Chapter One

Suze rolled off the futon with a feline grace that belied her hangover and headed towards the kitchen. Mixing a raw egg with some tomato juice and hot sauce she downed the combination with a handful of aspirins then headed for the shower.

Clouds of steam filled her small studio apartment when she got out of the shower and got dressed. Jeans and a T-shirt, Suze rarely if ever dressed to impress.

She began cleaning up beer bottles when the phone rang. Her caller ID told her it was Larry The Fence. A job would be welcome news, the money wasn't exactly tight, but there'd been little work for a while and things were boring.

"Hello, Larry" she said into the phone.

"Good morning, my friend Suze, how are you this beautiful day?"

"Alive, and awake, and curious what you have for me" Suze responded.

"Always straight to business," Larry said, "what I have for you is a job. You are familiar with Lord Kildermare's famous cane?"

"Sure, you want me to grab it?"

"Precisely, I have a buyer who's a long time enemy of the Lord's, and will pay five hundred grand to see him thus embarrassed." Larry's deep rich bass made the job sound like a soul song.

"Lord" Kildermare was a high society hanger on, famous for being famous. Part of his routine was a jewel encrusted cane he carried everywhere. He claimed it was an old family heirloom but since his actual family were the DeVicki's from Queens, New York, this seemed unlikely.

"Sounds like fun," said Suze, "just give me a few days to research it."

"I figured you were the right person for this" Larry said.

Suze got off the phone and went back to cleaning up beer bottles. Drunk Suze always left a mess that had to be picked up. The tall, lean brunette finished cleaning up then checked her sculptures for any signs of damage. Sometimes drunk Suze got to thinking Suze was a talentless hack who's work should be destroyed. Thankfully, she found no signs of damage.

She'd forgotten when she first started thinking of Drunk Suze as a separate person from herself. It worried her a little, she was afraid she was slipping into alcoholism. Or was already there.

#

Suze researched Lord Kildermare on line, finding lots of videos of him confronting people who didn't like him. She noticed he was always right up front and center, not behind his security team. And waving that cane around.

First of all, she was going to need a really fast bicycle. This gave her the excuse to buy that Bianchi bike she'd been eyeing...

A couple of days later there was a minor traffic accident between Lord Kildermare's Limousine and a tall young lady with long blond hair on a bicycle. The lady in question suffered no real injury but refused to get out of the way of the limo, berating the driver and all within and questioning the legitimacy of their parentage. Finally Lord Kildermare and his security team got out and confronted the woman, Lord Kildermare waving his cane in her face. Quick as a snake, her hand reached out and grabbed the cane.

"Thank you" she said, and took off into traffic on her bike, quickly getting lost to all pursuit in the swell of stalled cars that only a bicycle could navigate.

Back at her apartment Suze stashed the cane in the back of the closet and took off the wig. The job had gone well. She called Larry to report.

"I've got the cane" she said, simply.

"In your own unique style, I might add," Suze could hear the smile in Larry's voice "I saw some of the paparazzi footage of the event. I thought to myself, please let that be Suze in a wig, because otherwise we have a world of trouble."

"Yep, it was me all right. The job was a piece of cake. When do you want the cane?"

"Get it over here tomorrow. I'll make the exchange tomorrow night and pay you next day. Sound fair enough?"

"Sounds good to me, see you then." And the two hung up.

Suze went and got a beer out of the refrigerator and settled in to work on her latest sculpture. It was a slightly oversize piece of a human hand, grasping an apple, carved in oak. She was trying to get the details of the knuckles just right and was using her own hand as a model. The oak was slow to work but a beautiful wood. Soon she was lost in what she was doing, pausing only occasionally to get more beer.

#

Elliot Gandermail was starting to wish he'd never picked up the phone. He generally didn't when he didn't recognize the name on the caller ID, it was part of his agoraphobia, but he had been in a particularly good mood today and when he saw the name Harold DeVicki it piqued his curiosity. Just how Lord Kildermare had gotten his number remained something of a mystery. He'd "heard about Elliot" from "people" was all Elliot had been able to gather, and he figured Elliot was just the guy to recover his cane. Elliot was trying to explain he wasn't for hire like a plumber when Lord Kildermare said "I don't think detectives Gerjuoy and Deeb are giving this the sort of attention it deserves."

"Gerjuoy and Deeb you say?" Asked Elliot, intrigued in spite of himself. Elliot had a thing about detective Miri Gerjuoy. According to his partner, Max Mendoza, he had a crush on her. It was true that despite her desire to see him in jail for past misdeeds he always took a chance to impress her. Finding Lord Kildermare's cane for her might impress her, indeed.

"We'll take the case" Elliot said abruptly, "my partner Max will be in touch with you about setting up an interview"

"That's Terrific!" Enthused Lord Kildermare "What's your fee?"

"Hmm..." mused Elliot, "what's this thing worth to you?"

"A million even"

"We'll take half that if we recover the cane, and nothing if we get no results."

"Five hundred grand is well worth it" said Lord Kildermare, happily.

"We've got your number, we'll be in touch" said Elliot, as he hung up the phone. Now he just had to tell Max Mendoza about their new case.

Elliot picked the phone back up and dialed Max's cellphone.

Max Mendoza was at Morrow's Steakhouse with D.G. Penrose. The evening was going well, and they were both enjoying their meal and each other's company when Max's cellphone rang. Max pulled the phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Yeah," he said, "who died?"

"What?" Said Elliot.

"You forgot, didn't you?"

"Was that tonight?" Elliot asked.

"Yes, Elliot, I'm on a date with D.G. Tonight and I'm not interested in work or anything to do with it until tomorrow." Max said.

D.G. raised her voice slightly to be heard on Max's phone and said "You know, Elliot, for the smartest guy in the world I'm surprised you remember your socks in the morning. OK, now tell Max what the new job is, otherwise it'll bother him all night long and ruin our date and I don't want that."

"The boss has spoken" said Max, and he stayed on the phone a bit longer, nodding and saying "Uh-huh" now and then. When he got off the phone he turned to D.G. And said "Lord Kildermare's cane, the one some blond grabbed a few days ago? We're going to try and recover it. The job pays five hundred grand."

"Well, that'll be a little something to keep you busy" said D.G. Then she suddenly stopped and said "uh, oh."

"What is it?" Asked Max.

"Lord Kildermare's cane," D.G. Said, "that theft is being investigated by the girl detective your Elliot has such a crush on, that Miri Gerjuoy."

"And he doesn't think so clear when she's involved...oh, boy..."

"Maybe it's just coincidence that she's involved" said D.G.

"Yeah, and maybe Elliot is secretly the dictator of a small Latin American island paradise."