A Novel Way to Die

NINETEEN





“OH, THANK GOD! I’M SO GLAD TO HEAR THAT. RIGHT, SEE YOU soon.”

Darla hung up her cell and turned to James and Robert. They had been leaning against the bookstore counter listening to her side of the conversation with matching expressions of hopeful concern. It was an improvement on the gloomy looks that the pair had worn ever since she had given them the lowdown on the previous night’s medical emergency when they arrived at the store. Robert, in particular, had taken the news hard.

“He’s, like, the only grandfather I have,” the teen had mumbled, looking dangerously close to tears. “If he needs, you know, blood or something, I’ll donate.”

Darla hadn’t had the heart then to explain that his impulsive offer wouldn’t be needed for the old man’s particular condition. She tucked the phone back in her pants pocket and gave the pair a big smile.

“That was Jake. The doctor just checked in on Mr. Plinski again, and he’s doing fine. Jake will be bringing Mary Ann home in just a bit, and her brother should be out of the hospital in another day or so.”

“Ah, then apparently the diagnosis of a minor heart attack that the emergency room physician gave last night was correct,” James said with a satisfied nod.

For his part, Robert let loose with a fist pump and a fervent, “Sweet!”

“Sweet is right,” Darla agreed, sitting down on the register stool and giving an audible whoosh of relief. “I have to admit, I was pretty worried last night. When the paramedics carried Mr. Plinski out on that wheeled stretcher, he looked in pretty bad shape.”

In fact, Darla had feared the old man was already dead, recalling the small, still figure that she’d seen strapped to the gurney. But then he’d momentarily lifted a wrinkled hand in his sister’s direction, indicating he’d not yet gone to that big antique store in the sky. Mary Ann, of course, had wanted to jump into the back of the ambulance with her brother, but Jake had gently dissuaded her.

“That’s no place for you,” she had said as the paramedics loaded the old man into the EMT rig and then, lights still flashing, pulled away from the curb. “The ride is bumpy as hell, and the paramedics will be busy taking care of your brother. You don’t want to end up all bruised. I know which hospital they’re taking him to. We’ll get you there another way.”

“We can take Maybelle,” Darla had promptly volunteered, speaking of the old Mercedes sedan that Great-Aunt Dee had left her. The vehicle was parked in a garage perhaps five minutes’ walk away. “Jake, why don’t you take Mary Ann back to her apartment so she can put on some proper clothes. I’ll go back inside for my keys and then go get Maybelle.”

Normally, Darla would have been leery about running through the darkened streets at that hour of the night, but concern gave her feet what James would call the proverbial feathered appendages. She jogged her way to the garage and, almost hyperventilating, took the elevator up to where her car was waiting. As always, it turned over with a single twist of the key, and a few minutes later she was parked at the curb of the brownstone while Jake helped a distraught Mary Ann down the concrete stairs.

“We can’t all go,” Jake was quick to point out. “I haven’t heard from Hilda yet, and we can’t leave her stranded if she gets out before we’re back from the hospital.”

Darla had considered that a moment and then quickly tossed the car keys in Jake’s direction. “You go. You know where the hospital is, and you’re better in an emergency. But be sure to call me when you know something, no matter what time it is.”

She’d given Mary Ann an encouraging hug and helped her into the passenger side, where the frail woman barely made a dent in the padded leather seat. She waited until Jake had made a thoroughly illegal U-turn before heading back inside her own apartment again.

It had been almost five in the morning before Jake had awakened her from a restless sleep with a call telling her Mr. Plinski’s condition was serious but not dire, and they’d know more soon. Barely had she drifted back to sleep again, however, when Hilda called saying she was waiting downstairs.

Feeling punchy from her erratic night of missed sleep, Darla had grabbed her spare key to Jake’s garden apartment. Groggily, she had gone down to retrieve the woman’s handbag while Hilda waited in the taxi that was idling at the curb.

Hilda had looked as haggard as Darla felt. Her words of thanks had been brief as she reached through the cab window for her purse and then waved the driver to go on. Darla had chalked that brusque reaction to a combination of embarrassment and exhaustion. With a shrug, she had taken a moment to call Jake at the hospital and let her know that Luis had managed to spring Hilda and that the woman had reclaimed her bag and keys. Then, praying no one else would disturb her for a while, she had returned to her bed for a few more hours’ sleep before the store’s usual Sunday opening time of noon.

When she’d awakened, it had been very close to that hour. She’d had time only to hop into the shower and then pull on jeans and a bright yellow sweater. Since she didn’t have time to tame her hair, which had frizzed into an auburn cloud overnight, she’d twisted it into a quick bun, which she’d secured with a pair of wooden hair sticks. She’d made it downstairs just in time to see Robert and James, wearing matching green plaid vests, come walking up the stoop.

And now, while Robert and James celebrated the good news about their elderly neighbor with fist bumps and high fives, Darla was unhappily considering the fact that not everything was all right. Hamlet had never shown up that morning for his breakfast. And now, at almost half past twelve, the inconsiderate feline still was missing.

“James, Robert . . . I’m worried about Hamlet. I didn’t get to tell you earlier in all the excitement about Mr. Plinski, but the cat has been gone since sometime last night. The last I remember seeing him was when the two of you left the store.”

“What?” Robert demanded, his grin fading. “Like, no way. I told the little bro to stay here.”

“I know you did, but seriously, when I see that little so-and-so again—”

“I am sure you looked everywhere,” James smoothly interjected before Darla could finish her threat, “but maybe we should make another sweep through the store in case he is simply being stubborn about joining us.”

The three of them promptly spread out in different directions. Darla knew that it wasn’t unusual for Hamlet to be discovered curled up in some out-of-the-way nook, or else for him to be found lounging atop a bookshelf that appeared inaccessible. But what was unheard of was for the cat to skip his breakfast. Hamlet did not operate well on an empty stomach.

A few minutes later, they regrouped at the register.

“No Hamlet,” Darla said with a shake of her head. “I even checked that little gap between the bookshelves near the heat register, but no sign of him.”

“I looked upstairs in the lounge and out in the courtyard,” Robert offered, “but he wasn’t, like, there, either.”

“And I, too, had no luck . . . although I did find this on the floor near the reference area,” James said and handed Darla a thick paperback with a tricolor binding of black, red, and yellow.

“English-German, German-English Dictionary,” Darla read from the cover without much enthusiasm before tossing it onto the counter. “I guess that will come in handy if we want to say Where the hell is the damn cat? in German.”

“If I recall from my studies many years ago, that would be wo die Hölle die verdammte Katze ist,” James replied in a passable Teutonic accent. “But I agree, that is not much help under the circumstances.”

“Maybe he was, you know, worried about Mr. Plinski,” Robert suggested, sounding pretty concerned himself. “I’ll go check their stoop.”

He was back in a few moments shaking his head. “The little dude isn’t there.”

“I’ll check the apartment again,” Darla decided. “You know how he is. He probably snuck back in already and is up there laughing at us dumb humans.”

But Hamlet wasn’t upstairs, nor had he made an appearance by the time Jake and Mary Ann arrived back at the brownstone an hour later. The old woman looked surprisingly alert for someone who had spent most of her night sitting in a hospital waiting room.

“My dear, I am so grateful to you for lending us the car,” she exclaimed to Darla as Jake helped her out of the Mercedes. “I used to ride around in Maybelle with Dee quite often. That made the trip to the hospital rather comforting, like my old friend was watching over me.”

“I’m glad I could help in some way . . . though, of course, Jake is the real champ here.”

Mary Ann nodded and gave the ex-cop a teary smile. “I must confess, I phoned Jake even before I dialed 9-1-1. I was so flustered when I woke up and heard Brother calling to me. He said he’d been in pain for a good half hour before he finally decided that something was wrong. The nice doctor who took care of him said things could have been much worse if he’d waited any longer.”

“All of us were relieved to hear that he should be fine,” Darla assured her. “And we’ll all lend a hand if you need help while Mr. Plinski is laid up.” Turning to Jake, she added, “You look beat. Why don’t you get Mary Ann settled and then get some rest yourself. I’ll take Maybelle back to the garage.”

“Thanks, kid,” Jake replied with a tired smile that suddenly showed her age. Tossing Darla the keys, she admitted, “Now that the worst of it is over, I’m about ready to drop.”

Darla assumed her friend meant the medical emergency with Mr. Plinski. The specter of the missing Tera, along with the fact that Hilda had been charged with the brutal murder of a man they all knew, loomed large still. And that didn’t even count the situation with Robert. He still needed, as Jake had so wryly put it, his “forever home.” But for the moment, her most immediate concern was finding Hamlet.

Darla went back into the shop for her phone and coat. “I’m taking Maybelle back to the garage,” she announced. “And I’ll walk back the long way just in case Hamlet is doing a little Sunday stroll out there.”

“Take your time,” James urged her, “and I will be certain to call you if he shows up while you are gone.”

On the brief drive to the garage, Darla kept a keen eye out for a sleek black flash. As was to be expected, the missing feline was not to be found among the shoppers and walkers all out enjoying the crisp weather. She reminded herself that it was afternoon, which equaled prime catnapping time. Wherever Hamlet was, he likely was snoring away as he rested up for the arduous journey back to the bookstore.

She didn’t dare consider the alternative, that he’d had a run-in with a vehicle while roaming and that his sleep might be of the permanent sort.

By the time Maybelle was safely parked, Darla had mapped out a search route in her mind to include one particular place: the brownstone belonging to Barry. It had occurred to her that Hamlet, for reasons known only to his wily feline brain, might have made another trip to the basement where they’d discovered Curt’s body. With Barry on his way to Connecticut, she wouldn’t be able to go inside, but she could walk around the place and peer through the basement windows.

She did not slack on searching along the way, though. She peered behind garbage cans in alleys and behind decorative floor pots lined up along storefronts. She even made her stealthy way down to a few garden apartments to peek behind the bicycles chained securely at the bottom of their entry steps. Once, a sprawl of black fur atop a short concrete column sent her hurrying to check out a stoop halfway down one block. Unfortunately, the feline sunning itself there proved to be female and of the tuxedo variety—definitely not Hamlet.

“As soon as I find you, I’m going to slap a GPS collar on you,” she threatened, drawing a disdainful look from the tuxedo cat, who likely assumed the words were meant for her.

Shoving her hands deep into her coat pockets—as usual, she had neglected to bring gloves—Darla continued in the direction of Barry’s brownstone, one block over from where the tuxedo cat lived. Her pace was faster now, but she warned herself not to get her hopes up. Chances were he wasn’t there, either, and she’d just have to wait until it pleased His Furry Highness to come home.

Her next stop on the way, however, was one she hadn’t planned. Having made a detour down a street she’d never traveled before, Darla walked past a dingy shop front and then did a literal double-take. The neon sign in its window proclaimed in large red letters, “Bill’s Books and Stuff.” And, even worse, as she halted for a moment in startled confusion—his nasty porn shop was located this close to her nice store?—the shop door opened and Bill himself lumbered out into the daylight.

He recognized her almost as quickly as she recognized him, and he sneered.

“Whaddaya doing in front of my shop?” he demanded, his simian jaw thrusting in her direction. “No, don’t tell me. You’re looking to steal another one of my employees.”

“I most certainly am not,” she choked out, even as she reminded herself she didn’t owe the man an explanation.

His sneer morphed into a cold leer. “Well, then, let me guess. I know, you’re here to buy yourself one of those ladies’ toys. A single gal like you, all alone at night . . .”

He trailed off suggestively, and Darla felt heat flame her cheeks. She’d thought Curt with his extracurricular activities was bad, but Bill the Porn Shop Owner made him look like the model of civility. Thank goodness poor Robert didn’t have to suffer under this jerk’s influence anymore!

Fleetingly, she considered a few responses of the anatomically impossible kind and then decided dignified silence was her best resort. Given Robert’s accounts of the man’s foul temper, taunting him would be foolish at best . . . and dangerous at worst. Turning on her heel, she hurried on in the direction that she’d been going, trying as she did so to ignore the man’s mirthless laugh and his parting crude comment, “Hey, c’mon back! We got a two-for-one sale going on!”

A man like that definitely bore watching, she thought in outrage, though her burst of anger was swiftly replaced by an unsettled feeling. Why, she might have been standing within a few feet of Curt’s murderer. Reflexively, she glanced over her shoulder, suddenly fearing that the man might have followed her. Had Reese questioned him at all, she wondered, or was the cop so set on pinning the crime on Hilda that he’d overlooked someone who was, in Darla’s view, a far more likely suspect? Either way, she’d be steering clear of that particular block in the future.

She only hoped that Hamlet would do the same!

Just to be careful, she took a slightly circuitous route away from that neighborhood, checking another time or two behind her and breathing a relieved sigh when she saw no sign of Bill’s apelike visage leering after her. It wasn’t until she reached Barry’s brownstone a few minutes later that the heat in her face finally faded and her heartbeat was back to normal. Even though it was still midafternoon, the angle of the sun through the surrounding buildings left this portion of the block in early shadow. She shivered a little as she surveyed the house from the sidewalk. Without Barry there to lend his placid company, the feel of the building had changed. Something about the place now set off her hinky meter.

No longer was it simply a once-charming Greek Revival bravely holding up under the excesses of time and the previous owners’ careless remodeling. Instead, the building had assumed an air of cold abandonment that dared anyone to cross its threshold. It wasn’t simply that a murder had occurred on its premises, though that was bad enough! Wrapped in afternoon shadows, it hunkered behind its single shielding oak, its few unboarded windows seeming to watch for the errant passersby who strayed too close and needed to be taught a lesson.

At that last thought, Darla gave herself a firm mental shake. Shades of The Haunting of Hill House, she told herself with grin at her overwrought imagination. The place might be a dump in its current state, but Barry had mentioned nothing about any sinister history connected to it. The only thing that walked in that house was a mouse or rat or two—and possibly a certain black feline.

She softly groaned. Way to psych yourself up, kid, would have been Jake’s grinning response to the situation. But Darla cheered herself by remembering that she needed only to do an exterior search. Barry would have locked the place before he left. With that thought, she stepped around the woven construction fencing and made her way to the basement windows. There, she knelt in the damp earth. Clutching the security bars, she peered through the dirty glass into the darkness.

Or, rather, what should have been darkness. From what little she could make out through the layer of black grime coating the window, most of the basement was cloaked in deep shadow, save for a small light that seemingly had been left burning in one corner beyond the boiler. She frowned, scrubbing at the glass with her hand in an attempt to clean it.

She succeeded only in smearing about the dirt so that her view of the basement was even murkier, if that were possible. Had the crime scene investigators forgotten one of their flashlights? Or else maybe neglected to turn off one of Barry’s clip-on lamps? But the light meant that if Hamlet was in the basement, with luck she would spy him, or, at least, maybe a stray beam would catch his wide green eyes.

“Hamlet! Hamlet, are you in there?”

She strained her ears for some sound in reply; then, hearing nothing, she scooted over to the next window. Squatting in front of the glass, she tried again. “Hamlet! Kitty, kitty, kitty! Come on out!”

Barely had the words left her mouth than she thought she saw through the window’s veil of dirt a shadow move within the deeper darkness of the basement. “Hamlet,” she called again, reaching through the bars to rap at the window, “are you in there? Come out like a good cat, would you?”

The shriek of metal hinges nearby made her jump. She gave a reflexive shriek of her own and fell backward, landing with an ungraceful thud into a sitting position there on the grass. Heart pounding wildly, she shot a quick look toward the porch. Someone was hanging out at what was supposed to be an empty brownstone!

Her view of the door was blocked by the pile of brick and its wrapping of orange construction fencing, so her imagination—already running full bore—had a few fleeting moments to conjure various scenarios. Perhaps she’d stumbled upon the scrap thieves in their work, and they didn’t want any witnesses. Maybe Bill had guessed she suspected him of Curt’s murder and followed her, planning to drag her into the empty house and kill her, too. Or it could be that Curt’s ghost was lonely with Barry out of town and was looking for some company.

She scrambled to her feet, not liking any of these possibilities and poised to take off at a dead run. If Hamlet was in the basement, he’d just have to fend for himself until she could return with reinforcements—the kind wearing badges and carrying guns! But the adrenaline that had been rushing through her veins slammed into a figurative wall of confusion when she saw just who was standing on the porch staring down at her.