In Plain Sight

The Sorceress swayed suddenly and leaned against the table. A moment later the room snapped back into focus. Alex shook his head and blinked his eyes a few times to clear them. When he could see properly again, he noticed that Sorsha was breathing hard and sweating through her satin dress. She looked like she’d run a marathon.

“You hexed me,” he said. It was not an accusation, just a statement of fact.

“I had to be sure,” Sorsha said between gasps. “I’m sorry.”

Alex just shrugged. He understood why she had done it.

“If you can just wink your eye and make men tell the truth, why don’t you? You don’t care about it being illegal, or you wouldn’t have used it on me.”

“As you can see,” she said, her breathing finally returning to normal, “it takes a great deal of focus and effort. Even then, it’s not always right. People who know it’s coming can sometimes shape their answers in such a way as to speak the truth… but still be deceptive.”

“And you figured I was just the kind of dim bulb it would work on?”

“On the contrary,” she said. “I knew I would have to surprise you to have any chance of success. You’re far too clever for me to have warned you in advance.”

“Carful, Sorceress, that sounded dangerously like a compliment.”

She blushed. Alex wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been looking her straight in the face, but her perfect, alabaster cheeks turned a rosy shade of pink.

“The spell has a reverse effect for a few moments,” she said. Her face suddenly clouded over, her eyebrows dropping down over her eyes. Clearly she believed she’d revealed too much.

“So if I asked you a question right now, you’d have to answer truthfully?” A broad smile stretched across Alex’s face as he tried to think of the single most embarrassing thing he could ask. The look on Sorsha’s face, however, told him the moment had passed. Still, he filed that particular bit of information away for later use.

“I’m grateful to you for finding the missing Monograph pages,” she said, her voice stiff and formal. She spoke something in that deep, echoing voice and moved her hand down her dress. As her hand moved, the dark perspiration stains vanished, leaving the satin material unmarked and pristine.

“Is there a reward for finding them?” he asked. “Not that your gratitude isn’t appreciated.”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll ask. Now, if you don’t mind, a team of FBI investigators will be here soon. I don’t want to have to explain your presence to them.”

“Can I have my notebook?” he asked.

Sorsha smiled and set the notebook aside on the workbench. “I’m afraid that’s evidence now.”

Alex collected his kit and his pistol, then made his way downstairs to the five and dime. He called home and Iggy picked up immediately.

“There you are, lad,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d be home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” he said.

“Rough evening?”

Evelyn’s long, tortured scream still lingered in his mind. He death had been of her own making, but that didn’t make it all right.

“You could say that.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Iggy said with an infectious energy. “How about a picture? There’s a Sherlock Holmes one over at Radio City starring Basil Rathbone. What say you meet me there and we’ll make an evening of it?”

Alex didn’t really feel like another mystery, but Iggy seemed excited. He loved movies, and Sherlock Holmes, so why not?

“Sounds great, Iggy,” he said.

“I’m closer than you are,” Iggy said. “You hop on the crawler and I’ll walk over and meet you there.”

“Just take a cab, Iggy,” Alex said. This was one of their usual arguments. Iggy simply refused to admit that he was over seventy.

“It’s not far,” Iggy said. “I like to walk, and I’ve got plenty of time. It’s not like I’m in a hurry.”

The words hit Alex like a runaway crawler.

“Iggy?” he said. “Why didn’t Charles Beaumont take a cab?”

“What?”

“Charles Beaumont,” Alex repeated. “He ran out of his apartment right after that plague jar broke. He must have known what was in it.”

There was a long pause, then Iggy answered. “I guess if you want a thief to steal a jar full of plague, you don’t want him opening it by accident, so yes, he probably knew.”

“So he knew he was sick,” Alex said. “So why didn’t he take a cab?”

“Who says he didn’t?”

“No,” Alex said. “If he’d taken a cab, we’d have a dead cabbie and dead fares all over the city.”

“You’re right,” Iggy said, sounding puzzled. “So why didn’t he take a cab? He knew he was dying and he believed the water from the Mission could heal him. Why wouldn’t he try to get there as fast as possible?”

“Maybe the Mission was his last resort,” Alex said. “Maybe he went somewhere else first.”

There was a long pause and Alex could almost hear Iggy stroking his mustache.

“If someone asked me to steal a jar full of plague for them,” Iggy said slowly, “I might assume they have an antidote.”

“It’s thin,” Alex said.

“And it still doesn’t tell us where Beaumont went,” Iggy said. “If he went anywhere at all.”

“I think we’re on to something here,” Alex said. “Get a cab—”

“I don’t need a cab,” Iggy interrupted.