Book 10 - Angry Lead Skies Read Online Free PDF

head.”
    Spare us your unconvincing histrionics, Garrett.
    Unconvincing? I was convinced. I took a deep breath. I’d
never gotten in the last word yet but like an old-timer married
fifty years I’m an eternal optimist. It could happen. There
might come a day. It might be today.
    Actually, it’ll probably come when I’m on my
deathbed and the Reaper snatches me before Old Bones can come back
at me. Except that Chuckles might decide to come after me.
He’s already got a head start.
    Death. Now there’s a guy who knows how to have the last
word.
    Mr. Big is following the creature I sensed in the alley,
Garrett. Not any sad little manhunter named Gonlit. I had thought
you would understand that. A most unusual creature this is, too.
Nothing like it has entered my ken before. Most notably, it seems
capable of rendering itself invisible by fogging the minds of those
around it. It is amazing.
    “And you keep telling me there’s nothing new under
the sun.”
    Playmate’s scrawny young buddy finally collected himself
enough to notice us. “What happened to you guys? You smell
awful.”
    My good and true friend Playmate announced, “What you
smell is Garrett. I myself am redolent of roses, lilacs, and other
sweet herbal delights.”
    I glared at Playmate. “We ran into Bic Gonlit.” I
turned my glower on the boy. He did not leap at the opportunity to
have a chuckle at my expense. Maybe he wasn’t a total social
disaster at all times. Maybe he retained some rudimentary, skewed
sense of self-preservation.
    That’s Mama Garrett’s big boy. He can find a silver
lining inside the ugliest sow’s ear. Maybe he didn’t
have any sense of humor at all. Kip looked to Playmate for
confirmation. Playmate told him, “It was Gonlit.” Then
he told me, “Do something about your sweet self. I have a
strong feeling we’re about to get out amongst the people. I
wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself.”
    Yet again the stardust of amusement twinkled in the air.
I would propose that Mr. Playmate has offered excellent advice,
Garrett.
    I smelled doom. I smelled it like I’d smelled leaf mold in
the jungle every time it’d rained while I was in the islands.
It was in the air, sneezing thick. I did not have to sniff to catch
a whiff.
    I was about to be cursed. Squirm as I might I was about to have
to go to work. All because I had been dim enough to open my door
and let trouble walk in.
    I whined, “Where on the gods’ green earth is the
beautiful girl?” It’d never failed before. I’d
always gotten some wonderful eye-candy out
of . . . “Yike!”
    Old Dean, who pretends to be the chief cook and housekeeper
around here, but who is really the wicked stepmother, had stuck his
bitter, persimmon-sucking face into the office. “Mr. Garrett?
Why is it that I return home to find the front door standing wide
open?”
    “It was an experiment. I was trying to learn if crabby old
people will kick a door shut
before
they start complaining
about it having been left open. Of particular interest are crabby
old men who live in a household where their status more closely
approximates that of a guest than something more eternal. So you
tell me. Do you have any idea? Where’s the girl?”
    Dean doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. He offered me
the full benefit of his hard, gray-eyed stare. As always, he was
rock-confident he could demonstrate to the world that my second
greatest flaw is my frivolous, incautious nature.
    He believes my greatest failing to be my persistent
bachelorhood. That from a character who never got within
rock-flinging range of matrimony himself. I put up with him because
he is a wonderful cook and housekeeper. When the mood takes him.
And because he’s cranky enough to hold his own with the Dead
Man—though when he has his druthers he has nothing to do with
Old Bones at all.
    “Let’s not fuss,” I told him. “I have a
client here.”
    Bad word choice. That brightened Dean right up. Little pleases
him more