Emerald City Blues (2 page)

I took the letter and awkwardly wrangled it open one-handed. Inside was a single postcard of stiff, creamy stationery. On it, someone had written a single word in
dark red ink:
Veniam.

A gust of wind rattled the window,
cold rain battering against it with sudden vigor. "Who's coming, Tommy?" I’d bet a C-note he could read the Latin as well as I could, if not better. His father, William, had been one of Meister Gerd's journeymen. William Cooke was probably a better scholar a decade ago than I would ever be.

"I don't know. That's what worries me. It sounds like a threat, and I can't get the feeling of being watched out of my head. I've even started to dream about it, nightmares where I'm running from something I can't see. Something watching me from the shadows." He licked his lips. "Please, Madison. I know this is something like what my father used to be into, I know it. You're the Meister's last apprentice, and you’re a private investigator now. There's no one else I can turn to."

"Go home, Tommy." I hated the sound of my voice, thick with drink and my own darkness. "I stopped doing that sort of thing a long time ago. I was never any good at it, anyway." Lies are poor comfort, but they're better than a jagged truth. "I'm just an investigator now, a flatfoot gumshoe, tracking down bail jumpers and husbands who run off to San Francisco with their secretaries. That letter is just someone's bad joke. It's probably just a prank. Go home and quit worrying so much over nothing."

"It's not nothing, Madison, I know it isn't. Even if it's not something like... like
that,
though - you're an investigator. A detective, like your father was." He must have seen my expression darken, he pressed on so quickly. "I mean, even if it has nothing occult about it, somebody is trying to get to me. And they have. I'm… spooked. I can't sleep, can't keep food down. I'd go to the police but they'd never understand. You're all I've got, Madison. Please, won't you help me?" He took an anxious step toward me and I held up a hand to stop him. The wrong hand. He looked at my bleeding fingers and his eyes widened.

"My god, Maddie, what have you-" He shot a glance down at the shattered mirror on the floor near the wall, then back at me. "Oh. Oh, it's
that
night, isn't it? I'm so very sorry, Madison, I had no idea. I would never have bothered you if I'd known-"

Christ. "All right, Tommy. You win. I'll look into it. Just...go home. I'll come by in the morning and you can tell me the rest of it then. After we both get some sleep." I turned away before any more words could slip out of his open mouth and pulled the door open for him. Gentleman that he was, he could hardly say no when a lady asked him to leave. Even so dubious a lady as me.

"In the morning, Tommy." He inclined his head and pulled his hat back on as he stepped uncertainly past me onto the landing. He looked as if he wanted to say something else. I spared him that by closing the door and leaning against it heavily so I wouldn't stagger.

A job investigating non-specific, possibly arcane threats against Tommy Cooke was the last thing I wanted to think about right now. I was done with the Art. I was done with detective work. I was done with everything that reminded me how much I had lost. And just when I thought I was done with that part of my life forever, something came out of the rain and the darkness to drag me right back into it.

I slid down the door until I reached the floor and couldn't slide any farther. I thought about lying down and falling asleep then and there. It would not have been the first time. Instead, I lifted my left hand to look at Tommy's letter again.
Veniam.
The Latin meant
I come.
A chill went through me. I knew that handwriting. A memory flashed through my clouded mind like quicksilver and vanished just as quickly into a fog of alcohol. Where had I seen it before? I pounded my right hand against my forehead and then winced as my bloodied knuckles screamed at me. It was gone. And tomorrow I'd have to figure out what I was going to tell Tommy when he looked at me with those innocent blue eyes and pleaded for help. Help that only I could give, or so he would tell me. What could I say to that?

My
glass was too far away to reach, and it was empty. Unacceptable.

That made me rea
lize I had not yet drunk a toast for William Cooke. Damn Tommy anyway. And to hell with the glass. I reached for the bottle of Cutty Sark. William Cooke had favored Prohibition. He and the rest of the Circle would all have to make do with Scotch.

Grey light pierced the
Seattle fog and imprinted itself directly onto my brain.

Groaning, I hauled myself up. It appeared that I'd made it to the couch before passing out last night. That was something, even if I couldn't remember doing it. My drunken foresight must be improving. Judging by the light filtering
weakly through the overcast sky it was still before noon. Bully for me. I might still be able to keep my promise of meeting Tommy this morning while it was still morning. Would wonders never cease?

There wasn't time to eat anything
. That was good, because there was nothing even vaguely food-like in my cupboards just now. I'd been meaning to do something about that, but hadn't quite figured out how when I was flat broke and almost two months behind on rent. I needed a case to work. Much as I hated the idea of taking Tommy's money for a job that would turn out to be nothing, I had to eat. Time to suit up and get on with it. I shrugged into a white blouse that might still be clean enough, attempted to make my hair look decent, and rapidly decided I would have to wear something over both blouse and hair if I was going to be even halfway presentable. I put on a hat and coat, avoided looking at the mantle where the mirror had hung until the night before. As if it was actually important what I looked like. I was about to tell Tommy how much of his money he would have to part with for me to spend a week or two looking into something that was really nothing. Looking attractive might even make that harder on both of us rather than easier.

I pushed out onto the sodden street and trudged down Jackson, then turned up the collar of my trench coat against the breeze off Elliott Bay as I turned onto Second Avenue by the Savoy. My father's favorite fedora,
once black but now faded with age and wear, rode low on my forehead to keep out even the weak sunlight that stole through the steely overcast. No amount of overcast would protect me from the throbbing pain of a hangover I had so richly earned. I made a mental note to eat something at the diner down on Third, then a second note to do that as soon as I had a few dollars of per diem from Tommy in hand. With that still in mind, I turned off Second and caught the trolley as it passed by the Hotel Seattle. It was a long climb up James Street, and I was in rough shape after last night.

I thought about Tommy's lette
r as the trolley chugged and jolted its way up Capitol Hill. One drunken flash of insight aside, I had almost nothing to go on besides the standard human failings that lay behind veiled threats and harassment. Had dear, innocent Tommy managed to make an enemy somehow? He didn’t seem the type to make enemies. He also didn't seem the type to have gambling debts or any vices more serious than holding a torch for someone who would never be able to return his unrequited affections. The thought made my head throb even more than the jolting of the trolley car did. Tommy was a doctor, well-to-do and probably loaded. Was someone after his money and that nice house he had inherited up on top of the hill? Maybe there was a former patient with a grudge out there looking for revenge? I mentally walked around the case from a few different angles, looking for something that added up. Nothing solid came to mind. There was no obvious reason for someone to be gunning for Tommy, at least not that I could figure without talking to him to find out more.

I stepped lightly off the trolley on Cherry and relaxed into a slow pace heading north. Nice houses around here.
Old money. My father probably would have been able to tell me which city councilmen lived where, who the doctors and lawyers were, and which barons of industry owned the various mansions up here on the hill. What was it about rich folk that made them want to look down on everyone?

The short
walk did nothing for my hangover and little enough to clear my thoughts. The wind was cold and raw here on top of the hill. I turned off Madison and stopped cold. A few blocks ahead there were three black-and-whites parked in the street, lights and sirens turned off but still clearly working a crime scene. A crime - up here, among the elites of the city? It seemed unlikely. Burglary, maybe. But part of me asked why they needed three police cars to investigate a mere robbery. I had no answer for that one. The cold wind had gotten inside my trench coat and I struggled not to shiver for three of the longest blocks I had ever walked.

Then I came to a dead stop.
The three police cars were parked outside Tommy's brick Victorian.

I stared until one of the officers noticed and came out to run off the rubbernecker. Then he recognized Iron Mike's daughter and his gruffness softened into the kind of tired smile I was used to seeing on officers
who had been called out of bed long before the sun rose. "Well, if it isn't our very own Maddie Sheehan. Out for a morning constitutional, are we?"

I smiled. I think. I was still feeling gut-shot. "Something like that, Joe. What's new on the beat?"

He grunted, blowing a tired chuff of breath through his bristling mustache. "Nothing good, I'm afraid." Officer Joe Malloy was a third-generation beat cop who usually worked the dockside. Most career police officers either become pragmatic or they burn out. Malloy was pragmatic. I was burned out. "A nice young doctor got himself murdered last night. It's a bad piece of business, that's for sure and certain. Nothing for it, but I do hate to see things like this happen. Bad enough when a Nip turns up dead down on the waterfront, but this is a good neighborhood up here. Bad business."

I tried to sound calm, or at least not horribly guilty. That was hard, since I felt somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred perce
nt responsible at the moment. I swallowed hard. "Any leads?"

"Oy now and off with you
, lass. Just you keep your pretty wee nose out of department business, hey?" Malloy gave a grin to show his bluster was good-natured. "You know I'd not mind you seeing some business come your way, Maddie Sheehan. Just as I'd not mind seeing some justice for poor Mr. Cooke here. I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but for old Mike's daughter... I can say it don't seem right, what happened here. There's no obvious murder weapon, no tracks, and not a single witness so far. It's strange, damned strange, if you'll pardon me saying so." He opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again. "Well now. I'll see if I can't get the Chief to call you in as a consultant. But until then I can't discuss any more details on an open investigation. You know how it is. Regulations." He made a face somewhere between regretful and disgusted. On any other day it would have been comical. Not today.

"I know how it is." I did know. I'd grown up hearing the regu
lations often enough from my father. Which was why I also knew when they could be bent, and how. If there really was such a strange absence of the usual kinds of evidence, I might be able to turn up something from more...unusual avenues of investigation. "As it happens, Joe, I knew Thomas Cooke socially. His father was sort of a friend of the family, back when. Would you mind if I took a quick look around? I might have some insights that could help the investigation." I pitched my voice as levelly as I could, but he still lifted one greying eyebrow at me. He was about to speak when another voice came from behind me.

"You are an admitted associate of
the victim, and just happened to be walking by his front door the very morning after he was murdered?" I turned and saw a thin, wiry young police officer approaching, his steel-eyed gaze intense and suspicious. Lieutenant's bars on his uniform explained Malloy's sudden stoic silence. "And now you want to have a look at the scene of the crime. How coincidental. One might even say convenient. Miss...?" His expression had turned sharp, predatory, just short of an accusation. Joe Malloy's face had gone closed and stony. Something told me I was in for a quick lesson in current department politics.

"Sheehan." I watched carefully but his demeanor didn't change a bit. The name meant nothing to him.
He really was new. "The late Detective Lieutenant Michael Sheehan was my father."

"So you're the flatfoot dame
I've been hearing about. And you came sniffing around my crime scene completely by accident, is that it?" He still had yet to introduce himself. Not that I cared. Lieutenant Sneer would do fine. "Well you can turn around and go sniff somewhere else, gumshoe. This site is closed to the public while
official
detectives do their work. Thank you for your concern, citizen. Now clear out and let us do our work, or I'll have you cooling your heels in a cell downtown for obstruction of justice." He turned on his heel and stalked back towards the third police car.

Malloy blew out his whiskers and looked apologetic. I shrugged and tried to look indifferent. "Not your fault, Joe. Thanks for putting in a good word with the
Chief for me. If I can help, you know I will - retainer or no retainer."

"You're one of the good ones, Maddie." Malloy
gave me an avuncular smile from under his grey wire brush mustache, but his eyes told a troubled tale.