by Josh Lanyon
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. “Trained 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 unset
tling 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 little 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 a little 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 deputy. “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.
Nick was on board all right. He marched up the stairs, kid and cops trailing, and let himself into the Foster boy’s apartment for the second time that evening.
Perry followed him in, staring around the rooms like he’d never seen them before. The night was taking on a hallucinatory quality. Granted, he was somewhat sleep deprived. He stared at his suitcase in the middle of the floor. It seemed a lifetime ago that he had walked out of Marcel’s wood-framed Victorian and caught the plane back to Vermont.
He trailed Nick into the bathroom. Sure enough, the tub was empty — and sparkling clean.
Nick ran his fingers along the rim. “Damp,” he commented. Perry stared at him. The deputies crowding the doorway also stared at him.
Pushing through them, Nick headed toward the bedroom, zeroing in on the windowsill.
A shoe stood in plain sight on the ledge. It was black, small — maybe a size 9 — in good shape.
A muscle clenched in Nick’s jaw as he examined the loafer. “This isn’t the shoe.”
“See for yourself, buddy. It’s the only shoe here.”
Nick tossed the shoe to Perry, who caught it and swallowed. “This is my shoe,” he said as though he feared his shoe was guilty of some misdemeanor.
“Yep, that’s what we figured.”
“I thought you didn’t notice any shoes?” Reno retorted.
“We didn’t notice any suspicious shoes.”
“Shut up, Abe,” the older deputy muttered.
Nick started to speak, then bit it back. This was a losing proposition. The cops had made up their minds about twenty minutes earlier; that was plain.
He glanced at the kid, and it was obvious that Foster knew it was all over, although he was gazing at Nick expectantly. Why? What did he imagine Nick could do about this? Even if Nick wanted to do something about it.
He stared back, and the kid looked away, gritting his jaw. His hands were shaking and he shoved them into his pockets.
The deputies took their leave.
“We’ll say good night, folks. Keep safe.” The senior officer, last out the door, tipped the brim of his rain-spattered hat.
Nick caught the door before it closed on their heels. He glanced back at Perry Foster. The kid was focused on the tub, framed in the bathroom doorway.
The underbreath comments of the deputies died away with the sound of their boots on the staircase.
Situation defused, Nick thought. Rack time at last. “I guess that’s it,” he said. “I guess I’ll say good night too.”
Foster’s head jerked his way. “You’re going?”
“Yeah.” Nick was elaborately casual in response to the note he didn’t want to hear in Foster’s voice. “It’s all clear here.”
Foster was a frail-looking kid. He lived on his own and presumably held a job, so he couldn’t be fourteen, though that’s how old he looked. His wrists were thin, and bony knees poked out of the holes of his fashionably ripped Levi’s. There were blue veins beneath the pale skin of his hands. Nick thought of the Froot Loops c
ereal and the asthma chart on the refrigerator.
Hell.
“Thanks,” Foster managed huskily. “I know you probably think I’m psycho too, so I appreciate your helping me.”
“I don’t think you’re psycho.” Actually he had no idea if the kid was psycho or not. “I think you saw something. But whatever it was, it’s gone now. It’s over.”
Nick thought of the shoe with the hole in it; he should have noticed right away it was too big for a pup the size of Foster. Someone had switched that shoe after Nick left. Someone had swabbed down the tub and the floor. Someone had balls of steel. But it was not Nick’s problem. It was not his job to save the world. Not anymore.
“Yeah, well…” The kid managed one unconvincing smile. “Maybe I can get a hotel room in town.” He picked up his suitcase. “I don’t want to stay here tonight.”
Nick’s nod was curt. Great idea. Best idea yet. Except… A gust of wind shook the house. The lights flickered. From across the room, Reno heard Foster give a soft gasp. His eyes looked enormous. Like Bambi after his mom bought it in the woods.
It was a dark and lousy night. Not a night to be out driving if you didn’t have to. The radio crackled with weather advisories. Anyway, what kind of bastard would send an asthmatic kid out in a rainstorm?
“Hell,” he growled. “You can stay with me tonight.”
There was that wash of color in the pointed face. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” Foster said hopefully.
Nick snorted.
Chapter Two
“You were a marine?” Perry tried to make polite conversation while sizing up Nick Reno’s apartment.
The tower apartments were small and secluded and mirrored each other. In both, the main room stepped up into a round dining alcove with two diamond-paned windows. From outside, the rounded rooms looked like small towers. They gave the rambling old house a vaguely gothic look. Otherwise, the place was unremarkable, especially now that most of the internal architecture had been gutted to accommodate apartments. Nick’s place had a long, narrow kitchen facing the woods. Perry’s overlooked the overgrown and mostly dead garden. It didn’t matter because his rooms were just a place to paint. It didn’t look like Nick spent a lot more time in his. He had two bedrooms (the one Perry could see into had been turned into a weight room) and a bathroom. There was little furniture and few personal effects.
