Deadly Quicksilver Lies



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49

“I conned Puddle into doing you a favor, Garrett,”
Morley told me. I didn’t ask; I just waited for the
inevitable wisecrack.

He fooled me again. The crack didn’t come.
“Uhm?”

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t get around to
Quefours.”

“Puddle scare him up?”

Morley nodded.

“Waste of time, right?”

“Puddle’s still sulking.”

“What’s the story?”

“Quefours hasn’t seen the girl for eight months. His
choice. He broke it off because she wouldn’t play his way.
Made her sound prudish.”

“And Quefours doesn’t have the ghost of a notion
where to find her now. Right?”

“Wrong.”

“Huh?” I’ve always had a knack for witty
repartee.

“He said dig around among the witchcraft community. The
girl is looking for something. His notion was you should start with
the blackest black magicians. That was where she was headed when
they split.” Dotes appended a big nasty smile.

“You saying Cleaver framed her with the truth?”

“Maybe just to get you headed in the right
direction.” More teeth. He had to have about two hundred.
Looked like he’d been filing them again, too.
“Thought you’d get a kick out of that.”

“A kick in the butt.” It just got more confusing. I
started to get up.

“Hey!” Saucerhead growled. “You told
me . . . ”

“Feed this beast, Morley. Something cheap. Like
alfalfa.”

“Where are you going?”

I opened my mouth to tell him and realized that I didn’t
know.

“Like that? Then why not just go home? Lock your doors.
Get comfortable. Read. Wait for Dean. Forget Grange Cleaver and
Emerald Jenn.”

I responded with my most suspicious look.

“You got your advance, didn’t you? This Jenn chit
sounds like she can take care of herself.”

“Answer me one answer, Morley. Why did she run away from
home?” Might be important if the whole thing had to do with a
missing kid after all.

“There are as many reasons for going as there are children
running.”

“But they mostly boil down to a perceived need to escape
parental control. I don’t know enough about Emerald. I
don’t know enough about her mother. Their relationship is a
mystery.”

“What did I just recommend? Don’t keep gnawing on
it, Garrett. You don’t have any reason. You don’t need
any more grief. Turn loose. Spend some money. Spend some time with
Chastity.”

“What?”

“Gods preserve us,” Saucerhead muttered. He stopped
attacking his dinner long enough to sneer, “He’s got
that look, ain’t he?”

“Got what look?”

Morley told me, “The dumb stubborn look you get when
you’re about to jump into something without a reason even you
understand.”

“About to? I’ve been in it four days.”

“And now you’re out because you know it was a game
that didn’t take. You did your usual stumbling around and
knocked over everybody’s apple carts. Now it’s over.
You’re out. You’re safe as long as you don’t go
around irritating people. Consider it a phenomenon. You don’t
go charging around like a lunatic trying to find out why if it
happens to rain live frogs for three minutes in the Landing. Do
you?”

“But . . . ” But that was
different.

“There’s no need to find the girl now. Not for her
sake, which is the thing that would bug you.”

“Garrett!” I jumped. I hadn’t expected
Saucerhead to horn in. Everybody in the place stared at him. He
told me, “He’s making sense. So listen up. Nothing I
heared about this makes me think these folks’re really
worried about the kid.”

“He’s making sense,” I admitted. “Morley
always makes sense.”

Dotes gave me a hard look. “But?”

“I’m butting no buts. I mean it. You’re dead
on the mark. There’s no percentage messing with this
anymore.”

Morley eyeballed me like he believed me so surely he wanted to
wrap me in another wet blanket. I complained, “I really do
mean it. I’m going to go home, get ripped with Eleanor, grab
me a night’s sleep. Tomorrow I get to work on running my
guests off. All of them. Only one thing I’m
wondering.”

“What’s that?” Morley remained unconvinced. I
couldn’t believe that they really thought I had the white
knight infection that bad.

“Could Emerald be another Cleaver disguise? You think he
could manage makeup good enough to pass for eighteen?”

Morley and Saucerhead opened their mouths to ask why Cleaver
would want to, but neither actually spoke. Neither wanted to feed
me any reason to go chasing something potentially lethal.

“I’m just curious. He has a rep as a master of
disguises. And Playmate told me he’d always thought that the
daughter was dead. I wonder if maybe the plot wasn’t more
complex than we suspected. Maybe Cleaver didn’t just plant
clues up on the Hill. Maybe he created a whole
character.”

Morley snarled, “You’re psycho, Garrett.”

Saucerhead agreed. “Yeah.” He was so serious he put
his fork down. “I know I ain’t no genius like neither
one of you guys, but I do know you got to go with the simplest
explanation for something on account of about a thousand times out
of nine hundred ninety-nine that’s the way the real story
goes.”

What was the world coming to when Saucerhead got a smart tongue
on him? “Am I arguing? I agree. Sometimes I think this brain
of mine is a curse. Thank you, Morley. For everything. Even when
you didn’t mean it.” I left enough money to cover
Saucerhead’s meal, though I could have made it to the street
before anyone realized that the tab hadn’t been satisfied. I
figured Saucerhead deserved it. His luck rolled down a steeper
incline than mine. He seldom lived better than hand to mouth.

Me, I, Garrett, was out of the game. Whatever it might be. I was
going to go home, get organized, drink some beer, have a bath,
scope me out a master plan that included seeing a lot of Chastity
Blaine.

But I left Morley’s place with my hackles up, like some
atavistic part of me expected the same old gang to be out there set
to reintroduce me to the pleasures of the Bledsoe. I was on edge
all the way home.

The Bledsoe was a sight, they said. Supposedly it was
disappearing behind fast-rising scaffolding.

My tension went to waste. Nobody paid me any mind. I
didn’t even get followed. Made me feel neglected.

I’d never had a case as exciting as this just sputter and
fade away, but some jobs have. Those kind usually see me ending up
snacking on my fee. I recalled with pride that this time I’d
been clever enough to snag a percentage up front.

I wouldn’t win any kudos from the Dead Man, but he would
have to admit that I was capable of being businesslike on occasion,
even in the face of a lusty redhead.



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