Страница 5 из 99
“My name’s Marianella Luna,” the woman said, “and some important documents of mine have gone missing.”
Marianella Luna. Immediately Eliana remembered where she’d seen the woman before—on television. She was that Argentinian aristocrat, the one all the Independents loved, the one in those advertisements with the city councilman Alejo Ortiz, raising money for his Hope City agricultural domes. We have the strength to run our own city. Atomic power should be ours! End Antarctican dependence on Argentina! As if that was ever going to happen.
Marianella Luna stared at Eliana, her pale eyes framed in thick dark lashes.
Eliana found her voice. “Well, that’s certainly a shame, Lady Luna.”
Lady Luna sat with perfect posture, her hands folded in her lap. “More than you could know, I’m afraid. Will you be able to help me?”
“I’ll certainly try.” Eliana pulled a notepad and a pen out of her desk. “So. These documents. When did you notice they’d disappeared?”
“This morning. I woke up and found someone had broken into the safe in my library. It was—distressing.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
Eliana kept her voice neutral, but she watched Lady Luna closely, looking for clues. Always start an investigation with the client—one of the few pieces of advice Mr. Vasquez had given her.
Lady Luna took a deep breath and toyed with her necklace.
“The contents of these documents,” she said, “are sensitive.”
“Sensitive.”
“Yes, Miss Gomez. I don’t wish to give the impression that I don’t have faith in the city’s police department, and I’m sure they would never betray me intentionally, but if some newly minted detective were to glance at these documents, it would be—” She dropped her necklace. “Disastrous. If I hired you, it would be as much for your discretion as for your investigative skills. I do hope you understand, Miss Gomez.”
When she said Eliana’s name, her voice softened, her eyes took on a soft aristocratic glow.
“That’s why people come to me,” Eliana said, floundering a little. “Discretion and investigation.” She felt stupid saying this, but she didn’t want to risk Lady Luna taking her business downtown. And people did come to Eliana for discretion. It wasn’t a lie.
Eliana leaned back in her chair, trying to smooth out her awkwardness, and sipped at her coffee. “I won’t even charge you extra. Ten bucks a day, just like all my clients.”
Another light smile. “I’ve every intention of paying you handsomely for your work. Speed is another issue we’ll need to discuss, of course, and another reason I didn’t contact the police. They can be dreadfully slow with these things, as I learned when my late husband’s office was robbed.” She sighed. Eliana tried to remember who her husband was, but she’d never followed gossip about the aristocracy. She’d have to ask Maria later.
“I’ll get them back as fast as I can,” Eliana said.
“It’s important that you do so, yes. As I said, I can’t have the contents of these documents released to the public.”
“Of course not.” Eliana wondered what the documents were for. Immigration? Something tying Lady Luna to the mainland? She was palling around with Alejo Ortiz, after all, with his hypocritical mainland suits and his speeches about Hope City growing her own food. If Lady Luna wanted to hold on to the Independents’ good graces, it wouldn’t serve her well for word to get out that she still owned property back in Argentina proper.
“I’ll need you to tell me everything you know about the robbery,” Eliana said, pen poised over her notebook. Lady Luna watched her without moving. “When I say ‘everything,’ I mean everything. Even if it doesn’t seem important to you, it may damn well be important to me, so I want to hear about it.”
“Yes, of course.” Lady Luna glanced past Eliana’s shoulder, toward the narrow, grimy window that looked down onto the street below. Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hear anything last night. The house has a security system, as well as a mechanical butler. An android, I mean, left over from the amusement park.”
Eliana paused in her note-taking, surprised. She glanced up at Lady Luna, who smiled back.
“You told me to tell you everything. I do hope you won’t judge me too harshly. I know they’ve fallen out of fashion.”
“I won’t judge you at all. Go on.” Eliana wrote andie on the notepad. She’d never seen one before, although she remembered her father talking about them—complaining about them, really, calling them u
“I only mention it because he’s better equipped than you or I to notice intruders. And he heard and saw nothing last night.”
“Didn’t get shut off, did he?”
Lady Luna gave her a strange look, hard and glittering like Antarctic ice. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to shut off an android, Miss Gomez?”
Eliana’s cheeks burned. “Look, I’m just covering my bases here. I’ve never seen one before, so I have no idea how they work.”
Lady Luna shook her head. “He wasn’t shut off. I’m certain of it. I found the safe myself this morning, around eight o’clock. It was after I had dressed and eaten breakfast. I take care of my correspondence in the library every morning, and when I came in, I found the safe hanging open, empty.” Her voice died away, and she sat trembling in the worn-out leather chair. She possessed a fragile sort of loveliness that intensified with her anxiety. Eliana imagined this routine worked wonders on men.
“Do you have any idea who might have taken the documents?” Eliana asked.
Lady Luna hesitated.
“If you don’t answer me truthfully, I won’t be able to help you.”
The air in the room was silent and cold and unmoving. Lady Luna studied Eliana for a moment, then reached into her glossy little handbag and pulled out a stack of bills. She laid them on the desk. Eliana didn’t have to count them to know they added up to payment for far more days than she’d actually need to solve the case. And it was all up front.
A visa to the mainland, acquired legally, cost nearly three thousand dollars. An illegal one cost even more, and neither would get you a ticket for the reinforced ships sailing back and forth across stormy Drake Passage, which could cost as much as a thousand, depending on the time of year. She’d been saving idly for a visa and a ticket ever since her parents had died, but with this kind of money she might actually start to make headway.
“I realize that you’re professionally obligated to report criminal activity,” Lady Luna said softly. “But I hope your discretion can extend a bit further than you’re used to.”
Eliana shoved the notepad aside. Now the case was getting interesting. “What is it? You in trouble, Lady Luna?”
Her eyes were luminous. “It’s not me,” she said. “It was my husband. But I don’t want word to get out, you understand. He passed away six months ago, and I would hate for all this to come out now—”
“I won’t go to the cops. But if you want your documents back, you’ve got to tell me.”
Lady Luna drew herself up, her spine as straight as a doll’s. As an andie’s. “He occasionally did business with Ignacio Cabrera.”
The words rang out against the cold of the room. But Eliana had been seeing Diego for the last year. She wasn’t exactly shocked by people’s involvement with Cabrera.
“A bit more scandalous than owning a mechanical butler,” Lady Luna said. “I hope this won’t sully our arrangement, Miss Gomez. I never had dealings with the man myself, barely even spoke to him, but I knew about my husband’s arrangement, and I—” She looked off to the corner of the room.
Eliana’s chest twinged. She realized she actually felt sorry for Lady Luna, even if the woman was rich and beautiful and could get out of this city in a heartbeat if she wanted to. Lady Luna took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling, and Eliana knew it was time to remind Lady Luna that she wasn’t hiring just any private investigator.