42

At precisely eleven twenty-six on the following Friday morning, Mick was sitting behind his desk studying a layout of Mrs. Bettie Jenkins’ house. Rats were getting into her basement and then having free reign of the whole place, chewing up curtains and urinating everywhere. Being especially clever rodents, they’d somehow eluded the last three vermin experts she’d called out. She was at her wits end with it. It wasn’t the most exciting job but it all helped put food on the table, so Mick said he’d lend his sleuthing skills to the problem and see if he could find where the rats were getting in.

Just as he noticed something strange about the plan of Mrs. Jenkins’ home and was about to look closer at it, his office door opened and Mr. Leabrook walked in. He was wearing his best suit, a dark blue one he’d had tailored in Hattersdale. A mustard yellow handkerchief was tucked into his breast pocket, with his initials sewn into it. The two colors didn’t go well together, but Mick wasn’t about to say anything. Not while he was sitting there wearing a thick, wooly cardigan with a huge, brown wolf embroidered onto the back. People wearing paper armor shouldn’t go out in the rain, after all.

“Can’t give you much time I’m afraid, Michael,” Mr. Leabrook said, taking a step inside the office.

Mick didn’t recall asking his old employer for any time, but he set his pencil down on his notebook. “Morning,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“There’s another one. Right there, in broad daylight.”

Mr. Leabrook led him onto Coiner’s Way, where they stopped at the side of Rolls and Dough bakery. It was a brick building, perhaps forty or fifty years old. Most structures in Sunhampton went back way further than that, of course, it being one of the oldest towns in Easterly. Before Mrs. Grant had opened her bakery, it used to be an accountant’s office, though that was before Mick’s time. He’d always known it was the place where he could stop by after school and buy discounted jam twists and sweet rolls.

“Right here,” said Mr. Leabrook.

He was pointing at one of the bricks. A huge chunk of it had been chipped away to form a sort of cavern, just like before, and a little imp statue had been placed inside. Similar to the last one they’d found, the statue was stuck so hard inside its little brick chamber that it’d take a hammer and chisel to remove it.

“That makes two of them,” said Mick. “Can we be sure this is new, though? They’re so small. It could easily have been put there the same time as the other one, and we missed it.”

“It’s new, you can bet your last copper on it. Mrs. Grant keeps asking for the brickwork to be repointed, and we had a builder out to price it up last Thursday. They would have seen it.”

“Maybe it was them who left the statue there.”

Mr. Leabrook shook his head. “It was Stacey Logan who came out to price up the work.”

He needn’t have said more. Stacey Logan was the most respected builder in Sunhampton. She didn’t overcharge by even a copper, and her work was rarely less than exceptional. Even better, she’d been born in town and lived here all her life. She was a ‘hamptoner through and through.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Mr. Leabrook regarded the little imp once more, then looked away. “Something about this gives me the shivers, Michael. Sends one right up and down my back every time I look at the hideous thing. Can you do some digging?”

“Are you hiring me as a sleuth?”

“Saints alive, no. I can’t afford to be throwing gold around like that.”

“Then I’m sorry, Mr. Leabrook. I can’t afford to be spending my time on cases that don’t pay, either. I’ve done enough of that lately.”

“Then perhaps you’ll do it as our town’s head guard. That is your duty, isn’t it?” countered Mr. Leabrook.

“Nothing illegal about leaving a statue somewhere.”

“Ah – but damaging someone else’s property? Vandalism?”

Damn it, Mr. Leabrook had him there. There was no getting around it. Under his official capacity as town guard, he was duty bound to at least pretend to look into this. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Mick went into the bakery and questioned Mrs. Grant about the statue, but she didn’t know a thing about it, and she didn’t much care, either. She explained that she’d stupidly agreed to cater for a wedding happening in Perentee at the weekend, and she was going to be working all day and night making jam twists and a five tiered cake with little model figures of the happy couple on top. So, with all due respect, could Mick please leave her be?

Outside the bakery, Mick opened up his enchanted narrative notepad and let its magic get to work. Words wrote themselves onto the page in a furious scribble, before stopping abruptly, like a carriage coming upon an unexpected roadblock.

The bakery’s outer walls hold a secret, just as Mrs. Grant’s delicious vanilla pouch potluck treats hold secrets, too. Only theirs is of the sweet kind…not imp.

The statue itself seems harmless enough. But then, anything designed for harm by devious hands would appear innocent, wouldn’t it? A more learned scholar might know more, but a normal person won’t even notice the statue, let alone know what it is.

Points of interest:

The imp statue: Who put it there? Why?

A footprint near the wall: does it belong to the builder who was recently here, or someone else?

Mick stared at the notepad, his brow furrowing. How had he missed the footprint? He guessed it was somewhat faded. Not that outlandish to overlook a thing like that. He needed to look closer at things, though, damn it. It was just another sign of his inexperience.

He kneeled down by the footprint to get a better look, but his knees protested, so he straightened up again. Checking that his Simple Forensics token was set in his token bracelet, he activated Evidence Sweep.

Blue light the hue of a spring sky bulging with promise washed out from his hands, momentarily startling him. It traveled in waves over the ground and the wall, washing upwards before fading away near the bakery gutters. Once the last trace of it had disappeared, token text appeared in thin air, and three items appeared by his feet: a large slip of card, a smaller slip of card, and a vial. He’d had these items in his knapsack, though not with the details that were now on or inside them.

Evidence Gained:

Boot print: Size 9, probably not worker’s boots judging by the soles. Unusual treads.

Fingerprint: Partial, taken from the untouched brick next to the statue.

Metal shavings: From the chisel used to remove brickwork?

Mick put the evidence in his knapsack to look over later and see if he could make any deductions. That done, he activated Keen Eye to check if there were any smaller details that he’d missed, but nothing stuck out. Finally, he opened his regular notepad and made as good a sketch of the imp statue as he could manage. He was no artist, that was for sure, but his drawing was passable.