When we returned to the offices, Robin stopped just inside the door and wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Welcome back to you, too,” Sheyenne said as she flitted around from behind her desk.
My olfactory senses are not what they used to be, but even I noticed the aroma. “It does smell like something is off—very off. Has a new client come in?”
Sheyenne was unwrapping packages of evergreen-shaped air fresheners, the kind you normally hang from the rearview mirror of a car. She had purchased an economy-sized multipack. After hanging one of the fresheners in my office, she levitated to affix one to the light fixture in the conference room, then came back out. “The smell’s been getting worse for days—a fishy stench like slime and sewage mixed together, bubbling up from down below. I’ve been trying to mask the odor, but it’s a losing battle.”
Robin frowned. “An odor that strong could drive away business.”
“Or, around here, it might attract a certain sort of clientele,” I said. “I’ll go downstairs and have a look. I’ve been meaning to check out the new entrance into the sewer labyrinth anyway.”
Sheyenne asked, “Do you want to take a bottle of wine or some cookies to welcome the new neighbors?”
Robin suggested, “Or some nice air fresheners.”
“Let’s start with a bit of recon. Since we don’t even know what species they are, I’ll just say hi if the new neighbors happen to be down there, and do a little investigating.”
Back down on the first floor, I followed the hall to the normally closed door labeled “Basement Access.” Chambeaux & Deyer had kept offices in this building for years, but I’d never investigated down there. Unnaturals have a highly developed sense of privacy, and it’s not polite to go snooping in other people’s basements. You never know what you might find there.
Now, however, the door was unlocked, and Mr. Renfeld had added “Access for Tenants Only Please and another sign, Conserve miasma. Please close the door behind you.”
I entered the stairwell, dutifully pulling the door shut behind me. Oily fumes wafted up from the lower levels, and a standard Exit sign glowed above the door. The steps creaked as I descended, an intentional add-on for atmospheric effect.
I reached the sublevel and walked along the corridor where I saw the closed doorways of the four recently renovated apartments. The doors were numbered, –1, –2, –3, –4. There were no names listed. I could hear burbling sounds from behind one, eerie snake-charmer–style music from another. The other two were quiet.
At the end of the basement corridor, I discovered the source of the stench—and it wasn’t the new tenants. A door leading into the Unnatural Quarter sewer levels was propped wide open with a doorstop. The odors of the underground labyrinth swirled in, undeterred, and the stink was rising up to the second floor and beyond.
I kicked loose the doorstop and closed the door tight. Problem solved. Once the underlevels aired out, that should stop most of the stench.
From my glimpse of the sewers, it certainly didn’t seem like a place where a mad scientist could concentrate on his work, but for some reason evil geniuses preferred the redolent underground tunnels. I knew I would be going back there soon to track down Jody Caligari’s landlord. First, though, I wanted a little more background. And I knew exactly where to get it.
It’s good to have a friend in the real-estate business, even if that friend is a troll. Even if he lives in a cemetery. Even if his main business offices are inside a crypt left untenanted when the former owner rose from the dead and surrendered the property.
I had first met Edgar Allan the troll when I retrieved a stolen painting by a ghost artist. Since then, he’d been a good resource for certain types of information, and he had used me for real-estate leads. An ambitious agent with a wide range of properties to sell, from haunted houses to no-longer-needed cemetery plots, Edgar Allan was always looking for customers. I thought he could help me out now with Jody’s case.
Robin was ready to use any legal means at her disposal to get justice for the young genius, to retrieve his possessions and his security deposit, as well as restore his laboratory space—preferably with six months’ rent as punitive damages. But when you dig deep in the Unnatural Quarter, you often find more than you expected, and I wanted some background about the sewer slumlord before we provoked him.
I hadn’t visited the Greenlawn Cemetery for a while, and I saw that the grave plots had been neatly mowed, fresh bouquets arranged in vases, and even a playground added. Edgar Allan had been working hard to make this place a respectable post-life community, to keep the customers happy, and to increase property values.
I easily spotted the crypt that served as his home office. Streamers with colorful plastic triangular flags fluttered in the breeze. Balloons bobbed up and down, and a sign said, “Models Now Open.”
Edgar Allan had turned his own crypt into a show home. As I shambled up to the front door, his business partner, Burt, an ugly troll who served as an eviction specialist when necessary, lumbered out carrying a stack of “Open House Today” signs. He grunted a greeting to me. Burt was a troll of few words and many teeth. He could be a rough customer, but we were on the same side. Usually.
Spotting me, Edgar Allan scurried out the front door of the crypt. “Mr. Chambeaux! How can we meet your real-estate needs?” He was a much smaller troll than his partner, with fidgety hands and simian features, grayish skin, pointed ears, pointed nose, and a pointed face. He continued to chatter, as if he feared he would lose a sale if he let me get a word in. “I have some fine new properties to show you. Lovely locations. I’ve been following your adventures, by the way. I see the novels on the best-seller lists.”
“Those aren’t exactly my adventures,” I said, aware that it was a losing battle. “They’re just—”
“Now that you’re such a famous zombie detective, you really should upgrade your office space. Chambeaux and Deyer Investigations could be the flagship of an entire new business park. I’m an investor in several that are under construction.”
Even with the smells, though, I was comfortable with our current location. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m a creature of habit. You’re our guy if we ever decide to move, but that’s not in the cards just yet. We still have two years left on our lease.”
“Plenty of ways out of that, Mr. Chambeaux, provided the customer’s motivated.”
“We’re not at all motivated at present,” I said.
He looked saddened but accepting. “That’s often said about zombies, I’m afraid. Lack of motivation. Well, if you do find someone who’s in the market to buy or sell, be sure to pass them along.”
“I always do,” I said.
Before I could blink, he whipped out a stack of business cards and pressed them into my hand. “If you need more, tell me.”
I still had hundreds of his cards back at the office, but it was more polite to accept them than to turn them down. Edgar Allan used a fast and cheap online printing service that produced his cards by the millions.
“I need some background information for a pro bono case Robin and I picked up. We’re fighting a wrongful eviction. Our client was kicked out with no warning, and all his possessions were confiscated.”
Edgar Allan invited me into his headquarters crypt, so we could discuss the matter. “I’ve been on both sides of these sorts of conflicts, Mr. Chambeaux. Although the evicted tenant may seem to be a poor, downtrodden victim, landlords are often the oppressed ones. Renters will trash a place, move out in the middle of the night, and then complain about not getting their security deposits back when they’ve left the place a shambles.”
I lowered myself into a chair next to his desk. “That’s not the case here.” The stone walls were graced with framed photos of Edgar Allan shaking hands with satisfied customers, celebrity visitors, and lots of smiling people I did not recognize. “Our client is twelve years old, and he had a mad scientist laboratory in the sewers. I was hoping you might know the landlord, give me a little background—confidentially, of course—before I start turning the thumbscrews.”
The troll froze. His large yellow eyes blazed like lamps. “A landlord … in the sewers, you say?”
“Yes, I hear laboratory space there is at a premium, a waiting list a mile long.”
Edgar Allen said cautiously, “Oh, there are units for rent, but priced out of the market. Evil crime lords and supervillains like to have their bases underground, but the only real landlord in the sewers is … you don’t want to mess with that one, Mr. Chambeaux.”
“I’ve been hired to do exactly that,” I said, on guard. “What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s taken over the underworld. His name is”—Edgar Allan paused as if afraid to say it, and then spoke quickly—“Ah’Chulhu!”
“Gesundheit,” I said.
The troll nervously shuffled papers on his desk. “No, that’s his name. Ah’Chulhu. A demon with a bad disposition, and he’s one of the worst. A burbly, tentacle-faced type. He’s been taking over the sewers, buying up property. He wants to be the real-estate agent for the whole underworld.”
It could just have been professional jealousy I was hearing, but Edgar Allan seemed genuinely frightened. “Ah’Chulhu’s been expanding his holdings, selling off some of his less desirable properties. You might have seen the flyers he mailed out advertising his crazy sale, the End of Days Days?”
“I never look at the sales flyers, just throw them right in the recycler. What do I have to worry about with this Ah’Chulhu?”
“Everything,” Edgar Allan said.
“I mean specifically.”
“Everything, specifically,” the troll said. “I wouldn’t go near him. He owns those sewers, has gator-guys for henchmen, mutated alligators that were once flushed down toilets and now they walk upright, though still with a slouch. If your client has run afoul of Ah’Chulhu, he’d better just slink away.”
I frowned. “That’s not how I like to solve cases.”
“Maybe you should worry more about surviving this case than solving it.”
I didn’t point out that I was dead already, but young Jody Caligari had more to lose. “Thanks for the warning. Good thing I stopped by.”
I was glad I hadn’t let Robin barge right in and stir up trouble. I’d met tentacle-faced demons in passing once or twice before, and they were definitely not warm, fuzzy types. They preferred cold and slimy.
“Beware of Ah’Chulhu,” Edgar Allan warned me again. “But if you see him, could you give him one of my cards and ask if he’d be interested in co-representing a property or two?”