The ghost smiled. “Thank you—a reader who pays attention!”
“I presume you want help tracking down whoever set fire to your stage?” I asked. “We saw the heckler from Senator Balfour’s organization—I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“Yes, if you please, Mr. Chambeaux. Were we done to death by slanderous lies? My troupe requires the services of a private investigator. While we go through the paperwork, fill out the insurance forms, and hope to reclaim some money from our very expensive set and all those lost props, I want to know who was responsible and bring them to justice.”
“If the senator or his minions were behind it, I’ll be happy to help nail them,” I said, and before Robin could volunteer to do this case on a pro bono basis, I explained our fee structure.
“Alas, I am Fortune’s fool.” When Shakespeare found his purse and pulled it open to show he carried not a single penny within, l suggested we take our cut from the insurance settlement. I knew Sheyenne would be proud of me.
Chapter 12
More and more human tourists were coming to the Quarter, happy couples who strolled down the main streets and peeped into the windows of friendly shops that catered to various types of monsters.
The Timeworn Treasures pawnshop was not one such place.
No one would pass the pawnshop by happy accident. Timeworn Treasures was tucked in a gloomy side street off the gloomy main drag, a dingy and cluttered shop filled with other people’s junk. Customers, or victims, slunk down the main street, ducked into the alley when they thought no one was looking, and slipped through the front door to negotiate with the furry proprietor.
I understood that people ran into tough times and had to resort to desperate measures to pay the bills, or get that operation, or buy the shiny new RV they wanted so badly. To me, a pawnshop was a repository of lost dreams, a place where customers surrendered their precious possessions as collateral for high-interest loans, often for pennies on the dollar, hoping to restore their finances in time to retrieve their valuables before someone else bought them. In extreme cases, they sold their items outright.
That was how Jerry the zombie had lost his heart and soul.
I straightened the collar of my sport jacket, tilted back the fedora on my head, and pulled open the door. I hoped the pawnbroker was a reasonable person who would react favorably to a business proposition. That way, I could take care of this quickly and cleanly for Mrs. Saldana.
Unfortunately, the shop owner was a gremlin, the unnatural equivalent of a pack rat who loved to collect esoteric objects for the sole purpose of having them. A gremlin pawnbroker wasn’t interested in making a profit from buying and selling these objects; he just wanted to surround himself with them. I had seen an episode about gremlins and all their junk on Unnatural Hoarders.
After entering the shop, I let my eyes adjust to the gloom. I saw shelf after shelf filled with items on display, arranged in no order that I could discern: used spell books, fat leather-bound volumes as well as the more compact paperback editions; bone china hors d’oeuvre plates and entertainment sets for coven get-togethers; a Maltese falcon with a price so ridiculously high that I didn’t dare touch it; next to it, a shriveled and curled monkey’s paw that was marked down at a discount: Special Offer This Week: Only One Wish Left.
There were racks of moldering old clothes and a jewelry case filled with fashionable rings, necklaces, brooches, and bracelets. Zombies and vampires fresh from the grave often found themselves in a tight financial spot, forced to pawn the jewelry and clothes in which they’d been buried for seed money to start a new unlife. Timeworn Treasures was one of the places they went.
Propped on a high wooden stool behind a chicken-wire barrier sat the gremlin proprietor. He was only about three feet tall, average size for a gremlin, with tiny teeth, a pinched face, and tufts of fur in all the wrong places. He was not a member of the silly fictional species that you weren’t supposed to feed after midnight. This guy was an old-school gremlin, the type that liked to hitchhike aboard planes and rip the cowlings off engines or punch holes through wings. After strict airline safety regulations made such mischief a thing of the past, the gremlin had found himself a new career as a pawnbroker.
“How can I help you?” he asked, his voice nasal, his words blurred at the edges as if his lips and tongue were still fighting off the effect of a dentist’s anesthesia. “Looking for anything in particular?”
Not bothering to look at more shelves of what the gremlin classified as “timeworn treasures,” I fished out my business card. “Actually, I want to see you. Dan Chambeaux from Chambeaux and Deyer Investigations. A client asked me to make inquiries on his behalf.”
With small, clawed fingers, the gremlin reached through a gap in the chicken wire, took the business card, and perused it with yellow slitted eyes. He made a gurgling rumble in his throat, halfway between a purr and a growl. I didn’t think it was an indication of anger or displeasure, just the fact that he was congested.
He scootched his butt on the small chair, and I could see that his little legs dangled high above the floor and he wore no shoes on his furry feet. He set the card down, as if unimpressed, made a coughing harrumph, then picked up a dirty rag, dabbed it in a jar of silver polish, and began vigorously rubbing an inscribed silver chalice along with its accompanying silver-handled sacrificial dagger. Around him, other silver objects gleamed. Though the gremlin was little, he had bulging biceps, probably from vigorous and constant polishing.
He looked up at me. “Shiny,” he said, still lisping. “I like shiny thingth.”
At his left elbow, in a large stone stand that might originally have been a birdbath, sat a crystal ball a foot in diameter, marked Not for Sale. The gremlin touched the surface of the crystal ball and peered into the transparent depths. “Shiny,” he said again. When he removed his finger, he found a smear on the globe’s surface, which he rubbed away before heaving a contented sigh.
“Let me tell you about my client, Mr. . . . uh?”
“Thnaathzhh.”
I had never heard such a name before. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Thnaathzhh.”
The gremlin’s moist nostrils flared. “Not Thnaathzhh. Thnaathzhh!”
“Thnaathzhh,” I said again, precisely the same way he was pronouncing his name. In a huff, the gremlin tore a sheet from his receipt book and scribbled on it, Snazz.
“Oh, Snazz! That makes more sense.”
“Thnaathzhh,” the gremlin repeated, working his lips with such determination that spittle flew out. Luckily, the chicken wire blocked the trajectory, so the spittle did not make it to me and my jacket.