As Torin did his best to wipe his feet on the welcome mat, he said to Manfred, “Seal off the house for the time being, and get Sergeant Arron to send someone to guard both the front and back doors.”
Danthres rolled her eyes. “Waste of time.”
“Perhaps, but I’d rather have guards there and not need them than the other way ’round.”
“Fair enough. If you’re done, let’s go talk to the family.”
The family, to Danthres’s lack of surprise, was singularly unhelpful. That lack of surprise was due to the way her day had been going. First there was the scavenger hunt for her every personal item. Then she arrived at the east wing of the castle, where the sergeant informed her that the magistrate had returned a not-guilty ruling on her and Torin’s most recent murder case, which did nothing to improve either her mood or her opinion of the magistrate. She couldn’t complain to Torin about it because he was late as usual-only he wasn’t coming in at all, because he’d been summoned to the crime scene in Unicorn.
To add to the annoyance, none of the Jaros family seemed to be in any way insincere about their confusion over what had happened. Danthres had been a detective in the Castle Guard for a decade now, and she had gotten a good ear for when people were lying. While Millar Jaros did lie about his monetary worth and Abbi Jaros lied about how she was a good and faithful wife, and the children lied about any number of things, they all seemed quite sincere to her trained ear when they discussed the suddenly appearing closet.
Just as Torin and Danthres were about to leave the neighbor’s house, Abbi asked, “Excuse me, Lieutenants, but, well, I mean-” She threw up her hands. “What are we supposed to do about that?”
“Hire a cleaning service, I would expect,” Danthres said dismissively.
“I’m a good housewife,” Abbi said stubbornly. “I don’t believe in cleaning services.”
“Have at it, then,” Danthres said with a wicked grin. “But if you decide you’d rather not get on hands and knees and muck out your own house, I can recommend a service to avoid. They’re called Forak’s Perfect Clean, and they’ve made a mess of my own place.”
Abbi frowned. “What kind of cleaning service leaves a place a mess?”
“That’s kind of my point.” With that, Danthres left.
Danthres’ mood was even worse when she came in the next morning. After spending the morning wasting their time interviewing the Jaros family, they spent the afternoon wasting their time interviewing Alfrek Jaros’ coworkers. Alfrek, Abbi’s husband and Millar’s son, worked in the Lord and Lady’s castle as a deputy to the transport minister, Sir Lio. That, at least, made tracking them down easy, as they were in the same building where Danthres and Torin worked.
They were no more helpful in revealing why someone would mess up the Jaros sitting room from a hidden closet.
Sergeant Jonas came dashing in from the kitchen, shuffling parchments, his green cloak billowing behind him. He scowled at Danthres as she approached her desk. “You’re late. And where’s your-”
“Jonas, so help me, if you ask me where my cloak is, I will ram my sword so far up your ass the point will stick out your left ear. Just fetch me another one, will you?”
The sergeant twisted his lips, as if considering saying something, then thinking better of it, and then zipped off to fetch a fresh cloak. All members of the Castle Guard wore leather armor, a crest emblazoned on the chest to indicate posting: a gryphon for the castle, and a unicorn, dragon, goblin, or mermaid to indicate the precinct with the same name in the city-state proper. Those above the level of guard had a cloak to indicate rank; lieutenants wore brown.
Danthres saw, to her shock, that Torin was already at his desk, which abutted hers. True, she was later than usual, but for Torin, late was usual. He was also holding some parchments in his hands. “Paperwork,” he said dismissively as he set them aside. “What happened to your cloak?”
“Forak’s. I’m guessing one of their cleaning people made off with it when they cleaned the place. That’s why I’m late, I had to go over there to complain. They promised to search and get back to me.” She sat down at her desk. “What have you been doing?”
“I was thinking about what other avenues we could explore, and I thought we might try the architectural angle.”
Danthres frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Millar, Abbi, and Alfrek all said that the closet wasn’t part of the original design of the house, that it was a blank wall until yesterday morning.”
“Right. Whatever magic cast the muck also created the closet.”
“Perhaps. But this house dates back to when the city-state was first being built. Lord Galmar, Lord Albin’s late father, insisted that all constructions have their blueprints filed in the castle. Lord Albin didn’t continue that practice-the city-state grew too large for it to be practical to keep track of every single building-but back in the old days it was a requirement.” One of Torin’s smaller smiles peeked out through his beard. “So I’ve requested the blueprints.”
Instinctively, Danthres wanted to object. In her experience, the best way to find out what happened was to figure out who was most likely to have committed the crime and interrogate them until they confessed.
But they’d tried that, and didn’t turn anything up. Torin’s notion was as good a one as any.
“What’s wrong?” Torin asked.
“Hm?” Danthres looked up. “What do you mean what’s wrong?”
Torin smirked. “I expected at least a grouse about what a pain it is to paw through records when we should be questioning people.”
“What would be the point?” Danthres said with a dramatic sigh. “Besides, I used up most of my invective this morning with those shitbrains at Forak’s.” Waving off the platitude Torin was likely to espouse, she said, “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Let’s get to work.”
“Well, we can’t until-”
One of the castle page boys came in, laden with massive rolled-up parchments, and looking nervously from side to side. “Lieutenant bin Givald?”
Chuckling, Torin got up. “Close enough. Over here, lad.”
The page boy dashed over to Torin’s desk, dropped the parchments unceremoniously on its surface, then dashed out of the squad room as fast as his spindly legs would carry him.
“No doubt concerned about overexposure to the thugs,” Danthres said irritably, using the word far too many of the aristocrats in the castle used when speaking of the Castle Guard.
Torin grinned. “No doubt.” He unrolled the dried old parchments, one for each floor of the house.
Danthres got up and walked around to Torin’s desk. As she started to peer down at the blueprints, she noticed that Torin was wearing new boots. “What happened to your boots?”
Shrugging, Torin said, “I couldn’t get that muck off, so I sent them to be cleaned, and they issued me a new pair.”
“I should mark this day down,” she said dryly. “In ten years, I think that’s the first time you’ve changed boots without being threatened with bodily harm.” She was also impressed that Torin had managed to convince the service to do the job in the first place.
“It takes forever to break them in,” Torin said testily. “I have wide feet.”
She shook her head. “They’re boots, Torin, not pets.” Not wanting to get into this argument again, she looked down at the ragged material. “I’m amazed these things haven’t fallen to pieces. Aren’t they over a hundred years old?”
“Magic, probably,” Torin said, “cast when it was realized that they were, in fact, falling to pieces.” He studied the first floor. “Interesting. There isn’t a design for a closet-but there is a space there.” He put his index finger on the spot where the closet was now. “That’s odd.”