Free The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney Page B

Duilio said firmly. “We’re going to have to hunt her down.”
    Joaquim frowned. “Is that your gift speaking, too?”
    How could he answer that without lying to Joaquim? He wasn’t ready to hand over all the truth yet, not until he was
sure
she was a sereia. “I have reason to believe she won’t go to the police.”
    Joaquim’s expression showed he recognized that evasion for what it was. “I’m not supposed to be inve st igating this any longer.”
    That had never st opped Joaquim before.
    “I’ll go talk to the submersible captains,” Duilio told him, “and ask if they’ve seen a new house in the water.” A handful of entrepreneurial captains had inve st ed in submersible crafts that could be attached to their ships, pumping air down into vessels that would allow their passengers to go underwater and view the artwork. Despite the co st of maintaining what were essentially oversized diving bells, the inve st ment had reportedly paid off. Their tours of the artwork were filled by the idle wealthy and the curious. Duilio had even gone down in one of the vessels a couple of times himself. He tapped his fingers on the chair’s arm, weighing what he mo st needed from Joaquim. “Could you put together a li st of places an upper servant might go if left on her own? Between positions, perhaps. Not a lot of money. A hotel or apartment?”
    “More likely a rented room.” Joaquim fell silent, probably mulling over what needed to be done. “I’ll st ay late tonight,” he said after a moment. “I’ll put together a li st and drop it off by the house.”
    Duilio hid a smile. While Joaquim might not be allowed to expend further police time and resources on the inve st igation, Duilio hadn’t had any doubt that he would help on his own time. Joaquim had a revolutionary st reak in his soul. He counted every one of those missing servants the equal of Lady Isabel Amaral, and kept their names in neat files in his cabinet at the st ation.
    Once they’d made a conne ct ion between the missing servants and the work of art, it hadn’t taken too long to confirm that each of the servants, all of whom worked in great houses along the Street of Flowers, had disappeared within a few days of the appearance of their ma st ers’ homes in the artwork. Mo st of those servants had claimed they’d been offered positions elsewhere. Others said they were going home to visit family in the country. It had taken time to determine that those events hadn’t ever happened. It had taken a good deal more effort to determine that
every
household represented in the artwork had lo st two servants. Mo st hadn’t bothered to report their servants’ absence, assuming their employees had indeed moved on to other positions.
    Even so, they couldn’t
concretely
tie the missing servants to the houses. When the police had made inquiries about opening one of the houses, an order had come back almo st immediately to shut down the inve st igation.
    Joaquim’s hands had been tied after that, but he had st ill helped Duilio in his efforts to track down the arti st , Gabriel Espinoza. Unfortunately the man had disappeared from the city completely, but he couldn’t be doing the work alone. There had to be a number of coconspirators to create an artwork of this size, not only builders and watermen to get the artwork into the river, but someone had to be funding all of that as well. They had researched how the houses were built and how they were chained to huge weights on the river’s bed. They had tried tracking down some of the building materials, from shipments of wood to the proper grade of chain. Unfortunately, so far all their leads had gone nowhere. Duilio hoped that finding Miss Paredes would breathe some new life into the inve st igation.
    “I can’t help you look today,” Joaquim finally allowed, “but I can ask the officers at the front desk to tell me if they hear anything from the Amaral woman.”
    “Thank you,” Duilio said. “I’ll