Free Doyle After Death by John Shirley Page A

couldn’t possibly know how to do.”
    â€œWho would know?”
    â€œPerhaps Diogenes. But if anyone is truly above suspicion, it is he.”
    â€œAnyone else shady around?”
    He shrugged. “A few paranoids—­and there’s a fellow who likes to wander about and look in ­people’s windows. Sneaks into their houses sometimes! Rather a septic personality.”
    â€œOh yeah? Who’s that?”
    â€œChap named Bolliver, Hale Bolliver. Goes about grinning to himself as if he’s got a secret. I have hinted that he might want to move on to another part of the afterworld but he only says, ‘Oh you’d like that, wouldn’t you.’ ” The mayor sighed. “He and that Moore chap. ­Couple of paranoids. We like to be tolerant—­­people experience many phases of their afterlife here. But we may have to evict him from the community, if he doesn’t give up on this Peeping Tom business—­a village exclusion can be arranged.”
    Bolliver. I filed the name away in my head. “About Harris—­he work with anyone on this botanical survey?”
    â€œThere’s our former mayor—­Garrett Merchant. They did a bit of trekking about in the boonies together.”
    â€œGarrett Merchant? Used to be a billionaire big shot in industry back on Earth?”
    â€œThe very fellow. Dead . . . ah, that is, aftered . . . twenty years now. Built himself a rather overwrought retreat up just past the swamp in the Sighing Hills. His own Buckingham Palace but without the unifying style. He was quite a figure here in town for a while. Not here three years before he was mayor. Tried to organize all sorts of things—­grand projects that didn’t take. They just weren’t . . . Garden Rest.”
    â€œProjects. Like what?”
    â€œMerchant wanted to build a great coliseum for games! A grand, huge thing, bigger than the Roman Colosseum. And he tried to reorganize our money system. Did have some success building rather more elaborate houses for ­people. He recruited two of our best builders to work for him. Harris Morgan did some gardening, and some independent botanical work around Garrett’s mansion. If botanical is the word, plants not being quite what they were in the Before. Garrett’s estate—­as he calls it—­cannot be seen from town, with the hills and trees between, but it’s enormous. Gets bigger all the time.”
    â€œGarrett Merchant mixed up in anything unsavory—­or violent out here?”
    â€œGarrett? No, he’s a great big bluff laughing fellow, quite affable, never in any trouble. He was sometimes a bit sullen when his projects didn’t catch on, but nothing grim came of it.” He laid a finger to one side of his nose. “Now, we have had some violent chaps here—­but they’re long gone, many years ago. Expelled from the community. And I’ve had word they’re . . . well, one of them is a forgetter: a spirit who wanders about, don’t you know, not sure who he is or what he’s about. Not embodied. Waiting for sorting out from on high, I reckon . . .”
    I nodded, though I didn’t quite understand. “Anybody work for Merchant who could be trouble? How about these builders?”
    â€œSolid fellows. One named Higgs. Roscoe Higgs. Can’t recall the other chap’s name. Long? Charles Long? Perhaps that was it.”
    â€œThere any town records on local ­people? ­People who’ve come—­and gone? Something I could consult?”
    â€œYes, the Old Journals. I’m afraid we haven’t got the information systems you’re used to. Computers are unknown here, at least in Garden Rest. More than two thousand miles from here, there’s a place rather tastelessly called City of Phantasmic Devices—­they claim to have some variant of computers working up there. I