by Josh Lanyon
I must be nuts, he thought, staring out at the black slate of night sky out the little square window.
Roscoe had wanted him to stay and celebrate — and finally he had something to celebrate. After Marie, after his discharge, after the monotony of civilian life with no job, no prospects, finally there was something to celebrate.
And what did Nick do? He grabbed the first available plane back for Vermont — which he hated anyway and couldn’t wait to put behind him once and for all. What the hell was the matter with him?
But he kept thinking of the Foster kid. Perry. There was something not kosher at the estate, and that fragile boy was not equipped to deal with it. Not that it was Nick’s problem — although he was now officially in the P.I. business. Well, soon. After he finished his training.
All around him on the crowded aircraft, other passengers were settling down for sleeping or reading. Nick stretched his long legs out as far as he could beneath the seat in front of him — which wasn’t far. He’d have liked to get up and move around, but there was a woman with a baby in the aisle seat, and he’d have preferred public flogging to the risk of waking that shrieking mouth again. It was amazing the lung power in something that small.
He resettled in his seat, trying to get more comfortable, and glanced at his watch. Another two hours before they landed. He’d have to waste another hour going through baggage claim and finding his truck, and then another hour back to the Kingdom. He sighed and closed his eyes. Might as well get some rest. It would be after midnight before he made it back to Creepsville.
* * * * *
There was a fire truck parked outside the Alston mansion when Nick pulled up. Sheriff’s department cars were angled along the drive and grass. Blue and red lights cut through the misty night like lasers. An ambulance was parked a few feet from the front door.
Nick got out of his pickup, shrugging into his leather jacket. The unease that had dogged him since he’d left the estate bloomed into full consternation.
He strode across the rain-slicked grass. A deputy sheriff tried to stop him. Nick brushed past with a curt word of explanation. His heart was thumping unpleasantly; chill premonition slithered down his spine.
In the drafty front hall, the residents had all gathered in their nightclothes — that motley collection of pajamas and dressing gowns in which people always dressed for disaster.
“What’s happened?” he demanded.
A gray-faced Mrs. MacQueen, looking more like James Cagney than ever in a thick plaid wool robe and men’s style slippers, shook her head.
He looked at the others. Stein was nervously chewing the inside of his cheek. Teagle sat in a chair next to the unlit fireplace, his head shaking, his big hands white beneath the freckles. That walking cadaver, David Center, stood next to the Bridger woman, his bony hand fastened on the emerald sleeve of her kimono-clad arm. Bridger looked stoic, but Nick knew her type. The sky could be falling; she wouldn’t panic easily.
Paramedics appeared on the second level, wheeling a gurney. The figure on the gurney was covered.
Miss Dembecki whispered, “Perry.”
The world seemed to stop.
Nick had to clear his throat to speak. His voice came out funny and raspy. “Perry’s dead?”
So his hunch had been right. Trouble. Bad trouble.
Jane Bridger broke in. “Perry’s not dead! What are you saying, Miss Dembecki? That’s Tiny. Perry found Tiny dead in Watson’s bedroom closet.”
“Tiny?” Miss Dembecki murmured bewilderedly. She looked around the circle of watching faces. “But then…?”
The gurney and the EMTs were making their precarious way down the narrow stairs, banging loudly against the banister. Tiny’s heavy carcass was no easy load.
“Where’s Perry?” Nick demanded of Jane.
She tore her gaze from the grim sight on the staircase. “Upstairs being questioned, I guess.”
Nick waited until the EMTs had made it safely to the bottom, then he took the stairs two at a time.
A deputy stopped him outside Watson’s apartment. Through the open door he could see Perry talking to an older man in uniform. The sheriff? Perry was seated on the low sofa. He wore jeans and a striped pajama top, his pale hair sticking up in bed-head tufts. He was speaking in a voice so low that Nick couldn’t hear what was said. He could see the kid was gripping his inhaler.
“Listen, you’ll have to go back downstairs with the others,” the deputy warned.
Nick considered it, while the deputy bristled. There didn’t seem anything to be gained by insisting on staying — Perry looked shaken but unharmed, and it was doubtful even the local police were dumb enough to think he was a suspect in a homicide.
Nick returned downstairs to wait with the others.
“Just what the hell’s going on up there?” MacQueen demanded, huddled in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. “Shut up!” she screamed suddenly.
There was an astonished silence, and then from down the hall came the sound of her mutts whining and scratching at the closed door of her apartment.
“Are they still questioning Perry?” Jane Bridger asked after a polite few seconds’ pause.
“It looked like it.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” David Center said worriedly. “The spirits would not harm a simple soul like Tiny.”
Speaking of simple souls. Nick studied him bleakly. Center wore an incredible dressing gown of paisley blue and purple, proving, in Nick’s opinion, that he really was blind.
Bridger patted Center’s hand in absent reassurance.
“Well, I’m going back to bed,” Mrs. MacQueen announced, heaving herself to her feet.
Stein laughed. “Good luck with that.”
“Ma’am, the sheriff will want to question everyone in the house,” the deputy stationed at the front door said.
“Then he can wake me up!” Mrs. MacQueen swaggered off, and the deputy looked around helplessly before following her down the hall.
Perry appeared at the top of the landing. “They want you, Janie,” he said hollowly.
“Me? Why am I next?” Bridger protested, and it was Center’s turn to soothe her with murmurs and hand pats.
“They’ll want to talk to everyone,” Stein said knowledgeably, and Dembecki began twittering anxiously.
Muttering under her breath, Jane went up the stairs, silk dressing gown whispering, passing Perry on his way down.
Nick was disconcerted at the flip his heart did as Perry’s heavy eyes met his. Just relief that the kid’s okay, he told himself. He’d have felt guilty as hell if something had happened to Foster on what should have been his watch.
Perry came to stand next to him. “You’re back.” He greeted Nick wanly and managed a twitchy smile.
Nick nodded curtly. “How are you doing?”
“Okay.” He turned the Bambi eyes on Nick. “They said I could go back to my rooms. My rooms. They’re sealing Watson’s apartment.” He swallowed hard.
“You can stay with me,” Nick said. Perry seemed to work to keep his expression stoic, but the ardent gratitude was right below the surface, and if they’d been alone Nick would probably have done something unwise like put an arm around those slender shoulders.
The deputy came back. “That dame has lost her marbles,” he announced.
“No argument here,” Stein said, and Teagle shook off his white-faced preoccupation long enough to make a disapproving noise.
Dembecki twittered some more. Nick wouldn’t have been surprised to see her take flight right out of this cuckoo’s nest.
To the deputy, he said, “I’ve been away for forty-eight hours. Am I a suspect or can I go to bed?”
“Sheriff wants to talk to everyone that lives here.”
Nick handed Perry his keys. “Get some rest.”
Without a word, Perry took the keys and disappeared up the staircase.
Nick watched him go — tight little ass and those long, coltish jeans-clad legs — till
Perry vanished around the bend in the staircase.
He leaned back against the wall to wait, unobtrusively watching the others. Jane Bridger came down in a worse temper than she’d been in when she’d gone up. David Center was next. Bridger volunteered to escort him, but he declined brusquely.
Bridger retreated huffily to her own quarters.
Shortly afterward, Nick’s name was called.
He found the sheriff in Watson’s quarters. Sheriff Butler was a short, lean man with a neat silver mustache and piercing green eyes. Nick put him in the fifty-five to sixty-five range; he was the type who aged well.
“Ex-Navy SEAL, huh? That’s a pretty tough outfit.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed. This could go a couple of ways. Some guys admired the dedication and discipline required to be a SEAL. Some guys were intimidated by it and tried to prove otherwise.
Indicating that Nick should sit, Butler proceeded to ask his name, age, occupation, flight details, and purpose of his recent trip before really getting down to it.
“So if I understand you correctly, Mr. Reno, you’ve been out of town since” — he didn’t have to check his notes — “Sunday the eighth.”
Nick said crisply, “You understand correctly.”
“When was the last time you saw Jasper Bryant?”
“Who?”
“The handyman. Tiny.”
“Sunday morning. He let us, Perry Foster and me, into these rooms.”
“And?”
“And what? He took some dead fish out of the fish tank and he left. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Where did he go when he left this apartment?”
Nick said shortly, “You must have me confused with the psychic next door.” He glanced at the sheriff’s notes — Butler kept track in tiny, dark script that could have been printed by a machine. “I have no idea what he did after he left here. I take it he didn’t die from natural causes?”
“He was shot to death.”
Nick thought of the .45 caliber pistol taped — hopefully still taped — to the wall in the cupboard beneath his kitchen sink. “He wasn’t shot to death in this apartment, I’ll tell you that right now. He sure as hell wasn’t in the closet when I left here.”
“You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Yeah, I do. I helped the kid carry some things down from his rooms. He hung a couple of shirts in the bedroom closet. I watched him. There was nothing in that closet but clothes and shoes and comic books.”
“How’d you know the deceased was found in the bedroom closet?”
“The Bridger woman mentioned it.” Nick met the sheriff’s bright gaze. He said dryly, “No way do you think that kid knowingly spent the night in this apartment with a corpse in the closet.”
The sheriff’s thin mouth pursed in something that might have been sour humor. “It doesn’t seem likely.”
Nick was silent, thinking about Tiny’s comments about the ghost with yellow socks — thinking about those lost keys. The sheriff was watching him carefully.
“You got a theory?” he asked.
Nick said, “I’m sure Foster told you about the body he found in the bathtub.”
“We all heard about the body in the bathtub,” the sheriff said grimly.
“Maybe now you’ll believe it.”
Butler grimaced. “I don’t see that there’s automatically a connection between this homicide and the kid’s story.”
“Maybe not,” Nick said. “But your victim was blabbing about the ghost with yellow socks shortly before someone decided to take him out.”
The sheriff inspected him with those gleaming eyes. “You don’t say so,” he said finally.
“The kid must have told you this.”
The sheriff sighed. “Yeah, he said something along those lines and offered some garbled story about missing sets of keys. But I don’t know how reliable a witness he is.” He raised his eyebrows. “He’s a little light in the loafers, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re kidding,” Nick drawled. “What I noticed is he’s got a good eye for detail. He’s a painter. He notices things.”
“Maybe,” Sheriff Butler said, unconvinced. “The thing is, it’s the handyman who turned up dead. There’s still no sign of this body from the bathtub.”
When Nick didn’t respond, the sheriff added, “Thanks, Reno. If we have more questions we’ll contact you. Meantime, do me a favor and don’t leave town without letting us know.”
Perry was sacked out on the sofa when Nick opened the door to his apartment, but he sat up, hair on end, eyes heavy-lidded.
“Nick?”
“You expecting someone else?”
Perry gave a little chuckle and rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t think they’d keep you that long.”
Nick headed for the kitchen. “Want a drink?”
“Oh. I already brushed my teeth…”
Nick rolled his eyes and took a beer from the fridge. He was staring out over the sink, drinking, when Perry’s reflection appeared in the black window — a slightly rumpled ghost drifting up behind him.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Perry said. “And not just because I’d rather sleep in the gazebo than my own apartment.”
Nick jerked his head in the direction of the fridge. “Help yourself.”
Perry padded barefoot over to the fridge — and Nick resisted the temptation to tell him to put socks on his feet. He’d never considered himself the paternal type, but…someone needed to look after this boy. Once again he wondered what had gone wrong with the friend in San Francisco.
Perry got a beer, found the opener, and uncapped the bottle. He studied the design on the cap, frowning, then took a swig of beer.
“So what happened?” Nick questioned. “You found Tiny in Watson’s closet?”
“That’s pretty much it, yeah. I heard this weird sound. And then kind of a thump. I opened the closet and…he fell out.”
Nick glanced over. Perry’s fingers were white on the bottle cap, his eyes focused on whatever he had seen in Watson’s closet. It had to have taken a hell of a lot of courage to open that door. Against his will, Nick was impressed. Of course, the sensible thing to do would have been to run for help.
Not that there were many places to find it in this lunatic asylum.
“We both saw him leave the apartment Sunday,” Nick said. “And you had the locks changed, so he couldn’t have got back in.”
“Somehow he did. We saw him leave, but no one saw him after that, remember? Jane was looking for him. He never came downstairs.”
Nick swallowed beer, considering this.
“But he wasn’t there the night before last,” Perry said, “because I checked the closet. I mean, the door was ajar, so I shut it — but before I shut it, I glanced inside.”
“Why?”
Delicate color rose in Perry’s face. “Oh, you know,” he said vaguely.
And Nick did know. He bit back a grin. Hopefully Foster didn’t watch a lot of scary movies. “So he disappeared Sunday morning and showed up again, dead, in Watson’s closet on Tuesday night?”
“Right.”
“So someone murdered him and somehow — and for some unknown reason — dragged his body into Watson’s apartment.”
Perry said, “He wasn’t dead.”
Nick’s gaze sharpened. “What do you mean he wasn’t dead?”
“When I found him he was still alive,” Perry said unsteadily. “He…died while I was waiting for the ambulance.”
Nick set aside the inappropriate desire to offer comfort and focused on the business at hand. “Did he say anything? Did he say who did it?”
Perry shook his head. “He said, ‘We’re the good guys.’”
“We’re the good guys? You and me? Or him and someone else?”
“He didn’t specify.”
“But what the hell does that mean?”
Perry shrugged.
“Sounds like a line from a bad movie.”
Perry gave a
tired laugh. “I know. But that’s what he said. At least, that was the only thing I could make out. He said something else, but I couldn’t make out the words.”
“None of them? What did it sound like?”
Perry made a violent gurgling sound, and Nick nearly choked on his beer. “You’re shitting me.”
Perry gave that funny little smile, but said seriously, “It didn’t sound like words. It was just…dying sounds.”
“Yeah. Well…” Once again Nick had that totally out-of-character desire to offer comfort. If he didn’t know it would be a fatal mistake to encourage the kid, he’d have…
But it would be a mistake — so he didn’t.
Foster rubbed his eyes with his fist. “Gosh, I’m beat. I haven’t slept in two nights.”
Nick listened to this without hearing. He said slowly, “What I still don’t understand is how someone managed to lug Tiny inside Watson’s place after the locks were changed.”
“Maybe there’s a secret passage,” Perry offered.
“Yeah, right.” But as Nick considered it, his brows drew together. “Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. I never heard of any hidden passages.” Perry yawned, belatedly covering an inspiring glimpse of filling-free teeth and healthy tonsils.
“Are there blueprints of the house somewhere?”
Perry blinked at him like the question didn’t compute.
“Go back to bed,” Nick advised. “You look ready to keel over.”
Perry said, “Night, then,” and stumbled off to the sofa.
He was drifting off when a thought occurred. He pushed up on elbow calling, “How did your interview go?”
“Great,” Nick said. “I got the job.”
“Wow, that is great,” Perry said hollowly and buried his head in the pillow.
Nick finished his beer, tossed the bottle, and headed for his own bed.
* * * * *
Perry woke and lay blinking at the blue rain shadows rippling across the ceiling. Another day in Paradise, as his pop used to say.
He stretched, and the blankets drew up, leaving his bare feet exposed to the cold. Shivering, he curled up once more. Nick kept his thermostat too low; Perry felt chilled and cramped after a night on the sofa.
