Ghost of a Chance Read online

Almost an hour later, Alex got off a crosstown crawler right in front of Empire Tower. Crawlers were the brain child of John D. Rockefeller, former industrialist and now one of New York’s six resident sorcerers. They had the upper body of a double decker bus but from the wheel wells down, they had thousands of glowing blue legs made of pure energy. To Alex, they looked like a cross between a centipede and a snail.

  Formerly called the Empire State Building, Empire Tower had been converted into a magical battery that radiated power to most of the Island of Manhattan. The closer you were to the tower, the better the power reception got, so naturally New York’s well-to-do built their townhouses right up against the tower in an area known as the Core.

  The home of Ernest and Linda Atwood was styled after a Grecian temple, with marble columns and friezes under the eaves. Ernest was second-generation money, his father Marvin having made millions providing textiles to the growing nation’s clothing manufacturers.

  Marvin was widely reputed to be a workaholic who spent his days in the office making deals and, more importantly, money. Ernest was a man of leisure who, as far as Alex could tell, had never worked a day in his life.

  Alex’s clients, Gary and Marjorie Bickman, were waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the elaborate gates that led up to the Atwood home. A police detective Alex didn’t know stood with them, wearing a brown suit and a sour look on his face. He was average height with brown hair, a strong nose, and tired eyes.

  “You Lockerby?” he said, barely containing the sneer in his voice.

  Alex put on his most affable smile. He was well used to police detectives looking at him like something nasty on their shoe.

  “Call me Alex,” he said, offering the detective his hand.

  “Marcus North,” he said, not shaking. “I’m only here because Detective Pak vouched for you, but if you’re wasting police time, I’ll bring you up on charges.”

  Alex’s smile didn’t even hint at slipping.

  “Did you find anything, Mr. Lockerby?” Bickman asked in his proper, British accent. He stood with his arm around his wife, who looked like she might faint at any moment. Gary Bickman was short and slim with a slight build and black hair that he wore slicked back. He was dressed in a tuxedo, which Alex assumed was standard attire for a rich man’s valet. His wife was pretty and blonde with a plump face and round figure in a tasteful floral dress.

  “I think I’ve got good news for you,” he said, looking around. “We just need to wait for — ah, here they come.”

  A sleek black sedan eased up to the curb and a woman in a form-fitting silk dress got out. She was about Leslie’s age, but time had not been as generous to her as it had been to Alex’s secretary. Her face was lined and her hair had started to gray, but her eyes were sharp, even shrewd.

  “Which one of you is Lockerby?” she declared as she mounted the sidewalk.

  “Here,” Alex said, tipping his hat. “Are you from Lloyds?”

  “Greta Morris,” she said, holding out a hand.

  “If this is everyone,” Detective North growled, “let’s get on with this. Some of us have work to do.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Alex said.

  “Do you have it?” Greta asked.

  With a dramatic gesture, Alex reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the fake Sapphire Rose.

  “That’s it,” Marjorie gasped, collapsing against her husband as she began to cry.

  “Good show, Alex,” Bickman said.

  “Where did you get that,” North asked.

  “I found this in the Brooklyn landfill,” he said, passing it to Greta.

  “How did it end up in a landfill?” Detective North asked.

  “If I had to guess,” Alex said as Greta pulled a jeweler’s loop from her pocket and used it to examine the brooch. “I’d say Atwood threw it in the trash.”

  “Why would he do that?” Bickman asked.

  “Because this brooch is a fake,” Greta said, tossing it to North.

  The detective caught the brooch deftly and held it up to sparkle in the sunlight.

  “You sure?”

  Greta favored him with a stern look.

  “Detective, I’ve worked for Lloyds of London for twenty years,” she said. “We’re the most prestigious insurer of high-end jewelry in the world. I know fake jewelry when I see it.”

  “That can’t be,” Marjorie Bickman gasped. “Lady Atwood only wears it on special occasions. The master keeps it in his safe.”

  “When was the last time she wore it?” Alex asked.

  “They went to a party last week, at the Astors,” Bickman said. “A picture of the Lady Atwood wearing the brooch was in the Times.”

  “Convenient,” North said, turning the brooch over in his hands. “I think I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Based on what Mr. Wilks of Callahan Brothers Property told me, I’ve made a few enquiries,” Greta said. “The Atwoods have sold off quite a bit of their art collection over the last year.”

  “That’s true,” Bickman said. “The elder Mr. Atwood was the collector. The master said he disliked art.”

  “I suspect it’s more that he likes money,” North said.

  “Or rather spending it,” Alex added. “When was the last time you got paid?” he asked Bickman. “I mean in cash.”

  Caught off guard by the question, Bickman took a moment to answer.

  “Most of our needs are taken care of as part of the household,” he said. “The master usually just puts my salary in his safe for me. I think the last time I needed money was about a month ago when I took Marjorie to a picture show.”

  “What’s this about?” Marjorie asked, her fearful look back with a vengeance.

  “Your boss is broke,” Detective North said. “He got rid of this so he could collect the insurance.”

  “I suspect they sold off the stones in the real brooch a few at a time,” Greta supplied. “Eventually even the setting. I have a colleague trying to track them down as we speak.”

  Alex chuckled at that. Wilks might be a jerk, but he was very good at his job. If the Atwoods had sold off the stones on the black market, Wilks would know about it by breakfast.

  “My God,” Marjorie gasped, clinging to her husband. “If the Atwoods are broke, what about our money?”

  “How much do they owe you?” Detective North asked.

  “Sixteen hundred and twelve dollars,” Bickman answered immediately. “It’s supposed to be in his office safe.”

  “I’ll look into that,” North said. “But if they’re trying their hand at insurance fraud, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  Mrs. Bickman made a sobbing noise and buried her face in her husband’s lapel.

  “What are we going to do?” Bickman asked, his face ashen. “That money is all we have and until the accusations against my wife are cleared up, no one will hire us.”

  Alex looked at North, but the detective just shrugged.

  “I’ve got some questions for the Atwoods,” he said, pocketing the fake brooch. “I’ll lean on him about your money.”

  “Thank you, detective,” Bickman said, somewhat woodenly.

  “I’ll go with you,” Greta said to North as the detective headed toward the enormous house. “I have some questions of my own.”

  Alex watched them go as Marjorie sobbed into Bickman’s tuxedo jacket. He pulled out his rune book and tore out a minor restoration rune, passing it to the diminutive valet.

  “This will get the stains out of your jacket,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Bickman said in the same wooden voice he’d used with Detective North.

  “Do you have a place to stay?” Alex asked.

  Bickman nodded after a moment.

  “Marjorie’s sister lives in the city.”

  “Good. Take your wife there.” Alex hesitated. He really didn’t want to go on, but the sight of Bickman’s lost expression and Marjorie’s sobbing drove him on. He sighed and resigned himself to the course of
action in front of him. “Call me in the morning,” he said at last. “I might be able to help.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lockerby,” Bickman said, his face brightening a little. “I’m sorry...I only have my pocket money right now. I can’t pay you.”

  Alex didn’t even grimace when the valet said it. Of course he’d known it was coming, so it wasn’t such an incredible accomplishment.

  “I know,” he said, putting a comforting hand on Bickman’s shoulder. “You’ll pay me when you can.”

  2

  The Midnight Sun

  Alex regretted promising to help the Bickmans almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. They were nice enough people, sure, and they’d been dealt a bum hand, but helping them would mean calling her. He didn’t even want to think about that.

  He did, however, really need to get paid. He had about thirty cents in his pocket and that was pretty much it.

  To avoid making the dreaded call, Alex crossed town to The Lunch Box, a diner a few blocks from the brownstone where he rented a room from his mentor, Dr. Bell. Iggy would be making dinner soon, but Alex hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. He hadn’t really been up to food after his encounter with the landfill.

  “Hey, sugar,” the waitress said as Alex sat down at the counter. “Haven’t seen you in here in a while. What’ll it be?”

  A faded tag on her blue apron read, Doris, but she was such a fixture at the diner that she didn’t really need a name-tag. Alex wondered if The Lunch Box even had another waitress.

  “Coffee,” he said.

  Hungry or not, he wasn’t about to insult Iggy by eating right before dinner. Besides, he didn’t have enough money to spare for even a poached egg.

  “Anyone leave a copy of the Times lying around?” he asked.

  “Just this,” Doris said, handing him a folded paper before putting a coffee cup in front of him.

  As she filled the cup, Alex turned over the paper. It was thin and square instead of the regular newspaper shape, and its masthead bore the title, The Midnight Sun. A massive headline took up almost the top third of the paper, declaring; Ghost Killer Strikes Again.

  Alex resisted the urge to groan. The Midnight Sun was a tabloid, devoid of any actual journalism, and full of salacious rumors and celebrity stories that appealed to the gossip-hungry masses. Still, Alex knew Iggy would want to discuss the news of the day over dinner and it had been a while since Alex had read anything Iggy didn’t already know.

  As he drank his coffee, Alex scanned the article. According to the author, one Billy Tasker, the suicide of an elderly man in a fashionable Inner-Ring home matched a pair of suicides in the last few weeks. In all three cases, the victims were found alone in a locked room. Tasker claimed that he had inside knowledge of the coroner’s report, saying that each victim was stabbed twice in the chest by a long, thin blade. The mysterious part was that no weapon was found at any of the crime scenes.

  Of course, Tasker’s conclusion was that this was the work of a vengeful spirit, murdering people who had undoubtedly slighted it in life. Alex tossed the paper away in disgust, reminding himself that the last time he saw a copy of The Midnight Sun, it had claimed that runewright magic was actually the language of Atlantis.

  “There you are,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

  Alex turned to find Police Detective Danny Pak standing just inside the door. He was in his late twenties, only a few years younger than Alex’s thirty-two, with black hair, olive skin, and dark eyes. His features reflected his Japanese heritage and were made more prominent by the fact that he always had an infectious grin. He was also one of Alex’s only close friends.

  “What are you doing here?” Alex asked, picking up his hat up from the neighboring stool so Danny could sit down.

  “Danny comes here all the time,” Doris said, setting a coffee cup in front of the detective. “You want the usual, hon?”

  “Yes, please,” Danny said as he sat.

  Alex raised an eyebrow. He’d been to Danny’s apartment and it was on the other side of Central Park from The Lunch Box. There wasn’t any reason for him to go this far out of his way for dinner.

  He shifted his gaze to the kitchen. About a year ago Alex had met Mary, a pretty girl working a lunch counter who wanted to be a full-fledged cook. Alex sent her here and she’d been working at The Lunch Box ever since.

  “It’s not like that,” Danny said, reading Alex’s expression. To his credit, he didn’t blush at all.

  “Then you must have come to see me,” Alex said. “Lucky you caught me, since I don’t usually eat dinner here.”

  “I did want to see you,” Danny said, ignoring Alex’s innuendo. “I need your help.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “You heard about the rash of thefts we’ve been having?”

  Alex shrugged. New York was a big city with over a million people; someone was always getting robbed somewhere.

  “A bunch of deliveries have been hit,” Danny added.

  “Any pattern?”

  Danny shook his head and sighed.

  “No,” he said. “That’s the frustrating thing. The stuff that got taken is random. Some of it makes sense to steal, but the rest is just junk. A whole truckload of dungarees went missing, along with a load of paper napkins bound for Delaware.”

  Doris set a pastrami on rye in front of him and he paused to take a bite.

  “People are pretty desperate these days,” Alex said while Danny chewed. “Maybe they’re just stealing whatever they can get their hands on.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I just can’t seem to catch a break on this. I figured if you could use one of your finding runes to locate any of the stolen property, that might be the only shot I’ve got.”

  “I’d need something that links to any of the missing items.”

  Danny nodded and took another bite of his sandwich.

  “I thought of that,” he said with his mouth full. “I’ve got some leather from the machine that made a missing crate of work boots.”

  Alex shook his head.

  “That’s not going to do it,” he said. “They probably made a dozen pairs of boots from that one piece. The rune will only have something to lock on to if the boots are still together in the same place, and that’s assuming they all were in that one missing shipment.”

  “That’s not likely,” Danny admitted.

  “Alex,” a new voice said.

  He looked up to see Mary emerge from the kitchen. She was a slim girl with brown hair and freckles on her nose. When she saw him, her face lit up in a smile.

  “You haven’t been by in a long time,” she chided him. “Why didn’t you tell Doris to say hello?”

  “Sorry, Mary,” Alex said, feeling a bit guilty. “Too busy with my own problems, I guess. How’s the work?”

  Mary beamed.

  “I love it,” she said. “Max says business has tripled since I started. He gave me a raise.”

  “That’s great,” Alex averred.

  She turned to Danny and slipped her apron off, over her head.

  “Mario is already here,” she noted. “So, I’m officially off-duty.” Alex raised an eyebrow and Mary smiled. “Danny is taking me dancing.”

  “Is he now?” Alex asked with a smirk. Danny had an eye for the ladies and Mary was a real looker. Alex had wondered how long it would take him to ask her out.

  “If I get you a list of what was stolen,” Danny said, as if he hadn’t heard Mary, “would you look over it?”

  “Sure,” Alex said, standing up and putting on his hat. “Drop it by for Leslie in the morning.” He tossed a dime on the counter, five cents for the coffee and five for Doris, then winked at Mary. “You kids have fun.”

  The brownstone where Alex lived belonged to his mentor, Dr. Ignatius Bell. It was a four-story, Mid-Ring building just six blocks from Central Park. When Iggy retired from His Majesty’s Navy and moved to New York, he’d found Alex selling runes on a street corner.
Since the Brits only used runewrights for military doctors, Iggy took Alex under his wing and trained him to be a proper runewright.

  He’d also trained Alex to be a detective.

  Iggy hadn’t been entirely honest with Alex when he took him in. He had been a doctor in the Navy, but he’d retired decades earlier, become a writer, and written the most famous detective in history.

  Sherlock Holmes.

  Iggy, or rather Arthur, hadn’t wanted to leave his home and his family, but he’d done one other thing while he served in the Navy: he’d found the Archimedean Monograph. Originally written by Archimedes of Syracuse, the Monograph contained some of the most powerful and dangerous runes in history. It was a book many people sought, some of them perfectly willing to murder to get it. So Arthur Conan Ignatius Doyle became Ignatius Bell and moved to New York for the safety of his family.

  The brownstone didn’t look any different from its neighbors, just a row house of tan brick, but it was protected by powerful runes and wards. As Alex approached, he pulled out his battered pocket watch and flipped open the cover. As part of his training with Iggy, Alex had written small, delicate runes on the inside of the lid. These allowed him to open the front door by simply twisting the knob. Without the watch and its runes, a whole gang of men couldn’t have opened that door with a battering ram.

  “You’re early,” Iggy said when Alex came through the inner door of the brownstone’s vestibule. “Dinner’s not quite done yet.” Cooking was a serious hobby that Iggy had picked up during his navy days.

  Alex hung up his hat and moved through the front library to the kitchen. Iggy stood at the range, stirring something in a steaming pot. He was tall and slender with wavy silver hair and a bottle-brush mustache to match. Though he was well into his seventies, Iggy had the energy of a man half his age.

  “Don’t mind me,” Alex said, picking up Iggy’s issue of the New York Times from the sideboard and sitting down at the kitchen table. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Did you see the story about those robberies all over the city?”

  “No,” Alex admitted. “But Danny mentioned them. Supposed to be completely random so it doesn’t sound like the work of a gang, just desperate people.”