"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
They were hovering at the corner of Hatter's Alley, a small, crooked gap between crumbling houses, none of which was a hatter's shop. Zana was grateful for its existence, and the early nightfall of the season, both of which allowed her to put off her insane plan for another few moments.
She turned to look at Alan, but his face was just a shadow among deeper shadows.
"I'm absolutely sure I don't want to go through with this," she said. "So if you have a better idea, now would be an excellent time to share it with me."
She heard him sigh in the darkness. "If any of the junior officers discovers me, should I knock them out, or let them arrest me?"
"Let them arrest you." Zana rubbed her forehead; she felt a headache coming. "Better yet, don't let them discover you."
"I'll do my best," Alan said dryly. "But you can't distract them all, unless you start dancing on their desks..."
"Thank you for that advice," Zana murmured. "I'll keep it in mind as a last resort."
She could still call this off. Nobody had seen them sneak up to the watch house; they could return to the inn and forget about the evidence that Rogan was boasting about. They could - they should focus on saving Peet from Olman's grasp instead, or maybe just sneak out of town under cover of the night. This night, even. It would be the sane thing to do.
Zana leaned against a flaking wall for a moment, and closed her eyes. She couldn't even say what had sparked this idea - maybe her indignance over Rogan, once her embarrassment had faded. The way he had trampled her hard-won evidence into the dust, while he rubbed his two meager clues in her face all the time.
Or Halda's strange and frightening intensity, the hatred that had gleamed in her eyes when she had suggested they should fabricate evidence against Olman. Or rather, that Zana should fabricate it.
Or maybe it had been a combination of those incidents - but the idea that the evidence against Levar might have been fabricated, too, had lodged in Zana's mind and refused to go away.
She had to know. But after their latest row, it was unlikely that Rogan would cooperate with her.
"How are you planning to return those items?" Alan interrupted her thoughts. "I doubt you can pay him that kind of visit twice without making him suspicious."
Zana sighed and pushed away from the wall. "I'll just give them back to him. By that time, it'll be too late either way."
"Too late for what?"
But she had already stepped out into Main Street.
The night air was clammy, and Zana shivered under her robe. Or maybe it was the knowledge of what she was wearing under that robe - a last-ditch acquisition in Sapan's only boutique that had cost her almost all of their money. Galen would be livid, especially if he found out that she hadn't bought it for his sake...
It was the first time she had bought something like this, fur bristling at the knowing smile of the girl behind the counter. In a way, it had been even worse than that painfully awkward talk with Morla. "I want to... to get Faro out of the pub and back into my... uh... life," Zana had said, staring into her teacup. "But I was never very good at, you know, giving signals..."
She hoped that the old woman's crash course would be enough to keep Rogan's attention off his back door. At least it wouldn't be an uphill fight - unlike her fiancé, Rogan had openly shown his interest in her.
She couldn't think about Galen now.
Junior wasn't to be seen anywhere, which was a relief - Zana didn't know if she'd have been able to even try to flirt with Rogan if he had been there. But it was just Rogan, sitting alone at a desk, muttering under his breath while his quill scratched across the scroll - writing a report, probably.
He was so focused on his work that he didn't notice her, and she stood under the door and watched him for a moment. He was good-looking, yes, and confident, very, but he was also smart, and generous - or she'd be sitting in one of his cells now, for trespassing on Vilam's ground - and charming in a boyish way, and Zana wondered why he hadn't found a girl in Sapan yet. Surely they had to flock to him like birds to a... to a bird feeder? Maybe he was too picky.
Maybe he was one of those men who only sought temporary entertainment, and that was the reason he had picked her - because she would soon be gone again.
Well. Why not engage in the game, then? No matter if she embarrassed herself or not, she'd be out of town soon enough, and would never have to face him again. Zana straightened, plastered a seductive smile on her face, and took care to let her hips sway as she rolled over to him.
Rogan was so engrossed in his report that he only jerked up when she laid a hand on his shoulder. "Mothers! You'll give me a heart attack one day, Alta..." He trailed off as his eyes traveled down her open street robe, where the scandalous thing she had bought peeked through.
"... or maybe even today," he murmured. "Cesar, Alta, that thing is..."
Scandalous.
"... gorgeous." He leaned back in his seat and smiled up at her. It was a completely open, delighted smile, without any hint of predatory seduction, and Zana felt guilty to the bone.
It couldn't be helped. She could only march onward.
"Oh, that?" she said with faked surprise. "That's for Faro." She let the robe glide off her shoulders and twirled around her axis to show off the half-transparent layers of silk. "Do you think he'll like it? I'm always so insecure when it comes to men's tastes. Most of the time, they don't even notice when a woman has a new hairdo..." She trailed her fingers through her hair, and smiled expectantly at him.
Rogan gaped at her. Behind him, the door to the watch house silently opened again, and Alan poked his head in. His brows rose at the sight of her, but Zana only saw it from the corner of her eyes; her attention was fixed at Rogan's face. "I hadn't planned on showing it to you, but since you noticed it, what do you say?"
The guard gestured helplessly. "It's, ah, it's, ah... it's very nice. Shows off your fur." He nodded vigorously. Behind him, Alan tiptoed towards the door of the evidence room. "It's beautiful," Rogan said, though it wasn't clear if he meant the silk robe or her fur.
Zana latched on to that opening. "Rogan, you aren't supposed to notice my fur!" She hoped her voice was teasing enough to keep him engaged. She lightly slapped his shoulder for good measure.
Rogan laughed, sounding a bit strained. "Well, I, I can't not notice it!" He cleared his throat. "Why are you here, except for torturing me like that?"
"Oh." Zana pretended to remember her actual reason for coming to the watch house at that late hour, and casually perched on the edge of his desk. Her dangling leg brushed lightly against Rogan's thigh.
He didn't glance at it, but he also didn't move his leg away.
"I wanted to apologize to you, for getting you into trouble," Zana declared, resisting the urge to tug at the robe that had fallen away to expose much of her dangling leg. "You know, breaking into poor Vilam's office and stealing his drugs that he used to kill innocent humans with."
Rogan sighed, and Alan eased his lock picks into the door's lock.
Of course they'd lock the damn door.
Alan looked up and met her eyes for a moment, then jerked his head towards the lock. The message was clear: turning the lock picks would make a sound - a sound that she had to drown out somehow.
"Breaking and entering isn't my biggest problem, with Vilam cooling in Aldo's morgue," Rogan was saying, but Alan didn't move his hands. Talking in low voices wouldn't be enough to mask the sound of a turning lock.
"Are you still suspecting me?" Zana said, slightly annoyed. "Well, it looks as if he was killed by the same stuff that he used for killing - talk about poetic justice. But I don't have any Blaze, except for the bottles I took from him, and as you can see for yourself..."
She remembered then that she had poured a bit behind the drawer of Vilam's desk, to leave a trace that Vilam couldn't deny. That meant some amount of Blaze was missing from the bottle. Enough to kill a grown ape with?
Alan was still frozen at the door to the evidence room. Zana dug into her handbag, grabbed both bottles with Blaze with one hand, and pulled them out with flourish.
And dropped them.
Amidst the crash of splintering glass, her own shriek, and Rogan's curse as he scraped back his chair, Zana saw Alan turn the lock, and slip inside. She breathed a little lighter; while they were still not out of the woods, the door would at least protect him from Rogan's eyes and ears.
Provided she kept Rogan sufficiently occupied. Zana gathered the flighty vanes of her robe, and crouched down beside him, picking half-heartedly at a shard. "I'm so sorry," she squealed, "I shouldn't have tried to hold both at once..."
"Alta, sit down - you'll get that stuff on your robe, and that would spoil your evening with your husband," Rogan huffed. All his former eagerness had evaporated, or, more accurately, been choked by the unique aroma of Blaze.
"This stuff is really vile," Zana wheezed, not having to fake her reaction for once. She rose and hurried to the window to throw it open. Cool air brought the scent of wood fires, and the sounds of hoofbeats and cart wheels - more noise to cover Alan's activities in the next room. But if Zana wanted him to get out of that room undetected, she had to take care of Rogan's mood now. The scent of Blaze was doing the exact opposite of what the drug promised to do when ingested.
Zana forced herself to abandon her clean air oasis at the window, and hurried back to where Rogan was still picking up glass shards from the floor. "Oh, leave that," she said, and pulled at his hand. "Let Junior clean that up. What's that constable rank good for, if you even have to wipe the floor yourself?"
She didn't relent until he dropped the shards again, and let her pull him up to his feet. "Let's get away from the stink," Zana urged him, and chose a desk close to the window - far away from both doors.
"I'm so sorry," she repeated, walking backwards toward the new desk, holding both his hand and his bemused gaze, "I wanted to apologize for the mess I made, and made an even bigger one. Let me... let me make it up to you somehow." She sat him down into a chair so that his back was to the room, and let go of his hand.
But Rogan didn't let go of hers.
Instead, he pulled her closer, and looked at her with an expression that Zana hoped was intrigue, and not suspicion. "Make it up to me, huh? That's a... daring offer, Alta. Better think about it again, because if you're serious, I'll be serious, too."
Zana swallowed. Rogan's hand was big and hot around hers, holding her with a firm grasp. He'd let her go if she'd ask him; but if she didn't...
Then she saw the handle of the door to the evidence room move slowly, slowly downward, and made her decision.
With a nervous laugh, she plopped herself in Rogan's lap, and slung her free arm around his neck. "Well," she purred, "you know I'm a married woman, Rogan - so how serious can you really get? I was thinking more of a bit of harmless fun..."
Rogan just hummed, and pulled her closer, and Zana found herself wedged uncomfortably between his arms and some hard part of his uniform, probably the belt buckle.
She had no idea how to proceed.
So, uh, maybe she should ask Rogan, even if that might be a bad idea.
Just a few more moments...
"So what did you think we could do?" she breathed into his ear. Over his shoulder, she could see Alan slip out of the dark room. He froze at the sight of her and Rogan, his eyes widening; then he quickly and silently pulled the door shut and tiptoed to the main entrance.
Meanwhile, Rogan's hand had wandered up her thigh and was dangerously close to crossing into the Forbidden Zone. Zana fought the urge to wiggle out of his grasp, and let her own hand trail down Rogan's throat instead. Over his shoulder, she mouthed an urgent get to it! to Alan, who was still standing at the main door, gaping at her as if in trance.
The human flinched and silently opened the door, then closed it with a loud clap.
Rogan muttered a curse under his breath as he let his arms go slack; Zana jumped to her feet, and nervously smoothed her hair down. "A... Nait! What are you doing here, at this time?"
She hurried back to Rogan's old desk, and slipped into her robe. The heavy material embraced her, shielding her from both the cold air, and Rogan's hungry eyes. She allowed herself a tiny moment of relief; then she turned around to face Alan, who was staring at the ceiling to avoid looking at his mistress while she was in a, in a compromising attire. Or situation.
"Nait?"
Alan flicked her a sideways glance, and relaxed. "Master Faro is looking for you all over town, ma'am. He's very worried by now." His voice was dry enough to make the titles sound ironic.
Zana drew a deep breath. "Well, I had some... things to discuss with the police. But we... were just about finished, isn't that right, Constable?"
Rogan slouched back in his chair, his expression as carefully neutral as his voice. "Yes, I think we... touched on every important aspect of this matter."
Then he winked at her.
Zana stared at him for a moment before she remembered to smile flirtatiously, then she whirled around to grab her handbag, and marched to the entrance. "I'm really sorry for the mess I made, Constable," she said over her shoulder. "I'm so clumsy sometimes..."
"I don't mind your mess," Rogan said suggestively. "It's... endearing."
Zana found it better not to ask what he meant by that. She only breathed freely when they turned into Hatter's Alley again.
"I'm relieved that you didn't have to dance on his desk, after all," Alan remarked, as they hurried back to the inn. Zana expected the sound of running feet catching up to them any moment; had Alan locked the door to the evidence room again? She couldn't remember.
"I'm glad that at least one of us was entertained," she huffed, relieved to see the lantern of Morla's house in the distance. "Let's hope I didn't sacrifice my dignity in vain. Did you find something?"
"Yes. Both things, even."
"Excellent." They filed through the gate, and stealthily climbed up the stairs to their rooms. For once, Zana hoped that Galen hadn't returned yet. She didn't want to explain her choice of dress to him. Or why she had been out to town in it.
She unlocked the door to their rooms, and nudged Alan inside. "So. Let me see if our hunt was successful tonight."
Maybe she'd finally have something to rub in Rogan's face, for a change.
The few moments until they finally sat down at the table felt like the longest moments of Zana's life. She had tried three times to light the lamp, her fingers shaking from nerves, or the cold, while Alan put new wood on the fire. When he had noticed how frazzled she was, he had sent her into her bedroom to change into something... warmer, although by all rights, as an ape, she should be warmed enough by her fur.
When she returned, the room was bathed in the golden light from the lamp, and the kettle was softly humming on the oven. Alan looked up from the pot that he was filling with tea leaves, and smiled at her, and Zana felt her irritation at his calmness melt away. They had gotten what they wanted; she could wait another moment.
Ah, scratch that. "Where is it? Let me have a look."
Alan nodded towards the table. "In the bag. Be c..."
"I'll be careful, don't worry." She lifted the fabric of the bag, and cautiously felt inside.
The blue thread and the letter of complaint came in small chip boxes. The first box contained... a blue thread. Zana stared at it, feeling inexplicably disappointed. "It doesn't look like much," she murmured. "How in the world did they conclude that it came from one of Levar's bandages?"
"They probably held the thread up to one, and compared the color," Alan said, and put the teapot on the table. "Something that we can't duplicate - I assume you don't have a sample racer's bandage here somewhere?"
"No," Zana sighed, and idly plucked at the thread. It was thin and soft, and slightly fuzzy."Alan?"
"Hm?" Alan returned with two mugs and sat down.
Zana picked up the thread with thumb and forefinger and held it up for him to see. "Forget about the color for a moment. Does this look like a thread from a racer's bandage?"
Alan frowned at it. "I have no idea. What do you think it is?"
Zana stared at the fuzzy thing that moved softly with her every breath. "It's so... delicate," she mused. "And I've seen those bandages - when Marpo taped Peet's ankles before the race, and when Galen bandaged up his foot after he had inspected the stitches... and they don't look as if they'd fray easily..."
She tore her gaze away from the thread and glanced at Alan, who had a very thoughtful look on his face now. "I wonder how a thread could separate from a bandage that was pulled tight around Felga's neck," she said. "Unless it was already loose. But that happens only when the fabric is only loosely woven in the first place."
Alan slowly rubbed his chin. "That's a good argument for Levar's defense lawyer," he said. "Assuming you have such a role in your judicial system. But right now, you can't positively prove that this thread isn't from a bandage."
"No," Zana admitted. With a frustrated little sigh, she lowered the thread back into its box and closed it. If she wanted to return Rogan's evidence to him, she better not lose it.
"Let's have a look at that complaint," Alan said encouragingly. "Maybe you'll find something usable there."
"Let's hope so." Zana reached for the second box. She had reserved it for last - her hopes had rested on that scroll from the beginning, although the thread was also... odd. But Alan was right, it was nothing she could triumphantly rub in Rogan's face. It wasn't as solid as he might want to believe, but it wasn't solid enough to refute him, either.
It wasn't solid at all, that was the problem.
With a huff, Zana unfurled the scroll and began to read.
"That's odd," she said after a moment.
"Enlighten me?"
"It's a short, formal complaint," Zana explained. "It accuses Levar of illegal possession of Blaze, and of using it on his own humans - to illegally enhance their performance - as well as on racers of competing kennels, with the intention of damaging or killing the human." She let the scroll sink. "What's odd is how this is written. Felga was a reporter - writing articles was her job. This here is just... the sentences are awkward. Clumsy. No outright mistakes, mind you, but as if the writer wasn't really used to writing this kind of official text."
"I bet Felga had enough practice writing these," Alan remarked. "Considering her vendetta against the kennels."
"Exactly." Zana lowered her gaze back to the scroll. Something else was odd. "And the script itself is also not quite right," she added. "Felga's handwriting was like her temper - big, and not caring about boundaries, a bit chaotic... the loops and the ligatures and everything here look good; they're big and curly, and the distances between the lines are wide... the script is sprawling, just like Felga's."
"But?" Alan prompted when she didn't continue.
Zana squinted at the scroll. "I don't know. There is no variation - the loops are all pretty much the same size, and the distances are all equal, and..." She turned the scroll around and brushed her fingertips lightly over the page. "And the writer pressed the quill onto the scroll pretty hard. You can feel the indentations from the nib. Felga... wrote with a light hand. I can't remember feeling a relief on the backside of any of her scrolls."
"This wasn't written by her," Alan concluded.
Zana stared at the scroll. "But who could've written it? And why?"
Alan poured some tea into her mug, and nudged it towards her. "Well, we know at least one important thing about the author: they knew about Levar's possession of Blaze."
"Hm." Zana fingered her mug, but the tea was still scalding hot. "According to Felga's notes, she found it on Levar's property - in the tack room, or the sick room, I don't remember exactly right now... In any case, not a spot everyone had access to. So I don't think that whoever wrote this found the bottles independently from her. They must've learned about it from Felga."
"But that's good!" Alan smiled. "It shrinks the circle of suspects. Who would she have told about such a thing?"
"We don't know that she told anyone," Zana cautioned him. "The forger could've read her notes, just like I did in the archive."
"I don't think that'll make a difference," Alan said confidently. "Because in that case, our suspect must've had an opportunity to dig through Felga's handbag. If ape women are anything like the women of my time, her handbag would've never been far from her body, or even out of sight. Which again means our mysterious writer must be someone Felga trusted enough to leave her handbag with."
"And that excludes Vilam," Zana said darkly, "not that he's still a suspect, considering his present state."
"It also excludes Olman," Alan pointed out, "unless he had distracted Felga, and his secretary scoured her bag in the meantime."
It wasn't too outlandish a thought - in a way, it would've been exactly what she and Alan had just done to Rogan. Zana would've loved to believe that Olman had collected material that would shut up his nemesis, although she somehow doubted that Felga had been the type that could be blackmailed. She had been more the type that went after her extortioner with a shotgun.
"This, at least, wasn't Olman's work," she said reluctantly. "Because Rogan told me that someone also made a bid on Levar's kennel in case he'd be convicted." She took a sip from the still too-hot tea. "And the bid was made in favor of the shelter."
When she looked up, Alan was watching her with an odd expression. "There are a number of people who volunteer for the shelter," he said softly, and she realized that the expression had been pity. "If the writer had told them about the complaint, or simply spread a rumour about it, one of them could've felt motivated to seize that opportunity."
Zana shook her head. "Any rumour would've found its way back to Felga. And Felga would've known that she hadn't written that complaint - and who she had told about Levar's stupid and impulsive action. No, the writer and the bidder are one and the same person."
"You have someone in mind, haven't you?" Alan asked.
"This whole... method of operation looks familiar to me," Zana said slowly. "Forcing someone's hand to deal out 'justice' to someone who 'deserves' it... and framing someone else as being responsible..." She sighed and propped her elbows on the table. Her head seemed to be too heavy all of a sudden, and she felt terribly tired.
"This is all well and good, and maybe it'll even be enough to save Levar from the rope, now that Rogan's surefire motive is gone, but it doesn't get me one step closer to finding out who killed Felga," she groaned. "With Vilam dead, I don't have a suspect anymore! Not that I had one to begin with, if you're going by evidence against him."
She downed her tea in one draw, frustration building in her chest. "It seems clear now that he was involved in the drug business, at least - we do have Levar's statement..." She wasn't going to tell Alan about her nightly visit with Vilam, "but as Felga's murder suspect, he's not a very credible witness, and the drugs he stole from Vilam's locker have vanished, too."
She buried her head in her hands. "I have nothing!"
"Well, at least it's clear that Levar couldn't have killed Vilam," Alan said after a moment of stunned silence. "Which begs the question if Vilam's and Felga's killer isn't the same person."
Yes, and it's probably Olman, Zana thought morosely, not that I'd ever be able to force his conviction. But maybe I can at least find out the truth.
"I made a mistake," she admitted. "I was so convinced of Vilam's guilt that I only looked for clues that would prove my assumption." She jumped up and hurried into her bedroom to get her notes - a loose-leaf collection of scrolls that she had thrown in one of Alan's wicker baskets. She dragged it out from under the bed and carried it back to the main room, where she put it on the floor.
She gestured at the heap of scrolls that had been stuffed into the basket. Most days, she had been too tired to sort through the notes, and had only been concerned with not losing any of them, but looking at the chaos, she felt a bit embarrassed. The basket look suspiciously close to one of Felga's crates in the Sentinel's archives. "I need to correct that mistake, but it's so much! And I don't even know what I'm looking for!"
Alan scraped his chair back a bit, and stared at the mess. "You're looking for patterns - for things that add up, and for things that don't..." He picked up a note, frowned at it, and put it on the table with an rueful smile. "I'd help you, but I still can't read the simian script very well."
"That's alright, Alan," Zana sighed, and went to get her pen and ink. "It's the thought that counts."
She shook out a fresh scroll and pretended to take notes on her new master sheet, but her head felt congested, as if it had been stuffed with notes like one of Felga's crates. Her hand hovered above the scroll, the ink drying on the nib.
"You know what," Alan said after a moment, "why don't you read your notes to me, and I write down what we find? When we're done, I can read back to you what I've written, and, well, maybe we'll see the big picture."
"That's an excellent idea, Alan," Zana said gratefully. "Let me order the scrolls by the person they're centered on before we start - Vilam, Olman... everyone else..."
When she was done, Alan surveyed the table with raised brows. "That one isn't really high," he said, and gestured at the 'everyone else'-pile. "I see what you said about confirmation bias... Well." He leaned over the table to take Zana's master scroll, and her pen. "Go ahead, then."
Zana reached for the nearest scroll and cleared her throat. "Fine. This one here is from Felga's notes that I found in the archive of the Sapan Sentinel. It's about Olman's refusal to reforest the areas Tall Timber had cut down. Sapan actually has a communal law that obliges anyone who fells a tree to plant a replacement, to prevent landslides during the winter rains, but the prefect just raised the taxes and hired another company to do it... Felga thought that the company somehow belongs to Olman, but honestly, I couldn't make sense of her notes..."
"So Olman made a profit twice," Alan mused while his pen raced across the scroll. "When he cut the tree, and when he planted a new one. Clever."
"Illegal," Zana said dryly.
"Not anymore, with the prefect's blessing," Alan murmured. "Olman's well connected."
"Halda is convinced that he's the one behind the murders, even if he didn't commit them himself," Zana said, and reached for the next scroll. Halda's face blinked up in her mind, and she quickly pushed the memory away. As much as she understood the petite Chimp's wish to see her best friend avenged, she didn't want to think about their latest conversation now.
"Does she have any evidence for that?" Alan asked.
"No." Zana hesitated. "She... she actually suggested to me that we should... we should place some evidence against him, so that Rogan had a reason to arrest him."
Alan stared at her. "I see what you meant when you said you recognized a pattern."
"For the powerless, justice seems to be forever out of reach," Zana murmured. "I don't support or even condone her suggestion, but I can see how she would arrive at this kind of... of vigilante justice. Olman seems to be completely unassailable. Alright, this one here is about Vilam refusing to retire his racers to the shelter... he insisted that the charity had to pay him compensation for every racer, and when they refused, he went and, and killed the humans." She let the scroll sink and took a hasty sip from her rapidly cooling tea. "Am I a bad person if I don't feel sorry that he's dead?"
"I can't answer that," Alan murmured, not looking up from his notes. "I'm a bit biased about that matter myself..."
They continued in that way, Zana reading the scrolls, Alan noting down whatever he found remarkable, in neat little columns. When Zana rose to put a fresh kettle of water on the stove, she sneaked a glance at his scroll: some words were circled, and lines were connecting some columns to other columns, or circled words, like a complicated spider web.
She consciously held back from asking him what it all meant; he would tell her once they were finished with all her notes.
Zana suppressed a yawn when she sat down again, and reached for the next scroll. "This one... this one is from Felga's notes of the Sentinel's archive again... investigating a tip about betting frauds down at the stadium... this is just a list of everyone who's somehow connected to the racing business - tellers and sellers, basically." She motioned to put the scroll aside, but Alan held up a hand.
"You never know which piece of information is relevant until you checked its connections." He nodded at the scroll in her hand. "Just... just read it to me once."
Zana rubbed her eyes with one hand, and squinted at the scroll. "Fine. This is a list of businesses that had been hired for the last big races - it goes back for five years... actually it went back for ten, but I only copied five, I thought that was enough - and the money they paid to the racing commission, for renting the stalls, for example, or the money they received from the commission for services they provided, for example, for the humans that the charity rented out for catering..."
Alan frowned. "The charity rented humans to the stadium? Felga's charity?"
Zana shrugged. "I know it sounds strange, considering Felga's aversion to the whole racing business, but maybe they needed the money? Felga had told me that they didn't get much in terms of donations, which is why they started all those small businesses, like the tea house, and the production of the vases."
"The way you described Felga to me, she wasn't the kind of pragmatist who'd ignore where the money was coming from," Alan commented, "but that's not what I meant. Tovar had raved about the races to me, repeatedly, and he'd stressed how generous Olman's patronage for the races is. So generous, in fact, that Olman provides his own humans for the catering."
Zana stared at him, then stared down at the notes, where the charity's services were listed for every year, going back five years without a gap. The charity had made quite a bit of money with that deal.
At least it said so in Felga's notes.
"Zana?"
"When Galen and I were at that pre-racing reception, they had humans there, too," Zana said slowly. "Someone told me that they were Olman's own humans, I don't remember anymore who told me... but that was just a small reception. The race is a huge event, maybe Olman didn't have enough humans, and had to stock up?"
Alan chewed on the inside of his lip as he considered this. Then he shook his head. "Tovar is a bit of a racing maniac. He claims to know every racer who's ever run since he started going to the racetrack as a little boy, and from the stories he told me, I believe him. He went on and on about Olman and his good deeds for the racing culture here in Sapan - and he was very dismissive of the whole retirement idea." He leaned back in his seat and threw his pen on the table.
"Tovar would've recognized any former racer who'd have carried a tray with snacks, and he'd have complained about it to me all afternoon, believe me. According to Tovar, a human's life should consist of nothing but running races. He'd have disapproved so much of this arrangement, it wouldn't have escaped his notice."
Zana stared at the scroll. "So if the charity never hired out their humans, where do these numbers come from? And why would Felga have made notes about this..." She looked up to Alan, and saw the same realization in his eyes. "Halda."
Again.
"She's the logical candidate," Alan agreed. "She is the co-chairwoman of the organization."
"If she didn't hire out the humans herself, she had to have known who did, at least," Zana nodded, clinging to the hope that Halda hadn't sneaked the humans out behind Felga's back, like she had done with that complaint. "Or not hired them out, but falsified the books..." her voice trailed off.
"What is it? Zana?"
"Halda has the books," Zana murmured. "Felga told me that bookkeeping was a pain in the behind that she left in Halda's capable hands..."
"If we assume that no charity human was ever present at the racetracks for catering," Alan said, "then the question is what she really received that money for."
Zana remembered the light in Halda's eyes when she had talked about justice. That glee.
"No," she said at last. "The question is why Halda would do business with Olman at all."
This needs to end now, Alta. And you and I are the only ones who can do it.
"And what happened when Felga found out about it."