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I crouched on the frozen ground and tore thick tufts of grass from the angel’s base. The inscription read:
Devere Barella.
Beloved son of Jacapo and Rosemary Barella.
Died in infancy.
The stone and the death registry couldn’t both be wrong.
He’d told me he wasn’t who I believed. But this? This was a lie, a betrayal. He wasn’t Devere Barella. He wasn’t even the toymaker’s son.
Who was Devere?
ChapterEighteen
“Mr. Anzio?”the owner of the Lost Penny Inn called. He’d probably given it several attempts before I’d glanced up on my way through to the rear staircase. He raised an envelope, signaling it was time to pay the bill for the room.
“Ah yes, thank you.” I plucked it from his fingers, tucked it inside my coat, and resumed my stiff march up the stairs. My stay at the inn had proven expensive—an expense Rochefort had given his word he’d pay. Of course, neither of us had expected him to be murdered, thus leaving the bill unpaid. Neither my business nor I could afford to stay a day longer. I couldn’t afford to return to the city either, where the original threat of blackmail waited. But these were all problems for another day.
Back in my room, I lit a fire in the grate, threw off my coat, flung the bill on the desk alongside several others, and eyed my sprawling mass of notes. The chaos had begun to look like Devere’s lost workshop. Perhaps he could work like that, but I could not.
Messy desk, messy mind.
I swept the desk aside, clearing the wall space, gathered up my notes, and pinned them to the wall, switching some out and moving others from one grouping to another.
Jacapo’s death, my arrival, Lord Rochefort’s murder, the toy store fire. All my notes went on the wall, pinned here and there without any real order.
On one torn piece of paper, I’d written Devere’s name and nothing else. I didn’t even recall writing it. But where to pin it? I continued to think him innocent of any wrongdoing in his father’s death and Rochefort’s. He certainly had nothing to do with setting the blaze at his own store. But no matter where I pinned the name on the wall, it didn’t seem to fit. Unless I pinned it at the center of everything?
With the notes all fixed to the wall, I stepped back and studied the design from afar—now much less chaotic but still without answers.
Devere was not who he appeared to be. He’d admitted as such. He could have been informally adopted, with no official records—growing up as Devere Barella. But why would Jacapo take on an orphan child without a wife to support them both? There were no orphanages in Minerva. He would have had to travel to the city and return with a babe, and such things did not go unnoticed in a small town. Although, with everything considered, it did seem the most likely explanation. Perhaps Devere had never known he was adopted?
Had Devere uncovered the deception and killed his father for it?
People were capable of terrible things, driven briefly mad by traumatic events, but the manner in which Jacapo had been found suggested his demise was not an act of rage. The toymaker had been posed naked in the square for all to see. That death wasn’t an act of momentary madness, but a methodical killing, and a warning for all.Look what happens when I am crossed.
Nothing about this case made any sense. Even the insane had logic; one just needed the key to unlock it.
Devere was missing, and most of the town presumed he’d died in the blaze, which neatly wrapped up the case of his father’s death and Rochefort’s murder in one convenient package. Certainly, Russo was content to classify the matters as closed. He’d probably prefer it if I vanished too.
I paced, chasing elusive answers around my room.
It had been weeks, and I was no closer to finding Devere. That made me terrible at my profession, or it suggested someone was working against me. Russo seemed the obvious suspect, but what I knew of the man suggested he acted out and wasn’t shy about it. Russo was a bully, but not a killer. The events around the toymaker’s death were more subtle.
I needed fresh insight, new inspiration, another perspective other than my own.
I needed Devere.
I poured a whiskey, then rummaged through the desk drawers and found the bottle of laudanum I’d purchased after Devere had thrown away my stash.
A splash, that was all I needed. It helped shift my thoughts around my head, helped the dreams come. After adding a few generous drops, I set the bottle aside and gulped the whiskey, finishing the glass in one.
Perhaps Devere would visit my dream, as he had before. I hadn’t dreamed since he’d left, but I hadn’t taken laudanum either.
Stretching out on the bed, I laced my hands behind my head and listened to the crackling fire, voices somewhere on the floor below, too muffled to make out words, boots clunking by the door. None of those things were Devere telling me I was a fool, or demanding to know what mess I’d gotten myself into now. I’d thought him mean-spirited and vicious, but since the kiss on the night of the fire, it seemed that anger might not have been anger at all, more a fear… because he cared. He’d always been difficult to read. So distant, so different… never fitting in. He’d never belonged. But with me, the two of us alone together, he’d come to life, like the dancer in a music box, or the clockwork toy with its key wound anew. There was a softer side to Devere that few people saw.
Like the beetle.
