A Novel Way to Die

TEN





BY EIGHT P.M., DARLA WAS LOUNGING ON HER LIVING ROOM couch—a prickly, old-fashioned horsehair sofa inherited from Great-Aunt Dee—clad in gray sweats and a matching hoodie. Unfortunately, the fleece fabric wasn’t thick enough to protect against the sofa’s prickly hide. Grabbing a well-worn quilt, she spread the blanket over the offending cushions and then flopped again, this time with a sigh. She’d twisted her auburn hair into a knot held in place with a couple of her late great-aunt’s lacquered chopsticks, and her bare feet were planted on the coffee table as she watched a video of one of her favorite vintage British comedies. The show was her visual equivalent of comfort food after a particularly stressful day. And this day had definitely counted as stressful. She wasn’t sure how she was going to sleep tonight, since images of a waxen-faced Curt had continued to pop into her head all day.

But with any luck, she told herself, an evening’s marathon of To the Manor Born would be enough to relax her. Otherwise, she’d have to take more drastic measures and dig out the grainy VHS copy she had of The Joy of Painting and watch that a few times. If the soothing tones of Bob Ross talking about happy trees and clouds couldn’t improve her day, then nothing could.

She was halfway through both the second episode and her supper of leftover Thai takeout when the sound of a beehive on steroids nearly made her dump the carton into her lap.

She yelped in surprise, startling Hamlet, who was lounging behind her on the back of the horsehair sofa. A heartbeat later, she realized that the source of the sound was, of course, the buzzer linked to the glass entry door in the downstairs hall.

“Sorry, Hammy,” she told him as she set down the carton and shut off the video, and then padded over to the door.

The security system, similar to the kind one would find in a typical walk-up, had been nonfunctional when she’d first moved in. She’d only gotten it repaired when Jake had bluntly informed her that she was resigning as unofficial lookout for Darla’s evening visitors who didn’t realize their knocks couldn’t be heard two stories up. The intercom had only buzzed a couple of times since it had been restored to working order. Each time, the noise had startled the heck out of her, to the point she was considering bringing the repair guy back to upgrade it with a nice, soothing ding-dong chime.

She pressed the talk button and cautiously asked, “Hi, who is it?”

Except for a couple of food-delivery guys, her only visitors had been after-hours customers rightly guessing she lived over the store and hoping she’d pop down to open up just for them. She had politely declined both opportunities, leaving said would-be customers to go away disappointed. This time, however, she had an uneasy feeling that she knew who was standing down there at her door.

“Yeah, it’s Reese,” came the familiar Brooklyn-accented voice, made tinny by the intercom. “We need to talk, pronto.”

Darla winced. Time to face the music. She could probably think of a few other appropriate clichés, but what it all boiled down to was that she likely was about to get a lecture royal from the detective for breaking the news of Curt’s death to Hilda.

“All right, come on up,” she replied and buzzed him in. This, at least, was a major improvement, saving her from having to trot down two flights of stairs to manually open the door.

Reese must have taken the steps at a run, for a firm knock sounded on her door sooner than she expected. Deciding she’d better find out before she let him in if he was simply mildly ticked or if he was super torqued off, she fastened the security chain and popped the door open the couple of inches it allowed.

“Just making sure it’s really you,” she explained in as casual a tone as she could muster. “You know, safety first and all that.”

“Yeah, better safe than sorry,” was his wry response. “I think they teach something like that at the police academy. So, you gonna let me in?”

Darla hesitated, trying to judge the extent of Reese’s disapproval from her glimpse of chiseled cheekbone, crooked nose, and stern blue eye. Since he was doing a pretty sphinxlike job of hiding his emotions, however, she sighed and quickly unlatched the door.

Reese strode on in. He had on one of those ubiquitous beige trench coats, the official Columbo model, with the addition of a jaunty plaid lining but minus the wrinkles. Its belt was buckled behind his back so that the garment swung open, revealing the same navy slacks and brown tweed sport coat from earlier that day. Definitely not the black-leather-clad Reese she was used to seeing.

“Where’s the motorcycle jacket?” she asked, recalling how it had always made him look like a blond Mad Max. Not that she disapproved of that particular image.

Reese shrugged. “It’s in the closet. Peer pressure and all that.”

When Darla gave him a quizzical look, he went on, “It was brought to my attention by the powers that be that I’d better start toeing the line as far as departmental dress code if I want to see a promotion in my future. The old dress-for-success thing, know what I mean? Hell, I think I’d rather be wearing a uniform than be stuffed into a tie and jacket.”

“Too bad,” she said somewhat sympathetically as he peeled off the trench coat, loosened said tie, and gave a tug on his shirt collar. Feeling distinctly underdressed in her sweats, Darla shut the door and gestured toward the horsehair couch. “Go ahead, have a seat. I’d offer you some of my supper, but it’s only leftovers and there’s not much.”

“I won’t be staying that long.”

He eyed Hamlet, who gave him a wary green look from where he was stretched out along the sofa back. Apparently deciding not to test their previous unspoken détente—the two had clashed more than once, with Reese on the losing side of those battles—the cop bypassed the sofa and instead settled on one of the ladder-back chairs Darla kept for extra seating.

Darla resumed her own seat on the couch and picked up her Thai food, casually scooping up a forkful of noodles. Between chews, she asked, “So, any updates on the Curt situation?”

“Nothing yet on cause of death. If we’re lucky and the ME’s office isn’t too backed up, we might have a ruling by tomorrow afternoon. Depending on what she says, we’ll probably release your boyfriend’s building back to him tomorrow, too.”

“Barry’s not—”

She was going to say, Barry’s not my boyfriend, but Jake would probably tell her that smacked a little too much of junior high. Instead, she finished, “—not worried about that. His concern is for finding out what happened to Curt.”

“So’s mine.”

Reese leaned back in the chair, which creaked ominously. “Let’s say that your friend Mr. Benedetto wasn’t clumsy enough to fall down the stairs on his own and hit his head on that crowbar. Statistically, about half of all murder victims know their killers. So one of those police things we sometimes do is spring bad news on people we want to question. That way, we can see how they react. You know . . . mad, glad, scared. And a lot of times, the way they react lets us know if they’re telling the truth when we start asking them questions.”

He let the chair tip back down, so that it rested on all four legs again, and finished, “So a couple of hours after you leave the scene, I go to track down Hilda Aguilar, mother of the dead guy’s girlfriend. I want to ask her a few questions about the deceased and find out how to get in touch with her daughter, maybe even get a reaction. And then she tells me you already spilled the works to her, which means, no more surprise.”

Darla swallowed her noodles along with a bit of lingering guilt and tried not to sound defensive as she countered, “You didn’t tell me not to talk to Hilda . . . or anyone else, for that matter. And it wasn’t like I tracked her down. She saw me outside her shop and asked what was wrong. I wouldn’t have said anything, except that I really didn’t want Tera hearing about her boyfriend’s death on the street. I thought it would be better if her mother told her.”

“I’d probably have done the same thing in your shoes,” he agreed, lobbing her argument right back at her, untouched. As she stared at him in surprise, he went on, “That’d be pretty harsh, Tera getting a text from someone with the news, or something. And you’re right; I didn’t ask you not to talk to anyone. Technically, there’s no way I could keep you from blabbing the news all over town, if you felt like it.”

“Don’t worry, Hilda is the only one I blabbed to . . . well, besides Jake. Oh, and James.”

Reese rolled his eyes and then plucked a notebook and pen from his sport coat pocket. “All right, so how about you do a little blabbing to me. Tell me what Mrs. Aguilar said and did when you told her about Mr. Benedetto.”

Feeling relieved that the expected lecture apparently wasn’t forthcoming, Darla nodded. “I told her how we found Curt lying in the basement—pretty much everything I told you—and she definitely was shocked. She actually turned pale.” Then, recalling the reaction that, to her, had been the most odd, she added, “But the thing was, she didn’t ask me how he died. She wanted to know who killed him.”

“She asked who killed him?” Reese’s neutral tone sharpened, and he looked up from his notes. “That’s what she said . . . in those words?”

“In those words,” Darla confirmed with another nod. “She didn’t ask if Curt had been in a car accident or keeled over from a heart attack. She just assumed he had been murdered.”

“Keeping in mind we don’t officially know that for a fact,” Reese reminded her. “So what about Tera? Mrs. Aguilar told me she had been trying to get hold of her daughter since she talked to you, but no dice.”

Darla explained what she knew about Tera’s schedule and Hilda’s opinion of her daughter’s relationship with Curt.

“But surely Hilda has heard from her by now,” she added with a frown, though a very bad feeling abruptly made her put down her fork, her appetite gone. “Reese, you don’t think the reason no one has heard from Tera is because she had something to do with Curt’s death, do you?”

The detective shrugged. “That’s one possible scenario. I could give you five or six more off the top of my head. For all we know, your hellcat over there”—he pointed his pen at the hellcat in question, who responded with a lazy yawn—“took a little stroll down the street that night and ended up at Mr. Benedetto’s place. Maybe he decided to explore a strange basement, chase a few rats. And then, when the poor schlub went downstairs to figure out what was causing the racket, he ended up tripping over the cat as he was going down the steps.”

“Yes, well, about that . . .”

She hesitated, wondering how best to explain that she’d been worried about that identical scenario, and that Jake already had proved quite scientifically that Hamlet had been stomping about in someone’s blood. Her confusion must have been reflected on her face, she realized, for Reese abruptly leaned forward in his chair.

His eyes narrowed as he glanced from her to Hamlet and back again. Then he shook his head. “Okay, spit it out, Red. What have you and that cat of yours been up to?”

For once, she didn’t bother to chastise him about the “Red” nickname. “Didn’t your CSI person mention it to you?”

“I haven’t seen the report yet. Mention what?”

“The bloody paw prints near Curt’s body.”

“Bloody paw prints.” Reese sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I saw what looked like a few drops of blood spatter near the body. You’re saying you think they were actually paw prints? All right, let’s hear this story from the top.”

Darla obliged for the third time that day, having already given James as well as Jake a recap of events. Surprisingly, James had been more inclined than Jake to believe Hamlet might have been the feline culprit in Curt’s basement.

Yes, Hamlet has managed a few midnight forays over the years, he’d told her when she had finished . . . much to her dismay. Why in the heck hadn’t James mentioned that fact a long time ago? Unfortunately, we still have not figured out how he makes good his escape.

For his part, Reese listened intently, scribbling a note or two in his book as she spoke.

“Jake has the strip all officially bagged and photographed if you need to see it,” she finished, and then hurried to add, “But I’m sure that Hamlet wouldn’t have deliberately tripped Curt.”

“Don’t worry, Darla, I’m not going to arrest your cat. I’m not even going to bring him in for questioning. But I wonder if—”

The intercom abruptly buzzed again, cutting off Reese in midword and making Darla jump.

“Sorry, didn’t know you were expecting someone,” Reese said as, apparently deciding to leave his last observation unsaid, he flipped his notebook shut and rose.

Darla scrambled to her feet as well and hurried to the door. “I’m not. It’s probably a customer who doesn’t get it that closed means closed.” Pushing the intercom button, she called, “Hello, who’s there?”

“Um, Darla?”

Darla frowned. The tinny male voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she didn’t recognize the speaker until he went on, “It’s Barry . . . Barry Eisen. I know I should have tried calling you first, but I was in the neighborhood. You’re not busy or anything, are you?”

“Hi, Barry. Actually, I—”

Before Darla could finish, Reese was at her side gesturing “no” and doing the old slice-across-his-throat routine. She quickly released the button and hissed at him, “What, am I not supposed to tell him you’re here?”

“Keep me out of it. Tell him you’re eating your dinner and see if he wants to come up.”

She gave him a fair version of Hamlet’s what the heck? look but gamely pressed the “Talk” button again and went on, “Actually, I was just finishing my supper. Did you want to come up for a cup of coffee or something?”

“Sure, that would be great,” came his reply, the slight eagerness she heard now in his voice making her wonder abruptly if he thought that something meant, well, something.

Frowning a bit, she buzzed him in and then swung back around to Reese to demand, “Why am I pretending you’re not here?”

“The same reason you’re pretending he’s not your boyfriend,” the detective replied. Before she could decide if he was joking or not, he went on, “Remember that whole element-of-surprise thing we talked about? I just want to check this guy out, see if he’s on the level. Get him talking about finding the body and anything else you can think of that has to do with what happened. Now that he’s had some time to think about things, he might mention a few details he forgot to tell me—like maybe a motive.”

“Surely you don’t think Barry killed Curt?” she gasped. “Why, they’ve been friends since high school. And he and I were together when we found the body.”

“Remember what I told you? Until we know it’s an accident, we assume it’s a murder, and everyone’s a suspect.”

“Fine. And what are you going to do while I’m quizzing Barry, hide behind the curtains?”

“Nope, I’m going to hang out in the john. Remember, keep him talking,” he said, taking his coat from the chair and heading for the half bath next to the kitchen. Hamlet, following suit, leaped off the sofa and stalked toward the bedroom, apparently tired of having his evening nap interrupted. Darla barely had time to pick her remaining takeout off the coffee table and stash it in the kitchen before Barry’s polite knock sounded at her door.

“Hi, come on in,” she told him, gesturing him into the few square feet of exposed oak flooring that served as her foyer and closing the door behind him. “Here, let me take your coat.”

“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this,” he apologized, unzipping a drab green jacket that looked like it had come from the army surplus store and handing it to her. “I needed to talk to someone, and since you were there today with me . . .”

He trailed off, and she nodded sympathetically. “I understand completely. It’s kind of like the way you can’t really talk about surviving a disaster—a flood or a hurricane, or something—except with someone else who survived the same thing. So, how are you holding up?”

“Not too bad, I guess.”

His lips quirked a little, as if he were trying for a smile; then, giving up the attempt, he instead ran a hand through his thinning hair and shook his head. “It’s all still such a shock. Curt’s always been a phone call away ever since high school. I keep reaching for my cell to dial him, and then I remember.”

Then he paused and gave her a quizzical look. “You, um, have something there,” he added, touching his forefinger to a spot below his lower lip.

He tactfully looked away as she hurriedly used the back of her free hand to scrub away a few drops of peanut sauce that had dripped unnoticed onto her chin. Thanks a lot, Reese, she thought with an irritated frown. The least he could have done was tell her that she was wearing her supper. She only hoped she didn’t have broccoli stuck in her teeth, to boot.

“Why don’t I make you that cup of coffee, and we can talk,” Darla suggested. Which would leave Reese stuck in his bathroom hiding place for a while, she thought in evil satisfaction. “Go ahead and make yourself at home on the couch.”

While Barry settled on the sofa, she hung his jacket on the hook near the door and then headed for her small kitchen, where she stopped for a surreptitious look in the shiny surface of her chrome toaster. Relieved to find no more stray remains of her meal reflecting back at her, she filled the coffeepot with filtered water and measured out enough Kona blend for a few cups.

“Ready in a couple of minutes,” she announced as she returned to the living room.

Barry had been studying the cover of the DVD case she’d left on the coffee table. Now, as she took the wingback chair, he gave a nod of approval. “I’m a British comedy fan, too. If you ever want to borrow some of my collection, I’ll be glad to drop them off to you.”

“Sure, thanks,” she told him, favorably impressed. Had Reese made a similar offer, it likely would have been for the collected works of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis.

They sat in awkward silence for a moment while she waited for him to steer the conversation to what had happened that morning. But when he merely fiddled with the jewel case, she took the initiative.

“What about Curt’s family?” she asked in a sympathetic tone. “I didn’t know him well enough to know if he had any relatives living in the area.”

“His dad passed away a few years ago. He has a mother and a married sister—Peggy is her name—who are in Connecticut. I called Peggy this afternoon and broke the news to her. I figured it would be better if she was the one who told her mother. I told her to let me know if she needed help with the funeral arrangements or anything.”

Darla nodded; then, mindful of Reese hiding out in her powder room, she dutifully added, “I really thought when we first found him that he’d fallen down the stairs and hit his head, but now I’m not so sure. What do you think happened? Was it an accident?”

“I think someone hit him with that crowbar and killed him, Darla.”

The stark words made her shiver. Barry’s blunt assessment somehow made the likelihood of murder a given. Worse, a sudden image of an impeccably groomed Hilda Aguilar in her turquoise suit smashing a wrecking bar against Curt’s skull flashed through her mind.

No, not right.

Then, since Reese had mentioned it, she replayed the scenario in her mind but with Barry wielding the crowbar. And again, she gave a mental shake of her head.

No, he doesn’t fit the picture as a killer, either.

Aloud, she asked, “Do you think it was the scrap thieves who did it?”

He shrugged. “It could be. I hear they’re some pretty rough characters, maybe even tied in to one of those Russian gangs. Or it could have been a druggie, or someone mad about the fact we got that building for a song. Not that we did anything illegal,” he hurried to clarify, “but sometimes there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes politicking in the renovation business. You know, a little you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours kind of thing.”

Darla stored that last comment for further thought, hoping that Reese could hear everything clearly from his bathroom vantage point. Raising her voice for the detective’s benefit, she asked, “Do you know if Curt had any enemies?

Now, Barry smiled a little.

“Are you asking me if a sweet, mild-mannered guy like my buddy Curt had ever pissed someone off enough that they’d contemplate murder? Let me put it this way: I’ve been tempted to throttle him a time or two myself, over the years. But under that obnoxious exterior he was a pretty good guy. Not a Mother Teresa or anything, but his heart was in the right place.”

“He did have a way about him,” Darla agreed with a fleeting smile of her own. “But I did hear somewhere that about half the time a murder victim knows his or her killer. So if it turns out not to be an accident, the police will probably be taking a pretty close look at all of us.”

“Yeah.” Barry dropped his gaze to the DVD case, where he appeared to be studying the product information with great interest. “I don’t mean to make this all about me, but I’m a bit worried about how that’s going to work out. I picked up that crowbar, remember? That means my fingerprints are all over it.”

“Maybe . . . but if you’d both been using it during the remodel, then your fingerprints would have been on it anyhow,” she pointed out in a reasonable tone.

He looked up again and sighed in audible relief. “You’re right. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s just that I have a really bad feeling about the whole situation.”

“It’s awful enough that Curt is dead,” she said, “but if it turns out that it wasn’t an accident, then that could mean no one in the neighborhood is safe.”

“Well, that’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about. You see, there was something I didn’t tell the police this morning.”

Darla could almost feel her ears flick forward in sudden interest, just as Hamlet’s did when he heard the sound of kibble pouring into his bowl. No doubt Reese’s ears were doing the same trick. Trying not to appear too anxious, she said, “If it’s important, you should say something. Can you at least tell me?”

“It’s about Tera.”

Barry hesitated, shifting the DVD case from hand to hand as he seemed to consider whether or not, in Reese’s words, to blab.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything, but yesterday while we were doing some work at the brownstone, I overheard Curt on the phone with her. I don’t want to repeat some of the things he said, but they weren’t exactly nice. I’ve met that girl before, and I know she has a temper. She might have tracked him down there last night to finish the fight . . . and, you know, ended up finishing it for good.”

Before Darla could respond to this unsettling revelation, the sound of a flushing toilet interrupted them. The powder room door swung open, and Reese came strolling out, coat over his arm.

“Thanks for letting me borrow the facilities, Darla,” he told her. “It’s a long way back to the precinct.” Then, to Barry, he added, “I thought I heard voices. How ya doing, Mr. Eisen? Darla didn’t tell me you were stopping by.”

“She didn’t tell me you were here, either,” the other man said with a sidelong look at her.

Darla managed an innocent smile. “Oh, I thought I mentioned it when you came in. But Detective Reese was just leaving, weren’t you?” she added with a pointed look at the cop.

Reese, however, was giving an exaggerated sniff. “Hey, Darla, is that coffee I smell? I might stick around for a cup, if you don’t mind. The stuff you brew is a hell of a lot better than what I can get downtown. How about you, Mr. Eisen? You going to join us?”

“Actually, I need to head back home.” He set down the DVD case and rose. “Darla, I apologize for not calling beforehand. I promise I will next time.”

He headed for the door, pausing to grab his jacket off the hook. “Detective, you’ll let me know as soon as I can go back into the brownstone, won’t you?”

“Should be tomorrow, probably when we know the cause of Mr. Benedetto’s death.”

“I trust you’ll let me know on that, too. Curt was . . . a good friend.”

So saying, he gave Darla a small wave and slipped out the door. She could hear the faint sounds of footsteps going down the stairs, and she went to the window to watch as he exited the front entry and started down the street.

Darla let the curtain drop again and turned back to glare at Reese, who had his notebook out and was scribbling again. “Thanks for making me look like an idiot a couple of times over. I’ll be lucky if Barry ever talks to me again.”

“You did fine,” he said in an absent voice as he flipped the page. “Oh, and I wasn’t kidding about the coffee. I could go for a cup . . . no sugar, just cream.”

Darla ran through a mental list of several rude retorts but in the end gritted her teeth and went to pour him his drink. “Why didn’t you let Barry keep talking?” she called from the kitchen as she pulled down a Twilight mug that she’d bought as a joke from a street vendor and poured Reese’s coffee into it. “I thought you wanted to see if he was on the level.”

“Yeah, well, I was getting bored. All you had in there to read were a bunch of decorating and reorganizing magazines.”

“Sorry, next time I’ll throw in a couple of Sports Illustrated copies just for you.” Still rolling her eyes, she returned to the living room to find Reese staring intently at his phone. “Anything interesting?” she asked as she handed over his cup.

She was disappointed not to get a reaction to the sparkly rendition of a brooding teen vampire on the mug she’d deliberately chosen to goad him. All he did was take an absent sip and nod.

“Yeah, I just got a text from my friend at the ME’s office. Apparently they had a slow day for a change and got to Mr. Benedetto already.”

Something in Reese’s expression made her certain she already knew the answer, even before she cautiously asked, “Did they decide on a cause of death?”

He glanced up from the phone and thrust it toward her. “Turns out Hamlet is in the clear. Here, read for yourself.”

Squinting, she made out the phrases, Estimated TOD between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. . . . Blunt force trauma to head . . . DNA material found on possible weapon collected . . . Being sent to outside lab to confirm tissue match. Handing back the phone, she asked in as small voice, “I guess this means . . .”

He nodded. “Your boyfriend had it pegged right. To put it in layman’s terms, someone bashed Curt Benedetto over the head with that crowbar.”