Liquid Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 9) Read online

  “That’s not true,” said Bronmuth. “I was here when Gentry cracked that case. So were you, Sarge. You act like neither one of us paid any attention while he was here, or that we haven’t studied countless cases over the years. We can handle this on our own.”

  “Well, I’m sure you can,” I said, leaning forward and setting my mug on the table. “But unfortunately, it’s not that simple, for either of us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Silverbrook.

  I spread my hands in appeal. “Aragosto is your town. Nicchi lived and worked here, no question about that, but he washed ashore in New Welwic. That’s our jurisdiction. As of now, we have no idea where he was murdered, but our best guess is it happened at sea. Add those things together and you’re looking at a situation in which none of us has the upper hand. The fact that Steele, Quinto, and I are homicide investigators is immaterial. We’re all involved in this, like it or not.”

  Mines adopted a self-satisfied smile and turned it on Silverbrook, who looked as if he’d swallowed a lemon. He cleared his throat and jutted his chin toward me.

  “Fine. And I guess since I’m the one who took statements after Johnny’s disappearance, that means you’re with me.”

  Shay smiled. “Glad to be aboard, Officer Silverbrook.”

  I nodded in agreement, thinking to myself how much better of a liar Shay was than me.

  “So,” said Bronmuth. “You’re the homicide cops. Where do you propose we start?”

  “With the worst part of the job,” I said, standing. “Breaking Nicchi’s wife the bad news.”

  11

  Bianca Nicchi’s home made me jealous, but not because of its great opulence or incredible size. The house was a mere two stories, and probably in the range of fifteen hundred square feet. The exterior looked lively, with a coat of cornflower blue paint popping against white trim in the porch railing and posts, all surrounded with a rickety picket fence and a mob of green bushes that were taking full advantage of spring. Trees shaded the property, too, a pair in front and a half dozen in the back, rustling delightfully in the mid-afternoon breeze, but it wasn’t a hatred of shrubbery or a deep-seated aversion to foliage that fueled my ire. Rather it was the home’s cost. Not that Officer Silverbrook had shared with me insider knowledge of Aragosto’s real estate market, but the fact that a fisherman could afford a home such as this gave me some idea as to the town’s housing costs. In New Welwic, the best I could ever hope to achieve would be to upgrade from renting a small apartment to owning a similarly small condo. As for owning land, I’d have to settle for what I managed to drag with me in terra cotta pots up the stairs.

  We followed Silverbrook through the gate, down the path to the front, and up the porch stairs. The dwarf knocked on the frame of the exterior door, a hinged cover made of cheesecloth and wire. We waited.

  After a moment, the interior door creaked and opened. A young woman stood behind it, clad in a yellow, sleeveless sundress with a deep slit that plunged into her bosom. Dark hair fell to her shoulders, kept out of her face by bangs in the front. Thick, shapely eyebrows curved over light brown eyes like pouting lips, the latter of which the young woman also possessed.

  “Bronmuth?” she said through the screen door. “What are you doing here? And who are these jamooks?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Bianca,” said Silverbrook. “And these jamooks are cops, so maybe lighten up on the attitude? I know it’s hard for you, but give it a try sometime.”

  Bianca cast a judgmental eye over us. “They’re no cops I’ve ever seen. You and Sam been hiring at the station?”

  “They’re from New Welwic,” said Bronmuth. “Detectives Daggers, Quinto, and Steele.”

  “Detectives?” The exterior door squeaked as Bianca pushed it open. “This about Johnny? They find my sorry excuse for a husband drunk in a puddle of his own piss?”

  I lifted an eyebrow and shared it with Steele.

  “Look, Bianca, you mind if we come inside?” said Bronmuth. “We need to talk.”

  The young woman snorted. “Fine. Whatever. Come on in. Not like I’ve got anything going on.”

  Silverbrook nodded to us and led us inside, following Bianca through a corridor into a small living room fitted with a mismatched couch and loveseat, one of them upholstered in brown corduroy and the other with a teal and gray paisley design. What sunlight made it through the trees in the backyard filtered through the room’s windows, dying in the layer of dust that caked the coffee table and upon the threadbare tapestry hanging from the wall.

  Bianca settled on the couch in the far corner, crossing her arms and legs alike and turning a good fifteen degrees away from the center of the room. Silverbrook took the opposite corner of the couch. Anyone stupid enough to risk the center spot risked having their head bitten off by Bianca.

  “Well?” said the young woman. “What is it? You going to make me sit all day before you tell me?”

  “Look, Bianca,” said Bronmuth. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. Johnny’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  Bianca blinked, furrowing her brow. “What? Seriously?” She eyed Quinto, Steele, and me, none of who’d helped ourselves to the loveseat. It looked as if there might be a colony of mice living inside it. “So that’s what the three of you are here for? You’re emissaries from the city, here to tell me my husband’s dead?”

  “We found him this morning,” said Steele. “The embroidery on his jacket led us to Aragosto.”

  Bianca shook her head, her brow still furrowed and her lips pressed together tightly. She worked her mouth for a few seconds until words came out. “Well…I can’t say I’m surprised. He would’ve shown up by now if he wasn’t. And it’s not like he’d be alive for long if he did show his face, not after I got my hands on his sorry ass.”

  “You might want to cool it with the threats,” I said. “Johnny isn’t just dead. He was murdered.”

  Bianca recoiled as if she’d been wafted with smelling salts. “Murdered? What are you talking about?”

  “You noticed the part where Officer Silverbrook mentioned we were detectives, right? We’re with New Welwic’s homicide department.”

  Bianca blinked, staring as much into a fourth dimension as at anyone in particular. “But…why? Who would kill him?”

  Steele settled onto the edge of the loveseat, shelving whatever misgivings she might have and adopting her best look of concern. “That’s what we’re in town to find out, Bianca. Do you mind if we ask you some questions about your husband, Johnny?”

  Bianca started to close back up again, her folded arms tightening. “Well…sure, I guess. What do you need to know?”

  “Maybe you could tell us about the night he went missing.”

  “What about it? I already talked to Bronmuth after the fact. He took my statement.”

  “I think they want to hear it from you,” said Silverbrook. “Start at the beginning. You said Johnny left around eight, right?”

  I clenched my teeth. Shay’s jaw tightened as well. Bronmuth might claim he didn’t need our help, yet in our very first interview, he bungled an opportunity to allow a key witness to contradict herself.

  “That’s right,” said Bianca. “There was nothing special about the night, really. Johnny’d gotten back from a fishing trip the day before, then spent most of the day in and out of the house, buying supplies for his ship or hitting the bars or gods knows what else. Anyway, he left for good about eight. Didn’t say where he was going, or even give me so much as a goodbye. Just left, like I didn’t even exist. I figured I’d be able to tell where he went when he came back by the smell, either of the bottle or the sea, but he never showed. And here we are, with you all saying he got murdered.”

  “You didn’t pay much attention to his business, I take it?” I said.

  Bianca shot me a dirty look. “Huh?”

  “You said he could’ve been up to gods know what during the day. Clearly he didn’t talk to you much a
bout his affairs.”

  “We didn’t talk about much at all, if we’re being straight,” said Bianca. “Haven’t for a while. I’d pretty much given up on him.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Steele.

  “Just that I couldn’t tell you much about Johnny,” said Bianca. “Not anymore. When we started dating, and the first couple years of marriage, things were great. Johnny doted on me, cared for me, spent time with me. But that all went away. Got too caught up in his work, or got bored with me. I can’t tell you what I don’t know, and I already told you he didn’t talk to me anymore.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you when these…marital troubles began?” asked Shay.

  Bianca shrugged. “A year ago? Maybe two. I don’t know.”

  “And do you have any idea what might’ve caused the changes in your husband?”

  “It’s just the way men are, according to my girlfriends. Who knows. Maybe he was stressed about money, or over problems with his brother. Maybe both.”

  “His brother?” I asked.

  “Joey,” said Bianca. “They worked together. That’s why it was called Nicchi Fishing and Crabbing, not Johnny’s Fishing and Crabbing, capiche? Joey left a year ago. Started doing his own thing.”

  “Speaking of money,” said Bronmuth, “how are you holding up with Johnny gone, Bianca? You doing okay?”

  The young woman gave Silverbrook a dismissive nod. “Thanks, but I’m fine. The whole community’s pulling together. Sent the collection plate around, same as they always do, you know? Besides, I’m sure something’ll come through sooner or later. I’ll be alright.”

  The young lady still hadn’t uncoiled. The wall she’d built around herself loomed over us all, capable of fending off attacks from catapults and ballistae alike. Though her tone of voice had softened in response to Silverbrook’s inquiry, it struck me as odd how she hadn’t shed a single tear for her husband. If what she said was true, her relationship with the man wasn’t much to write home about, and she’d already convinced herself he’d exited the picture, but she surely hadn’t expected the man to have been murdered. And still no tears. Not even the threat of any. Could she really be that cold? Who drove away who, exactly?

  “I hate to harp on financial matters,” said Steele, “but since we’re on the topic, do you know if your husband suffered from any money problems? Was he heavily indebted to anyone?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bianca. “I already told you he didn’t include me in his business dealings—not that I wanted to be. Maybe money had been a little tight lately. Didn’t I say it might’ve been? But Johnny wasn’t in a bad way with worse people, if that’s what you’re asking. Not to my knowledge. Why?”

  “Well, his boat went missing the night he did,” said Steele. “We presume it was stolen. Maybe it was an act of chance that thieves targeted your husband, but given what we’ve learned about Aragosto, that seems…unlikely.”

  Bianca shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. If Johnny was up to anything, I didn’t know about it. And I doubt he was. We might’ve grown apart, but he was a good man. An honest man. Now, Bronmuth, if you and these government mooks are done firing the grill, maybe I can get some privacy? It’s not like I just learned my husband was murdered or anything.”

  The anger and annoyance radiated off her quite convincingly, but still no tears.

  “You bet, Bianca. You need anything, just call.” Silverbrook stood and gave us a nod.

  A half-dozen steps brought us out the door, which clattered shut behind us.

  “Well, that sucked,” said Bronmuth, passing a hand over his close-cropped hair. “You deliver news like this all the time?”

  “Not every day, but close,” said Quinto. “You get used to it.”

  Silverbrook shook his head. “I’d rather not.”

  “How well do you know Bianca?” I asked as we descended the steps.

  “About as well as I know anyone,” said Bronmuth.

  It wasn’t a useful answer. “She a good woman?”

  “Of course she is,” said the dwarf. “Rough around the edges, but yeah. What are you getting at?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “And where exactly are you in such a rush to go?”

  “The scene of the crime,” I said. “Or at least as close as we can get without getting wet.”

  12

  A sense of déjà vu accosted me as I waltzed down the rickety wooden dock, the slats clacking underfoot with each of my steps, but the sensation faded as I failed to encounter an impertinent fisherman at the end of it all, sassing me as I asked him about a man in a monogrammed maroon jacket. Instead, there wasn’t anything at the end of the dock. No fisherman, no boat, no crates of cargo that reeked like Quinto’s breath after he binged on fish cakes of questionable freshness. All I spotted was a collection of coiled rope, a few bollards, and a wide expanse of sapphire blue ocean beyond.

  “Here we are,” said Silverbrook, spreading his arms. “Pier seventeen. Johnny’s slip. Not sure what you expect to find.”

  “Evidence of something untoward, of course.”

  Spindly piers stretched into the shallows on either side of me, some with boats moored and some without. All manner of crafts were represented, some with low hulls and wide bodies, others narrow with peaked bows, some adorned with figureheads of ocean gods or dolphins or half-naked women. Service buildings lined the wharf behind us. Off to the left, past the seventeen piers and the piled stones of the breakwater, I spotted the colorful flapping banners of the tourist-friendly boardwalk.

  “What kind of evidence, exactly?” asked Bronmuth. “Blood? Guts?”

  “Steele, you want to take this?”

  My partner nodded as she searched, crouching to get a better look at one of the fastening posts. “I understand where you’re coming from, Officer. Homicide investigation is its own beast, as are arson and burglary and the other felony subdivisions. Most of the investigative techniques carry over, but you look for slightly different things depending on the type of perpetrator you’re after. Obviously we’d love to find physical evidence tying a scene to Johnny’s death. Blood is the most likely, but there could be other markers. Signs of struggle or of a quick exit. Unintentionally misplaced non-sanguineous bodily evidence.”

  “Non-whatinous?” said Bronmuth.

  “Anything other than blood,” said Quinto.

  “The usual then,” said Bronmuth. “And?”

  “And what?” asked Steele.

  “Have you found anything non-san-guin-aeous?”

  Shay rose and sighed. “No. Nothing sanguineous either. It’s an old dock, rickety and in need of care, but if there was ever any evidence of an assault or kidnapping here, it’s long since washed away. Has it rained in the past ten days?”

  Bronmuth nodded. “Middle of last week.”

  Shay lifted both her brows. “Wonderful.”

  “Hey. Bronmuth!”

  The voice, salty and rough like a gust of ocean spray, arrived simultaneously to the footsteps. A wiry graybeard with a red tartan shirt and tan carpenter pants approached, his mop of faded, straw-like hair mostly concealed under a plain knit cap, a garment I was starting to think was mandatory for anyone who worked on or near a boat.

  “Hey, Keonig,” said Bronmuth, tipping his head toward the newcomer. “How you been?”

  “Every day a little older and a little creakier,” said Keonig. “But I’m still kicking. Who’re your friends?”

  At least Bronmuth was polite enough not to correct the man on his assumption. “Detectives from New Welwic. Daggers. Steele. Quinto.” He pointed us out in turn, and we each nodded or waved.

  “Detectives, eh?” said the graybeard. “You still looking into Johnny’s disappearance?”

  “Murder, apparently,” said Bronmuth. “These folks found him washed ashore in the city.”

  I ground my teeth again. I wanted to punch the stupid dwarf. “Sil
verbrook? How about you ixnay the assual-cay omicide-hay talk, mmkay?”

  His eyebrows scrunched. “What?”

  “Your tongue’s lolling,” I said. “Maybe you should keep it in your mouth.”

  Bronmuth added a cocked head to his eyebrow contortions. “Are you mad I told Keonig about the murder?”

  I tapped the side of my nose and gave him a bug-eyed, toothless grin.

  Silverbrook snorted. “Give me a break. We told Bianca. You think word’s not going to get out?”

  “I’ve no doubt it will,” I said. “But it doesn’t have to be the first thing out of your mouth. You want to learn how to investigate a homicide? Consider revealing as little as possible to witnesses rule number two, right after don’t trust the guy with the bloody knife in his hand.”

  “Witnesses?” said Keonig. “I don’t know anything!”

  Bronmuth growled, the edge of his lips curling. “I know what I’m doing. I didn’t graduate from the academy yesterday.”

  Quinto clapped me on the shoulder, gently pulling me back. “Don’t mind Daggers, Silverbrook. He’s been having an off day.”

  “Off day and a half, more like,” muttered Steele from the end of the pier.

  “The point is, we all want the same thing,” continued Quinto. “To figure out what happened to Nicchi. Keonig, was it? You work here?”

  Keonig looked like he’d rather be anywhere but between me, Quinto, and Bronmuth, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah. I’m the docks’ super. I make sure everyone’s got their paperwork on file, everyone’s following proper safety procedures, and I handle disagreements. If someone ties up on somebody else’s pier or tangles their mooring lines. That sort of thing. Boring stuff, mostly, but I saw Bronmuth and I figured I should check in to make sure I hadn’t missed something.”