Chapter Text
Byleth paced the length of Claude’s study, model gun in hand. She glared at the human dummy positioned at the desk, a length of red yarn tied through its shoulder and wrapped around the corner of the chair. How did it happen? The facts make no sense!
With a sudden burst of inspiration, she grabbed the length of red yarn from the desk and darted up the rolling ladder attached to the bookshelves at the rear of the room. It was the last place anyone would fire a gun, but maybe that’s why no one solved it yet!
She rolled the ladder into place, first trying dead center to the dummy. She wrapped the other end of the yarn around the gun, then climbed up, took aim –
“What’re you up to, beautiful?”
Byleth gave a start. Standing in the doorway was Claude, executive of Golden Deer Aviation and her husband of a year and a half. He had his hat and coat in one hand, his briefcase in the other, and a bemused expression on his face.
He dropped his things at the door and walked over to her. “I thought we talked about you working late.”
“Speak for yourself. And then apologize to the cook for missing dinner.”
“I’ll be sure to.” He approached the foot of the ladder and held out his arms. She unhooked herself from the rungs and fell.
He caught her easily. She could see the wear of time on him from her new vantage point: his natural curls sprung up as his hair gel wore off, and he sported a healthy five o’clock shadow. His green eyes sparkled with mischief. “Dare I ask why you picked my study for your reconstruction when we went to all the trouble of renovating the place so you could have one, too?”
“Yours matches the crime better,” she said as he set her down. “Not that it made a difference. I’ve been working on it all day and got nowhere.”
“How old’s the case?”
“Twelve years.”
“And you’re trying to crack it in one day?” He strolled across the room, taking in her handiwork. “Tell me about it.”
“The victim was John Siward, the stockbroker.” Byleth had established the Riegan Foundation, a detective agency that specialized in cold cases. She had to take cases from wealthy clients in the beginning to get the Foundation in running order, but eventually she planned to take on ordinary people as clients: plumbers and teachers instead of socialites and stockbrokers.
“One evening, Siward was found slumped over his desk with one gunshot wound in his stomach. The autopsy concluded he died from blood loss, but it mentioned several shallow wounds on his right hand and the right side of his face, and they found a piece of plastic embedded in his cheek.”
He stopped short and swiveled around, perplexed. “What, did he hold a bomb up to his face?”
“The police have no explanation for that, which is why I’m investigating every other angle I can.” If she could investigate the things she knew must be true and clean up the inconsistencies there, maybe they would lead her to an explanation for the more bizarre questions the police couldn’t answer. “We know for a fact he bled out from his stomach.”
“Then he had to have been standing when he was shot. The desk would block it if he was sitting.”
“Which is exactly what I thought, except for this.” She walked over to the chair and pushed the dummy over, making it face-plant on the desk. She pointed at the top right corner of the chair where she taped a piece of notepad paper with a filled-in circle. “They found a bullet hole in the chair. If the shooter fired while Siward was standing, this would have hit him in the hip, but the only wound was in his stomach, along with the bullet.”
“Really?” Claude walked toward the desk, his eyes narrowing. “How many casings were found at the scene?”
“None. The police suspect he was shot with a revolver.”
“Well, we know at least two shots were fired.” He folded his arms. “The one for the chair and the one for the victim. The first one had to have hit the victim because otherwise, it would’ve given him a chance to run away.”
“But if the first one hit, why keep firing?”
“Maybe the killer was aiming for a quick death,” he mused. “A wound to the stomach isn’t ideal, but your chances of survival are much better than a wound to the chest or head.”
He glanced curiously at her. “What am I missing here?
She walked past the desk and swept aside the curtain. A piece of paper with a crudely drawn crack on it was taped to the window. “The window was completely shattered when the authorities arrived, but all the glass was cleaned up. With that new exit point, there’s no way to tell if he was shot from inside the room or outside.”
He trudged to the desk and sat the dummy up. “The position of the body suggests he was shot from inside, facing his attacker. One bullet lodged in his gut, and maybe the other one shot out the window.”
“But why?” She scratched her head. “I thought about there being two shooters, one out and one in, but it just doesn’t make sense.”
“We know there was some arranging of the evidence,” he replied. “The killer cleaned up the glass. That tells us they had plenty of time to cover their tracks. Was anything else moved?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Not that we know of.” He frowned, deep in thought as he walked around the desk, tracing his fingertips along the surface. He stopped near Byleth’s side, glancing at the empty space on the desktop. “Where’s my telephone?”
“Siward didn’t have one.” She pointed to the windowsill where she stashed his phone. The curtains had been another discouraging avenue. She thought the light of the sunset might have been a factor in the aiming of the gun only to discover they had been drawn at the scene of the crime, likely to disguise the lack of a windowpane from any passersby. Still, she had experimented by drawing them open and shut, only to find very little impact on the outcome of the scene.
“You said the case is twelve years old?” He perked up. “Everyone had phones by then.”
Byleth flipped through her notebook. “A telephone wasn’t recorded in the police report.”
He scoffed. “There’s no way a stockbroker didn’t have one in his office. Hell, if he had it, he could’ve called for help and saved his life.”
That tickled her brain. “Maybe that’s why it’s gone.”
She went around the desk, pulled back the chair, and chucked the dummy onto the floor beside it. “Sit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He obeyed.
Byleth picked up the model gun and the red yarn piled on the corner of the desk. “I keep my phone on the side of my dominant hand.”
“So do I.”
“Siward was right-handed. Let’s assume he did the same.”
She gave Claude the end of the yarn and then walked backward, unrolling the ball as she went. “Let’s say Siward is standing up at his desk when someone walks into the study…”
Again Claude obeyed, standing up from his chair. “It must have been someone he respected if he stood when they entered.”
Byleth’s path had led her toward the far corner of the room. “And someone he trusted,” she added, “since he let them walk this far.”
She pointed the gun and held it along the taut length of the yarn. “The killer gets this far across the room, then shoots him in the stomach.”
Claude collapsed into the chair dramatically, clapping the hand holding the yarn over his stomach. “He falls back into the chair. And somehow, throughout all this, no one hears the shot?”
“It was the staff’s day off,” she replied. “And none of the family claimed to be home.”
“So if they’re all alone, Siward knows screaming for help won’t cut it.” His eyes glinted sharply. “He knows his only option to get help –”
“Is the phone!” they exclaimed at the same time. Byleth felt that telltale surge of electricity, that feeling she could chase down the truth and grab it with her bare hands. “He picks up the phone and puts it to his ear.”
Claude lifted his yarn-wound fist to his ear. It perfectly lined up with her drawing of the bullet hole. “And then the killer shoots the receiver before the call can go through!”
“Which explains the wounds on his hand and face!”
“And the broken window!”
After that, everything else snapped easily into place, as if a hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle suddenly shrank down to a ten-piece. “The killer cleans up as many pieces of the phone as possible, but they can’t dig out the shard buried in the victim’s skin. With no one else in the house, they have ample time to dispose of the phone, revolver, and glass.”
Claude grinned smugly at her from the chair, tugging insistently on the yarn. She went obligingly as he reeled her in and said, “So, beautiful, how many of the suspects are well-respected by the victim and a crack shot?”
“Only one,” she replied with a grin. “His brother-in-law, who was a sharpshooter during the war – and who could not forgive Siward was stepping out on his sister.”
“Shame on him.” Claude finally drew her in, closing his fingers around her hand. “But you deserve a toast.”
“We deserve a toast.” She unfurled the yarn from his wrist and tossed it on the ground as she sat in his lap. “You worked a miracle for me. I couldn’t have solved it without you.”
“Couldn’t you? I was just a body for you,” he said, his arms winding around her, “to use as you please.”
“You’re many things,” she murmured. “That’s just one of them.”
“Mm-hmm.” His eyes darted down to her lips. “I’m sure you have some calls to make. Reports to write up.”
“I’m sure I do.”
But she lingered there, stretching the moment. She toyed with the gold earring dangling from his ear, the Almyran signifier of marriage. His eyes fluttered as he leaned into her hand.
She said, “But maybe I should thank you for your services first, miracle man.”
“Oh, I like the sound of that.”
She kissed him, cradling his jaw. And then they kept kissing, which was a terrible habit of theirs Byleth had no wish to break.
She knotted her fingers in his hair as his hand latched onto her thigh, his grip one of many sensations in a vivid sea of stimulation. She inhaled that cologne, able to smell his own natural scent underneath; she tasted the warm skin on his jaw and neck; she felt his five o’clock shadow catch on her hair. She felt his body squirm, desperate to adjust how he sat.
“It makes me wonder,” he said breathlessly, “if this is strictly necessary.”
“Necessary?” She undid the first few buttons on his shirt one-handed, stroking her fingertips through his thick chest hair. “When has sex ever been necessary?”
“Got me there.” The hand on her thigh moved to her hip, then caught on her belt. “I mean – well, aren’t you getting tested tomorrow?”
“Maybe some late-night study will help.” She moved off him, fixing him with a coy smirk as she sat on the edge of his desk. “Unless you’re not up to it?”
His eyes darkened as he rose to his feet. “What kind of man would I be,” he said, “if I left my wife unprepared?”
He unbuckled her belt, and then her button and zipper were next, and suddenly he was bending her over the desk while sliding her trousers and underwear down her legs, goosebumps rippling on her skin. She kicked off the fabric dangling from her ankles while he mouthed his way down her body, his lips meeting her skin for the first time on her belly. Then he paused and kissed a particular spot between her hips.
“For luck,” he said, hefting her legs over his shoulders.
She opened her mouth just as his face disappeared between her thighs, and she said very few words after that.
The weekend came quickly. Byleth was back in her study, putting the finishing touches on her report regarding her findings in the Siward case. She preferred to finish these as quickly as possible before the facts faded from her mind. It was a relic of her days as a private investigator in Fhirdiad, but she hated the idea of leaving these things to a secretary. It was her case, her report, her responsibility, which meant it was her fingers jamming up the typewriter, and now it was her pencil marking the mistakes on the draft.
“Ma’am?”
A voice shook her from her concentration. Their butler Ladislava entered the room. She held herself ramrod straight, arms folded behind her back. “A guest is here for you.”
They weren’t expecting anyone, and it couldn’t be Leonie or Lorenz. They came over as often as if they lived here, so Ladislava wouldn’t bother calling them ‘guests.’ “Did they give a name?” Byleth asked.
“No, ma’am, but he said he knows you and your father. He’s a police officer.”
Byleth tensed. Jeralt had been in hiding for over a year after Byleth tackled a case that had some unfortunate repercussions, namely renewing interest in her mother’s murder. “Did you show him in?”
“He’s in the parlor, ma’am.”
“Did he have a warrant?”
“N-no, ma’am.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
Like the rest of their staff, Ladislava was an ex-con. Byleth had instructed them never to let a police officer in if they didn’t show a warrant, but they were naturally uneasy around the law – and so, easy people for the law to coerce.
“Remember for next time,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “I’ll handle him.”
“Of course, ma’am. Shall I alert the master?”
Claude was out in the hanger, lovingly tinkering on his private plane, Failnaught. “Not yet. I think I can get him out quickly.”
“Very well, ma’am.”
She got up from her desk, touching the golden hairpin in her bun. It was a wedding gift from Claude as well as a secret stiletto blade. He knew she used to carry a knife, and he gave her one she could carry into the classiest gala and the highest-security prison.
She walked across the foyer of Riegan Manor, a beautiful home nestled in the forest west of Derdriu. When she first came here, it was dilapidated and near ruin; after she helped Claude regain his fortune by clearing his name of a horrible crime, they had renovated it to perfection. Over two years into living here and Byleth still wasn’t quite sure what to do with all the rooms in the manor. The parlor functioned exactly the same as the drawing room, except Claude seemed to reserve it for business contacts. Byleth had never quite learned how to be a good hostess, but her blunt attitude and bulletproof honesty came in handy for guests who overstayed their welcome.
She swung the door open and stepped into least welcoming room in the manor: the room designed to show off their wealth. A beautiful yellow couch faced the bay window, though their visitor had elected not to sit. He stood on the rich green rug on the floor, his hat tucked under his arm while he perused the photographs on the mantle of the useless fireplace. Byleth recognized him immediately even though she had not seen him since she was seven years old.
“Seteth,” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”
Standing before her was Seteth St. Seiros, her father’s former partner in the homicide division of the Enbarr Police Department. He wasn’t as tall as Byleth remembered but he was just as broad-chested, unbelievably fit for a man in his sixties. His scowl was exactly the same except age had carved a few lines into his face.
“It is good to see you again.” He turned to her and looked her over, brow twitching upward. “You seem well.”
Nostalgia washed over her when she heard his voice. His words had a very deliberate quality to them, as if each had been shaved down to fit neatly into their sentence.
“Answer the question, Seteth.” She fought the habit, old as it may be, to call him Uncle Seteth. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s regarding your father.”
“Then come back with a warrant.” She yanked the door back open and waited expectantly. “If you wish to question us again, then please contact our lawyer, Judith Daphnel, Esquire.”
“It is not – ” He sighed. “That’s not why I’m here.”
That stopped her short. Something in his manner made her blood turn to ice. He was too still, too gentle.
Her hand dropped from the doorknob. “Why are you here?”
His jaw clenched. “I think you should sit down.”
All of a sudden, her heart was pounding in her chest, which grew so tight that she had difficulty drawing breath. “What’s wrong?”
“Byleth, I think it best to hear this seated.”
“I’m not moving one inch until you answer me!”
He sighed heavily. She saw something flicker behind his stern face, something kind and…sad. “I’m sorry. Your father is dead.”