A Voice in the Crime – Chapter 1
The Nap That Ruined Everything
Felix Greer had not planned to become a witness to a crime. He hadn’t even planned to leave his apartment that morning.
The plan, as it had been for the past seventy-three consecutive mornings, was simple: wake up at 9:47 AM, ignore the three alarms, check his email for proofing notes from his editor, microwave leftover Thai food from two nights ago (the borderline, sniff-test kind), and spend four hours in his makeshift recording booth—a repurposed closet lined with egg-crate foam—narrating Chapter Twelve of a mid-tier thriller called Blood on the Viscount’s Cravat.
But the universe, as Felix had long since concluded, had a sense of humor. Specifically, the kind of humor that involved throwing a bucket of ice water on a sleeping cat.
The phone call came at 9:52 AM.
He was still horizontal, one arm draped over his eyes, when his phone vibrated across the nightstand like an angry beetle. The name on the screen made him groan: Margo Fisk, Events Coordinator, Pellerin Museum of Antiquities.
Margo was a woman who used exclamation points in professional emails. She also had a habit of calling Felix for “emergencies” that turned out to be things like “The docent called in sick and we need someone to hold the door open for the gala sponsors!”
He let it ring twice more. Then, against every instinct, he answered.
“Felix!” Margo’s voice was pitched at the frequency of a small, excited dog. “Thank God. Are you free today? Right now? This second?”
“I’m free in the sense that I have no plans,” Felix said, staring at his ceiling. “And I’m busy in the sense that I intend to keep it that way.”
“This is serious. Dr. Ashworth is having a crisis.”
Felix sat up. Not because he cared about Dr. Ashworth—the museum’s senior curator was a pompous man who once corrected Felix’s pronunciation of “obsequious”—but because Margo never used the word crisis without follow-up. She was a hyperbolic person, but not a liar.
“What kind of crisis?”
“She didn’t say. But she called from the museum’s private line, and she was whispering, Felix. Whispering. In the middle of the morning. And then she said, and I quote: ‘Send me someone who isn’t a suspect.'”
Felix rubbed his face. “Why would she need someone who isn’t a suspect?”
“That’s all she said! Then she hung up. Please, Felix. You’re already on the volunteer list for the gala next week. You’ve been through the security training. You have a badge. And—” Margo lowered her voice, which for her was still at normal conversation volume, “—you’re not friends with any of the staff. That’s actually what she needs. An outsider.”
Felix almost laughed. Not friends with any of the staff was the understatement of the year. He’d narrated museum audio guides for three years now—his most reliable freelance gig—and in that time, he’d exchanged exactly forty-seven words with Dr. Ashworth, most of them about microphone levels. The other staff treated him like a piece of furniture that occasionally made sound. He was invisible. And invisibility, he supposed, had its advantages.
“Fine,” he said. “But I’m billing my hourly rate, not the volunteer rate.”
“Done. Just get there.”
The Pellerin Museum of Antiquities occupied a limestone building that had once been a bank, which Felix found appropriate. Both institutions existed to guard things people wanted to steal. The difference was that banks admitted it.
He arrived at 10:27 AM, the sky over the city a pale, washed-out blue like old denim. The museum’s front doors were unlocked—that was strike one. The security desk was unmanned—strike two. And as he walked into the Great Hall, a cavernous space lined with Roman busts and Egyptian sarcophagi, he saw that the door to the East Wing was propped open with a fire extinguisher.
Strike three.
Felix had narrated enough mystery novels to know that three strikes before lunch meant either incompetence or a trap. And he had a feeling this wasn’t incompetence. Dr. Ashworth, for all her personal failings, ran a tight ship.
He found her in the Cobalt Room—a small, circular chamber off the East Wing that housed the museum’s most prized single object: the Greyfield Star, a 17th-century sapphire-and-diamond pendant allegedly given by a French queen to her lady-in-waiting before both lost their heads to the guillotine.
The room was designed like a jewelry box: velvet walls, dim golden lighting, and a single reinforced glass case in the center on a rotating pedestal. The case was supposed to be locked with a biometric seal that required Dr. Ashworth’s thumbprint and a six-digit code that changed daily.
The case was open.
And inside, resting on the black velvet cushion where the Greyfield Star had lain for the past eight years, was a single object.
A chicken bone.
Not even a clean one. It still had gristle.
Dr. Ashworth stood beside the empty case, her arms crossed so tightly she looked like she was holding herself together. She was a woman in her late sixties with silver-streaked black hair pulled into a severe bun and the kind of posture that suggested she’d once been a dancer or a drill sergeant. Her face, usually the color of good parchment, was now the color of milk.
“You’re Felix,” she said. Not a question.
“I am.”
“You’re not a cop.”
“Correct.”
“You’re not a journalist.”
“I narrate audiobooks. Mostly mysteries, ironically.”
Dr. Ashworth blinked at him. Then she laughed—a short, sharp, joyless sound. “Wonderful. The universe sends me a narrator. Fine. Come here.”
Felix walked to the case. The chicken bone sat there like a punchline. He looked at the empty lock, at the undisturbed velvet, at the way the lighting still hit the center of the display as if the pendant were still there.
“When did you notice it was gone?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes before I called Margo. I do a visual check every morning at 10:00 AM. The case was sealed. The pendant was present. At 10:07, my assistant, Priya, came in to adjust the humidity gauge. She found the case open and the pendant gone.”
“Where’s Priya now?”
“In my office. Crying. Which is understandable, because she was the last person in here before me, which makes her the primary suspect if the police get involved.”
Felix turned to look at her. “Aren’t you going to call the police?”
Dr. Ashworth met his eyes. For the first time, he saw something behind her composure: not fear, exactly. Something colder. Calculation.
“I will,” she said. “But first, I need someone to look at this room and tell me something the police won’t think to ask. Because the police will come in, dust for prints, interrogate my staff, and find nothing. But you—” she tilted her head, “—you’ve narrated a hundred mysteries. You know how these things work. You know the questions nobody asks until chapter twenty.”
Felix wanted to argue. He was a voice actor, not a detective. He’d once lost his keys for three days and found them in the freezer. He was, by any reasonable measure, the last person anyone should ask to investigate a crime.
But the chicken bone was bothering him.
Because the Greyfield Star was worth, last estimate, four million dollars. If you were going to steal it, you wouldn’t leave a calling card. You wouldn’t leave anything. You’d close the case, wipe the glass, and walk out like nothing had happened.
Leaving a chicken bone was either a taunt, a distraction, or a message.
And Felix, despite himself, wanted to know which.
“Give me an hour,” he said.
Dr. Ashworth nodded once. “The room is yours. I’ll be in my office, not calling the police. Yet.”
She left. The door clicked shut.
Felix stood alone in the Cobalt Room, surrounded by empty velvet and the faint smell of old money and new disaster. He pulled out his phone, opened the voice memo app—force of habit—and began to narrate what he saw.
“Chapter One. The theft of the Greyfield Star. The case was opened not cut. The lock was not forced—it was opened with the proper code, which means either someone knew the code or Dr. Ashworth herself opened it. The velvet shows no signs of scraping, meaning the pendant was lifted cleanly, not knocked aside. The chicken bone is fresh, which means whoever left it did so within the last twenty-four hours. And no one—not a single member of the staff—has reported hearing or seeing anything unusual.”
He paused. Looked at the bone again.
“Which means,” he continued softly, “that the thief is still inside the building. Or they never left at all.”