Rain pounded on the roof; the wind rattled whatever was loose to rattle. Gradually the girl in the coffin began to breathe. Slowly, shedding more flakes of styrofoam, she sat up and opened her eyes. The pupils were an intense blue. "I . . . guess I've . . . passed away," she said in a faint voice. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here." Jake took hold of her right hand. "I'm Jake Pace," he said, "and this is my wife, Hildy. We'll help you as much as we can." Hildy smiled at her. "What do you want Odd Jobs, Inc. to do for you, Miss Kirkyard?" "Well, first off," replied Sylvie, "I want you to find out who murdered me." Copyright ?, 1985, by Ron Goulart. All Rights Reserved. Cover art by Tim Jacobus. DAW Collectors' Book No. 629 First Printing, May 1985 123456789 PRINTED IN U.S.A. BRAINZ, INC. CHAPTER 1 When the warning alarm went off, Jake Pace was in the kitchen baking cookies and his wife was in their large living room playing Mozart on the banjo. It was a gloomy, storm-wracked afternoon in the autumn of 2004, with dusk already drifting across their secured estate in the Redding Ridge Sector of Connecticut. An exuberant wind was whipping at the maples and evergreens, tossing hard rain at the Paces' sprawling glaz and redwood home. Thunder rumbled just beyond the surrounding woodlands and lightning crackled. At every flash the kitchen computer said, "Eek!" "Hush," advised Jake. He was a long lean man in his middle thirties, tanned and weatherworn. "Electromagnetic pulse is going to fry my brains," predicted the voxbox just below the small display screen. "I'll go all gaga and forget completely the twenty thousand exciting and delicious recipes stored within my?" "Silence." Jake scowled at the terminal while he dumped a second measuring cup of carob chips into his mixing bowl. "Not that my vast internal knowledge is of much avail. You persist in ignoring my advice even in?" "All great chefs extemporize." "You simply can't substitute maple syrup granules for sugar in the recipe for Dockwalloper Carob Chip Cookies and expect . . . Eek!" The recipe on the screen went fuzzy for an instant. "You two squabbling again?" called Hildy from the next room. "Just a doctrinal debate," replied Jake. Hildy resumed her electric banjo rendition of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." "I wonder," mused the sinkside kitchen computer, "how many other heads of nationally famous private detective agencies are whipping up batches of cookies this aft?" "Gloomy weather always puts me in the mood for homemade cookies." Bending slightly, Jake shook a little nutmeg into his cookie dough. "And this sort of day also puts me in an edgy mood, so don't?" Bbbrrrrinnnnggggg! "Trouble!" said Hildy. Jake reached toward the nearby refrig unit, snatched free the spare stungun magnetically stuck to the side of it. Spinning, he ran from the kitchen and into the living room. Hildy had already grabbed out the stungun she kept in the lid of her banjo case. Pistol in hand, she was crouched near the wide viewindow that looked out on their acre of rain-battered front lawn. Bbbbrrrinnnnggggg! RON GOULART Jake paused in the middle of this possible emergency, to take an admiring look at his wife. She was tall, slender and auburn-haired. One of the most attractive women he'd ever encountered. "Spot anything out there?" "Unauthorized sky car is coming in over the trees," Hildy replied. "Do we have anyone who's especially eager to do us in at the moment?" "I could probably draw up a fairly substantial list of folks who're disgruntled with Odd Jobs, Inc." He knelt to the left of her. "But most of 'em aren't dippy enough to come barreling right in here like this." The intruding skycar was a good nine years old, battered and once black. It was now circling the lawn, low to the ground, in a very offkilter way. "Think it might be a drone?" suggested Jake. "Loaded with explosives and set to?" "Nope, it's merely that crazed Irishman." She stood, brushed at her short neosilk skirt. "You mean that lush John J. Pilgrim?" Hildy nodded. "Who else flies a skycar that way, forgets to call ahead and let us know he's . . . Oops!" The flying car had nearly collided with the plazdome over their docking port. Its landing gear grated and slurped across the rain-slick surface and the car lurched, swooped, headed for the ground. Its battered nose plowed up about ten feet of nugrass and mud before the skycar came to a thumping, rattling stop just short of plunging over into the outdoor pool. "Yep, it's Pilgrim." Jake slid the stungun into his pocket. "I'll go out and give him the heaveho." "Find out what he wants, and you better leave the gun here," advised his wife. "I don't want you stunning John J. or?" "He's perpetually stunned." Sighing, Jake tossed the gun onto a floating coffee table. "How he can continue to get work as an attorney is beyond?" "He's a very dedicated man." "Dedicated to booze." Jake's shoulders hunched as he headed for the downramp that led to the ground-level doorway. "He did help out when you got arrested during that Big Band Murder Case business," reminded Hildy as she followed her lanky husband. The rain came slapping at Jake when he opened the lower door. "What's the reason for this intrusion, Pilgrim?" he shouted at the nosed-over skycar. Pilgrim was emerging, backwards, out of the vehicle. A small red-haired man in a rumpled two- piece bizsuit, he was singing to himself as he came toppling out into the mud. "Oh, I ain't the cosmonaut and I ain't the cosmonaut's son . . . Geeze, did I land on my pinot noir?" Pilgrim struggled to his knees, slapped at his hip pocket and then extracted a plazflask of red wine. BRAINZ, INC. "Unk," commented Jake, watching the redheaded lawyer from their doorway. "He's still guzzling Chateau Discount brand wine." "And I ain't the cosmonaut's son, but I can explore your black hole till the cosmonaut comes." On his feet finally, swaying, buffeted by the heavy rain, Pilgrim reached into his tipped over skycar and fetched out a black umbrella. "Oh, I ain't the immunologist, and . . . Hey, needlenose, instead of standing over there gawking, give me a hand, okay?" He was pointing the rusted ferrule of his umbrella at Jake. "Go help him, Jake," urged Hildy. "And, please, don't poke or pummel him." Jake's only reply was a martyred snort. Inhaling, he sprinted for the wobbly attorney. The wind and the rain attacked him, pushing him back. "C'mon, I'll guide you into the house," he offered, teeth close to gritting. "Then you can explain why it is you've come barging into our?" "Get your clammy mitts off me, Pace." In jerking free, the small lawyer bonked against the side of his landcar, stumbled, went down on his knees in the rain. "It's not my dapper, compact person I wish help with." He shoved the umbrella open, raised it over his rain-smeared red head. The wind sucked the umbrella free of his grasp, took it dancing away into the thickening twilight. "Gar, you're jinxed, Pace. I've had that darn parasol for near to nine years and never had a single mishap. Then I come paying a?reluctant, I can assure you, old pal?business visit on you and my?" "What exactly is the reason for your dropping in?" Pilgrim scowled, pointing in at the rearseat of his downed skycar. There was a large coffinlike neowood crate lying on it at an awkward angle. "I have brought you this, acting on the instructions of my late client," he explained, spitting into his palms and rubbing them together. "Now help me tote the darn thing into your seedy menage." The thunder seemed to be rolling nearer; the ground shook. "What's in it?" Jake reached in, got a grip on the big crate. "A body," replied Pilgrim. "More or less." Jake worked at prying the lid off the crate with a crowbar. The lid made a mournful, keening noise. Outside fresh lightning flashed, turning everything pale crackling blue. "Care for a little nip, Hildy?" The red-haired lawyer held his flask toward her while they stood around the crate in the center of the living room. "Chateau Discount pinot noir fortified with cranberry juice cocktail and?" "No, thanks, John J." As the lid came all the way free, Hildy peered down into the shadowy interior of the coffinlike box. "Planning to have seafood for dinner this evening, perhaps? White wine'll go better with that. Somewhere about my damp person I have a flagon of Chateau Discount chablis with added prune juice from concentrate that?" "That's Sylvie Kirkyard," realized Hildy. RON GOULART Jake brushed the rest of the styrofoam potato chips off what appeared to be the body of a blonde young woman in her late twenties. "A reasonable facsimile, actually," he said. Pilgrim took a swig from his red wine flask. " 'Twas the dear lass' final wish that I deliver this thing to you," he told them, wiping his lips on his soggy coat sleeve. "A real pain in the toke it's been, too, sneaking around and doing all sorts of sly and danger?" "Why?" inquired Jake. "Because she didn't want anyone to know. Not a single one of her grasping, conniving relations nor, yet again, any of her many mercenary, albeit socially prominent, suitors." "I meant," said Jake, stepping back from the box, "why did the heiress to one of the world's largest, vastest electronics fortunes want us to have this android sim of her?" Pilgrim tapped the side of his head. Since he used the hand holding the wine bottle, some of t...
widez2