A commotion down the hall interrupted Lyra before she had the chance to say anything.
“Stop! You aren’t allowed in there!”
“Get back here!”
“Drops! Lyra!”
The mare who came skidding around the corner, running at full gallop with Pear Pommel and another guard in close pursuit, was Moondancer. She was carrying a scroll along beside her in her magic.
“Oh, there you are,” she said as she skidded past, hooves playing at the tile floor for traction. Lyra’s head swiveled to watch her go, then snapped back to watch the two guards fly past. They tackled Moondancer to the ground just as she came to a stop, dogpiling on her.
It was only after the dust had settled that any of them could form words.
“…Moondancer?” Lyra said.
The mare’s head popped out from the bottom of the pile, her glasses askew and her hair fallen out of its restraints. Moreover, she had an unsettlingly manic grin plastered on her face. “Lyra! Hey! I figured it out!”
Bon Bon stepped forward. “Figured what out, Moondancer?”
“I figured out the connection between the names,” she said. “And you’re not going to believe this, but: I know who did the museum job!”
“I think we might, too,” Bon Bon said.
“Ma’am, I’m confused,” Pear Pommel said, still piled on top of Moondancer. “Is this mare with you?”
“I can vouch for her,” Bon Bon said. “And I think she’d really appreciate it if you’d get off of her.”
“What on Equis is going on in here!?”
Everypony who could turn towards the voice did so. It was Trace, emerged from the other side of the hallway with one of her subordinates in tow. “I heard shouting—”
She stopped.
“Who is that?” she asked, pointing at Moondancer.
“Who is that!?” she asked, pointing at Photo Finish.
“Who is that!?” she asked, pointing at Coppercog.
Lyra and Bon Bon glanced at each other. They turned to her in unison.
“Above your paygrade.”
Bon Bon turned to Moondancer, who had gotten up and was dusting herself off. “Go ahead.”
Moondancer nodded and began to pace. “When you sent me that list of names, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I went through every set of records I could to find a match; criminal records, birth records, everything I could get my hooves on.
“As it turned out, I was overthinking it,” she continued. “Because the connection between those ponies was very simple: they’re all related!”
“Related?” Lyra asked. “Related how?”
“Related by blood,” she said. “Hollyleaf and Mountain Carpet were cousins once-removed, and Zigzag was the granddaughter of Carpet’s great-great-uncle. I was going to wait until tonight to tell you, but then I dug a little deeper into their family tree, and I discovered something very interesting!”
She stopped pacing and spun around to face them, grinning. “Another one of their relatives, Zigzag’s uncle’s cousin’s son, was working as a guard at this very museum!”
Bon Bon nodded. “Rabbitfoot.”
“Rabbit—”
Moondancer blinked. “Wow. You are good at this.”
“Rabbitfoot?” Trace said. “I don’t know anything about a list of names, but are you saying that Rabbitfoot was responsible for the thefts?”
Bon Bon nodded, her face grim.
“But that’s impossible! Rabbitfoot is dead!” She thrust a hoof towards the crystals. “He’s in that crystal, over there!”
Lyra shook her head. “No,” she said, “he isn’t. Coppercog?”
“Ah, right, my turn? Good, good.” Coppercog stepped forwards. “I think you’ll find,” he said, “that the pony held within this crystal is, in fact, not Rabbitfoot at all!”
“Then who—”
“The janitor,” Lyra said. “Clean Sweep.”
Trace stared at her, mouth agog, one eye twitching. “But how—what!?”
“As I said earlier, I was here on the night of the robbery,” Coppercog said. “I normally spend most of my time in the west wing library, going through the few books contained there that I have not already read exhaustively. However, on that night, I noticed a most peculiar smell.
“It was like the stench of death which perfumes all otherworldly spirits, myself included,” he said. “Except at the same time, not like that at all. I do apologize if that seems to not make sense; I’m not sure the correct words exist for this, and believe me, I would have known them if they did. A-hem. Regardless, I simply had to know what could possibly be emitting such an odor.
“I followed the smell to the east wing, where I discovered its source: one of the guards. Upon a quick check of his nametag, I discovered him to be Rabbitfoot. Moreover, I noticed that he had deviated from his normal patrol route, heading back towards the Aisle. I followed him, intent on discovering just what was going on.”
“I’m sorry,” Trace interrupted, “You say you were here?”
He turned to look at her. “I am a ghost, madam,” he said. “I have haunted these halls for longer than you have been alive, now if you would let me return to my account, I think you would find it most illuminating…”
When Trace had nothing else to say, her mouth preoccupied with mouthing the word “ghost” over and other and her ears twitching erratically, he continued.
“Rabbitfoot arrived in the Aisle,” he said. “He retrieved, from the pocket of his uniform, a vine, bright red in color, which he then wrapped around his horn. I watched, fascinated, as he began to systematically melt his way into several display cases, taking the items held inside and placing them into Purse Snatcher’s Pouch of Pilfering.
“Halfway through the act, however, he was interrupted; the other guard, Searchlight, had heard him as he passed by on his patrol. Searchlight tried to stop Rabbitfoot, but was struck by a beam of crimson magic from Rabbitfoot’s horn and entombed in crystal. It was all quite grisly.
“Rabbitfoot finished his task, but he was not done. He waited in the Aisle for some time, until at last arrived the janitor, bucket and mop in tow. Rabbitfoot attacked him, killing him in a single shot from his horn.
“He took the janitor’s uniform and donned it, putting his own uniform on the janitor’s body. He then hit the janitor with the same spell he had used on Searchlight, entrapping him in crystal, but not before positioning his namebadge so that it would lie just under the surface of the ghastly tomb. Then, with one final flash of his horn, all evidence of any of this disappeared without a trace!”
“That was when he cast the illusion over the aisle!” Lyra said. “After that, all he had to do was pose as Clean Sweep until he could make his escape. He got to leave earlier than he could have as a guard, giving him more time to make a clean getaway in case his ruse was discovered quickly, and at the same time, throw everypony off his tail!”
“You were all looking for the janitor,” Bon Bon said, “when in fact, the janitor never left the building at all. Your biggest suspect was right under your noses the entire time!”
Trace said nothing for a few moments, her brow furled and her expression unreadable.
At last, she turned to her subordinate.
“Get me Rabbitfoot’s home address,” she said. “Now.”
─────
The door went down in one kick.
When nothing fizzled, ticked, flashed or exploded, Bon Bon stepped into the apartment, stepping over the splinters of the door she’d just bucked off of its hinges. Lyra watched from the doorway as she scanned the apartment.
“Looks clear,” she called back. “Stay alert.”
Lyra walked in after her, closely followed by Trace, Moondancer, Pear Pommel, and a half-dozen royal guardsponies.
Rabbitfoot’s apartment was just a little thing by Canterlot standards; Lyra recognized the general design. The front door opened into a combined living/dining room area, with a couple of doors leading off to the side. One of those would be the bedroom, and the other was probably a bathroom.
“You two, stay by the door,” Pear Pommel commanded. “The rest of you, check the rooms. If anypony’s still here, subdue them. Report anything suspicious.”
Her soldiers obeyed, moving past Lyra and spreading through the apartment.
“We’re too late,” Bon Bon said. “No one’s been here for days.”
Lyra glanced over at the long-dirty dishes left to crust over in the sink. “Seems like it.”
“We might get lucky,” Trace said. “He might have left us some clue to his whereabouts.”
“Possibly,” Lyra said.
Not likely, though.
“Ma’am!” It was one of the guards, stepping out of one of the side rooms. He was carrying something in his magic, an envelope. “We found this on his bed, ma’am!” he said as he handed the envelope to Pear Pommel, who in turn passed it over to Trace.
Trace broke the envelope’s seal, holding the envelope away from her face as she did so, and when nothing happened she withdrew its contents: a single sheet of paper. She skimmed it, squinted at it, turned it over, a frown spreading over her face.
She looked up. “Do either of you know a ‘Lyra’?”
─────
Lyra stared at the war board.
They’d found nothing else in Rabbitfoot’s apartment, even after the investigation team had gone over it a second time. Trace’s investigation had, once again, hit a dead end. As had Lyra’s own, even if they had learned a lot.
They’d checked with the stationmaster in Canterlot; Rabbitfoot had, indeed, caught a train out of the city. A train headed for Ponyville.
But, by all accounts, he had never arrived. They’d talked to the workers at Ponyville’s station, saying Lyra had been expecting a family member and asking if they’d seen anypony of Rabbitfoot’s description.
No luck.
The war Board’s “Identity” column had gained another face, that of Rabbitfoot’s. It had also gained another name: that of Manehatten’s former Chief of Police, who had retired suddenly and unexpectedly partway through the Soft Stitch murders. No one had heard from him since.
He had also been Mountain Carpet’s grandfather.
Below his name was a scrap of notebook paper, upon which was written the following:
“POSESSION RUNS IN THE FAMILY.”
Below it was a list of names and addresses, an ink-copied record of Hollyleaf’s family tree stretching back five generations.
It had had to be folded over three times just to fit. There were a lot of names on the list. Too many.
The other side of the board had grown, too; a list of the stolen objects and their basic functions having been tacked between the “ability” and “goal” sections.
They’d made no headway in figuring out just what Hollyleaf needed with such an eclectic assortment of objects, but they knew it couldn’t be good.
Lyra glanced, not for the first time that night, at the sole piece of paper that had been tacked to the top of the board. It was the note they’d found in Rabbitfoot’s apartment.
Written on the paper, in utilitarian scribble, were four words. Only four words, but they were enough to turn Lyra’s mouth dry.
“See you soon, Lyra.”