Under the Floorboards (and In the Walls)

Dear Aunt Tildy, Please Continue-Lucy

"Ok so here's the plan."

We were in the living room. Lockwood was laying out the battle plan.

"George. I want you in the archives. Find out anything you can find."

"About what?"

"About your aunt's house. The serial killer in the park that we got the first skull from. The house Sophie Wilde died at. There has to be a connection."

I shook my head slowly.

"What?" Lockwood looked at me. "Do you have a different idea?"

"There is a connection, but not in the sources. But what happened to the sources. Someone put the source in my room. I think someone put the source in the coal. This was an assassination."

"Technically," George said. "An assassination is fueled by politics. Unless you're running for city councilwoman or being appointed Secretary of the Interior, this is just a murder."

"Thank you for clarifying, George. I'm glad to know someone is just trying to murder Lucy." Lockwood scowled at George.

"They knew where I slept and that I had been moved down here."

"Which means they're watching the house," Lockwood finished. "That really ticks me off."

"Wait!" George said excitedly. "You said that Kipps said that that old lady was hit by a truck. That could be the connection."

"It would be a stretch." Lockwood pointed out.

"By itself, yes." George argued, a bright gleam coming into his eye as it did when he was figuring something out, no matter how gruesome. "But not really. Sophie claimed that sources were being planted. It looks like someone got wind of that and lured her into a house to kill her."

"Kind of like what Fairfax did to us!" I exclaimed.

"Exactly. Then they offed the only witness to it. The old lady who hired and lied to Wilde. With a truck. We get robbed by someone using a truck as a distraction and then find out the stolen source was reused."

"What I don't get," I said, leaning back on the sofa, "Is the why. Why kill agents? Why kill me?"

Lockwood rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Do you think," he began, "that it's a coincidence that Sophie, the most talented agent with Touch in London and you, Lucy Carlyle who can speak with Type Three's, were both targets?"

"I don't see how that's connected," I opposed. "They don't know about me talking with Type Threes."

Lockwood sighed.

George fiddled with his pen. He was getting ink all over his fingers.

I was about to suggest that we call up Kipps. He might have some fresh perspective. But then the bell rang.

George jumped up.

"You get the door," Lockwood commanded. "I'll clean up." Lockwood tried to remove all evidence that I had been sleeping and basically living down here. Not a good show for a prospective client to have an injured agent.

Lockwood was standing with a tea pot and a stack of cups looking like he was about to toss them under a sofa cushion when George walked in with an elderly lady. She was carrying a covered dish.

"Good morning dearies! George has told me all about his nice young friends. Ah Lucy! How is the legs? And Lockwood, tea! How lovely. Yes, I would adore a cup. I just popped by to say hello and bring you this cake and see how you were doing. Dreadful weather we've been having, wouldn't you say?"