Hostile takeover arcane.., p.1
Hostile Takeover (Arcane Casebook Book 8), page 1
CONTENTS
1. The Feathered Serpent
2. The Gordian Aftermath
3. Book Learning
4. Hathaway House
5. Reception
6. Circles
7. The Husband
8. Windfalls
9. Taking Stock
10. The Agent
11. Lunch with a Side of Bacon
12. Final Offer
13. Death in the Morning
14. Murphy
15. Date Night
16. What’s in a Name?
17. Connections
18. On the Road
19. Even Odds
20. Rebuilding
21. The Builder
22. Dumplings and Lightning
23. The Anchor
24. Enchanting
25. The Second Chance
26. Wheels Within Wheels
27. Navigating the Warren
28. Structure
29. The Tower
30. The House of Pigs
31. News
32. The Alliance
Also by Dan Willis
About the Author
Digital Edition – 2022
This version copyright © 2021 by Dan Willis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Edited by Stephanie Osborn
Supplemental Edits by Barbara Davis
Cover by Mihaela Voicu
Published by
Runeblade Entertainment
Spanish Fork, Utah.
1
THE FEATHERED SERPENT
The office of accountant Willie Faust was opulent but tasteful, as befitted a professional of his status. The desk that occupied the center of the room was white oak, stained slightly darker than its natural color, with inlays of glistening cherry wood. The fixtures were from Tiffany, the fountain pens had gold nibs, and the carpet was Persia’s finest. A bank of bookshelves stood behind the desk, filled with sumptuous, leather-bound books, mementos from a lifetime of travel, and a salt-water tank filled with tropical fish.
Despite the confident air of elegant certainty the office inspired, Alex could see a few cracks in the veneer. None of the books in the bookshelf had even the slightest crack in their spines — they were for show, much like the Tiffany lamps and the colorful fish.
Behind the desk Willie sat in a leather chair, leaning sideways with his feet up on the top. He was a man of middle years, perhaps forty, perhaps a bit more, with a long, narrow face, a downturned nose, and sharp, dark eyes. Like his office, Willie’s suit was expensive and well-tailored, accenting his thin frame and padding out his shoulders so he would cut a more heroic appearance when he stood or walked.
“I know you didn’t find anything at my house,” Willie said with the air of a fighter who was assured of victory. “So if there’s nothing more, I’ve got clients who expect me to be working.”
“Save it,” a gruff voice replied before Alex could speak. “We found plenty at your apartment.”
This last came from New York Police Detective Derek Nicholson.
Nicholson worked for Lieutenant Detweiler of division three, and Alex had worked with him a few times before. From Alex’s perspective, the detective was a slob, always showing up in a rumpled suit, and he wasn’t really very bright. That said, he was smart enough to work with Alex whenever he got the chance, which forced Alex to raise his opinion of the man.
“Do tell,” Willie said, an easy, confident smile ghosting across his face.
“I’m glad you asked,” Alex replied, returning the accountant’s grin as he plunked down a paper shopping bag on Willie’s immaculate desk. “Let me show you what we found.”
Willie’s expression changed, but instead of alarm, it slid toward boredom.
“I’ll tell you what you didn’t find,” he said, stifling a theatric yawn. “You didn’t find a solid-gold bookend.”
The retort hit a nerve, but Alex stifled any reaction. It had already taken far too long for him to figure out that Willie had taken the museum’s missing exhibit.
“First,” Alex said, reaching into the paper bag, “there’s this.” He pulled out a large, rectangular battery that weighed about two pounds. Alex set it gently on the desk.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Willie asked.
“This is a lantern battery,” Alex said. “We found it in the bottom of your pantry. Curiously, we didn’t find a lantern to go with it.”
“I broke the lantern,” Willie said. “No sense getting rid of the battery.”
“Then there’s this,” Alex said, pulling out a jar of green liquid and setting it next to the battery.
“Cleaning fluid?” Willie chuckled. He looked from Alex to Nicholson. “You’re really getting desperate, Detective.”
“This isn’t cleaning fluid, Mr. Faust,” Nicholson said as Alex pulled a white, button-up shirt from the bag. “In fact, it stained your shirt right here.”
He pointed to a small green dot next to one of the shirt buttons.
“In fact,” Alex repeated, “it’s actually nickel sulfide.”
“Is that something illegal?” Willie drawled.
“No,” Alex said, stepping around the large desk and moving to the bookshelf. He picked up a shiny, chrome statuette and held it up. “Nickel sulfide is also known as electrolytic nickel, and you use it to make things like this.”
The statuette had a blocky snake head sitting atop a plain square pedestal. It was, in fact, the exact item stolen from the museum, only rendered in chrome instead of gold.
“That’s a replica,” Willie said. “I bought it from the museum gift shop. It’s interesting to look at, which is why the museum sells hundreds of them every month.”
“I imagine people like the history,” Alex said, putting the heavy figure down next to the stained shirt. “It’s from the museum’s Mesoamerican collection and represents a feathered serpent, also known as the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl. But that’s not why you were interested in it; you wanted the money it would bring.”
Willie sighed and sat up in his chair.
“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” he said. “If I stole this mezzo-coattail thing, then where is it?”
Alex smiled down at him.
“You remember that I told you this green liquid of yours is also called electrolytic nickel? Well, that’s because it’s used in a process called electroplating. You take something like this,” he picked up the statue again, “and you submerge it in your electrolytic-nickel solution. Then you add electricity,” Alex indicated the battery, “a sacrificial piece of nickel, and in a few minutes, you’ve chromed the object.”
“So you think I did that to the original and then put it on my shelf for all to see?”
Alex gave him a knowing smile and reached into the paper bag again. This time he pulled out a stoppered glass container full of clear liquid and then an open-topped beaker.
“What say we find out,” Alex said, removing the stopper from the bottle and carefully pouring the liquid into the beaker. “This is hydrochloric acid. Funny thing about hydrochloric acid; it dissolves nickel plating… but not gold.”
Willie Faust laughed in Alex’s face.
“First of all,” he said, “if you get any of that on my desk, I’ll sue. And secondly,” he pulled open his desk drawer and reached inside, “you’re going to be here a while.” When he withdrew his hand, he held another of the Quetzalcoatl figurines. “You see, I figured you’d come to some conclusion like that when you saw that I had a replica on my shelves, so I decided to buy a few more.
He set the second replica on the desk, then dipped back into his drawer and added a third, then a fourth, fifth, and sixth. When he finished, he closed the drawer and picked up his desk phone.
“Have fun with your little science experiment,” he said, holding the receiver to his ear. “Hello, Marge?” he said, “I think this is going to take some time; would you send out for lunch, please.”
While he spoke, Alex took off his suit coat, then unbuttoned the cuff of his right sleeve and began to roll it up.
“Oh, I don’t think it will take all that long, Mr. Faust,” he said, moving around the far side of the desk. “I want to start with this one.”
Willie Faust hung the phone up as Alex lifted the lid on the tropical fish tank and reached down inside. When Faust saw what Alex was doing, he started out of his chair but didn’t make it far, as Detective Nicholson was there to push him back down again.
Gotcha, Alex thought, not bothering to hide the smile spreading across his face.
He reached down to the bottom where a squarish bit of what looked like stone lay beside a model sandcastle. Picking it up with his fingers, he tugged it free of the gravel that made up the bottom of the tank. As he lifted, his fingers wiped away the algae from the tank, revealing another chrome replica of the figurine.
“Gee, Willie,” Alex said, shaking it off as he pulled it from the water. “This one feels a bit heavier than the others.”
Willie glared at Alex, but he kept his mouth shut.
Alex carefully lowered the figurine into the beaker of acid, releasing it before his fingers contacted the caustic liquid. Willie watched, transfixed, as it sank to the bottom and began to bubble.
“Give that a few minutes and it should take care of your evidence problem, Detective,” Alex said to Nicholson as he picked up his suit coat and headed for the door.
The offices of Faust Accounting were in the inner ring but still too far away from Empire Tower for Alex to walk back to his office, so he stopped by a newsstand to buy a paper before catching a cab.
Stocks Plunge! Second Crash Around the Corner?, the banner headline screamed. Despite the provocative nature of the headline, Alex shrugged and skipped the story. Ever since the big crash in twenty-nine, headlines predicting a second crash had become commonplace. Every time a sufficiently large company took a stock dip, the papers recycled their headlines.
The rest of the front page was filled up with war rumblings from Europe. Hitler had been calling on Germany to reunite, by which he meant that Austria should be part of the Third Reich. There was even a companion story on page three about German armor and troops massing on the Austrian border.
Alex shook his head and suppressed a shiver. Despite his best efforts to just be a private detective and make a living, his work had brought him to the attention of powerful people. All of them had told him that another war was coming in Europe, coming from Nazi Germany.
He hadn’t wanted to think about it, actively putting it out of his mind. Now every day the papers conspired to drag it back into his consciousness. The World War had killed some forty-million people when all was said and done, and the financial repercussions had been staggering. Now the stage was set for it to happen all over again.
“Except now we have weaponized magic to contend with,” Alex muttered.
Falling back into his pattern, Alex turned the page, desperately seeking something positive. He finally settled on a story of heroism by the Manhattan twenty-second fire brigade who had arrived at a burning house so quickly they were able to save most of the structure. The mayor announced he would be giving the brigade captain the key to the city.
“Empire Tower,” the cabbie’s voice broke through Alex’s musings. “That’ll be two bits.”
Alex extracted a quarter and a dime tip out of his pocket and handed them over before getting out.
“Thanks, Mac,” the cabbie called as he shut the door. “Have a great day.”
“Doing my best,” Alex replied as the cab drove away. “Doing my best.”
Fifteen minutes later, Alex stepped off the elevator on the twelfth floor and turned left. He’d stopped in the terminal below to grab a cup of coffee and ended up chatting with Marnie the whole time he drank it. As the queen of coffee for Empire Station, Marnie always had a smile and a good word, something Alex needed in these darkening times.
When he opened the door to his office, he found his secretary, Sherry Knox, sitting behind her desk going through a stack of papers and making notes on a small pad of paper. She looked up as the door opened, broke out into a wide smile, and her dark eyes sparkled. Her black hair was piled up on her head in an ornate style and she wore bright red lipstick that matched her blouse.
“There you are,” a gruff voice said. “It’s about time.”
Alex stepped around the door and found a blocky man in an expensive suit sitting on his leather waiting couch. He had bushy eyebrows, a thick neck, and calloused hands that meant he was no stranger to physical work. All in all, he looked more like a nightclub bouncer rather than the leading property recovery agent for Callahan Brothers Property.
“Mr. Wilks,” Alex said, pasting a smile on his face. “What brings you to my office?”
Wilks stood up, seeming to be at a momentary loss for words.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I need your help,” he managed.
Alex glanced at Sherry, and she shrugged almost imperceptibly.
“Let’s go into my office,” Alex said, indicating the door in the right-hand wall.
“No time for that,” Wilks said. “I need you to look at a body for me.”
Alex was taken aback for a moment. Wilks was Callahan Brothers’ property recovery expert, he shouldn’t need Alex to look at a body.
“This isn’t a personal problem,” Alex asked, “is it?”
Wilks expression turned from earnest to irritated.
“Of course not,” he growled. “I used to be a cop. I know how to get rid of a body.”
Alex hadn’t thought of that, but the man had a point.
“When companies depend on certain people in order to stay in business, it’s customary to take out insurance on them. It’s called a key man policy.”
“And one of your key men turned up dead?” Alex guessed.
“Exactly. Now the cops think it was an accidental death,” Wilks began.
“In which case your company would have to pay out on the policy,” Alex interjected.
Wilks gave him a sour look and nodded.
“I think there’s something funny about the whole thing,” he said, “but I can’t put my finger on it.”
“And you want me to take a look and see if there was any foul play,” Alex finished.
Wilks nodded and put on his hat.
“I got the police to hold the crime scene for me, but they’re getting antsy. I need you to take a look and give me your read on the situation.”
Alex glanced at Sherry, wondering if she had anything pressing for him. Anticipating his question, she shook her head and went back to her notes.
“All right, Mr. Wilks,” Alex said, opening the door again. “Let’s go look at your ex key man.”
Wilks’ car was a 1937 Chrysler Imperial, painted a light cream color with a convertible top. As the insurance man eased it through traffic, Alex couldn’t help but be impressed. He’d been flirting with the idea of buying his own car and the Imperial made an elegant case for such an expense.
“You ever hear of Waverly radios?” Wilks asked as they drove.
“Who hasn’t?” Alex replied. “They make the best tabletop radio on the market. I’ve got one in my apartment.”
That was true, but Alex never used it on account of the fact he spent most nights at the brownstone. It was probably a good thing where the radio was concerned, since Waverly radios had casings made out of some fancy material that looked great, but tended to crack if they got too hot.
“Well, what makes them so good is a secret process they use when they manufacture the tuner,” Wilks explained. “They use a proprietary rune to make it work.”
Alex was starting to see why Wilks had thought of him.
“I’m guessing your key man was the runewright who made this secret, proprietary rune.”
Wilks nodded.
“His name was Fredrick Chance and he was found dead in his office this morning,” Wilks said. “With him gone, it could seriously compromise the company. The stock took a nosedive as soon as word leaked out.”
Alex remembered the story in the paper about some companies losing big in the markets. He hadn’t looked at the story, but he’d bet Waverly Radio was on the list.
“So, how did Mr. Chance supposedly die?”
“Nope,” Wilks said, easing the car off the road and into the parking field of a large, industrial building. “I don’t want you going in with any preconceived notions.”
That seemed a little severe, but Alex just shrugged and got out of the car.
Wilks led him across the field and through a heavy door in the side of the building. Inside was a large, intricate assembly line with men and women sitting along it, building radios.
