The Purloined Necklace

The Purloined Necklace

The moment Chastity Jane walked into his office on the third floor of
the Laramie Building, Walter Jensen started praying to every god he
knew, swearing that he’d abandon his life of sin and debauchery if only
she’d turn around and walk right back out of his door. No such luck, of
course. Angrily, he kicked the solid oak table with the toe of his
boots. Chastity glided in wearing a slick red dress of some exotic
metamaterial that hugged her breasts like a second skin, complimented by
a pair of red high heels that would embarrass a escort. She was showing
ample cleavage, and the view down the top of her dress was uninterrupted
by any kind of necklace or broach. She might have been superficially
beautiful, but Chastity Jane was followed by trouble everywhere she
went.

“Hello, Meriwether,” Jane said quietly.

Walter stabbed out his cigarette in a huff.

“The first thing,” he said, “is that I’m not helping you. I see you on
the news every other week, and it’s always your lawyer, or your
secretary, or your personal assistant going to jail instead of you. You
can’t pay me enough ducats to worry about your problem. I don’t care
what favors you think I owe you; I’m definitely not obligated to stick
my neck in a noose for you. The second thing is that I know you know
damn well that nobody’s called me Meriwether in seven hundred years.
Don’t pretend you didn’t have your People check me out before coming
down here today.”

“It’s not like that,” Chastity Jane replied.

Walter snorted. “What’s it like, then?”

“One simple, easy job. Fifteen thousand ducats. Nothing illegal; I just
want to get back a piece of my property that has mysteriously vanished.”

“Some property!” Walter practically shouted. “And I’m sure it’s not at
all cursed, stolen, or held in the jaws of Satan himself in Danté’s
innermost Hell.”

“I’ll pay you five hundred ducats just to listen,” Chastity insisted.

“And I’ll pay you five hundred ducats just to leave!”

Chastity looked at him sidelong. “You need the money.”

“Like Hell I do.”

That was a patent lie. It was hard to say exactly how Walter accumulated
so many debts. There was the gambling, sure. There were old jobs that
went bad and had to be paid in full, of course. But in some strange and
inexplicable way, Walter had a gift for money; a gift for losing it.
Only Walter Jensen could be ten thousand ducats in the red in a city
where basic room and board were paid for by the government.

“Fine,” he finally said, as Chastity waited patiently for the numbers to
sink in. “I’ll listen to your damned story, and then you get out of
here.”

Chastity began her tale. “As you know, during the rehypothocation crisis
– “

“Scandal,” Walter put in.

“It was an accounting error! I had nothing to do with it.”

Walter snorted. “Strange, how you never do.”

“During the rehypothocation crisis in Chastity Investments, we lost a
lot of our market capitalization. Yesterday, I had to let some good
people go. Then, early this morning, there were two separate break-ins
into my office. I have one of my former employees on a security
recording coming into my office and stealing an item that was very
important to me. Not an hour later, a pair of hired goons ransacked the
place but didn’t steal anything; they must have been looking for the
missing item and nothing else. I want your help, Walter. This has
nothing to do with embezzlement or comingling of funds. This is entirely
a personal matter.”

“Then why not take it up with Civil Security?” Walter asked idly.

“Walter, it has to be you. You and I both know that Civil Security is
always looking for a reason to suspect me of wrongdoing. I know that
you’d never stab a client in the back, and you might find some very
sensitive information in the course of investigating this case.
Information that could be misinterpreted by people who are already
prejudiced against me.”

“Misinterpreted?” Walter grinned coldly. “Chastity Investments has been
named the second sleaziest financial firm in Neo Alexandria by
Euphrosyne News for three years running. Is that also a
misinterpretation?”

“Fifteen thousand ducats is a lot of money. This isn’t about the public
face of the firm. This is a personal vendetta by a member of my staff,
and I’d like the item they stole retrieved.”

Walter sighed. “I’ve listened to your story, and the answer’s still no.
Now, can I have the five hundred ducats you promised?”

“Fine,” Chastity said. “Think about it. I’ll send you my personal
identification address, too.”

Chastity brought up the screen of hard light that could be projected by
her implanted computer, and she typed on it for half a minute. Then she
stood, smoothed the folds of her dress, and walked out of Walter’s
office. He let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
There was a ping in his hearing, projected directly into his brain by
his own implant. Over the years, Walter had trained himself to navigate
his computer system without moving any physical part of his body at all,
and he checked his bank balance on the HUD woven directly into his optic
nerve. Sure enough, she’d deposited the five hundred ducats. All in a
day’s work.

Nobody else came into his office for the rest of the day, which was just
as well because he was drunk by fifteen hundred hours. Walter swilled
cheap whiskey, out of a plastic bottle, ameliorated only by three cubes
of ice from the freezer in one corner of his musty office. Despite his
best efforts, Walter couldn’t get Chastity Jane out of his head. Why had
she come to him, after all these years? What exactly was the nature of
this personal relic stolen from her, and why did she want it back so
badly? Still, he knew deep in his gut that it wasn’t worth getting
involved, even for fifteen thousand ducats. Chastity Jane threw people
under the subway the moment they were no longer of any use. Though rumor
had it they were well-compensated for taking the fall, Walter still had
enough personal pride that he wasn’t going to join the parade of people
going down for her benefit.

Walter was well marinated by the time eighteen hundred hours rolled
around. He switched the telephony system over to night mode, even though
it hadn’t rung all day and was unlikely to ring that night. He was just
about to stand up, put on his hat, and head to the subway station when
there was a loud pounding at his door.

“I’m closed,” Walter announced with irritation.

There was a muffled whisper from the other side of the door, and then
the pounding got violent. The door groaned on its hinges from the first
blow, and the second smashed the lock clean open.

“Now just a goddamn minute,” Walter said, fumbling with the drawer where
he kept his revolver.

Just his luck; it was locked, and he was too drunk to remember where
he’d stashed the key.

Two men in suits strode into his office through the busted open door.
One was a dark Arab, no doubt an old native who knew his way around the
streets. He was tall, muscular, and fastidiously mustached. The second
was a smaller Oriental man, of the kind who probably kept a butterfly
knife in every stray fold of his suit and hung wall scrolls depicting
medieval torture on the walls of his apartment. Walter hauled himself
onto his feet, preparing to at least make the attempt to brawl them.
Effortlessly, the Arab man reached out and shoved him back down in his
chair. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that third double.

“Where’s the necklace?” the Arab demanded.

Well, this day certainly wasn’t going to lack for excitement.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Walter answered with
honesty and resignation.

The Arab suit hissed in response, “Don’t make me look.”

The Oriental man reached out, and put a hand on the raging Arab. “Now
please, Mr. Jensen. We would hate to inconvenience you more than we
already have. We know that Chastity Jane was here, in this office, and
we know she gave you her necklace for safekeeping. All you have to do is
hand it over. This doesn’t involve you.”

Walter actually laughed. “She didn’t give me a damn thing. She came in
and asked for my help on a case, and I told her to get lost.”

The Arab suit apparently could no longer restrain his inner fury, and he
cracked Walter across the jaw. Not hard enough to knock him out, but
hard enough to get his attention, even through the haze of drink.

“Don’t lie to me, you slimy little prick,” roared the Arab thug.

The Oriental man reached out in restraint for a second time. “Now, now,
there’s no need for any unpleasantness. We know you two have something
of a history together, Mr. Meriwether Jensen.”

“It’s Walter,” the seated man answered lamely.

“So you’re not going to just give us the necklace?” the Oriental goon
asked quietly. “Disappointing. Mr. Halawani, I’m afraid you’re going to
have to look for it.”

Walter tried to stand again, but the Oriental reached into his suit in
such a way that Walter was absolutely certain that there was a weapon
being pointed at him.

“Please remain seated, Mr. Jensen.”

The Arab called Halawani started tearing apart Walter’s office
immediately. The man tore all the drawers out of the detective’s
cabinet, dumping their contents on the floor and rifling through them
haphazardly. Walter could only watch as the thug opened each and every
one of his books on the wall, flipping through the pages in search of
hidden compartments, and then dumping them down with the rest of the
mess the moment he was satisfied this necklace wasn’t stashed inside. He
tore the blades off the ceiling fan, and wrenched all the drawers out of
his oak desk. The lock on the drawer with the revolver took him an extra
tug to break open, and the Arab’s face went flush with effort and anger.

“Nice toy,” the Oriental remarked when Halawani finally got the drawer
opened.

Walter replied sarcastically, “It was a gift from my mother.”

The Arab was going to punch him again, but his companion stopped him
with a shake of his head. When Halawani had finally ripped open
everything that could be opened, and broke everything that couldn’t, the
pair gave him a sidelong glance of weary expectation.

“You’re not hiding the necklace on your person, I hope?” the Oriental
asked.

Walter exploded. “I don’t know anything about any goddamn necklace!”

The two hitmen conferred quietly in the corner, and within a minute
they’d finally come to some kind of conclusion.

“We apologize for taking up so much of your time,” the Oriental intoned.

Walter looked around at the ruins of his office.

Halawani fumed, “Hope that you don’t see us again.”

The pair of them walked out of his office, and the Arab was sure to step
on and shatter a snow globe that had fallen to the floor during the
ransacking as he walked out of Walter’s office.

“Son of a bitch,” Walter muttered under his breath with a kind of awe.

There was only one thing to do. Sure enough, Chastity Jane had dragged
him into this, even against his will. Until whatever intrigue that was
taking place got resolved, he’d know no peace by day or by night. He
cursed her, with every invective and curse that he’d learned in his
thousand-odd years of life. Then, he dialed her number. It rang eight
times, and Walter was just about to give up when Chastity answered the
call on her telescreen, and he recognized the apartment she kept in the
city that he’d been to once, and one too many times.

“Had a change of heart?” she asked languidly, leaning back in her sofa
with a glass of wine that cost more than he made in a good month.

Walter carefully didn’t look at the décolletage showing through the
front of her silken robe. “Two thugs just shook me down and ruined my
office. They were looking for a necklace. I don’t suppose you’d know
anything about that?”

Chastity sighed. “Oh Walter, I’m so sorry. Just bill me for the
damages.”

“It doesn’t work like that and we both know it,” Walter growled.
“Whoever hired those two won’t leave me alone until your little problem
gets taken care of. So you’ve managed to drag me into it just by showing
up; are you happy now?”

Chastity sniffed a little, feigning hurt. However, Walter could see her
impatiently swirling her glass in her right hand.

“In fact,” he went on, “if I didn’t know you any better I wouldn’t be
accusing you of hiring those goons yourself.”

It took her a second to process that, but as soon as she did, she sat
bolt upright with genuine anger. “I had nothing to do with that!”

Walter sighed. “Why don’t you tell me everything?”

“Not on the infogrid, even over an encrypted channel. I’ll tell you
what. Meet me in an hour at my offices at 6320 Luxor Street. My office
is on the forty second floor; I’ll have the computer let you in.”

“Fine. Walter out.”

He killed the call, and then stepped through the ruins of his office to
the coat rack. He didn’t have a cleaning droid, and he was hesitant to
rent one because they used algorithms born of habit. If he rented one
for a single job, it was just as likely that it would dump all his
paperwork in the trash, or to file the bills together with the receipts
in alphabetical order. He found himself regretting his anachronistic
insistence on using physical paper – the worst they could have done if
he’d kept all his records electronically was smash the terminal, and
that would be backed up at a server farm somewhere in the mountains to
the east. He grabbed his hat and overcoat, and went down to street level
and hailed a taxi. He normally wouldn’t pay for such an extravagance,
but he’d bill Chastity Jane for that, too. The ride to Luxor Street took
a solid twenty minutes, as he was located in Neo Alexandria’s suburbs
while the regional office for Chastity Investments was in the
fashionable downtown.

He paid the cabbie, and then stopped at a ground floor café for coffee.
His head was still pounding from the Arab’s blow, and from the cheap
whiskey that had yet to fully wear off. He ordered a double espresso,
and downed it like a man dying of thirst. He listlessly read the news,
the display projected over his field of vision like a high school
transparency. It had taken a little practice, but he could now switch
between his regular vision and his ocular implants effortlessly. “The
News” was the usual collection of celebrity gossip, crime reporting, and
governmental shenanigans that were identical the universe over, even in
the world of reincarnated devas. Chastity Jane had somehow managed to
stay out of the public eye for a full two weeks, which must be some kind
of record. Diva Angelica fell off a boat during a cast party and had to
be rescued by a Valkyrie; yawn. Somebody robbed a branch bank and got
away with the unprincely sum of a hundred and eighty ducats. Finally, it
was time to meet Chastity in her office. Walter resolved to show up ten
minutes late.

Sure enough, the door to the skyscraper opened up for him the moment he
raised his wrist to knock. It read Walter’s identify from his computing
implant, and ushered him straight in. The 6320 Luxor skyscraper was
rather short by the standards of the Neo Alexandrian elite, but it was
luxuriously appointed. All marble and mahogany, with a gaudy chandelier
that was undoubtedly real gold and real diamond, knowing the way
Chastity acted. Walter walked to the elevator bay, and discovered that
she didn’t own the entire building, but only rented out the top five
floors. That was a bit of a surprise; maybe Chastity Investments had
fallen on some hard times since the Second Convocation had started
cracking down on the grey market transactions that the financials
incessantly skirted.

He hit the button for the fortieth floor, and the elevator rocketed
upwards without protesting his authorization. It let him out in the well
heeled lobby for Chastity investments, and he walked past the unmanned
secretary’s desk and into the financial office itself. There must be
someone burning the midnight oil, because there was still a bit of noise
coming up the central stairwell from the floor below them. As for
Chastity’s office, he had to take a set of sweeping stairs, which were
made of some kind of crystal lined with gold edging, and then he knocked
on the door of her office.

Chastity Jane opened up, and she was wearing a dress of brilliant,
sparkling emerald that made her look like the mythical city of Oz.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

He followed her into her office, and was impressed by both the amount of
wealth on display and also the ostentatiousness with which it was
displayed. It took more than money to buy a scale model of downtown Neo
Alexandria done in rhodium, gold, and crystal; it also took colossally
bad taste. Everything that could be gilt, plated, or first edition, was.
There were numerous high end telescreens on every wall, rolling live
stock tickers from all three of Neo Alexandria’s exchanges and also
delayed quotes from such exotic locales as Polgorad. Chastity Jane was
halfway through a game of chess with somebody, and Walter was surprised
to see that she seemed to be acquitting herself well.

“So, what’s the story?” he asked with an exasperated sigh. “Tell me
everything.”

“Well, perhaps I wasn’t entirely forthright when I said that the item
stolen was strictly personal. As those two men who roughed you up said,
I’m missing a very valuable necklace. It was more than just a piece of
jewelry; it contained a data chip with a record of black market business
transactions that certain people would like to keep private.”

Walter smirked. “And are you certain people?”

“It actually wasn’t a record of anything over here at Chastity
Investments. It has to do with a particular influential, well-connected
family. I bought it from a dealer of unusual items who knew I’d be
interested; gods only know where he got it from.”

“Organized crime?” Walter asked.

Chastity’s lips were touched by the hint of a smile. “You could say
that. Some people will go a long way to avoid customs inspectors.”

“That depends on what they’re carrying. So, how did these smugglers
figure out you were in possession of this record at all?”

“They’re not just any group of smugglers. It has to do with certain
sensitive art deals involving the Palaiologos family.”

“And you dragged me into this,” Walter groaned. “Certainly you must
realize they’re the richest, best connected, and most opaque banking
dynasty in all of Neo Alexandria. I say you cut your losses now.”

Chastity replied coolly, “Well, it’s not that easy. I needed those
records for leverage.”

“You’ve got the Palaiologi breathing down your neck?” Walter asked with
a smirk.

“They’ve never liked me much. They think I’m a parvenu, after all.”

“Aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “That’s not the point. The point is, they’ll stop at
nothing to destroy me and they have a great deal of influence in the
Second Convocation, despite all the reforms. Unless I get that necklace
back, I have no way to protect myself against their political
machinations.”

“How do you know who stole it?” Walter asked.

Chastity brought up her pocket computer’s projected screen, and typed on
it for a few seconds. Obviously she lacked either the ability or the
inclination to do it all sub rosa in her head. The telescreen nearest
to them flipped to a new video, what was obviously security footage from
this very office.

“I’m sorry about the angle,” Chastity said. “It was placed to watch the
door, and it only catches Lucinda in its peripheral. She was one of my
brokers, and I had to let her go yesterday. I guess I forgot to revoke
her access to the offices.”

Walter watched as the well-dressed woman entered the office, and fiddled
around on an end table pushed up against the wall. She was clearly doing
something, but it was hard to tell exactly what was happening because
her back obscured what little could be seen.

“And that’s not all. Take a look at this,” she said.

Another video played, and Walter watched with interest.

“Less than an hour after Lucinda stole the necklace, two men in suits
came into the office and looked around for it. You can watch them tear
up my office, though they were a little gentler with my valuables than I
expect they were with yours. Honor among thieves.” Then Chastity was
conscious of what she just said, and finished, “or something like that.”

“How did the Palaiologos guys know you had the necklace at all?”

“Well, I may have made a few calls. You know, to remind them that
they’re not the only ones who could wield influence with the
Convocation. I may have, you know...”

“What?”

“Gloated. But only a little!”

Walter rolled his eyes. Only Chastity Jane would call up one of the
oldest and most powerful families in the city and gloat about coming
into possession of a very sensitive data cache. He felt a throbbing in
his temples that could only be relieved by getting her out of his life.

She went back to the subject at hand. “There was something else stolen
as well, but it wasn’t nearly as important. Lucinda also took a book out
of a drawer of the table where the necklace was placed. It was fairly
valuable, worth a few thousand ducats. But that’s the sort of thing I
can replace.”

Walter walked over to the table where the necklace had laid. The whole
room had been put back together after the Palaiologos thugs had left,
and the desk drawer was closed. He opened it, under Chastity’s watchful
eye. Sure enough, it was empty. He looked on the surface of the table,
but there wasn’t much to learn there. It was perfectly glossed and
looked just like any other table. There was a crack between the edge of
the table and the wall, and he peered into the darkness but couldn’t
make anything out.

“I guess we should pay Lucinda a visit,” Walter said. “I’m sure you’ve
got her address. It wasn’t too bright of her, stealing from her employer
right in front of a security camera and all.”

Chastity Jane shifted uncomfortably. “Well, there are issues that aren’t
entirely cut and dry. There was a dispute about some back pay, and
frankly, it wouldn’t even be worth my time to go after her for something
as petty as the missing book. If the necklace weren’t missing as well
I’d just cut off her access to the building and chalk it up to shrink.”

“Is anything ever simple with you?” Walter demanded.

She smiled demurely. “Things used to be.”

“Like Hell.”

She strode forward as if to kiss him, but Walter was having none of
that. He took an equal number of steps backward, until she finally stood
in place and pouted.

“Just give me her address,” he said levelly. “I’ll go talk to her about
the necklace. If you’re right, she might not even know what she has;
maybe we can just buy it off of her.”

Chastity’s eyes brightened. “That’s a good idea. Tell her I’ll go up to
five thousand ducats.”

“Five thousand? Isn’t that a little cheap for a piece of jewelry that
can save your whole company?”

“If I offer any more than that, she’ll realize that she’s got something
important. Besides, that’s about the same amount of money she demanded
in her dispute over unpaid contractual bonuses.”

“Fine. What’s Lucinda’s address?”

Chastity did some quick typing. “She lives at 8901 Byzantium Avenue,
apartment 3903. I’ll send you her personal identification address as
well, so you can call or email her. Here, I’m sending you a little
something special too.”

Walter heard the tone he had set to indicate a new authorization.

“Now you can borrow my aircar,” she said with a grin.

Walter almost said no. He desperately wanted to say no. He tried to
squeeze the word no out of his strangled vocal cords, to no avail. After
all, when would he ever get another chance to fly a Barracuda 157?

What he said instead was, “Great!”

“It’s parked on the roof. Come back soon with my necklace.”

Walter took the stairs in the rear of the office, forcing himself not to
look back at Chastity Jane. Sure enough, he got onto the roof and under
the warm night sky the Barracuda 157 sat, gleaming at him. It was almost
impossible to fly legally in an aircar like that. It had a top speed of
over three hundred miles an hour, well over double the speed limit of
one hundred and twenty on the city’s aerial freeway matrix. The
Barracuda 157 easily cost as much as a house in the suburbs, and Walter
felt himself overcome with something akin to religious awe as he stared
at the sleek, silvery hull of the vehicle. He wanted it more than he’d
ever wanted any woman in his entire life, even more than he’d wanted
Chastity Jane back when she was known as Elena Minerva Ptessera and
they’d shared an ill-advised fling. The hatch leapt open at his touch
like a school of startled minnows.

Walter gleefully climbed into the driver’s seat of the aircar, the
supple leather warming up the moment he sat down. He closed the hatch
and cinched the crash harness tightly around himself. With all the
computer assistance that went into piloting an aircar, crashes were
uncommon, but still not unheard of. The Barracuda’s primary computer
detected someone in the pilot’s seat and booted up with a whine. Maybe
it was just his imagination, but Walter imagined he could feel the
energy crackling out of the tiny carmot pseudoreactor buried somewhere
under the aircar’s small trunk, and he grinned like a kid on Winter
Solstice morning. Knuckles white with anticipation, he pulled back on
the control stick and the Barracuda 157 jumped silently into the air.

Walter did a quick scan for Civil Security patrols with the comically
illegal traffic scanner that Chastity had installed, and then jammed in
the throttle with his right foot. The Barracuda shot forward like a
charging rhino, the quiet rush of the wind outside the car becoming a
roar he could hear even through the completely airtight hull. He watched
the speedometer as he passed a hundred miles an hour, then a hundred and
fifty, and then two hundred. Walter shot past plodding cargo airships in
the upper right lane, and wove in and out between the numerous family
aircars out for an evening on the town. He hit two twenty five, and then
two hundred and fifty before he got really scared. He could barely keep
control of the vehicle now, and even the tiniest crosswind threatened to
send it spinning out of control and off the aerial freeway. Finally
sated, he reduced speed back to a more reasonable hundred and fifty,
overcome with quiet wonder at the raw power of the vehicle. If he
started saving now, maybe he could afford to own one himself sometime in
the next ten thousand years.

Finally done fooling around, he headed for Lucinda’s apartment on
Byzantium Avenue. The building was nice, but decidedly middle class.
Maybe Chastity Jane wasn’t as generous with her own employees as many
financial firms were reputed to be; or maybe the Second Convocation’s
crackdown on white collar crime had forced her to scale back. He queried
the building for a landing beacon, and allowed the computer to land the
Barracuda for him. He didn’t want to risk scratching the hull on the low
ceilings of the parking garage, especially considering the uncanny power
of the Barracuda’s engines. In less than a minute, he was on the ground
in a visitor’s stall, and he ruefully climbed out of the Barracuda and
gave it a look like he’d never see it again. He walked across the
concrete floor to the elevator bay, and finally decided to give Lucinda
a call. He watched on his HUD as the implant counted the number of rings
and total call time. After ten seconds, she picked up.

She looked like Walter would have expected. She took on the appearance
of a woman in her late middle age, her blonde hair just remaining on the
south side of grey. She had a well endowed figure, accentuated by a
black tank top. Lucinda looked like she’d just got back from the gym.
She watched him suspiciously from the telescreen in her living room, her
face painted with a scowl.

“I don’t recognize this address, who is this?” she asked.

Walter took a deep breath. Time to put up or shut up.

“My name is Walter, and I’m a private detective. Chastity Jane has
retained my services to retrieve a piece of property that’s recently
gone missing. She’s willing to pay a significant bounty to get it back,
no questions asked.”

Lucinda narrowed her eyes. “I only took what I was entitled to. I looked
it up the value of the book on an infosite for appraising antiques
before I took it.”

“It’s actually not about the book; Chastity doesn’t care about that.
She’s willing to offer three thousand ducats to get the necklace back,
though.” If Walter could talk her into the lower amount, maybe he could
keep the two thousand left over for himself.

“I didn’t take any necklace,” she replied. “I only took the book.”

“Look, Chastity has you on the security camera. There’s no use playing
dumb.”

She glared at him, really angry now. “I’m telling you, I didn’t take the
necklace! I saw it on the table but I left it alone. The only thing I
took was the book, which I’ve already sold for the back pay she owed. If
she wants it back, she can buy it from Ptammy’s Antiques and Heirlooms
on Fortran and Byzantium!”

Now what? “So you really didn’t take the necklace?”

“I’m telling you, no!”

“Was it still on the table when you left the room?”

Lucinda shrugged disinterestedly. “I don’t know, I wasn’t paying
attention. I was feeling nervous because I hadn’t done anything like
that before. Not that I stole from an employer, mind you, but I wanted
to get my pay right then and not wait the twenty years of litigation
that Chastity would put me through to get it.”

“Thank you for your time,” Walter said, killing the call.

He thought back again to the sequence of events. Chastity left the
necklace on the table, and then left her office. Lucinda came in, and
took a book from that very same table. Lucinda admitted that she saw the
necklace but didn’t take it, contenting herself with the antique book
that she felt she was owed. Then the two Palaiologos thugs broke in and
tore the place apart. Obviously they didn’t find the data cache, because
they’d shadowed Chastity Jane to his office, and then raided it after
she left. Something wasn’t adding up here. Was Lucinda lying? There was
no way to tell. He decided to pay a visit to Ptammy’s the next morning.
He flew the Barracuda 157 back to his apartment, grinning to himself as
he imagined the look on his next door neighbor’s face when he came out
for work the next morning and saw the Barracuda parked in Walter’s
normally empty stall.

He slept fitfully, his mind working a mile a minute. He dreamed that he
was spelunking out in Northreach Gorge, but it was totally dark, and the
headlamp on his helmet shone without illuminating anything. Other than
the helmet, he was wearing no safety gear, and his feet were shod in
slick loafers that could barely keep a grip on the walls of the canyon.
He kept almost missing footholds and plummeting to his death. Every time
he woke up he had a answer for the mystery. Maybe there had been three
break-ins, and the cameras didn’t capture the third for some reason.
Maybe Lucinda had stolen the necklace and discovered its true value, and
was lying about taking it. Maybe Chastity Jane had planned the whole
thing in order to weasel herself back into Walter’s life.

He had a quick breakfast the next morning, which he had to cook himself
since he had yet to get his roughly used kitchen droid serviced. The
last time he’d relied on the droid, it had cooked his eggs in mineral
oil instead of butter, giving him a nasty shock. Walter managed to spill
grounds in his coffee while fumbling with the coffee maker, and he
raised his eyes to Heaven and blamed Chastity Jane for that, too. When
he was finally sufficiently fed and caffeinated, he flew the Barracuda
down to Ptammy’s Antiques and parked in a nearby garage. The fee was an
exorbitant two ducats per hour, and he vowed to add it to Chastity’s
bill.

He opened the door to the small shop, which was covered wall to wall
with antiques, tchotchkes, and outright junk in a way that probably
represented a serious fire hazard. The biddy behind the counter must
have been Ptammy, and Walter idly wondered why she chose to look like an
old lady in a realm where she could choose to be any age she wanted. She
smiled at him, and made a welcoming mudra with her hands.

“Welcome to Ptammy’s. Can I help you find anything?”

“Actually,” he said, “I have a question about someone who came in
yesterday. A middle aged woman looking to sell a book; she was probably
wearing a pantsuit?”

She looked at him dubiously. “Are you a gentleman caller?”

“No, it’s about the book actually.”

“Ah, that. Yes, I still have it right here.” She rummaged behind the
counter. “It’s a very valuable first edition of Nathan Heller’s Sky of
Resistance. It’s an autobiographical account of the first airship duels
above Neo Alexandria during the Rollins Heresy.”

Walter ignored this. “Actually, it’s not about the book, exactly. I was
wondering if the woman who brought it in sold anything else. Like, a
necklace of some kind?”

“No, it was just the book,” Ptammy said. Then she coyly winked. “Is this
the kind of lady trouble that sometimes brings people in to my humble
shop, looking to sell on the cheap?”

Walter sighed. “No, it’s nothing like that. Thanks for your help.”

He walked out, with Ptammy offering to sell him a cuckoo clock, a set of
rhodium tableware, and, with final desperation, a first edition of
Heller’s Sky of the Valkyries in near-mint condition

Walter walked back to the parking garage filled with an air of
dejection. If Lucinda had taken it, she obviously knew what she had,
because otherwise she probably would have just sold it to Ptammy. Like
as not, the necklace was already back in the hands of some Palaiologos
don, which might be just as well because it meant it wasn’t his problem
anymore. Let Chastity face the wolves on her own for once. He was
suddenly interrupted by a call on his implant, from Chastity, which was
flagged as a priority one transmission. He took a seat on a bench so he
could direct his entire attention to the call.

“What is it, Chastity?” he groaned when he connected the call.

“Case closed!” she crooned. “I’ve found the necklace and deposited your
full fee into your account.”

Walter boggled. “What do you mean, you found it?”

She was beaming at him. “Lucinda must have knocked it off the table when
she was getting the book. One of the maids was doing her weekly rounds
in my office, and she found it behind the table when she moved it to
clean the carpet underneath. I’m in business again!”

Walter knew Chastity Jane would be trouble from the moment she entered
his office.