Bitter Gold Hearts

______ LIII ______

We dumped the ogres and Brunos in the weeds, live or dead. The farmhouse was still as crowded as a rabbit warren. We found seats for everybody. Only Amber and I remained standing. She leaned against the doorframe, too nervous to sit. Though the Stormwarden's perch was no better than anyone else's, her manner turned it into a throne.

She said, "Proceed, Mr. Garrett."

"Let's start with my old buddy Skredli. Skredli, tell the nice people the story you told me at Chodo's place. Keep in mind that the lady there can make you hurt a lot worse than Chodo ever did."

Skredli got fatalistic again. He told his story. The same story.

Donni Pell was the villain of his piece. She was a wonder to watch as she tried working on him so he would cast her in a better light. Gameleon and daPena were worth watching, too. And Domina Dount, for that matter, as she learned that some things she'd heard but not gut-believed were true.

When Skredli finished, I looked at Gameleon. "You think you can talk your way out of here?"

"I'll have your head."

Morley asked, "You want me to knock him around a little to improve his attitude, Garrett? I always wanted to see if blue-blood bones sound different when they break."

"I don't think we'll need to."

"Let me twist his arm a little. How about you, Saucerhead? We could hang him up by the ankles and break him like a wishbone."

I snapped, "Knock it off!"

Raver Styx lifted her left hand and extended it toward Gameleon, palm forward, fingers spread. Her face was bland. But lavender sparks danced between her fingers.

Gameleon yelled, "No!" Then he screamed a long, chilly one. I wouldn't believe anybody had that much breath in him. He went slack.

"So much for him. For now. Baronet? How about you? Want to sing your song?"

Hell no, he didn't. His old lady was sitting right there. She'd have his nachos on a platter.

She said, "Karl, whatever you're thinking, the alternative will be worse." She raised her left hand again. A few sparks flew. He flinched, whimpered. She dropped her hand into her lap, smiled a cruel smile. "I'd do it, too, you know." And she would. I was convinced.

There were some bleak faces in that place.

I looked at Gameleon, at daPena, at Domina Dount, at Amber, who sincerely regretted having come. Poor old Skredli was damning himself for not running instead of trying to make a last score.

Donni Pell... Well, I concentrated on the spider woman for the first time. I had avoided that because even I, a bit, was subject to whatever made her so dangerous.

She didn't look dangerous. She was a small woman, fair, well into her twenties, but with one of those marvelous faces and complexions that make some small, fair women look adolescent for years beyond their time. She was pretty without being beautiful. Even ragged, filthy, and abused, she had a certain something that touched both the father and the lech in a man, a something that made a man want to protect and possess. I don't play with little girls, but I know the feeling a man can get looking at a ripening fifteen-year-old.

In my time I have encountered several Donni Pells. They are conscious of what they do to men—manipulate it like hell. The sensual frenzy is balanced by manipulating the fatherly urge as well. Usually they come across as being empty between the ears, too. In desperate need of protection.

Donni Pell, I suppose, was an artist, having turned an essentially patriarchal society's stereotype of a woman's role into a bludgeon with which she worked her will upon the male race. She was still trying to do it, bound and gagged. Under it all she was tough. As hard and heartless as a Morley Dotes, who might qualify as the male counterpart of a Donni Pell. Skredli and his boys hadn't broken through.

The Stormwarden said, "Will you get on with it, Mr. Garrett?"

"I'm trying to decide where to poke the hornet's nest. Right now these people have no incentives."

"How about staying alive?" She rose and joined me. "Somebody here had Amiranda killed. Somebody here had my son killed. Somebody here is going to pay for that. Maybe a lot of somebody's if the innocent don't convince me of their lack of guilt. How's that for motivation, Mr. Garrett?"

"Excellent. If you can convince a couple men who figure their place in the world entitles them to immunity from justice."

"Justice has nothing to do with it. Stark, bloody, screaming, agonizing vengeance is what I'm talking about. I'm not concerned about political repercussions. I no longer care if I get pulled down."

Her intensity convinced me. I looked at her husband and Gameleon. DaPena was convinced, too. But Gameleon was holding his own. Softly, I said, "Courter Slauce."

Equally softly, the Stormwarden replied, "I haven't forgotten him. Continue."

I scanned them all again—then turned on Domina Dount. "You feel like modifying anything you've said before?"

She looked blankly at me.

"I don't think you're directly responsible for any deaths, Domina. But you helped turn a scam into something deadly."

She shivered. Willa Dount shivered! She was ready to break. The blood had reached her when she'd had to see it firsthand. Amber sensed it, too. Despite the state of her nerves, she glared at me. I winked.

"Nobody wants to kick in?"

Nobody volunteered to save himself.

"All right. I'll reconstruct. Correct me if I get it wrong, or if you want somebody else to get the shaft."

"Mr. Garrett."

"Right, Stormwarden. So. It started a long time ago, in a house on the Hill, when a woman who shouldn't have had children did so."

"Mr. Garrett!"

"My contract is for a job done without interference, Stormwarden. I was going to walk lightly. But since you're impatient, I'll just spit it out. You made life such hell for them that your whole family was ready to do anything to get away. Nobody worked up the guts to try till you went to the Cantard, though. It's unlikely anybody would have then if your husband hadn't, in the course of continued unwanted attentions, gotten Amiranda pregnant."

Amber glared daggers. Domina Dount squeaked. The Stormwarden glared, too, but only because I was making public something she already suspected. The Baronet fainted.

"As soon as she knew, Amiranda went to the only friend she had, your son. They cooked up a scheme to save her from shame and get them both away from a house they loathed. Junior would get kidnapped. They would use the ransom to start a new life.

"But they couldn't work it out by themselves. They wanted it to look so real the Stormwarden Raver Styx would believe that her son had been done in by dishonorable villains. Why? Because whatever else they felt, the daPena brats loved their father and didn't want him crucified. They wanted to cover for him."

"Mr. Garrett—"

"I'm going to do it my way, Stormwarden." I faced Donni Pell. "They couldn't pull it off without help. So Junior went to his girlfriend. She said she'd arrange everything. And things started going wrong right away, because Donni Pell can't do anything straight.

"She told the guys she hired what was happening, figuring she could work it for a profit. She told the Baronet, figuring she could get something out of him. She told Lord Gameleon, maybe. Or maybe he got it from another direction. There are several ways he could have known.

"Donni planned to do the stunt using ogres who were stealing from the daPena warehouse and selling to Gameleon. That was a big screw-up. Domina Dount already had Junior investigating shortages at the warehouse." I spoke directly to Donni. "And you knew it.

"Meanwhile, Karl Senior let Domina Dount in on the news."

Willa Dount registered an inarticulate protest.

"Karl got grabbed on schedule and taken here, where Donni grew up. Then Willa Dount, to keep it looking good at her end, asked me to put my stamp of approval on what she was doing to get him back. The kidnappers thought I'd been hired to poke into the warehouse business. They tried to convince me to keep out.

"Now it gets confusing as to who did what to who and why. None of the principals understood what they were doing because they were all being pulled in several directions. Everybody at the Stormwarden's house thought they had a chance for a big hit and a break with Raver Styx. Everybody outside saw the big hit. But the pregnancy and warehouse might come out if the kidnapping was investigated. Junior had to be sent home and kept quiet so the trails could get stale before the Stormwarden got back. But then I was suddenly in the middle of the thing. Nobody knew what I was doing, and I wouldn't go away.

"So. The ransom demand was made. The delivery was set. Domina raised the money. And Amiranda, who sensed that it wasn't going according to plan, headed for her rendezvous with Junior.

"But Donni had gotten other folks involved. And they fancied a hunk of ransom. The hell with the kid. What could he do? Go cry to his mother?

"But Karl Senior, who figured to get half of Donni's half of the ransom, warned her that Ami was tough enough to blow the whole thing." I glared at the Baronet. He was awake now, and bone white. "So Donni arranged for Ami to do what she had planned: disappear forever. I guess Junior was supposed to think it was Ami who left him without his share."

Donni Pell made noise and shook her head. The Stormwarden stared at her with the intensity of a snake sizing up supper. I didn't know if I had that part right. Amiranda's death, otherwise, benefited no one but the Baronet. But I couldn't figure him for the order. He wouldn't have done it for his piddling share of the ransom. Or maybe he never got it, because he hadn't made tracks when he should have had cash in hand.

I glared into Donni's eyes. "You going to tell us who wanted the girl killed? Or are you just going to tell us it wasn't you?"

She had a very dry throat. I don't think anybody heard her but me. "It was the kid. He said—"

I don't bash women often. When I backhanded her I told myself it was because she wasn't one. Not in the lady sense. With her talent she might have sold the idea to somebody. But I'd been back and forth with it from the beginning, and if there was one thing I'd learned from it all, it was that the son wasn't guilty of that one. His big crime was stupidity compounded by gutlessness.

"Better come up with a more likely sacrifice, kid. Or you're it."

The trouble with Donni Pell was that she had no handles. She knew exactly where she stood and exactly what her chances were. She was the only person alive who really knew what had happened. I could guess, and spout, and maybe come close, but I couldn't get more than seventy-five percent.

The Stormwarden said, "Mr. Garrett, I'm willing to be patient in the extreme, but this approach isn't unmasking anything. With what you've already given me I've reached several conclusions. One: that my brother-in-law, Lord Gameleon, for reasons he considered adequate, had my son killed. In his instance my only interest is to determine the extent to which my husband had knowledge of that and was involved in the effort to financially weaken me by siphoning my sources of income."

She wasn't stupid. And just because she wasn't in the trade didn't mean she had to be blind. "All right. I would've gotten to that eventually. I was hoping friend Donni would nail it down when the flood started."

"There won't be a flood with her, Mr. Garrett. You know that. The woman has the soul of a ... a ..."

At a loss for words? I would have suggested "Stormwarden" to fill her metaphor, but she was already unhappy with me. It was no time to press my luck.

She said, "I'm also certain that my husband killed Courter Slauce. That much detecting I could manage myself. He was away from the house when it happened. He left on Slauce's heels, in a panic according to the men on the gate."

The Baronet tried to protest. Nobody listened. I asked,

"Why?"

"Slauce knew something. Karl was frightened enough to murder him to keep him from telling you. Courter would have been easy for him. Comparatively. Karl hated the man, and Slauce wouldn't have felt he was in any danger from such a coward. That leaves Amiranda."