Two small dogs burst out of MacQueen’s rooms, and nails slipping on the hardwood floor, scrabbled their way to Bridger’s door, barking hysterically.
Fed up, Nick stepped back, treading on Miss Dembecki’s slippered foot; he hadn’t noticed her sidling up behind them. Now she yowled like an injured cat.
“Sorry,” Nick exclaimed.
“Why can’t you look where you’re going?” moaned Miss Dembecki, hobbling to one of the overstuffed chairs by the fireplace. The fireplace was unlit. It had never been lit as far as Nick could tell. Maybe it was supposed to be decor. It just emphasized how unwelcoming the damn house was.
Foster gulped out more vehemently, “There’s a dead man in my bathtub!”
Dead silence. Another burst of televised laughter. Someone tittered nervously.
“What does that mean?” demanded MacQueen finally. She reminded Nick of James Cagney in drag, sort of sounded like him too.
“It means somebody ought to go upstairs and check it out,” Nick said.
The boy shot him a grateful look.
“Who, me?” MacQueen actually backed up in one of those you-won’t-take-me-alive-copper moves.
“You own the place. You’re the manager, aren’t you?”
“But, that’s…I mean…sure, but…” Her bug eyes traveled from face to face. She licked her colorless lips. The others were making sounds, wordless excuses, apologetic noises.
“Forget it,” Nick said. “I’ll go.” It would be a relief to escape the freak show for a minute or two. “Where are your keys, kid?”
Foster said, “I didn’t…lock the…door.” He still sounded breathy, but he wasn’t blue anymore. He kept a tight grip on the inhaler.
“It’s the third floor. The tower room opposite yours,” MacQueen informed Nick.
“Got it.” Nick started up the stairs.
On the second floor, he passed Stein, who twitched him a meaningless smile but didn’t speak.
Nick continued his climb to the third floor. It was dark and quiet up here; the scent of cats and the sound of TV didn’t reach. Neither, half the time, did the heat. Lace curtains over the poorly sealed windows floated up like specters then flattened back against the wall. Not the best visibility: the long hallway was badly lit; a pair of half-dead plants on tall pedestals provided suitable cover for ambush.
A funny feeling prickled across the back of Nick’s scalp. It was a feeling he had learned not to ignore during fourteen years in the service—though unexpected in a broken-down mansion in the middle of the Vermont woods.
He considered, and discarded, going back to his quarters and arming. He was pretty confident he could handle any garden-variety scumball who might have sneaked in.
Approaching the kid’s apartment cautiously, Nick turned the doorknob.
The door swung open onto a large chilly room that smelled of rain and turpentine. It looked more like an art studio than someone’s living quarters. The curtains had been removed to allow more light. A spattered drop cloth covered much of the floor. A canvas half-covered with inky pine trees rested on an easel near the window. Blank canvases were stacked against the wall; painting utensils covered what appeared to be the dining room table. There were paintings everywhere: on the walls, on the floor.
In the middle of the room was a suitcase.
So the kid had been gone overnight; that meant someone could conceivably have got into his rooms and…dropped dead.
Except the bathroom door was open, the light on. Nick had a clear view of the tub. It was empty.
Surprise.
Had he really expected to find a dead man in a bathtub?
Nah, but something had sure scared the shit out of little Perry. The few times Nick had passed him on the stairs he seemed quiet, polite, and reasonably sane.
Nick advanced down the hallway.
The bathroom was big, old-fashioned, the twin of his own. The tub was one of those claw-foot porcelain jobs, running hot and cold water through separate spouts, making it ideal for scalding your feet. There was a small, bullet-shaped window over the tub. For laughs Nick opened it, gazing down on distant muddy ground and tree tops sparkling wet in the house lights.
Nobody and no body.
There was a streak of brown on the inside of the tub. He knelt to check it out. Red clay? Paint? Rust? That smear could be a lot of things, and yet instinctively the hair rose on the nape of his neck. He scratched at it with his thumbnail, sniffed his thumb. Was he imagining that coppery, metallic smell?
No damn way.
He noticed black scuff marks on the tile. Like somebody’s heels were dragged across the floor?
Nick’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Rising, he made for the bedroom. Not much to see. A twin-size bed, a battered bureau. The only thing out of order was one brown shoe lying in front of the closet. He picked it up. Cheap leather. Size 14. There was a hole in the sole. Nick set the shoe on the window ledge, glancing at the bed. A stack of books sat on the night table. Library books. I Like ’Em Tough, They Can’t All Be Guilty, I Found Him Dead, Secrets of a Private Eye. A bookshelf was packed with paperbacks flaunting equally lurid titles.
His mouth curved wryly. Okay, now things made sense.
Still, remembering the terror in those wide brown eyes, he opened the closet door. Oh boy. The kid even hung up his pajamas.
He glanced under the bed. Someone had raised their little boy right. No dust bunnies, no dead bodies.
Cursorily, Nick glanced through the other rooms and closets. No corpses. There was an asthma chart pinned to the refrigerator, which told its own sad little story, and a box of Froot Loops on top of the fridge, which Nick found grimly amusing.
As he shut the front door, the painted canvases lining the living room caught his attention. Nick didn’t know anything about art, but he knew what he liked. He liked these. There was a sureness and maturity to these calm studies of covered bridges and autumn woods that one wouldn’t expect. Chalk one up for the boy next door.
The landing on the second floor was deserted when Nick reached it. Stein had either got bored or fallen over the balcony. Same scenario in the front lobby. MacQueen had escaped back inside her apartment and turned up the TV volume. In fact, the only people left were Foster, who seemed to have recovered somewhat—the inhaler was no longer in sight—and the voluptuous Ms. Bridger, who stood before the unlit fireplace.
“All clear?” she inquired cheerfully. Her red hair and green dressing gown were like a shout in that drab room.
“Yeah.” Nick remembered the streak of red clay on the tub and dismissed it.
“No way. That can’t be!” Foster’s thin face tightened. “Then they moved him,” he said stubbornly.
“They? What, it’s a conspiracy?”
Foster flushed. He had that baby-clear skin that advertised his emotions like a billboard.
“Sweetie, sweetie,” cooed Bridger. “Couldn’t it have been a bad dream?”
“Or too many detective stories?” Nick put in.
Foster was still sitting on the bottom step or the grand staircase. He glared up at Nick. “I wasn’t asleep!” He turned that angry gaze toward the Bridger chick. “I got back from the airport, walked in, and there he was. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t hallucinating.”
“There’s no dead body now.”
Foster swallowed hard. “I think we should call the police.”
Bridger looked in dismay to Nick. How was it Nick’s problem? Let them call the police. Just leave him out of it.
“But, sweetie, Mr.…uh. Mr.—”
“Reno,” Nick supplied reluctantly.
“Mr. Reno has already checked. The police won’t find anything now. Right? We don’t want to cause trouble.”
Nick glanced at her. Maybe a little hard around the edges, but still a surprisingly good-looking woman to be living out here in the middle of nowhere. What was it about the cops that worried her?
“The police have forensic people,” Foster said stubbornly. “Trai
ned people who have equipment that can find microscopic traces of blood or hair.”
Nick thought of the bloody streak in the tub again. The possible scuff marks on the tile. “Listen, kid—”
“Perry. Perry Foster.” Foster rose as though he had made up his mind.
“Whatever. Foster, the police are not going to send out their forensics team in the worst storm of the decade because of a crank call.”
“I’m not a crank! There was a dead body. Someone put him in my locked apartment and took him away again. Someone in this house.”
Bridger glanced nervously at MacQueen’s closed door. She chewed her bottom lip and said, “Sweetie, let’s the three of us go inside my apartment and think this through.”
Nick opened his mouth, but Foster beat him to it. “I can’t go in there,” he said obstinately.
“I’ll put the cats away.”
“Their dander—”
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” Nick exclaimed. “I don’t care what you people do, just don’t involve me.”
The kid, Foster, gritted his jaw, but his eyes were glittering ominously as he stared at Nick. “Sure. Thanks for your help,” he managed, politely.
Nick started to turn away. “The police might want to question you, Mr. Reno,” Bridger warned. Her eyes shone like green glass.
Nick drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Let’s go inside and talk this over,” he said very calmly.
* * * * *
The police arrived while they were having coffee. The coffee was laced with brandy, which, according to Nick, was a mistake, but clearly the whole night was a mistake as far as he was concerned. Calling the cops was the biggest mistake, and he had waxed loud and eloquently—but mostly just loud—on the topic.
Now he was brooding in silence, taking up half of Jane’s horsehair sofa. The police, having heard Perry out, tramped upstairs to investigate. Nick Reno had been right. There was no forensics team, just two weary and wet deputy sheriffs in yellow slickers, looking mighty unamused.
Before the deputies headed upstairs, Nick filled them in about the mud smear on the tub and the scuff marks on the tile.
“How come you didn’t mention those things before?” Perry accused when the door closed on the officers of the law. “Those are clues.”
“Let the cops decide if they’re clues or not,” Nick returned.
“More brandy?” offered Jane. He held out his cup, and she topped off his coffee.
Perry stared down at his mug. He knew the other two were irritated with him for insisting on phoning the police; it was like they were operating in an alternate universe. Of course he had called the police. Any normal person would call the police.
So now the three of them sat waiting for the law to finish, drinking spiked coffee and eating decorated cookies hard enough to crack a tooth on. The brandy was getting to Jane; she was flirting with Nick.
Perry’s gaze wandered around the room. There were two Christmas cards on a table. One was from an insurance company. The other was lying face down. Jane was not the Suzy Homemaker type. Her apartment was a mess. She must dress and undress walking from room to room, he decided, eyeing a silk blouse draped over a lamp shade. The tabletops were dusty, and there was cat hair on the overstuffed furniture. His chest tightened as he noticed it.
“How are you feeling now, sweetie?” Jane asked Perry, as though reading his expression.
“Fine.” He shot a diffident look at Reno and then looked away. Nick Reno was staring at him like he was a dork.
“What happened while I was upstairs?” Reno questioned suddenly.
Jane shrugged and pulled at the shoulder of her slipping dressing gown. “Nothing.”
“Mr. Center came out of his rooms,” Perry offered.
“For about half a minute. He went straight back inside,” Jane clarified. “Everyone did. Miss Dembecki went back in her apartment and locked the door. Ditto Mrs. Mac. It’s not like anyone thought you would find anything.” She patted Perry’s hand apologetically, asking Nick, “Why? What did you expect?”
Nick Reno had the kind of face that gave nothing away. Instead of answering Jane directly, he asked, “How many people live here?”
“Seven, now that poor Mr. Watson is gone.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed reflectively. “That’s the guy who died in the village? And Stein is the fatso on the second floor?”
“That’s right. He works as a security guard at the mall most nights. It used to be Mr. Stein, Mr. Center, and Mr. Watson on the second floor. On this floor, it’s been me, Miss Dembecki, Mrs. Mac, and Mr. Teagle since…well, it feels like forever. I’m sure you’ve met Mr. Teagle. He makes a point of meeting everyone.” Her smile was sardonic. Mr. Teagle did not approve of Jane. “And way up on the third floor, it’s just you and Perry in your twin towers.”
Perry was trying to work out a timetable. There was no way anyone could have entered the house from the outside, or if already inside, use the main staircase without coming into view of the tenants crowded in the lobby. That meant that whoever had moved the body must have still been on the third floor during the time between Perry’s flight and Nick’s trip upstairs. Maybe the intruder had been in Perry’s rooms when Perry found the body. Maybe he had been watching from behind the door the whole time.
It was an unsettling idea. “The body must be hidden somewhere on the third floor,” Perry told them.
Jane quit tapping her carmine nails on her cup and stared.
“Where? My rooms?” Reno suggested dryly.
Perry’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the notion. That was the most obvious explanation: there was no body because Reno had carted it off to his own rooms. He had been outside when Perry came downstairs. Could that mean anything?
Watching him add it up, Reno commented, “You’ve got a hell of an imagination, kid.” And strangely enough, Perry was reassured.
“Maybe it went down the laundry chute. The corpse, I mean.” Jane handed round the plate of wreath-shaped cement cookies.
Nick declined cookies with a shake of his head. “Describe this dead man to me,” he ordered.
Perry thought hard. “He was about fifty, heavy-set. He needed a shave. His hair was reddish, like he dyed it. He was wearing a yellow and brown checked sports coat and mustard-colored socks. He had a hole in his left shoe.”
Nick went on alert. “What kind of shoe?”
“A brown loafer.”
“You’re sure there was a hole in the left sole?”
Perry nodded, then gripped by sudden memory said, “He had bushy hair in his nostrils and a mole on his chin.”
“More than I needed to know,” Jane murmured.
A heavy hand pounded on the front door and she jumped. Perry faded to the color of one of the corpses in his tough guy novels. “It’s the police,” he got out.
“No kidding. We called them, remember?” Since the other two seemed paralyzed, Nick rose and opened the door to the deputies.
Tired and grim, the two officers of the law regarded them.
“I feel I gotta ask. Were you folks drinking this evening?” questioned the senior partner. In his rain slicker and hat, he strongly resembled the Gorton Fisherman—after hauling up an empty net.
“We had a snort for medicinal purposes,” Jane volunteered over Perry’s indignant protest. “We weren’t together all evening, so I can’t say beyond that.” She stretched comfortably, and the deputies’ gazes trained on her gaping neckline.
The Gorton Fisherman harrumphed. “There’s nobody upstairs. No body.”
“I told you that much,” Nick said. “What about the blood?”
“Who says it was blood? Could have been…mud.”
“You seen a lot of blood?” the second deputy sheriff queried. He was younger and seemed more pugnacious about being dragged out on a wild-goose chase.
“Enough.”
Perry said, “What about the scuff marks?”
“Scuff marks don’t mean diddly,” said the d
eputy. “And I didn’t see any mud.” He glanced at his partner. “Did you see any mud?”
“Nope. That tub was clean as a whistle. Like someone just scrubbed it down.”
“What does that tell you?” Jane put in.
The older man eyed her calmly. “That someone just scrubbed it down.” His dark eyes rested for a moment on the brandy bottle in the midst of the coffee table clutter.
Perry insisted, “There was a dead man in my bathtub. He didn’t get there by accident.”
“Maybe he wasn’t dead,” the sheriff said. “Maybe he was a vagrant and he left after you found him.”
There were so many holes in that theory, Perry didn’t know where to start. He protested, “My apartment was locked. How could he have got in?”
“How would a dead man get in? A vagrant would have a better chance of breaking in than a dead man.”
Inescapable logic. Still Perry persisted. “But he was dead. Someone brought him in and took him away again so you wouldn’t believe me.”
“It didn’t take that,” the deputy said. The older officer gave him a reproving look.
“Listen,” Reno said. “I didn’t believe in that dead body myself, but I saw a streak of something in that tub that sure as hell appeared to be blood to me. And there were black marks, probably scuff marks, on the floor tiles. Also, Foster said the dead man was wearing a shoe with a hole in the sole. I found that shoe. I left it on the windowsill.”
“We didn’t see any shoe with a hole in it.”
“Did you check the bedroom?”
“Sure. We weren’t looking for footwear specifically.”
“Did you see the shoe on the windowsill?”
The deputies exchanged doubtful looks.
“I didn’t see any shoe,” said the Gorton Fisherman. “You want to check for yourself,” he added, “be my guest.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Jane said. She smothered a yawn and said to no one in particular, “Gentlemen, I hate to be a party pooper, but I need my beauty sleep.” She made a lazy shooing motion, and the minions of the law obediently retreated further into the hall.
“You’re damn right I’ll see for myself,” Perry said, rising. But he couldn’t help checking to see if Nick was along for the ride.
In Other Words...Murder Page 21
