Dim Sum Asylum(63)
“Not a damned thing.” Ghost pulled his hair back, securing it with an elastic tie he’d had around his wrist. Out of his club clothes, he was harder, and his cunning intelligence played over his face in a range of emotions I knew Trent wouldn’t be able to pick up. “Do you think the mage or whatever this asshole is… do you think he used Jie to keep the seeming in place? Because if he mirrored her body onto that woman, that’d kill her.”
“It explains how much the seeming looked like her, but why take her only to kill her by draining her energy?” I shook my head. “I think that’s why the netsuke was set to blow. Its function wasn’t to kill like the two it was connected to. The spell was probably set to explode so the body was wiped out before anyone noticed it wasn’t Jie. It just didn’t do the job well enough, so we found out she was human long before he expected us to. Next question, what was Jie working on for the club? And was it something you two would have to worry about later on down the road?”
“You own the club with Jie?” Trent cut into my questioning. “Co-owners? Because we’ll have to get an alibi for you to exclude you from her… this.”
“We were….” It was amusing to see Ghost dance around how Kingfisher’s ended up in his and Jie’s laps. “She handles operations and house staff. I take care of the talent and security. We both make decisions on the facilities and memberships. If either of us dies, we don’t gain anything. Our halves go to someone else.”
“Who?” Trent’s eyes widened, incredulous when Ghost glanced at me. “Roku? Roku gets the club?”
I didn’t like Ghost spilling out Takahashi secrets in the middle of the cop house, especially since a few of the old-timers already thought I was on the take, but as usual, once Ghost began talking, it was next to impossible to shut him up without physically putting a fist into his mouth. Trent was all ears, probably adding notes to the files on me he’d stored up in his head.
“Considering he’s the one who got it in the first place, ownership returns to him. It was the only way Takahashi would let him give it away,” my sort-of brother explained, ruffling his wings out. The fluttering sound brought the caiman’s hackles up, and it coughed a bit of a warning that Ghost ignored. “I don’t gain anything but a headache if Jie’s dead. He’d be an absent partner, and I’d have to find someone to manage Jie’s half. So yeah, I can give you an alibi, but no one in their right mind would believe I’d want Jie dead.”
“Someone wants something,” I countered. “He has Jie. She’s useful to him. But for what?”
“Did you ever think about the one person Jie is important to?” Trent asked. “Besides Ghost, that is.”
“She’s got no family. Hell, for all I know she made her mother up and was living in a catacomb growing up.” I frowned. “Other than Ghost, she’s maintained a distance. She’s had to. Kingfisher’s offers neutrality. Jie was harder to get close to than the damned white dragon at the North Gate.”
“For a detective, you’re pretty dense there, Tombo,” Ghost groused, slouching in his chair. “He’s talking about you, you fricking idiot. Jie isn’t the target here. You are.”
Sixteen
AFTER ARRANGING for Ghost to be dropped back off at Kingfisher’s, we’d once again dug into the case files and, unsurprisingly, came up as empty as we had before. Every call I made to spell casters dangling on the edge of criminal activity came back with the same answer: no, they had no idea who could pull off that powerful of a spell, and if they did, they sure as Hell weren’t going to tell me and put themselves right in that asshole’s crosshairs.
My headache flirted with me, but strong, wicked coffee and bottles of water surreptitiously iced by my partner’s fingers drove most of the throbbing back, and by the time we’d finally called it a day, only a thin metallic pulse along the roof of my mouth and sinuses remained. I needed to go home, shower, and probably sleep for two weeks, but the lingering press of Jie’s disappearance remained, sitting on my shoulder and whispering dark thoughts involving blood and carved bone.
Half an hour after leaving the station, I unlocked the door to my corner loft, unsurprised to find Bob the Cat passed out on the sectional I’d shoved up against the long wall. She opened one eye, exhaled deeply, then flipped over. I took that as a rousing huzzah that I’d come home to her.
“Hey, Bob.” I waited for a meep or a purr, but nothing. She remained a mostly white, orange, and black-splotched fur bump in the middle of the red cushions. “Bob. I’m home. Dude. Something? Anything?”
Bob the Cat and I owned the loft, a large rectangular space set at the top of an old Chinatown building I suspected was once owned by a tong. Its ceilings were high, stripped down to the rafters and left open. The space was bisected by a few eight-foot-tall cut-through shelving units I’d bribed a carpenter to assemble. It gave the illusion of separation but let me see through the whole space.
In a corner near the windows, Bob had an enormous cat post she never used in front of me, but I suspected there was lounging based on the peach-colored hair I found covering its stapled-down carpet. My bed sat against the solid short wall, the bathroom and closet built in behind it giving me a sound buffer between my place and the woman who owned half a dozen fluffy white yappy dogs with names like Reginald and Princess Poo. Bob wasn’t impressed by their existence and promptly served one up for slaughter when it accidently bolted into the loft when I’d opened my door. It’d been a bloodbath, tangled ruddy ivory furry patches strewn over the hall and foyer, and now every time Bob heard a muted bark, she headed to the door, eager to deliver another reckoning.