Spike Dragon Private Detective (Ed)

	Rain lashed at the pane of my office window. It was coming down in sheets, and icy cold.  It was cold enough it could have turned to snow, or sleet, or frozen rain before the dark night was over.  Who the hell knew?  Nobody, not with the pegasus union on strike. I wouldn't want to be walking home on a night like tonight.  Not that I have a home to walk home to.  I sleep here, in my office.  Right in this very chair.
	My name's Spike.  I'm a dragon.  Spike the Dragon, private detective.  It used to be Spike the Dragon, police detective - just another sap in the thin blue line.  That was before they drummed me out of the force.  Drummed me out for killing that bunny civilian.  The force never much liked to discuss what I had caught that bunny doing to his little pony wife.
	So that's why I'm here, in a dead end office overlooking skid row.  I've got a half drunk bottle of scotch in the bottom left hand drawer.  That's usually where I keep my revolver.  Drink the scotch, clean the revolver.  Don't get those confused.  That's what I was doing now, cleaning the revolver.
	That's when she came in.  She was a long white drink of water.  Had a mane full of beautiful purple hair.  It would have looked gorgeous all done up.  Now it was wet and hanging straight down.  A gentleman would have offered her his coat.  I offered her a chair, and a chance to explain what she wanted.  She didn't know me, but I had seen her before.  She was in all those magazines.  The ones I kept in the john.  She was the primadonna of the local fashion industry.  Real hoi polloi.  When she opened her lips she spoke with a clear accent.  What kind of accent, was anything but clear.  It could have been southern.  Some overstuffed Georgian genteel.  Or for that matter, any sort of upper class east coast twit.  There was a hint of English in there.  Not real English, but the phony kind.  The kind picked up at exclusive American boarding schools.  Maybe daddy didn't love her, but he sure had a lot of cash.  Her accent spoke of danger.  Danger and sex.
	“Well, you see, Mr...”
	“Spike the Dragon.”
	“Well Mr. Dragon, I found you in the listings.  I need some information, and I'd like it discreet.  I'd like to give you some money for it too.”  She looked around the dilapidated office.  “You do know what money is, don't you Mr. Dragon?”
	I grinned.  “You've come to the right place, Sweetheart.  I've got all kinds of information for you.  Like where the front door is, or how to make a knuckle sandwich.”
	“Why don't you take a look at this instead, short stuff?”  She reached into her saddlebag, pulled out a photograph and threw it on my desk.  “Do you know who that is?”
	“Sure,” I said, “everybody knows that broad.”
	“She's dead.”
	“Yeah, I know.  Everybody knows that too.  Mayor Mare is dead.  She died in her own office, three days ago.  Natural causes.”
	“The causes weren't so natural, Mr. Dragon.”
	“Maybe so, but what do you want me to do about it?”
	“I want you to find out who murdered my mother, Mr. Dragon.”  I took another look at the photo.  The resemblance was there, if you knew to look for it.  Hell of a thing to spring on a man.  This broad was one tough cookie.  But now she looked rough around the edges, like she was about to fall to pieces.  This could be an interesting case.  If it was true.
	“How do you know?” I asked.
	“I was there, there at the end.  I was the one who found her.  She was still alive.  She knew she had been murdered, but she didn't say who.  She was real scared.”
	“Did you go to the police?”  She shook her head.  I raised one eyebrow.
	“She was the mayor, Mr. Dragon.  She was scared.  For all I know the police were in on it.”
	I thought about it a moment.  Some rich sexy dame was in my office.  She wanted me to bring her mother's killer to justice.  This was serious business.  I decided to go for broke.
	“Ten rubies a day, plus expenses.”
	“Will sapphires do?”
	“Corundum's corundum, I always say.”
	We shook on it.  That was that.  Now came the hard part.
	I took a walk to clear my head.  Fresh air helps me think.  So does a full stomach, so I stepped in to the corner cafe.  It was called Pinkie's Pies.  She was Pinkie.  She made pies.  Pinkie's Pies.  Pinkie knew all the scuttlebutt on the street, the only trick was getting it out of her.  She was a real dizzy dame.
	“Hiya, Spike, sweetie,” she said, “can I get you some pie?”
	“I'll have my usual.”
	“Sorry, sugar, we're all sold out of apple.  How 'bout banana cream?”
	“Sounds good, sweetheart.  And joe.  Make it black, I'm going to be up awhile.”
	“Working a case, honey?”
	“You got it.  I've got a stiff on my hands.”
	“Ooo.  Another case of lead poisoning?”
	“More like regular poisoning if you ask me.  Made to look natural.  Top rate button man, if you ask me.”
	“Hood rat?  Chippy?”
	“Mayor Mare got zotzed.”
	She whistled between her teeth.  “Job like that would take a lot of scratch.”
	“I'm trying to think who would want her offed.”
	“Get a slant out the window lately, honey?  Savvy?”
	I looked out the window.  Just a dark empty street.  Rain was coming down in sheets, kicking up big white splashes, looked like doves taking off.  It almost made the city look pretty.  Rain.  Weather.  The pegasus strike.  The union had a real beef with the city.  People had already been hurt.
	“I come in for pie and you're telling me it's the pie cards that rubbed out the mayor?”
	“Dollars to donuts.”
	“That's not bad, actually.”
	“Egg's in the coffee.”
	“Come again?”
	“Frimming on the flim flam.”
	“Tout suite.  You're my girl, Pinkie,”
	“See you Friday!” She smiled and bounced her self back into the kitchen.  I left my spinach on the counter.  To be honest, I didn't understand half of what she just said.  Pinkie was a real daffy dame.  But I sure did love to eat her pie.
	So about that strike.  Hundreds of pegasus ponies were out of work, demanding better pay, better conditions, life insurance.  Weather changing was high risk business.  Only the toughest ponies took the job.  I always figured they had a good point, but the city had decided to play hard ball.  The sun hadn't come out in weeks.  Crops were starting to fail.  The whole economy was starting to get sucked into the fight.  But that only made both sides fight harder.  Like I said, it had gotten ugly.  But why would they want to kill the mayor?  Sure, she was their enemy number one.  But only on the surface.  Croaking her wouldn't do them any good, there would just be another corrupt lackey taking her place.  Was it spite?  Was it revenge?
	There was a strike out by the airport.  They had signs but they weren't using them.   Not many people out to read them in the small hours of the morning.  They were working the lines twenty four hours a day, keeping an eye out for scabs.  I guess I must have looked like one to them.  I don't know why, being a dragon and all.  These were not clever ponies.
	“Well look what the cat dragged in, girls.  It's another scab,” said the rainbow maned one, coming to the front of the crowd.  This one was in charge.  You could tell it just by looking at her.  Real alpha female.  “Don't you know what we do to suckers like you?”
	“Listen, toots.  I'm no scab.  I came by to ask you some questions.”
	“You a city man?”
	“Do I look like a city man?”
	“What do you want to know, shorty.”
	“I'd like to know why you killed the mayor.”
	She laid me out flat with some chin music.  Damn she was fast.  I had just come up to talk and I was already behind the eight ball.  I picked myself up off the pavement.  The goons came forward, pulling out chains, saps, brass knuckles.  Stuff meant to scare off the scabs.  Maybe even hurt them pretty bad if they gave any lip.  They weren't packing heat.  I was.  I pulled my revolver and stuck it right under the leader's chin.  That clammed them up real fast.
	“I'm not sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation,” I said.  “I thought a pegasus would have more respect for gravity.  I'm not here to play games.”  I cocked back the hammer.  “I want to know who killed the mayor.”
	“The mayor died of natural causes.”
	“That's what they say.  Except for the people I've been talking to.  Now spill the beans.”
	“I don't know nothing, mister.  We've never killed anybody.”
	“What about that zebra kid, just came by looking for work?  Need to feed his sick mother.  It was in the papers.”
	“We didn't kill him, mister.  We just beat him up.  He died in the hospital.”
	Goons, I thought to myself.  Numbskulls.  Equestria's finest weather service.
	“Why would we want to kill the mayor?  Somebody else would just take her place.  The whole city's against us.  She's just a stooge anyway.  The city council's making the real decisions.”
	She had a point.  She'd only confirmed what I already suspected.  It wasn't the union.  I had no more answers, and I'd just made a mess of the situation.  This was going no where.  I stepped back.  The thugs started forward again until I waved my gun in their direction.  None of them was really spoiling for bloodshed.  They just wanted to make a living.  “If I hear anything more about dead zebra kids,” I shouted at the boss, “I'm gonna personally fill you full of daylight.”
	With that I disappeared into an alley.  I kept looking back to make sure I wasn't being tailed.  If I hadn't been looking back, maybe I wouldn't have walked straight into those two other ponies.  One was big, the other was enormous.  I couldn't make them out, silhouetted in the street light.
	“Do it,” said the big one, a dame.
	The enormous one clobbered me right across the jaw with a wild haymaker.  I fell to the ground.  I was hurt bad.
	“You want me to finish him off, boss?”  that was the enormous one, he was a real big lug.  Spoke real deep, with some kind of accent.  I couldn't think of what it was, I couldn't think of anything at all.
	“Not tonight, big brother.  It would only make for more questions.  People are already asking too many questions.  Let's hope he's learned his lesson.”
	That's when the darkness swallowed me.

	I woke up in heaven.
	There was an angel bending over me.
	I don't know where I'll go when I die.  Odds are it won't be as nice as the hospital.  And whoever's standing over me probably won't be such a sweet thing.
	“Spike, baby, please.  You poor thing.  You need to stop doing this to yourself.”
	I sat up in bed.  “You think I clocked my own chin?  Did you turn into a fathead?”
	“You know what I mean, Spike.  This is killing you. I don't want to lose you.  I love you.”
	Here I was waking up from a concussion, and it was the nurse that was falling to pieces.  What a world.  I got out of the bed to put on my trousers.  I couldn't find my shirt.
	“Please don't go, Spike.  Stay with me.”
	“I can't, baby.  I've got a job to do.  I need to pay the bills, just like you.  Rent doesn't pay for itself.”
	“You can move in with me, Spike.  In that little cottage I have out in the country.  You know the one.  You'll like it out there.  You can relax.  Fish all day.  And we could finally be together.”
	“You know we can never be together, baby,” I said.  Not after what happened.  There'd be too many questions.  A formal investigation.” I found my shirt. There was blood on the collar.  My tie was underneath.
	“Then we can run away together.  Some place that they could never find us.  All I need is you.”
	“That sounds really tempting, sweetheart,” I said, as I put on my hat.  “Real tempting.  In fact, I'm going to give that a lot of thought.  But not tonight, baby.  Tonight I've still got a job to do.”  Then I kissed her.  I kissed her hard on the lips.  I kissed her long.  Her back hoof curled up in ecstasy; I suppose the same happened to my tail.  Then I left her standing there, in her little white uniform.
	“I love you too, baby,” I said as I walked out the door.  I don't know if she heard me.
	Mayor Mare was dead.  Murdered.  The union men were the obvious suspects.  They said they didn't do it, and they were on the square.  Whoever did do it didn't make a clean break, and now they didn't want people asking questions.  They'd probably been tailing me since that dame showed up in my office.  So the only recourse I had left was to ask more questions.  I just had to ask the right people.  I had to find the Brain.
	Everybody in this city knew that if you wanted the right answers, you asked the Brain.  I had worked with her as a cop often enough.  Some said she was a specialist who worked with the Feds, but nobody knew which Department.  Others said she had a direct line of communication with the Lord.  It wouldn't surprise me if it were the latter; she's that good.  I found her at the library.  She was always at the library, hunched over a pile of books.
	“Long time no see, Spike,” she said, “been seeing your nurse moll again?”
	“You're going to tell me how you knew that one, toots,” I said.
	“Stitches were a dead giveaway.”
	I felt my forehead, there were probably a dozen of them.  I didn't even know.
	“I need to ask you some questions.”
	“Shoot,” she said.
	“Let's say you were an old gray mare.  And you weren't what you used to be.  Say early sixties.  You drop dead in your office one day.  What just happened?”
	“Heart attack,” she said.  “Maybe stroke.”
	“That's not just for fellas?”
	“Common misconception,” she said.  “An old mare dies of natural causes all of a sudden?  More likely a heart attack than anything else.”
	“Let's say it wasn't a natural cause.”
	“Poison.”
	“You sure?”
	“Well, if you shoot her,” she said, “It probably wouldn't look that natural.”
	“Something like Nevada gas?”
	“Cyanide?  Not an acute dose.  Not as a gas.  It causes seizures, vomiting.  Hell of a way to go.  But if it was in her food, lower doses.  Maybe it could be a little more tough to spot.”
	“Could she last long enough to tell her daughter she'd been murdered?”
	“Maybe, Spike.  There are poisons that could do that.”  She put down her pen and looked up at me with those big dark eyes.  “But maybe instead of guessing about what kinds of poison were used, you should be asking who would want to kill the mayor.”
	I didn't know what to say.
	“There have only been so many old mares dropping dead of 'natural causes' in the last few days, Spike.  I wasn't foaled yesterday.”
	“Right.  Well.  At first I thought it was disgruntled union members.”
	“No chance in hell,” she said.  “They made a deal.”
	“What?” This was news to me.  She looked down at her books and started writing again.
	“They made a deal.  They were going to give the union everything they wanted.  It was at an emergency city council meeting.  The day the mayor died.  She was going to sign it the next morning.”
	“Won't the interim mayor just sign it?”
	“Not until after she's sworn in.  Won't be until next week.  And her death has shaken up city hall.  The deal's looking shaky.  Ponies are nervous.”
	“So anybody who doesn't want to make a deal with the union could be a suspect.”
	“Or anybody who just wants the strike to continue.”
	“For just another week?  Why?  Who's it useful for?”
	“How's the weather doing, Spike?”
	Weather?  The weather had been horrible.  Weeks of rain and high winds.  I missed the sun, the blue sky.  Everything was all black and shades of gray.  It matched my mood, but I was due for a change.
	“Who'd want weeks of bad weather?” I asked out loud, more to myself than the Brain.  “Maybe it's the same people who don't want sunshine.  Who's coming out on top?  Windmill salesmen?  Umbrella factories?  Bridge builders?”
	“Who's getting hurt?” the Brain chimed in.
	“Streetsweepers?  Ball clubs?  They haven't been able the play home games this whole time.  Farmers?  They depend on the weather more than anybody else.  But who would want to hurt farmers?  Foreign restaurants?”
	“Spike, I don't think Chinatown actually ships in their groceries from China.  Shipping companies might be a good guess, but I think the people who want to hurt farmers most are other farmers.”
	“How so?”
	“It's not Ma and Pa Kettle anymore, Spike.  Farming is big business these days.  Agribusness.  Very cutthroat.  The big farms eat up the little farms.”
	“What about insurance?  Subsidies?  Crop futures?”
	“Spread all across the board, Spike.  Every time there's a disaster, the big farms come out on top over the little farms.  Just makes monopolizing all the easier.”
	“And an extra rain could mean whether or not the crops come in?  It's that important?”
	“Could be a matter of life or death, Spike.  At least if this whole train of thought is even on the right tracks.”
	But which farmers. There were a lot of them.  Which crops were even being affected?  Surely it wasn't all of them.  What crops were even supposed to be in season?  Spike tried to think back to the last time he ate.  Pinkie's Pies.  Pies.  Apples.  Apple pies.  Pinkie's Pies was all sold out of apple pies.
	I threw my hat and coat back on.  “I think I need to pay a visit to Sweet Apple Acres,” I said, turning to leave the library.
	“You should take some back up,” the Brain shouted after me, her voice filled with worry.  “Those people can get dangerous in the boonies.”
	“I work alone, sister,” I shouted back.  “Tell you what, you don't hear back from me in a couple of hours, you send the riot police!”
	I headed out of town.  It was dark out of town.  You forget just how dark it gets without street lights on every corner.  Sweet Apple Acres looked anything but sweet in the darkness.  I knew something was wrong the moment I pulled myself through the barbed wire fence and snuck onto the property.  The sun wasn't up yet, but that didn't mean the farmers shouldn't be.  They were nowhere to be seen, a farm like this should be buzzing with activity in these early hours.  It was creepy.  I snuck in close to the farmhouse.  Turned out they were up after all.  But they weren't getting ready for a day of work.  It looked like they were having a party.  I could hear the music even through the shuttered windows.  There was a light on in the basement.  I crawled up to take a look.  It was some kind of lab.  There was an aged crone of a pony working away in a lab coat and goggles.  Dope?  No, poison.  Of course.  Apple seeds.  All apple seeds contained a small amount of amygdalin, or some damn thing.  Turns into cyanide in the blood stream.  Not enough to kill a pony, not unless you could extract enough from a lot of seeds.  And these people had a lot of seeds.
	Then I looked in at the party.  This was the right house alright.  There he was, the bruno that sucker-punched me.  He was massive.  I was lucky he didn't take my head off my shoulders.  There was maybe a dozen of them.  I'd probably need that back-up after all.  At least I had solved the case.  I turned around to head back to town.  She was standing there the whole time.  The one the big guy answered to.  She had a rifle.  She clobbered me right on the head, and I fell.
	“You just don't learn your lesson, do you sugarcube?” she asked as I passed out.
	This time I woke up in hell.  Or at least it was underground.  It was the basement lab I'd seen from the window.  I was tied to a chair.  The boss pony was standing in front of me.  She didn't have her rifle anymore, but then again she had a full basement full of nasty looking tools.
	“Why didn't you just kill me?”  I spat.  A tooth came out.  I was in pretty bad shape.
	“I need some information from you,” she said.  That sounded familiar.  “Like how much you found out.  And who you told.”
	“I found just about all of it out, it wasn't hard to do,” I said, stalling.  “Except for one thing.”
	“Oh?”
	“How'd you slip her the mickey?”
	“Easy enough,” she said.  “The mayor liked to visit schools.  Like the one my little sister goes to.  She thinks it puts her in touch with the common ponies.  It put her in touch with a big ol' basket of our freshly baked apple bran muffins.  Nobody can eat just one,”  she smiled.  That's when she started to hear the sirens.  Police sirens.
	Her smile drained away.  “What's that?” she asked.
	“That's backup, sugarlumps,” I said.  Good old Brain.  I'll have to stop on my way back and pick her up something nice.
	“No.”
	“Oh yes.  You want to know who I told?  I didn't tell anybody.  But the Brain knows.  The Brain always knows.  And now the Brain's bringing the whole force down on your pointy inbred pinhead.”
	She started running upstairs.  There was a big commotion of hooves as the other ponies heard the sirens too.  “You better give up!” I shouted after her.  “You're caught, you can't get away!  If you give up, nobody gets hurt.  They might give you clemency.”
	She stopped and walked downstairs.  “You know that's a load of malarkey,” she said.  “I'm as good as dead.  But at least I won't be the only one.”  She knocked over a large glass still, then rushed back upstairs.  The still knocked over another, then another, like dominoes.  They shattered into a million shards, spilling their solvents all over the floor.  It was ether.  Ether was nasty stuff.  I was already getting dizzy.  I had to get out of these ropes.  If I passed out now, I'd suffocate.  As I watched, the pool of ether poured over one of the hot plates.  It had been left on.  I grinned.  The ether lit up.  I had missed the sun, but this was a close second.
	I walked out of the blazing wreck of the farmhouse about five minutes later, sans clothes.  Sargent Hooves was standing there.  Good old Hooves, reliable as always.  I bummed a smoke off her.  The cops had rounded up all the Apple gang without a shot fired.  They were leading them away in irons.  Their head honcho saw me.
	“You!” she shouted, “how did you survive?”
	“You stupid broad,” I said, “don't you know dragons are fireproof?”
	The cops all chuckled.  Good guys, these cops.  Days like this, I almost missed them.  Day.  The sun had come up. The sky was clear.
	“Don't you think you should put on some clothes, Spike?” Hooves said.  “You're indecent.”
	“Oh, right,” I said, looking down.
	I went up to one of the ponies in cuffs.  The big bastard who had slugged me.  I winked, then pulled off his tie and put it on myself. It was too big, but at least I was decent.
	That's when I saw her.  The dame from the night before.  She looked even prettier with her hair done up.  She must have been tipped off by the police and followed them out.
	I walked up to her to talk.  “Well, that's that,” I said.  “Case is solved.  Didn't even take me a whole day, so that won't cost you many sapphires.  But I'm an honest man, and it was an honest night's work.  I hope you're happy.”
	She slapped me across the face with one of her hooves.  Hell of a hook.  I needed to stop taking blows to the head like this.  Fluttershy was right, it was going to kill me.
	“My mother's dead, you jerk.”
	I should've kept my mouth shut.
	“But you did your job,” she added.  “Her killers will be brought to justice.  They're going to light up like a Christmas tree.  So I need to thank you.” She grabbed my tie and pulled me up to her lips.  The kiss was dynamite.  Everybody stopped to look.  It was better than any gemstone.
	She lowered me back down.  Then turned, and walked away, swinging those hips.
	Hooves sauntered up to me.  “Who on earth was that?” she asked.
	“One in a million,” I said.  “A real rarity.”
	“You know, Spike,” Hooves said, “you should go straight to the hospital.  You look like you've been ran over by a truck.  You should see somebody.”
	“That's the smartest thing you've ever said, Hooves,” I said.  “I think I'll go do that.  I think I really need to see a nurse.”