Old Tin Sorrows Part 25

'Wanted to see if I was spitting blood.'

'Come on. You rolled with it.'

He flashed me a down under smile. He was putting on a show. He wanted folks to think he was hurt worse than he was. Might be an edge for him later.

I shut my mouth.

Peters managed to say, 'What now, Garrett?'

'I don't know.'

'How do we stop this before we're all dead?'

'I don't know that, either. Unless we just scatter.'

'In which case the killer wins by default. Wayne walks tomorrow, it's the same as if he got killed.'

Morley said, 'Makes your job easier, Garrett.' He did a grimace. He was overacting.

'Eh?' I was at top form.

'Shortens the list by another name.'

Black Pete grunted out, 'Garrett. How're you going to catch him?'

Him? I wasn't so sure now. If Wayne walked and Peters was clean, the crowd was so small I'd have to lynch Kaid. But I thought Kaid was too old and feeble to have done all the killer had.

'I don't have a clue, Sarge. Don't press me. You people know each other better than I know you. You tell me who it is.'

's.h.i.t. It isn't anybody. Logically. One way or another you can discard everybody. Except maybe your phantom blonde, that n.o.body sees but you.'

'I saw her,' Morley said. I looked at him, puzzled. Was he lending moral support?

Hadn't he said something about seeing her last night? Or was that the other Morley?

I'd forgotten that. The thing that could be somebody else. Probably the spook that the doctor was sure was here.

It didn't get any easier.

'Your picture,' Morley whispered.

I frowned.

'Get it and find out who she is. Besides a hot tumble.'

Maybe he was right. Maybe. I wanted to say the h.e.l.l with it for now. We were out of the woods for a while. That draug had been cared for. The killer wasn't likely to make another move for a while. I hurt everywhere. I just wanted to slither upstairs and finish what I'd started before I'd been interrupted.

But I'd put off seeing Bradon for a few minutes and look what that had cost. Not just Snake but Chain. Not to mention the stable, those paintings, and however many horses had vanished into the sunset because there was no one to round them up.

I got my feet under me. 'Peters. Any rain gear handy?'

Morley got up, too. He scrunched over, held his side with his left arm.

'Rain gear? What the h.e.l.l you need to go outside for?'

'Got to get something while it's still there.'

He looked at me like he thought I was crazy. Probably right, I thought. 'To your left at the end over there, through that arch. The old guest restrooms.' He still wasn't talking in big gobbling chunks.

Morley and I went to the arch, which was barely five feet wide. A crack of a doorway for this place. It opened on an alcove, eight by eight. There was a door in front of me and one to my left. 'Check that one,' I told Morley, and opened the one in front of me.

Mine was the women's, the only p.i.s.soir I'd seen in the house. I hadn't noticed any plumbing downstairs. Maybe it wasn't there anymore. The place was dried up, used only for storage.

There were no raincoats.

I went to check on Morley.

His room was the men's. Surprise, surprise. One wall was all marble that fell to a trough. The flush pipe whence water ran, at eye level, had rusted out. I spied the rain gear but not Morley. 'Where are you?'

'Here.' His voice came from beyond a copse of brooms and mops and whatnot in the left-hand rear corner. He'd found another movable panel. He was halfway up the narrow stairway behind it.

'We can check it out later.' I spied a lantern amongst the junk on the marble four-holer. It smelled like it had been used in the modern era. When Morley came down I was getting it lighted.

Morley said, 'If there weren't people hanging around, you'd think the place had been abandoned for twenty years.'

'Yeah.' I shrugged into an oilcloth coat so big it hung long on me. 'Let's get with it.' While Morley tried to find something smaller than a circus tent, I snapped up a few extras to wrap Bradon's artwork. We put on hats and dashed out into the storm.

Actually, we stumbled. I wasn't getting any friskier. Neither was Morley. I had to spend most of my energy keeping the lantern from blowing out.

There was a brisk wind blowing, throwing barrels of water around. It came from every direction but up. The thunder banged away. Lightning, over the city, carried on like a battle between hordes of stormwardens. We reached the barn in spite of all.

'Thank heaven we found rain gear,' Morley said. 'We might have gotten soaked.'

Sarky b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I was wet to the skin. I rooted through the place where I'd squirreled the paintings. 'd.a.m.n me! Something's gone right.'

'What?'

'They're still here.'

'Watch out for a b.o.o.by trap, then.'

I almost took him seriously. That's the way my luck runs.

I shook the water off the extra coats. Morley held the lantern and cursed and dodged bats. 'Those coats aren't going to be enough. Let me look around.' He scurried off, leaving me halfway convinced I'd never see him again.

He came back with a couple of heavy tarps. We wrapped the paintings in two bundles. We took one apiece and slogged into the storm. I got soaked all over again. I had mud up to my knees when we reached the house, but the paintings arrived dry.

We shed our gear.

'Guess we better take these up to the suite,' I told Morley. He was looking at the paintings. 'What do you think?'

'The man was disturbed.'

'And good, too. That's her.'

'I'm in love.' He stared at the portrait like he might dive in.

'Let's admire her upstairs.'

But we had to pa.s.s Kaid, Wayne, and Peters to get to the stairway. Black Pete asked, 'What's all that?'

No reason not to tell the truth. 'Some of Bradon's paintings. I saved them from the fire.'

They wanted to see. They hadn't seen Bradon's work before. The man never had shown it.

'Yech!' Kaid said after a couple of war scenes. 'That's sick.'

'It's good,' Wayne said. 'That's how it felt.'

'But it doesn't look like-'

'I know. It's how it felt felt.'

'Man,' Peters said. 'He didn't like Jennifer much, did he?'

Somehow I'd managed to save four portraits, the blonde and three Jennifers. Just as well I hadn't salvaged any of these guys. They wouldn't have appreciated them. I'd gotten more than one Jennifer by accident. It had gotten hurried toward the end.

Peters lined the portraits up against the fountain. The third and probably most recent Jennifer I hadn't seen before. It was the ugliest. Jennifer was radiant yet something horrible about her made you doubt the artist's sanity.

Kaid said, 'He was crazier than we thought. Garrett, don't ever let Miss Jennifer see these. That would be too cruel.'

'I won't. I took them by accident more than anything. I was just grabbing. But the blonde, now. I took that one on purpose. That's the woman I've been seeing. Who is she?'

They looked at me, at the painting, at me again. Their studied blandness said they were unsure about my sanity. They thought I'd let my imagination attach itself to the first thing handy.

Peters played it straight. 'I don't know, Garrett. Never seen her before. You men?'

Wayne and Kaid shook their heads. Wayne said, 'There's something familiar about her, though.'

That seemed to cue something in Kaid's head. He frowned, moved a step closer. I asked, 'You know something, Kaid?'

'No. For a second...No. Just my imagination.'

I wasn't going to argue with them till I could produce physical evidence. 'Let's get these tucked away, Morley.'

We started gathering the paintings. Now Peters was frowning at the blonde, something perking in the back of his head. He was a little pale and a whole lot puzzled.

He didn't say anything, though. We collected the paintings and headed for the stairs.

Maybe intuition nudged me. When I reached the fourth floor I went to the rail. Peters and Kaid had their heads together, yakking away. They kept their voices down but were intense.

Morley's ears are better than mine. He told me, 'Whatever they're talking about, they're determined to convince each other it's impossible.'

'They recognized her?'

'They think she looks like somebody she couldn't be. I think.'

I didn't like the sound of that.

36.

Morley perched the mystery woman on the mantle in my sitting room, contemplated her intently. I misread his interest. I seldom do that because his interest in the female tribe is definite. 'Can't have her, boy. She's taken.'

'Be quiet,' he told me. 'Sit down and look at the painting.'

He wouldn't be sharp if it wasn't important. I planted myself. I stared.

I began to feel like I was part of the scene.

Morley got up and snuffed a few lamps, halving the light in the room. Then he threw the curtains open, apparently so we'd get the full benefit of the storm. He settled and resumed staring.

That woman came more and more to life, grabbed more and more of my being. I felt I could take her hand and pull her out, away from the thing that pursued her.

The storm outside intensified what was going on in the painting's background. That d.a.m.ned Snake Bradon was a sorcerer. The painting, once you looked at it awhile, was more potent than the swampscape with hanged man. But this one was more subtle.

I could almost hear her begging for help.

Morley muttered, 'd.a.m.n her. She's too intense. Got to block her out of there.'

'What?'

'There's something else there. But the woman pulls your attention away.'

He'd lost me. The rest of the painting was decoration to me. Or arrows pointing out the crucial object.

Morley got paper from my writing table, spent ten minutes using a small knife to trim pieces to cover the blonde. 'You damage that thing, I'll carve you up,' I told him. I had a notion where it ought to be displayed. There was a big bare spot on the wall of my office at home.

'I'd cut my own throat first, Garrett. The man was crazy but he was a genius.'

Curious, Morley calling him crazy without having met him.

Morley killed another lamp. He hung his cutouts over the canvas.