Inga sighed. “Troll males are difficult.”
“Are the females easy?” I arched my eyebrows.
Given that she was six-and-a-half-feet tall and a perpetual grump, I couldn’t imagine that her human mother—I supposed I didn’t know if she’d had a human mother—had found her easy.
“They are more reasonable.” With a stiff back, Inga strode off after Reb. “It is time for your schooling.”
A distant shout came from the end of the hall, something about warriors not needing schooling.
Most of the time, I regretted that I hadn’t been around when Amber had been growing up. But sometimes, I was secretly relieved that all I’d had to deal with had been murderers and rapists.
“She better be careful if your police officer comes back around,” I told Dimitri as he joined me with his iPad open, photos in the process of being edited. “It’s not legal to hit kids anymore, at least not in this country.”
“Must be a new rule,” Dimitri said. “My dad clobbered me regularly. To man me up.”
“No, it was illegal ten years ago too. As Thad informed me when we were still married and raising toddler-Amber. If she was misbehaving, we were supposed to talk to her about actions and consequences and then have her sit on the naughty step as punishment.”
“It must have worked well. She’s so polite and well-mannered today.”
“I didn’t know your voice could get that sarcastic.”
“Please. Sarcasm is the official language of New York. What do you think of these pictures? Nin is going to help me get an online store up and running, so we can keep selling dragon door knockers even after all of our regular clientele have them.”
I sensed Zav’s aura, not near the shop but back at the house. He must have expected to find me there instead of checking on the shop. Well, he would figure out where I was.
“Make sure to include a photo of the pink one,” I said as Dimitri finished showing me the digital camera roll. “You want buyers to know all of the options available.”
“That option isn’t available.”
“We’ve made three.”
“Not willingly.” Dimitri swiped through the pictures, which looked pretty good. At the least, they were better than the blurry, shadow-engulfed images I took with my phone’s camera. “I’m sticking with black, blue, and green.”
“Girls will want pink and purple.”
“Girls don’t buy dragon door knockers.”
“We’ve sold a bunch to girls.”
“Troll and orc girls. They’re not who’s going to be shopping on Etsy.”
“Have you asked them?”
“Val, they live in caves. UPS doesn’t deliver to caves.”
“Are you sure? They delivered to my mother’s school bus at the campground we stayed at one year.”
“I’m sure the campground had an address,” Dimitri said, his jaw set in a study of mulish obstinacy.
I trusted Nin would talk to him and fix him of his delusions about who did and didn’t shop online for dragon door knockers.
The door opened, and a uniformed police officer walked in.
“Uh oh.” Dimitri lowered his iPad. “That’s the same guy as yesterday.”
The officer, buzz-cut and in his thirties, gazed around the shop, looked at me for a moment, then spotted the door knockers lined up for the photo shoot and squinted at them. Interestingly, he didn’t have an iota of magical blood, not that I could sense. But he was wearing a bracelet that didn’t look regulation but did emit a faint magical signature. It might be designed to help him locate things—or buildings—camouflaged from mundane humans by magic.
He frowned and strode toward the door knockers.
I nudged Dimitri. “Maybe he’s a customer.”
“I doubt it,” Dimitri said glumly.
“If he is, ask if he has any daughters and how they feel about online shopping and pink dragons.”
“You’re not funny.” Dimitri gazed wistfully toward the front door, like a man ready to go on the lam.
I turned him toward the officer. “I’ll go over there to talk to him with you.”
As we headed over, Dimitri still throwing longing glances toward the front door, my phone buzzed.
Where are you? Willard texted.
At the shop. Where are you?
At your house. I went for a short run at Green Lake and decided to stop by.
To use my shower? How many laps is a short run for you? It was just shy of three miles around the lake on the paved path.
Four, and it’s cool out, so I didn’t sweat much.
You ran twelve miles and didn’t sweat much? You’re a machine.
Ha ha. I got that wedding footage I told you about. I was just going to drop it off, but… hang on, I’m getting sass.
Sass? Nobody’s home.
Wait, my senses told me that Zav was still at the house. Why hadn’t he flown over here? Maybe he had paused to trim the topiaries.
Your dragon lover is here giving me sass.
I’ll be right there.
“…implicated in the murder of one Charlie Wu,” the officer was saying, and my ears perked up. Murder?
Distracted by Willard, I hadn’t paid much attention when he started talking to Dimitri, but now, I hurried over to join them. The officer—a detective, his badge said—faltered and seemed startled by my approach. Maybe he’d heard of me. Or maybe he liked blondes and thought I was hot. With a big nose and big ears that the buzz-cut only enhanced, he was on the homely side. Female attention might fluster him.
Just in case it helped, I put my hands on my hips, adjusting my jacket so more of my chest would be on display, and slid my ring finger into a pocket. “Hi, Detective. What’s going on here?”
“Who are you?” He had a Midwestern accent and had to be a new transfer. Most of the Seattle PD knew me by sight. I’d even consulted for them on occasion.
“Val Thorvald. I’m one of the owners here.”
“The door knockers were her idea,” Dimitri said.
I elbowed him. “I simply said to survey the customers and see what they wanted. You came up with the winged T-Rexes all by yourself.” I lowered my voice to whisper, “It’s not nice to throw your business partners under the bus.”
“You have armor and a badass sword,” he whispered back. “You can survive being hit by a bus.”
The detective held up a hand, appearing more annoyed than amused by our banter. What was new? He did steal a glance at my chest, so maybe he was attracted to me. I smiled warmly. Whatever helped keep Dimitri—and our shop—out of trouble.
“I’m Detective Sutherland, here investigating a murder.”
He pulled out a tablet similar to Dimitri’s, managed to fumble it, but recovered it before it fell to the floor. He swore, took a breath, and showed us a photo of the cement walkway up to someone’s house, the wood of the porch charred, the bushes to either side blackened and skeletal, and the door itself charred and warped by fire. The only thing in the photo that wasn’t damaged was a familiar green dragon knocker mounted below the peephole in the door.
“The body was found underneath that thing, that thing that spat a stream of fire at me when I walked up to investigate.” He scowled at me and Dimitri, then pointed to the knockers lined up on the display case. “It’s exactly like those, and the homeowner, after we questioned her, said she bought it here.”