An Apprentice Without Magic, page 26
part #2 of Magic Missing Series
“Banna Plunk,” Sam said. “What about the records?”
“Undamaged from the looks of them. The firemen think the ward was placed to kill.”
“I did a lot of thinking in bed. I think it is all a diversion,” Sam said. “Find the Fealty Mining Company records and compare them with what Tom Elbow has in Mount Vannon. If they are different, then Banna Plunk is indeed involved.”
“Tom Elbow?”
“Chief Constable Bentwick knows him,” Sam said.
“Is this a guess?”
Sam smiled. “An educated one. Banna Plunk is a pollen artist from Polistia. She bought many of the shares to the Fealty Mining Company, which I understand the king seized. The original records reside in Mount Vannon and in Mountain View. I don’t know why she would want the records changed, but if they weren’t destroyed, then she went to the trouble for something, and that might mean replacement,” Sam said. “The ward would have been a diversion, I think. When her agent was confronted, the fire was set, but it was intentionally a very slow burning one, so the records weren’t destroyed. She probably thought the night watchman would summon the firemen rather than try to apprehend the person who had started the fire and installed the ward.”
“A lethal one, if that’s what it was.”
“Lethal for me, but maybe not for someone who can manipulate pollen. We won’t know that now, will we?” Sam said.
Dickey shook his head. “Not at all. Whatever activated the ward was destroyed when you absorbed all its energy.”
Sam pressed his lips together. Now he’d have to wait for records to be copied and then sent to Baskin from Mount Vannon and from Mountain View. He proceeded to give Dickey more detail on the stock manipulation plot that Banna Plunk was leading as her alter ego, Bannon Plunk.
“Have you examined the records?” Sam said.
“No. I was waiting for you to recover. Captains don’t do that kind of thing,” he said, but he amended his statement, “…I wish. Let’s head to the Royal Recorder. We can copy the records and send them off,” Dickey said. “Can you handle that?”
Sam nodded.
Not long after, Dickey and Sam were joined by one of the Recorder’s functionaries. The fourth-floor room and the tracks the firemen had made had been cleaned too well; Sam wouldn’t have thought there was a fire a week ago.
“Where are ownership records?” Dickey asked. “We are looking for anything about the ownership of the Fealty Mining Company.”
The functionary put his hand to his chin and turned around looking at the shelves in the room. “There,” he said.
He walked along a row of files and bent down, pulling out three boxes. He looked up. “We can each take one,” he said. It didn’t sound like an offer for help but a command.
They put the boxes on one of the tables in the room. Sam looked at the label outside the box. ‘Fealty Mining Company Registration Documents’ He opened the box and began to go through all the documents. When he found the list of shareholders, Bannon Plunk’s name didn’t show on any other them. He took his spectacles off and examined the documents.
“We may not have to copy these documents and compare them to other sites,” Sam said. “This one has been tampered with. I saw the very same technique used to modify the maps in the Mount Vannon’s constabulary office. Chief Bentwick can confirm that. It has now happened here, too.”
Sam showed them one of the shareholder's names and said that beneath this document was the name, Bannon Plunk. He went down the list and found thirty-one shareholders that had been tampered with.
“The Plunk name occurs many times, and each one was overlaid with an expert pollen application of a false name,” he said.
“Can you prove it?” Dickey said.
Sam pulled out a gold tip from his purse. He wouldn’t need his wand to dissipate a ward. He laid the tip on the section of a fictitious name and in a few minutes the pollen overlay faded and disappeared.
“This is fraud!” the functionary said.
“Of course it is,” Dickey said. “Why do you think we are here? Sam, here, suspected such a thing. I suggest you bring a couple of your principals to this room and have them observe the pollen patch fade to show the name Bannon Plunk underneath. Sam’s special talent is that he can see through pollen patches.”
“I will be right back,” the functionary said.
Dickey relaxed, putting his arm around the back of his chair. “Good instincts. Your educated guess just graduated.”
“If Banna Plunk weren’t in Baskin, I wouldn’t have thought of it,” Sam said. “I wonder what other frauds the woman is perpetrating?”
“She’s been involved in at least one, now two. We don’t know what her ultimate goal is.”
“Everything points to making money and lots of it. This is a cover-up,” Sam said. “She’s not making money, here.” Sam put his finger on one of the pollen patches. “Maybe she is avoiding prosecution.”
“Eliminating her legal exposure?”
Sam nodded. “That would still fit, wouldn’t it?”
“If there is an active investigation into the mining company. The chief can find that out. We aren’t tasked with fraud. A different department in the Ministry of Justice handles that. They are all Royal University graduates,” Dickey said.
“But aren’t you one?” Sam asked.
“I am, but I choose to be a snoop. It’s a lot more fun than burying your nose in a pile of documents. Not that we don’t have more than enough documents to write.”
Sam nodded. “I have become proficient at those, I think.”
Dickey gave Sam one of his smirking smiles. “Good enough.” He lifted up one of the forged documents. “I can’t see the patch.”
“Try these on,” Sam said, handing Dickey his spectacles.
Dickey didn’t put them on but held one out by the frames like he would a magnifying glass and examined the page. “Oh. I can see the patch has a barely noticeable shiny texture.”
“I don’t need to match textures, but other people could. Maybe we can get Chief Constable Bentwick to get more of these made. The man who made mine lives in Oak Basin. His name is Link Cackle.”
“Keep that thought for when we return. Right now, I want to use these to convince the higher-ups at the Royal Recorders that there is a technique for manipulating certified documents.”
“Until someone becomes expert enough to match the textures and does a better job with the edges,” Sam said.
“If it is possible.”
Sam was about to say something, but the employees arrived. Sam recognized the two men from the day of the fire. Dickey stood, and Sam followed.
“Are you the boy who nearly lost his life decommissioning the ward?”
Sam felt his face get hot. “I decommissioned the ward and suffered a bit of damage, but I am fully recovered.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” the man said. “We will, of course, pay your healing expenses.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Dickey said. “The constabulary has already done that.”
Sam hadn’t even thought about asking what the bill was. That was an unintended oversight that he shouldn’t have missed. “Thank you for the offer,” Sam said. He proceeded to show them the modified documents.
“So this Bannon Plunk or Banna Plunk has her name scattered through the Fealty Mining documents?”
Sam nodded. “I believe so. A small gold bar should be able to remove the pollen patch in a few minutes or maybe a bit longer. I can help you identify the patches.”
“We would appreciate your doing so. There may be a thousand documents between these three boxes. Can you help the constables, Garran?” the higher-up asked the functionary.
“Of course. It might take some time.”
“All you have to do is stack the documents, and I can tell if they have been manipulated with a few glances.”
“A boy specialist?” the other principal asked Dickey.
“He is, indeed. Let’s get started. I’ll help, too.”
Sam spent the rest of the day going through documents. They soon found what documents wouldn’t be necessary to change, and by the end of the day, the three boxes were sorted. Garran, the functionary, would be issued a golden bar to eliminate the patches in the next week.
Sam got up and stretched. “I didn’t think I’d be so tired,” he said. “Maybe I overdid things for my first day back.”
He walked to the window and admired the darkening sky lit red by the setting sun. “Can I open the window?” he asked Garran.
“If it is windy, close it. We don’t want our work blown all over the room.”
Sam opened the window a crack to verify the air was as still as it looked. He poked his head out and looked both ways. The room was less than twenty feet away from the Red Marine Shipping building.
“You didn’t talk to Hander Pot about an intruder, did you?”
Dickey shook his head. “Our focus was on you and that damned spider silk pollen string.”
Sam nodded. “Let’s see if Hander is in. I’d like to ask him a few questions about that night. If we wait much longer, people will forget, won’t they?”
Dickey grinned. It wasn’t even a smirk. “They certainly will.”
Chapter Thirty
~
S am looked around at Hander Pot’s opulent office. It looked fancier than any room he passed by at the man’s house.
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again, Sam Smith. My daughter wasn’t very happy to learn you were half a human.”
“I assure you Sam isn’t that,” Dickey said.
“I know that, Captain Nail. The mind of a young woman is a thing of mystery, especially to fathers who spend too much time at work.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Hander shrugged. “So, how can I help you?”
“You’ve heard about the Royal Recorder’s Office fire?”
“Of course. We had to postpone our opening until the afternoon. No one could enter our building with all the vehicles parked in the street,” Hander said.
“Did you have anyone in the building at the time of the fire?”
Hander paused and steepled his fingers while he thought. “There is a small staff on site at all times, as well as a night watchman.”
“We think the arsonist might have used your building as a base to get access to a specific room next door,” Dickey said. “As snoops, we’d like to verify if that was possible. Any bit of evidence helps us find the criminal.”
“I’m sure it does,” Hander said. “I have nothing to hide. In fact, if someone is staging a crime in my building, it is in my best interest to cooperate, is it not?”
Dickey smiled and nodded to Sam.
“We’d like to go up to the closest window on the back side of your building on the fourth floor. Can someone take us there?”
“I will,” Hander said. “I want to see you in action, Apprentice Constable Smith. Follow me.”
The principal owner led both of them up two more flights of stairs and down a dark hall.
“We don’t use this area very much. Our business expands and contracts in a year. I doubt if our night watchman even monitors this part of the building.”
He took a lamp from a table filled with them and lit it before giving one to Sam and to Dickey. He retrieved one for himself before opening a door at the end of a corridor. It opened into a good-sized room. Four dusty desks and chairs stood unused.
“Stop,” Dickey said. “We will want to examine these floors.”
“What?” Hander asked.
“Footprints.” Dickey knelt down and pointed to a set of such prints leading into the twilight gloom that made it past windows with curtains pulled shut, letting little light from the outside bleed into the room.
Sam took out his notebook and measured the right and left foot and sketched the shape and texture. “These aren’t from normal boots, and the prints indicate a small foot. Maybe a lady’s,” Sam said.
Hander clapped his hands. “Marvelous, it’s just like I pictured. Every bit of minutiae is documented for use in assembling data to prosecute.”
“Not prosecute, necessarily,” Dickey said. “We seek after the facts. The prosecution we leave to the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice.”
“Of course, of course.” Hander didn’t seem fazed by the correction. He seemed to be enjoying the process immensely.
They reached the far window. Sam tried it. The sash moved smoothly and silently. He examined the grease on the window. It was fresh.
“Now what?” Hander asked.
“We look out the window, of course,” Dickey said.
Sam looked at Dickey and leaned out. The waning light of day revealed a greasy handprint on the wall a few yards toward the window of the records room.
“But how did he get from here to there?” Hander asked.
“Pollen,” Dickey said. “It was dark back here. Not a very good chance to be seen. What do you think, Sam?”
The question shocked Sam into straightening up and hitting his head on the sash. “I agree. The ledge is only a handspan wide. A pollen artist could create a wider platform in a few minutes, making it easy to break into the filing room, file a hole in the window frame for the pollen string that would latch the window and seemingly allow nothing to be disturbed.”
“Until the night watchman showed up,” Dickey said. “Then the operation turned to one of survival. The fire was a diversion, along with the strange ward that nearly did Constable Smith in.”
“Let me see,” Hander said. It didn’t take him long. “I agree. That is a strong possibility. What is this pollen string you described?”
Sam leaned down and examined the scattering of footprints, including their own on the dusty floor. He spied a small pile of pollen.
“This,” Sam said, pulling out his wand and lifting a tangle of the thin, thin pollen. “It appears this string wasn’t long enough. The arsonist left it here.”
“And where is the ledge?” Hander asked.
Sam shrugged. “I have no idea what the arsonist did with it. Maybe he just let it drop to the ground.”
“Then there might be evidence outside,” Hander said.
“May we come back tomorrow when the early sun will shine on the ground below?”
“Certainly. I will make sure I arrive early enough to escort you. This has been very illuminating. You continue to impress, Sam. I can see why Harrison Dimple took you along.”
Sam still couldn’t understand why Harrison made him accompany him on his healing tour other than pity, but he kept that to himself.
“Time to go,” Dickey said. “I’ll take this.” He jammed the pollen threads into his pocket and let Hander lead the way from the unused office.
In a hired carriage, taking them to a restaurant for a dinner that Dickey would charge the constabulary for, he said, “So what do you think so far?”
“It is hard for me to think of Banna Plunk limber enough to sneak across from Hander Pot’s business to the Mount Varron file room at her age. She looks like she’s a middle-aged lady to me.”
“Some older ladies are in pretty good shape,” Dickey said. “And some aren’t. We can’t let that be an eliminator.”
“How did she get into the Red Marine Shipping building? It seems she had to plan the invasion sometime in advance,” Sam said. “Maybe we should ask around for a nosy person spending time in both places.”
“And if she used a different disguise for each building?”
“Then we will know that, too,” Sam said.
“Not bad. Let’s come up with some questions to ask while we have a bite to eat. I’ve kept you from resting for too long.”
Sam merely nodded. He didn’t tell Dickey how exhausted he felt, but he would continue on. They were making progress, and Sam enjoyed the chase every bit as much as Hander Pot seemed to.
~
After the best night’s sleep since the ward attack, Sam woke up early and sparred with a constable for half the time he normally did. He was nearly humiliated by his defeat, but it felt good to get the exercise.
He walked into the snoop office with a smile on his face, which quickly came off when he saw the grim visage of Dickey Nail.
“The Ministry of Justice has taken over our case,” he said. “We are to cease our investigation.”
“What? We made real progress yesterday.”
Dickey showed him the order. “We are to create a final report, and that will be the end of it.”
“But the gold-tinted spyglasses,” Sam said. “It is an innovation that can help the Ministry.”
Dickey shrugged. “We can put it into the report.”
Sam frowned. “Can you accompany me to visit a friend this morning?”
“A friend?” Dickey looked puzzled, but nodded. “Ah. This would be the father of a girl you met?”
Sam smiled. “Exactly. We have some unfinished business. It may not go into the report, but I wouldn’t like my friend to be disappointed.”
Dickey stood up, letting the order drift to the desk’s surface. “We shouldn’t keep Hander waiting should we?”
Sam was elated that he was bending the rules. He suspected that Dickey had done the same thing many, many times over, but Sam had never initiated anything like this before. He couldn’t let the Ministry, led by Issak Bolt, cut their investigation short.
Hander ushered them into a little conference room. “I’ve been doing a little snooping this morning, myself.”
An older man dressed in a black suit stood and nodded to them.
“This is Jak. He is our night watchman. I’ve kept him from tumbling into his bed for a bit this morning.” Hander beamed. “Tell them what you told me.”
“A woman was wandering around the building the night of the fire,” Jak said. “I remember her clearly, but our night staff doesn’t remember a thing. It’s odd, isn’t it? She must have walked right past them to get to the room that Lord Pot showed me. I just saw her back. She probably didn’t know I was around. I don’t know how she got in the building, but it had to be after closing time, along with the night staff.”
