Feet beat it, and a door slammed from somewhere in the kitchen.
I let out a sigh of relief. Assuming that every kitchen in Rannit has a back door that opens into the alley is a safe bet, unless it’s your life you’re betting.
Mr. Fields emerged. His nose was bloody and his shirt was untucked and missing most of its buttons. In his right hand was a long straight knife, and in his left was a wicked two-tined fork.
“What the Hell are you doing here?”
I plopped my butt onto a stool. “You’re welcome. Again. I dropped in for a cup of coffee. Are you going to stab me, poke me or pour me a cup?”
“Haven’t decided.”
“Want me to lock the door? Might be a good idea if your two friends from the kitchen head back. Also a good idea if you decide on stabbing me. Don’t want to scare off paying customers with violent acts of murder on the sales floor now, do we?”
“Do you ever shut that mouth of yours?”
“Hardly ever. It’s how I make my living. Take today, for instance. I spent all of it digging through old Army payroll records, Mr. Fields. Did you know most of them still exist? Well, they do.”
He glowered. He glared. But his hands were shaking and sweat was pouring off his fat little head. After a moment he threw the fork onto the floor and shoved the knife under his apron and stalked to the big brass coffee machine and set about pouring two cups of it.
“Two sugars, please. Hold the arsenic. But as I was saying. I spent all day going through these records, just to see if you and Mr. Lethway were not telling the entire truth about never having served directly with each other, during the War. Do you know what I found, Mr. Fields?”
He shoved the coffee cup at me and sat across from me. I took a sip. His cup never moved, and he didn’t meet my eyes.
“You were his personal cook. For two years, maybe longer. Why did you lie about that, Mr. Fields? Why did Lethway?”
“You’re going to get us both killed.”
“And if I just walk away, maybe take up turnip farming, is that going to keep those men from coming back? Is that going to keep them away from your daughter?”
He growled a curse word. But he didn’t reach for his knife.
I drank coffee and waited.
“I was the Colonel’s cook. Four years. Kept me off the front. Only Troll I ever saw was dead.”
“So you ran an officer’s kitchen. That’s nothing to lie about.”
“No.” He clutched his cup with both hands and stared down into it. “I wasn’t rich. Was just a kid. But I could read and write. I did my own requisitions. Handled the kitchen funds.”
It began to dawn on me.
“Whose idea was it, to skim a little off the top?”
“His.” He looked up at me. “I swear, finder. I was poor, but I was honest. It was the Colonel’s idea. Said he had some gambling debts. I kept a third of the take. Hell, it wasn’t much. At first.”
“But things didn’t stay small.”
He shook his head. His face was pure crimson. The veins in his forehead were swollen and throbbing.
Maybe he had been an honest kid, after all.
“The Sixth wound up at Killispill. Regional headquarters. The Seventh was already there. Hell, within a year we were feeding eight, nine hundred men a day. Double that the next year.”
“So a lot of money was involved.”
“A fortune. The Kingdom might have skimped on a lot of things. Hell, you know they did. But the officers got fed. Nobody asked any questions. They didn’t even look at the ledgers. We’d claim we spent a thousand crowns on beef, when we spent two hundred. It was like owning a bank, finder. Even when I tried to pull back, the Colonel wouldn’t hear of it. He got greedy. He’d have killed me, had I tried to stop.”
I nodded. That might have been true. Even if it wasn’t, it was something the baker needed to believe.
“And then the War ended.”
“It did. All over. Orders came down. You’re discharged. Thank you for your service.” He spat on his good clean floor. “Bastards.”
“So you and Colonel Lethway-you just split the take and parted ways?”
“That’s what we did, finder. I didn’t lay eyes on the man until Tamar-until my daughter started walking out with that fool son of his.”
“And the money?”
He lifted his hands, gestured to the coffee shop. “All gone, years ago. I built my business with it. Lost most of it the first five years. But it kept us afloat, long enough to get established.” He sighed and gripped his untouched coffee again. “I’m not proud of what I did during the War, finder. But I’ve never done anything like that since. I’ve worked hard and made a living for myself and my family. I want nothing to do with the Colonel or the past.”
“Those two men who just left. Were they part of this, somehow?”
He spoke quietly. “They know. I don’t know how they know, finder. Or who they are. But they know Lethway and I stole a fortune during the War, and they want something from him, and they want me to try and pry it out of him.”
“By blackmailing him.”
He nodded. “I told them to go to Hell.”
“They didn’t seem to be heeding your travel advice.”
“I meant to kill them, finder. I had a knife.”
“Brave. But dumb. Two of them, one of you? Maybe those are good odds when you’re dealing with rogue pastries, but not hired muscle.”
He mulled that over while his coffee steamed.
“You didn’t really kill that man in my house, did you, finder?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Tamar keeps crying. Talking in her sleep too. Telling someone she’s sorry.” He looked up at me. “I wish I’d told that son of a bitch to get stuffed the first night he walked into my mess tent.”
“You were just a kid with a potato peeler. He was a Colonel. Don’t beat yourself up too much. After all, you’ve got other people trying to do that for you.”
That got a ghost of a grin.
“Whatever it is they want out of Lethway, he isn’t budging.” I finished off my cup. “They cut off his kid’s ear, Mr. Fields. Sent it to him. He dropped it in the fireplace. I think the Colonel will let Carris die before he’ll cooperate.”
“I’m afraid you’re right about that.”
“That means they’re going to keep coming after you, Mr. Fields. Because if there’s one thing the Colonel is afraid of, it’s being exposed as a War profiteer.”
“So you’re saying I should blackmail Lethway?”
I smiled, big and wide. “No, Mr. Fields. I’m saying I should.”
Chapter Fourteen
Convincing Mr. Fields to hand over everything I needed to pry open Lethway’s lips took another pot of coffee.
But when that was drunk, he stopped shaking. His face wasn’t the color of hot coals. And the hate was gone from his eyes.
The worst had happened, and instead of tearing his world apart, I had emerged as the very man who might be able to put it safely back together.
All I had to do, of course, was live through my little talk with Lethway.
When I left the coffee house, I had a parcel under my arm. It was a pair of ledgers, wrapped in aged brown
