Pound of Flesh by Dan Willis

Author:Dan Willis [Willis, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

18

THE SALON

Iggy puttered in the kitchen, humming to himself while Alex read the evening paper. Danny had been right, every article about the Keeler murder had an undertone of scandal and conspiracy. Some figured the police were deliberately mishandling the case to cover up for one of their own, while others implied subtly that Amanda was the mistress of someone high up in government, possibly even the mayor himself.

As Alex skimmed the stories, he did take solace in one thing…no one thought Adam was the killer anymore. When he picked up the last paper, a salacious tabloid called The Lamplighter, he found that not everyone had abandoned Adam as a suspect. Like The Midnight Sun, they too claimed to have an inside source at Bellevue, and their source claimed that Adam was only faking his amnesia.

Alex chuckled, interrupting Iggy’s humming.

“Find something amusing?” he said as he continued to putter over the stove.

“Did you read the Lamplighter?”

“No,” he admitted, “It only just came in as I was starting dinner. I usually save that particular rag for my after-coffee chuckle in the greenhouse. Did you know that they have twice published stories that I’m alive, or rather that Conan Doyle is alive, and working on a new Sherlock Holmes story?”

“I hadn’t seen that,” Alex chuckled, “but I’d pay a tidy sum to have been there when you read that.”

Iggy harrumphed at that, but said nothing.

“You know,” Alex continued, using the tabloid to hide the smile on his face, “you ought to write some new Holmes stories. Have your publisher say they were found in a drawer or something.”

A long frosty silence greeted him, and Alex did his best not to snicker.

“Funny,” Iggy said at last, his voice flat and even. “You know very well that I spent years trying to get out of Sherlock’s shadow. Now that I’m out, I’m never going back, so I’ll thank you to keep your humorous observations to yourself.”

“Do you ever think about writing again?” Alex asked, his tone turning serious.

“Sometimes,” Iggy said, “but then I come to my senses.”

“Why not write something different,” Alex suggested, his impish tone returning. “I hear romantic stories are all the rage with young women.”

“Perhaps someday,” Iggy chuckled. “If I run out of money.”

“How come you didn’t get wiped out in the crash?” Alex said, asking a question he’d been sitting on for years.

“My money was in a British bank at the time of the crash,” he said. “I didn’t convert it to dollars until I came here. Even then, the money I brought with me was just what I had in a rainy day fund. I…I left the rest for my family.”

Iggy hadn’t come to America of his own volition, of course. He’d been fleeing a secret society called the Whalers, kind of a precursor to the Legion. They wanted the Archimedean Monograph and suspected, rather than knew, that Iggy had it. For the safety of his family and friends, he had to fake his own death and run.

Alex really hadn’t thought about Iggy’s money, other than to acknowledge that he had more than enough.

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