49

The billiards club was in a rundown building on Knapper’s Street, a stone’s throw from Ceridoc Mercantile Square. Inside, it was a hall filled end to end with green tables, some unoccupied, others with games in various states of play. Whoever was Chancellor in Charge of Lamp Placement was miserly with their coin, but the dimness seemed to work for the place. Every few seconds there was the soft click-clack of balls colliding, punctuated by murmured conversations that never reached the volume you’d find in, say, a tavern. This was on account of the club’s second rule: ‘No loud noises, under any circumstances….except if there is a fire.’ The air smelled strongly of fried potatoes, not a surprise since this was the only hot food they served. You weren’t allowed to eat them near a table, though. Rule three.

Mick sought out the owner, only to learn that she was on vacation in The Cove. Instead, he had to make do getting answers from the clerk who ran the place in her absence. She was busy totaling something in a big, red book on the counter in front of her. Stacked on one side of the counter where three boxes filled with little green cubes of cue chalk.

“Got a few questions for you, if you don’t mind,” Mick said.

“Can I see your token?”

“I don’t have one.”

“This is a members’ only hall, I’m afraid,” she said. “You can fill out an application now, pay the fifty gold, and we can issue you a token in a few days if your references square up. Or, if you know a member, they can get you a guest pass for the day.”

“Will this do?” asked Mick, showing his guard badge.

She studied it. “No, that’s not one of our tokens.”

“It’s a special one. Says that you need to answer my questions.”

“Excuse me?”

Mick sighed. “It’s a guard badge. I was trying to be mysterious…you know what? Forget it. Just need to ask you a question or two, that’s all.”

“Oh, sorry. You were being rather vague. Right you are.”

“Alright, so, I was wondering…”

The clerk was pleasantly cooperative now that she knew he was both a town guard and a sleuth in training, and after a few directed questions he learned that one of their members had recently visited the hall to play a few games, only to find that they didn’t have their members’ token. They reported it missing and filled out a form for a replacement, but hadn’t yet returned to claim it.

“What did they look like?” asked Mick.

“Can’t say. I don’t work Tuesdays. All’s I’ve got is a note from Piper about it. If you can call it a note, that is, with her handwriting. More like a sheet of squiggles.”

“Could I see the form, please?”

The clerk turned a piece of paper around, allowing Mick to make a note of the name and address written on it.

Mick ate his homemade cheese and ham sandwiches on a bench in Harrington Square, where he was surprised to learn of a city tax that had recently been introduced. Brought into law by a flock of pigeons who perched on the edge of a fountain, this taxation decreed that unless you donated a few crumbs of bread and a piece or two of cheese, you wouldn’t get left alone.

It was early afternoon by the time he reached the address he’d copied from the form. Lexingdale Drive was a long street with three-storied townhouses on either side, designed primarily as an advertisement for how big these folks’ coin purses were. The idea of actually living in them was a secondary concern. This was the kind of neighborhood where if your nose was attuned enough, you could take a big sniff and actually smell the gold in the air as sure as if coins were being minted nearby. There was an element of competition about the whole thing, too. Many of the homeowners had hired landscapers to sculpt their bushes, resulting in a neighborly topiary feud. Just to his right, a pride of leafy lions was staring out onto the street. From the house across, a herd of green elephants gazed back. You could almost hear their trunks trumpeting. The gentle murmur of conversation from a garden party or two was carried throughout the street by a gentle breeze. Mick had never expected his target to live in a place like this.

“Fraud pays, I guess,” he murmured as he reached the house in question, before reminding himself to keep an open mind. Fraud wasn’t necessarily a given. The presumption of guilt was a slippery slope. Whoever lived here, they could well be an innocent person who’d simply lost their billiard’s club token.

By now, he was well practiced at giving the guards’ knock. Three firm rap-rap-raps brought someone to the door. When he saw who it was, you could have knocked him over with a feather. Fair or not, any thoughts of presumption of innocence left his mind.

“Mick Mulroon, as I live and breathe,” she said.

Lena Coarty looked surprisingly different to when Mick had last seen her at her cottage. Gone were the more obvious tokens such as her country clothes, but something more indefinable had changed, too. She just looked less…rural. She was the kind of person who gained a kind of social camouflage from her surroundings without having to do much to achieve it. Back at her cottage, she’d worn a countryside look. Here on Lexingdale Drive, all she needed was a glass of wine and a sense of presumption and she fit in like a velvet glove.

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How did she do it? Maybe it was an ability that she got from an illicit skill tree token. Mick could really do with getting his hands on one of those to see how they worked. Understand your enemy, and all that. Unfortunately, any criminal competent enough to study for an illegal skill tree also set their tokens up to break upon removal from their token bracelets. That wasn’t such a hard thing to arrange if you knew a dodgy tokenmaker.

“Would you like to come in for a brew?” said Lena, stepping aside.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“How’ve you been?”

“Good, thanks,” replied Mick. “You?”

“Ah, you know. Keeping myself occupied. Birdwatching. Collecting antique jewelry. Nice, legal hobbies.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, Mick said, “It’s good to have interests. I like billiards.”

This provoked no response from Lena. As they walked through the hall, hemmed in either side by huge vases that cost more than Mick’s annual earnings under Mr. Leabrook, Lena explained that this wasn’t her house; she was a lodger. Her ex-husband’s brother – her ex-brother-in-law, basically – owned the place, and Lena looked after it while he was on one of his frequent business trips. He was a molasses salesman, dealing in huge quantities of the stuff and selling it to bakeries and restaurants across Easterly. He let Lena stay here so the place appeared occupied while he was away. Her presence as a flesh and blood system of security took the place of paying rent.

“Liam just doesn’t want the place to look empty while he’s on his travels,” she said. “Doesn’t want to attract criminals.”

“No, that’d be terrible.”

Mick still didn’t trust Lena enough to accept a beverage that she had to add things to or stir, so he took a glass of water from the water pump. They sat at a counter in the kitchen. Taking into account the cooking area, dining table, and middle island, there was more marble in this room than a king’s tomb.

“So, how can I help?” she said. “Don’t tell me those birds have been stealing again.”

Mick had already thought about how to approach his interview. He didn’t have any evidence linking the owner of the billiards club token to the false food safety rating. So a patron left a bag containing food safety sigils in a tavern that later got sent an F rating. And what? The presence of a token in a bag proved nothing – a half competent solicitor would just say that the knapsack owner must have found the sigils and picked them up out of curiosity.

Sipping his water, he brought ‘Chapter 9 – Interrogation and Questions’ of Starter Sleuthing to mind. There was a framework for interviews, a roll of twine for sleuths to follow so they didn’t get lost. What was the first thing? Right – establish rapport. Easier said than done, given his distaste for Lena’s company, but he just needed to keep the Sunny Café and poor old Spruce in mind.

“This is a nice place,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind living here myself.”

Lena blew on her coffee. “All you have to do is marry a man, find out he’s a gambler who refuses to change, get divorced, and stay on good terms with his brother.”

“Right, sure. I’ll bear that in mind. Been up to much since we last spoke?”

“Let me see…I got into spoken word poetry. There’s a club on Wessex Road, past the Oak Tree tavern. You ought to drop by one day.”

Attending an evening of spoken word poetry was maybe the last thing in the world Mick wanted to do. Saying so wouldn’t made for very good mortar in his brick wall of rapport, though.

“I’m sure it’s a powerful experience. Me? I like playing billiards. You ever played?”

“Never,” said Lena.

Mick tried to pierce her expression, work out what she was thinking. This was the problem with her; she was hard to read, and even harder to disbelieve. She could tell you the clouds were raining chickens, and it’d have a ring of truth.

“There’s a club down on Knapper’s Street. Heard it’s good,” he said.

“Oh, that place? Liam goes there sometimes, come to think of it.”

“Your brother-in-law?”

“Ex-brother-in-law, yes.”

So Mick had laid the trap, and Lena had deftly hopped over it and then flung it in her ex-brother-in-law’s direction. The problem was that the club membership form had belonged to a L. Turner. Why the club had allowed someone to write their first name as ‘L’ was beyond Mick, but they had, and that was that.

“What’s your old married name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Is that a guard question, or a Skinny Mick question?” said Lena.

“Could be either.”

“Well, it’s not a state secret. I used to be a Turner.”

1. Turner. No ‘Mr.’ on the form, no ‘Mrs.’ So it could belong to either Lena or Liam. Mick couldn’t contradict anything she had said so far. What did Starter Sleuthing say to do next in an interview? Let’s see… There was establishing rapport, then…right. Ask indirect questions.

“I called by the Knapper’s Street club. Fancied a game of billiards. Wouldn’t let me play without a member’s token. You believe that?”

Lena shrugged. “Those kinds of places like to keep out the ruffians.”

“It wasn’t exactly the Emeraldvale Hotel. The only food they served was fried potatoes.”

“Nothing wrong with a basket of fried potatoes. Hits the spot.”

Mick agreed with her, actually. “I s’pose serving food is a minefield, though. So many things you have to get right. It’s not just about how well you cook stuff. There’s ordering ingredients, making sure you get a good food hygiene rating…”

He eyed her now, looking for a reaction, but Lena’s poise was a huge, stone boulder that it would have taken a horse-pulled carriage to shift even an inch.

“Things are getting tough for businesses these days,” he carried on. “You heard about how lots of eateries are getting scored low by the Food Safety Board?”

“That’s unfortunate,” said Lena. “Though, hygiene is important. I s’pose places that score low are to be avoided if they can’t keep their kitchens clean.”

She’d given him nothing so far, damn it. Then again, Lena Coarty had probably been interviewed by members of law enforcement more times than Mick had had hot dinners. And he had had a heck of a lot of hot dinners. No sense getting too disappointed that she hadn’t cracked right away.

He moved onto the next stage of an interview: propose a hypothesis and see how the target reacted. Trying to act casual, he blew on his drink before taking a sip. Only when the cup reached his lips did he remember he was drinking cold water, but Lena didn’t seem to notice.

“If you ask me,” he said, “something funny’s going on. So many eateries all getting poor scores. Tell me something; what do you think a person would gain by falsifying ratings and sending them out to places?”

“I couldn’t even begin to imagine.”

“Put yourself in their shoes. The kind of person who’d do that. Y’know, a criminal.”

“A criminal’s shoes? Don’t think I’d like the fit.”

He was getting nowhere. That was plain to see. Best not to waste any more time or energy on it. His decision made, he stood up. Time for the final part of an unsuccessful interview; give the target one last out.

“Well, that was a damned tasty cup of water. Think I’ve taken up enough of your time, Ms. Coarty. Anything you’d like to tell me before we finish?”

She shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

“Alright, then. I’ll be seeing you.”

“I don’t doubt it.”