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The signs of a break-in, to any good detective, were obvious even when the door wasn't kicked in or the lock jimmied. Tiny ways in which the dust was disturbed around a doorframe, small things out of place, even a stray scent, could all reveal some interloper's presence.
To a Jäger, such a thing was doubly easy to detect, especially one with as fine a nose as Dimo.
And in Mechanicsburg, where one could not tap a brick without the Castle's knowledge, if not outright interference, burglary had developed into a subtle art indeed, but still not something turned against anyone in the Family.
So when Agatha returned from her latest case and entered the parlor to find someone lounging in her favorite armchair reading the Mechanicsburg Knell, it was for these facts alone that she was not remotely alarmed, even before she noticed the tacky wingtip shoes.
"Hello, KB," she greeted without much enthusiasm, and dropped her travel bag on the floor.
Her brother lowered the newspaper he'd been reading just enough to give her a cheeky grin over the pages.
"Hello, Aggie," Klaus Barry said in response.
"Hoy, Mazter," Dimo greeted as well, trailing after Agatha and easily carrying her travel trunk. He lowered it steadily to the floor, though being full of tools and various mechanical tidbits, it thunked resoundingly as it hit the ground.
"Dimo, lovely to see you," Klaus Barry greeted, folding his newspaper carefully and setting it aside. "Been keeping my sister out of trouble, have you?"
"Dot iz a dirty lie, und she better not hear hyu say zo," Dimo replied with a grin.
"I'm right here," Agatha pointed out, pulling a face at her brother. "And since you're here to get my help, I'd expect you to be a bit more well-behaved yourself."
"Outrageous. Who says I'm here for your help?" Klaus Barry said, tossing the newspaper aside on a nearby side table. He actually managed to look earnestly offended by the notion.
"Because you're squatting in my parlor like a spider," Agatha said. "And if you were just bothering me for your own entertainment, you would have just called me up to the Castle. Why are you here, KB?"
Klaus Barry threw his hands up, laughing as he surrendered to his sister's observations.
"The brilliant detective catches another one," Klaus Barry said, smirking as he steepled his fingers. He always looked a bit like Lucrezia from the stageplays when he did things like these, some scheming but charming villain, even when his intentions were perfectly honorable.
Agatha rolled her eyes, but couldn't resist dropping into the armchair across from her brother, ready to take on another case if he had indeed brought her one.
The thing about Mechanicsburg at the time was the following: it had two Heterodynes. And Heterodynes being one of those things where even one tended to be more than enough in some circumstances, two was practically enough to conquer a continent if they were so inclined.
It was good for the Wulfenbach Empire, then, that these were two of the most exceptionally well-behaved Heterodynes in a very long family history for misbehavior.
First of all, because Klaus Barry Heterodyne's support was invaluable to the Wulfenbach Empire, not only for the fact that the Jägers were some of its most reliable and versatile troops, but additionally because Klaus Barry was one of the strongest Sparks at Klaus Wulfenbach's disposal. And Baron Wulfenbach was only too happy for the political support from Mechanicsburg, even barring the more personal affection he had for his protege.
Throughout the salons and taverns of the Empire, it was even rumored that the Baron would name Klaus Barry Heterodyne as his heir, and piquant rumors about the boy's parentage were, of course, the bread and butter of inveterate gossips all over the continent.
Second of all, of course, in the matter of the two Heterodynes, was Klaus Barry's younger sister Agatha.
Agatha's interest was not in ruling the town, though if Klaus Barry died without heirs, that task would fall to her regardless. No, she liked the town well enough. But what she loved was independence to pursue her own interests, and for the most part, that was to engage in Sparkwork. And because after a while even that tended to get boring, in her ever-present efforts to challenge herself, and at least partially because of a penchant towards trouble that she must have inherited from her father and uncle, Agatha had somehow become known as an able investigator.
The 'how' was unclear even to her. There'd been that murder during a reception on Castle Wulfenbach, sure, and she'd used some heavily modified soup-serving clanks to prove the culprit had not, in fact, been the butler, and the Baron had seemed impressed by her skills... but how she ended up as a questor for the Empire, and known throughout the scandal rags of Europa as a brilliant deductive mind was an enigma even to Agatha.
And since then, people kept calling her in to solve inexplicable murders, or find the culprits in particularly confounding thefts, and Agatha kept solving the mysteries she was presented with, bemused by how that kept contributing to her reputation as some kind of legendary detective. She was passable at best as a detective, relying more on her Spark than her powers of deduction to tackle each problem she was faced with.
Well, at this point, it was something entertaining to do, and she did enjoy the work, if only because it got her out of the house.
The rest of the time, of course, there was Mechanicsburg, and her house in the Tumbles where she went to avoid Klaus Barry's use of Castle Heterodyne as his work office. Perhaps there weren't as many labs that could fit in her stout little home in town as in the Castle, but at least she hadn't had some hapless foreign dignitary wander into her lab and get his face almost melted off since moving there, so that was a plus.
Dimo did not come before or after she moved out to the house in town, but more or less concurrently. He was already on the doorstep, grinning at her in greeting, when she showed up with her valise and a small glass enclosure in which she was carrying one of her more sensitive experiments that she didn't trust the Castle or the minions to transport.
"Did my brother think I need a chaperone?" she asked, aggrieved by the notion.
"No, but Mamma Gkika sez hi," Dimo replied with a snicker. "End she tinks young vimmen vit tendenzy to get in trouble should haff someone vit a goot clobberink arm vatching der back, so don't hyu effen tink of sending me off or hyu'll haff Jenka instead."
Agatha opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it slowly as she remembered just how overprotective Jenka had gotten the last time she and Füst had come to drag Agatha out of a bind. It had been that affair with the diamond and the man-eating plants. Füst had bitten a duke. It had kept Klaus Barry busy smoothing over diplomatic relations for months afterwards.
"Fair enough," Agatha said, and accepted it with grace when Dimo opened the door for her and then took her valise to carry to her room.
If Dimo became a fixture in Agatha's house from that point on, she certainly didn't complain about it.
For his part, Dimo did not mind all that much occupying this bizarre questor niche right along Agatha. If anyone even suspected him of being smarter than the average Jäger, he would vehemently disabuse them of the notion.
But he didn't so much mind being clever if it kept him a step ahead of a Heterodyne's enemies, and there to catch her should she fall.
Literally, as in just now when Agatha toppled off the top of the tower, and fell right into his waiting arms.
She looked back up, dazed, as the Spark she'd just been tussling with turned back to work on his mind-control device.
"Hoy, Miztress," Dimo greeted toothily. "Fancy meetink hyu here."
"Ah, yes, here in the garden, where you told me you were taking a walk," Agatha deadpanned.
Dimo snorted a short laugh, before his demeanor turned more serious.
"Dot guy iz schtill at it?" he asked.
"Not for long, since I removed the power regulator from his Mind Obfuscatolator," she said, and took out some small component from her pocket to show him.
Up on top of the tower, the large device was beginning to emit a concerning high pitched whine, much like the whining of the Spark as the device refused to work.
Dimo snickered as he placed Agatha back on her feet, and they began to stroll down the wending garden paths as, in the background, the Spark's ranting hit a panicked pitch. Agatha took Dimo's arm as they walked, and a small explosion punctuated their turn down a more shaded path.
"We should probably call in Wulfenbach forces to sweep up that mess," Agatha said.
"Dey iz schmart guyz, dey ken see dot explosion from der little spy birdie," Dimo waved it off.
"They have a stealth dirigible overhead?" Agatha asked, looking up even though a thick canopy of branches covered them. But then, even if she could see the sky, she likely wouldn't have been able to pick it out with the naked eye, so she huffed instead. "Of course they do. Well. They can handle things from here. I'd say there's, hmm, enough time for a late breakfast?"
She gave a sidelong look to Dimo, who returned the look with heat instead.
"Hy tink," he said slowly, his arm coming up around her shoulders, fingers tangling in her loose hair, "ve haff time for a leetle snack, mebbe."
"Oh," Agatha said. She hooked a finger around Dimo's shirt collar and pulling him into an alcove between a decorative bush and a trellis. "In that case..."
In the cool shade of the garden, Dimo's eyes almost seemed to glow. He nuzzled Agatha's cheek, with a growl so soft that it wasn't heard, so much as felt where their bodies pressed together, and then he moved to capture her mouth in a kiss.
Overhead, a dirigible circled for a landing, but in the garden, it was still quiet.