arm to perch on her shoulder. Automatically, Celinda reached up to pat her, taking comfort, as she always did, from the contact.
“Like I said, this is routine.” Alice rezzed a pen and prepared to take notes.
“Am I the first person you’ve interviewed in connection with this murder?” Celinda asked warily.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, you are,” Alice said.
Damn, it was happening all over again, Celinda thought. Her short career at Promises, Inc., flashed before her eyes. She would have to leave town and find another job, just as she had four months ago. There were only four large city-states on Harmony. Two down and two to go. At this rate, she would soon be running the kind of low-end dating service that advertised in the Personals section of cheap tabloids.
“Miss Ingram?” Alice’s voice was sharp.
Davis did not move. He just stood there, watching her. Celinda forced herself to shake off the dread that threatened to demoralize her. Stay focused. Maybe you can manage this. Maybe your life is not about to go to green hell again.
“Sorry, Detective,” she said politely. “What was the question?”
“You were about to tell me where you were last night between twelve and three,” Alice said.
Celinda moved one hand in a vague gesture. “Where I usually am at that time of night. In bed.”
There was a short beat of silence.
“Was there anyone else in the household?” Alice asked.
Probably diplomatic cop talk for Are you sleeping with anyone who can give you an alibi? Celinda thought.
“No,” she said. “Just Araminta.”
Alice looked up from her notes. “So there’s no one who can vouch for the fact that you were home alone?”
Celinda started to say no and then stopped, brightening a little. “My landlady, Mrs. Furnell. She lives right downstairs. I have to walk past her front door to get outside the building. Trust me when I tell you that she would definitely remember if I went out late at night or if I came in at an odd hour.”
Alice did not look impressed, but she made a note. “Were you a frequent shopper at Jackson’s?”
Celinda shook her head. “Yesterday was the first time. I was just browsing, but Araminta went straight to this widget and started playing with it. She seemed to want it, so I bought it for her.”
It was the truth as far as it went. Celinda saw no need to add that she would never have gone into the shop in the first place if Araminta hadn’t made a great fuss when they walked past the window.
“Thank you.” Alice flipped the notebook shut and looked at Davis. “That does it for me. What about you? Is that the missing relic you were hired to find?”
Davis studied the red plastic object in Celinda’s hand. “It fits the description I was given.”
“What, exactly, was the description of this missing item you’re looking for?” Celinda asked.
“I’ve got a photograph.” Davis went back to his chair, reached down, and opened the slim briefcase he had brought with him. He took out a glossy print.
Celinda looked at the picture. The relic in the shot was, indeed, identical to the one in her hand. In the photo it appeared to be lying in a metal drawer, the kind that museums and banks use to store valuables.
So much for hoping that Davis didn’t know the relic was valuable. Easy come, easy go, she thought.
Alice rose from her chair. “I’ll leave you and Miss Ingram to talk about that red doohickey. Believe it or not, I’ve got some actual police work to do.”
“Thank you, Detective,” Davis said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Oakes.” Alice did not bother to veil the sarcasm in her voice. She slung the strap of her black leather bag over one shoulder and made for the door. “Be sure to mention my name to Mercer Wyatt the next time you see him. Tell him that we at the Cadence City PD just live to assist the Guild in every possible way.”
Celinda froze. Mercer Wyatt was the CEO of the Cadence Guild.
“Oh, damn,” she whispered. “Please don’t tell me this is Guild business.”
Chapter 2
ALICE PAUSED AT THE DOOR. “GUESS I FORGOT TO MEN tion that Mr. Oakes’s client is Mercer Wyatt, the boss of the Cadence Guild.”
Celinda stifled a heavy sigh of regret. So much for Mr. Perfect. There was a saying in her business: Any match-maker who tries to match herself has a fool for a client. She should have remembered that bit of wisdom. But, oh, the vibes had been so good. Correction: the vibes were still terrific. What was wrong with this picture?
“Guess you did forget to mention that little fact,” she said to Alice. She drew herself up and gave Davis an accusing look. “I assumed you were probably working for some high-end collector.”
“The Cadence Guild is what you would call a corporate collector,” he said, unfazed by her glare. “It has a very fine museum.”
“Which, of course, is not open to the public.” She gave him a steely smile. “Like everything else the Guilds do, their museums are operated in an extremely secretive manner.”
Alice was starting to look amused again. “I’ll leave you and Mr. Oakes to discuss this in private.” She turned back to Davis. “Don’t forget our agreement. If you turn up anything in your investigation that I should know about, I expect to hear from you immediately.”
Davis inclined his head. “Understood, Detective.”
Alice looked skeptical, but she said nothing more. She went out into the hall, closing the door behind her.
Davis studied Celinda, eyes cool and enigmatic. “I apologize for any confusion here.”
“My fault,” she said crisply. “I obviously didn’t ask the right questions.”
Sensing her tension, Araminta muttered into her ear.
“I take it you are not a fan of the Cadence Guild?” Davis said.
“I am not a fan of any of the Guilds. I consider them antiquated, outmoded institutions. Not to mention arrogant, heavy-handed, and corrupt.” She gave him another chilly smile. “Just my opinion, of course.”
“Sure.” He gave her an equally wintry smile. “You’re not the only person who has some reservations about the way the Guilds are run.”
“They certainly have had some bad public relations problems in the past,” she agreed with alacrity.
“Which they are working hard to overcome.”
She thinned her smile out a little more. “Got a long way to go.”
The Guilds had been established during the Era of Discord when the colonies had faced the threat of tyranny from a megalomaniac named Vincent Lee Vance. Until that turning point, there had been no necessity for the four struggling city-states that had grown up around the original colonies to establish militias. Regular police departments had been all that was necessary to maintain law and order in the new world.
When Vance and his fanatical minions had begun to terrorize the city-states, they had staged their assaults via the network of underground alien catacombs that crisscrossed the planet. The strange alien psi energy that radiated throughout the maze of tunnels rendered conventional weaponry unreliable at best and, at worst, extremely hazardous to those who used it.
But the underworld labyrinth provided its own natural artillery in the form of highly volatile, potentially lethal balls of fiery, acid-green energy technically known as UDEMs. The acronym stood for unstable dissonance energy manifestation. The balls of eerie green fire were called ghosts, because they drifted erratically and unpredictably through the tunnels like so many lost specters.
Certain individuals with unusual parapsych profiles—commonly known as ghost hunters—could control and manipulate the ghosts, transforming them into weapons. The vast majority of ghost hunters were men, because the paranormal ability to handle the unique energy storms generated by the UDEMs was linked to certain male hormones.
