Blankets and tapestries and woven stuff draped the ceilings and walls, giving the small room the feeling of a tent. Every color in the world seemed represented, with reds taking dominance. The stuffed chairs had feet carved like paws, and overflowed with cushions just as the several small tables in the room looked as if they were tottering under their burdens of bric-a-brac. Patterned carpets of various shapes and piles were layered underfoot, contributing to Stepovich's feeling of uncertain footing. Of Madam Moria there was no sign at all.
"Now, Mizz Peabody, I can see you're upset, and I think that really if we just talk, you'll find there's no basis for it." Ed began placatingly. Too placatingly. Stepovich watched Ms. Peabody's hackles rise.
"I believe I asked for your credentials," she observed icily. She looked from Ed to Stepovich sternly.Ed made a show of reaching inside his jacket. In fora dime, in for a dollar, Stepovich told himself, and flashed out his badge.
"Officer Stepovich, ma'am. I'm in charge of this investigation. Ed here is just my man. If you've got any quibbles with the way it's been conducted, I'm the one you need to talk to." He flipped the case shut,hoping she hadn't had time to get his badge number.
"Quibbles!" She puffed up like a blowfish. "Quibbles are not what I have. Officer Steppopick. What I have are grievances. Have you ever heard of entrapment? Of harrassment?" She paused. "But those are just small potatoes compared to the fact that I called (he police department today, and they had no record of any ongoing investigation, or any officer in charge."
Stepovich was suddenly sure that the mild indigestion he'd been experiencing was now a full-fledged ulcer. He made the tiny hand motion he'd always made when he wanted Ed to go first around a corner or check out an entryway. But this time he made it toward the door. Let Ed get the hell out, they'd have nothing to connect a retired cop to this. Ed took a step, but not toward the door. Closer to Stepovich. Leaning toward him, shaking his big stupid face like a mournful jackass and saying softly, "No way,buddy."
"Yes way, buddy."
Stepovich looked at Ms. Peabody, who was glaring triumphantly, like a vulture who'd found a dying mule in the desert. "Wait a minute," he said. "We have to talk."
"You can talk to me," she snapped. "I'm going to-"
"Wait," he repeated, putting as much force into it as he could. Before she had the chance to speak, he grabbed Ed's arm and walked him into a corner by a hanging tapestry of a green owl and a red raven standing over a wounded knight. "Listen, idiot," he said. "You got a pension to think about. I can-"
"You can get your ass fired, buddy. I'm not going to let you play lone wolf and pay for my screw up."
"Wolf?" The voice was,high and querulous, a granny wakened from her nap by noisy children. Fora moment, it seemed sourceless. Then the tapestry twitched, pushed aside by the tip of a questing metal rod. Both he and Ed instinctively stepped away, going into defensive postures, before recognizing it as the end of a cane. A woman slowly shouldered her way past the heavy hanging, revealing a doorway behind it. She was old, but vitally alive, her alertness independent of her failing senses or stiff body. Her dual canes, one black and twisted wood banded with iron, the other burnished aluminum, thumped her slowly into the center of the room.
"Ms. Sarinsky, as your volunteer advocate, I have to insist you let me handle this," Ms. Peabody advised her sternly. "Actually, it's better if you say nothing at all to these persons," she added in a condescending undertone.
"Madam Sarinsky," the old woman shrilled imperiously. "I am Madam Moria Sarinsky, seer of the unknown. And I know what is best here!"
Stepovich thought Ms. Peabody looked as ruffled as a church soloist who'd lit into the wrong selection."For the sake of preserving your legal rights, I advise-" she began again, but Madam Moria Sarinsky lilted her black cane and made a shooing motion as if the legal advocate were an annoying chicken.
"It's different now," she said, not explaining, but dismissing. "I did not see the Wolf before. I thought it was only this old grey Badger, trying to dig me out.Go on, go on, girl, you can do nothing here. You. Young man." She waved a cane at Ed. "Clear a chair for me. No, not that one, stupid. Any fool could see it has a wobbly leg. That one. Hurry up."
Stepovich was torn between watching the vanquished Ms. Peabody gather her briefcase and leave,and watching Ed meekly obeying the old crone.
"… she obviously doesn't understand what you're doing. Which means she hasn't been properly Mirandized, and nothing she says can be legally used. And when the time comes, I'll be a witness to that.So if you think-"
"Yes, yes, yes," Madam Moria intoned testily. She pointed the twisted black cane at Stepovich. "You. Shut the door."
And he did, giving Ms. Peabody just time enough to get through it. He turned back to find Madam Moria settling in the chair with various small hisses and groans. She thumped a cane on the floor until Ed got the message and placed one cushion where her slippered feet could reach it. Then she breathed noisily through her nose for several more moments while she settled the folds of her gown around her. Dressing gown was too poor a description for that brocaded and embroidered marvel. Her slippers matched it, for god's sake. When it was arranged to her satisfaction, the old woman lifted her head and fixed her gaze on Stepovich. "So, Wolf. What have you come to ask?"
Maybe next year's power suits would be lavish brocade bathrobes. Stepovich started to pull up a chair,but she pointed imperiously to a cushion near her blue-veined feet. He sat. Better to go with it than to lose it.
He looked up into her eyes. They were dark and old, the browns sort of leaking into the whites and staining them. And if she wasn't at least half blind,he'd eat his badge. Blind. But seeing him, too, in away that put the creeps up his back. He cleared his throat and heard himself say, "I want to know who killed Cynthia Kacmarcik."
He heard Ed shift his weight in a chair at this novel mode of interrogation. So did Madam Moria, for she lifted her aluminum cane and pointed it at Ed commandingly, "You. Go to the kitchen. Make tea. You keep an old woman up late, you have to care for her throat. Go."
Ed stood reluctantly. "How do I know where the tea is?" he demanded.
"Dig for it. Badger. Dig. Hurry up. And mind you steal nothing, or I shall know!" she called after him as he blundered off through the tapestry she'd emerged from. Ed dismissed, she leaned closer to Stepovich. Her blind eyes swam over his face. She reached out a bony hand, and startled him by gripping his hair. It was all he could do to keep from jerking free.
"Someone has her," she whispered. "Just like this. She'd like to be dead, poor Cynthia would, but someone won't let her go. Am I right, hmm?"
Stepovich's throat went dry. Her pale old tongue emerged, wet her withered lips, and the fingertips of her free hand. She rubbed the spittle together on her fingers as if listening to it. "A little boy is in it. A nasty little boy, who hides behind Her skirts after he's done his dirtiness. But it would be a mistake to go after just him. He's only a puppet, you know. But he's a puppet with a knife, so don't turn your back until you've cut his strings. Hmm?"
He could hear Ed clattering cups, heard water run into a kettle, but the sounds seemed distant: Not muffled by the hangings and the apartment walls, but distant, miles away, like dogs barking outside a village or the creak of cart wheels over a bridge. She wasn't seeing him with those rheumy eyes, but she was seeing something and he couldn't break away from her gaze.
She flicked a handkerchief in his face, and he never even flinched. "Here's a scent for you. Wolf," she told him, and there was a scent to it, like cheap macho cologne, all musk and sharp with no sweetness. He breathed it in and it seemed to vanish from the air around him even as a part of him vowed not to forget it. The handkerchief, too, vanished, as if it had never been.