Bitter Gold Hearts

  __XX__

  Breakfast with SHAGGOTH was an experience. He could eat. Three of him could lay waste to nations. No wonder the breed was so rare. If there were as many of them as there are of us, they would have to learn to eat rocks because there wouldn’t be enough of anything else to go around.

  He brought the buggy around front and put the horses into harness with an ease that awakened my envy. Those beasts trotted out docilely and cooperatively and stood there smirking because they knew I would be irked by their easy acquiescence.

  Damn the whole equine tribe, anyway. The witch came out with a lunch she’d packed. I thanked her for that, for her hospitality, and for everything else. She ran through the instructions for using the spells she’d given me. Those instructions were as complicated and difficult to recall as instructions for dropping a rock. But specialists think the uninitiated incapable of falling with­out technical assistance.

  I offered to pay for the help again. “Don’t start up, Garrett. Let me do my little piece for justice in an unjust world. Somewhere out there, there is somebody with the soul of a crocodile. Somebody who ordered the murder of a pregnant woman. Find him. Balance the scales. If you don’t think you can handle him alone — for whatever reason — come see me again.”

  She was quietly furious about Amiranda. And she hadn’t even known the woman. It was curious that Amiranda could find so many allies by getting herself murdered. And a pity none of us had been around when she needed us most. Though Saucer head had done everything he could.

  I didn’t argue anymore. “I’ll let you know how it comes out. Thanks for everything.” I exchanged glares with the horses, putting on a good enough snarl to get my bluff in.

  “Watch yourself, Garrett. You’re playing with rough people.”

  “I know. But so are they.”

  “They probably know who you are and might know you’re poking around. You don’t know who they are.”

  “I’ve had plenty of practice being paranoid.” I swung up onto the seat, glanced back at the bundle I’d be taking home, and hollered at the horses to get going. Good old Shaggoth trudged through the woods ahead of the horses, showing them the easy way to get back to the road — the way I’d completely missed coming in. The beasts kept glancing back, silently accusing me of being a moron. I started with the first farm beyond the road to the place where Junior had been held. No, nobody there had seen a young man on foot the day Karl claimed to have started home. Certainly no one of any breed had come there looking to rent or buy a buggy or mount. It was what I expected to hear. He wouldn’t have done it so close, but the chance had to be covered. It was donkey-work time, grasping for straws. I had nothing concrete to affirm or deny my suspicions.

  I got the same response house after house. Some talked easily, some not, the way people will, but the end was always the same. Nobody had begged, bought, borrowed, rented, or stolen transportation of any sort. Lunch time came and went and I began to consider restructuring my assumptions.

  Maybe Karl Junior had walked home. Barefoot. Or maybe he’d hitched a ride or had flagged down one of the day coaches running into the city. Or the ogres might have left him some way to get home. That seemed damned unlikely. Walking, stealing, flag­ging a coach presented difficulties, too, for reasons of character and obvious traceability. Coachmen remember people they pick up along the road. Hitching looked like the best and most logical alterna­tive. It’s the way I’d have gotten myself to town. But I doubted that a resort to the charity of strangers would even occur to a spoiled child off the Hill. But had he gotten home that way, my chances of discovering the people who had helped were even more remote than they were by my present, most-favored course. So I stuck to what I was doing. I reasoned that if he had hitched, he would have mentioned it. He’d been careful to mention such details.

  I now had a strong attachment to the assumption that Junior had participated in his own kidnapping. I had to caution myself not to get so attached that I began dis­carding contrary evidence. The vision sent me back to wartime days. The farmer and his sons and a dozen other men were advancing through the hayfield in echelon, scythes rhythmically swing­ing. They looked like skirmishers cautiously advancing. I pulled up and watched for a few minutes. They saw me but pretended otherwise. The paterfamilias glanced at the sky, which was overcast, and decided to keep cutting.

  All right. I could play it their way. I slid down, walked to the edge of the field where the hay was down already — just to show how thoughtful a fellow I am — and approached the crowd from the flank. The women and kids raking the hay into piles and getting it onto the backs of several pathetic donkeys were much more curious than their men folk. I gave them a “howdy” as I passed, and nothing more. Anything more would have been considered a heavy pass by many farm husbands. I parked myself a cautious distance from the guy who looked like he was the boss ape in these parts and said “howdy” again. He grunted and went on swinging, which was all right by me. I was trying to be accommodating.

  “You might be able to help me.”

  This time his grunt was filled with the gravest of doubts.

  “I’m looking for a man who passed this way four or five days back. He might have been looking to rent or buy a horse.”

  “Why?”

  “On account of what he did to my woman.”

  He turned his head in rhythm and gave me a look saying I had no business going around asking for help if I was not man enough to rule my woman.

  “He killed her. I just found out yesterday. Got her over in the buggy, taking her to her folks. Want to find that fellow when I get that done.”

  The farmer stopped swinging his scythe. He stared at me with squinty eyes that had looked into too many sunrises and sunsets. The other scythes came to rest and the men leaned upon them exactly like tired soldiers lean on their spears. The women and kids stopped raking and loading. Everybody stared at me. The boss farmer nodded once, curtly, put his scythe down gently, hiked over to the buggy. He leaned against the side, lifted the cover off Amiranda.

  When he returned, he stood beside me instead of fac­ing me. “Pretty little gal.”

  “She was. We had a young one coming, too.”

  “Looked like. Wadlow! Come here.”

  One of the older farmers came to us. He planted his scythe and leaned. He looked even more laconic than the first one.

  “You sold that swayback mare to that smart-ass city boy what day?”

  The second farmer considered the sky as though he might find the answer written there. “Five days ago to­day. About noon.” He eyed me like he was suspicious I might want the money back.

  I knew what I wanted to know but had to play the game out. “He say where he was headed?”

  Wadlow looked to my companion, who told him, “You tell him what he wants to know.”

  “Said he was going into the city. Said his horse got stole. Didn’t say much of nothing else.”

  “Hope you took him good. Was he wearing shoes?” It was an off-the-wall question but about the only thing left I had to ask. Except, “Was he alone?”

  Wadlow said, “Didn’t have no shoes. Boots. Pretty rich-boy boots. Wouldn’t last a week out here. He was by his lonesome.”

  “That’s that, then,” I said. The older farmer asked, “That tell you what you need?”

  “I reckon I know where to look now.” And that was true. “Much obliged.” I checked the sky. “Thank you, then.” I turned to go.

  “Luck to you. She was a pretty little thing.”

  My shoulders tightened and I shuddered in a sudden wash of emotion. I raised a hand and marched on. I had a man’s work to do. Those farmers understood better than anybody I knew, except maybe Saucer head Tharpe. By the time I settled on the buggy seat, the skirmishers were on the move again and the women and children were back to work. Maybe they would find the time to talk about me over supper.

  __XXI__

  It was late when I entered the city but a sliver of light still re
mained. I had a brainstorm. It was a long shot but it might stir something. I had Amiranda’s body propped up beside me. The witch’s spells were holding their own and the light helped with the illusion. Maybe somebody who knew she could not be alive would see her and think she was. To that end I made a few cautious forays into the outskirts of Ogre Town, then went up and circled Lettie Faren’s place because a lot of the Bruno types from the Hill came there to waste their wages. The wages of sin is that you get cheated out of them. Then I headed home, going around to the back so no one would see me take the body inside. Dean was there despite the hour. He helped with the door and gawked. “What’s the matter with her, Mr. Garrett?”

  I wasn’t in one of my better humors. “She’s dead. That’s what’s the matter with her. Murdered.”

  He stammered, apologized, stammered some more, so I apologized back and added, “I don’t know why. Maybe because she was pregnant. Maybe because she knew too much. Let’s take her in to his nibs. He might be able to sort it out.”

  The Dead Man isn’t always as hard and insensitive as he pretends. He read my mood and saved the usual act. That is the one who spent the night. It was the first he admitted knowing about that.

  “The same. Let me tell it while I’m in the mood.”

  He let me run through it up to the moment I carried her in there. Dean ran me mug after mug and hovered solicitously in between. I knew I was doing a good job reporting and had done a good one poking around be­cause he didn’t interrupt once and his only questions afterward were about the mammoth. Purely personal curiosity.

  Let me mull it, Garrett. You go get drunk. Watch out for him, Dean.

  “Watch out for me? Why?”

  You are working yourself up toward a quixotic gesture. You are Unreasonable and irrational when you fall into such moods. I caution you to restraint. The information you have gathered is mainly circumstantial and there is not enough to point an accusing finger accurately. Tomorrow I will suggest some courses that may, possibly, produce evidence more concrete.

  “More concrete? It’s plenty hard enough for me.”

  You expect to tackle the favorite and only son of the Stormwarden Raver Styx on the basis of a pair of shoes and a horse? When you know there is a high probability that she would shield him even if he were caught cutting the hearts out of babies in the public streets? Further, you may have chosen the wrong villain to be the target of your wrath.

  “Who else?”

  That is what you will have to discover. It is true, I believe, that there is a reasonable probability that the young daPena and the dead woman were involved in a contrived kidnapping. But that is not a certainty. One simple fact could explain away all the evidence you have adduced as indicting the younger Karl.

  “Here you go playing games with my mind again. How are you going to explain everything away?”

  Two hundred thousand marks gold. A payoff of that magnitude could waken charity in the heart of a beast as foul as an ogre, perhaps. Perhaps they saw no need to plunder their hostage of pocket money. Damn him. He could be right. The problem with this thing was that there were too many answers instead of not enough. “I don’t believe it,” I insisted.

  Take this and reflect upon it in your cups, then. What became of the gold?

  “Huh?”

  Insofar as you know, the gold was turned over. Cor­rect? By the woman Amber’s direct statement, and by implication from others, all the young people wanted out of the Stormwarden’s household. But the younger daPena returned. Would he have done so if it had been he who had received the gold? Or would he have run? You may have to attack it through the money after all. Or, possibly, through the entertaining girl Donni Pell, who looks like the candidate for the connection with the ogre community.

  This time I said it aloud. “Damn you.”

  He let me have a dose of the mental noise that passes as his chuckle. Come back in the morning, Garrett. I will suggest an approach.

  I started to go, but there was the thing that used to be Amiranda staring at me with empty eyes. “What about this?”

  Leave it. We will commune.

  “What’s this? Are you a necromancer as well as a mental prodigy? Have you been hiding some of your lights under a bushel?”

  No. I expressed myself figuratively only. Co away, Gar­rett. Even my boundless tolerance has its limits, and you are pressing them. I went off and got myself rather sloppily wrapped around a few gallons of beer. Faithful to his orders, old Dean hung around and shoveled the pieces into my bed when it was time. Damn the Dead Man, anyhow. Why did he have to complicate things?

  __XXII__

  Old dean knew how to get me going on the morn­ing after. He bullied me into eating a good break­fast. When he thought I was slackening, he started bang­ing pots and pans until I yielded to the lesser evil and resumed eating. A good big breakfast with plenty of apple juice and sweets really knocks the edge off my hangover, but food always looks and smells so ghastly I just can’t believe it will do any good. Once I’d stoked up to Dean’s satisfaction, he pre­sented me with a huge steaming mug of a smoky-flavored herb tea that had come to us courtesy of Morley Dotes sometime back. It had a mildly analgesic nature. “His nibs is ready anytime you are, Mr. Garrett. You may take the mug along with you.”

  He was going to trust me carrying something out of the kitchen myself? I gave him a look that he interpreted correctly. He grumbled, “That room was creepy enough with one corpse in it. He can clean up after himself if he’s going to keep the other one in there with him.”

  I rose. From the kitchen doorway I said, “Maybe they’ll get married.” Feeble, but it wasn’t my best time of day. Dean gave me a black look and reached for the biggest pot he could find.

  The Dead Man was trying to sleep when I stepped into his room. He was long overdue for one of his three-week naps, but now wasn’t the time. “Wake it up, Old Bones. You’re supposed to have some suggestions for me this morning.”

  He had several, but none of the first few was fit to record. I observed, “I take it you’re sure enough of your Glory Mooncalled theory that you can indulge in a little smug snoozing.”

  The latest from the Cantard contains nothing contradictory.

  “You going to break down and tell me?”

  Not yet.

  “What about the suggested approach you promised me last night?”

  /would have thought that you would have seen the best chance already. You had the night to reflect on next moves.

  “I took the night off. Give.”

  You are allowing yourself to become dependent upon my genius. You should be exercising your own, Garrett.

  “We human types are bone lazy. Come on. Pay the rent.”

  Get the younger Karl. Bring him to me. He appears to be the weakest link in the chain of circumstance. If there is a tumor of guilt in him, I will open him up and expose it. One glimpse of that poor child there should be shock enough to leave him pliable.

  “That’s all I have to do, eh? Just go drag him out of that fort he calls home and bully him into coming here where you can work him over.”

  /cannot do your legwork for you, Garrett.

  “Bah!” He was getting a sarky tone on him, Old Bones was. Maybe he’d stub a toe on his Glory Mooncalled theory and get dragged down from the heights of conceit. Oh, how he loves to strut.

  There was a foreign object just inside the front door. “Dean!”

  He came at a run. “Yes, Mr. Garrett?”

  “What the hell is this?”

  Actually, I knew what this was. It was my old pal Bruno frozen in midstride two steps inside the front door and leaning against the wall. His expression was one of terror and one hand grasped the air before him. Dean had used that to hang up the sweater and knit cap he wears when he comes in early mornings. That showed me a side of him I hadn’t suspected.

  “He came to the door while you were out in the country. When I answered he just busted in past me. His nibs must have heard the uproar.
”

  Better than a watchdog. “And nobody bothered to tell me.”

  “You had things on your mind.”

  “How’d he get against the wall?”

  “I pushed him out of the way. I have to get in and out to do the marketing.”

  I stepped over in front of Bruno. “What am I going to do with you? You just keep coming back. Maybe drop you in the river to see how fast you swim? I’ll have to think about it, because you’re getting to be a nuisance.” I turned to Dean. “Maybe we ought to get a chain so things like this don’t happen.”

  Dean admitted, “His nibs could have been asleep.”

  The problem of Bruno’s ego slipped my mind as I trudged up the Hill. I had a bigger problem. How the devil could I get to Junior, let alone pry him out? Consid­ering the attitudes of some up there, I might not get close to the Stormwarden’s place. The hired guards might be waiting for me.

  They weren’t. Not obviously. I tramped around the daPena place three times, hoping maybe Amber would spot me before Eenie, Meenie, Meinie and Moe started closing in and I had to show the Hill the flash of depart­ing heels. It didn’t work. I had to go. I decided to take a long walk. Sometimes getting the blood moving van­quishes the gloomier humors and the brain will come up with a thought.

  The best I could manage in three hours of marching was the notion of sending Junior a letter saying I knew where the gold was and if he would come down to my place we could talk it over. The trouble with that was it might take a lot of time I didn’t have. He might dither a couple of days. Or he might not be able to slip his leash. Or the letter might not get to him at all, with highly unpredictable results. And Amiranda’s body wasn’t going to keep forever. F or want of something more constructive to do, I went around to Saucer head’s place to see how he was mend­ing. A girlfriend I didn’t know said he was keeping just fine and I should get the hell away before I got my eyes clawed out. She was no bigger than a minute but she had her back up and looked like she would give it a damned good shot.