“Please have a seat, Mr. Simmons. Natalie will be right with you.”
I smiled. It was genuine. She smiled back, and it was too.
“Thank you, Miss…” I said. I inserted a careful, questioning silence after the Miss.
“Miss Hawthorne,” she replied. “Miss April Hawthorne.”
I winked and took a leather-bound chair close to the indoor brook. I could have dipped my toes in the stream, were I inclined to part with my shoes.
There were murals on the walls. All depicted the company’s more famous exploits during the War. None were half as interesting as the way Miss Hawthorne looked at me with that impish little half-smile.
We’d done a lot of not talking, Miss Hawthorne and I, before I heard feet upon a distant stair and a polished oak door opened, and a second young woman stepped into the room.
I stood. My smile was broad and civil.
“Good afternoon, Miss Mays,” I said.
“April? Where is Mr. Simmons?”
I took the waybill from my pocket and unfolded it. Miss Mays looked from April to me and to the waybill and the blood drained out of her face.
“Mr. Simmons sends his regrets. But I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say anyway. Shall we sit?”
The girl was terrified. She didn’t know my face, but she knew damned well what that waybill meant, and she knew she’d sent her three henchmen into something that had gone horribly wrong.
She knew I was trouble. But here I was, smiling and offering to sit down more or less in public. She wavered between bolting back upstairs or screaming for help, but she finally hid her look of shock and took a seat beside me.
April looked on, confused. I reassured her with a grin and a nod and folded the waybill and sat down myself, turning to face Miss Mays.
She was all of eighteen. She was brown-haired and blue-eyed and pretty. Maybe not so experienced at not talking as Miss Hawthorne, but give her credit, she was looking me in the eye and she wasn’t tearing up or biting her lip to keep it from trembling.
“You know who I am,” I said. I was whispering, barely audible above the helpful babbling brook. “Markhat. The finder. I wanted to come around myself and thank you for sending Argis and Wert and Florint around to see me.”
She swallowed, but wisely said nothing.
“Now, I have to think that your father doesn’t know you’re using his employees as unskilled labor,” I said. “And I also have to think he’s not going to be happy when they don’t show up for work again.”
She blinked at that. I kept smiling.
“So, what’s the occasion, Miss? A wedding?”
“What?”
“Miss Hawthorne there mentioned a floral arrangement. You’re wearing an engagement ring. I assume you’re getting married?”
She struggled to keep her voice level. “In just a few days. On St. Ontis Day.”
I nodded. “A fine choice. My congratulations. Now then, what is it about my waybill that led you to send you friends out to greet me?”
I let her stew a moment.
I sighed. “You’re in over your head, Miss. You sent three of Father’s best to issue a beat-down to a licensed finder. They’re among the missing. What if I file a complaint with the Watch? What if I hire a lawyer and file a suit? Be a shame to postpone the wedding, wouldn’t it? Especially for something so deliciously scandalous. Why, I’ll bet dear old Father doesn’t have a clue what you’ve been up to. Does he?”
“Are they dead?”
“You don’t get to ask any questions until you’ve answered mine. Next time I ask it will be down at the Watchhouse on the Square. And after that, you won’t have time to worry about the scarcity of blue fireflowers, Miss. Last chance.”
Her eyes blazed. But she weighed her options.
“There’s only one person who might be looking for Marris Sellway,” she said, so low I could barely hear her. “If you’re his man, screw you. Go get the Watch. Go get a lawyer. Go get them and go to Hell.”
She stood up. I had to admire the way she saw a world of hurt coming but spit in its eye anyway.
“April,” she said. “Call Father.”
I shook my head. “Whoa, young lady. You’ve got me all wrong. I was hired by an old woman named Granny Knot. She brought me a bagful of money and said she wanted it to go to Marris Sellway. That’s who I’m working for. That’s what I was hired to do. That, and nothing else.”
“April. Wait.”
“I’m telling the truth, Miss. I’m not out to hurt anyone. Not you.” I went out on that limb made famous in the proverb. “And not your mother.”
Her face fell. I was right.
“Why don’t you go by Doris anymore?”
“Because of him,” she replied.
“Him?”
Natalie, formerly Doris, glanced furtively around. “He started the fires on Cawling. And I’m sure he killed my father. And if you’re working for him now, and you tell him who we are and where we are, he’ll kill us both. Mother and me.”
“Nobody is going to kill anybody, Miss. And look, this is going to sound crazy, but the man I’m supposedly working for is dead.”
“Dead?”
I sighed. “Like I said, it sounds crazy. A spook doctor came to me. Claimed she came on behalf of a ghost.”
Natalie laughed. It wasn’t a normal laugh, but a release of pent-up terror, and April gave us both the eye from across the room.
“Was this man’s name Gorvis, Miss?”
She shook her head. “He called himself Connors back then. But he liked to brag that he was wanted, so that probably wasn’t his name.” She shivered. “I know they said Father died in that riot, but I never believed it. Father wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have gotten in the middle of a thing like that.”
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.
