Page 8 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)
FAWKES
Fawkes spent no more than a few seconds debating whether to tell her.
It made more sense than not at this point.
She was right: cards on the table. And he was confident by now that Leah liked secrets enough to be okay with keeping this one rather than immediately going and telling her entire theater group.
If he was wrong, Sam would have one more thing to mock him for.
“I’m a private investigator,” Fawkes said.
Leah gazed at him over the top of her coffee cup, hazel eyes wide. “Ohhhhhhh.” Then her gaze went laser-focused. “Prove it.”
“Really?”
“If you’re a P.I., you have a license, right? Let me see it.”
Fawkes shrugged. He opened his wallet and handed over the card with his license number.
Leah whipped out her phone and photographed it.
“Oh, come on ,” Fawkes said, retrieving it.
“You can get these online, I bet. I’m just gonna hang on to this picture.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Leah laid her phone on the table as if fully prepared to take more pictures. “So if you’re a P.I., what are you here to investigate?”
That was the $64,000 question, all right. “This needs to stay between us,” Fawkes said. “If anyone else finds out, it’ll completely blow my investigation.”
“I’ll have you know that I am amazing at keeping secrets. Don’t let the shrew fool you. I mean, my shrew probably wouldn’t be, but she’s on the inside, and also a shrew.”
Fawkes choked on a stifled laugh. “You know, the weird thing is, I believe you. Okay, so, my partner and I?—”
“You have a partner?” Leah looked shocked, and he could see her eyes darkening quickly.
“Work partner,” Fawkes hastily clarified. “In the agency.”
“Right—work partner. Sorry.”
“His name’s Sam. He’s a good guy. Anyway, I’m here on behalf of a client who hired us to look into a jewel theft. We believe the thief is here at the lodge, and I’m trying to figure out who it is.”
Leah’s jealous look faded as he talked, into a dawning expression of delight. “You’re investigating international jewel thieves? Count me in!”
“Not international—okay, maybe,” he had to concede. “This may be part of a string of thefts going back years. But then again it might not. Anyway, I’ve been looking around at night.”
“I knew you left your room last night!”
“Yeah, so being a raccoon shifter is honestly pretty handy as an asset for a private detective,” Fawkes said.
“I’m nocturnal, can climb walls and trees, and absolutely do not mind pawing through trash in the slightest. Not to mention that raccoons are common, so the usual reaction of someone finding a raccoon in their trash is ‘Get out of my trash, you vermin’ and not ‘Oh no, someone’s going through my bills collecting evidence for a divorce lawyer’. ’”
“Shrews are also nocturnal and sneaky,” Leah said leadingly.
“What? No—whatever you’re suggesting?—”
“We make a great team, don’t we? Hester already asked me to look into the thefts.”
“There have been more thefts? Here?”
“See? We need to share information. I can shift and get into places you can’t. Like under doors.”
He and Sam already used their shift forms extensively at work.
PIs were legally constrained in a variety of ways, but raccoons couldn’t be busted for breaking and entering.
The possibilities of being shrew-sized flowed through his mind—door cracks, drain pipes, becoming a shrew on the wall for important conversations . ..
One potential difficulty in Leah’s situation occurred to him. She couldn’t possibly have overlooked it. And yet.
“When you shift,” Fawkes said, trying to approach his subject obliquely, “does your, uh—do your legs?—”
“Spit it out, man. If you’re asking if I’m still disabled as a shrew—yes,” Leah said without a flicker of upset. “Which is why I have this.”
She opened her handbag, felt around, and pulled out a toy-sized object which she put on the table.
Fawkes stared. Leah nudged it toward him, and he picked it up.
It looked like it had been made from the chassis and wheels of a small toy car.
The car part had been removed above the base, leaving behind something a bit like a tiny skateboard.
As if there was any doubt how she meant to use it, a layer of foam padding had been added, scooped out slightly in the center so that it formed a foam cradle—on which, say, a shrew could lie belly-first.
The entire thing was painted glittery pink and gold.
“I call it the shrewmobile. This is version like, well, we’re way beyond 2.0, more like version 10 or 12. I realize it’s not stealthy, but if anyone sees me on this, I think the gig is up anyway. Oh yeah, forgot this.”
Leah felt around in her purse and took out what Fawkes recognized as the kind of visibility flag commonly in landscaping, an orange plastic triangle on a wire, though the wire had been clipped to about eight inches long so it fit in her bag.
She retrieved the shrewmobile from Fawkes and wedged the flag’s wire into a small hole drilled through the back of the vehicle.
Then she set it on the table, the flag waving proudly above it.
“This is so nobody at the Menagerie steps on me. Since we all know about shifters, it’s no problem to run around in shift form if we want to.”
Fawkes tapped a plastic clip on the back, painted metallic gold. “What’s this for?”
“It’s a tow hitch. There’s a wagon with extra stuff.” Leah rummaged and plopped another small object on the table.
This was simply a toy car trailer, with the sides raised with reinforcing metal mesh.
It had several items on it, secured with a few loops of twine.
Fawkes unhooked the makeshift cargo net with his fingertips and took out a small object that he recognized as a plastic wind-up motor from some other dismantled toy.
There was also a spring-loaded plastic crossbow, with fishing line wound on a reel and a suction dart on the end of the line.
The images it brought to mind were beyond ludicrous.
“Does this actually work?” Fawkes asked, holding the miniature crossbow in his palm. It was bigger than shrew scale; it looked like she’d repurposed yet another toy to make it.
“Still a work in progress,” Leah admitted. “Actually, gimme that.”
She took it back from him and retrieved another item from her purse, a small plastic case that turned out to be full of tools and bits of deconstructed toys. Using her fingernails, Leah picked apart the knot holding the suction dart to the line.
“I think the concept is sound,” she said as she worked. “But the dart doesn’t stick to anything. A grappling hook ought to work better. Let’s find out.”
She fiddled with two small pieces of wire, bending them around each other. Fawkes watched, fascinated by the deft working of her small, strong fingers. The feeling of her fingertips running across his hand as she had taken the toy back was a vivid sense-memory he couldn’t shake.
“There, it’s done,” Leah said. Her bottomless purse yielded a cheap plastic lighter, which she used to melt the ends of the fishing line where she had secured it to the grappling hook.
“I’ll test it later.” She turned the full force of her gaze on Fawkes, who by now was smitten beyond words.
“So what do you say, detective? Is the team of Raccoon and Shrew on the job?”
Fawkes found himself briefly lost for words. Before he could get himself together, a woman’s voice called, “Leah!”
Maggie breezed over to their table at high velocity.
“Where have you been? We’re starting full dress rehearsal in ten minutes. I need to find out if the new ropes work. Have you been practicing your lines?”
“Yes, I’m on my way,” Leah said—to her back, as Maggie whipped off to round up several other cast members who were lingering over coffee and sandwiches at other tables.
“Lines?” Fawkes asked, while Leah gathered her shrew-scale Batman gadgets back into her purse. “I thought you weren’t in the play.”
“I’m Gloria’s understudy,” Leah explained.
“If anything happens to her, I go on as Peter Pan. I’m also Wendy’s understudy, although I don’t know that part nearly as well.
” She reached for her crutches. “If you want to hang around and help out, I’m sure Maggie wouldn’t mind having an extra pair of hands to fetch and carry.
And I have been neglecting the play a little.
But they don’t need me much during rehearsals.
I’ll just need to monitor the special effects—do you want to come? ”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” Fawkes said.
Getting to hang out with Leah for the afternoon was obviously the top of his priority list, but he hadn’t forgotten his strong suspicion that one of the crew members was the thief.
And perhaps not just a thief, Fawkes mused, gathering their trash.
Those shears in Leah’s purse were sharp and potentially lethal.
Whoever had trashed their sets was angry.
There was something going on in the Menagerie—and he wanted to find out what it was, before Leah wound up on the dangerous end of another pointy object.