“This is my Patchwork Princess. I put her back together when no one else would.”
Sheyenne said nothing, but her eyes held deep pity. Robin, on the other hand, was ashen beneath her dark skin; she looked away and then seemed embarrassed for having done so.
“The poor girl was a wreck when I got to her—literally a wreck,” Miss Eccles said. “She threw herself in front of an oncoming train, and the damage was atrocious.”
“Sorry,” Wendy said.
“The dear thing was miserable, wanted to end her life. She never expected to come back, but then suicides have a greater chance of resurrection. So there she was, even more miserable than she’d been before. I couldn’t let someone suffer like that! So I went back to the train tracks with two empty bushel baskets, picked up every piece I could find, and brought her back here.”
“Thank you, miss,” Wendy said. Her arms weren’t attached right. Her head seemed askew, and she was a crazy quilt of tiny stitches. Triangular pieces of tan Naugahyde had been sewn in places where the skin was gone. “She did the best job she could. I’m grateful.”
“I took her under my wing. The poor dear’s been a great help to me, and now she realizes that life isn’t so bad.”
The Patchwork Princess tottered off into the adjoining room and returned with a carpetbag, which she set on the end table atop a doily. Miss Eccles opened it and withdrew spools of sewing thread, darning needles, a crochet hook, and flesh-colored thread as well as thicker twine.
“I’d like to assist, if I can,” Sheyenne offered as Miss Eccles probed the tears in my skin. The plump woman nodded. “Boar bristle paintbrush.” Sheyenne placed the brush in the taxidermy-surgeon’s outstretched hand. Humming to herself, concentrating on her work, Miss Eccles used the brush to clean the bullet holes. “Knitting needle.” Sheyenne handed her the implement, which Miss Eccles gently eased through the wound and out my back to clean the channel.
Wendy fetched a pot full of gummy packing mixture. While Sheyenne helped Miss Eccles fix my shattered ribs and stitch together the major muscles, the Patchwork Princess hunched in a chair next to the Tiffany lamp. She spread my shirt and sport jacket in her lap, and with clumsy but determined strokes used a needle and thread to sew up the bullet holes.
While Robin watched with fascination, Sheyenne gave her the details about what we’d learned at Grandma Wong’s. “I’m sure this has to do with whoever poisoned me. We were snooping around, trying to find out who bought the death cap extract—and then Dan was shot.”
“I’ll tell Officer McGoohan,” Robin said. “We need the police force working on this too!”
I groaned. “No, let me talk to McGoo. He’s got his hands full as it is. Besides, I’m supposed to be a hotshot private investigator. If I can’t solve this, who can?”
Miss Eccles packed the body cavity with the biofiller, topped it off with cotton, then used almost invisible stitches to close the bullet holes, front and back. Wendy’s stitchery wasn’t nearly as neat or accurate as the other woman’s taxidermy work, but both finished at the same time. Wendy shyly handed me my shirt and jacket.
As I shrugged back into the shirt, my arms seemed to be working well enough. The marks on my chest weren’t unnoticeable by any means, but not nearly as bad as I’d feared. Robin fussed over my buttons (even under the best of circumstances, my fingers didn’t have their previous dexterity). When I put the sport jacket back on, I decided that the stitched-up bullet holes added character, like a badge of honor.
I made a point of acknowledging the Patchwork Princess to boost her self-esteem. “Thank you very much, Wendy. Looks like I won’t need a new jacket after all.”
Her smile was crooked, but as bright as sunshine. Miss Eccles said, “You know where to come for a quick fix when the inevitable happens.” Sheyenne paid the woman and thanked her.
“The inevitable’s not going to happen anytime soon, Dan,” Robin vowed as the two escorted me out of the Patchup Parlor.
Sheyenne added, “And let’s not make a habit of this bullet thing.”
Chapter 31
The next day Sheyenne went on the ghostly warpath. She returned to the scene of the shooting before dawn, found three of the six bullets that had gone through my chest, and delivered them straight to Officer McGoohan. Robin had already given him an indignant report of what happened to me the previous night. It was immediately apparent that this latest batch of bullets did not come from the same .32 caliber weapon as the one that had shot me in the head. These bullets were from a .38, like my own gun.
Great—two people were shooting at me, or the same person using two different guns.
First thing in the morning, McGoo submitted the slugs for testing and came to our offices. He tried to act casual, but I could tell by his red face that he had hurried over. “What’s the matter, Shamble—getting shot once wasn’t enough for you?”
“I can tell you, it doesn’t get better with practice.”
He did not manage to hide his concern. “So, you all right? Bullets aren’t such a big deal for you, are they?”
I gave him the “Are you kidding me?” look. “I’m patched up, and you can hardly see the bullet wounds. Cosmetic repairs have come a long way since the Big Uneasy. Want to see?”
“I’ll take your word for it. No need to strip,” McGoo said, then he got serious. “Who the hell did you rile up now?”
“I wish I knew. I’m still trying to figure out who murdered me the first time.”
He snorted. “Some private eye.”
“The suspect list is getting longer by the minute. We were trying to track down the source of the toadstool poison that killed Sheyenne, and Harvey Jekyll knows that I’m breathing down his neck, and I delivered a restraining order to the Straight Edgers, and the Ricketts family is mad because I recovered the stolen painting that just sold at auction. Enough? I’ve also got half a dozen other cases if we want to cast a wider net.”
“If you worked on one case at a time, the suspect pool would be more limited.”
“Great idea, McGoo.”
“After what happened last night, you’d have been safer with me chasing down a giant monster.”
“How did the hunt go?”
He blew a sigh out through his lips. “Didn’t see the big brute, but I checked out all the vandalism sites. A lot of them have broken windows, but not the additional extreme damage we found at the Hope and Salvation Mission. Funny thing . . . most of the smashed windows are being repaired by a new company called Black Glass.”