I'm not really sure what to say this week. Hmm, usually I manage to waste your time a little before the story. Anyway, thank you a ton to my reviewers. Encouragement, compliments, and critique are always extremely welcome. Enjoy, and please do remember to hit the nice little review button once you have finished.

Disclaimer: Balkoth does not own the Teen Titans. Of Gumshoes and Moonlighters is mine. Any characters you do not recognize as cannon are mine. The plot is mine. The English language and the world in general are not. Wouldn't that be something? Me own the world. If you like the idea of Balkoth acting as your supreme overlord, tell me.

Miguel Herrera

Time has a way of defying every rule people try to apply to it. Richard Grayson and Garfield Logan were dealing with one of the most perplexing cases they had ever seen. Time should have been going slowly. Days where no new information was acquired should have dragged by second by agonizing second. Days where new information was acquired should have flown by too quickly for anything productive to be done until the next day. Why then, had they reached the third week of November and everything moved by as if nothing mattered?

It was snowing. Small white specks sailed out of a warm gray sky, thickening the layer of powder on the streets. The specks that did not reach the ground peppered the shoulders of everyone outside. Garfield was shivering even in the four layers of shirts and jackets covering his frame. His bronze nose had turned into a cherry and the way his shoulders were hunched allowed the snow to collect on his back until it looked like the Humpback of Notre Dame was walking down the street.

Richard was out with Rachel today. Garfield had no problem with that. He'd gotten to know Rachel pretty well through Richard and had met her on several occasions. The woman was kind, had a knife for a tongue, and seemed to be just the person Richard needed in his life. Somebody who was serious and intelligent but somebody who could get him to drop the robot façade he so often adopted. They had sort of become friends.

Garfield had gotten a lead. Miguel Rodriguez-Herrera had made quite a name for himself in the weeks following his inheritance. Apparently, now that he had money, the Latino was investing wisely and donating generously to pretty much every charity in existence. Despite this, Herrera had been difficult to find. There were twenty-seven different Miguel Hererra's in Jump City. Garfield and Richard had been looking for him when they weren't taking other cases and it had finally paid off.

Garfield stopped at the corner of the street and looked both ways before jogging across. Garfield stopped when he got to the sidewalk again. Here he was. The building in front of him looked like any other small business. Brick walls, a white sign with "open" printed in large red letters, and a lot of regular customers but never anybody new.

Garfield pushed open the glass door and sighed as the heat seeped out toward him. A light bell tinkled as the door closed and Garfield took a moment to look around the joined coffeehouse and bookstore. Garfield scanned the crowd and suddenly wished that Richard weren't off on a date. Richard was better at this crowd surfing thing. Sure, if Garfield found Herrera he could work something out. The danger was that Garfield didn't want to attract attention to himself by asking questions and he didn't know how to recognize who he was looking for.

A hearty laugh sounded from a corner and Garfield spared a glance over to the maroon booth. Then he did a double take. There were three people at the booth. One of them was a Hispanic male, about twenty years old. He was the source of the laughter. There was one woman who Garfield recognized as Rachel. There was no mistaking such unique eyes. The third person, Garfield couldn't recognize for a moment. Then he saw the sunglasses hanging out of the man's breast pocket and tried to imagine the face without such a bright smile. It was hard to believe that Garfield was looking at Richard.

It was easy to see why the third person at the table was laughing. Garfield would have. It was just such a nice picture. Rachel had out a pencil, a protractor, a ruler, and a sheet of paper. Richard had mentioned something about how Rachel had studied architecture and picked up a hush-hush job. Her brow was furrowed and a small bit of her tongue was sticking out between her lips. Richard had a manila folder open in his lap and was holding a pen loosely in his grip while looking at the teenager across from him as if in a daze.

Garfield rubbed his hands a few times, afraid that there might be permanent tissue damage. Then he walked over to the table and stood in silence for a moment.

The first person to notice him was the teenager who had been laughing earlier. He raised an eyebrow at Garfield, and, in response, Garfield pointed a lazy finger at Richard. The boy made a silent "oh" with his mouth and slid over to make room for Garfield. Only when Garfield ordered a cup of de-café did Rachel and Richard notice his presence.

"Hey, Gar," Richard said while putting down his pen. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm just visiting you guys really fast," Garfield responded. "I actually came here looking for Miguel." Rachel raised an eyebrow in a mocking query and Richard smirked. "What?"

"I'm Miguel." Garfield jumped when a voice spoke from next to him. Garfield turned to the kid he was sitting next to.

"Miguel Rodriguez-Herrera?" Garfield asked in disbelief.

The boy grinned impishly before answering. "The one and only." Miguel leaned against the chair. "Dick here was just getting over the fact that the person he has been looking far has been right under his nose." Garfield shot a startled glance over to Richard. He'd been getting over it? Richard had been smiling, maybe even laughing. It was going to take a long time for Garfield to get used to this more laid-back Richard.

Richard shook his head ruefully while tightening the grip on his pen. Richard was working on a hit and run case about five days old. An obnoxious woman, Jessica Drebuad, with enough money to bribe away feelings of ill will had suffered a fender-bender and was resolutely trying to turn the city upside down. That was only one of the many cases that Logan and Grayson had been working on over the past weeks.

"Gar," Garfield looked over at Rachel when she spoke. "I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Miguel." Garfield heard Miguel chime in with a "Nice to meet you" but was still reeling. All of the work they had done and the person had been inches away from them.

"Miguel," Garfield started after glancing at a still smirking Richard. What was so funny about it? There was a type of irony in the whole situation but it was also really embarrassing. Even as Garfield thought about it, a smile started to form on his lips. Okay, it was a little funny. "Has Dick gotten around to telling you why we were looking for you?"

"I think he was just getting around to it," Miguel stated lightly. It sounded as if he was just commenting on the weather but there was a mocking undertone. Garfield looked at the kid, struck by the weird feeling that he knew this boy. They were kindred spirits.

"Right," Richard cut in. Rachel looked up from her work to see what was going on around the table. This felt important. Rachel wasn't sure if she knew it or if Trigon knew it but a critical moment was approaching. "Miguel, you were left a lot of things by your aunt."

"Great aunt," Miguel corrected with a flourish of his hand.

"Great aunt," Richard agreed with a hasty nod of his head. "One of those things,"

"Was a really bizarre stone hand with nice sharp claws and a screw attached to the bottom? What of it?" Miguel interrupted. Garfield looked over at Richard to see if he'd given Miguel that information. Richard just shrugged. Miguel caught the transaction. "Rachel and I already talked about that. Is it some sort of collector's item?"

"In a sense," Richard answered while sparing a glance toward Rachel. How had she known about the artifact before him? Maybe Miguel had brought it up. That seemed to make sense.

"You read the papers, Miguel?" Garfield asked while digging through one of his pockets. He pulled out three pieces of paper. Two of them were articles on The Raven and the heist she was involved in. Once Miguel glanced over those, Garfield handed him an old piece of parchment. An ancient yellow crust had settled over the durable medium. Drawn on one side, symbols of a long lost language serving as annotations, was a clawed hand supported by a pillar covered in stairs. A small stone was suspended above the hand, lines drawn from the stone to each tipped fingernail and one bold line moving straight to the center of the palm.

"This is what The Raven is collecting. We don't know what it is," Garfield pointed to a particularly ominous looking symbol that most closely resembled an S, "but that doesn't look like a good thing." The deformed letter was the only symbol still in color, everything else having long ago faded to a pale yellow. The S was still showing in blazing detail, as if on fire, while the red ink still gave the impression of being wet.

"Where is that hand?" Richard asked from across the table. Miguel raised his head to look at Richard but he never got a chance to respond.

"The artifact is in safely in Miguel's lock-box until he moves. After he's moved there are all sorts of place for him to put it." Richard nodded toward Rachel to show he understood.

"Miguel," Richard said, turning his attention to the Latino, "we think that the second you move that thing somebody is going to try to steal it."

Miguel shared a looked with Rachel that clearly showed that both of them were currently doubting the investigator's sanity. Who would want to steal an old rock, after all? "All right," Rachel said, "so what would you propose he do?"

"Well," Garfield spoke to Miguel, "we think that while it's in a lock-box there won't be any trouble. All we ask is that when you move you invite us to the house-warming party."

The snow plummeted from a deep gray sky and buried the shoulders of everybody outside. While the children who had managed to get a day off school ran to the shelter of electric heaters, X-box's, DVD's, and hot cocoa, the wind picked up and the hail started to fall.

Next Update: Wednesday, October 4, 2006