One feeble lamp battled the dark. Tate worked by touch, really. "You'll ruin your eyes if you don't spring for more light." Tate is one of the wealthiest men in TunFaire and one of the tightest with a sceat.

"You have one minute, Garrett." His lumbago was acting up. Or something Couldn't be me.

"Straight at it, then. Tinnie's been stabbed."

He looked at me for half the time he'd given me. Then he put his tools aside. "You have your faults, but you wouldn't say that unless you meant it. Tell me."

I told him.

He didn't say anything for a while. He just stared, not at me but at ghosts lurking behind me. His had been a life plagued by loss. His wife, his kids, his brother, all had gone before their time.

He surprised me by not laying it off on me "You got the man who did it?"

"He's dead. I ran through it again.

"I wish I could have had a piece of him." He rang a bell. One of his nephews responded. Tate told him, "Send for Dr Meddin. Now. And turn out a half-dozen men to walk Mr Garrett home." Now I had me a "mister."

"Yes sir." The nephew bounced off on a recruiting tour.

"Anything else, Mr. Garrett?"

"You could tell me why anybody would want to kill Tinnie."

"Because she was involved with you. To get at you."

"A lot of people don't like me." Present company included. "But none of them work like that. They wanted to get my goat, they'd burn my house down. With me inside it

"Then it has to be senseless. Random violence or mistaken identity."

"You sure she wasn't into anything?"

"The only thing Tinnie was involved in was you." He didn't say it but I could hear him thinking, Maybe this will learn her a lesson. "She never left the place except to see you.