77Chapter One: Maximus Aquinas, Detective
If there are two things that Detective Maximus Aquinas hates, they are idleness and loose ends. And the two seem to be all over the place now that the mafia boss is now an ailing man. Very old and without a male heir, his empire is crumbling, while he is not quite dead yet. Maximus knows that young upstarts are going to clamour for the vacuum that the mafia boss is going to leave but he will give them three years before crime will be rife again in the Corona underworld. And that will be three long years of idleness.
As he is thinking, Maximus is doing push ups on the floor. He is counting to sixty but he might have done seventy-five. He is not going to let his physique deteriorate while he is pushing pens and shuffling through files of cold cases. When he is bored with his push up routine, he grabs a grip exercise instrument and starts to work with his grip and lower arms muscles. While doing this, Maximus paces in his small office, his nose is flaring with the intake of air. In front of him is a blank white magnetic board, his wall of mind maps, ready for a new case. But the board has been empty for weeks. When he paces, anyone can see that Maximus is a very tall and large man, but very fit. He has platinum white hair but strangely dark and expressive brows. He has a firm mouth and buck teeth, which he tried to keep people from seeing much of them by keeping his mouth shut and let his eyes and nose do the investigating. And he really has the nose for crime. He can sniff crime in the air.
When his nose twitches, he knows something is up. He sees his colleagues lounging in the pantry next to this office. They are watching TV. Unbelievable! Maximus snorts. His nose starts twitching. When it does, Maximus has to walk until the twitching subsides. He follows the twitching and the twitching continues till he reaches the pantry where his colleagues are watching TV.
BerZerkTV. He hates the channel. It's full of crap.
But something is on.
The announcer on the screen says, "My master is the great Chancellor of the Corona University, and if you not be of the house of Al Hapone, I pray come and crush a cup of wine."
What is this? Maximus asked. Why is the lady announcer dressed in red and wearing red lipstick speaking in weird archaic language?
A running title flitted across the scene: New Chancellor of Corona University will celebrate daughter's twenty second birthday and his installation in two days. Grand masquerade ball at the Kingsleys' sprawling mansion.
Maximus' nose stops twitching. He's found it. The other of his most hated two things. Loose ends. He goes to his computer and does a database check on cold cases.
Algernon Kingsley. Reported that his daughter went missing twenty two years ago.
2011. Daughter, Rachel Kingsley found. Allegedly abducted during infancy by one Gothel Bathory.
Rachel Kingsley told the police that a man by the name of Eugene Fitzherbert rescued her from her abductor who by then had assumed the identity of her mother, in an event that left Mr. Fitzherbert grievously injured by gunshot wound inflicted by Gothel. But Fitzherbert survived the injury. Gothel was reported to have died because of drowning but her body was never found. More than two months passed when Fitzherbert was involved in another rescue of Corona's so-called Lost Princess. This time the case is bordering on the paranormal. It was reported that a teaching staff attached to the University had spontaneously combust after rendering the then Vice-Chancellor unconscious and inflicting stab wound on Fitzherbert. Again, Fitzherbert survived the wound. But then he disappeared. The whole scene was suspect. Spontaneous combustion. A gun and a compacted bullet lying in a mound of scattered ashes. A broken amulet. Again and always, the Fitzherbert character is there.
The mug shot of Eugene Fitzherbert looks familiar. Maximus runs the computer for more info on the man.
He comes to new information that Eugene Fitzherbert is also known as Flynnagan Rider, the heir apparent to the ailing and aging Mafia boss. He is Corona's Prince of all Thieves. That is why the face looks familiar, obviously!
Suddenly, Maximus is summoned by a hunch that Flynnagan Rider was watching the same BerZerkTV broadcast that he was watching, about the celebratory masquerade ball at the new Chancellor's mansion.
Maximus may just have found a new thing to hate.
Flynnagan Rider. Corona's so-called Prince of all Thieves.
Author's Notes: Thank you to battlebat35 for suggesting this idea. It is pretty risky and I don't know how will this turn out to be! Thanks for reading, y'all.