Free The Sword-Edged blonde by Alex Bledsoe Page A

everything—state secrets, personal secrets, even things I’ve never told anyone else. She was the mother of my child. If I could be
that
wrong about her . . . how can I ever trust my judgment again? How can I expect anyone else to trust it?”
    “Things aren’t always what they seem,” I said as reassuringly as I dared. “C’mon, let’s go do this and then we can go get drunk.”
    The gate creaked the way a mausoleum door should. I followed him past the bones of his ancestors, until we reached the most recent additions. He stopped before one whose capstone was still white with its newness. It bore his son’s name, and the beginning and end dates of a criminally short life. We placed our torches in holders on the wall behind us.
    I opened the canvas bag and pulled out a hammer and chisel. Phil ran his finger down the line of fresh cement that sealed the tomb.
    “Really have to do this?” he asked one last time.
    “Really do.”
    “I’m sorry, P.D.,” he said softly, and stepped back.
    Removing the seal was a one-person job, so I didn’t begrudge Phil not helping. It took awhile to chip the cement away; it was still fresh and solid, unlike the crumbly stuff around older tombs. By the time I finished, my shoulders were in knots and I was drenched with sweat.
    I dropped the tools back in the bag and pulled out two crowbars. We wedged them on either side of the stone and, accompanied by a great grinding sound, pulled it out and carefully lowered it to the floor.
    Phil drew out the heartbreakingly tiny coffin. He placed it on the floor, took a deep breath and then lifted the lid. I leaned down to examine the contents.
    I knew within moments that I’d been right. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” I said as I scrutinized the scattered, fleshless bones retrieved from the cauldron. “The good news is, this ain’t your boy.”
    Instantly Phil was on his knees next to me. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
    I picked up one of the skeletal arms, intact from theelbow down. “Look at the hand bones. Baby bones are short and round, because they’re not fully formed yet. These are the finger bones of an adult. But here’s the clincher.” I picked up the skull, which was conveniently missing its lower jaw. “Look. Somebody was in a hurry, and they got a little sloppy. That look like a baby tooth to you?” I pointed at the single molar at the back of the jaw that had been missed when the gum was altered to look more infant-like.
    “What
is
this?” Phil whispered, astounded.
    “It might be a dwarf, but I’m betting it’s a monkey. Changed around a little so it would pass the kind of inspection it would get in a crisis. It wouldn’t occur to anyone that these bones
wouldn’t
be your son, especially since he was gone.” I dropped the skull into the coffin, where it landed with a dry clatter.
    Phil sat heavily against the wall. “My God. I don’t understand all this. . . .”
    I scooted the coffin aside and sat beside him. “It’s a setup. I suspected it when I realized how long it took your wife to get from the banquet to the nursery; no way it should take thirty minutes. Something happened to her.”
    “But . . . what? And why?”
    “Only she can answer that.”
    He turned to me. “If this counts as good news, what’s the bad?”
    “The bad news is that someone wanted it to look like your wife killed your son so badly that they’d go to all this trouble. They were able to get into and out of this castle with no one noticing it. Even if he’s not dead, your boy’s still gone. Somewhere out there, you’ve got one hell of an enemy.”
    “
Who?
Arentia hasn’t been at war for nearly fifty years. The crime rate’s lower than it ever has been. We don’t even have a death penalty anymore. And I don’t mean to sound egomaniacal, but everybody seems pretty happy with the job I’ve been doing.”
    “Maybe it’s not you, then. Maybe it’s
her
.”
    He nodded; I’d expected