Old Tin Sorrows

21

Morley was in my sitting room when I arrived. He had his feet up on my writing table. "You're getting old, Garrett, you can't take one long night anymore."

"Huh?" I was right on top of things. We investigator types have minds like steel traps. We're always ready with a snappy comeback.

"Heard your speech to the troops, shucking them so you can make with the snores."

"My second long night in a row. How'd you get in? Thought we had the place buttoned up."

"You might. Trick is, walk in before the buttoning starts. You went off chasing the walking dead. I just strolled around front and let myself in. Poked around the house some, came up here when the troll woman started rattling pots and pans."

"Oh." I got the feeling my repartee lacked something tonight. Or this morning. The first ghost light of dawn tickled the windows.

"I looked through the kitchen. The things you people eat. The sacrifices I make."

I didn't ask. Cook favored basic country cooking, heavy stuff, meat and gravy and biscuits. Lots of grease. Though Morley might have liked what she'd had for lunch my first meal here.

He was saying he planned to stay around. He went a little farther. "I figure you can use a ghost to balance off theirs."

"Huh?" I wasn't making a comeback.

"I'll haunt the place. Roam around where they're not looking, doing things you'd do if you weren't busy keeping them calmed down."

That made sense. I had a list of a hundred things I wanted to do, like look for hidden passageways and sneak into people's rooms to snoop. I hadn't had time for them and probably wouldn't because somebody would be in my pocket constantly.

"Thanks, Morley. I owe you one."

"Not yet. Not quite. But we're getting up close to even."

He meant for a couple of tricks he'd pulled on me back when. The worst was having me help carry a coffin with a vampire in it he'd given a guy he didn't like. He hadn't warned me for the good reason that, if I'd known, I wouldn't have helped. I hadn't known till the vampire jumped up.

I'd been a little put out.

He'd been paying me back with little favors ever since.

He said, "Fill me in so I won't go reinventing the wheel."

I got myself a handkerchief first. "This cold feels like it'll turn bad. My head's starting to feel like the proverbial wool pack."

"Diet," he told me. "You eat right, you don't get colds. Look at me. Never had a cold in my life."

"Maybe." Elves don't get colds. I gave him the full account as I would've given it to the Dead Man. I kept an eye on him, watching for giveaways. He finds ways to profit when he weasels his way in to help me. I'd watched him enough to recognize that moment when he grabs onto something.

The obvious way here would be to recruit a gang to loot the place. That would be easy. Not so easy would be eluding an excited and bloodthirsty upper class afterward. Not that that would intimidate him much.

They might not have much use for General Stantnor, but as a class they couldn't tolerate the precedent. Every stormwarden, firelord, sorcerer, necromancer, whatnot, would join in to pass out the exemplary torments.

"We have three separate things going, then," Morley said. "Thievery. Slow murder, maybe. Mass murder. You have the wheels turning on the thievery. So forget that. The General... The thing to do is let me and a doctor look at him. On the other killer, the only thing you can do is keep talking to people. Eliminating suspects."

"Go teach grandma to suck eggs, Morley. This is my business."

"I know. Don't be so touchy. I'm just thinking out loud."

"You agree Dellwood and Peters look unlikely?"

"Sure. They all do. The old man is bedridden and probably couldn't be fixed up with a motive anyway."

I hadn't considered the General.

"The Kaid character is too old for the pace and not strong enough to shove these other guys around."

"Maybe. Sneakiness is the killer's trademark, though. An old man would be sneaky."

"Sure. Then there's the Wayne character, who plans to marry money. So who does that leave if everybody else is honest?"

"Chain." Obnoxious, argumentive, overweight Chain, to whom I'd taken an instant dislike.

"And the daughter. And the outside possibility. Not to mention maybe somebody who went away but didn't disappear because he'd been murdered."

"Wait. Wait. Wait. What's that?"

"You have four men who rode off into the sunset, right? Snake Bradon's presumptive necromancy recalled three. Where's the other one? Which one was he? What were the will provisions regarding those men?"

I didn't recall. One had gotten cut out, I'd heard that. But if somebody was good for a share even if he wasn't around, and everybody thought he was gone, or dead now, he'd be in great shape to do dirty deeds, then turn up for the reading of the will.

"Whoever got Hawkes headed for the house here."

"You lost the trail."

True. "If it was somebody who isn't on the inside, he wouldn't know about the General burning the will."

"Yes. He might keep on keeping on."

True again. "Somebody tried giving me the ax."

"There's that. But it could be related to your other problems."

"Morley, trying to puzzle it out will drive me crazy. I don't want to bother."

He gave me a look something short of a sneer. "Good thinking. You're goofy enough now."

I said, "Look, at this point what I do is just bull around and try to make things happen. When the bad boys get nervous, they do something to give themselves away."

Morley chuckled. "You have style, Garrett. Like a water buffalo. What good will bulling around do if your villain was Tyler?"

"Not much," I admitted.

"What about the cook? If she's been around four hundred years, she might think the family owes her a fatter chunk than the old man was going to give her."

I'd considered that in light of the fact that the non-human races don't think like us and trolls are pretty basic. Somebody gets in a troll's way, the troll flattens him.

"Cook's time is accounted for when Hawkes got it. Not to mention, if she was on a horse and her weight didn't kill it, it would leave tracks a foot deep."

"It was an idea. How's she look for poisoning the old man?"

I shrugged. "She's got means and opportunity but I come up short on motive. She raised him from a pup. I'd think there'd be some love of a sort."

He snorted. "You're right. We're not going to reason it out. Sleep on it. I'll go haunt."

"Don't walk into the bedroom," I warned him. "I have an ax rigged to carve sneaky visitors." I'd decided to go back to the featherbed. The floor in the dressing room was too hard. Maybe I'd move later, like I'd been thinking.

Morley nodded. Then he flashed a grin. "Wish there was your usual compliment of honeys in this one. That would make it a lot more interesting."

I couldn't argue with that.