The two of you make some small talk, finish your meal, and say your goodbyes.

You step out of the Three Bells and try to blink away the strong mid-day sun.  It doesn't work, but your eyes adjust.  Time to get back to the case.  You'd rather take a cushy carriage ride to Ascot than hoof it, but working stiffs like you put a lot of miles on the old boots.  Wagontown's a lot closer to Ascot than Edge, socio-economically and physically.

On your way to the general's estate you've got time to take stock of what you know.  You've met some of the players at Danny Silver's, but you don't have anything to connect any of them to a kidnapping.  Heck, you don't even have a kidnapping to connect them to.  At least you have a ransom note.  That's something.  Good solid physical evidence.  You've got a book about magic and you've got a pretty girl running from thugs.  They connect to each other, but do they connect to the case?  Now you've got a mage burning buildings down too.  It might not connect directly to the case, but the time frame of the fire in East Wharf fits.  That could be a connection if you did a little work.

That should be your focus, putting the pieces that you have together.  See what fits and what you can ignore.  You need solid connections between the people, the things, and the events.  That's how you'll push this case forward.

You look around.  Vast manicured lawns, excellent streets, walls and gates.  This is Ascot for sure.  What you're less sure about is which way the Daenatris Estate is.  It all looks different from street level in the sunshine.  You decide to navigate by gut instinct.  Your gut rarely fails you and today is no exception.  You find yourself at familiar gates looking up a large arching brass plaque reading DAENATRIS.  This is the place.  Your about to ring the gatehouse bell when a gardener spots you.  You tell her you're here to see the general and she lets you in.

This time you know the drill.  You're taking off your coat and armor before Norris even asks.  He politely accepts the armload.

"Are you here to see the general, sir?"

I know that I frankly need to investigate everyone here, but the General is a good start.  And besides, I should see him anyway, since he is paying.  "That is the plan, Norris.  How's the world treating you today.  Hear anything interesting?" Yeah, I know its a long shot, and I watch in case he needs motivation.  Of course, in this joint, he probably doesn't need my assistance.

I wait patiently.  Who knows, I might get a visitor while I wait.

"Another exquisite day, sir," Norris answers in a manner that is both off-the-cuff and formal at the same time.  He also sounds sincere.

"Well," he ponders a moment before answering your second question.  "We haven't heard from Sean Quinn or received any further correspondence from the would-be kidnappers.  I do hope your investigation, being of a more active variety, has born fruit."

"But you needn't tell me, sir.  Better to grace the general's ears."

With that he departs to prepare your audience with General Daenatris.


You tap your foot while waiting.  The sound echoes off the hard walls of the vast room.  When you close your eyes you can almost sense the general size and shape based on sound alone.  The foyer is quieter and feels more empty than it did last time.  A chandelier swings ever so gently overhead.  You wonder how they light and replace the candles.

"General Daenatris will see you now."

You follow Norris to the greenhouse again.  It's even hotter than the night before, what with the sunlight and everything.  The general is sitting in the exact same spot, but you notice he has a different shirt on today.  That is more than you can say for yourself.

The elderly elf motions for you to freely partake in the wet bar selection.

"Thomas Hardy.  Norris tells me you followed the Sean Quinn angle.  What did you learn over in Silverside?" asks the general.

"Good to see you, General, thanks for letting me meet again.  And thank you in advance for the drink."  I pour a good stiff one, then sit down. Even out of my normal attire, it is hot out here.  But if the old man likes it, so do I.

"He went into the park there, and no one has seen him since.  I went over to the nice joint nearby, ran into your daughter there.  I really don't think she likes me.  She figured you sent me to follow her.  I saw her later on the other side of town with a fellow, but didn't follow up."  I didn't need to tell him about my new partner.

"I'm following some other clues, and trying to tie them to the ransom note for a kidnapping that never happened.  Have you heard anything more, sir?"

OOC: You actually saw her in Silverside (not across town) outside Danny Silver's Casino.  She was with Danny Silver.

The general nods.

"I can see why she'd think I'm having her followed.  That is not the intent, but her safety is very important to me.  Do you know anything about the fellow she was with?  You must have reason to believe he's not involved with the ransom note."

"I haven't heard anything new since yesterday.  You are my source of information regarding these kidnappers, Mr Hardy."

I leaned back in the chair, looking at my drink, then at the General.  "I'm still working on that.  As far as I can tell, there are no kidnappers, or at least, no one has kidnapped your Daughter.  It's a caper without a caper.  But my buddy's missing, and there are some interesting things happening in town... warehouses burning down, strange magics, this mystery guy Chrissy is seeing.  I'm gonna turn some rocks over today and see what crawls out."

I looked seriously at the old man.  "I wanna get to the bottom of this as much as you do, and part of it will be following her, and seeing what she does.  Clearly, if there are kidnappers, that would be what they are doing too.  I ain't saying there is or isn't a kidnapper.  But somebody wrote that note, and that somebody wanted your attention."

I sipped the drink, a big sip, and leaned forward.  "I may have asked, but is there anyone that would want to do this to your and your family?  Some rival?  Former old friend or not so friend?  Anyone at all?"
This message was lightly edited by the player at 16:22, Sat 27 Apr.

The general lifts a hand off his lap and taps a bony knuckle to his chin.

"You know Mr. Hardy, I think most of the people in this town have forgotten about me.  Human's have a short memory and a shorter attention span.  My old rivals are no longer around, and in my current state I'm in no condition to make new rivals.  I suppose anyone living in Ascot or Wall is some sort of target or another for thieves.  You could look into the Thieves' Guild.  I'm sure you've dealt with them many times and have your avenues of inquiry."

With a slight shrug he sets his hand back down on the blanket.

"Truly, you'd be better off looking into those in dear Chassianna's circle.  She's out there in the world, living her life and actively attracting attention.  It's her not-so-friends, as you put it, who would pull a half-brained stunt like this."

I finished my drink, not at all surprised.  I figured Chrissy was all that, and I was thinking it more.  If she had half of the gumption her little sister did, then the entire town was in trouble.  I looked longingly at the booze the old man had, then sighed.  "That's part of my plan.  I'll get together with my partner, and we'll see if we can both follow your daughter and her friends.  I gotta feeling that you're right, she's got stupid friends trying to do stupid.  I still don't know where missing Quinn fits into this caper, but I will, trust me.  I'll find out, sir!"

I stood up, wondering if I dared ask him for more money, as I gave all I had to my 'partner.'  I might be a sneak, but at least I pretended to be honest.

The plan to shadow Chassianna and her associates pops into your mind just as you say it, and you're real glad it did.  Those are the words and thoughts of a professional who knows what he's doing.  Fills the customer with confidence to hear that sort of talk.

As for execution.  Marceline would dig it, but you'd have to be careful about who she's following.  Grace, on the other hand, she wouldn't raise any suspicion at all.  Maybe it was time you let her in on this case.  You're a little surprised she didn't pop in to the office while you were wooing Marceline last night.  She'd be more angry that you hadn't clued her in than catching you canoodling.  Dodged a crossbow bolt there.

Between this and the warehouse and bookstore leads you're feeling a little better, yourself, about the case.  Tom Hardy gets his man.

"Sounds like you have it under control.  Good luck," says the general as you stand up.

"If there's nothing else, sir..." Norris says, ready to show you out.

---

OOC: I believe you still have plenty of the 50 gold the general gave you.  You only gave Marceline the rest of your Danny Silver Casino chips.

"Thank you, General.  I will report back."  I walked out to see Norris and smiled.  "No, Norris, I have what I need.  Take care, buddy!"

Of course, out on the road, I wasn't so sure.  I made my way back to my pad, abode, flop.  Whatever it was.  Yes, there were other places to go, but I needed to check in.  Grace probably thought I was on a bender.  I needed to take a few notes, check in (without a certain sweet doll distracting me!) and then I could go out.  I thought I could check out a few joints, then go find my 'partner.'

I stepped in, looking around.  "Grace?  Are you around, sweetheart?"

Norris offers to give you a carriage ride back to Edge.  Whether you ride or walk you return to your office to find Grace standing between the desk and couch, hands on her hips.

"When exactly were you planning to tell me you had a case?"  She doesn't let you answer that.  "I had to find out from John.  OK, spill it.  What's going on?"

"C'mon, doll. So I got a caper.  Can't a guy cut a break?  You bitch when I'm sleeping here, you bitch when I'm workin'.  You can't have it both ways!"

He held up his hand.  "So yeah.  Old General get's a ransom note for his eldest daughter, turns out she's neither missing or kidnapped.  So I'm trying to figure out what that means.  And my old buddy Quinn was on this caper before me, but he is now missing. So I'm following up on some stuff today before my partner and I..."

Oh crap, I shouldn't have mentioned that!

"I mean, if I had a partner, then I could cover more ground.  John was a stop last night.  Why, you hear something?"

The gal is miffed.  No two ways about it.  Complaining about her bitching isn't exactly cooling her under the collar.  You don't want to stir up a fight, but maybe it's in your nature.

"I heard plenty.  You found a book on magic, and this all ties in to a rogue pyromancer somehow.  John mentioned a general too, but not so much about a kidnapping."

Grace shifts her hips and puzzles a moment.

"Wait.  If there was no kidnapping, what exactly were you hired to do?  And why is there a ransom note?  Are you supposed to stop the kidnapping?  Catch them in the act?"

I sat on the couch, looked longingly at the bottle that I killed off last night, then back at the woman who put up with being the secretary to a drunk.

"So there was this girl, and she was being chased by two thugs, and dropped a book on wild magic about.  So I picked it it up, saved her butt from the two pugs, then she vanished.  The book was marked in the wild magic section, so I wondered if that might have a connection with the fires around town and such.  And then the daughter, she's elf like her dad, and those kind tend to be magical, so I wondered if she was involved and if the whole ransom thing ws a red herring or if there was something to it.  And while she's not missing, Quinn, who was one working for said General Daddy before me, is missing.  And he went missing near the hoity toity nightclub that said daddy's girl hangs out at.  It makes me want to drink just telling the story!"

Much to my surprise, I didn't drink.

"So John only knows about the magic book and the girl and the fires.  He don't know about the family thing and all that jazz.  So I'm gonna retrace my steps.  If not to do right by my buddy Quinn, but to solve this before I go batsoid crazy!"

"Tom, you're making more and less sense at the same time."

She sits down on the couch next to you, suddenly less miffed like she just up and forgot to be mad.

"Let's start with the book."

Grace likes books.  She reads them on purpose and actually enjoys it.  That's probably why she's knows so many little things no person would ever pick up just knocking around in this world.  She must have a whole slew of books at home.  You recall a few fully stocked shelves at her place, but your memories on the subject are a vague at best.  Grace spends a heck of a lot more time here at the office than you do at her pad.

"Hand it over and tell me about this girl who dropped it.  Sounds to me like you don't know her yet.  Now that's rare here in Granite Rocks.  Might be she's one of the lucky few.  Vanished before she could be wooed by the ever-charming Tom Hardy with a whirlwind night on the town, or at least a few bottles of the cheap stuff and a roll in the hay."

Now that she's done a little good-natured ribbing she asks more about the the book dropper and the case.

"Did this happen before or after the elf general hired you to...  I'm still unclear on what we're supposed to do.  Find Quinn?  Find an arsonist?"

I sighed.  "The girl was first.  Yesterday morning evening.  I ran after her, then two uglies decided they wanted to have fun.  I laid em out, not dead, but then she ran from me.  I found the book, brought it back here.  Then, this butler for the General shows up, so I go to his place, heard about Quinn and the ransom note, which I still have.  I go the last place Quinn was at, which was a joint was near Patterson Park.  I went in there, saw the daughter, who doesn't like me.  No taste.  Talked up another gal who pointed me back into town, and that's where I found out about arson and stuff.  This morning, nothing's changed."

I took a deep breath.  "And I gotta let you know, I'm working with someone on this.  A dame. Real head on shoulders, as smart as you.  She's tight with this daughter and she sees things I don't, so you'll see her around likely later.  That is, if I can find a clue.  I'm kinda short on those right now."

I take out some gold and put it on the counter.  "I probably owe you more than that.  You still work for me and I'm a rotten boss.  But here you go.  I figure this out, maybe there will be more for all of us.  Wouldn't that be swell?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:31, Sat 08 June.

Grace is smiling just a little when she nods about this.  Your assistant keeps mostly the same expression on her face all the time.  That's just how her face is.  She'd be a terrible actress, but she'd sure be hard to read at the card table.  You've been around her long enough to know what the part grin and nod means.  It means she already knew what you're telling her.

When you set the coins on your desk for her she looks at them with enough interest that you know she's going to accept them, but she's more interested in the book.

She puts her hand on your forearm while she's sitting next to you.

"You're a good boss, Tom.  Well... good enough.  You give me purpose, tracking down leads, digging up the truth, keeping you out of trouble... as much as anybody can.  If it wasn't for Hardy Investigations I wouldn't even bother setting foot in Edge."

"Now quit holding out on me.  Let's have that wild magic book.  I want to see the ransom note too."

I sighed.  She was a good broad, and had stuck with me a long time.  I owed her this.  "Alright doll, here's the book.  It's not all wild magic, but that was what was marked.  And here's the bullshit note."

I rubbed my eyes.  "So here's the thing.  So there's this girl, disappears, but its enough to make a couple of paid thugs want her for more than what she is.  And then this rich Elf General want's me to investigate his elder daughter that parties and sleeps around and  most assuradly ain't kidnapped.  Stuck up bitch.  Her younger sister is a dream girl who I think would have played with me if I wasn't pretending to be a professional."

I thought a minute.  "And the elder sister sings, and my partner is her bass player.  And there have been weird fires at warehouses, which a wild mage would likely be behind, but there's no proof."  I shook my head.  "You see?  This caper has more twists and red herrings that anything I've seen."

Grace is about to open the book when you hand her the ransom note.  She sets the book down on an end table stained with glass and bottle rings, and shifts the note into the sunlight.

"General Daenatris," she reads out loud.  "That's your old elf.  We have your daughter.  If you want to see her again in one piece...  10,000 gold... blah blah blah no constables, mages, or royalty."

Grace turns the note a little sideways.  Then she tips her head to match.

"Your kidnapper's a woman," she states flatly, handing the ransom note back to you before picking the Codex Transmundane up and thumbing through it.

I looked at her for a long moment like she had grown horns.  I picked up the note.  "A woman?  Don't surprise me, but how do you figure that?  Handwriting?  Language?"  I picked it up to smell it.  "If its a dame, then I bet my money its the daughter in question.  Trust me, she's a work of art.  She's convinced I got the hots for her, which is why I took the job, so I can babysit her.  Ha!"

I looked over at Grace. "If you can tell me what ties this book and the girl who owned it with this ransom thing, then I'll take you to dinner.  And not the usual crap, real food."

The note doesn't smell particularly like anything other than paper and ink.  Could be you detect a tiny hint of old elf.  Old elf sitting in a very hot, humid, and earthy room.  You're disappointed.  You were hoping to pin it to Chassianna with your keen sniffer.  You have slightly more than no notion what she smells like.  Lilynna on the other hand, you vividly remember the sweet, wild fruit smell of her breath.


Grace shakes her head and sighs as if she is dealing with child.

"Girls dropping books, girls singing, girls playing bass, little sisters...", she says with a tsk-tsk of disapproval.  "If you weren't so busy chasing girls you might have taken a minute or two to play detective."

Grace stands up and snatches the ransom note back.  Shoving less important things aside, but at least not off the desk, she clears space for both the unfolded note and open book.

"See here?" she points to the word 'have' in the book.  "See how standard and mechanical this is.  The scribe has written this word thousands of times.  The whole book is that way.  Common words written commonly.  By a man.  Almost all scribes are men, you know."

"But the note, well there's just a little curl and flourish to the word 'have', and she's toning it down.  She'd like to girl it up even more, but that's no good for a ransom note.  A ransom note needs to be professional.  This woman can do professional.  She's had a good deal of practice, but she's no scribe."

"Come on Tom, you're a forger.  You can see it can't you?"  Yeah, you can see it now.  Hey, did Grace teach you forgery or did you learn it back when you were on the force?  "You could believably copy either a page of the book or the note by getting inside the head of the writer, but you didn't even look at your clues.  What else haven't you looked at?"

I looked at what she was saying, ignoring the obvious facts about me that she knew better than I.  "Girl with education, but not a scribe.  Not my new partner, but can't rule her out.  Either sister could have written this.  My male parts say it is the elder sister, the one who is not kidnapped. But little sis could do it too. Maybe the running girl too, but I have nothing there to go one."

I looked more at the writing.  "See, what gets me, is if it is the elder sister, what is in it for her to write her own kidnapping?"

I looked at Grace.  "Dammit Grace, what am I missing?"

Grace shakes her head quickly, which always makes her short hair poof up a bit.

"Tell me.  Does the old elf still have all his marbles, or is he slipping?" she asks you while looking back at the note.  "A father would know his own daughters' handwriting."

I thought about that for a long moment.  "I really am not sure if the General is all there.  He loves his booze, more than me, if you can believe it.  But yeah, I don't think he'd notice the handwriting over the message it had.  I hadn't thought of that.  Could this be a caper by the eldest to get daddy's money?"

"If she's trying to extort her old man she's doing a lousy job of it.  Least you can do is stay kidnapped.  Maybe the ransom note was to get this Quinn guy out of the picture.  For what, I don't know."

"Let's stick to what we do know.  Some woman wrote a ransom note.  She wants 10 grand, which is a heap of gold for anybody, but they say family is worth more than gold."

She says this with a dubious inflection.  You don't really know much about her family.  You sure can't think of any of your kin you'd pay 10 Gs for.

"The note said an agent will arrive.  But that never happened because the kidnapping never happened.  Quinn went off to a joint where the daughter sings and went missing himself, so the General hired you to...  what?  Watch the daughter?"

Grace paces around.  She's thinking.  You like watching dames think.

"That's all we know about the case.  The book, the girl who dropped it, the fires, we've got no connections between those and the kidnapping, right?  So we can go about this one of two ways."

She turns to you and holds up one finger.

"We can forget the book and the fires and focus on the daughter and this place she sings.  Those sound like the only real leads you've got.  Maybe we turn up a connection that way."

Grace holds up a second finger.

"Or we can take a leap, eyes closed, and check out the book or these fires.  They're tangible and untouched.  You've been to the place near Patterson Park already.  Could be we get lucky and they're somehow related to the kidnapping or Quinn."