The workroom of Bips and Bops by Betsy receives a thorough search for the Stone of Golor. The slain duergar ambushers have the customary Xanathar tattoo of a circle radiating ten eye stalks as well as some coin [5 gp, 10 sp, 6 cp to Janky]. Their corpus delicti are concealed behind some boxes where Reade earnestly attempted to discover or create a trap door.
Suspecting that Betsy’s shop may be unaffiliated with Fenerus’s attached house, Luth workshops with the apple thieving urchins to disguise himself as Fenerus so as to not draw further suspicion from Fenerus’s onlooking neighbor when he enters “his” house. Janky, as Thadeus McBeth, conversates with said onlooking neighbor, who also happens to be the proprietor of the costume shoppe, to establish a plausible backstory of visiting his old friend Fendrear. Reade finds Fenerus’s door unsecured, lock broken by the recent arrest.
The ransacked house contains no Stone of Golor and few clues beyond the Xanather logo conspicuously painted in blood on the wall.
The dead end turns live when a tall, graceful woman dressed in emerald green, known to all locals as Open Lord of Waterdeep Laeral Silverhand, interrupts their surreptitious search of the crime house. She openly relates her search for a magical item called the Stone of Golor, which of course no one present has ever heard of before, and she could really use the help of the virtuous adventurers to locate it. For the good of the city, the party agrees to investigate an address in the southern ward for her and discreetly contact her at the Seven Masks Theatre with any information.
Unfit for further combat, the party sets up an observation post at the Jubilant Dragon Inn across the street from the boarding house at Laeral’s furnished address. Reade requests rooms at opposite ends to get a complete perspective, and front desk clerk Sunny obliges. Second watch Smoll observes a sober lurker clandestinely emerge from the nearby sewer, make his way to the Inn’s attached tavern, and then leave, inebriated, sometime later. Other mundane observations of foot traffic comprise working stiffs trying to make their ends meet.
The rested party returns to the Inn’s lobby at midnight to rent an additional room in the basement, accessed through the tavern via its one-eyed proprietor, Denny, who throws in a brief history of the establishment dating back to the time someone gave Stella the magic mirror that hangs behind the bar to this day.
In the basement, the party locates access to the sewer system in, unsurprisingly, the privy.