Sheyenne figured out the significance. “It’s a straight edge, Beaux.”
From the bottom of the drawer she took a small velvet case that opened to reveal a thick silver ring. “Well, look at what I found.” Sheyenne pointed the camera close. A straight line had been scribed across the silver surface on the face of the ring, surrounded by the words Grand Wizard.
I felt cold as the realization sank in. Harvey Jekyll wasn’t just dabbling with the Straight Edgers. According to this ring, he was their leader.
“Now, that’s certainly something Harvey wouldn’t want made public,” I said.
Suddenly the camera jerked, and the sound pickup transmitted the door banging open, voices shouting. I heard a man say, “The desk alarm was triggered—somebody must be in here!”
The view from the camera swung wildly back and forth. I glimpsed Harvey Jekyll looking like a gnome in a fur-lined smoking jacket, flanked by two burly security goons. They charged into the room.
“Spooky, get out of there!” I yelled.
The crossword puzzle newspaper and day planner flew up into the air, twirling around as Sheyenne unleashed her inner poltergeist. The desk lamp flicked on and off. File drawers opened and closed, clattering as folders sprayed a geyser of loose documents. The guards shouted, to little effect.
Jekyll, though, staggered into the spectral whirlwind and dove for the credenza. He grabbed the ectoplasmic defibrillator and turned the end of the bullhorn toward Sheyenne.
The image from the camera shot forward as if I were riding a bullet, heading straight toward the widening eyes of Harvey Jekyll. Then the screen went blank, filled with static. The camera feed was gone.
“Spooky!” I called, but got no answer.
Even from two blocks away I could hear the commotion behind the brick walls. I needed to go there and help Sheyenne somehow, but I knew I’d never get past the alerted guards. Bright beams stabbed into the dark as security lights blazed around the mansion perimeter. The Dobermans howled.
Suddenly, with a gusting cold breeze, Sheyenne was there in front of me. “Better get in the car and head out of here, Beaux. They’re bound to do a sweep in just a few seconds.”
“What happened? The camera went dark. I thought . . .”
“I had to distract them, so I threw it in Jekyll’s face. I didn’t want to forget this.” In her ghostly hand she held up the Grand Wizard ring.
“I wish I could kiss you right now,” I said. I settled for giving her a heartfelt wink.
“Ditto,” Sheyenne replied. “But use your imagination and figure out how to thank me later. Let’s get back to the office.”
I started the rusty Pro Bono Mobile with a roar and a sputter, and we raced away.
Chapter 33
Though Robin couldn’t fault our results when we gave her the full report, she was less than enthusiastic to learn about the commotion we had caused.
“You couldn’t have been more subtle?” she asked. “Sabotaging his home alarm system, opening a second-story window, tampering with the lock on the desk drawer, stealing private property!” She sounded very discouraged. “Jekyll is going to guess we were involved.”
“I didn’t leave any fingerprints,” Sheyenne objected.
“More importantly, it’ll never go to court,” I said. “If he thinks we’ve got his Grand Wizard ring, I very much doubt he’ll risk us making it public.”
“Maybe he can’t prove we were the ones who broke in,” Robin said, “but we can’t prove the ring belongs to him either. We have a Straight Edge ring—so what? He’ll deny it.”
“We have the running video of me taking the ring from the study,” Sheyenne said.
Robin did not look happy. “And that video proves you broke in. We need to delete it. Besides, just because you found the ring in a drawer doesn’t mean it’s Jekyll’s or what he was doing with it. He might say Miranda planted it there.”
“Even so, we’d better set up a meeting with Mrs. Jekyll—preferably tonight—to discuss how best to leverage this.” I suspected that for once, Miranda might make time for a scheduled appointment. “In the meantime we’d better keep the ring in the safe, locked tight.”
An hour before midnight, I joined McGoo in the Goblin Tavern for a quick beer. It felt good to get back to anything that passed for normal. Sheyenne had managed to set up a meeting with Miranda Jekyll at Basilisk—a public place, for safety, and late enough to accommodate her busy social schedule.
In the meantime, I informed McGoo that Sheldon Fennerman was now under a protection spell, but more importantly I let him know what we’d (unofficially) discovered in Harvey Jekyll’s mansion. The Grand Wizard’s ring was safely locked away, but I wanted McGoo aware of the situation, just in case. No telling what Jekyll or his goons might try to pull, and I had no intention of being gunned down a third time.
To prevent Robin from having legal heartburn, I chose my words carefully. “This is hypothetical, McGoo. I’m not actually saying that Sheyenne did slip into somebody’s private study, or that she did obtain a very interesting and incriminating object.”
“I get it, Shamble. We’re just talking in general terms.” He slurped his beer. “But—also in general terms—you need to be damned careful. You’re playing with fire here.” He looked up. “Say, are zombies afraid of fire, like in Night of the Living Dead?”
“I’m no more afraid of fire than a lot of other things,” I said. “Clowns, though, they give me the creeps.”
“You know what kind of streets zombies like best, Shamble?”
“What?” He had suckered me into another stupid joke.
“Dead ends.”
“That’s not even remotely funny.”
Before we could finish our first beers, the radio crackled at McGoo’s shoulder, and he acknowledged, listening to the squelch of code words. He looked at me. “Another disturbance at the Hope and Salvation Mission. Mrs. Saldana says it’s an emergency.”
I swung off the bar stool and moved as quickly as I could. “The monster’s back?”
“No, this is something else.” He headed off at a jog, and I kept up with him, glad for the hours I put in on the treadmill at All-Day/All-Nite Fitness.
In front of Mrs. Saldana’s mission, by the light of the street lamps, I saw glass shattered on the sidewalk, lots of it, enough for two large windowpanes. The old woman huddled against the brick wall in her ubiquitous flower-print dress, her face filled with revulsion. She pressed her hands together as if praying while she stared at a puddle of red and tan goo that looked like rejected by-products from a cat-food factory. Off to the side, a black silk top hat lay where it had fallen to the ground, next to a frock coat and checkered waistcoat.
From behind her, in the yawning gaps where the windows hadn’t yet been replaced, I saw the equally frightened Jerry, her gaunt right-hand zombie. He shuddered in the shadows, afraid to come outside.