Bitter Gold Hearts

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 remained. 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?"