“What question is that, Danthres?” Torin asked as he slogged through the muck toward the front door.
“What crime has been committed?”
Torin looked down, smiled, and then looked back at Danthres. “Well, vandalism at the very least.”
“A crime easily solved even by the pea-brained idiots of the guard rank.” Turning to Manfred, she said, “Nothing personal, Manfred.”
Manfred grinned. “Honestly, ma’am, most guards’ brains aren’t that large.”
Danthres found herself laughing against her better judgment, then quickly grew serious again. The last thing she wanted to do was get chummy with one of the guards. “So why are we handling this?”
Torin walked slowly to the closet door. “I said vandalism was the very least this could be. I’ve examined the closet door-it doesn’t match the design of the rest of the house, and the space it takes up can’t be accounted for by the shape of the house. It’s definitely something magical. It might be some sort of attack on the Jaros family. Since we haven’t actually spoken to them yet, now might be the time to do that, and see if this is part of something larger.”
Rolling her eyes, Danthres said, “Somehow I doubt that very much.” She sighed far louder than perhaps she should have and asked Manfred, “Where are they?”
“Next door, ma’am-they said they didn’t want to stay in here until it was cleaned up.”
Torin gingerly walked across the sitting-room floor toward Danthres. “Perhaps you can recommend that cleaning service of yours?”
Her face darkening even more, Danthres said, “Not likely. I spent half the morning trying to find where they put everything.” At the behest of a rather aggrieved landlady, Danthres had hired a cleaning service for her rooms. Said landlady had rented Danthres the two rooms on the upper floor of her house in Dragon Precinct on the condition that Danthres keep the place clean and neat. However, Danthres had not been keeping up that part of the bargain especially well, thanks to the long hours she put in as a detective for the Castle Guard as well as her own inherent laziness when it came to matters of housekeeping. Since the landlady was threatening to toss Danthres out on her ear if she didn’t comply, she hired a cleaning service.
They’d done a thorough job of making the place neat and shiny and clean. It was far more thorough than Danthres would have believed possible-so much so, in fact, that Danthres couldn’t find a single thing she was looking for this morning. It was what had set her on her bad mood in the first place.
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.