Diamond Sphere Read online

  Diamond Sphere

  By F. P. Adriani

  Copyright © 2019 by F. P. Adriani

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, without express written permission from the author and publisher.

  Published by F. P. Adriani

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  *

  Diamond Sphere

  Exactly six months after I started Miscellaneous Solutions Associated, a girl walked into my office and offered MSA its first real job.

  Well, its first real real job. Previously MSA had been contracted for some real doozie jobs, like the guy who hired me to find his fake teeth. And then there was the mom who wanted a bodyguard for her being-bullied school-kid. Most days I would take any job; no job was too big or too small, too smart or too stupid. Whatever would pay the bills. And did I have bills.

  Eight months ago I’d lost the income from my old job. Now I was totally on my own, living on savings and whatever I could make as half a security specialist, half a doer-of-whatever-needed-doing-for-a-client, and yet all a businessperson. It felt weird: businessperson was a hat I’d never worn.

  When I first thought up the idea for MSA, I intended that both my friend Nell and my boyfriend Tan would become active semi-partners. And in the beginning both of them had been active in the business. But because it couldn’t even financially sustain itself yet, three months ago Tan had fallen away from MSA, and now almost all his efforts were geared toward his full-time job as security director at The Citadel Museum—where the girl with the real job for me had apparently found out about me. From there, from him.

  Julianne Castano was the girl’s name. Up until four weeks ago, her mother had been a consulting scientist at The Citadel. And now her mother was dead.

  Julianne stood on the other side of my desk; with her short straight brown hair, big eyeglasses, chubby cheeks and pouty frowning mouth, she looked around thirteen or fourteen. She might have been a little older. I didn’t ask her age.

  Instead, I sat there while, beside her, a tall blond-and-gray-haired woman named Lori Godwin spoke. She was Julianne’s guardian, and she told me that Amy Castano’s death was listed as a naturally-caused heart attack. But Lori and Julianne didn’t think her mother had died of natural causes—Julianne especially didn’t think this, and that was why she was here.

  “I want you to find out who killed my mom,” the girl said bluntly now.

  I stared at her pale face. “What makes you think someone killed your mom? Why would they?”

  Now Lori Godwin said to me, “Could you close your door?”

  While interviewing a potential client, I usually kept the door behind me open to my outside general office area. At the moment, Nell was sitting at the main desk out there, so was my assistant Roberto; at other moments, my one other employee, Mike, could have been sitting out there too.

  I didn’t like keeping secrets from either my partners or my employees. I no longer liked keeping secrets, period. I had turned a new corner in my life; I had slowly been working on changing my previous covert behaviors, which were actually had-developed-later-in-my-life behaviors. And now, to better my current behaviors, to become more overt, I’d been working hard on remembering back to when I was innocent and young—not much younger than Julianne looked—and using my memories of that old me to change the current me.

  I had nothing to hide now from Nell especially, but also from Roberto. His usual job was doing any legwork I needed doing. And because he had to put himself out there, I made sure he was always informed in here.

  I wondered why Lori and Julianne had something to hide; I also wondered why they wanted our conversation hidden from the others.

  My ass feeling uneasy, I shifted on my seat and thought in silence for a long moment….

  Then I sighed loudly, stood up and closed the door, shrugging at Nell’s raised brown eyebrows right before the closing wooden door blocked my view of her.

  I went back to my easy chair.

  Now Lori sat down in one of the chairs across from my desk, and she said in a low voice, “It’s not so much that we need you to find Amy Castano’s killer. There’s a situation here on Diamond. A potentially dangerous problem.”

  I stared at her serious face, finally noticing that a shiny sheen of sweat covered both her top lip and her chin. And her right hand was shaking on her black briefcase.

  My eyes back on her face again, I said, “I don’t do dangerous.”

  “But,” said Julianne fast, “I heard you do. You were in the news.”

  Yes, I had been, and over an incident and a time I did not want to think about right now, or ever again for that matter.

  The girl kept talking, making me realize that either she really was older than she looked—or she was much too mature for her age, or much too smart for her age, or maybe both.

  “You can deal with thugs,” the girl continued. “Mister Onyx said you were the person to come to for finding people. I just went up to him when I was at the museum two days ago—and I asked him if being a security expert, if he knew what I could do about my mom being dead.”

  My eyes widened at her mentioning Tan had pointed her my way: my instincts were telling me to ask her and her guardian to leave my office. There was something…wrong about them, or maybe about what they wanted me to do? I couldn’t tell which yet. But shouldn’t Tan have sensed something a bit off here? And if he actually had, why the hell had he sent the girl here?

  This had been an ongoing argument between Tan and me: he wanted me to stop getting into dangerous situations; I wanted to get into whatever situations would make me money. What I wanted usually won out: certainly, no man would ever tell me what to do, no matter how much I respected him. Ultimately, I always did what I wanted. Fuck everybody else.

  Still, I really didn’t want to get my ass killed; that would kind of spoil my days. So, recently, I had decided against an investigative focus for MSA and had been putting out more security-solutions advertisements.

  Last month I’d scored MSA’s first semi-real small security job, which I’d contracted out to another security firm that employed the guards. I intended to be just the middle person most times: I and my employees wouldn’t do the actual guard work then; we’d just get a commission off matching the proper guards to each situation—a.k.a. easy money.

  For months I’d been promising myself I’d only get involved in those simple security jobs and nothing dangerous.

  Yet here was this girl Julianne tweaking my curiosity in ways it shouldn’t be tweaked.

  So much for my promises.

  My eyes roamed the girl’s face more carefully this time. Though we didn’t look alike, something about her reminded me of myself when I was younger: our faces held the same worries, the same pain—I, too, had lost a parent while very young. I’d lost both my parents. So I probably knew what Julianne was going through….

  “She shouldn’t be dead,” the girl said to me now. “She wasn’t sick a day in her life! I need your help.”

  “I’m not sure how I can help you. I know nothing about your mother other than what you just told me.”

  I looked at Lori and was about to speak to her when the girl said in a rush, “I’ve got her notebooks. I found them after the funeral. They were hidden.”

  My head turned back to the girl. “Hidden?” I a
sked, frowning.

  Her head bobbed up and down—fast. “I’ve got a lot of money. You’d be paid a big fat amount.” She named a very lovely, very huge sum.

  Dangerous or not, enough money for me to live on for a year certainly was a LOT of money…a lot of hard-to-pass-up money. I found my interest seriously peaking. …But then my anger just as seriously peaked at the girl’s next words.

  “The thing is: can we trust you?” she asked me. Then she glanced over at her guardian, who was looking at me, very directly, her narrow brown eyes on my wide green ones—wide still because of the potential money involved, but also because of the potential insult.

  When I spoke, my words to the girl were gentle—bitingly gentle. “Insulting people you want to work for you really isn’t a good idea, you know.”

  Lori opened her mouth now. “This isn’t a normal situation, Miss Senda. Amy was both an astrophysicist and an archeologist. On her own she was working on several projects for years, one for nearly a decade. Lately she made even more progress. She located what she’d always been looking for. I only found this out when Julianne found the notebooks. I have one with me.” Her hand patted her briefcase. “But that’s where we have to be sure we can trust you, Miss Senda. There’s a map too.”

  “Nothing I learn in here will leave this office,” I said. “Let me see what you have.”

  She opened her briefcase then handed me a map—no, only part of a map. I raised my head to her. “I said you can trust me. You really think you should have torn this before coming here?”

  She pointed a quick forefinger at the map. “That wasn’t me. That’s how Julianne found it.”

  I looked at the graying-and-yellowing map, at the perfect perpendicular tear along one side, as if someone had creased it and laid a ruler over the crease before tearing. My finger absentmindedly stroked the torn edge; then my heart slowly began pounding harder as I looked over the map’s written and drawn contents.

  I saw a huge chunk of Diamond depicted, with mountains shaped like triangles, oceans like big blue ellipses, sand seas like swirling white clouds. And on the map’s torn yellowy right end lay a crude drawing of The Astral Mountains, only the tear had rudely cut off part of them.

  The map seemed to cover about a third of Diamond; I wondered if the missing part covered the rest of the planet. I also wondered if that part existed. Not that what remained appeared to be anything special. As maps went, it seemed hastily drawn, very incomplete.

  I knew The Astral Mountains though; I’d grown up near there. And between two of those mountains on the map, I saw a circular heavily-drawn-in marker, in red.

  DANGER, the image said in even darker red letters right below the red circle.

  I had been so absorbed in looking at the map that I didn’t realize Julianne had come behind my right shoulder.

  Now her pale forefinger pressed down at that DANGER circle as she said, “There’s where you’ve got to go.”

  *

  While my attention was still on the map, I asked them about the notebook, but they only shook their heads “no” in response. I wondered what had changed their minds. But I didn’t really need to see the notebook. The map’s DANGER sign was enough. But then so were the DOLLAR signs I’d been promised if I took the job.

  I handed back the map to Lori. “You won’t give me enough details right now. And I can’t give you a firm answer right now. I need to think about this.”

  Lori gave me their contact information; then they left my office a moment later.

  I sat at my desk, staring out the big front window, staring toward the right at the beautiful young skinny oaks and the even skinnier red palella trees.

  My office sat at the end of a street near a small park. Months ago I’d moved my living space to a hotel closer by; unfortunately, Tan’s house was over half an hour from my office and over an hour from my hotel. Or maybe fortunately his house was that far away because when I saw him there, the distance I’d have to drive home gave me an excuse to stay overnight at his place, which I’d hoped to do that weekend, before this new job opportunity had come up. Now, I didn’t know about all that….

  As I was staring out the window, both Julianne and Lori moved into the view there. A tall blond man in a dark-blue suit had been walking behind them. But now, suddenly, another shorter man came up from the right and began grappling with the tall man.

  My heart slammed into my ribs; I shot off my seat and rushed out the room, through the big outer office, into the long curving hall and then out the front door.

  But when I’d finally reached them in the street, I was too late. What looked like the contents of a pocketbook were strewn on the blacktop surrounding the two women; Lori was struggling to pick up the items fast, Julianne was sobbing, and the tall man was now charging down the street after the shorter man.

  “What happened?” I shouted at the women.

  “The map—it’s gone!” cried Julianne.

  *

  “How the hell did that happen—those two guys?” I asked, glancing down the street, but I saw no one there now.

  Lori shook her head at me. “No, John drove us here—he was guarding us—outside your door. Julianne wanted to go into the park. The other guy must have been waiting there. He punched John—grabbed my briefcase.”

  My heart was doing that rib-damaging pounding again. “The notebook too then?”

  Lori’s head did a second side-to-side shake. As she bent toward the ground now, her brown eyes warily glanced up at me. “Just the map and nothing else in there. I lied about the notebook.”

  My suddenly soaring anger stiffened my back. I knew the two of them were bullshit. What else had they lied about? “So there is no notebook.”

  “Oh yes there is—see?” Julianne said as she opened her brown coat and flashed me a big inside pocket. I could make out a hard rectangular bulging shape inside there.

  “Why should I trust what you say?” I practically spat. “It could be a library book.”

  “We can’t do this here—discuss this,” Lori said as she straightened up and began dropping things back into her pocketbook. “Where is John?”

  “Where indeed,” I replied.

  Just then, Nell and Roberto charged up to us. Nell turned frowning brown eyes on me as she said, “What the hell, Pia—you flew past us and didn’t even hear me call your name.”

  “They were robbed,” I said, looking at Nell but tilting my head at the two women.

  “So are you going to help me—take my case or what?” said Julianne, sounding older again. When I looked back at her, I saw her tears had dried up. Her face was all seriousness now.

  “Like I said, I’ll think about it.” I watched her slow frown. Then I said to Roberto, “You and your gun drive them home. I’m gonna check round the corner there.” I jerked my head over to where the two men had disappeared.

  Roberto nodded at me. I said goodbye to the two women, then I left them standing there beside Nell.

  As I walked away, I pulled out my own gun.

  *

  Around the corner in the alleyway where the two men had run, I found zip, nada, nothing—zero. Zero people, zero briefcases, zero maps. The alley looked the way it always looked: damp, with a few garbage pails—empty, I looked—one grimy-with-frying-oil exterior restaurant wall, and sandy dirt scattered here and there on the sides of the faded broken blacktop below me.

  My eyes hastily scanned for suspicious footprints in the dirt, but, really, I wasn’t a cop. I didn’t have the proper equipment for this shit. I did have some equipment from my old job, but that had been more about my avoiding leaving footprints rather than analyzing them.

  I sighed heavily, stuck my gun back beneath my black blazer. I did not want to deal with this shit with this girl and her mother and her guardian; I smelled DANGER just as the map had warned.

  I went back to my office, intending to call and leave a message for Lori Godwin that she should call the cops next time and not me.

  But
when I stepped inside my general office area, Nell had been waiting for me there.

  “Jesus,” she said, “the day’s hardly begun, and already there’s a theft on the doorstep, and you’re taking off for dark alleyways.”

  “Like I asked for this?” I said, flashing her a twisted frown. “Tan sent this kid my way—you believe that?”

  “Actually, yeah, I can believe it,” Nell said, somewhat cryptically. For a moment I wondered about her tone, but I didn’t ask her to explain her statement because I was too busy dealing with feeling both uneasy and pissed at this day.

  I looked at the wall behind Nell, at the peeling paint near the corners, at the yellowing light fixture above the desk, at the sticky wall-dust over the side file cabinets…. Really, this office was just a depressing-looking space. The park outside was the only pretty spot around here….

  Did I mention my office was kind of a dump in a dumpy area? Well, it was kind of a dump in a dumpy area. And I really hated making Nell and the others come to work here—why I normally gave them only part-time office hours. Nell did half the paperwork at her place—not that I had tons of jobs to have tons of paperwork for. Plus, nowadays Nell spent a good deal of her time on her side-business: she made one-hundred-percent-from-Diamond-materials jewelry. Her artful pieces had begun selling quite well; at some point, she’d probably ditch this partnership with me—and I wouldn’t blame her for doing that….

  I looked at her again, at her dark-brown wide cheekbones, at her gently frowning mouth. Her face seemed different lately, more filled-out-smooth. Actually, she looked the best I’d ever seen her look. And I said so to her—that she looked great.

  As I continued staring at her pretty face, her mouth twisted into a little smile; then she finally spoke. “Pia-babe, you know, I came in early today because I wanted to talk to you about something personal, but I never got to because of your morning meeting.”

  I shrugged. “All right. So talk now.”