More than twelve hours had passed since Athena Rex's murder, and Dianthea had yet to leave the bar at Comstock Saloon.

The barkeeper, Olympia, had left her snoozing on the bar overnight, which wasn't great for the young officer's back, and certainly not for her neck, which got stiffer with each moment since she awoke, but at least she didn't have to go home. Fuck that old song lyric adage, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." She didn't go home, and she did stay here, and she had woken up to find a breakfast stout pushed up against her face — a nice, big, room temperature British pint. Oddly, the British pint was the size of some ounces more volume than the American pint — she didn't know how many off the top of her hangover foggy head.

The site of a real-life, honest to goodness speakeasy barroom, Comstock Saloon paid homage to the time during the prohibition era when the 18th Amendment made illegal the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." Shades kept the windows dark for a better morning drunk vibe, and the ancient furniture and appointments consisted of three materials: hardwood, leather, and brass. A cocktail bar, it had no beer taps, but a curated selection of bottled hipster craft beers hung out in the fridge behind the bartender, to be ordered off-menu by those in the know.

The first thing Dianthea did after waking up was pull a laptop out of the briefcase at her feet (not an easy maneuver for a hungover drunky), retrieve from a suit pocket the thumb drive with Malyssa's crime scene photos, and email the shots to her sister and Inspector Prince. Or the second, after taking a couple of gulps of warm, blackish beer. The rest of the morning, she sat drinking and enjoying the stories told to her by every patron who came into the bar. The regulars, purportedly needing a seat to eat breakfast sandwiches and sausages from the hole in the wall next door but ordering various spirits to pour into their coffees, embellished everything they had seen on cable news and read on their Facebook feeds.

"One day, Senator Rex is fighting crime, making grandiose speeches, and saving the world. The next, she's history. Of course, anyone who didn't see that one coming has been into too much giggle water."

"I don't think the Pigeon's dead at all. The whole thing was staged. No body? Who's going to believe that one?"

The voices floated around Dianthea as if disembodied themselves. As she nursed her recovery pint, she wondered if any of these strangers' ideas might open her mind up to a lead on the case.

A woman asked her friend on the next stool, "Think it was the mob did her, Joe?"

"The simplest solution is often the correct one. But the mafia whacking her? That's too perfect a poetic justice to be true." The man who oughta be Joe laughed uproariously.

That conversation turned its back on Dianthea, too quiet for her to overhear, but minutes later, a couple of gents passed behind. "They say the body disappeared. Doesn't that mean it could come back?" one asked as he squeezed between her stool and the wall.

"That's right, as a ghost, to haunt your tax dodging ass."

Mid-morning, Leander hopped up onto the stool next to her. "What's the latest?" she asked with a perkiness that was not usual for her. The twenty-two-ounce bottle, which was now a two-thirds poured into a glass that was quickly approaching half-empty, read "Founder's Coffee Stout," and the caffeine explained her energy. Only the continual imbibing of libations would be sustaining her. Combatting withdrawal and keeping her in calories.

Wiping a stein on her grimy apron, Olympia came over with a stern eye for Leander. "You should bring your partner something to eat." It seemed the woman had gained sympathy for Officer Alafoggianis due to the mistaken assumption that she had been working the case all night. "There's sausages next door."

Leander slung his badge at her. "Are you the one who served her? You wanna look at me like that? I could fine you. She should fine you." His head cocked sideways to indicate Dianthea. "Here, I'll serve the bar, you go get the sausages. Lots of sauerkraut, please."

His gaze stayed on her until her incredulity faded, and she realized he was serious. When she turned to hustle away, he admitted, "I'm not going to serve the bar," and he watched her until she went out the front door on a sausage mission.

Drawing his Samsung, he reviewed the crime scene photos from Malyssa's camera, ignoring Dianthea's laptop though it was open on the counter to the same; its keyboard was gunky with crumbs, grease, spirits, who knew. Flipping through pictures with his finger, he said, "I arrested the husband last night."

His partner patted him on the back in congratulations, and raised her pint for a cheers, but he didn't have a drink. And he ignored her. "Adoni Rex is back in his apartment, safe and sound, and a free man. No reason to hold him. These pictures are no help, and we don't have a body. How do you lay down murder charges without a body? I didn't even know you could get such charges to stick. I woke up at dawn to Google it this morning. Wanna know how many murder convictions have been made without a body in the United States this century? Fifty-six. In a hundred years. And there's a reason cases where the body is never recovered get thrown out. A missing person could be turned into a homicide charge with photoshop and a few bought witnesses."

He paused and flipped back through Malyssa's photos. Nine in a row zoomed in on Athena's left hand, instead of the usual number: one up close, one mid-range, one far away. Fog had taken an additional six from slightly different angles — but negligibly different enough to be redundant. "Why so many of the victim's hands?" he mumbled. Then he corrected, "Of her left hand." The prescribed three of the right hand, but nine of the left. Staring, squinting, tilting his head side to side, he flipped between the nine photos, back and forth until he lost his temper, shook his head, and threw the phone down onto the brass bar. "Another missing corpse. Nothing we can do but cross our fingers and hope the next one they'll make a mistake. The next one. Is that how this department is going to work from now on? It's not Adoni Rex. It's not the Sigler mafia. The best I can figure it's their rivals. And if it's a rival gang, they will get away with it because we have nothing — and no way to get anything. I swear I'm going to get Lacy Andreou and shut the bars closed in her face myself, but first, there are going to be more bodies. I can't work with this."

Picking up his massive Samsung — and missing the shocked look on her face that she just took up his phone without asking — Dianthea displayed perhaps the first real interest in the case. With uncharacteristic savviness, she asked, "How do you know it's not the Sigler mafia?"

Since she wasn't even looking at him, she was looking at the phone screen, it wasn't hard to pull off a shrug and a rationalization. "The Siglers control so much. Including a not-insignificant portion of the force. I don't think they even need to pull a move like this." When he snatched the phone back, his lightning-quick reflexes may have betrayed a nervousness of what she might find on there. Casually, as if checking his messages, he slunk back on the stool, closed all of the open apps, and turned on Do Not Disturb before allowing Dianthea to see his screen again. All innocence, as if he just didn't want her to see any evidence of "U up?" calls. "Why do I get the feeling your sister is trying to tell us something? She knows something. And I wanna know what she knows and won't say except through her photography portfolio." If that seemed like a non sequitur, his partner showed no sign of noticing.

As if to be comforting, Dianthea pointed out, "There's always that Jimmy Lambeti, private eye, we can pin it on."

Leander ignored her again, and he had another non sequitur up his sleeve. "A lot of Andreous have been going away. They're more likely to be that mad at Senator Rex, even if her efforts only put away the occasional button man. My guess is it's the small fry gang behind this.

"We do nothing but react and let the body count pile up. There's nothing we *can* do but take pretty pictures of the crime scenes and wait for a murder that gives us something. Where's the big break?"

Dianthea spent a minute looking at the photos of Athena's left hand as well. Then she handed the phone back to him and said, "Sorry, I don't see anything. Maybe the next one." She took off to use the loo.

Just as he had been afraid, while they had been talking, a new text came in from a contact he had labeled Auntie Sylvia. It was encoded, which made it read like gibberish — which would be suspicious even to an unobservant slacker like his partner. He wouldn't even be able to read it until he ran a decryption app on it. It didn't even matter; he knew what it would say. It was obvious Mena Sigler was mad this was being pinned on her family, and it wasn't fair because she wasn't even responsible. The heat up her fanny was making her unhappy. The ire made him believe her. She was in no way involved, she insisted, in the senator's death.

Breathing deep in lamentation, he scrolled up through his messages, further back in time. Before he even opened the last text he had ever received from Senator Rex, he remembered what it said verbatim. By some magic luck. "How old are you now, thirteen? Just messing with you, child. Many happy returns." The tear that gathered and stung his eyeball was all too real.

Athena was good people.

"I lost my hat," was the first thing Detective Fog said to Jimmy upon her return.

She went to her inner office and came back with a spare plopped on her head. "This isn't a crime scene anymore?" she asked.

"Nope," said Jimmy. "There's not much here."

"Still, fast work. Fast cleanup," said Detective Fog.

Jimmy spun toward her on the desk chair. "I found a clue," he said and waited for the applause to begin before continuing. Fog clapped her hands together lightly and silently, a big grin on her face. "Turns out the wedding ring of Athena's finger was not her own matrimonial band. Pretty creepy. You had a good shot of her hand in your photographs — which your sister stole and then emailed to me. I'm surprised she recovered so well from her Sunday night beverages. Officer Alafoggianis is keeping us abreast of everything." He entered the password to Malyssa's laptop to call up the photos.

"Nice of her. Who's ring is it?" Fog peered over his shoulder at her own photography work.

Jimmy shrugged back and adjusted his own hat on his head. "That's not going to be easy to determine, Detective. And there's something else weird about it, if you think about it. Or wait, I just realized, you must not have seen footage of the murder!" He sat ramrod straight at the abrupt cognizance that he'd shown the security recording to the other twin. A few taps and a click called up the video. "Officer Dianthea wanted this, so she took my whole computer," he said to Detective Fog's complete lack of interest or reaction.

Watching the video with a worried expression, Malyssa crossed her arms. The gunshot rang off, and she squeezed short fingernails into her skin.

Jimmy spoke over the silent footage of the shooter leaving out the door, the way he or she had come. "The police insinuated that the figure in the hat and cloak could be me. But they haven't arrested me yet, so that makes one of us. Did Dexter Mars get ahold of you? He called here all night asking for you, dialing back every minute for the first hour, and then every ten minutes. I assumed when the calling stopped at three a.m., it was because he found you. He showed no sign up to that point of falling asleep or giving up."

Clearing her throat, Malyssa shook her head. It seemed not to be a shake of negation, but a shake to get her cranium back in the game, because she answered, "Yes. He got ahold of me. He wants to hire me to investigate Athena's murder. It seems like a conflict of interest, but I'm taking the cash; it's a good thing I don't have corporate bylaws in my company." On the horizon, the fog started to roll in from the west, just when she no longer needed shade from the blinding sunshine." You're wanted for Athena's murder, and I'm wanted for Paul Aniston's and Nick Minardos's. Except Adoni Rex is also wanted for Athena's murder. Well, you know how it goes, chaps. The only way to clear all of our names is to find the real killer!"

Her enthusiasm met a deadpan expression from her business partner.

Shifting gears, she proceeded to her usual spot on the couch. "Why was Adoni brought in for questioning?"

"He tried to kill himself with an antique firearm." Jimmy looked away from the laptop screen to face her with raised eyebrows. "The weapon also endangered Inspector Prince since it was cracked and not safe to discharge. My gut says, even though they released him last night, it's not over. That doesn't look like Adoni on the footage — he's a bigger gentleman — but he coulda hired someone.

"Despite your sister's returning the digital photos, I don't see the police cooperating with us. Who knows what they have to build the case against Adoni. It might make sense for you to work on your relationships at this time so we can get the inside scoop. Prince is the obvious target. No offense, but I don't think your sister likes you very much. Bad blood? Still?"

"Only when it comes to the proper execution of police work," said Fog. "Inspector Prince may prove a greater problem. If he's good police, he'll be on to me for real, and if he's bad police, well, you know. We have a chance with him if he's middling police. Most signs point to that, to be honest. He doesn't rat on Dianthea for shirking her duties, so how by the book can he be?"

Detective Fog found the photos returned by Dianthea in her inbox. She opened the digital shots and flipped through to the close up of Athena's left hand with the wedding ring that wasn't hers. "Like I said," said Jimmy, "she had it on before the murder — there's no footage of the murderer switching the rings on the security feed. How the hell are we going to find out whose ring this is?"

The ring was plainly not Athena's. A quick Google search including hundreds of images of the senator at hundreds of events revealed hers to be a thick 14k yellow gold band that had been worn independently of her diamond engagement ring for about a decade. The band in this picture was similar in size and color, but a very close look had Jimmy convinced it wasn't the same band; plus, it had been paired with a gaudy, cheap diamond engagement ring.

"How did you ever notice the wedding band wasn't 14k from this picture?" asked Detective Fog. "I mean, once you point it out, I can tell it doesn't look the same as these other hundred pictures, but it's close enough that I would never have looked twice."

"The thing is," said Jimmy, "there's so little evidence to examine that it's easy to overanalyze every little detail and leave no stone unturned. It felt like a waste of time waiting for you to come back from your prison stay and for the DNA results to come in — although those might never be passed along to us if you don't put effort into your police contacts. I was bored. The stains on the carpet, the crime scene photos, and the security footage are our only evidence, period.

"I've verified the outfit is her own, as you can see she wore it to address the Delta Veterans Group two years ago. The hat's new, but she wore it at a fundraiser last month for 'life-threatening diseases.' The shoes were hard to find; I think she's had those leather stilettos for a decade but hasn't worn them in any head to toe shots in the past seven years or so. I guess I went a little crazy when I saw the ring had been switched, it probably wasn't necessary to examine the rest of her apparel, but it passed the time. Now the real detective is here to solve the crime."

He watched Detective Fog expectantly. She made her way around the office and back to the couch where she had sat last night with Cassandra Aniston, so many murders ago.

With a shake of her head, she said, "I don't have any answers for you. Did Cassandra get home all right?"

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. Let me know what you think of the story so far! Who dunnit, guys?

This book will update again on Friday. If you are looking for more to read, check out my other Constellations novel, Stars Rise.