A Novel Way to Die

SIXTEEN





DARLA GLANCED ABOUT, UNABLE FOR A MOMENT TO TELL where the voice, which was obviously Robert’s, had come from. Then she looked down.

In the shadowed corner of the courtyard to the right of the door, she spied something tucked away behind the bistro chairs and table where Darla and her staff often took their lunch. Robert lay huddled on the bricks in his sleeping bag, his head propped on his backpack as a makeshift pillow. That alone was enough to make her eyes widen in surprise.

But what truly startled her was the fact that the AWOL Hamlet lay stretched atop Robert’s shoulders, serving as an equally makeshift blanket. The feline raised his head, and his green eyes caught the light. From his casual yet protective pose, she swiftly caught the vibe from him, It’s all under control.

Leaning the rain stick against the doorjamb, Darla promptly hit “End” on her phone and hurried down the two steps that led to the patio.

“Robert, what’s wrong? Why in the world are you sleeping out here in the cold?” she demanded, her previous outrage replaced by a wave of concern.

Robert, meanwhile, was dragging himself into a sitting position. In the process, he dislodged his feline guardian angel, who slipped off the teen’s shoulders and landed neatly on the brick. While Hamlet paused for a quick paw lick, Robert managed to extract himself from the sleeping bag and scramble to his feet.

“Sorry,” he mumbled through a yawn, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand, while with the other he clutched his sleeping bag to him like a security blanket. “I just needed a place to crash. I’ll go find somewhere else.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” came Darla’s stern reply. “Come inside right now where it’s warm and explain to me what’s going on.”

He meekly followed her inside, trailed by Hamlet, who did not look meek at all. Darla saw that he—the teen, not the cat—was wearing the same clothes as he’d had on earlier that day, though now the garments were notably crumpled. Shaking her head, she locked the door again and led Robert back to the register where the light above illuminated that portion of the counter. She pointed him to the tall stool there and said, “Sit.”

He did, while Hamlet lightly leaped onto the counter for a better view of the action. Once they both were settled, she said, “Now, talk. How come you’re not at home where you belong?”

“I, um, don’t have a home anymore,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “My dad, he, you know, tossed me out as soon as I turned eighteen back in the spring.”

“Your dad threw you out?” Darla stared at him in shock. “Why, you were still in high school then, weren’t you?” At his nod, she went on, “What, were you doing something illegal, and he didn’t want you in the house?”

“No! I was making all A’s in my classes and everything. It didn’t matter to him. He said his time was up, he wasn’t responsible for me anymore. He said his dad threw him out at eighteen, so he was, like, returning the favor.”

“But what about your mother? How could she allow that?”

“She’s somewhere in California. I haven’t heard from her since I was eleven.”

The youth’s matter-of-fact tone affected Darla more than any bitterness or anger. How could a parent do such a thing to his or her child? If the youth had been sitting around the house unemployed and using drugs, maybe that would have been different, but he’d been in school and then holding down a job of one sort or another ever since graduation. Apparently, his only transgression had been having a birthday.

Darla shook her head in disbelief. Even though she’d lived in the New York City area for only a short while, she knew full well how hard it was to make rent there. With only a high school education, and working jobs that paid little more than minimum wage, no way could Robert support himself on his own or even scrape together enough to get himself somewhere else.

“We’ll talk about this some more tomorrow,” she told him. “For tonight, why don’t you go up to the lounge upstairs and sleep on the couch? You can use the shower in the little bathroom up there in the morning, and I’ll bring you down some breakfast around nine o’clock. And then we can figure out what to do.”

She paused, dreading the next question but knowing she needed to ask it. “And Robert, about seeing Tera Aguilar the other night . . . tell me, what were you really doing out on the streets that late?”

“I was, you know, heading back here,” he said, clutching his sleeping bag more tightly to him. “Sometimes my cousin lets me crash at his place, but he wasn’t home, so I thought I’d stay in the courtyard here. I figured it was, you know, safer than the park.”

“That was all? Do you promise you’re not the one going around the neighborhood stealing scrap metal to sell for cash?” she asked, though knowing his circumstances as she did now, she’d be hard-pressed to judge him too harshly.

Robert, however, gave his head a vigorous shake.

“No way, I don’t steal. Besides, Alex . . . Mr. Putin . . . is pretty mad about whoever’s doing that. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she replied, relieved to realize that she believed him. Though, of course, one final question remained. “And you don’t know anything about who killed Mr. Benedetto, either?”

He shook his head again, though this time he was stifling a yawn, as well. “No clue. I just hope they catch him soon. It’s kind of, you know, creepy being out there at night thinking some psycho dude might be running around.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that tonight,” Darla assured him. “Like I said, you can stay upstairs. Now, get moving, so we can both get some rest.”

“Sure. And, uh, thanks for not being, you know, mad.”

He slid off the stool and started for the stairs, looking so young and vulnerable that she wanted to run after him and give him a motherly hug. She suppressed the impulse, however, and merely watched to make sure he made it up the stairs safely. Hamlet, meanwhile, rose and looked from her to the departing teen.

“Go on ahead,” she softly told the cat. “I think he could use a little company.”

Seemingly agreeing with her assessment, Hamlet slipped down off the counter again and padded his way up the steps. Darla gave them a moment to get settled in; then she let herself out the side door again and headed up to her apartment. Once there, she sent a quick text message to Jake—All OK ignore voice mail I’ll explain tomorrow—and then took a quick look at her computer screen. All stations were quiet once more. Leaving the program open, just in case, she flipped out the lights and then headed off to her bedroom.

One potential suspect in Curt’s death had been ruled out, at least to her satisfaction, she decided as she shed her sweats for an oversized T-shirt and settled beneath her comforter. The teen’s explanation regarding his involvement—or rather, the lack thereof—with the scrap metal thieves had the ring of truth. As for the actual murder, so far as she knew, Robert wasn’t anywhere on Reese’s radar. James would be equally glad to learn that Robert had nothing to do with either the Curt situation or the scrap metal thefts. But the older man would likely be as distressed as she to know of the teen’s homeless plight.

Once again, Darla’s redheaded temper simmered at the thought of Robert’s father callously throwing out the boy to live on the streets. If not for her changing the cameras and thereby catching him, how long might Robert have spent sleeping in the bookshop’s courtyard? And what would have happened once winter truly hit, when the temperatures dropped well below freezing and snow filled the walled-in terrace? Hopefully James could help her figure out a solution to Robert’s situation.

But even with Robert now accounted for, that still left Curt dead and Tera missing.

Darla groaned and pulled the covers over her head. She’d try again tomorrow with Robert’s and James’s help to puzzle out an answer to Hamlet’s cryptic clues. And maybe by then Reese would have learned something of value from Tera’s cell phone records and messages.

Which reminded her that she still had that piece of plastic in her corduroys that she needed to give to Reese.

Which also reminded her that, despite all the unpleasantness of the past few days, at least she’d had a very pleasant meal with a very pleasant man.

She smiled to herself in the darkness. The proverbial sterling lining to the cumulonimbus, as James would put it. For the dinner with Barry had been fun, and she was looking forward to a second time out with him. She suspected that he was looking forward to it, too. And she could even overlook the slightly underhanded way he’d managed to get her cell phone number.

Of course, the big question was, did he like cats . . . and more important, would Hamlet like him? She couldn’t recall seeing the two of them in the same room together, and so the feline’s opinion of the man was an unknown at this point. But she rather suspected the two would get along well enough.

After all, if the persnickety Hamlet could become BFFs with a goth teen, then anything was possible.

* * *

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU’VE NEVER HAD BISCUITS AND GRAVY FOR breakfast before? What kind of uncivilized place is New York, anyway?”

Smiling, Darla set down a basket of fluffy biscuits in front of Robert, followed by a bowl of white sausage gravy, and then sat beside him. They were upstairs in the bookstore lounge, which up until a few minutes ago had been Robert’s temporary sleeping quarters. Today, he was wearing what she could only term a mod black turtleneck over his fashionably skinny black jeans. He’d tied the look together with yet another vest, this one made of some shiny silver fabric with a distinctly futuristic vibe to it.

By the time she’d come upstairs, he was folding the blanket that normally was tucked beneath the oversized coffee table that anchored the sofa with a pair of wingbacks. The coffee table served equally well as a dining table, which was a good thing, since Darla had decided to indulge her inner country cook that morning and go with the works.

First, however, she’d had to feed Hamlet, who had been sitting in her kitchen as usual, awaiting his kibble and fresh water. Apparently, his teen-sitting duties extended only through nighttime hours. While he crunched away at his breakfast, Darla gave him a few “atta kitties” for watching out for Robert overnight. And, to make up for the shrimp she’d not brought home for him from the Greek place, she’d cooked a small chunk of thick-sliced maple bacon just for him. Hamlet had finished off the crispy slab in a couple of appreciative bites and favored her with a meow of enjoyment in return.

At nine on the dot, as promised, she’d made her way down to the shop carrying the essentials of a good southern breakfast. In addition to the biscuits and gravy, she’d scrambled a few eggs, which she topped with cheddar, and cooked several slabs of the same kind of bacon that Hamlet had just enjoyed. To counteract all the heart-clogging grease, she had also carried down a carton of orange juice, all packed into an old picnic basket of Great-Aunt Dee’s. The coffee was already taken care of, as she’d recently splurged on one of those single-cup brewers and installed it in the lounge.

Now, Robert picked up a biscuit and stared at it in bemusement. “Don’t you have any, like, grape jelly?”

“Jelly is for toast. No, no, don’t dunk it like a donut!” she exclaimed as he attempted to dip the biscuit into the gravy bowl. Picking up a biscuit of her own, she went on, “Hold your horses, and I’ll show you how to do this right.”

Though, of course, doing it right meant you also needed to follow said breakfast with a five-mile run so as to unclog any arteries that had become dangerously plugged up during the course of the meal.

“First, you tear the biscuit into little pieces that you put on your plate. Or, if you want to be formal about it”—she paused and grabbed a second biscuit—“you can slice it like a muffin and put both halves like so,” she explained, arranging top and bottom alongside each other to form a flaky figure eight. “Now take your gravy and pour it over the biscuits. And I don’t mean little dollops. Drown those suckers.”

Still looking doubtful, Robert followed her lead, pouring until his biscuit halves were swimming in the creamy sausage and gravy mixture. “Now what?”

“Now eat it and thank God you’re a country boy,” she told him, grinning at the John Denver reference that she was pretty sure went straight over that city boy’s head.

He took a tentative bite and swallowed. “Not bad.” And then, while Darla watched in amusement, he went on to polish off four biscuits topped with gravy, most of the scrambled eggs and bacon, and half the carton of juice.

They weren’t kidding about a teenaged boy’s appetite, she thought, suddenly understanding why her contemporaries with high school–aged children were always complaining about their grocery bills. Her amusement faded, however, when it occurred to her that in addition to lacking a regular place to sleep, Robert might be missing a few meals as well.

Finishing off her own two biscuits, and vowing to have nothing but salad for lunch and supper as penance, she settled back in her chair and fixed him with a serious look. “All right, that’s taken care of. Now, do you feel like telling me how you’ve been getting along these past few months? You said you stay with your cousin sometimes?”

“Yeah, except when he, you know, has a girl over. Or when he lets some other friend stay there. He’s only got, like, one room, so I can’t live with him permanently.”

“So what do you do when you can’t stay with him?”

“I stay with a friend, sometimes, or else in the park. And this girl I know who works at a gym, she sneaks me in some mornings so I can use their shower and washing machine. And I can lock one of the dressing rooms and sleep in there for a while, too.”

He paused and took another swallow of orange juice. “Oh, I almost forgot. A couple of weeks before he fired me, Bill found out I needed a place and let me stay in his basement. He only charged me, like, a week’s salary. I mean, there was a cot and a dresser and this old TV, and except one time when it leaked after it rained real hard, it wasn’t too bad. But after what happened, I had to pack up again.”

She wanted to ask him if he’d considered finding someplace where he could split the rent with a friend. But then it occurred to her that in this part of town it would probably take four or five friends to afford anything that wasn’t another Bill’s basement.

“I tried a homeless shelter one time,” he went on, “but it was, like, kind of sad. Old dudes and ladies with kids, mostly. I figured they needed the space more than me, so I didn’t go back. I mean, I’d feel bad if some five-year-old little dude had to sleep on the sidewalk because of me.”

“But aren’t you ever scared out there alone?” Darla persisted, recalling horror stories she’d heard about life on the streets.

He shrugged. “It’s okay. Except one time two guys jumped me and, you know, stole my phone. Oh, and my shoes. But nothing, like, bad ever happened. I can take care of myself.”

His tone as he related all this had been matter-of-fact, but now Darla saw a brief flicker of uncertainty in his expression that belied his air of unconcern. By her calculations, he’d been homeless for maybe six months, long enough that any feeling of adventure at fending for himself had likely been replaced by a growing sense of hopelessness. But if she had anything to say about it, last night’s courtyard campout would be his last night on the streets.

Not wanting to push the subject, however, she turned the conversation back to southern cooking while they drank their coffee. Finally, glancing at her watch, she told him, “It’s almost ten. Go ahead and stack all these dishes in the picnic basket while I get the register set up. If you think you can hold down the fort by yourself for a bit, I need to run down and visit with Jake.”

She’d had a text message from the ex-cop waiting for her when she got up that morning: the words cryptic much followed by several question marks. She’d grinned a little at that virtual jab and texted back half a dozen exclamation points followed by will stop by @ 10. After all, given the number of times that Jake had left her hanging, a little payback was in order.

A few minutes after opening, Darla left Robert and Hamlet—who’d wandered down in search of more bacon—to talk to Jake. Besides needing to explain the Robert situation and perhaps get some advice, she still had the bit of pink plastic to pass on to Reese. She also wanted to know if there was an update on Tera. The fact that Jake had not been answering her phone last night might mean some new developments. On the other hand, she was almost certain that Jake’s breezy text indicated that nothing earth-shattering had occurred in the interim.

Even before she knocked at Jake’s door, Darla could hear the faint echoes of distorted guitar licks and throbbing bass drifting up from the basement apartment. Not exactly the sort of music she’d expect to hear playing at that hour of the morning, but then, she’d seen Jake’s music collection before. Save for a scattering of jazz and classical, everything in her library was 1980s or earlier rock, emphasis on guitars, bass, and drums, from bands with names that included words like “death” and “black.” Since Darla’s own music tastes ran more toward light rock, with an occasional segue into country or New Age for variety, the two of them had agreed to disagree on that particular subject.

Figuring she’d never be heard over the headbanging if she knocked, Darla opened the door and walked on in.

Jake sat at her table typing at her computer, her mane of black curls bobbing in time to the music. She might have passed for a college student studying for a final save for the reading glasses, which Darla had never seen her wear before, perched on her nose. Jake glanced up at Darla’s approached, waved her in, and snatched up a small remote control. The music promptly quieted from an unholy roar down to a breathy growl.

“Sorry,” she said, plucking off the glasses and giving Darla a grin. “After yesterday, I had this urge to play a little music from the good old days.”

“Which days were those, the Inquisition?” Darla replied with an answering smile. “Talk about torture, having to listen to that. What is it, grunge?”

Jake shook her head in mock dismay. “You really did lead a sheltered life back in Dallas, didn’t you? Well, let me give you a little music education, kid.”

She assumed an exaggerated storytelling tone, as if she were trying out for the Jersey version of Faerie Tale Theatre.

“Once upon a time, somewhere between the long-ago embarrassment that was disco and the current abomination that is Britney Spears, lived a genius of a musical genre known as heavy metal. Their name is legion—Black Sabbath, Metallica, Judas Priest. And, of course, Iron Maiden, which is playing for your listening enjoyment as we speak. Some of these groups have spent thirty years on the charts, which I kinda doubt Britney is gonna do. And these guys”—she pointed in the direction of her very 1990s stereo—“are as old as me and still putting out new albums and touring. So listen and learn.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I value my eardrums and my sanity.” Darla plopped herself into one of the chrome chairs. “Besides, I’m here to tell you about last night.”

While Jake listened attentively, Darla recounted how she’d found Robert and Hamlet sleeping in the courtyard, and the teen’s explanation as to how he’d become homeless. When she was finished, Jake shook her head.

“I hate to tell you, but I’ve seen that happen more times than I care to count. Not that the other extreme where you let your kid live with you until he’s forty is much better, but you just don’t toss a teenager into a city like this without any money or life skills or some kind of plan. At least Robert has a good head on his shoulders and has managed to take care of himself to this point, but most of those kids aren’t as savvy as he is. They’re out there looking for a place to live, needing something to eat, wanting a little cash in their pockets. Pretty soon they’ve hooked up with a gang or a pimp or a dealer, just to survive. And that’s why the teen crime rate is so high, and the teen victim rate is even higher. And don’t even get me started on teen suicide statistics.”

“So what do we do with him?” Darla asked in concern. “He can’t sleep in the bookstore lounge indefinitely. And I don’t have room in my apartment for him.”

“What about the Plinskis? Didn’t Mary Ann say she was looking for a new tenant?”

Darla nodded. “Actually, I thought about that on the way down here, but no way could he afford the place working part-time hours here and for Putin’s construction business. And I don’t think the Plinskis would be too keen on a whole herd of teenage boys living in their garden apartment, which is what it would take to make the rent.”

Then she brightened. “Maybe James has a spare room, at least temporarily until we figure something out.”

“Yeah, I like how they have that whole father-son look going with the vests these days,” Jake replied with a snicker. “Or maybe Reese would know a place.”

“Reese! That reminds me.”

Darla stood and reached into the pocket of her slacks to pull out the small plastic ziplock bag where, in emulation of Jake, she’d carefully placed the found piece of pink plastic. “When I was helping Barry clean up after Reese dumped all the construction junk onto his lawn, I found this caught in a piece of wood. It must have broken off the plastic case on Tera’s phone. I don’t know if it will do him any good, but I thought I should give it to him.”

“Good work, kid. You never know about stuff like that.”

Turning in her chair, Jake opened one drawer of the file cabinet behind her and pulled out a pair of long curved tweezers. Then, setting a clean sheet of paper on the table, she opened the small plastic bag and carefully shook out the piece of pink plastic onto that page. Putting on her reading glasses again, she used the tweezers to pick up the fragment and studied it with a frown. Finally, she set it down again and gave Darla a sharp look.

“I hate to break it to you, kid, but what you’ve got here isn’t part of a cell phone case. It’s a fingernail.”