The Mysteries of Megan Glen

The Ring Maker: 2

“That depends on what you want,” I answered coolly, despite that I was almost freaking out on the inside. I’d never had someone come to me on their own; most people didn’t know I existed. And if they did, they saw me as another cop; an amateur one.

“I think you’ll find it interesting.”

I folded my hands together. “Why don’t you tell me and I’ll decide?”

“Alright, long story short, someone is threatening me and one of my workers has gone missing. I need help-”

“Don’t you have bodyguards for that?” I interrupted, thinking of the guys that had cornered me in the ice rink.

He ran one of his hands along the leather of the limousine seat as his eyes drifted from me to the air. “I do, but I would rather figure out who this person is and have them arrested quickly instead of waiting until they try to kill me. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“And what exactly do you want me to do?”

“I need you to find out who it is that’s threatening me and get Pamela back.”

“Do you have a piece of paper?”

Charlie looked confused but he pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “So, are you going to help me?”

“That depends,” I muttered, jotting down my address on the paper. “Send me a folder about you and another about the case, include the notes that you’ve gotten from the guy. I’ll take a look and see if I’m interested.”

He frowned. “What makes you think I can send you a folder about myself?”

I gestured to the limo. “I’m pretty sure you can do anything you want. If you can’t send it to me, have one of the pushy guys do it- not the shaky one though, he seems rather nervous.”

“Ah, he’s always that way. I’ll have it to you by tomorrow, as this is rather urgent.”

Suddenly yelling started up outside, making Charlie’s face twist into shock. I laughed softly. “That would be my rescue party. Goodbye Mr. McDaniel.”

“I look forward to working with you Megan Glen,” he said as I stepped out of the car. He knew my name… I didn’t take as long as I should have to ponder the fact as I had to quickly focus on the little trifle going on outside of the limousine.

The four bodyguards stood close together like superheroes in a movie, glaring at my rescue team. Danny stood in the front, an angry expression plastered on his face, not wearing any shoes. Lacey stood behind him, barefooted as well and looking mildly interested while Jake stood back, looking amazed and frightened at the same time.

“Megan, are you alright?” Danny asked as he spotted me.

I moved over to stand by them. “I’m fine; I’ll tell you about it later. And you guys,” I turned to the guards, “next time you could just ask me to go with you, you don’t have to be all freaky about it.”

“We’ll consider it,” said the same one that had spoken to me earlier. His face was hard and blank, but I could see the sliver of amusement in his eyes.

“I think Charlie is waiting for you and I have other stuff to do, so bye,” I stated bluntly, starting back towards the rink, the three siblings flanking me.

Danny caught up quickly. “What happened?”

“Where are your shoes?”

“Inside, I wanted to make sure you weren’t being kidnapped and I didn’t have time to put them on. The only reason we took as long as we did was because we had to take off the ice skates before we could leave.”

I smiled slightly and tried to hide it, keeping my eyes straight ahead. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m perfectly fine.”

“So who were they?” Lacey asked, jumping into our conversation. “What did the limo look like on the inside?”

I sighed as we entered the rink and they started tugging on their ice skates again. “It’s nothing important. However, it might concern you Danny.”

He looked up, completely forgetting about his laces, “Really- why?”

“I’ll tell you about it at the house. I don’t think I’m going to be forced away again so you might as well go have fun, sliding on ice or whatever it is.”

“So, will you tell me about the creepy guys now?” Danny asked as he entered my room a while later. I’d taken a cab home and returned a few hours before the rest of them.

“Sure, one second,” I mumbled, not looking away from my computer. I read the rest of the page quickly before turning it off and spinning my chair around to face Danny. He stood near the closed door, hands shoved in his pockets.  I shook my head with disappointment. “Stealing again, Danny?”

 He looked down, his face flushed. “I thought you would want to see it.”

“What is it?” I asked with annoyance. The last thing I wanted to do was admire all of Danny’s stolen goods.

He brought a ring out of his coat and handed it to me. “Open that.” I pursed my lips, but lifted the clasped seal. Inside was a thick yellow powder; poison.

“Where did you get this?” I closed the ring and placed it on a paper towel before turning to face Danny once again.

“It fell out of the limo when you were getting out,” he responded. “I grabbed it immediately and wasn’t sure what had happened so I figured we might as well keep it. It was only a few minutes ago when I saw what was inside. It’s toxic, isn’t it?”

I nodded, recalling the multiple rings on Charlie’s fingers. “Highly, it’s lead (II) chromate which, in high doses, can kill or send a person into a coma.”

“Is that considered a high enough dose?”

I glanced at the ring again. “I don’t think so, that much would just cause a lot of pain. Now, sit down so I can tell you what Charlie McDaniel wanted.”

“Who?” He sat in the chair across the room as I observed the ring under my best spyglass.

“The man in the limo; he was quite strange…”

“So, I looked him up on the internet before you came in and I found that he’s actually pretty famous. It turns out this guy has made tons of money by selling unique handmade rings,” I finished after a few minutes.

Danny nodded silently so I turned back to the ring. There was an engraving on the bottom part of the ring with the name ‘McDaniel’ meaning it was one of the rings Charlie had constructed. He’d probably taken a liking to it and kept it- but who else would have had access to the ring?

“You’re saying a ring-seller is being threatened? And he came to you for help? How did he even know about you?” Danny rambled, deep in thought.

I shrugged, setting the ring back down. “I don’t know, maybe he talked to the police and they referred me? He might have read the papers about the case with the book club; I think I was mentioned in that.”

“I guess... Tomorrow he’s sending you the folders, right?”

“That was the plan; I suppose you want to look over them with me?” It had become second nature to make sure Danny was there when I was solving a case. He usually had some sort of valuable input.

He smiled and nodded. “You’re going to accept the case right?”

“It depends on the content of the folders,” I replied. “A boring case is usually worse than no case at all.”

He hesitated before shaking his head lightly and saying, “I think you should accept it and if you figure it out too fast, you can let me try to puzzle it out.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll take it, especially since this Charlie McDaniel is so weird. What kind of a man makes a living by selling homemade rings?”

Danny surprised me by chuckling. “And who would want to threaten a man like that?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”