The central conceit of Urban Fantasyland Tours is the Mystery play; a crime performed for the benefit of the Detective who then seeks to solve it. Often, this will involve a death. (In many cases, this death will not actually stop the victim from actively participating in the case, in one form or another.)

In other plays it starts fairly simply, but then through a series of unlikely events, balloons out into something that threatens the fate of the Urban Fantasyland, where the detective is uniquely positioned to resolve.

(This may be a physical threat, but In Urban fantasylands with the Hidden quality, it is most likely a threat to reveal the secret to humans, who are of course, the most dangerous predators any supernatural being has.)

--Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.

I started talking it out to myself. “So sometime before he died, Hugo Delacourt gives a rejuvenation treatment to his business partner. Basic magical favor, though way outside his normal field. At the same time he seemed to be investigating where his business interests and Spider Bonaparte’s business interests overlapped. Spider may have had him whacked, but according to Simone, he was apparently laundering money on their behalf.” I sat in Delacourt’s chair.

“So if the snake thing wasn’t a side gig Lukas Martel had going with Spider, who’s side gig was it? Was it Delacourt? Who wants that many magic snakes and why, and how did one of them tag Delacourt.”

I was still missing too many pieces of the puzzle and needed to fill in some blanks. My best source of information would probably be Bastienne, or maybe Spider himself, if I could link Spider to the smuggling op. But I had the other lead as well- the packages that Delacourt ordered via Grandmother’s freight.

Since Laura was basically housebound and they were all delivered here, she might know what they were, so I stood up, dusted myself off, and went to find her.

It took a lot of empty room searching to find Moira, but eventually I tracked her down in the solar, where we’d first interacted in this play. She’d apparently decided to stay in what she’d been wearing earlier, and was settled in on a lounge chair, positioned so that her profile and the line of her body were the first thing you’d see on entering. I wondered if she’d gotten a heads up that I was coming and had set the stage like this.

I knocked on the inside of the door, since it was open. “Laura? As much as I’d like to just sit and look at you, I’ve got a few work-related questions first.”

She opened her eyes and sat up, still posing like a magazine pinup. “We can do both, can’t we?” Th

I allowed, “Fair enough, if you don’t mind me being a bit distracted.”

Moira smiled, and adjusted her position to face me in a slightly less "Appeal to the viewers" way. “So what’s the question?”

“So when I was going through your late husband’s workshop, I found several shipping notices for things he’d had shipped here via a company called “Grandmother’s Freight.” I figured you would have been the ones to sign for them- do you know what they were or where they are now?”

She pulled her robe closed then, and stood. “I remember those, just a second, I’d have to look…” I’m pretty sure she was stalling while the boss or one of the scripting team fed her info. She brushed past me, and headed down the hallway. “I didn’t open them, actually, though I did sign for most of them- Chauncey signed for one. I mentioned them to Hugo once and he said to just leave them in one of the unused rooms...this one.”

I followed her as she opened the door to a mostly undecorated room. “Hugo wanted this to be a nursery if we ever had children, but, well.” She shrugged. “It never happened so we wound up using it for storage.”

The room was brightly lit by the morning sun peeking through mismatched curtains, one set pink and one set blue, but the only furnishings present were the boxes, all apparently unopened, all of weird, mismatched sizes.

I looked to Moira. “Do you mind if I…” I nodded to one of the boxes.

She shook her head. “Go ahead, I’m sure it’s fine.”

I tore open one of the larger boxes to reveal a slightly smaller box, filled with packing peanuts. “Little anti-climatic.”

Laura smirked. “Feel free to dump them out on the floor, I’ll have someone come clean up later.”

I took her at her word, and something hard and heavily wrapped in translucent plastic came rolling out of the bottom of the box to rest on the pile of stuffing. The plastic was strapped on by several thick rubber bands. “They certainly weren’t skimping on securing this thing, whatever it is. I hope it wasn’t perishable.”

Moira shook her head. “I don’t think they would be, not if Hugo wanted them in here.”

I stripped off the rubber bands and unrolled the tough plastic, revealing a black plastic case that smelled faintly of oil. Inside was a squat submachine gun, complete with drum magazine- a reproduction of an old Tommy gun. “The hell?”

The other boxes revealed similar items; shotguns, both illegally sawed off and non, at least two wands that I was pretty sure were loaded with not-exactly legal spells, and in the last box, enough plastic explosives, detonators, and wire, to take down at least a building the size of this mansion. I stared once it was all assembled. “I know I’m repeating myself here, but what the hell?”

Moira was staring wide-eyed. “Hugo, what were you planning?”

“He had to be in on it with somebody. This is hardware just one guy couldn’t use, and he didn’t strike me as a demolitions expert, just from what I’ve read about him.” He’d probably be really good at planning where to strike and just where to set charges, though.

“He didn’t keep notes on this in his workshop, so whatever he was planning to do with all this is probably on file somewhere else. Did he have anyplace off site he’d go? Besides the office?” Delacourt might have had a magical space in his office, too, but I doubted I could get access to it right away- Laura wouldn’t be likely to have the key either. I frowned, then thought about another thing I’d found in the workshop. “Maybe something owned by the Larues? He’d started sending them money again recently.”

Moira blinked. “He what? But my bridal price was paid off ages ago.” I made a face that she didn’t see at “bridal price”. “We have a few old properties he might have bargained for, but only one in this area. I thought it had actually been condemned, to be honest.

“Do you have the address?”

“She nodded, “It’s down on Chambers and Phillips. Big old barn of a place, you can hardly miss it.” She sighed. “So I suppose you’ll leave me alone here, then.”

I smiled at that, and, rather than kneel like I’d been doing, picked her up in one arm to pull her up into a kiss. She squeaked in surprise, then leaned into it, pressing against me. “I’ll be coming back. And hey, if it turns out the place is horribly dangerous, I’ll have plenty of adrenaline to work off.”

Moira drawled, “How romantic. But I’ll be waiting.” Once she signaled she was ready, I sat her back down on her feet. Don’t leave me hanging, Mr. Criss.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mrs. Delacourt.” And with that, it was time to leave.

Chambers and Phillips is in the Warehouse district, which says a lot about the size of this particular Wainscotting neighborhood that it even has one. Rows and rows of big empty buildings, mostly patrolled by members of a private security company on foot, with no gun, no taser, and if they’re lucky, the flashlight they’re equipped with works. Poor bastards. These warehouses are almost exclusively used by companies like, well, Mystery Play LLC, to have someplace out of the way where we can plant evidence and stage fights without being a public nuisance.

Which is why, when I checked the warehouse at Chambers and Phillips and saw it was marked “Grandma’s Freight” with a large sticker, I figured I’d found the place. When I peeled the sticker and found fading paint on rust that said Larue Steel underneath, I was certain of it.

I didn’t go in the front door, of course. Not even the dumbest of our clients, and again, we’re talking guys whose mothers may be very closely related to their fathers because they want their children to have better magic, and the sort of wizbro who figures out a magical application designed to disrupt the flying broomstick industry and thinks that makes them an expert on everything, so they can be very dumb indeed, would go in through the front door.

No, I climbed up a series of conveniently stacked boxes around the back and checked out things inside the place from the skylight first.

I was expecting a lot of guys walking around piles of boxes, which was the usual setup for this sort of situation. What I got instead of was the biggest fucking snake I’d ever seen, sitting the middle of a painstakingly marked up magic circle, with one mostly unconcerned guard keeping watch at a nearby desk, about halfway through his lunch break, if the discarded wrapper and the can of coke were any indication.

“What the hell?”

Dropping through the skylight like I’d planned would put me inside the magic circle with the serpent. That didn’t seem like the best idea. So L climbed back down and looked for a back way in instead. Eventually, I had to settle on squeezing my way through a different window, but at least it wouldn’t make me instant snake chow.

Conveniently, when I dropped to the floor inside, it put me behind the security guard, and he apparently didn’t notice that I was behind him. So I stalked up, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and demanded, “So. Don’t reach for the alarm, don’t grab your wand, don’t do anything. What the hell is going on here, what’s with that snake.”

He grabbed for his wand, so I grabbed his wrist with my free hand and pulled it behind his back, then shoved him face down onto the desk. “What’s up with the big snake, what was Delacourt up to?”

He mumbled a lot in response, because in my defense, I normally do this move to people I don’t want to talk, just to listen while I provide them with very pointed exposition.

Right. Shit. I let him up a little so he wasn’t facedown into the desk, and he babbled. “I dunno! I got a call, said I needed to come here and keep an eye on this thing. Just have to keep it here and not let anyone take it until after the equinox, then I could just turn on the sprinklers and run.

The equinox was in just a couple of days.. “Did anyone say why?”

“Something about that if it was let go before then, someone could just summon it again, that’s all I know, I swear!”

“Summon...fuck. This is Aim’s steed, isn’t it. Look. Have there been any weird fires around since you started working here? Stuff that spontaneously burst into flame without explanation? “

The guard looked confused, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes when I take a smoke break my cigs would light on their own. Thought it was weird, but just, you know, generally kind of handy? It’s that snake? Weird.”

I sighed. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Andy. You’re not gonna kill me or anything, are you, Mister?”

“What? No. What I’m going to do is give you a phone number. If anyone else comes here and tries to take the snake? Call me. I’ll be here with bells on.” I handed him a business card, (With a name that wasn’t Derek Criss or Ray Doyle) glancing between Andy and the snake. Things were starting to fit together, but I couldn’t be 100 percent sure yet. I needed just a little more to go on, and maybe I’d find it at Delacourt Financial.

Andy sat back at his desk, still shaking. He’d probably been promised an easy job where no one would come looking for the giant snake. Poor bastard.

I left the way I came, the better to not draw attention to the place.

Based on Andy’s story, Delacourt knew about the list, and was trying to keep it from being filled. He had also figured out that whatever ritual they were being gathered for was on the equinox. That was a solid motive for murder for whoever was gathering all the snakes, whether that was Spider Bonaparte, Lukas Martel, or some third party I had yet to meet.

Before, I didn’t think I could get access to his actual workspace in any sort of timely way, but since the warehouse had only provided one lead, I didn’t have any choice but to find my way into whatever ritual site he was maintaining at his office to see what he was working on there and if he’d left any other clues.

Delacourt financial was, well, for the purposes of this play, located in the largest building in this neighborhood. Being 12 stories when the next largest is only 5 stories is pretty impressive, even if it’s not much on an absolute scale. Props, thanks to clever use of glamours, had made it over so you couldn’t even see signs of the previous owners. A lot of the regular workers were still in place as extras so they wouldn’t lose paid hours.

I figured the best way was to try and bull my way through with the truth, so I went up to the front desk.

I gave my best office smile to the woman at the reception desk. “Hello. I’m an investigator for the Delacourt estate. There’s something that’s come up related to the deceased and I need to investigate the personal effects he kept in his office. I can provide you with contact information for his widow if you need to verify my identity.” I passed over my business card. “It’s fairly urgent that I be able to examine his belongings as part of the ongoing inquiry.”

The woman behind the desk gave me a dubious look. “Uh-huh.” She made no move to call anyone, and didn’t glance at the card.

I sighed. “I am actually serious. Call whoever you need to call, I need to examine Mr. Delacourt’s personal effects on behalf of my investigation for Mrs. Delacourt. If you don’t have their residential line, I can provide it or Mrs. Delacourt’s personal number.”

She eyed me, and just picked up her magazine again, not saying anything. This was probably intentional to get me to do something rash so security could be called. If I were Carrefour, I could probably have cast a spell to get past this.

“Right, well, if you’re not going to help me, I’ll find someone who will.” I walked past the desk, towards the elevator.

She called back, “You’re not allowed back there, sir!”

I yelled over my shoulder. “Yeah, well, then call your boss who can allow me so we can talk, because I’ve got a job to do and not much time to do it in.”

She glared at me. “Sir, you’re going to have to leave or I’m going to call security.”

I shrugged. “And I’m not leaving until you call someone who will actually talk to me instead of making threats, because I do have every right to be here. So you can call security and have them threaten me ineffectively, and I’ll call my boss, who, by the way, has her name on the building and currently owns her husband’s share of the company and I wonder who’ll they’ll listen to when that happens?”

She reached for her phone. I reached for mine, putting a finger over the screen to dial Laura’s direct line. “Or you can call your boss and get his authorization, and I’ll go upstairs, and do my job, and more importantly, not bother you or report you to HR.”

She glared again, I raised my phone as menacingly as I could. She dialed. I waited, and finally, with a sigh, she said.

“Mr. Smythe, there’s a Mr. Criss here. He says he’s working for the Delacourt estate and Mrs. Delacourt and needs to look at any effects Mr. Delacourt left in his office.” She looked blank, then nodded, and covered the receiver with her hand. “Go on upstairs. Security will escort you to Mr. Delacourt’s old office.. Twelfth floor.”

I smiled. “Thank you, you’ve been a great help.” I lowered my phone, and headed for the elevator.

On the way up, I texted Laura to let her know where I was and what I was doing, just in case, because I wouldn’t actually put.it past the design of the play for this to be an ambush. We’ve pulled bigger dick moves on our clients before.

It wasn’t going to be much of an ambush, if that was the plan. They’d only sent two guys, one of whom looked like he’d been parked behind a desk for a while, with an impressive middle age spread and an RP accent. “Mr. Criss? This way, please.”

They led me to an office with Delacourt on the door. “We haven’t really had time to do much cleanup, you must understand, it was so sudden, so his things should be largely where he left them. I…” He paused. “My wife and I caught your act in the Catskills, back before you retired. She’d love your autograph, if you don’t mind. Belinda Smythe.”

I raised an eyebrow, but this was part of the Derek Criss setting. “I’ll be happy to provide one. Got something I can sign for her?”

He handed over a pocket organizer, and I signed, and asked, “Do you know if Mr. Delacourt keep his workshop in the office or did he have a separate one? I’ll need to examine the magical space if possible as well.”

Smythe shook his head, and took the organizer back. “I believe it should be located off the office, but he had a personal key for it. No one has access to it, even me.”

“I may be able to figure something out. I’m pretty good with getting out of locked locations, after all.”

He laughed at that, because it’s the sort of thing you’re expected to laugh at from a stage magician, and I went into the room.

I locked the door behind me, because there was still a chance to have a bunch of armed goons pour in to try and kill me, and started to case the joint.

Given how Delacourt had kept his home lab, I expected his office to be similar, but he was actually pretty neat about the whole thing, with the same austere decorating taste his house showed off. A few books, an art print or three, a mostly uncluttered desk with a picture of smirking Delacourt hugging an uncomfortable looking Laura around the waist.

I checked the laptop on the desk first- password locked, but that at least, I had a solution for- one of the tricks provided by Lawson since I don’t have the spells Carrefour would use.

It conjured up a ghostly image of Carrefour, that unlocked his screen and vanished, which let me into it to start going through his files.

I hadn’t expected Hugo Delacourt, a man everyone had so far described as fairly bloodless and unemotive, to keep a journal on his work computer.

I also hadn’t expected him to be a man with quite so many worries that he kept under wraps.

He was worried about Laura, whether he was a worthy husband for her, whether they’d be able to have children, whether she deserved someone closer to her own age, he had a good 30 years on her, being 57 when he died, and 48 when they married.

He was worried that he’d gotten too involved with Spider Bonaparte’s business thanks to the acquisition of Grandmother’s Freight and subsequent investments Bonaparte had made via shell companies. He was trying to disentangle himself from that but it was taking time, and “Luke” and the board were fighting him.

He was worried about his friend and partner, Lukas, who had contracted a form of skin cancer- one that a simple spell could treat, though it was outside his speciality, and there weren’t any doctors in the area willing to try that sort of sympathetic magic.

He was also worried that since he’d performed the snake ritual for Lukas, he’d been receiving death omens about death by snakes...very specific snakes. Snakes that shouldn’t be in the Wainscotting neighborhood at all, but were, and more were arriving weekly.

He outlined the plan to summon at least one of them to keep them out of the equation and unable to be used, though he still didn’t know what they were for, just that it was exceptionally dangerous.and no one else seemed to be aware of what might be going on, so he had to act.

The last update in the journal said that he was worried about how Laura would get on after he was dead, but gave no indication of how he was dying or who had killed him.

I saved it all to a thumb drive, and closed the laptop. With a deep sigh, I stood up and started searching the room for the entrance to his on-premises magical workshop.

A lot of wizards like to keep that thing behind a secret door, and I can’t really blame them. I also didn’t really particularly care about the privacy of a dead man, so I knocked on the walls repeatedly until I found a hollow space, and looked for the obvious trigger mechanism.

It was easy enough to find- there was a keyhole, hidden behind one of the previously mentioned tasteful art prints.

But where was the key. I looked back at the picture on Hugo’s desk, of him and Laura, and slid the back of the frame off. Key. As sentimental as the man had been in his diary it was an easy enough guess.

The walls slowly slid out once I turned the key, and the room inside was...well, if I’d thought Hugo Delacourt’s lab at home was messy, this one was worst- almost every inch of every wall covered by scribbled notes, with him talking about snakes, recording his visions about them, and hammering home that in his last days, Hugo Delacourt had not been a well man, even as he kept it very controlled in his daily life.

Searching through the notes did give me a little info on what he’d planned to do with the guns: He had gotten hold of the shipping information for several of the remaining snakes, and been hiring people to hijack the deliveries. The weapons were meant for a large shipment scheduled for the day before the equinox, but he hadn’t put a crew together even if he could equip them for it.

One of the ones crossed off on his list was the ripe-making-snake. He’d had his own death hand-delivered to him by one of his own people. The question was whether that was accidental or not.

All I needed was a name for the man who killed him and my job, officially, would be complete. Except for all the loose ends strewn about the case.

,And except for the real world murderer still on the loose.