Dial H for Heroics

Josie and Seven Russ walked along the path. They remained silent. Seven peered at

the town, sorting things with her eyes. Josie had her eye on the firebird moving from

one roof to another, leading them to an end goal.

They reached the lower fishing village. They were strangers, but Seven looked

enough like her sister that people waved at her as they passed. Her clothes, one of

June’s shirts and sweat pants, drew looks, but no one approached to say anything to

her about it.

Josie wore her poncho and jeans and was close enough to normal that she didn’t draw

looks for that. She was a stranger and that was enough to be suspicious.

She thought someone should be asking her questions about why she was in town.

She put it down to no one wanted to interfere in what they thought of as their Russ

and what she was doing.

“It looks like we’re heading for the tavern over there,” said Russ. She nodded at the

building bordering the piers where the fishing boats were moored.

“They must have some good fish cooking,” said Josie. “I wonder what the chowder

is like here.”

“Probably poisonous,” said Seven.

“Good one,” said Josie. She frowned at the tavern’s door. “The bird seems to be

waiting on us to go inside. Let’s go in and see who it picks out. Then I can ask some

questions. It should be a snap to prove the poisoner did the deed.”

“Have you done anything like this before?,” asked Seven.

“I made someone admit to framing a princess for a crime she didn’t do,” said Josie.

“I got her a duchy since I couldn’t get her the princess slot back.”

“All right,” said Seven.

“Lori might be at Jack’s wedding if he lives that long,” said Josie. “You can meet her

then.”

“I haven’t met a princess before,” admitted Seven.

“They put their dress on the same way as everyone else,” said Josie. She pushed

the tavern door open. “They just have more helpers with it usually.”

“Boim Russ?,” said one of the slim waitresses working the room. “What brings you

by without Old Karney?”

“I’m sorry,” said Seven. “I’m Boim’s sister, Seven. This is Josie Fox, my new

employer’s manager.”

“How do you do?,” said Josie. She examined the room with what could be stern eyes.

“Boim is up at the house. Master Karney is sick. We came down to look around while

she tried to get dinner together. We arrived out of the blue, so to speak.”

The firebird flew into the room and settled on a man sitting with a group of others.

They were all older, looked weather worn, and had been talking about Boim Russ

until they realized they were talking about the wrong Russ.

Josie smiled as she approached the table. She had her hands under her poncho. She

regarded the bird as it hopped on the man’s head. She pulled an empty chair up to the

table and sat down.

The firebird vanished as the spell acknowledged she knew which one had put the

poison tea in the jar in Karney’s kitchen. She wondered idly when he did it.

“How’s it going?,” Josie said. “I see you guys are playing cards. How does the game

work?”

Russ talked to the waitress. She didn’t know if they were eating, or just getting a

drink. She asked the waitress to wait. They might not be eating or drinking anything

for a bit.

“Why are you butting into our business?,” asked one of the old men, not the poisoner,

but just cranky and devoid of charm.

“It’s kind of my job,” said Josie. She leaned over to look at the hand of cards in her

neighbor’s hand. He pulled the cards close to his chest so she couldn’t see what he

had. “You know how it is.”

“No, we don’t,” said the poisoner. He put his cards face down on the table. He looked

at his friends for support. “What do you want?”

“That’s part of the job,” said Josie. “You see I work for the Robert Reed Appreciation

Society. They have tasked me with doing away with monsters and villains. So to

do that, I have to make sure I don’t kill the wrong people. You know how that is.

They make you fill out all these forms like a tax auditor wanting to know how

much fish you bring in every day if you kill the wrong guy. Now the problem I have

here is that one of you poisoned old man Karney with some kind of sea urchin and

I have to figure out which one of you did it, and then punish that person.”

Josie smiled at them.

“So you can see that I have to ask questions, so I don’t kill the wrong guy,” she said.

“So does the guilty one of you want to admit they did it so I can move on with my

day, maybe give out some leniency? Or do I have to burn your boats and hope that

one of you cracks to save the others?”

“What are you talking about?,” asked another of the men at the table.

“Karney was poisoned,” said Josie. “The only people he talked to was you people

here at the tavern. One of you poisoned him. All I need is an admission of guilt. Then

I do my job, and the rest of you go on with your lives unless I have to come back here

over some other problem.

“Sea urchins aren’t in the waters around here,” said Josie’s neighbor. “You have to

go south of here to get one of those, unless it’s some kind of ingredient like for an

alchemist.”

“How would you know that?,” asked Josie.

“Been fishing these waters for longer than you have been alive,” said the man. “Never

seen a sea urchin. I caught a needle fish once which is close, but I got rid of it before

it could poison my catch of the day.”

“Do they do that?,” asked Josie. Her suspect had broken in a sweat. He wanted to

jump and run, but he didn’t have an excuse to run out of the room.

“Needle fish will poison your whole load,” said one of the others. “Little Micky lost

a whole catch because he had two of them in his net.”

“Almost poisoned the whole town,” said the cranky talker. “I remembered that. A lot

of people were sick, and we lost Gilles, but it was pure luck no one else died.”

“Micky killed himself,” said Josie’s other neighbor. “He hung himself in his catch

stall.”

“Hugh got his boat,” said the cranky talker. He indicated the sweating fisherman. “We

thought it was bad luck, but he has done well with it.”

“That’s right,” said Hugh. “I have had it for years.”

“So none of you has a reason to kill Karney?,” said Josie. She leaned back in her

chair.

“Everyone has a reason,” said the cranky talker. “I don’t think any of us would

poison him. I can still swing a hook.”

Josie would love to let June come in here and throw some punches. That was her

thing. She just wasn’t as scary to people who didn’t know her.

The people who did know her knew she was capable of things most people wouldn’t

do to accomplish some goal.

“So Hugh got Little Micky’s boat,” said Josie. “Who got the rest of his stuff?”

“Most of us split it,” said the cranky talker. “I got some of his nets, Kell got the

other part of his nets, Bord got some of his sails, Cranew got his stall to pack his

catch, and Karney got a ring.”

“A ring?,” said Josie.

“Yep,” said Cranew, Josie’s right hand neighbor. “It was a simple thing of gold. It

was the only thing he wanted. He said he didn’t need the gear since he was getting

ready to leave the sea.”

“And he did leave,” said Kell, the left hand neighbor. “We always wondered how he

hired Boim to be his maid.”

“She works for room and board,” said Seven. “We’ve talked about it before. She told

me that Master Karney suffered something at sea and decided not to sail any more.

She wondered why he didn’t move from the coast, but is too afraid to ask.”

“Where could he live?,” asked the cranky talker. “He might have money saved up, but

he gets a lot here just on credit. He takes to the sea and comes back enough to pay

that credit down, but he doesn’t really fish any more.”

“And starting over in another place is hard enough,” said Kell. “What would he do

if he ran out of a way to pay for his food and shelter?”

“And his age might be a factor,” said Josie. “Starting over as a farmer is a young

man’s game.”

“Exactly,” said Bord, the man between Hugh and the cranky spokesman of the group.

“Karney would be a poor farmer compared to the good sailor that he was.”

“So none of us had a reason to kill Karney,” said the cranky talker. “Do you mind

moving off?”

“I don’t know why, but I already know who and how,” said Josie. “If I had to think

about a motive, I would say it was about the ring.”

“What?,” said the men at the table.

“Seven, get us some beer, water for me,” said Josie. “I need it to wet my whistle.”

“All right,” said Seven. “Do not kill the murderer before I get back.”

Josie waved her off. She smiled, but her eyes had taken on the look of a cat about

to pounce. She pulled a piece of paper and a pen from her messenger bag and

put them on the table.

“A mystery is a type of story where a crime is committed and the hero of the story

tries to figure out what happened,” said Josie. “They fall into a lot of types: the fair

play, the locked room, the procedural, the whodunnit, the howdunnit, the reverse

whodunnit.”

“The reverse whodunnit?,” said the cranky guy. “What is that? What is any of that?”

“They are types of mysteries,” said Josie. “The reverse is where the audience knows

who did the crime, and watches him try to evade the Watch. My favorite stories were

Columbo and how he would harass the murderer until they gave him enough evidence

to take them to jail. Now here we have a standard procedural which is basically the

Watch collects facts and assembles enough to pick the suspect out of a line up of

similar suspects.”

She wrote the crime down on her sheet of paper.

“What we have is attempted poisoning,” said Josie. “The maid didn’t know what she

was dealing with when we arrived, but I had an elixir to fix the problem for the

moment. Karney is sleeping it off.”

“Now I have a group of suspects,” said Josie. She wrote their names down on the

paper next to the crime. “Anybody in town could have poisoned Karney, but you

people were the only ones he talked to regularly according to the maid, and you

are all fishermen, and know what sea urchin, or its relative needle fish, can do.”

“There are other fishermen,” said Hugh. “Karney knew all of us at one point, or the

other.”

“How many gave him gifts?,” asked Josie. “That’s where the poison was.”

The men turned their gaze on Hugh. He tried to put on his poker face. Sweat betrayed

him again.

“So I come into town to see what I see, and I find you guys are at your table, with an

empty space for Karney,” said Josie. “It suggests that he came down to talk and play

cards with you regularly. Talking to you reveals that one of you had possession of a

source of the poison that no one else knew about.”

“Little Mickey’s boat,” said Cranew. He frowned at Hugh. “Needle fish poison can

sink into wood if a barb gets stuck.”

“That was years ago,” said Kell. “A barb wouldn’t still be potent, would it?”

“Is the ring the motive, Hugh?,” asked Josie. “It’s the only thing I am not sure about.

I doubt the maid wanted to leave the house for you, and I don’t see anything in it

for you to get the maid, or the house.”

Seven returned with the drinks. She put each cup of beer down in front of the men,

and the water in front of Josie. She stepped back with the serving tray under her arm.

“I found something on the boat,” said Hugh. “I asked Karney for the ring to test what

I had found. He tried to extort me for half of whatever was there. I turned him down.

Why would I give him half of what could be a fortune?”

“So you decided to poison him and get the ring that way,” said Josie. She sipped her

water. “What if he had left it to his maid? Were you going to kill her too?”

“I was going to ask her to give me the ring for a paltry sum,” said Hugh. “Then open

the vault that I had found.”

“Let’s go see this vault,” said Josie. She stood. “You’re not going to need it where

you’re going.”

“You can’t have it,” said Hugh. He jumped up and reached for the knife hanging

at his belt. The edge of the serving tray hit him in the face, staggering him. Then an

angry Josie started beating his face with the heavy cup. The water flew as she

hammered him to the floor.

The fishermen had stood at the first sign of violence. They paused as Josie

straightened and pulled her clothes back to neatness. Some blood covered her hands

from the impacts.

“Good throw with the tray,” said Josie. “Captain America would have been proud.”

“I see that June was right,” said Seven. “You are a woman that would push another

woman down a flight of stairs.”

“How did he get the poison?,” asked Cranew. “The fact that he as much admitted to

the crime, there is no question that he did it. The only question is how did he get the

poison to use on Karney.”

The other patrons in the tavern had stood at the almost fight. They settled back down

when the old men picked up their fallen comrade and bound his hands behind his

back. They left his knife on the table with their cards. They picked up the money, and

divided Hugh’s stake between them.

“Let’s see if we can find the source of the weapon,” said Josie. She looked at the

tavern looking at her.

They seemed shocked that a stranger had beat an old man in front of them.

The group went down to the docks, and walked along the wooden slips until they got

to Hugh’s boat. They climbed aboard and lifted their captive over the side so he could

point them to his hidden treasure if he wanted to cooperate.

Hugh sullenly remained silent under the mask of bruises that was his face at the

moment.

“Where do we start?,” asked the cranky fishermen. He glared at the attempted

murderer. “Do you want to tell us, stupid?”

“Give me a second,” said Josie. “We don’t actually need him any more.”

She became Zatanna long enough to send out a bird for the poison and one for

the vault. She followed the poison bird to the galley. She found a stone cup and rod

on a shelf. The inside of the cup was purple. She showed it to Cranew who nodded.

This was the same color they had seen at Micky’s outbreak years ago.

“Josie!,” called Seven. “We found the vault.”

Josie and Cranew joined the others. She had the poison cup in her hands. She looked

at the steel door in the cabin wall. She frowned at it. Instead of a key hole, or a dial,

it had a slot above the lock handle. She realized that the ring went into that slot and

opened the lock for anyone who had it.

“We think this is the cup he used to poison the tea Karney had,” said Josie. She

handed the cup to the cranky spokesman. “I am going to open this thing just to satisfy

myself about what’s inside. I suppose we can split everything, and I will give Karney

and Boim their share.”

“That’s mine!,” shouted Hugh. “You can’t have it!”

“Be quiet,” said the cranky fisherman. “You have admitted to poisoning your brother.

The poison has been found on your boat by an outsider and Cranew, the slowest man

here. If the magistrate was here on his circuit, you would be hanged tomorrow with

what we now know. You didn’t need the ring. We could have had Aldous open it with

a hammer and chisel if you wanted it badly enough.”

“We would have spotted you the smith money, Hugh,” said Kell. “It would not have

been that bad.”

“Open this vault, woman,” said the cranky fisherman. “Let’s see if the contents are

worth all of this.”

Josie changed into the Locksmith and opened the door gently with a probe from her

gauntlet. She stepped back. A box of coins rested inside the vault. The fishermen

looked at Hugh.

“It’s a bag full of tin,” said Kell. “You almost killed someone over a bag full of

pennies.”

“I think we will let Hugh have his treasure,” said the cranky leader of the group. He

closed the door on the treasure.

“He can’t stay here,” said Bord. “That would be too much of a problem.”

“Do you want to live?,” asked Josie.

“Yes,” said Hugh. He looked at his former friends, and this stranger. They all glared

at him. “I want to live.”

“Okay,” said Josie. “Everyone else, get off this tub. You don’t want to be on it when

it leaves.”

The fishermen and Boim jumped to the dock. They turned as a wind kicked up,

running counter to the breeze they felt from the dock. The ropes snapped and the

anchor line snapped. Josie stepped off the boat. The sails unfurled and the boat left

the slip like a race horse out the gate.

“What did you do?,” asked the spokesman. He watched as the boat sailed for the

horizon.

“I let him live,” said Josie. She took the poison cup from his hand. “Now, I have to

check on Karney, and then I have other things to do with my day.”

She gestured for Seven to join her as she walked toward the house on the cliff.