//------------------------------//
// Pit in a Peach 
// Story: Dead Ponies Don't Wear Plaid 
// by JohnnyNorthrain 
//------------------------------//

	The first time you see a pony drive is hilarious. They sit flat on their bottoms and use a steering wheel created for human hands. There’s not much for a hoof to grip on to yet the ponies seem to be able to drive just fine. The typical seat is replaced with a flat cushioned pad while the break and gas pedals are moved to the floor just in front of their hind hooves. I’d never seen a car in Canterlot or Ponyville. They were pretty much restricted to Manehattan and Fillydelphia since the road network was not decent enough for automobiles. There were no service stations that I’d seen and I had no idea what they actually ran on. 
Sometime in the recent past one or two of them must have slipped the barrier between Earth and Equestria just as I had. Whatever pony had engineered and built a new car from the design of the old was probably rolling in bits. They’d shrunk the size of the vehicles slightly to be more pony friendly. I was still able to fit in the back seat with Lyra while the cabbie took us downtown to the morgue. 
Seeing the city from the back of a cab is a good way to view the subtle changes between neighborhoods and boroughs. Everything here in Manehattan seemed to have a chaotic sense of order. Streets fanned out like fingers in every direction then suddenly shifted and continued at strange angles. The entire city had grown up over time and not much of it had really been planned out. I had looked at several maps but the tangle was too much for me to make sense of. I figured it should have been a couple streets then a straight shot across town to the morgue. Instead it was a zig zag of one street after another before we finally reached out destination. 
Ponies of every color and mark blended to make the population of this city. There were several sub districts that we passed. They had no real boundaries but as soon as you entered one there would suddenly be only Pegasus or Earth ponies, or Unicorns. It reminded me of the Italian, Irish, German and Asian districts in Chicago and New York. Just as soon as I’d entered one of the division neighborhoods the invisible boundary passed and the ponies mixed again. 
I stepped out of the cab and handed the cabbie three quarters of the amount that the meter said. He started to argue with me about the price but I pointed out that there was no reason he couldn’t have just come here instead of taking us on an unguided tour of the city. That type of meter running annoyed me and he protested again. I wasn’t going to stand for it but Lyra hoofed over the extra and we turned away without giving him a tip. 
The morgue itself was an annex of the biggest hospital in the city. It stood several stories high shining white in the sunlight like some British castle in the distant past before the outer plaster covering flaked away and all that was left behind were stone skeletal remains. It was a jewel of a building that spoke volumes of potential. Here was a place that ponies could be proud to come and receive medical treatment. The hospital was a beacon of welcome to the sick and the lame… provided they could pay.
The two of us used the side entrance that headed downstairs and we checked in at the desk. The attendant lead us through walls of freezers to the specific one we’d come to see. She unlocked it and rolled out the body of Madame Melba. She had been gorgeous in her prime. There were several photographs of her with prominent ponies at the apartment. One of them even featured Celestia. Now though she had aged and was frail and bent. Her skin hung loose around her body and there was one very clean bullet hole in her temple. I almost asked the attendant for gloves before remembering that she wouldn’t have any. The attendant walked back to the main desk leaving us to our work. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a knife. My switchblade had been lost months ago but I had fashioned a useable blade from a butter knife. All it took was a couple hours of scraping it against wet cement before it was as sharp as thorns on a rose bush. 
I dug into the wound with the tip of the knife until I hit the projectile inside. Ten minutes of slow digging and pulling freed the remains of the bullet. Ten minutes of Lyra grimacing every time I had to slice away a bit more skin and bone. It was dirty work and if I had a pair of tweezers it would have gone smoother. I took the slug over to the sink and washed away the blood and brain matter. It was copper jacketed and the base had survived intact. The round was much smaller than that of a Tommy gun. I held it up to my finger and traced the base of it. 
“I think this is a nine millimeter.” I told my partner and sat the round down on the slab next to Melba. 
“So we’re looking or something else than a Chicago Typewriter?” She asked looking closely at it. 
“I never quite thought it was a Thompson. There would have been more bullet holes around the apartment. This though… I not so sure what fired it.” 
“How many guns can shoot a nine millimeter?” She looked up from the bullet. 
“There’s probably a thousand different types. So as it stands we have someone who entered her apartment…”
“Broke in you mean.” 
“Entered, there was no sign of forced entry. She probably let them inside. The pony in question entered the apartment and shot her. Then they broke a string of pearls from around her neck, scooped up the loose ones and left.” I drummed my fingers on the side of the slab. 
“How do you know the pearls were on her neck at the time?” My partner asked. 
“There’s a line at the front of her throat. The skin is red under the hair. It was forcefully pulled off after she had been shot. If they went for the pearls first from the front the line would be on the back of the neck. Instead it’s on the front of the neck which means they had to grab it from behind.” 
Lyra Heartstrings nodded as if she fully understood. She was learning quickly and Celestia bless her heart she was good at this type of work. I’d been doing it near a decade now and learned tricks of the trade from a mentor who helped pull me out of a deep pit of depression years ago. Melba was definitely the victim of a strange robbery. I checked her body for other clues and came up empty. I patted the base of her neck and silently said a prayer for her soul. I slid the freezer back into the wall and cleaned my hands at the sink after pocketing the bullet and sliding the knife back in its sheath. 
The list of suspects in my head only included one name at the moment. Toast Melba was her brother and estate holder for the Melba family. I’d have to track him down and ask him the standard questions. Where were you at the time of the death? How much have you had to drink? Why would your parents ever name you Toast? Did they get the joke about your name? You know the standard stuff that helped break the tension a bit and may just let somepony slip up and give me more information than they intended. Toast though was in his seventies and probably just as bent backed as he sister had been. His daughter might be the better avenue to pursue before going directly to him. She was in her forties and had a law firm in Manehattan. I added her name to the list of potential suspects. 
The soap I used to clean my hands had a violet hue to it. The color reminded me of those eyes again. The driver of the car that used the Tommy gun had been someone I’d seen before. Canterlot kept coming to mind but I would have remembered her there. She seemed to have a moment of recognition for me when our eyes met. Why hers would narrow in anger or disgust I couldn’t quite figure out. She was gorgeous though with her gray coat and black mane. What really sold me on her looks were those eyes. A man could lose himself in eyes like that for years and be happy. 
I dried my hands then slapped myself across the cheek. Lyra’s attention turned on me but she said nothing. I cursed myself and my train of thought. I’d been in Equestria now around six months. Why the hell was I thinking about a pony like that? I was slightly angry that I had even crossed that line and started feeling that little flutter in my heart when I thought of those eyes. I was a human damn it. I liked humans even though the only other one around had been killed by my partner. I never blamed her for it, in killing Nickolas she saved me from the same fate. 
Turning away from the sink I sighed and walked out of the morgue. My mind was brimming with a hundred thoughts threatening to boil over. Why had Celestia tasked Lyra and me to investigate this case? Well the answer to that one was pretty obvious. I was the only one that had experience in dealing with gunshot murders. Why was Melba killed in the first place? I was pretty sure those pearls were the big reason. If I could find a photograph back at the apartment with her wearing them then I’d know what the entire string looked like. Perhaps they weren’t just pearls and had been a string around a diamond. Why couldn’t I get this stupid school boy crush feeling to disappear when I kept thinking about that damned pony? Why was the pony across the street with saddle bags staring at me? Why were they trying to appear interested in a magazine at the news stand but really just keeping an eye on me? 
I walked around the corner with Lyra following and we got half way down the block before I looked over my shoulder and saw that same pony following. We stopped and they stopped. I looked down at my partner and shrugged my shoulders with a nod of my head. She’d seen them also and we both booked it around the next corner as fast as we could. The moment we were on the other side of the building we stopped and pressed ourselves back against the wall. 
Hoof beats echoed off the cement sidewalk as the pony ran around the corner trying to catch up and ended up running directly into me. I quickly wrapped my arms around their neck and we tumbled on the ground as he tried to escape. The latch on his right saddle bag opened and the contents spilled out. He bit at my shoulder trying to gain purchase with his teeth on my flesh. Lyra joined the fight and the two of us almost had the pony subdued before he kicked out hard sending her into the wall and me to the ground. I reached out and grabbed hold of the bags. He ran and they ripped free. The pony disappeared into the city and I dropped the bag to the ground. 
Thankfully Lyra was alright. She would be bruised from where the kick hit. As she looked from me to the spilled contents her eyes became wide. I shifted my attention away from her and saw the object of her fascination. Somepony had acquired a Walther PPK. I picked up the black German police pistol and dropped the magazine out of the grip. It held seven rounds of nine millimeter Browning. It was loaded and ready for action. I slipped the pistol into my coat and we both sifted through the rest of the items from the bags. 
There was a letter about the pistol telling the pony that Brickle… whomever Brickle was… that he could outfit a way for them to fire the gun. There was an unsigned note that gave instructions on following the human and his partner around the city to make sure they did not cause trouble. The note had a soft perfume on it that had not come from the Earth pony we’d tussled with. I inhaled the scent and closed my eyes knowing that I’d smelled it before in Equestria. It was a particular type of flower I couldn’t quite place. I sorted through the rest of the bag and stored in my coat what clues there were. We left the bag on the sidewalk and we caught another taxi back towards the apartment. When we were in the back seat I pulled out that note again and turned it over in my hands. 
“What’s the plan now Johnny?” Lyra took a sniff of the note and licked the tip of her nose. 
“I need to find a photograph of the pearls. We need to figure out why we’re being followed. We also need to figure out who this Brickle is.” 
“Brickle?” The cabbie asked looking back at us.
“Do you know them?” I perked up in anticipation. 
“I know a Butter Brickle. Owns an ice cream shop in mid-town. Best ice cream in Manehattan.”
“If you can get us there in fifteen minutes there’s double the bits in it for you.” 
The cabbie smiled and stomped his hoof on the gas. We sped through the streets moving around cars like they were standing still. What luck to have the cabbie we hailed know of a Brickle. If the lead dead ended at least I could get some ice cream. I hoped that they had French Vanilla or something with Pecans. My stomach rumbled in anticipation and a smile tugged at the corner of my lips. I leaned back against the seat and turned my blue eyes towards Lyra. She was nearly white as the cabbie disobeyed every traffic lay to get us to our new destination. My predominant thought at the moment kept coming back to that pony. Who the hell was she with those pretty purple eyes?