Ghastly Glass (24 page)

“We’ll do our part,” Robin promised.

“Without lifting all the toaster ovens in the Village, I trust?” Brother John, head of the Brotherhood of the Sheaf, interjected.

Robin grinned (not a good start). “Of course not! You can trust us, Brother Monk.”

“We’ll all help, Chase,” the head of the Musician Guild vowed.

It was a remarkable moment, something that would live in history. All the guilds agreeing on something was unbelievable. I guessed with their livelihood on the line, they could all find something they had in common. The Village made money for these people. No one wanted to be out in the cold on the Strand plying their wares alone again.

“All right! That’s what I wanted to hear!” Chase pushed his fist into the air in that time-honored salute of triumph. “We’ll start tonight with the biggest guilds who can spare a few members to patrol while the Village is closed. There won’t be any visitors to work around, so a few should do.”

“But no one has been hurt at night,” Hephaestus of the Food Guild remarked. “Why not wait until tomorrow?”

“Because that person is out there. Writing on the walls is just part of the problem. It seems to be part of a larger pattern. Maybe if we can stop it, we can stop the violence, too,” Chase explained.

“What about that snoopy reporter, Lilly Hamilton?” Little Bo Peep demanded.

“I’d be glad to take care of that problem,” Grigg said with a grin.

“Who are you representing?” Lord Dunstable asked him.

“I’m representing the pirates,” Grigg told him with a glance at me. “Our Pirate King had an unfortunate accident this afternoon. He was unable to attend.”

“No one needs to do anything with Lilly Hamilton,” Chase said to a chorus of guffaws that implied most of the men thought Chase wanted to do what
they
wanted to do.

“Yeah, Bailiff,” the head of the Knave, Varlet, and Madman Guild said. “Like we aren’t all thinking what you’re thinking.”

Chase glanced at me, a little red spot on each of his cheeks. He settled the crowd down again and got everyone in line with the plan to protect the Village.

Was he really thinking about hitting on Lilly Hamilton? I couldn’t believe it, but I also couldn’t explain that guilty look or that unusual flush. Of all people! Lilly Hamilton! What could he possibly see in her? The fairies threw themselves at him all the time. Lady Godiva actually removed her bodysuit and rode naked to the dungeon to impress him two years ago. But no! Chase wanted that stupid ex-weathergirl turned Myrtle Beach Katie Couric wannabe. I missed the tail end of the meeting dwelling on it.

“So did you guys hear anything besides what everyone was yelling?” Chase asked me and Lonnie after the guild heads were gone.

Lonnie shrugged and scratched his little rat face. “No, boss. I didn’t hear anything except what you heard.”

I couldn’t say what I’d seen and heard. I mumbled something similar to what Lonnie had said, all the while looking at Chase’s handsome face and wondering where I went wrong. My grandma always said to be careful of the pretty boys. Chase qualified for that. Certainly all the women in the Village wanted him. He could’ve swatted them away as they were thick as flies.

But instead, he wanted Lilly Hamilton.

I was almost too depressed to care about what happened to the Village. Lonnie picked up some plastic-wrapped food and headed back toward the dungeon. Chase and I took the long way around, past Baron’s, Lady Cathy’s Crochet, and Bawdy Betty’s.

“I was thinking maybe I should stay at the dungeon tonight and you stay with Debby just to be safe,” he said to me.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Is something wrong?”

The moonlight gilded the Village around us. Crews had cleaned up the spiderwebs (big mistake), leaving the buildings looking mostly normal. The lights in the pumpkins still burned at the entrances to each house and shop, but someone had apparently turned off the bats and werewolf soundtrack. It would be easy to believe we had been transported into a real Renaissance village.

“Wrong? What gives you that idea?” I sure wasn’t going to talk about it. If Chase wanted Lilly Hamilton, she was welcome to him.

There was something going on between Fractured Fairy Tales and the Romeo and Juliet Pavilion. Two men were digging what looked like several holes. Beside them were tombstones. That was just what we needed right now. A graveyard would make everyone feel so much better.

“You’re upset about Roger,” Chase guessed.

Hit the buzzer!
Could he be any more wrong? “Yeah. That’s it.”

We stopped walking only a short distance from the new cemetery. Chase stood in front of me and refused to budge. Every time I tried to walk around him, he got in my way. He’s not exactly a mountain (or even as big as Bart), but I couldn’t get around him. “What?”

“What?” he demanded back. “What’s up with you?”

I could hear footsteps running up from behind us in the quiet street long before a breathless Grigg reached us. “Chase! You have to see this!”

“I’m kind of busy fighting with Jessie right now. I’ll get to it later,” Chase answered.

“Oh, so this is fighting?” I asked. “I suppose you wouldn’t be fighting if you were seeing Lilly Hamilton, star reporter.”

“What are you talking about?” Chase asked.

“I’m talking about you blushing when everyone was razzing you about her at the meeting. What was up with that?”

“Will the two of you please shut up?” Grigg interrupted again. “There’s another dead man swinging from the Hanging Tree.”

“
A
t least it’s not a
real
dead man.” I finally stated the A obvious after a group of us had been standing for several minutes at the base of the Hanging Tree. “I mean, it’s just a scarecrow kind of thing with those stupid words on it again.”

“Death shall find thee.”
Chase said it out loud. Not like any of us needed to hear it again.

“What do you think?” Grigg asked.

“I think we at least have some idea of what’s going on now,” Chase responded. “This isn’t one particular man. The figure represents the whole Village. Whoever’s doing this wants to shut Renaissance Village down.”

Master at Arms Gus Fletcher and Death, really Bart, had joined us as we reached the tree. Everyone seemed to agree with Chase’s assessment. Even I thought the figure represented the Village since it was wearing a Village T-shirt. It didn’t take a lot of brainpower to figure that out.

“Why would someone want to shut the place down?” I hoped the dismay and horror of the idea didn’t color my voice. “I can’t believe anyone here could be that unhappy. Why wouldn’t they just leave?”

“People are strange.” Bart shrugged. “Who knows what anyone is thinking?”

Wasn’t that the truth? I would’ve never guessed Chase could be interested in that skinny-legged, know-nothing Lilly Hamilton either. Bart was obviously a very wise man.

“This person could be anyone in the Village,” Grigg said. “I think it has to be a resident. Who else would have this kind of access?”

Chase lowered the figure from the tree branch. Grigg caught it in a plastic bag he’d snagged from a nearby trash can. “I wish you were wrong. But I agree with you. It has to be a resident.”

“Wait a minute! What about those times when visitors managed to sneak in and out? You don’t know that isn’t what’s happening now. After all, you can’t be everywhere.” I knew I was again pointing out the obvious, but it had to be said. I didn’t want to think any of the people I saw every day on the cobblestone streets could be responsible for killing Death—Ross—and hurting Roger.

“We’ll need to look at everyone’s past-history profile,” Grigg said in police language. “The chances are we could find the answer right there. I suppose Adventure Land must have that.”

“And that would work if anyone here had ever given a past-history profile,” Chase replied. “We have hundreds of high school and college drama students who have never even voted or held a job other than here. There are probably another few hundred semi-adults who have also never worked anywhere but here. The only thing we really require for employment is a Social Security number and a valid ID.”

“No background check?” Grigg said it as though the very idea violated his thoughts of how the world should be.

“Nope.” Chase shook his head.

“That has to change,” Grigg replied. “You can’t just let anyone run around crazy in here. You have to know if they’re really crazy or not.”

I laughed. I knew this was a serious subject and I was looking at my home away from home falling victim to
real
thieves and scoundrels, but I couldn’t help myself. “I’m sorry. But most of the people here are hiding out from one thing or another. Haven’t you noticed? They tend to duck and cover whenever a police officer shows his face. Except for you, Grigg, because you fit right in.”

“I’m afraid Jessie’s right.” Chase agreed with me, which perversely made me angry. “If we get rid of all the crazies, the Village will be empty.”

Grigg took that statement personally. “I’m not crazy.”

If he was waiting for one of us to rush in and assure him that he was right, he was disappointed. He was a middle-aged ex-police officer who spent his time pretending he was a pirate. Nope. Not crazy at all.

“But I think you’re onto something, Grigg.” Chase changed the subject. “We’ve needed to upgrade our system for keeping track of employees for the last two years. I think this might be the push we need to get Adventure Land to take some responsibility.”

Bart agreed by punching one large hand into the other. “Yes. We need a better database on all the people who work here. Or have ever worked here. Systems get so outdated.”

We all kind of stared at him. I wondered where all that tech talk came from. He hardly seemed the type.

“What?” He looked around at us. “Don’t we have a database? I wasn’t always Death, you know. I like computers.”

“I don’t know if we even have a computer,” I said.

“Okay, Bart, you’re my go-to guy on this since I can’t stand computers,” Chase said. “I’ll call the main office in the morning and see if we can get some names to work with. There must be someone who knows who’s being hired around here.”

Someone screeched not too far away from where we were standing. I was fairly sure it wasn’t a soundtrack. There were sounds of scuffling and one of the trash cans getting knocked over at the Lady of the Lake Tavern.

Chase ran that way and the rest of us followed. Sure enough, a group of Robin’s Merry Men seemed to be roughing up one of the minstrels. The odds were not in the minstrel’s favor.

“What’s going on?” Chase demanded when he reached the group.

“We found this knave out here alone, probably looking for someone else to kill,” one of the Merry Men accused. “We were patrolling the area, as you requested, Sir Bailiff.”

“I was out here getting my mandolin from the Merry Mynstrel Stage.” The young man in blue velvet held up his instrument as proof. “They took my hat and tried to shove me in the trash can. I think they broke my mandolin.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he started crying. My heart went out to him. He was very young. Maybe one of those high school drama students Chase was talking about.

“Don’t worry,” Bart told him. “I’ll take care of it for you.”

A moment later he had two of the Merry Men hanging upside down by their feet. Who knew someone so big could move so fast?

“That won’t help my mandolin.” The young musician grabbed his blue velvet hat, whose large peacock feather had been crushed in the fight.

“You want me to shake them until all their money falls out?” Bart asked in the most polite of voices. None of us had any doubt that he could and would do exactly what he offered.

“No.” Chase stepped in. “Put them down, Bart. They meant well. I’m sure they just got carried away. And I don’t think it will happen again, right, Merry Men?”

The Merry Men were all too happy to agree with him. Anything to have the giant figure of Death let them go. Of course, he dropped them all on their heads (hopefully it knocked some sense into a few of them). They lay around on the ground, whimpering and complaining. Chase was certainly going to hear about this from Robin.

“I’ll see to it that you get a new mandolin,” Chase offered the musician. “I’m sorry this happened.”

The musician seemed satisfied with that. He sniffed, wiped his nose on his hat (
yuck
), and went on his way.

“The rest of you, use some common sense, huh? Did he really look like a threat to the Village or was he a convenient punching bag?” Chase yelled at the Merry Men. “If anything like this happens again, the Forest Guild won’t continue their patrols.”

“Methinks you are too harsh, Sir Bailiff,” said the Merry Man who seemed to be in charge of the group. “Forsooth, we were but challenging the lad to protect everyone.”