But...'Suppose he could think like a sorcerer?'

'What do you mean?'

'What I...? Let me reach. I was supposed to meet him. He was going to tell me who the killer was. He seemed sure he knew. He'd be wary. But somebody got to him despite his training and precautions. Suppose he knew that might happen? Suppose that, if he had a mind to, he could turn himself into a b.o.o.by trap.'

'Somebody's a b.o.o.by.'

'Flatterer. Look, it's in stories all the time. The curse that gets you after you kill a sorcerer. Suppose he fixed it so that, if he got killed, everybody else the killer killed would get up and go after him?'

Wayne grunted. 'Maybe. Knowing that spooky, paranoid b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he'd rig it so they'd get up and go after everybody.'

That fit, too. Sometimes I'm so brilliant I blind myself.

So what? Suppose that was true? It explained the draugs but didn't settle anything. There was a killer on the loose-if that hadn't been Tyler. No way to know unless he struck again.

If he had an ounce of brains, he'd retire while he had the chance to get out free.

I have such confidence in human nature. 'Gents, I'm bone tired. I'm going to bed.'

'Sir!' Dellwood protested.

'That thing isn't going to get in.' It was still trying.

And getting nowhere. 'Our killer, if he's still alive, has got a great out now. He can let Tyler take the rap.'

What you call planting a seed for the slow of wit.

I was so tired, my eyes wouldn't stay open. I needed to set myself up with some safe time. 'Good night, all.'

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 b.u.t.toned up.'

'You might. Trick is, walk in before the b.u.t.toning 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 pa.s.sageways 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 cla.s.s afterward. Not that that would intimidate him much.

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

'We have three separate things going, then,' Morley said. 'Thievery. Slow murder, maybe. Ma.s.s 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.

22.

It seemed I'd just drifted off when somebody started pounding on the door-though the light through the window said otherwise. I cursed whomever and rolled over. I'm not at my best when wakened prematurely.

In the process of rolling I cracked my eyes. What I saw didn't register. It was impossible. I wriggled into the down, the old hound searching for perfect comfort.

I sat up like I'd gotten a pin in the sitter.

The blonde smiled faintly as she drifted out my bedroom door. I didn't even yell, I just gaped.

She'd been sitting on the edge of the bed looking at me. She'd gotten in without getting carved up. I checked the b.o.o.by trap. It sat there looking back, loaded and ready to splash blood over half a county if some villain should cooperate and trip it. Just sitting here waiting, boss.

And the door was open.

It hadn't worked.

That gave me the spine chills. Suppose it hadn't been my lovely midnight admirer? Suppose it had been somebody with a special gift? I imagined being stuck to the bed like a bug with a pin through him.

By the time I got through the supposes and lumbered out of the bedroom, the blonde was gone. Without having used the hall door, where some obnoxious fellow was pounding away, trying to get my attention. He'd gotten my goat already.

I collected my head-knocker and went to see who wanted me up at such an unreasonable hour-whatever hour it was.

'Dellwood. What's happened now?'

'Sir? Oh. Nothing's happened. You were supposed to see the General this morning, sir.'

'Yeah. Sorry. I was too busy snoring to remember. Missed breakfast, didn't I? h.e.l.l. I needed to diet anyway. Give me ten minutes to get presentable.'

He looked at me like he thought it might take me a year longer than that. 'Yes sir. I'll meet you there, sir.'

'Great.'

I'm getting old. It took more than ten minutes. It was twenty before I started hoofing it across the loft to the old man's wing. I wondered about the blonde. I wondered about Morley. I wondered why I didn't just go home. These people were nuts. Whatever I did, I wasn't going to strike any blow for truth and justice. Ought to fade away and come back in a year, see how things stood then.

I was in a great mood.

Dellwood was waiting in the hallway outside the General's door. He let me in. The preliminaries followed routine. Dellwood went out. Kaid followed after making sure the fire was the size and heat of the one that's going to end the world. I sweated. The General suggested, 'Sit down.'

I sat. 'Did Dellwood bring you up to date?'

'The events of the night? He did. Do you have any idea what happened? Or why?'