Sherlock glowered at me.
I poked my tongue out at him. Mature? No. Satisfying? Hell yes.
Morrie continued. “I submitted Kate’s paperwork, checked in on her funeral and grieving family, and everything seemed to have gone without a hitch. I didn’t think anything of it until a few weeks ago, when you were setting up the shop for Danny Sledge’s writer’s workshop and an anonymous text alerted me that a hiker had discovered Kate’s body near Wild Oats. Freshly dead. With a knife sticking out of her chest.”
“But…” I had so many questions. “Why would she even be back in the country, if you got her safely to the Philippines? And who would want to kill her? Did it have something to do with the reason she tried to fake her own death in the first place?”
“That’s exactly what the authorities have been wondering. Luckily, they found my business card still tucked in her pocket, along with her original passportandher boarding pass under the new, fake identity I made for her, so they had a pretty good idea where to start looking.”
My head fell into my hands. “Mor-rie.”
“Don’t look at me like that. The card doesn’t point directly to me. I’m not a simpleton. It instructs a client to make contact with an untraceable number and jump through a series of hoops to prove their legitimacy and secrecy before I’ll even hear their case. Unfortunately, what Detective Hayes lacks in brain cells, he makes up for in connections with top operatives in MI5. They infiltrated my network and discovered me – as Sherlock so eloquently puts it – at the center of a vast death-fraud web. They seized my assets while they investigated me, which is why I couldn’t bail out the shop, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they took me in. Of course, that fool Hayes has jumped to completely the wrong conclusion about my involvement, and is coming after an innocent man.”
“Innocent?” Sherlock lifted a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, steepling his fingers together. The expression reminded me so much of Morrie it made me sick. “That’s not a word I’d use to describe you.”
Sherlock was right, but I wasn’t about to agree with him. “Okay, then. I know you didn’t commit the murder, so we’ve just got to figure out who did.”
Folding himself back into his chair, Sherlock took a deep puff from his pipe. “I’ve already made some progress on the case. It’s the reason I chose this location as a hideout – it’s close to the crime scene. It’s how I’ve been able to prove that footprints found near the body exactly match Moriarty’s shoes.”
“And just how did you prove that?”
Sherlock picked up a pair of familiar-looking brogues from behind his chair and tossed them on the table. “It was elementary. I stole these from the stoop outside your bookshop, and matched them with the casts I took from the crime scene.”
“I was wondering where those went.” Morrie frowned at the shoes.
“How would you know any were missing?” I groaned, my head in my hands. This was getting worse. “You leave them lying everywhere. As Sherlock has demonstrated, anyone could sneak inside and nick them.”
And then use them to frame you.
“I wish never to be far from a decent pair of footwear.” Morrie held his chin high. “I get all my brogues custom-made at the same artisan cobbler in London. They made a last – that’s a mechanical form shaped exactly like my foot – to obtain the perfect fit.”
“Precisely.” Sherlock’s eyes locked on Morrie’s shoes. “The elegant shape and distinctive tread mean that the prints could have been made only by you, or by someone wearing your brogues. My next task is to visit this cobbler and—”
“Excuse me?” I glared at him. “Why are you trying to help Morrie?”
“It’s elementary,” Sherlock replied. “I intend to win him back. But that would be a fruitless endeavor if he’s behind bars.”
“You…” A fresh migraine flickered across my temples.This is not happening.
“Win me back?Youplanned to push me over a waterfall.” Morrie stalked across the room and tore the pipe from Sherlock’s lips. I winced as he tossed it against the wall, where it hit with aCRACKand broke into several pieces, scattering ash and tobacco into the already stuffy air. “There will never be anything between us again, Sherlock. I’m with Mina now.”
“If you say so,” Sherlock said in a tone that clearly implied he thought he still had a shot.
No, this is not happening. I’m not going to have a pissing contest with the world’s greatest consulting detective over Morrie. Not least because I don’t have a dick to piss from.“He does say so. If you’re able to accept and respect Morrie’s decision, we could still use your expertise in solving the case. Show us what you’ve uncovered already.”
Sherlock reached behind his chair and lifted up a wooden box. He upturned it on the table, and an avalanche of paper ephemera toppled out. Morrie rummaged through some boxes beside the fireplace and came back with candles, which he dotted around the room so I could see what I was doing. I picked up a stack of official-looking forms and squinted at the tiny print. “These are Kate Danvers’ medical records? How did you get these?”
“Morrie is not the only one with the skills to deceive your authorities.” Sherlock preened. “Kate’s records show a history of depression and suicidal thoughts.”
“That tells us nothing,” Morrie said. “I instructed her to create that paper trail. It established suicide as the most likely cause of her disappearance. If you plant the seed of the idea in everyone’s minds, they’ll water it until it blooms, and then they won’t come looking for her. The last thing we wanted was the authorities investigating it as a suspicious death.”
“If she wasn’t really suicidal, then why did Kate want to fake her death?”
Morrie shrugged. “You’d have to ask her. I’m not a psychologist. I never asked her, and she never told me.”
“You must have some idea.”
“There are three reasons people want to fake their death – financial gain, to be with a lover, or to escape violence. Significantly more men fake their deaths for the first two reasons, but that’s because they’re stupid enough to get caught. All the women I’ve helped successfully disappear have been fleeing a violent husband, and they’ve all stayed fake-dead, until Kate.” Morrie frowned. “This is really going to tank my Yelp rating.”
