[Greg Anos]

VR led me to his room. His human looked up from his liseuse and nodded. He reached into his pocket and pitched me a SD chip.
"War and Peace?" I asked.
"The Mudhen." His human grunted.
"Cool. Haven't read it since I got my first saddle. Cheese still losing?"
"Mostly."
VR softly growled. "Get to work, Redneck."
I cocked my head at the dog. "Is he usually this friendly?"
"Only when he's happy." his human replied.
I looked down. "I'll check back with you in the mornin'. Let me read an' digest this stuff, first."
"You can read?"
"I can write, too. Especially epitaths."
I let myself out and headed back to the office.

When I got back to the office, the first thing Mrs Slocum did was hiss at me. Obviously, she didn't like the company I was keeping.
"Shoot the dog?" Mindy inquired.
"Naw. Good money in the deal, Angel."
"Stop calling me Angel! I'm not an Angel!"
"You got wings under that dress, and I'll get fried if I make a pass. That sounds more like an Angel to me than a Fairy. Besides, you've got a couple points a lot bigger than a Fairy's."
She gave me another glare. "Get to work, Redneck."
"Remind me to give you a fire hydrant for your birthday." I called out as closed the door.

I popped the chip into my liseuse and booted up.
The glittery doo has disappeared 4 days ago. The time of disapperance was between the Queen's morning promenade and lunch, when she decides to give it another touch, for luck. At which point she'd found that her luck had run out. Three hours. Hmm. Lots of delivery truck leaving during that time, having delivered food, stationary, toilet paper, and such. Tradition still called for paper documents, when documents were kept at all. I could blame Mannie the Pigfarmer for that, back in the old days before it became a kingdom. Two hours to the main border checkpoint... Yep, slick as cattle rustling.

They'd run a thorough search of the vault, using metal detector, x-rays, and ultrasound. No false tops, sides or bottoms. More than I could say when I went drinkin' at the Do-Drop-Inn. Nothing big enough to be Great Dump that wasn't visually checked to be what it was supposed to be. Well, either it was gone or somebody's paid an awful lot in bribes. Clearly an inside job.

Now if I went back and re-did the vault check, that eyeshade-wearin' doggie would disallow the cost and my profit would go up in smoke. So I had to take their word until I had exhausted all the other possibilities. Besides, the amount of bribes paid out would show up even to a cub investigator. Nope, what I need was some legwork done in Pinwheel. And it was Winter, so I wasn't goin' to do it myself. Who did I know that could blend into the background, do good legwork, and could carve up any 10 French bladesmen if the need arose, without the European hoorah over shootin' irons... Right.

I picked up the phone and called Chicago...
"BadGoodDeb, how would you like to go to Europe on an expense account? I need some legwork done..."