Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

“I don’t know how your sister did it, but she put all the webcams in a loop,” I told Julius. “I can even tell you the time she did it. Eight forty-two. That was when you were in the shower. I know this because when I examine the webcam feed from the office, the Cartier Venetian clock — the one Lou Heffernan gave you for saving his neck — is stuck showing the time as eight forty-two. I apologize for missing this earlier, but I’ve already adjusted my neuron-network programming so I won’t miss it again. I’ve also reset all the webcams, and they now seem to be operating properly.”

Julius grunted softly for my benefit. Instead of ordering his sister from his chair, he headed for the chair opposite his desk, content to take the seat where he usually placed suspected murderers. As he did this, I had a hunch as to how he knew that his sister was waiting for him in his office, and I asked him about it.

“You must’ve picked up a fragrance or some other scent from her. Maybe a whiff of a perfume, or a distinctive soap or lotion that she uses.”

While I have highly sensitive visual and audio circuitry that allows me to “see” in far greater detail than Julius or anyone else is capable of and pick up frequencies outside of human hearing, I lack olfactory senses, which at times puts me at a disadvantage, as well as making the concept of odors an abstraction that I haven’t yet been able to get a handle on. My hunch would’ve explained how Julius detected his sister’s presence while I had been clueless about it, and I was feeling a sense of self-satisfaction that I had figured it out, at least until the moment Julius gave me a signal that that wasn’t how he’d known his sister was in his office. Once he was seated with his right leg crossed over his left knee, Julius showed his sister his best poker face, which was a damned good one, and casually remarked how this made two visits in six months after twelve years of not seeing each other.

“Normally, I’d be delighted,” Julius added, “Except I’m guessing that you’re in some sort of trouble. Should we discuss it now, or after coffee and breakfast?”

Julia’s impish smile muted a bit. “Now would be better. I’d like to meet with your assistant, Archie Smith. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so much, I’ve been unable to find any trace of him. It’s as if he doesn’t really exist.”

“Interesting. And why do you wish to meet with Archie?”

“I’m sure you already know the answer to that.”

“Humor me.”

Julia removed her feet from Julius’s desk, and sat up straighter in the chair. “I’d like to know how he, or you, really found which overseas flight I was on the last time I came here, because I don’t believe for one second the fiction you tried foisting off on me.”

After Julius’s townhouse was blown up and all the media outlets were reporting that Julius had perished in the explosion, he suspected that his sister would be flying to the U.S. from somewhere in Europe so that she could attend his funeral and seek retribution for his death, and he tasked me to figure out which flight she’d be taking. Given that I didn’t know what name she’d be using or which airport she’d be flying out of, or even where she’d be flying to, and that all I had was a fourteen-year-old photo of her, the task amounted to finding a needle in a very large hay silo. I lucked out when I located video of her after hacking into the Bucharest International Airport’s security system, and from that I was able to discover the assumed name she was using and the rest of her travel information. Given that Julius would’ve had better odds of being dealt a straight flush in one of his poker games than I did of tracking her down that day, I could understand her suspicions.

Without any crack in his poker face, Julius murmured, “Indeed.”

“Yes, indeed,” she said, with little effort to disguise her sarcasm. “I’ll tell you a secret. Even my company doesn’t have the technology to pull off something like that. So I’d like to know how you did it. Or your mythical assistant, Archie Smith.”

“Did your company send you?”

“No. For obvious reasons, I never reported to them what happened.” Her expression softened, and she added, “As you surmised earlier, dear brother, I’m in trouble. Since taking on my latest assignment, I’ve had three attempts on my life. I’m hoping whatever technology you used to track me down that day can help me find my assassin before he’s able to try a fourth time.”

While Julius maintained his poker face, the fingers on his right hand began drumming along the arm of his chair, which indicated either impatience or nervousness, and this time I wasn’t sure which. This lasted for six point four seconds before his right hand again came to a rest.

“There’s an easier remedy to your problem. Quit right now. Stay in Boston. The offer I made you before, to be my partner, still stands.”

She displayed a wan smile over that prospect. “It wouldn’t stop the attempts on my life. All I’d accomplish by doing that would be to draw my assassin to Boston. Sorry, Julius, but my best strategy for staying alive is to track down this assassin, find out who hired him, and one way or another put an end to it.”