We climbed down then and headed back, and I let him tell me about tropical plants and temperate plants and arctic plants and diurnal-nocturnal plant cycles and herbal medicines from many cultures. When we neared Rastov’s place, I saw at first what appeared a piece of rope hanging from a tree limb, blowing in the wind. A moment later I realized it to be Quicklime, signaling for my attention.
I veered to the left hand side of the road, quickening my pace.
“Snuff! I was looking for you!” he called. “He’s done it! He’s done it!”
“What?” I asked him.
“Did himself in. I found him hanging when I returned from my foraging. I knew he was depressed. I told you…”
“How long ago was this?”
“About an hour ago,” he said. “Then I went to look for you.”
“When did you go out?”
“Before dawn.”
“He was all right then?”
“Yes. He was sleeping. He’d been drinking last night.”
“Are you sure he did it to himself?”
“There was a bottle on a table nearby.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, the way he’d been drinking.”
Larry had halted when he’d seen I was engaged in a conversation. I excused myself from Quicklime to bring him up to date.
“Sounds as if your anticipation was right,” I said. “But I couldn’t have calculated this one.”
Then a thought occurred.
“The icon,” I said. “Is it still there?”
“It wasn’t anywhere in sight,” Quicklime replied. “But it usually isn’t, unless he takes it out for some reason.”
“Did you check where he normally keeps it?”
“I can’t. That would take hands. There’s a loose board under his bed. It lies flush and looks normal, but comes up easily for someone with fingers. There’s a hollow space beneath it. He keeps it there, wrapped in a red silk bandana.”
“I’ll get Larry to lift the board,” I said. “Is there an unlocked door?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to try them. Usually, he keeps them locked. If they are, my window is opened a crack, as usual. You can raise it up and get in that way.”
We headed for the house. Quicklime slithered down and followed us.
The front door was unlocked. We entered and waited till Quicklime was beside us.
“Which way?” I asked him.
“Straight ahead, through the door,” he said.
We did that, entering a room I had viewed from outside on an earlier inspection. And Rastov hung there, from a rope tied to a rafter, wild black hair and beard framing his pale face, dark eyes bugged, a trickle of blood having run from the left corner of his mouth into his beard, dried now into a dark, scarlike ridge. His face was purple and swollen. A light chair lay on its side nearby.
We studied his remains for only a moment, and I found myself recalling the old cat’s remarks from yesterday. Was this the blood he had referred to?
“Where’s the bedroom?” I asked.
“Through the door to the rear,” Quicklime replied.
“Come on, Larry,” I said. “We need you to raise a board.”
The bedroom was a mess, with heaps of empty bottles all about. And the bed was disheveled, its linen smelling of stale human sweat.
“There’s a loose board under the bed,” I said to Larry. To Quicklime, then, “Which board is it?”
Quicklime slipped beneath and halted atop the third one in.
“This one,” he said.
“The one Quicklime’s showing us,” I told Larry. “Raise it, please.”
Larry knelt and reached, catching an edge with his fingernails. He found purchase almost immediately and drew it gently upward.
Quicklime looked in. I looked in. Larry looked in. The red bandana was still there, but no three-by-nine-inch piece of wood with an eerie painting on it.
“Gone,” Quicklime commented. “It must be somewhere back in the room, with him. We must have missed it.”
Larry replaced the board and we returned to the room where Rastov hung. We searched thoroughly, but it did not seem to be present.
“I don’t think he killed himself,” I said finally. “Somebody overpowered him while he was drunk or hung over, then did that to him. They wanted it to look as if he did it to himself.”