Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore 1)

"About twice a month she gets a package, addressed just like these letters. When I asked her about it, she said it was an herbal remedy for her rheumatism that she orders from a doctor down there. "

"This is no doctor's script. " The letters were heavy and precise, though not refined. Whoever had printed them was working slowly, and laboriously. Perhaps he or she couldn't read very well. I was willing to bet it was a man, for the letters had a masculine quality to their square-edged straightness.

"No, it isn't. But it's never done any good to argue with the woman, as you can well imagine. " Harry sat on the edge of the bed and shuffled through the letters again, furrowing his brow into deep creases. "Do you really think this is important?"

"It might be. We could ask her. "

"She won't tell us anything, not now that she's been tied up in a chair all night. You thought she was uncooperative before . . . I'll be

t we ain't seen nothing yet. "

I stared down at the bottle, swishing its contents around into a whirlpool. "You're probably right. But she's all we've got. This time, how about you let me do the asking?"

He shrugged and rose, reaching his hands behind his shoulders and cracking his back. "Be my guest. You can't possibly get any less out of her than I did. "

Downstairs in the dining room, Eliza had fallen asleep. Her curly white head was tipped forward, her chin resting on her breastbone. Her chest expanded and contracted just enough to lift and lower her face, still blocked by the gag. I was merely inches away from feeling sorry for her until Harry removed her gag and she shot awake and started yelling.

"You scalawags—both of you dirty goddamned carpetbaggers—I'll see you both dead! I'll see you both gutted and stretched and dead on a rack before I'm gone, do you hear me? I'll kill you myself, with my own two hands! I'll—"

Harry popped the saliva-soaked rag back into her mouth and let her gnaw on it in muffled rage. "I told you," he said to me. "She's not going to be of any use. We may as well turn her loose and make a run for it. "

"I'm not going to run away from a little old lady," I said, jaw set firm. "I'll smack some manners into one if I have to, but I'm not going to flee from one. It's undignified. "

"What do you plan to do, then?" He said it with a hint of warning that implied, all threats aside, he would prefer that no actual manners-smacking took place.

I positioned myself so that Eliza could stare me down all she liked. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her to remember how much she hated me, and my mother before me. There was a chance I could use that fury to my advantage.

"Eliza, who's your friend in Florida?"

She stopped squirming and gnashing her teeth against the rag. Her eyes shrank to tiny, mean slits, and she slowly shook her head back and forth.

"Okay," I said, "that'll work. I'll just ask yes-or-no questions and you can shake your head. That'll work fine. "

At that, she threw her nose into the air and stared at the ceiling. I might have expected as much, but her refusal did not daunt me. I could get a knee-jerk reaction out of her, and that was something. It was more than "nothing. "

I decided it was safe to act on my assumption that her correspondent was male. "Tell me, Tatie. Your friend in Florida. You've known him for a very long time, haven't you? We found some stuff in your room that tells us you've known him for fifty years, if you've known him a day. "

Her eyes didn't release their death grip on the ceiling, but she didn't huff as though I'd said something stupid and wrong. Her hands had instantly gone into hard-knotted fists where they were strapped to the armrests, and it was not because she was tied inhumanely.

"Is he a family member?"

Nothing. Not even a twitch at the corner of an eye.

"This swamp water he's sending you, it's some kind of medicine?" She continued her steadfast policy of nonreaction, so I wiggled the cork loose and smelled at it again, squinting down the neck of the bottle. "I have a hard time believing that. And you take this regularly?"

"It's for her rheumatism," Harry reiterated without enthusiasm. Eliza pivoted her head just enough to glare over at him instead of the ceiling, then permitted herself a half nod.

"I don't buy that. Not for a second. "

"This conversation cannot go anywhere, Eden. She's not going to tell us anything. " My coconspirator was growing tired of the games, or possibly just tired. Lord knew I was beat like an old rug. I would have given anything to lie down in the big bed upstairs they'd assigned me earlier, and go to sleep as I ought to have.

But there were bigger things at stake than circles under our eyes. "Eliza, what would you do if I threw this out? Flushed it down the toilet? Would you care?"

Her head jiggled ever so slightly, signifying the negative.

"Not at all?"

She did it again, more firmly. Harry was wrong. Whatever the vial contained, it was important enough to Eliza that she wanted me to think it was useless. If it had really been something ordinary, she would have left her eyes on the ceiling and kept her head stationary.