CHAPTER TWO

The Witnesses

The air was drier and the atmosphere lighter the next morning when Felix rolled out of bed, his dark hair in a knot from tossing and turning all night. Irritable, he combed it out in the bathroom and tied it back. The salt in the beach air would help it stay up.

"Those things'll kill you, you know," Sylvain pointed at Felix's cigarette pack as they waited in line at a coffee shop half an hour later.

Felix pulled a cigarette out, but didn't light it. "Cigarettes don't kill people. I kill people," he deadpanned. There, he thought. And Sylvain says I have no sense of humor.

Sylvain blinked, unsure if his partner was joking or was having another one of his episodes. The latter was more likely, and Sylvain did not want a repeat of last year's Christmas party, so he shut his mouth until it was time to place his order. "Egg and cheese bagel, no bacon, and a medium americano with a splash of almond milk. What?" He asked, looking at Felix. "I like the nutty taste."

"Large coffee. Black. No sugar." Felix plunked a card down on the counter for the cashier to swipe. "And the meat lover's biscuit."

The two sat at an outside table as they waited for their food. The little shop was busy, and customers in shorts and swimsuits milled about, waiting for their own caffeine buzz. "How'd you sleep last night?" Sylvain asked, watching Felix light his cigarette.

"Fairly well," Felix replied, exhaling smoke. "Though the sheets were damp. Bugger beaches and their humidity, and bugger landlords that leave the windows open and the air conditioning off."

"Never leave the windows open!" An older gentleman, who'd been sitting on a bench and reading the day's newspaper, said suddenly. He laid the newspaper down on the table and turned to the officers, eyes bugged. "Especially at night! Close the windows!"

"Yeah?" Sylvain smiled politely at the man. "Why's that?"

"If you close the windows, you can't hear the sea witches," the man explained, as if he were explaining why baking powder worked better in a recipe than baking soda. "They're takin' young men an' eatin' their hearts! Keeps 'em young and beautiful!"

Felix flicked a glance at Sylvain, whose mouth was pressed tightly to keep from laughing. "What do you mean 'sea witches'?"

"Sea witches. Sirens. Harpies. Whatever you want to call 'em," the man answered.

"You're talking about...mermaids?"

"Sure, that's a name for 'em, too," the man said, nodding. "I call 'em Sea Witches because they capture their victims with magic an' devour their hearts. Wretched creatures...an' judging by this mist I'd say we've got a nasty infestation in our waters. Storm brought 'em in an' that's who's been takin' our boys. Takin' 'em an' eatin' 'em."

A small giggle escaped out of Sylvain's nose, and he excused himself to retrieve their orders from the counter before more damage could be done. Felix kept his eyes on the older man. "Taking boys? Who's been taken?"

"Who? Tons of young lads goin' back a hundred years," the man said, shrugging. "Don't know their names."

"But none recently?"

"No, not recently. Not yet." He wagged a finger at Felix. "Mark my words-if they're here now like I suspect, it'll happen sooner or later. I've been scannin' the papers every mornin'."

Felix glanced at the paper on the table. The headlines were all about the recent weather, the upcoming peach festival, and a local musician who'd donated a large sum of money to a children's hospital. Captain Blaiddyd had said the Garreg Mach PD were trying to keep the case quiet, and it seemed they'd done a good job so far. "What do sea witches look like?" He asked.

The man shrugged. "Who knows? Anyone who's ever seen 'em has had their heart eaten. They come from the waters, so they've got fish tails, I reckon, seaweed for hair, and long fingers for grabbin' men. Probably real pretty, too, so the boys aren't too scared." He sat for a second, sucking his teeth. "I heard one sing one time. Prettiest thing you could ever hear."

"If you heard them sing, why didn't they eat your heart?"

"Because," the man said, wagging his finger again. "I closed the window! Never leave the windows open!"

—

Sylvain laughed hard, giving Felix an unwelcome view of the half-chewed food in his mouth. "He said that? Fish tails and long fingers?"

"Don't laugh at demented old men. You'll be one yourself one day." Felix sipped his coffee, uncomfortably cramped in the driver's seat of the car. They'd retreated to the vehicle to eat their breakfasts so as to avoid another tirade from the sea witch man.

Sylvain squinted out the windshield, watching the man read the newspaper. "I think he's just heard The Merrow's killer mermaid tales too many times."

"Huh?"

"The killer mermaids. You remember from yesterday," Sylvain said, gesturing with his bagel. "The redheaded woman was going to do shadow puppets before you ruined her day."

Felix looked blankly at his partner for a moment, then hit the dashboard with his fist, accidentally honking the car's horn and strewing the front seat with biscuit crumbs. "Goddess damn it. I forgot that was a thing in this town."

"Wait, did you actually believe him?"

"No, I didn't actually believe him."

Sylvain slowly bit his bagel, a mix of mischievous and bemused. "You did, didn't you?" He was a small sliver serious, but mostly just interested in antagonizing his humorless partner. "Tell me that my mentor, my fearless partner, does not believe in mermaids."

"No! It's…" Felix rubbed his forehead with his wrist. "Look. All leads are good leads. If someone says sea witches have been stealing young men while we are, in case you haven't forgotten, in the middle of a case about a missing young man, you follow that lead. End of story."

"Ah, this must be the secret to your success." Sylvain shoved the rest of his bagel in his mouth and chewed. "So if someone comes up and tells you he saw Ashe Ubert hanging out with Peter Pan the night he went missing, do we go straight to Never-Neverland to look for him, or do we have to get a statement from Tinkerbell first?"

It was too early for a fist fight, and there were too many witnesses. Felix practiced breathing the way he learned from that YouTube video about anger management. In for four counts...out for eight. Repeat. "Who," he asked finally, opening his eyes. "Is the detective here and who isn't?"

His jab struck true. Sylvain's eyebrows rose into his carefully tousled hair. "Oh, we're going there, are we? You are and I am not, detective Fraldarius, sir. Please, I beg you; pour down your detective wisdom upon my unworthy body that one day I, too, may lick Captain Blaiddyd's plates when he's done eating off of them! Maybe then Chief Catherine will notice me!"

"I do not lick Blaiddyd's plates! You know I hate that guy." Captain Boar...Felix's morning was irrevocably ruined now. "He's a psychopath."

The two men glared at each other for a long minute, then the corners of Sylvain's lips pulled up. He's playing me for a fool again, Felix thought, feeling one of his eyes twitch. This man was why he had chronic indigestion. "Take this," he muttered, shoving the rest of his biscuit in his partner's hand. "I've lost my appetite."

"Where are we going?"

Felix shifted the car into reverse and pulled out of the little cafe's gravel parking lot. "The Merrow. Let's be a little early for our witness interviews."

—

If Felix was hoping to find the staff of The Merrow in the midst of a last-minute secret meeting plotting their alibis, he was disappointed, for they were all either hard at work or hiding in corners and trying to pretend they weren't playing Flame Insignia: Heroes on their cell phones. The usual chorus of welcome! greeted them when they entered, though it was more half-hearted than he remembered.

A woman Felix didn't recognize waved them over the counter. He approached, intending to tell her that he wasn't there for a meal, but she seemed to already know him. "You must be Detective Fraldarius," she said, smiling at him.

"And Officer Gautier," Sylvain added, giving her what he surely thought to be an irresistible wink.

"We're not he-"

"I heard," she interrupted him with a surprising sternness for one having such a kind, serene demeanor. "that you didn't want to see Annie's shadow puppet theatre yesterday."

A familiar, peach-cheeked face popped out from the door that led to the kitchen. "Mercy! Stop it!" Annette protested, grasping the door in embarrassment.

Mercy, if that was her name, ignored her. "Now, obviously I wasn't there and I don't know your circumstances, but I just want to let you know that Annie worked for weeks to perfect her shadow puppets. How would you like it if someone was rude about something you had worked so hard on?" Her voice was like craft wire wrapped in flannel; soft, gentle, but firm at its core.

Felix stared at her, incredulous, but she just looked pleasantly back at him, waiting for an answer. Sylvain, covering his mouth, shifted his weight to watch Felix for a response.

A clock shaped like a circle of jumping mermaids ticked the seconds by, and the atmosphere grew stormier with every moment. Just as Felix was beginning to sweat on the back of his neck, Mercy's shoulders were grabbed. A girl with twin tails the color of bubblegum pulled her away from the register, laughing humorlessly. "Alright, well that is enough of that," the girl said, stepping in front of her. "I bet someone would love to get these gentlemen's orders!" She looked around, clearly not intending to do it herself.

"I just think he should give Annie's show a try," Mercy explained, leaning around the girl's head to make eye contact with Felix again. "I think he'd really like it! What do you say?"

"Mercy…!" Annette groaned from the doorway. "Hilda, do something!"

The twin tailed girl, Hilda, made a small irritated noise in her throat. "You know working with the register chips my nails and...oh, fine." She positioned herself in front of the register, her beaming smile a little strained. "Welcome to The Merrow. Can I take your order? Please make it something easy; I'm trying not to work too hard today."

So many things were wrong with this scenario. Felix blinked, tilting his head to look pointedly at Sylvain. "We're not here to order food," Sylvain began, pulling out his badge.

"Oh, thank goddess," Hilda sighed, her smile real now.

"-we're here to interview the staff of this restaurant regarding a missing individual."

"No," Hilda wailed, "That sounds like work...look, I just make smoothies. I don't know anything about missing boys. Come on!"

The front door flew open behind the officers, and the manager rushed in, her uniform askew and her hair wet. "Sorry, girls, I overslept and-oh," she stopped, seeing the two men. "You two are back."

"What's going on, Manuela?" A short girl with long, white hair spoke up from where she'd been plating waffles and watching the goings-on at the counter. "Why are the police here?"

Manuela sighed, making her way behind the counter. "It's not a big deal, ladies. They came by yesterday and asked to speak with us about one of our customers. Just keep working and I'll tell you when they need you." She picked an apron off a hook and started to put it on, but stopped when Sylvain cleared his throat. "What, you want to start with me? Oh, for the love of...I haven't even had my coffee yet! Give me half a minute."

—

"Of course I knew him. He was a very loyal customer. He usually came in around eleven o'clock in the morning and stayed for hours-often until closing." Manuela nursed her coffee, trying not to act as hungover as Felix suspected she was judging by the way she held her head. The officers had commandeered the staff break room for their interviews, and the fluorescent lights overhead seemed to be personally offending the manager.

"How often did he come in?" Sylvain asked, trying to avoid noticing the way she was looking at him from under lashes.

She shrugged. "Oh….maybe five days out of seven. Some days he stayed longer than others. Tuesdays. He was always here on Tuesdays."

"Why Tuesdays?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"Did you talk with him often?"

"Never. When I'm in the restaurant I'm usually in my office or out tending the beachfront counter. We only have a few girls old enough to serve the cocktails, so I usually take the lead." She sipped the coffee and lowered back in her chair, relaxed.

Felix, who'd been silent thus far, spoke up but kept his eyes on the way she rubbed her thumb along the rim of her cup. "Was Ubert friends with anyone in your staff?"

The rhythm of her fingers stayed steady. "They all liked him, as far as I can tell. His name came up often when they were cleaning after hours. They were very confused when he suddenly stopped coming in, though I don't think they imagined he was missing. I hope you'll be kind in the way you break it to them."

Her tone was sincere, tinged with sadness and a hint of distanced curiosity. If she was lying, she was good at it. "We'll do our best," Sylvain answered, his tone softening. Felix smirked behind him; Sylvain was still so green. "What did they say about him while cleaning?"

Laughing, Manuela waved her hand. "Girlish gossip, officer. Do you really want me to repeat it?"

"Yes," Felix replied flatly. "Spare no detail."

Manuela made a face and went for her coffee again. "Well. They would mention what he'd been writing about that day or what music he'd said he liked. They wondered where he came from, whether or not he had a girlfriend...and they often speculated about what he might look like shirtless on the beach." She leaned forward to enjoy the discomfort her words brought. "There was talk of ways to get him to go to the beach side of the cafe so they could find out."

"Did he have admirers?"

"Among my girls?" Manuela laughed again. "Probably. The young will be young, you know. He was an attractive young man, but too fresh for me. I need a man to be at least thirty. Twenty-somethings have no sense. How old are you two, by the way?"

Felix stood, interrupting before Sylvain could answer. "We're done here. You're free to go."

"Who's next?" Manuela asked, pushing her chair back. Her eyes twinkled with mischief, but she refrained from teasing them any further.

Sylvain, looking a little too pleased, consulted a list. "Hilda Goneril."

—

"Ashe is missing?" Hilda's mouth dropped open. "Since when?"

"When was the last time you saw him?" Felix countered with a question of his own.

Hilda rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "I don't know...three weeks? Four? He stopped coming into the cafe all of a sudden and...goddess, I just thought he couldn't afford the cafe food anymore or something. He's missing? Is he dead?"

"We don't have an answer for that, but we don't have any reason to assume he is," Sylvain said soothingly. "Were you friends?"

"I guess so. I mean, I didn't look forward to him coming in because he always ordered smoothies and I'm the smoothie captain and I hate our blender, but he had...I dunno...a nice smile?" She blinked, still shell-shocked. "I didn't not like him."

"How about the other women here?"

Hilda looked up at Felix, who was leaning against the wall. "What about them?"

"Did any of them have any special connections with him? Arguments? Trysts?"

She shook her head. "No way. I don't think he's a get-mad kind of guy. As for trysts, I don't think so. Dorothea probably tried, but she is desperate for a boyfriend. Maybe even more desperate than Manuela, and that is saying something. Both of them will probably try to hit on you two, just a warning."

It was too late for warnings. "Any other details you can think of?"

"About Ashe? I don't think so. This is scary, you know? Even though we didn't talk that much...I've never known anyone who went missing. If you find him, tell him I won't complain about making his smoothies anymore." She frowned. "I guess I feel kind of bad about that now."

—

"Lysithea von Cordelia," The girl said, her arms crossed in front of her. She looked younger than the other women the officers had seen thus far, but was also the most hostile. "Before you ask, yes, I am old enough to have a job. Believe it or not, I'm nineteen, so spare me any child labor law jokes."

Sylvain blinked at her, surprised. "We aren't worried about your age. We're here to ask you about a customer of yours-"

"Ashe Ubert," Lysithea finished for him. "He hasn't been here in weeks and I heard Manuela say his name before you called for me. I assume he's dead?"

She was the second staff member to mention death, Felix noted in his mind silently. "Why would you assume that?"

She turned to look at him, and her eyes were sharp. "You said you were from the Faerghus Provincial Police, correct? If he had committed a crime or simply gone missing, the local police force should be enough to conduct an investigation. If the province is involved, someone must be dead."

Her tone was confident, but her fingers were knitted together tightly enough to blanche her fingernails. Felix didn't like the way she studied them, as if she was the one interviewing them. Smart civilians made him nervous. This one would make an excellent investigator...or criminal. Sylvain spoke over Felix's thoughts, echoing what he'd told Hilda. "We have no reason to assume he's dead. He is only a missing person at this point in time."

"Oh," Lysithea said. "Interesting use of your tax money, then."

She wasn't trying to bait them, Felix decided, watching her face. She was just one of those people with strong opinions and a naturally abrasive personality. "Did you know Ashe well?"

"Not really. He didn't interest me."
"How often did he come in?"

"Anywhere from four to six times a week, more often in weeks when it rained."

"Where did he sit?"

"The far bench on the right when you face the front windows, though he sat near the drink machine sometimes as well."

Felix smirked at Sylvain; that was the bench he'd pointed out on their first visit. "What did he order?"

"A peach smoothie and a regular bubble waffle with honey and candied violets, then black tea every three hours if he stayed all day."

Sylvain narrowed his eyes. "You know a lot for someone with no interest in him."

"That's because I pay attention, unlike some of my coworkers." Lysithea's reply was swift. "Anyone who pays attention should be able to answer easy questions like these." She looked between the two officers and sniffed. "What? You think I'm a suspect? Understandable, I suppose, but false."

"Did any of your coworkers ever quarrel with him?"

"Never. They all thought he was too attractive to quarrel with."

"Did you think he was attractive?"

Pink crept into Lysithea's pale face. "No! Not even a little bit."

So this was her weakness. Sylvain honed in immediately. "You don't have to lie to us. We won't tell."

"I'm not lying," she shrilled, putting her fists on the table. "I'm not interested in things like that. He was very average!"

"Who here talked to him the most? Were you jealous?"

"Why would I be jealous-I already told you I'm not-it was Annette, Ingrid, and P-Hilda who talked to him the most." She was thoroughly flustered now and bit her lip when she finished speaking.

Sylvain cocked his head, pausing in his writing. "What was that last name? You spoke so fast I didn't catch it."

"Hilda."

"Hilda Goneril? She said she didn't interact with him much."

"Well, she did." Lysithea's arms were crossed again and her expression was stony. "There. Now I've told you everything I know. Any other questions?"

Sylvain smiled at her. "None for now."

—

"Oh no," the young woman named Dorothea said, her brows inching together. "Not Ashe...he's such a sweet boy."

"Did you know him well?"

"Well enough. Better than most customers, anyway." She sighed. "He was very polite when he came in, which is a nice change of pace from some of our...less savory regulars."

Felix flipped to a new page in his notepad, interest piqued. "'Less savory'? Expand on that."

Dorothea's mouth quirked in a way that suggested she often complained about this subject and was only too happy to broach it with someone new. "Well. You've seen our staff. We're mostly young women, and if I may say so myself, we are a rather attractive group. I have to fight men away from my Ingrid, and more than one of our 'admirers' has gotten a bit...overzealous in the past. It's gotten better since we hired Claude, but it can still be frightening."

"Anyone noteworthy in your history of overzealous suitors?"

"Let me think." Dorothea closed her eyes, resting her chin on the tops of her fingers. Her other hand tapped the table lightly, thumping out a rhythm. "There are two that I would consider 'noteworthy.' One of them comes in on Wednesdays and Saturdays without fail, and the other only drops in occasionally, but he is insatiably irritating when he does. I started counting, and he has asked Ingrid out twenty-two times just this summer!"

"Why haven't you reported him for harassment?" Felix asked.

Something like sheepishness drew her eyes to the floor. "I don't think those two are dangerous, really...just frustrating. If it became a large enough problem, we would call the police."

"Did either of them ever interact with Ashe Ubert?"

"Once, about two months ago. Ashe saw one of them interrupting, erm, one of us while she was wiping down tables and stepped in to tell him to let us do our jobs." She saw their gazes sharpen and held her hands up. "Nothing else happened. He left after Ashe scolded him."

Felix clicked his pen open. "What was the name of this person? The one Ashe interacted with."

Uncertainty thrummed in Dorothea's eyes, and for the first time she hesitated. "Is...is the name necessary? I don't think anyone deserves to get in trouble over what happened."

"How do we know that he didn't go home and plot revenge on Ubert, who had humiliated him in front of a woman he liked?"

Nodding, Sylvain hummed his agreement. "People have done worse for sillier reasons."

When Dorothea didn't speak, Felix sighed irritably and leaned forward. "We need that name." He didn't want to mention obstruction, but he would if he had to.

She relented before he resorted to legal threats. "His name is Lorenz Gloucester. I truly don't think he means any harm. He's just a rich, spoiled, upper class sort of man that hasn't been told 'no' enough in his life." Dorothea scoffed. "We have more than a few of those types here in Garreg Mach. I can't stand them, personally."

"I take it Ashe wasn't that kind of person," Sylvain asked, noting Lorenz's name in his notepad.

"Not at all. I don't know the details of his life, but I feel like he's had it rough at one time or another. He had a lot of sense, which people who have been pampered their whole lives tend to run short on."

Felix nudged Sylvain under the table, and he closed his notebook in response. "Out of curiosity," Sylvain asked, "what do you think happened to Ashe Ubert?"

"Well." Dorothea was looking at the floor again. "Naturally I don't know for sure, but...I'd like to think he just...went somewhere else. Maybe he wanted to start over. I don't want to think anything bad happened to him, so until there is evidence to make me think otherwise, that's the story I'm sticking to."

Felix's mouth thinned. Images of cases he'd worked on flashed through his mind...greed, corruption, lust, murder. Happy endings were a beautiful ideal, like a soap bubble shimmering in sunlight just before popping. "I hope you're right."

—

"No, there's no 'k' at the end," Annette explained, leaning over the table to watch Sylvain write. "Just 'c'. Dominic. Like optimistic. Or arsenic."

Felix glared at her until she sat back down in her chair properly. She quailed a little under his gaze, but held eye contact with him either defiantly or obediently-he couldn't tell. "I know what's going on," she offered when no one spoke. "Mercy told me our customer Ashe is missing."

"Did she now?"

"Well, she-she said you never told her it was secret, so it was okay if she told me. Right?"

The officers had instructed Manuela at the start that everything regarding the case was to be considered confidential and kept to themselves, but the manager clearly hadn't shared this information with her staff. Felix would have been disappointed, but his faith in humanity had been scraping rock bottom ever since he'd joined the police. Very little disappointed him now. "I've heard from sources that you and Ashe Ubert were close."

Annette's brow wrinkled. "Close? That's a little...I like talking to him. He's a writer-you probably already know that, don't you-and he writes the kind of books that I like."

"What sort of books are those?" Sylvain asked.

"Books about...classic heroes, I guess. The kind of heroes that do the right thing no matter what and never compromise their values in the face of danger." Her hands were under the table, but they could tell she was either wringing her hands or worrying the edge of her shorts. "Sometimes the heroes he described were a little too perfect for me to believe. But even that can be refreshing every now and then."

"Did he ever mention anything to you that would suggest he was leaving or in trouble?"

She shook her head, and her little hair rings bobbled. "Never. I was wondering why he'd stopped coming in to write, but he'd never given me a phone number or any way to contact him, so that was that. One time he wrote me a poem and signed it so I could sell it on the internet when he becomes famous, but that's...um. That's all."

She lapsed into silence and Felix's intuition stirred. Listening to her speak, it seemed that she was the sort of person who found it hard to stop talking once they'd begun. Those sorts of people were useful when there was hidden truth to uncover, but trying on the nerves.

Then again, every sort of person was trying on Felix's nerves.

"What sort of person was the Ashe you knew?"

Annette tilted her head a little, maybe trying to figure how this kind of question fit into a police investigation and what she could say that would be useful. "He's...sorry, it's hard to condense people into a sentence or two...he's...gentle? I don't think he'd ever hurt anyone on purpose, but he also has a kind of...chivalry about him? If a shark were coming for you, he would definitely swim in front of the shark and be the one bit instead of you. Is there a better word for that?"

"Gentlemanly?" Sylvain suggested.

"Sort of," Annette said agreeably. "He's like...he would have been one of the Knights of Seiros back a thousand years ago. But not like Jeritza the Death Knight. A nice knight, like Alois the Laughing Knight."

Felix wanted to keep her talking. "Who did Ashe talk to most here?"

"He talked to all of us at one time or another, but he mostly talked to me, Ingrid, and-er," She paused for a second, her pupils dilating. "Dorothea. She hit on him sometimes but he never seemed to realize it."

The two officers shared a small glance. "Not Hilda?"

"Hilda?" Annette was fiddling with her fingers under the table again. "Not really. Though she did try to talk him into making his own smoothie once. She said she wouldn't charge him for it if she didn't have to make it for him, but Ingrid said she couldn't do that 'cuz it's probably illegal...or something." She swallowed hard, remembering who she was talking to. "I swear, she stopped it before it happened! Don't take us to jail!"

Sylvain chuckled, but Felix kept his eyes on Annette's face. "One of your colleagues mentioned that the staff has trouble sometimes with male customers harrassing them. Do you recall any of these incidents?"

Seeming pleased with a change of topic, Annette tapped her chin. "Male customers...male custo-was it Dorothea? Was she talking about Ferdinand?"

"Ferdinand? Does he have a surname?"

"Von Aegir. His father is a big shot at some company in Adrestia, or so he says. Dorothea calls him Flirty Ferdie. He comes in twice a week and drives us all a little batty."

"Does he harass the staff?"

"No, he's more…" She puffed out her chest and made a face, lowering her voice. "I am Ferdinand von Aegir! Anyone should be honored to be invited to have coffee with me! Blah blah blah! Make me a waffle full of strawberries cut into flower shapes that I'm not going to pay extra for!"

An unfamiliar desire-the desire to laugh-twinged near Felix's belly button, but he squashed it with practiced control. Sylvain suffered no such compunction, however, and laughed until Annette's face was quite pink. "This makes me sad we missed the shadow puppets," Sylvain said when he'd caught his breath.

"You should be!"

Felix cut across the growing camaraderie, eager to return the conversation to its purpose. "We were told there is a troublemaker named Lorenz Gloucester who had an incident involving Ashe. Could you tell us about that?"

"Oh, Lorenz...he…" Annette sobered, thinking hard. "He's a problem for sure, but I don't remember him ever interacting with Ashe." When Felix's eyes narrowed, she quickly added: "That doesn't mean it didn't happen, though. It may have been on a day I wasn't working. He tends to come in early in the week, and I don't work on Mondays or Tuesdays."

"Can you tell me more about him? Does he seem like the type to fight with Ashe?"

"Fight? Lorenz?" Annette winced. "I don't think so, and Ashe would probably win if they did. Lorenz is just...really persistent. He bothered Dorothea so much we had to change her work schedule so she wouldn't be here when he came, and then when he started coming in on different days, we started hiding Dorothea in the kitchen."

Sylvain frowned. "Does he wait for her after work?"

"No. He's asked what time she gets off work, but she didn't answer, and when we went home at the end of the day, he wasn't around. We looked, just in case."

"No one likes men who won't take no for an answer," Felix said, mostly for Sylvain's benefit. "We'll keep him in mind. Anything else you can think of that might help us find Ashe?"

Annette frowned, her round face taut, like she had more words in her throat. "No...no. I just hope...he's okay."

—

"She's the weak link," Felix said later, when they'd sat back in the car and closed the doors. "Annette."

Sylvain pursed his lips, flipping through the pages of notes he'd taken during the interviews. "What do you mean 'weak link'?"

Felix gestured vaguely out the windshield at The Merrow, which had become busy with the lunch rush. "This place is suspicious. I think they know more than they're saying, and I think she's the weakest link in the chain."

"How can you possibly say that those interviews were suspicious? They all seemed like very normal people to me. Annette may have even been the most normal. That's probably why you think she's strange." Sylvain threw his notepad gently into Felix's lap. "Not to mention we've only interviewed half the staff. It's a little trigger-happy to instantly suspect the only people we've talked to about the case."

"I've read the case files, just like you did, or should have. I've read pages of interviews conducted by the GMPD, and I've found nothing more than baseless conjecture and dead ends." Felix picked up Sylvain's notepad, thumping it against the steering wheel. "There's something going on here and we need to go deeper."

"If you want, I can go back in and check their freezer. Maybe Ashe is there." Sylvain reached over, plucking his notepad back from his partner's fingers. "I can get a sample of their ground meat while I'm at it, so we can test the DNA. Any barber shops nearby to check for trap doors?"

"You're not as cute as you think," Felix spat.

Sylvain tsk'd, sliding his sunglasses on to block out the noon sun. "I'm adorable."

Rebiele: Thanks so much for your review! I hope this story gives you all the feels and good stuff you're looking for!