I frowned. “Do you know who it is?”
He shook his dark head, his gaze sliding to Alice and taking on a speculative glint. “No. Only that he’s not human. He’s a gnome.”
Alice’s narrow shoulders stiffened as she poured hot water into a mug.
“A gnome?” I didn’t want to tell the detective that I hadn’t even known such creatures existed, so I asked another question. “What did he die of?”
His speculative glance slid in my direction. “He was murdered.”
I hadn’t been expecting that. “Yikes!”
Alice settled a steaming mug in front of Detective Grym and crossed her arms. Apparently, she and I weren’t having tea. I bit back a sigh.
“My feelings exactly.” Grym said, sipping his tea. “The victim was last seen here. At Croakies.”
I glanced toward Alice. She flinched, her lips pinching tightly together. “I told you, Detective, I barely knew Gido. He came to offer security services, and I told him no. He left. End of story.”
Grym sipped tea as silence throbbed through the room.
Having zero impulse control when it comes to filling an uncomfortable silence, I attempted to fill it after what felt like an excruciatingly long moment. “If he was walking the neighborhood trying to sell his services, he must have visited several shops along this street,” I offered helpfully.
Grym nodded. “He certainly did. From the small grocer to the travel agent. I’ve spoken to just about all of them. The problem is, I have several witnesses who insist they saw Alice and Gido arguing in front of Croakies.” His gaze narrowed. “A few of them also reported seeing Alice smack him in the head with a broom.”
Alice suddenly found her fingernails very interesting. I winced when I looked at them. I had the sudden thought that she should have found them interesting a few weeks earlier. They were a dry, ragged, and unadorned mess. “It was just a slight disagreement,” she finally said.
“Slight?” Grym said, his voice dripping with warning. “You knocked him out.”
Alice shrugged. “Who knew gnome’s heads were so delicate. I figured it was made of concrete or something.”
Alice gave up staring at her long-neglected fingernails and crossed her arms. “I can assure you that he walked away under his own steam as soon as he woke up.”
“You’re sure about that?” Grym asked.
“I am. I watched him leave.”
“And exactly where were you when he scraped himself up off the sidewalk and left?” the detective demanded with a wry lift of an eyebrow.
Alice didn’t hesitate. She pointed to the large window at the front of the store. “Standing right there in the window.”
Grym jotted notes in a small notebook as she talked. “Which direction did he go when he left?” he asked.
“South,” Alice said, pointing in the direction that led to downtown Enchanted.
“Did he get into a car?”
She shrugged. “Not within a couple of blocks. After I saw that he wasn’t going to bother any more of my neighbors, I left him to himself.”
Grym’s dark-caramel gaze filled with suspicion. “Why did you fight with the gnome, Ms. Parker?”
She tapped one foot on the ground, her jaw jutting in a way that made her look downright pugnacious. For a long moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. But she finally sighed, her jaw losing some of its mulish slant. “Are you familiar with Gnomish Security Services?” she asked the detective.
Grym lifted his chin, choosing not to respond.
She nodded, apparently taking that as verification. “Then you know why. Gido wasn’t selling protection from an unlucky happenstance. He was offering me a chance not to get shaken down by Gnomish itself. It’s a protection racket, Detective. You know that and I know it. I was just letting him know that he wasn’t going to get any business on this street. This is my berg, Detective Grym. And I’m not letting it be subjugated to a violent element.”
Well, I’ll be darned like the goddess’s favorite socks. “Seriously? That stuff doesn’t just happen on TV?” I asked, appalled.
Alice skimmed me a look. “I’m being perfectly serious. They start out asking you to pay a reasonable fee for their services. Then someone in the neighborhood gets robbed. Then a couple more. And suddenly everybody is paying a lot more for services they can’t cancel under a not-so-veiled threat from Gnomish.” She shook her head. “I’ve lived in a neighborhood that was ‘protected’ by those thugs once. I’m not doing it again.”
Grym sighed. “You’re not wrong. The Enchanted PD has been trying to catch them in an active case of defrauding customers, but they’re good and they’re careful.” He eyed Alice carefully. “But none of that makes it okay to take the law into your own hands,” he told Alice.
She held his gaze, not backing down. I respected that about her. “I give you my word that Gido got up and walked away under his own steam. I would have liked to do worse to him,” she said. “But I didn’t.”
Grym stood up and headed for the door. “I might need to ask you some more questions,” he told Alice as he opened it. “Don’t leave Enchanted.”
We watched in silence as he left, closing the door quietly behind him. Alice hurried over and locked the door, flipping the sign to Closed.
She started pacing back and forth in the open space in front of the door. I watched her pace for a long moment, wondering if I was looking at the panic of a woman guilty of murder. I didn’t think Alice was capable of such a thing. But then I’d only known her a couple of days. Not long enough to really know her at all.
I stood up, intending to say goodnight and flee back to my cozy little nook in the artifact library.
Unfortunately, my movement caught Alice’s eye. Her head jerked around and her small eyes behind the enormous glasses locked onto me. “We need to figure out what happened to Gido.”
I blinked in surprise. Of all the things I’d thought she might say, that hadn’t been
