Last Call

by Allyson K. Abbott

  I headed for the interior of the closet, but just as I reached for the brace to open the door, it opened on its own. Felicity stood there, dressed in the clothing she had chosen. Her discarded clothes lay in a neat, folded pile atop the mattress.

  “Good job,” I said. “Are you ready to go see the doctor?”

  She didn’t answer. But she frowned.

  “It will be okay,” I assured her. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “I want Mack,” she said.

  “I’ll come to see you again, as soon as you’re settled in your new house, okay?” I had no idea if this would be possible, but I felt I needed to give the girl some sort of reassurance. Then, to distract her, I said, “Can you help me with something, Felicity?”

  No answer, but she looked me straight in the eye, and I took this as acceptance. I took my phone out of my pocket and opened up the text message Cora had sent me. “Look at this,” I said, showing the phone to Felicity. On the screen was a picture of me and Mal that Cora had taken on the first night we had met. Mal and I both looked a bit awkward and shy, understandable given that we were faking a blind date. “Do you know this man, Felicity?”

  She stared at the picture for a long time. Finally, she looked up at me, her eyes budding with tears. Slowly, she nodded. Then she clapped her hands over her ears and started chanting. “No, no, no, no, no . . .” She kept repeating the word, the timbre and level of anxiety in her voice rising with each repetition.

  Fearful she was building up to a full-blown meltdown, I reached over and placed a hand over hers. “It’s okay, Felicity,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me, or remember anything if you don’t want to.”

  Her chanting stopped. She looked me in the eye, and then said, “Bad man!”

  I wondered who she was referring to. Could it be Mal? Did she think Mal was a bad man for some reason? I didn’t want to push her, afraid she would start to chant again, so I switched subjects. “Are you ready to go?”

  She looked sad, and for a moment, I thought she was going to dart back into the closet and shut the door again. But after a few seconds she nodded, and after dropping her arms to her sides, she headed out of the bedroom.

  Chapter 7

  Duncan drove us back to the bar after we saw Parnell and Felicity on their way. Parnell, still not convinced the child would cooperate, had called in her cavalry. Two strapping young men had shown up to ride with her and Felicity to the hospital. With a little cajoling from me, Felicity went willingly and quietly. I asked Parnell if it would be possible for me to see Felicity once her medical exam was finished and she was settled in somewhere.

  “I think your involvement with this is done at this point,” she said, her tone curt. “Thank you for your help so far, but we have it from here.”

  I was about to say something back to her, something rather rude, but a look from Duncan stopped me. He shook his head ever so slightly, warning me not to go there. Feeling frustrated and angry, I let him steer me toward his car. The first couple of minutes of our ride was spent in silence. Then Duncan posed a question to me.

  “What did you say to Felicity to make her laugh when you whispered in her ear?” he asked.

  “I told her that the color of Parnell’s pants made me smell dog poop.”

  Duncan shot me a look that was half-amused, half-disbelieving. “Did it really?”

  I shook my head and smiled. “No, but I thought it might put Felicity at ease and help strengthen the bond we were already building.”

  “Nice work,” Duncan said.

  My smile faded. “Thanks, but I feel like it was all for naught. I would’ve liked to have spent more time with her rather than turn her over to the clutches of that Parnell woman.”

  “You never know what might happen,” Duncan said prophetically. “On another subject, once we get to the bar, I’m going to check in with Mal’s family and get a key to his house. I want to head over there as soon as possible. Do you want to come along?”

  “Of course.”

  Our stop at the bar was intended to be a short one, but it wasn’t to be. The first delay came from Cora and the Signoriello brothers, Joe and Frank. The trio was seated at a table near the front entrance, and the remnants of whatever they had ordered to eat for lunch was on the table, as was Cora’s laptop, something she never went anywhere without.

  “There they are!” Cora said as we walked in. “How did the first official crime investigation go?”

  “Sit down and give us all the gory details,” Joe said, grabbing a chair and pulling it out from the table.

  “I’d love to guys,” I said, “but we’re only here for a short while. We just stopped by to pick up something. The investigation is still very much ongoing. You guys haven’t seen or heard anything from Mal today, have you?”

  All three of them shrugged and shook their heads. Then Cora said, “Is Mal involved in your case?”

  In a calm, reasoned voice, Duncan avoided a direct answer. “We really need to talk to him as soon as possible.”

  “I assume you’ve tried to call him?” Cora said.

  “I have,” Duncan said. “The calls keep going to voice mail.”

  “Maybe he forgot to charge his phone,” Joe offered.

  “Or maybe he forgot his phone,” Frank suggested.

  “Both are good possibilities,” Duncan said, though I knew from the change in the taste of his voice that he didn’t believe this for a moment. “If you see him, please ask him to call me right away.”

  The threesome nodded, but I could tell from their expressions that Duncan’s efforts to downplay the situation hadn’t fooled them. Joe and Frank’s bodies might be slowing down a little—to be expected when you hit your midseventies—but their minds were as bright and sharp as they had been in their heydays. They’d been around the block a time or two, and seen plenty in their combined lifetimes.

  Cora hadn’t been around nearly as long, but she’d been coming to the bar for the better part of a decade or more. She and I had grown much closer recently, sharing confidences, thoughts, ideas, relationship frustrations, and of course, the database of my synesthetic reactions. Her talents when it came to computer hacking had proven to be a very valuable asset to both me and Duncan, though Duncan kept her participation strictly on the lowdown. Cora didn’t always play by the rules.

  We moved to the bar so I could check in with my staff to make sure things were running smoothly. My day bartender, Pete, was working behind it and, at the moment, Debra, my head waitress, was back there also, helping him slice oranges.

  “How is everything going?” I asked them.

  “Swimmingly of course,” Debra said, looking smug. “We’ve been doing this long enough to handle things just fine on our own. And you know that if any problems came up, we would call you. So the more important question is, how did your first day as an official crime consultant go?”

  “It’s been interesting, and that’s all I can say about it for now.” Pete shrugged; Debra looked disappointed. “I’m going to be leaving again in a few minutes,” I told them. “Keep up the good work.”

  Duncan and I then headed into the newest section of the bar, an adjoining space I bought a few months ago. We crossed the room toward the raised stage at one end. Off to one side of the stage was a door to a stairwell going down to the basement. Beside it was the door to my new elevator, which was almost completed and ready to use. The elevator was primarily intended to provide an alternative access to the second floor, which could also be reached by stairs on the far side of the room. It would go down to the basement, too, but only if one had a key to override the normal access points.

  I opened the door to the basement and hollered down the stairs. “Anyone down here?”

  “We are,” came back a voice I recognized as that of Connor O’Reilly, Mal’s father.

  Mal had given me an overly generous Christmas gift by having members of his family, who owned a construction company in Yakima, Washington, come to build my elevator.
They weren’t doing it for free, but I knew the price Mal was charging me was far below what I would have had to pay anyone else. In exchange, I provided free food and drink while they were working.

  For the past two weeks, Mal’s brothers, Ryan, who was a carpenter, and Patrick, who was a master electrician, had been staying at Mal’s house at night and working on my elevator in the bar during the day. His sister, Colleen, who was a master carpenter, had also come along. Mal’s mother, Josephine, and his other sister, Deirdre, who was a master plumber, had stayed home. With so many family members crowding his house, Mal had been spending his nights on a bed I set up for him in the basement of the bar. I had invited him to stay in my apartment upstairs, and he did for a couple of nights. But once the person who had been stalking me was apprehended, he moved himself into a makeshift bedroom he set up in the basement. This was probably wise of him, given that Duncan and I no longer had to hide our relationship, and Duncan had been spending many nights at my place. The situation could’ve been awkward because of Mal’s feelings for me, but he handled it with uncommon grace and kindness. He was a sweet man, and my feelings for him ran deep. But there was something between me and Duncan—chemistry, magnetism, I didn’t know what to call it—that wasn’t there with Mal. Mal was more like the brother I never had.

  Duncan and I descended the stairs into the basement, and the O’Reilly clan gathered around us.

  “Any word from Mal?” Connor asked.

  Duncan and I both shook our heads. “We were hoping you guys had heard something,” Duncan said. “When is the last time any of you saw or heard from him?”

  “He slept here last night, or at least that’s what we all assumed,” Connor explained. “We left around nine last night and headed back to his house. He was down here doing some finishing work on the elevator car’s interior.”

  “He texted me this morning,” Colleen, said. “Said he needed to come by the house to shower and grab some clothes and wanted to know if everyone else was done and gone. We were all headed out the door and I texted him back and told him so.”

  “What time was that?” Duncan asked.

  Colleen took out her phone, swiped the screen a few times, and then said, “Seven fifty-eight.”

  Given that the time of death the ME had provided was around seven-thirty in the morning, this timing seemed ominous.

  “Has Mal been coming back to the house regularly?” Duncan asked.

  “Not regularly,” Patrick said. “He’s been in and out a few times over the past couple of weeks to do laundry and pick up some things. Other than that, he’s been sleeping here at the bar. He said Mack was letting him use her shower.”

  Duncan shot me a look. “I didn’t know that.”

  “He uses my father’s shower,” I clarified. “Anytime you’ve been here, you’ve been up and gone long before Mal needed the shower.”

  “I want to go take a look at his house,” Duncan said, turning his attention back to the O’Reillys. “Can I borrow a key to get in?”

  Colleen fished in her jeans pocket and pulled out a single key on a ring. “Here you go,” she said. “Is Mal okay?”

  “I’m sure he is,” Duncan said, lying. “He probably either forgot his phone or forgot to charge it.” Before anyone could ask any more awkward questions, Duncan pocketed the key and turned to me. “Can you show me where Mal has been sleeping?”

  “Sure. I set up a cot for him in the basement beneath the old section.”

  We left the O’Reillys after assurances that all parties would inform the others if anyone saw or heard from Mal, and headed back to the main area of the bar. Though we could have cut through downstairs, taking a secret tunnel that connected my apartment and the original site of the bar with the basement in the new section, there were some bad memories associated with that tunnel and I tended to avoid it. Instead, we went back up the stairs and threaded our way over to the back hallway of the original bar area, where the entrances to my apartment and that side of the basement were both located. Once we went back down into the basement, I led Duncan over to Mal’s temporary sleeping quarters, which had been set up in a corner near several boxes of liquor.

  “Not a bad location,” Duncan said with a wry smile, eyeing the boxes. “Convenient if one wants a nightcap.”

  “I told Mal a long time ago that he has free run of the bar, so he doesn’t need any of this.”

  Duncan shot me a look when I said this, and I sensed my statement had disturbed him for some reason. Whatever it was, he shrugged it off in a second and shifted his focus to Mal’s sleeping area.

  The bed, which was neatly made, was a double-size, inflatable mattress covered with sheets and blankets I had provided from my apartment. There were empty, upended crates on both sides of it, and one of them was serving as a nightstand. A lamp sat on top of it, plugged in with an extension cord that ran across the floor. There was also a phone charger, a half-empty bottle of water, and a coffee mug that had been cleaned. Stashed in the open area beneath these items were the plans for the elevator, along with some trim samples. The other crate was serving as a makeshift dresser. There were socks and underwear, a couple of T-shirts, and an extra pair of jeans folded inside it. On top were several toiletries I assumed Mal carried upstairs whenever he used my shower. The ceiling overhead was open, and hangers looped over an exposed plumbing pipe held two plaid flannel shirts.

  “Not a bad setup,” Duncan said.

  “I guess,” I said, frowning.

  “What?” Duncan said, watching me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose this area is better than nothing, but it bothers me that Mal is using this as a bedroom when I have a perfectly good unused bedroom in my apartment. I tried to convince him to take over my dad’s room, but he adamantly refused.”

  Duncan opened his mouth as if to say something, but apparently thought better of it and clamped it closed again. He surveyed the area for a moment, and then said, “If we assume Mal spent the night here last night, odds are his phone was charged. He clearly rigged things up so he could charge it every night. So why isn’t he answering it?”

  I knew it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother trying to answer. We headed back upstairs, and I checked in with Pete to let him know I was leaving again. I had complete faith in my employees’ abilities to run the bar without me, so my check-ins were driven more by guilt than any real concerns. Assured that all was and would continue to be fine, Duncan and I left and headed for Mal’s place.

  Mal’s house was in the same neighborhood as Duncan’s, though it was several blocks away. It was a small, two-story, Craftsman-style home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The neighborhood was an older one, and most of the houses, including Mal’s, dated back to the 1920s and ’30s. A few looked like they were losing their battle against the ravages of time and neglect. Not surprising, given Mal’s construction background, his house appeared to be well maintained. There were a few things that needed fixing on the exterior, but there was also evidence that Mal had been working on these items. Several balusters on the front porch railing had been replaced but not yet painted, a chore that would have to wait for warmer weather. There was also evidence of paint that had been scraped away from some of the window trims.

  Duncan knocked and rang the bell on the off chance Mal was there, but when no one answered after a minute or so, he unlocked and opened the front door.

  “Mal, you here?” Duncan yelled, creating a burst of chocolate flavor in my mouth. There was no answer, and the utter silence was a bit spooky.

  Inside, the house looked like it had been a temporary home to several guests. In the living room, clothing had been strewn here and there: draped over the backs of chairs, hung on a closet doorknob, and tossed onto one of the end tables. Someone had breakfasted at the coffee table and left behind their remnants: a coffee mug with a half inch of cold coffee in the bottom, and a plate with some toast crumbs and a few bits of scrambled egg. Out of habit, I grabb
ed up both items, positioned them with my fingers so I could carry them and crutch at the same time—something I’d become quite adept at over the past few weeks—and carried them to the kitchen.

  I expected something out of the fifties or sixties with lots of heavy wood trim, older appliances, and either tile or Formica countertops. But the kitchen was a pleasant surprise. Clearly Mal, or whoever he’d bought the house from, because he’d only been living in Milwaukee for a year, had redone the kitchen recently. The appliances were new, stainless steel, and state-of-the-art; the countertops were granite—a gorgeous swirling medley of gold, brown, and silver—and the cabinets were a simple Shaker style with a honey-red finish. The floor was hardwood, clearly the original oak boards based on the appearance of some of the pieces, but newly sanded and polished to a shiny gleam. There were can lights in the ceiling, but the Craftsman style of the house was evident in both a ceiling fixture and a pendant light over the sink, both of which had beautiful stained-glass shades. It wasn’t a huge room, not large enough to support an island or kitchen table—and given the large, connected dining room, there was no real need for either—but there was a small, round, bar-style table with two stools in the middle of the room, topped with the same granite as the countertops. It provided a small eating space or an additional work space.

  Once again, evidence of a hasty breakfast and morning retreat was evident in the dirty dishes in the sink and the dirty skillet on the stove. I added the dishes from the living room to the collection and then rejoined Duncan in the living room, where he was sifting through a small pile of mail on a table by the front door.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head and kept sorting, so I meandered my way upstairs. My senses reacted to a number of things: the smells of soap, aftershave, and hair products; the squeak of the wooden stairs beneath my feet; the feel of a cold draft as I passed by a stained-glass window on the upper landing; the sight of the sun-washed colors from that window playing on the hallway floor. I pushed all the subsequent reactions down, tamping them into submission, and tried to focus on just what I could see. The first two doors I came to were both bedrooms, one on the right and one on the left. The left, southern-facing room was warmly lit by sunlight; the room on the right was darker and shaded. The wall colors seemed to have been chosen with these differences in mind: a warm, creamy shade of yellow for the darker room, and a cool, forest green for the sunnier room. White trim around the windows and four-panel doors, as well as wide, white baseboards and white crown molding, made each room look like a framed painting. The furnishings were older, not valuable antiques per se, but gently used period pieces.