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Chapter 48: The search for the warm pancake
“I remembered another one,” Trask said, following Matilda into the Barley Mow Inn. “Fancypants.”
“Maybe a waiter or a maitre d’?” She scanned the dining room for threats as Trask walked in, then closed the door behind him after one final glance at the street.
“That would go with the dining motif,” Trask said. “Maybe these are names of restaurant owners who bribed Lockton to get restaurant licenses.” A restaurant would be a good place to hide, he thought. Warm. Plenty of food. Lots of people coming and going. Plenty of small back rooms off-limits to the public.
Quimby didn’t know what the words meant and rejected the idea that he himself was hiding Lockton in a back room.
“If I’d known that Lockton was taking bribes, I would have given him a bribe,” he said. “But nobody told me. Nobody thought to themselves, ‘Maybe Quimby can use some help with his import licenses. I should clue him in.’ No. I had to learn about it this morning, same as everyone else.”
Trask’s eyes landed on the stack of newspapers, and he felt a pang of recognition.
“I’ve seen those words before.” He picked up a paper and went to his regular table at the front window and sat down. “It was right here. I was reading AviNewz. And looking outside.”
“How long ago was this?” Matilda asked, looking out at the street.
“I don’t remember,” Trask said. “Maybe a few days ago? We could look through the paper’s archives.” Not the local copies — those had burned in the newspaper building fire and the Scriptorium fire. But the off-world backups. Didn’t Sidney say she kept them? Or maybe Sidney herself would know what the words meant, and he could save himself a trip off-world. He looked around to see if she was in the restaurant, but didn’t see her.
“I don’t like the fact that you’re sitting right here in front of the window,” Matilda said.
“Do you really think Lockton can shoot me through a window?”
Matilda looked at the building across the street, then at him. “Odds are low,” she said. “It’s brighter outside, so he probably wouldn’t be able to see you, especially from that distance. He’d have to shoot at an angle, so the arrow would probably deflect off the glass. Not to mention the mullions.”
She slapped a hand against one of the oak bars providing support to the window. The Barley Mow, like most Krim City establishments, didn’t use large panes of glass in its windows but many small square panes. Sometimes, like at the inn, they were set in a diamond pattern.
“But why don’t you scoot back a couple of inches, just in case.”
Trask pushed his chair back, and now the vertical beam blocked his view of the windows directly across the street. Then he pulled the table closer, and the heavy legs scraped against the stone floor.
Matilda patted him on the shoulder, turned, and walked a few steps to the table with the gamblers.
“What are we playing?” she asked, pulling a chair over and squeezing in between Taenaran the Bard and Frieda Lane, even though there was free chair on the other side of the table. Gorehair was the third player.
Matilda caught Trask looking and gave him a wave, and he realized that she’d picked her spot so she could keep an eye on both him and the inn’s front entrance.
Taenaran glanced over at Trask, and quickly said, “We’re playing mumchance.”
“Cool, I don’t know that one,” said Matilda. “What are the rules?”
Taenaran and Frieda looked at each other.
“Ummm…” Taenaran said.
“We’re playing house rules,” said Frieda, moving her chair slightly to the side to give Matilda more room. “If you roll an eleven or twelve, and the corpse rolled a five or a nine, you throw out. But if the corpse threw a six or an eight, you throw out on eleven but nick on twelve…”
“Oooh, sounds like hazard,” Matilda said.
“Unless you sit next to the corpse, then it’s the other way around, but only on Fridays.”
Trask stared at the front page of the paper. Maybe he’d seen a restaurant review that mentioned warm pancakes and egg custard and noted the head waiter’s fancy pants. He was sure he would have remembered if he had. He liked egg custard. He would have wanted to visit.
Trask turned in his chair to face the dice players.
“Hey, guys, remember the noob from Monday night who lost at cards? The one dressed like an assassin? Did he ask about restaurants?”
“I was at the King’s Armpit that night,” Matilda said.
“Me, too,” said Gorehair.
“I was minding the store,” said Frieda. “People like to pick up flowers on their way home at night.”
“I was here,” said Taenaran. “But there were several noobs dressed as assassins who lost money.”
“Did any of them mention any other places they liked to go, or were planning to go?”
Taneran shook his head.
“How about this,” Trask continued. “Say you were looking for a restaurant that had egg custard, warm pancakes, and someone in fancy pants, where would you go?”
“Fancy pants?” Frieda asked. “That sounds like the Crow’s Nest. Or maybe the private room at the King’s Arms.”
“I don’t know my way around fancy restaurants,” Gorehair said, “but if you want to know horses, Fancypants is running this weekend. Hold on.” He patted himself and finally pulled out a folded-up sheet of paper. Trask stood up and walked over.
“That’s the racing form for the Midsomer Cup,” Gorehair said. “The qualifiers were this week, and the official races are Saturday and Sunday.”
Importing racehorses would definitely require a license, Trask thought. A horse owner might owe Lockton a favor and give him a place to hide. And the racetrack was outside the city proper, at the fairgrounds.
“Do you mind if I keep this?” he asked.
“I do mind,” said Gorehair. “I’m heading to the Armpit tonight to see if I can scrounge up any gossip about the jockeys.”
“Okay, give me a minute then.”
Trask went back to his table and copied over the names of the horses running that weekend. Egg Custard and Warm Pancake were two of them, in addition to Fancypants. How many bribes did Lockton collect?
Quimby came over to take his order just as he was finishing up, and Trask was torn. On the one hand, the longer he waited, the more time Lockton had to make preparations for his escape. The racetrack was near the southern city gate and caravans departed nearly every day. Players went on quests for exotic plants and animals, to find treasure, or to discover lost cities they could settle. Everybody wanted to be king until they found out how much work it involved and how hard it was to attract residents to a new settlement far from the center.
On the other hand, he was hungry.
“Do you have any handpies I could take to go?” he asked.
“You’re confusing the inn with a lunch wagon,” Quimby said. “Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised. Nobody pays attention to where they are. The other day, someone asked for a vegetarian menu. And don’t get me started on fish bones.” But then Quimby started on fish bones, anyway. “I keep telling people, fish have bones in them. If you choke and die, you should have been more careful, then. But does anybody listen? No. Do they expect the bones to vanish by magic?”
Trask stood up and returned the racing sheet to Gorehair while Quimby moved on to the challenges of finding good rendered beef tallow.
“Come on, we’ve got to hurry,” Trask told Matilda.
Matilda put down the pair of dice she was about to throw and stood up. “You’ll have to teach me the rest of the rules later,” she told Frieda.
She got to the door first and checked for threats before allowing Trask to exit the Inn. “I have a suspicion that they were making up the rules as they went along,” she told Trask as they turned left towards the center. “I take it you found a clue? Is that why we’re in a rush?”
“Yes,” he said. “We’re going to the fairgrounds to talk to some horse owners.”
“They sell some pretty fast horses down there,” Matilda said.
“That’s why we need to hurry,” Trask said. Also, the pie stand vendor who was usually in front of the post office at lunch would be running out of the good steak-and-kidney pies any minute now.
Great job, well-written, Maria.