Strange how you can manipulate yourself when somebody outside can't.

I leaned back and watched dust fall from the underflooring as a pair of sneaky feet stole after Tate.

I was still that way when the cousin brought lunch and beer. I was busy inhaling that when Uncle Lester appeared with a fat moneybag and a big wicker chest. I finished my beer in one long draft, belched against the back of my wrist, asked, "What do you think about all this, Uncle Lester?"

He shrugged. "Ain't my place to say."

"How's that?"

"Eh?"

It began to sound like hogs-at-the-trough time—all grunts and snorts. "Did you read any of this stuff?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Care to comment?"

"Looked like Denny was dipping his toes in the shadows. You could tell that better than me."

"He was. And he was an amateur. A damned lucky amateur. You ever have any hints that he was into anything?"

"Nope. Unless you count that woman's letters. Them writing back and forth like that all this time seemed a mite odd to me. Ain't natural."

"Yes?"

"The boy was kin, and he's dead, and you don't want to speak ill of either one. But he was a bit strange, that boy. Always a loner 'fore he went off to the war. I'd bet that woman is the only one he ever had. If he had her. He didn't look at one after he got back."

"Maybe he crossed?"

Lester snorted and gave me his best look of disgust, like I didn't know about the Tates and the elves back when—though the cartha are the interspecies rage these days.

"Just asking. I didn't think so. He seemed to be a guy who just wasn't interested. I've been in brag sessions when he was around. He never had a story to tell."

Lester smirked. "Listened polite like, way you might if'n I started telling stories about when I was a kid."

He had me.

It is not often Garrett gets caught with nothing to say.