by Frank Tuttle
Darla was sure she could eventually lay the blame at the embezzler’s feet, if she had the time and access to the Barracks.
I reminded her such a feat might take months, even years, if the records were there in the first place. And, I pointed out, there were more direct means to find the answers that related to Lethway and Fields.
I planned to just show up and ask. And when they denied everything, I’d suggest that the Regency might conduct its own review of the records, if, for instance, someone from House Avalante suggested such an investigation.
Kicking a finder to the curb is one thing. Giving the Regency the boot is quite another.
For the first time since that morning Darla had bribed me with sticky buns, I felt like I was working the case.
I dropped Darla off at her place, and kissed her goodnight beneath her tiny yellow porch. I knew she was hoping I’d ask her to come with me on my visit to Mr. Fields, but knowing the reception I was going to get, I didn’t ask.
The cab rolled away from Darla’s neat little house. I could see her standing in the window, watching me go.
“Where to, pal?” called down the cabbie.
I gave him the address to the bakery. I was hoping Fields would still be there, even though it must be closing. Normally I don’t like to bother a man at his work, but I didn’t think he’d be any happier to find me on his doorstep at home.
My sleepless the night before was catching up with me. I put my face in the cab’s window and let the cool evening air rush past. Rannit stinks in my neighborhood, but closer to the bakery, it smelled of meals cooking and fresh-cut grass.
I wasn’t exactly revived when we arrived, but I felt a bit more coherent. The cab pulled right in front of the bakery, and I clambered out and paid the cabbie and sauntered to the doors.
They weren’t locked yet. The CLOSED sign was nowhere to be seen.
But neither was Mr. Fields, or anyone else.
Call it a sixth sense. Call it a touch of Mama Hog’s Sight. Call it what you want. But the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and a cemetery chill scampered down my spine. When I opened the door, I did so slowly, and as it opened I slipped my hand inside and caught that cheery little bell and I put my pinkie finger inside it to silence its cheery little ring.
Then I darted in and closed the door carefully behind me.
Voices. I heard voices, from the kitchen. Male and low and angry. In no way did they suggest a discussion about cinnamon was taking place.
I moved gingerly across the tile floor, thanking the Angels it hadn’t rained. My shoes would have squeaked, had they been wet. And if my hunch was right, squeaky shoes and tinkling bells were a good way to get killed, in that place and at that time.
The closer I moved to the swinging gate that led behind the counter, the better I could hear.
One of the speakers was Mr. Fields. There were two others. One did most of the talking. The other added occasional grunts or snorts to the conversation.
“…going to tell us what we want to know,” said a voice.
“I’ve told you I don’t know a damned thing,” replied Mr. Fields.
“He’s lying,” said the other voice.
“Could be,” said the first. “Maybe he needs reminding who it is he’s stalling.”
Then there came a crash and a rattle. Tin pots fell, glassware shattered, men grunted and cussed.
Outnumbered two to one, and with no assurances that Fields wouldn’t turn on me just out of spite, I did the only thing I could think of, which was go back to the door and yank it open and give that cheerful little bell a damned good shake.
The ruckus in the back abated, just a bit.
“Mr. Fields?” I called, good and loud. “Agent of the Regency. Time for your food service license inspection. Loomis, Charles, you two get started. Milton, take the back.”
Feet beat it, and a door slammed from somewhere in the kitchen.
I let out a sigh of relief. Assuming that every kitchen in Rannit has a back door that opens into the alley is a safe bet, unless it’s your life you’re betting.
Mr. Fields emerged. His nose was bloody and his shirt was untucked and missing most of its buttons. In his right hand was a long straight knife, and in his left was a wicked two-tined fork.
“What the Hell are you doing here?”
I plopped my butt onto a stool. “You’re welcome. Again. I dropped in for a cup of coffee. Are you going to stab me, poke me or pour me a cup?”
“Haven’t decided.”
“Want me to lock the door? Might be a good idea if your two friends from the kitchen head back. Also a good idea if you decide on stabbing me. Don’t want to scare off paying customers with violent acts of murder on the sales floor now, do we?”
“Do you ever shut that mouth of yours?”
“Hardly ever. It’s how I make my living. Take today, for instance. I spent all of it digging through old Army payroll records, Mr. Fields. Did you know most of them still exist? Well, they do.”
He glowered. He glared. But his hands were shaking and sweat was pouring off his fat little head. After a moment he threw the fork onto the floor and shoved the knife under his apron and stalked to the big brass coffee machine and set about pouring two cups of it.
“Two sugars, please. Hold the arsenic. But as I was saying. I spent all day going through these records, just to see if you and Mr. Lethway were not telling the entire truth about never having served directly with each other, during the War. Do you know what I found, Mr. Fields?”
He shoved the coffee cup at me and sat across from me. I took a sip. His cup never moved, and he didn’t meet my eyes.
“You were his personal cook. For two years, maybe longer. Why did you lie about that, Mr. Fields? Why did Lethway?”
“You’re going to get us both killed.”
“And if I just walk away, maybe take up turnip farming, is that going to keep those men from coming back? Is that going to keep them away from your daughter?”
He growled a curse word. But he didn’t reach for his knife.
I drank coffee and waited.
“I was the Colonel’s cook. Four years. Kept me off the front. Only Troll I ever saw was dead.”
“So you ran an officer’s kitchen. That’s nothing to lie about.”
“No.” He clutched his cup with both hands and stared down into it. “I wasn’t rich. Was just a kid. But I could read and write. I did my own requisitions. Handled the kitchen funds.”
It began to dawn on me.
“Whose idea was it, to skim a little off the top?”
“His.” He looked up at me. “I swear, finder. I was poor, but I was honest. It was the Colonel’s idea. Said he had some gambling debts. I kept a third of the take. Hell, it wasn’t much. At first.”
“But things didn’t stay small.”
He shook his head. His face was pure crimson. The veins in his forehead were swollen and throbbing.
Maybe he had been an honest kid, after all.
“The Sixth wound up at Killispill. Regional headquarters. The Seventh was already there. Hell, within a year we were feeding eight, nine hundred men a day. Double that the next year.”
“So a lot of money was involved.”
“A fortune. The Kingdom might have skimped on a lot of things. Hell, you know they did. But the officers got fed. Nobody asked any questions. They didn’t even look at the ledgers. We’d claim we spent a thousand crowns on beef, when we spent two hundred. It was like owning a bank, finder. Even when I tried to pull back, the Colonel wouldn’t hear of it. He got greedy. He’d have killed me, had I tried to stop.”
I nodded. That might have been true. Even if it wasn’t, it was something the baker needed to believe.
“And then the War ended.”
“It did. All over. Orders came down. You’re discharged. Thank you for your service.” He spat on his good clean floor. “Bastards.”
“So you and Colonel Lethway-you just split the take and parted way
s?”
“That’s what we did, finder. I didn’t lay eyes on the man until Tamar-until my daughter started walking out with that fool son of his.”
“And the money?”
He lifted his hands, gestured to the coffee shop. “All gone, years ago. I built my business with it. Lost most of it the first five years. But it kept us afloat, long enough to get established.” He sighed and gripped his untouched coffee again. “I’m not proud of what I did during the War, finder. But I’ve never done anything like that since. I’ve worked hard and made a living for myself and my family. I want nothing to do with the Colonel or the past.”
“Those two men who just left. Were they part of this, somehow?”
He spoke quietly. “They know. I don’t know how they know, finder. Or who they are. But they know Lethway and I stole a fortune during the War, and they want something from him, and they want me to try and pry it out of him.”
“By blackmailing him.”
He nodded. “I told them to go to Hell.”
“They didn’t seem to be heeding your travel advice.”
“I meant to kill them, finder. I had a knife.”
“Brave. But dumb. Two of them, one of you? Maybe those are good odds when you’re dealing with rogue pastries, but not hired muscle.”
He mulled that over while his coffee steamed.
“You didn’t really kill that man in my house, did you, finder?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Tamar keeps crying. Talking in her sleep too. Telling someone she’s sorry.” He looked up at me. “I wish I’d told that son of a bitch to get stuffed the first night he walked into my mess tent.”
“You were just a kid with a potato peeler. He was a Colonel. Don’t beat yourself up too much. After all, you’ve got other people trying to do that for you.”
That got a ghost of a grin.
“Whatever it is they want out of Lethway, he isn’t budging.” I finished off my cup. “They cut off his kid’s ear, Mr. Fields. Sent it to him. He dropped it in the fireplace. I think the Colonel will let Carris die before he’ll cooperate.”
“I’m afraid you’re right about that.”
“That means they’re going to keep coming after you, Mr. Fields. Because if there’s one thing the Colonel is afraid of, it’s being exposed as a War profiteer.”
“So you’re saying I should blackmail Lethway?”
I smiled, big and wide. “No, Mr. Fields. I’m saying I should.”
Chapter Fourteen
Convincing Mr. Fields to hand over everything I needed to pry open Lethway’s lips took another pot of coffee.
But when that was drunk, he stopped shaking. His face wasn’t the color of hot coals. And the hate was gone from his eyes.
The worst had happened, and instead of tearing his world apart, I had emerged as the very man who might be able to put it safely back together.
All I had to do, of course, was live through my little talk with Lethway.
When I left the coffee house, I had a parcel under my arm. It was a pair of ledgers, wrapped in aged brown paper. He’d been keeping it close to him, all these years, moving it from secret drawer to safe to hidey-holes far and near.
When the pair of toughs had been threatening to cut off small but valuable bits of his person earlier, the very thing they sought was lying two steps from them, covered only by a baking tin.
But now it was mine. Two ledger books-one a copy of the book the Army had received-the other the real book, showing who got what, and when. Accompanied by receipts and signed orders and even a series of handwritten letters the Colonel had, in some moment of daft bravado, signed with his name and seal.
What lay between those covers was a hanging, even for a man of Lethway’s post-War stature.
I had to admire Fields' ingenuity. The ledgers proved Lethway made himself rich during the war, at the expense of the taxpayer. They only showed that Fields had carried out the orders given him.
If things came to a Court, Fields would likely claim he had no choice. And a jury might just buy that.
Clever little move, for an honest little baker.
The first thing I meant to do was stash the bulk of the evidence somewhere safe. I planned to take a single signed letter with me when confronting Lethway. That would be enough to establish the existence of the rest without risking the whole batch to a grab. I figured stashing the ledgers at Avalante would put them well beyond the reach of even a Lethway, so that word was on my lips when I stepped into the street to hail a cab.
I was in such a hurry to get to Avalante I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to the people on the street. Oh, I had eyes for the pair who’d fled the bakery, all right, but no one nearby fit the requirements of a pair of murderous musclemen. No, it was nannies out walking with kids and bankers out for a bit of air and ladies in hats out walking to be seen.
But at the moment, they weren’t walking. Instead, they were clustering around a barker, who was in turn passing out handfuls of handbills. People were taking them and then walking into each other as they backed away, their eyes on the paper they held.
A lady walked past, her skirts whipping, such was her hurry. I planted myself in her path and gave her my warmest, most winning smile.
She frowned and tried to dart around me. I sidestepped, still smiling, and she thrust a handbill at me.
“Take it, I have two.”
And then she was away.
WAR, the handbill read. WAR COMES TO RANNIT.
I cussed and stuffed the awful thing deep in a pocket and stopped the next cab I saw.
No one, not even the Regent and the Corpsemaster and the Army, can keep a secret forever.
Especially not when half of the secret is heading south toward you with mayhem on its mind and the other half is being built at night all around the city walls. The handbill had lots of it wrong, but it had enough right to convince me the proverbial cat was out of the metaphorical bag.
The Watch would go after the barker and the handbill printer, of course. I doubted they’d catch either. But even if they did, the word was spreading, and I figured by tomorrow even the weedheads would know the peace was broken.
NINE CITIES ALLY AGAINST RANNIT, cried the handbill. ARMY OF A HUNDRED THOUSANDS ON THE MARCH AGAINST US NOW!
Wrong on both counts. But the numbers weren’t going to matter. Not with the cannons in the mix.
I hope Evis and his-well, our, I suppose-plan to render the Brown impassable to barge traffic hadn’t been tossed aside by his superiors in the House. I had little faith the scheme would actually accomplish more than making a lot of noise and ruining some good timber, but already I was not only grasping at straws but throwing the weight of my hope upon them.
That’s what war does to people. Makes them cling to any hope, no matter how empty it may be in the harsh bright light of day.
I slept most of the way to Avalante, despite having gulped down coffee all afternoon. My dreams were troubled and brief. I didn’t even awake, claimed the cabbie, when a bridge clown reached inside and tweaked by nose.
Jerle, the day man, let me in and took my coat. The old boy insisted on peeking inside the cover at the ledgers, just to make sure I wasn’t trying to smuggle in a trio of Troll assassins, but he was quick and professional about it and he even offered me a seat while he looked.
I didn’t think I’d catch Evis awake at such an unvampirish hour, but Jerle told me he’d been left word to show me right in if I happened to stop by. So I made my way to Evis with barely a yawn or stumble.
The first thing I heard when I drew near to Evis’s door was female laughter. I stopped dead in my tracks, wishing for the first time that a suave halfdead was gliding silently at my side, so he could knock at the door and make sure Evis wasn’t occupied before I barged in.
But I was alone, and Evis had left word, so I walked right to the door to knock.
The woman laughed again before I could lift my hand. I heard Evis speak, his word
s not quite clear, and the lady laughed again, and there was a tinkle of glass on glass and a slosh of liquor.
I knocked. If Evis was pitching woo he could always tell me to go away.
“Come on in, Markhat,” called Evis. “We were just talking about you.”
The door swung inward, meaning Evis had touched something behind his desk.
I stepped inside.
Gertriss was seated across from Evis, trying to decide whether to hide her cigar or take a puff. She’d already managed to put her glass of brandy down on the corner of Evis’s desk. I knew she’d done that in a hurry because she’d missed the cork coaster and even sloshed a bit of brandy on the polished wood.
Something squealed and caught me across my knees. I tousled Buttercup’s hair, and she greeted me by leaping up and wrapping her arms around my neck before sliding around to ride on my back.
“Boss,” said Gertriss. Her cigar trailed up a damning swirl of smoke. “I was just waiting for you.”
I trotted a half-circle around the room while Buttercup giggled and squealed.
“I see. Did Buttercup decline to smoke, or has she finished hers already?”
“Oh, knock it off, Markhat. The banshee is older than all of us put together, and you know it. It’s not like she’s never seen people have a smoke or a drink before.” Evis leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring. “Anyway, your junior partner here is helping me celebrate. We got the go ahead from the House. We’re going to blow the bluffs.”
Gertriss cringed. I disengaged Buttercup and sat her on the floor. I wasn’t happy with Uncle Evis, but when vampires babysit banshees, I suppose hoping for nursery rhymes and games of dolls and houses is a bit too much.
Evis reached behind him and groped for a moment amid the sorcerous knick-knacks he keeps in those huge glass cases of his. When he withdrew his hand, he held a glowing orb that trailed twisting wakes of dancing light.
“Here you go, kid. Play with this.”
