Steele-Faced (Daggers & Steele Book 6) (27 page)

“So…should I let this guy go?” asked Olaugh.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “He tried to knife me. I’d be bleeding out on your deck if not for the guy with the boat hook. By the way, how are you feeling? Woozy? Disoriented?”

“Olaugh wasn’t mind controlled,” said Shay. “There was a miscommunication with the navigator. He didn’t know about Jimmy or the con or anything else.”

“Oh. Never mind then.” I turned to our captive. “Listen up, Vlad. You said we’re on the same side. Prove it. Tell me everything that’s happened over the last thirty minutes. How is it we found Ghorza on the floor of her stateroom, and what are you doing here at the gangway?”

“If I do, will you let me go?”

“Not right away,” I said. “But if you help us find Theo and unravel this mess, I might consider dropping the assault charges.”

“Fine,” he said. “About an hour ago, the ship’s crew arrived with the poker winnings. Ghorza and I both had a drink to celebrate. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Ghorza took a seat, saying she felt a bit faint. I asked if she needed anything. She said it might be hunger and asked if I could grab her a bite to eat, so I went to the ship’s kitchen and put in an order for room service. When I returned, I found her alive but unresponsive on the floor of our room. The money was gone. I ran into the hallway to see if I could find who’d taken it, but I hadn’t been searching for more than a couple minutes when I heard the ship’s horn. I assumed the thief would be heading for the exits.”

“We must’ve just missed him,” I said to Shay. Then to Vlad: “And? Why’d you attack me, then?”

“You jumped me first. What was I supposed to do?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But you knew we were cops.”

“No,” said Vlad. “You’d
claimed
to be cops, but neither of you had a badge and neither were dressed to fit the part. You’re still not. You dragged Jimmy off before Ghorza and I could get any explanation. For all I knew, you two were in cahoots with him.”

I glanced at the knife still sticking from the railing. “What can you tell me about Johann’s man, Ignatius?”

Vlad blinked. “Who?”

Shay caught my drift. “Daggers, we’ll have time for that later. Right now we need to focus on Theo.”

“Right.” I glanced into the crowd. It wouldn’t be easy to see the little guy among the trees, but if Vlad couldn’t manage the winnings without a cart, then what chance did Theo have? Unfortunately, I still couldn’t spot a gleam of shiny brass anywhere. The sailors hadn’t finished attaching the gangway to the ship, however, allowing no one to disembark, so at least we had that going for us.

“He’s not here,” I said. “We’d spot his trolley, if not him. Olaugh. Is there any other way off this ship?”

The big boatswain shook his head. “There’s an attachment for a gangway on the port side, but there’s nothing there at the moment. It would lead right into the Earl. Other than that, the only way off the ship is the way you two tested at sea.”

“And I don’t think Theo’s jumping overboard with a sack of coins twice his own body weight,” I said. “Which means he must’ve stashed the treasure somewhere aboard the ship. Where?”

Olaugh shrugged. “There’s countless choices. The
Prodigious
is monstrous.”

Shay shook her head. “I don’t know, Daggers. If you’re right about Theo—and I admit you make a convincing argument—then he would’ve known someone, at the very least Vlad, would find Ghorza and the missing cash. His only chance to get away would be to leave the ship before we could organize efforts to stop him.”

“Maybe he didn’t think we’d act so quickly,” I said. “Or perhaps I was wrong, and he didn’t suspect you and me of running with the law.”

“Please,” said Shay. “If he didn’t think we’d act quickly, he’d be here, waiting to disembark. He must’ve known you and I were police officers. Why else would he attack us? He’d have to have some other…reason…”

She trailed off. Her brows knitted together.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You and Verona were both in-game threats,” said Shay. “You were attacked after ending the day winning big hands. But I wasn’t. A threat, that is. Neither was Ignatius. Something else ties the two of us together as targets.”

Steck spoke, possibly because he didn’t want to be forgotten. “Theo was one of the parties with luggage in the hold.”

“Exactly,” said Shay. “Theo must’ve had Ignatius murdered because of what he found, or what Theo feared he’d find there. And me?” Her eyes widened, and she grabbed my arm. “We need to get to the other side of the ship. Now!”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“Theo didn’t attack me on the deck because of
who
I was. He attacked me because of
where
I was.”

I recalled the scrape on the deck and the scrap of cloth in the railing, wedged into the wood between the two…
“Lifeboats!
He’s taking a lifeboat!”

We rushed off across the deck, me and Shay leading the way, Steck and Olaugh, with Vlad gripped in his meaty hands, in the middle, and the sailors bringing up the rear. Our feet clattered off the wooden planks as we reached the prow and rounded the bridge, then headed back down the port side. Given the sheer size of the
Prodigious,
it took a minute before we reached the area where Shay had been knocked overboard. I pulled air through my nose in deep draughts, blaming my fight with Vlad for my elevated heart rate.

“There!” Shay pointed. I spotted the scrape on the deck from the evening prior, and next to it, past the ship’s edge, was a gap where one of the lifeboats should’ve been.

I gripped the railing and cast my gaze into the water. Despite the glare of the late afternoon sun off the water, it didn’t take me long to catch sight of my quarry. There, not three hundred feet from the
Prodigious’s
hull, floated a wide rowboat, and in it, a diminutive gnome. Theo sat at the oars, struggling with their size, and opposite him were two mustard yellow suitcases that seemed somehow familiar. Perhaps I’d noticed them in the hold the night of Lumpty’s murder.

I heard a whump and a whack. Olaugh grunted. I turned to find the big boatswain staggering back, a hand over his stomach. Vlad stood by himself, his hands suddenly free. In one of them I spotted a steely flash.

I acted instinctively, throwing myself in front of Shay. Vlad jumped—but not toward us. He dove onto one of the spare lifeboats. His hand darted to and fro, snicker-snack. A rope whipped up and slapped the railing. Another spun through a pulley, producing a creaky whine, and Vlad dropped from sight.

I recovered quickly, pulling myself to the railing for a view. The lifeboat whose ropes Vlad had cut crashed into the river’s brackish waters with a mighty splash. Vlad himself, clinging to one of the ropes still supported by a pulley near us, flew through the air, the wind billowing his hair. He landed lightly on his feet in the bottom of the rowboat like a seasoned stunt professional from one of the fight scenes in
The Pirates of St. Gustifere.

“Hey! Quick! A boat! After him!” I shouted and pointed, incapable of stringing together more than two words at a time.

The sailors were ahead of me, already loosening the restraints on another of the boats. Olaugh jumped to their side, the front of his shirt clean and blood-free. Apparently, Vlad had merely punched him and not used his blade.

Olaugh jumped into the boat. I followed him, then turned toward the ship. “Shay?”

“Go,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye on things from here. Call for help. Organize efforts to track them both down.”

I nodded. Olaugh gave the men an order. The pulleys creaked and the boat dropped.

Out in the ocean, Vlad worked the oars of his boat furiously. Theo wasn’t oblivious to the action. He’d noticed the elf, and presumably us. He, too, cranked on his boat’s oars, but his strength and reach limited him.

We hit the water. Olaugh grabbed the paddles and pulled.

In front of us, Vlad had abandoned his propulsion efforts. He stood in the small rowboat’s prow. The low sunlight glittered off his hand. His arm whipped forward, and the gleam flew.

I couldn’t hear the knife land over the lapping of the water and the steady whistle of the sea breeze, but I heard the scream it elicited from Theo. I stood and squinted, expecting to find the knife protruding from the gnome’s chest, already dreading the interrogations to come wherein I’d try to shed light on the murder of our presumed telepath by the man who minutes ago I’d been sure had been behind the mind control efforts himself.

Theo continued to howl. He hunched over in his boat, and I caught sight of the knife. It protruded from the craft’s lip, pinning the gnome’s hand to the wood.

Vlad sat back down in his boat, and rather than make a break for it, he headed in Theo’s direction at a more leisurely pace.

Olaugh and I caught up to Theo a mere moment after Vlad arrived.

The elven manservant straddled the edge of the two boats, keeping the craft together with his legs. Theo clenched his jaw, muttering though his teeth.

“Son of a…Vlad. You—argh!—piece of…”

Vlad gave Olaugh a nod. “Sorry about the shot to your midsection. I had unfinished business to attend to.”

I glanced at Theo, then the bags that tipped the rowboat’s aft toward the water’s edge, then back at Vlad. “You didn’t run.”

“Or even swim,” he said.

I scowled. That should’ve been my line. “You could’ve, you know. You might’ve even gotten away.”

“And to what end?” said Vlad. “I told you, we’re on the same side. I simply needed to deliver a little personal justice to Theo on behalf of my mistress. Something I didn’t think you and your boys in blue would have the stomach for.”

I snorted. On
my
side? I doubted that, but for the first time since setting foot on the
Prodigious,
I’d finally have a chance to find out the good old fashioned way—with a clenched fist and a deep scowl in a poorly lit room on dry land.

41

I emerged from the interrogation room, a sheet of paper rolled up in my right hand. I tapped it on my left palm and chewed my lip a bit before heading back up the precinct stairs into the pit.

I found Shay seated on the corner of her desk, still looking magnificent in her black and pink dress. Steck stood nearby, chatting with her. He hadn’t changed either, but somehow his porter’s uniform seemed more out of place in the station’s depths than did Shay’s cocktail attire.

“There you are,” said Shay. “Thought we’d lost you.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said. “I was able to conduct almost four interrogations in the time it took you two to do one. That gives me an eightfold per capita efficiency advantage. Someone should award me a medal.”

“Four?”
said Shay. “What are you talking about?”

“While you guys questioned Theo, I took on Ghorza and Vlad, one after the other.”

“And while interrogating them, you forgot the most fundamental elements of math?” said Shay.

“Very funny,” I said. “I finished talking to the pair and came back out here to find you still hadn’t finished with the gnome. But even though
you
decided to take your time, not everyone on our staff did.”

I handed Shay the sheet.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Preliminary CSU report,” I said. “Our team found traces of blood on one of Vlad’s knives. They matched it to Ignatius.”

Shay’s lips puckered. “I see. And you took this information back with you for round two?”

“Sure did.”

“What did Ghorza and Vlad have to say about it?”

“Ghorza—who gave me a similar story as Jimmy regarding memory lapses and difficulty concentrating over parts of the voyage—claimed not to know anything about Ignatius, his murder, or the knife used to kill him,” I said. “Of course, she also all but admitted she has no recollection of the events of that first night after arriving in the lounge and tipping back a few cocktails. Vlad similarly told me he had no knowledge of Ignatius. He vehemently denied ever meeting the man, much less killing him. He also claimed Ghorza couldn’t have killed the man because she’d been in his care the entire time.

“Once I came back with the CSU report, Ghorza’s story didn’t change, though I could see doubt creep into her face. Vlad’s story, on the other hand, changed dramatically. He took credit for the murder, saying he’d crept into the luggage hold and murdered the man while Ghorza was indisposed from drink.”

“So Vlad’s the killer, then,” said Steck.

I shook my head. “I doubt it.”

Shay tilted her head. “No?”

“He couldn’t answer basic questions I posed him about Ignatius’s murder and the condition of the hold,” I said. “Besides, he didn’t run when he had the chance.”

“So why would he admit to the murder?” asked Steck.

“Because, despite my initial assumption to the contrary, he cares deeply for Ghorza,” I said. “He’s more than her manservant. I don’t know what, exactly—a lover, a friend, a confidant—but I suspect he admitted to the murder to protect Ghorza. She must’ve snuck out on him that first night, and he didn’t know where she’d gone. Perhaps he’d noticed one of his knives missing. Either way, he knew enough to connect the pieces when I related the CSU data. And he knew if he came forth, she’d be in the clear.”

Shay whistled. “And they say chivalry’s dead. No pun intended.”

“So, how did the chat with Theo go?” I asked.

“Not as good as you might’ve hoped,” said Shay. “I don’t know if it’s the recently stitched up hole in his hand or his incarceration, but he’s become markedly less talkative over the past few hours.”

“So he admitted to nothing,” I said.

“Basically,” said Shay.

“It wasn’t for Detective Steele’s lack of trying, though,” said Steck. “She was like a badger, attacking him with everything she had. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Probably because you don’t participate in many homicide interrogations,” I said. “Normally, I play the bad cop role, but Steele’s come a long way. Although I have to take exception to your metaphor. As fierce as they are, badgers are black and white, not black and pink.”

Shay shook her head at the joke, but she still smiled.

“Seriously,” I said, “you didn’t get
anything
out of him?”