Sweet Silver Blues Read Free Page A

it take, Mr. Garrett?”
    “How come you’re so hot to find this frail?”
    “I want to meet her, Mr. Garrett. I want to see the sort of woman capable of making a monkey of my son. Name your price.”
    “Even rich don’t do you any good if the wild dogs of the Cantard are cracking your bones to get at the marrow.”
    “Name your price, Mr. Garrett. I am an old man who has lost the son he expected to follow him. I am a wealthy man with no more need to cling to wealth. I am a determined man. I will see this woman. So again I say, name your price.”
    I should have known better. Hell, I did know better. I’d been saying so for ten minutes. “Give me a thousand on account. I’ll look over the stuff Denny left and do some poking around at this end, just to see if it’s feasible. I’ll let you know what I decide.”
    I went back down the stairs and pulled up a chair behind the desk where Denny’s letters and notes were piled.
    “I have to get back to work,” Tate called. “I’ll have Rose bring you some breakfast.”
    As I listened to Tate’s tiny footsteps fade away, I couldn’t help but weigh the possibility of dear Rose slipping something poisonous into my food. I sighed and turned to my work, hoping this next meal wouldn’t be my last.
     
     

4
     
    The first thing I did was look for the stuff Denny’s family had missed. Misers always have something they think they have to hide. A basement like that, plain as it looked, had a thousand crannies where things could be squirreled away.
    Just as I spotted it a little dirt fell from the under-flooring overhead. I cocked an ear. Not a sound. Somebody was doing a passable job of cat-footing around up there.
    I had my feet on Denny’s desk and was expanding my literary horizons when Rose and my griddle cakes sneaked on stage. I checked her over the top of the first page of a letter that somehow had a quality of déjà vu. But I didn’t pay much attention. The smell of griddle cakes with wild honey, tea, hen’s eggs, hot buttered bread, and steamed boodleberry preserves was a bit distracting to a man in my condition.
    Rose was distracting, too. She was smiling.
    Snakes smile that way before they strike.
    When her sort smile you had better check over your shoulder for a guy with a knife.
    She placed the tray before me, still smiling. “Here’s a little of everything we had in the kitchen. I hope you’ll find something to suit.”
    When they’re nice to you, you had better get your back against a wall.
    “Your feet hurt?”
    “No.” She gave me a puzzled look. “What makes you ask that?”
    “The look on your face. It has to be pain.”
    Not a flicker of response, except, “So the old man talked you into it, did he?”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Into what?”
    “Finding that woman of Denny’s.” Plenty of vitriol pent up behind that smile.
    “Nope. I told him I’d go over Denny’s papers and look around town a little. I would tell him what I thought. That’s all.”
    “You’re going to do it. How much did he offer you to find her?”
    I put my best blank cardplaying face and stared into the starved ice marbles of her eyes. I don’t believe that stuff about windows of the soul. I’ve seen too many lying eyes. But beyond hers lay nothing but shatter-sharp flint and frosty iron.
    “I’ll give you twenty percent if you don’t find her. Twenty-five if you find her dead.”
    Blank-faced, I started on my breakfast. There was ham and sausage, too. The tea was so good I drained half the pot before I touched anything else.
    “I could be very generous,” she said, turning sideways, posing to show what she had.
    She had the equipment. All of it, and plenty of it. A prime little package, but a package filled with rot. “Denny said that you like small women.”
    Some better than others, I thought. “I make a point of trying not to be cruel to people, Rose. The best I can do here is speak plain and say I’m not interested.”
    She took rejection well.