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. D amn 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.