Interviewing the Alleged Alegari (Part 6)

Posted on Wed 22nd May, 2019 @ 1:59pm by Commander Jasmine Collins-Keller & Lieutenant Adam Keller & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

1,562 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Orchids & Jazz Loft
Timeline: MD 2, 1300

Previously ... Part 5

After the server left, Tanith took a tiny sip of champagne and returned to their conversation. "Plants? Really? You're going to drink champagne--or tea, I suppose--over a woman who likes plants." She laughed a deep throaty laugh, then set her glass down and leaned forward to say in a deadly quiet voice, "A woman who doesn't even exist. None of us do. You have nothing to celebrate."

"I disagree," Damion said. "And for a woman who claims not to exist, you seem quite real to me. Am I not even to celebrate your survival, the battles you've surely fought?"

She shrugged, leaning back and picked up her glass again, swirling the champagne a little. Another sip of her favorite slid down nicely. Like her, it wasn't the most expensive thing on the menu. Like her, it had its fans anyway.

Despite her nonchalance, Damion privately agreed that, in many ways she didn't exist. Zelda had appeared as a singer in a music group for several years, touring the outskirts of the Federation. Before that, she'd been the daughter of a freighter captain who'd died. But before that, try as they might, the analysts and researchers in his department had been unable to track Zelda Alegari's origin. He suspected they would have as much difficulty tracking down Tanith Endrade; they might as well hunt for Victoria Antoinette Scharleau while they were at it. "In any case, you're here now, and I've met you. We're a pair of survivors sitting down to a meal--but I think your road has been harsher than mine."

"Hard to compare," she said, putting the glass down and leaning forward on her arms again. "I don't know anything about your hardships ... and you don't know anything about mine. Nor do you care. You have some agenda for bringing me here, or we would still be in the dingy interrogation room, or I'd be back in my sparkly little cell." Tanith wiggled her fingers to imitate sparkly. "So why don't we skip the getting-to-know-you routine and get right to the point. Why am I here? What is it you think you'll learn from me in this fancy little jazz club?"

"You're not in the interview room because Destiny wanted to go on an adventure, and we were willing to indulge her--to a point," Damion said. "I brought you to this restaurant because you were here once in the recent past--one of you was here. And while you were here, you either made contact with someone, or that person made contact with you. Whoever had control of your body at the time kept a close eye on him. The person you contacted here has committed at least one murder and, we suspect, may have used you to commit other murders. That ring the doctors removed from your finger was not put there just for decoration--and you don't strike me as the sort of person who would shy away from killing if you absolutely had to."

Ring ... that rang a bell. Ha, ha! she thought, then took control of her thoughts. She looked down at her finger, for some reason touching the third finger, where there was a slight indentation from a circlet worn for several years. She clenched her fist. That wasn't the ring he meant. "A ring was removed from my finger? Which hand?" she asked, trying not to panic. Tanith was the one who knew everything. If she'd been wearing a ring, she should know about it.

Her eyes wandered the main floor of the restaurant, not looking at the man across from her, and not resting on a particular spot, but she did remember being here, and she knew the table where she'd sat. Bringing her attention back to him, she asked, "Why was it removed?"

Adam kept his attention on Jasmine but focused his mind on the woman's thoughts. He felt a change as she walked into the club. This was no longer the same woman. Another personality? This one was definitely more calculating. Dangerous? he wondered. His first thought was it had been a mistake to use Jasmine in this ruse. The woman recognized something, but Adam wasn't sure exactly what it was.

"It was removed from the middle finger of your left hand," Damion told her in as calming a tone as he could. He lowered his voice, not wanting to alarm nearby guests. "It contained lamia toxin--not much, but you don't need much."

He would swear by all the training he'd ever had that, in this instant, Tanith was as confused as Zelda. Damion could see her wrestling with it, and he hated being the one to make her feel that way; she so clearly needed to control her environment most of the time--which told him that she had been powerless at some point in her life.

Adam felt a rush of fear, confusion, and a forced calm. "She's trying not to panic." Adam looked at his wife. "Jasmine, I want you to leave." He looked at her and gave a firm look. He wasn't suggesting this. "Kiss me goodbye, slap my face, anything that says you're leaving and then go straight to the exit. No lingering conversations."

"What's wrong?" Jasmine tried to look around Adam's shoulder but he stopped her.

"Don't." He ordered in a whisper. "I'm not sure. She's trying not to panic. She's confused. That can make people dangerous and I don't want you here IF something happens."

Jasmine nodded and smiled. "I'll go check on the girls." She stood up with a smile. Adam stood as she left her seat. He kissed his wife and nodded as if she were telling him what she was doing.

"I love you. I'll see you at home." He whispered and then watched her go down the stairs before sitting back in his chair and ordering another drink. He directed his attention back to his target.

Tanith's eyes followed the pretty young woman as she walked away from the man who might be her husband or her contracted bond, or just a lover. Nice life if you can get it, she thought, using the moment to distract herself, to calm down as she struggled to understand that she'd been wearing a suicide ring ... or something someone could have used to kill her, perhaps.

She looked back at the man across from her. "You're telling me I would have committed suicide ... or someone would have murdered me if I were no longer useful. I'm going to presume you wouldn't tell me this if you couldn't prove it, so which do you suppose it was? I don't think I'm the type to end it all in a fit of ... what? Anger? Despair? I think I'm more the type to try to take my enemy with me, don't you?"

"No, that is not what I'm telling you," Damion said with a brief shake of his head. "I'm telling you that we're not Sherlock Holmes, so we don't know why you wore that ring--not for certain. There are several possibilities." He counted them out on his fingers. "One: You're into body modification and wanted it permanent, so you had the ring imbedded, yourself, of your happy free will. Two: You accepted wearing the ring as a condition of employment and may or may not have known about the poison inside it, and you may or may not have been happy about having to wear it. And three: Some right bastard did that to you, without your consent, and you are entirely unwilling. If it was done without your consent, you may have blocked it from your memory.

"Problem with story #1: No reputable body modifier would ever do something to you that could only be reversed with surgical dematerialization. That ring was implanted into your bone with titanium prongs. Without a surgical transporter, it would've taken a supernova to budge the thing. Also, you didn't notice the ring was gone until I pointed it out to you. If you'd had it put in of your own free will, I'd think you'd have missed it before now.

"Problem with story #2: Not much of one, frankly. Find an eccentric employer offering enough latinum to retire on if you'll just do a simple thing, and many will take the job, nae matter what bizarre conditions the eccentric bloke puts on them. I think you're daring enough to accept an odd condition, and I think Destiny feels she's immortal and might plunge into something dangerous with little thought--she seems calculating but impulsive. Zelda--not willingly.

"Problem with story #3: It would take a very, very sick mind to force a person to wear a deadly item of jewelry they could not remove without the certainty of killing themselves trying." Damion grimaced. "And yet, I used to wear something similar--and it was implanted for the best possible reason--keeping the peace. Even so, the Starfleet doctors were horrified by it when I explained what it was."

Damion spread his hands apart. "So--not proof, but circumstantial evidence and a bit of psychological extrapolation from a man practicing psychology without a license. In the end, you're still a great question mark, Miss Endrade. But you not remembering that poison ring worries me a great deal."

To be continued ....

 

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