I nodded. “A few questions. First, why did you turn Wert and the boys loose on me?”
She bit her lip. “My wedding is next week. I don’t want…my fiancee doesn’t know- When I saw that waybill, well… I thought maybe you’d go away, if…”
“If I got a good beating and a stern warning.”
“Are they…?”
“They’re fine. Not a bruise on them. They’ll be back around looking sheepish in a day or two, I promise.” At least I hoped so. Though I doubted any of Owenstall’s boys would just beat them for the sport of it. “Your mother know about any of this?”
She shook her head an emphatic no. “She thinks I’ve forgotten all about Cawling Street,” she said. “It makes her happy, believing that. So I let her. But. I’ve always known that…man would show back up, Mr. Markhat. I’ve been watching.”
She was pretty. Dark-haired and fair-featured. Her eyes looked older than eighteen, and I guess maybe they were, at least in experience.
“All right. Miss. Like I said, I’m not here to bring you or your family any grief. I’m not going to tell anyone that we’ve spoken, tell anyone your name. It may be that I need to talk to you again. If that’s true, I’ll come back here. I won’t ask you to meet me anywhere else. Got it?”
She nodded.
“Now comes the tough part. I need to know exactly what happened back on Cawling Street. I need as much detail as you can remember. Especially about the man Connors.”
Her face went pale.
“April,” she said. “Could you send for a pitcher of tea and two glasses?”
And then she put her hands in her lap and took me back to Cawling Street.
It was still bright and sunny when I left Stig River’s offices and set back out for home. Normally, I’d have been smiling.
But Natalie’s recounting had erased any vestige of a smile.
Connors or Gorvis, by any name, was a monstrous piece of work. He’d set his eyes on Marris Sellway, and from that moment no one in the family had known any peace.
Natalie was convinced Connors had stabbed her father. If her story about Connors showing up the next day and catching her in a headlock and whispering a description of her father’s death throes in her ear was true, I was willing to believe it too.
Connors even had the Bloods cowed. He paid no protection. They gave him wide berth and showed him complete deference, though outnumbering him an easy twenty to one.
According to Natalie, Connors had gone house-to-house, kicking in doors and searching for Marris, after she hid from him one day. And when he hadn’t found her, he simply started setting fires.
And still, no one had raised a hand against him.
I stomped my way out of the shiny, new business district and took a wandering route towards home.
The man had burned an entire street nearly to the ground. Not once, but twice. And no one could work up the courage to steal up behind him with a brick in hand?
Marris had finally fled with Doris, literally hiding in the rolling clouds of smoke from the second fire. Homeless and penniless, she had somehow avoided the fate that would usually have resulted from such a flight. Instead, she’d taken on another name, found work, found a husband, found a life.
Until now.
I thought about the nature of a man willing to burn down dozens of homes just to make a point to a woman who’d spurned his every advance. I thought about what kind of monster could murder a kid’s father one day and brag about it to the grieving child the next.
Mostly, though, I thought about being used by such a man under the pretense of speaking from beyond the grave.
I wasn’t sure where Granny Knot fit into all this. Maybe she was out and out feeding me the whole line of bull and was being paid for her troubles. Maybe she was somehow being duped into thinking she was speaking with a dead man.
But either way, I’d nearly led a monster to an innocent woman’s door.
It was the bag of coin, of course. I’d been so distracted by that I hadn’t focused on anything else. And that, I decided, was planned as well. I was supposed to be convinced Connors was dead, simply because I couldn’t imagine someone alive letting that much coin slip out of their hands.
At the corner of Maddon and Vent, I paused. Right would lead me to Granny Knot’s. Left would lead me back home.
I squinted at the sun and estimated my walking times. I decided I could just make it home, and then head to Granny’s. I was feeling distinctly unarmed, and while most of the time I don’t feel a need to haul around the implements of mayhem, that afternoon was shaping up to be different.
So left I went, at a brisk pace.
Dead man or not, somebody was going to feel the weighted end of my head-knocker, and bloody well soon.
I was trying to decide whether Granny was duped or dastard when I marched onto Cambrit and passed Mama’s and saw the carriage pulled up right at my door.
I slowed, put my hands in my pockets, lapsed into an amble. I was half-fearing Mama would pop out and shriek my name, but I heard voices inside and knew she had a client.
The carriage was new. It was fancy, too, with rubber-covered wheels and bright steel springs and a shine that would do a funeral wagon proud. And there, on the back, was the logo of the Stig River Runners.
I came up even with the cab, peeked inside. A woman sat there, about my age, clad in an uptown hoop skirt and a hat that someone had festooned with gauze and flowers.
She glared at me and yanked the curtains shut before tapping on the roof of the cab.
“We might as well go, Summers,” she said. “Make the block one more time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You looking for Markhat, the finder?” I asked.
“None of your damned business,” said Summers. He even swatted the air a foot in front of my face with his whip.
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
And the cab pulled away.
I waved and waited until it was out of sight before unlocking my door.
Three-leg Cat was on my desk, complaining about his feeding arrangements. I poured him out some dry food in my room in the back, found places for my Army knife and short head knocker, and settled back, waiting for the cab to make the block.
It didn’t take long. I heard it pull back to the curb outside, heard the door open, heard dainty boots scrape the sidewalk.
And then came the knock.
I rose and opened the door. The woman frowned at me.
“Please, come in,” I said, to her. “Summers, you’ll wait there.”
She stood there for a moment.
“I’m Markhat. The finder. Won’t you come in?”
“You are a very rude man, Mr. Markhat.”
I nodded. “My mother weeps herself to sleep some nights. I have a chair. Please sit in it.”
She came in. Summers glared at me over his shoulder, so I gave him a cheery wave as I shut the door.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Your name is Eva Mays. These days, anyway. Not so many years ago it was Marris Sellway. Your daughter Natalie is getting married next week. Natalie is a prettier name than Doris. And that paper in your hand is one of my waybills. Any of that right?”
She paled. I realized I was being an ass.
“Calm down, Mrs. Mays. I’m occasionally rude, but I’m not a villain. I have no intention of revealing your past to anyone. I especially won’t be mentioning Cawling Street to a thug named Connors.”
She gulped air. Whatever story she’d concocted on her way over here was falling apart before her eyes.
“I was hired to find a Miss Marris Sellway under the pretense of handing her a large sum in pre-War coins. But I’ll tell you plain, Mrs. Mays, that I don’t plan on fulfilling my charge. If this Connors character is trying to find out where you are and who you are, he won’t be doing it through me. I quit.”
She gave up trying to come up with a workable lie.
“Connors is dead,” she said, after a moment. Her voice still shook. “He died six months ago.”