A Novel Way to Die

TWENTY-THREE





“HILDA SAYS TO TELL YOU THAT SHE HOPES YOU’RE FEELING better,” Jake said as she snapped her phone shut again and leaned against the counter not far from the stool where Darla sat behind the register. Then, setting a gift bag embossed with the Great Scentsations logo on the counter, she added, “And here’s a combination thanks and get-well gift from her.”

“Well, you deserve as much thanks as I do,” Darla protested. Still, she eagerly glanced into the bag to find it filled with several products she recalled from her last foray into Hilda’s shop. She smiled wryly when she saw that one was a jar of cucumber eye compresses.

Jake, meanwhile, reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar, genie-bottle-shaped vial, which she displayed with a satisfied smile of her own. “Hey, I got mine. Oh, and Hilda said she’ll email you the names of some ointments that will help fade the rest of that bruising.”

Darla put a self-conscious hand to her throat, which was wrapped in a bright blue paisley scarf of Great-Aunt Dee’s that she’d found in a box in the back of her closet. She’d donned it less as a wry fashion statement and more to stave off questions and dismayed looks from her customers who might peg her for a battered woman and decide she needed intervention. Of course, the concealing fabric was no defense against the curious shoppers who’d seen the evening television news a few days earlier and already knew her backstory, having caught the report about what Robert had been referring to as the “Showdown at the Brownstone Corral.”

The aftermath of that event, while nowhere nearly as dramatic, had been in its own way equally as trying. The ER doctor treating her had insisted that Darla stay overnight in the hospital while they assessed her head injury. A mild concussion, along with some tracheal trauma, was the doctor’s determination.

Dressed in her green ER scrubs, the young doctor had looked to Darla like a kid who’d escaped a slumber party. Still, her soft voice had an unmistakable air of authority as she reminded Darla that not all her injuries were outwardly visible.

“Let’s not forget there’s a certain psychological trauma involved with being almost murdered,” the woman had added, eyeing her over her clipboard with an expression that seemed to indicate she’d seen a few things in her short tenure. “You don’t want to go home and pretend everything’s normal, because it’s not.”

Though Darla had been determined to prove the doctor wrong, she’d not succeeded. Sleep was hard to come by, mostly because her dreams invariably devolved into a hazy re-creation of those frightening minutes when she’d truly feared for her life. And even safely ensconced in her apartment, she found herself jumping at every small noise and constantly looking over her shoulder lest Barry suddenly be there.

Physically, things were only a little better. Four days after her struggle with Barry, the distinct pattern of splayed fingertips was still visible on her pale flesh. The original reddish-blue coloring now had faded to a gruesome-looking combination of green and yellow; still, Jake had warned her that it would take at least another week or more for the bruising to fade completely. And while her voice was almost back to normal—the hoarseness relieved by repeated doses of hot tea and honey—the bruises were a constant reminder of just how close she’d come to being Barry Eisen’s third victim.

Which brought to mind the man’s second victim . . .

“That’s nice of Hilda to think of me, considering what she’s coping with right now,” Darla said, meaning it. “So how is Tera doing?”

That the missing girl had resurfaced later that same day, while Darla had been recuperating at the hospital, had been the one bright spot in the whole tragic affair. Barely had Darla learned to her immense relief that the body she’d found in the brownstone basement had not been Tera—according to Jake, the victim was instead the blond ponytailed building inspector who’d had words with Barry a few days earlier—than Reese had called her hospital room. Fearing dire news, she’d instead been overjoyed to hear that Tera Aguilar had been discovered alive, and relatively well despite a broken arm, and was being reunited with her mother.

You won’t believe this, Red, the cop had told her, but the whole time she’s been holed up with a couple of her girlfriends. And the real kicker? The girls are Alex Putin’s daughters.

The fact that Tera had been suffering from mild amnesia and was obviously in fear of her life had convinced her friends that it wasn’t safe for anyone else to know where she was.

This Putin guy made a couple of phone calls and got a doc to patch her up on the QT, Reese had continued. They figured she was hiding from an abusive boyfriend, so no way were they going to let her out in public. And Tera couldn’t remember enough about what had happened to know if it was safe for her to tell her mother where she was. It wasn’t until you made the news, Red, that she knew it was okay to come out of hiding.

“The doctor said whoever set her broken arm did a decent job of it, so she won’t need any follow-up surgery once she’d out of the cast,” Jake said. “And she doesn’t seem to have any lasting damage from the concussion, though she really doesn’t remember much of what happened before she crawled out of that Dumpster and went looking for help.” Jake shook her head and added, “Too bad we can’t say the same thing for that building inspector friend of Eisen’s. But if it comes down to a choice between either his or her body wrapped in that plastic, I’m damn glad it wasn’t Tera.”

“Tell me about it!” Darla agreed with a sigh. “When I saw that long blond hair sticking out of the tarp, I was sure that Barry had killed her, too. It never occurred to me it could have been Toby who had been murdered.”

Now, Darla wanted to know, “Did Reese get anything out of Barry that would explain what the heck happened there?”

“At this point, since Tera is still iffy as a witness, it’s mostly conjecture,” Jake replied, idly playing with the tassels on the display of bookmarks beside her. “Eisen’s no fool. He lawyered himself up and isn’t talking. But I can make a few educated guesses.”

“Go ahead,” Darla urged. “I want to hear it.”

“Okay. From what Reese pieced together from Tera’s statement, she showed up at the brownstone Wednesday night sometime after midnight. That fits in with when Robert said he saw her on the street. Unfortunately for her, she arrives just in time to witness Eisen club her boyfriend with the crowbar. She panics and tries to run out of there. Barry doesn’t want any witnesses, so he goes after her and gives her the old crowbar treatment, too. That’s how she got the broken arm and concussion.”

“But the whole thing about the Dumpster . . . how did Tera end up in there?” Darla wanted to know.

Jake let the tassels fall back into place and moved on to the cartoon pencil display.

“In the heat of the moment, Eisen probably didn’t check Tera too closely,” she replied. “He just assumed he’d killed her. And then he had the problem of two bodies lying around the brownstone. I’m sure he figured he would be pretty safe in trying to pass off Curt’s death as an accident. And if the ME ruled it murder, he’d have the scrap thieves or someone else to pin it on. That’s why he made sure that you were there when the body was found, to bolster that story.”

Jake gave a humorless smile. “But Tera was one body too many . . . it would be pushing things to have you find both of her and Curt dead. He probably assumed he was safe enough stashing her in the Dumpster for a day or so until the cops released the crime scene. Then he could get a car and dump her somewhere, or else bury her in the basement like he was going to do with the building inspector. Then Reese threw a monkey wrench in his plan by doing a little Dumpster diving before he could move Tera’s body.”

“Except that Tera wasn’t really dead,” Darla added, stating the obvious.

This time, Jake’s smile held true amusement as she nodded.

“The girl has more lives than Hamlet, and she’s just as gutsy. Apparently, when she came to in the container, she managed to drag herself out—broken arm and concussion and all—and get the heck away without Eisen knowing she was gone. But she left behind her cell phone in the Dumpster.”

Jake paused and chuckled outright. “Can you imagine what was going through Eisen’s head while Reese was digging around in that container looking for the phone? He had to have been sweating bullets the whole time, expecting Tera’s body to pop up any minute. And then the only thing Reese found was the cell. The man must have been going out of his mind wondering where she was.”

“He did seem nervous,” Darla told her, “but when I asked him about it later, he said it was because he was afraid Reese was there to arrest him for illegal dumping.”

“Yeah, the guy has an answer for everything, doesn’t he? I’m sorry that you got taken in like that, kid.”

Darla nodded, not trusting herself to speak on that subject. She didn’t want to go there . . . not now. Instead, she asked, “So how did Toby the building inspector fit into this? Why did Barry need to kill him, too?”

“Unless Eisen sings, we might not ever know for sure what really went down. But the police did identify the dead guy as one Toby Armbruster. He really was a building inspector for the city, but let’s just say he was putting in some unauthorized overtime. Reese found a couple of complaints against him that raised a few flags.”

As Darla listened with interest, Jake went on, “Best Reese can guess, Armbruster would show up at a small restaurant or business, flash his city credentials, and claim to find a problem with wiring or plumbing or something. Then he’d threaten to shut them down if they didn’t get the issue fixed, pronto. The next day, they’d conveniently get a visit from Barry Eisen, who would tell them he was an approved contractor for the city. Long story short, Eisen pretends to make the fixes, collects the cash, then Armbruster does a reinspection and tells them they pass. No one’s the wiser, and the two of them split the money for work that wasn’t ever done.”

“And Curt found out about the scheme and wanted in on it,” Darla reminded her friend, “which explains how he ended up dead. But wouldn’t killing Toby have been killing off the goose that laid the golden egg?”

“That’s what I thought, too, so I’m guessing what happened there was semi-accidental. Think about it: Eisen had to have been going crazy over the whole disappearing-Tera situation. Then Armbruster comes poking around the place the other night for some reason. It’s dark, and he’s probably wearing a coat. Eisen gets a quick look at him, just enough to see that blond ponytail, and he jumps to the conclusion that Tera has come back to blackmail him or accuse him, or something. A quick whack on the head—he used a hammer this time out—and no more Tera. Except it turns out that he offed his partner in crime instead.”

Darla gave a sober nod. While the dead building inspector had seemed a particularly unpleasant sort, she still didn’t want to see him dead.

Jake, meanwhile, seemingly was ready to move on to a new subject.

“I don’t know why you’re working today,” Jake now scolded her. “Even a minor concussion isn’t something you fool around with. You should be resting upstairs.”

“I’ve already done that, and I’m going stir-crazy. But I promise, I’m letting Robert do all the hard work until James gets here.” Darla paused and gave her friend a conspiratorial smile. “Don’t say anything to him yet, but I’ve decided to bump Robert up to full-time, at least until after the holidays. So all Hamlet and I have to do is sit here behind the counter and look friendly.”

She gave the feline a fond look. He was sprawled across the counter, taking up most of the spot designated for checkout, where any customer making a purchase would be sure to notice him. Normally, she would have shooed him off to a more convenient location. For the foreseeable future, however, he had a free pass on obnoxious behavior. Besides, he was on convalescent watch, just like her.

From what James had told her later, while Darla was busy protesting being loaded into the ambulance for a ride to the hospital, he and Robert had retrieved her car—the teen, to her surprise, proved to have an actual driver’s license—and transported Hamlet to the emergency vet. Fortunately, Hamlet had been merely stunned by the flashlight that had hit him, and his stint inside the disassembled boiler had done him no additional harm. He’d been sent home with a couple of days’ worth of pills to soothe the pain of a few minor soft-tissue injuries and a bump on his head.

James and Jake had suggested that while Darla remained in the hospital for observation, Robert should camp out in her living room to keep Hamlet company. Darla had groggily agreed. And she’d been touched to find on her return home that Robert had taken the flowers sent by her family and customers and arranged them in bright bouquets around the apartment.

“Speaking of Robert, what are we going to do about helping him find a place to live?” she asked Jake, lowering her voice, although the youth, who was upstairs busily stocking books, could not hear her. “He can’t keep going from place to place each night like he’s been doing.”

“I know. I put out a few feelers, but nothing’s come up that’s in his price range. If James is tired of him, I guess he can stay on my sofa for a couple of nights until we think of something.”

The bells on the front door range just then. Darla saw with pleasure that it was Mary Ann walking in, carrying a covered dish. She gave the old woman a friendly wave.

“There you are, my dear,” Mary Ann exclaimed, setting the dish on the counter. “I tried calling your home number, and when you didn’t answer I took a chance you might be down here. I brought a little something for you so you don’t have to cook dinner tonight.”

“That’s nice of you. I have to admit, I’m pretty tired of soup.”

“I’m sure you are, dear. How are you feeling?”

“Much better. And Hamlet is feeling pretty perky now, too.”

In fact, the cat had risen and walked over to the casserole dish that Mary Ann had left. He took a sniff and sneezed. Then he did a little scraping motion with one paw, as if he were burying something in his litter box, before turning tail and removing himself a few feet from the offending dish.

“Hamlet!” Darla scolded him. “Mary Ann went to all the trouble of making us food, and you diss it right in front of her.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” the old woman replied with a smile and a wave of one bony hand. “It’s a vegetable casserole, which is probably why he doesn’t like it. But what are you doing back at work already? Didn’t you just get out of the hospital?”

“They only kept me for a night . . . but don’t worry, I’m still on part-time duty. I won’t be back to working full-time until next week.”

“Well, my gracious, don’t hurry it. Though I have to keep reminding Brother of that, too.” She sighed. “I have to admit, it’s been difficult trying to work in the store and take care of him. I wonder if it’s time for us to shut the place down and retire.”

“But Mary Ann, you love that store,” Jake protested. “Can you hire some part-time help?”

“My dear, I would love to, but in this economy, people don’t really need antiques and collectibles. We’re barely scraping by as it is.” The old woman gave her head a brusque shake. “Quite frankly, we can’t afford to hire anyone. And if we can’t find someone to rent our garden apartment soon, we’ll surely be in trouble.”

Darla hesitated, glancing Robert’s way, and then exchanged a glance with Jake. So the apartment was still available. Maybe with a little tweaking and compromise, it could prove a solution to both the Plinskis’ and Robert’s problems.

“Mary Ann, I have an idea.”

Swiftly, she explained Robert’s situation. And then, as the old woman tsk’d in consternation, Darla told her how she and Jake and James were taking turns keeping a roof over his head while they tried to figure out how best to help him.

“You know how it is, Mary Ann. With needing to scrape together enough money for first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, there’s no way Robert can afford any place that’s inhabitable. I know your rent is pretty much what he makes here in a month now that he’s full-time, but maybe you can take some of it in trade? We’d have to ask him, of course, but maybe he could work for you a few hours on his days off. And since you know him, maybe you’d be able to waive all the upfront money.”

Mary Ann frowned, tapping a finger on her chin.

“Oh, Darla, I’m not sure,” she said in a tone of dismay. “That’s so much money.”

Darla immediately felt contrite. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have suggested it. You and Mr. Plinski need to do what’s best for you. We’ll find a place for Robert eventually, and in the meantime he can stay with one of us.”

“Oh no, my dear. You misunderstood me. I meant, that’s far too much money for me to charge the dear boy for rent.”

Then, as Darla stared at her in surprise, Mary Ann went on, “Frankly, I’m quite distressed that you didn’t tell me about Robert’s troubles before now. I had no idea that he wasn’t living with his father anymore.”

She assumed a militant expression, her strong gaze as she surveyed Darla and Jake that of a woman half her age.

“Face it, girls, Brother and I are old. And that means we can’t do things we used to do, that we have to swallow our pride sometimes and ask for help. And I have accepted this. But some people think that old means foolish. They think that they can take advantage of us just because we don’t see and hear as well as we used to. I don’t want to be one of those old people who wakes up one morning and finds out that her tenant stole her identity and emptied her bank account. And I don’t want to be the old woman who didn’t know her tenant was operating a drug lab in her basement.”

“Mary Ann, that would never be you,” Darla protested.

The old woman gave a firm nod. “And that is because I know that a fat rent check doesn’t mean a thing if the person signing it is a criminal. We know that Robert is trustworthy, and we like him very much. And it will be a comfort to have a strong young man around the shop on occasion to do the heavy lifting. So I think you need to call him over so that we can sign the deal.”

Darla grinned. “You bet! Robert, come down here,” she called upstairs. “Ms. Plinski is here, and she has a business proposition for you.”

Robert, dressed in black and wearing a tiger-striped vest, appeared at the top of the stairs. “Yo, Ms. Plinski,” he called with a smile and a wave.

Taking the steps three at a time, he landed at the bottom of the staircase and trotted over to join them. “Hey, food,” he said in approval and lifted the lid. “Green bean casserole, awesome! I just ate breakfast, but I can probably eat again.”

“That food is for later,” Darla admonished him with a smile. “We’ve got something more important to discuss. Mary Ann, why don’t you tell Robert our idea?”

“Of course. Robert, it’s like this. Brother and I need a tenant in our garden apartment. You would be doing us a huge favor if you moved in.”

“I’d love to, Ms. Plinski . . . but I can’t, you know, afford the rent,” he protested, looking embarrassed.

Mary Ann shook her head. “Nonsense. We are prepared to suggest a substantial reduction in the going rate in exchange for a few hours of labor a week. I believe the revised rent amount would be within your budget,” she said and named a dollar figure.

Robert’s eyes widened. “That’s not much more than Bill charged me to stay in his basement. Do you, like, really mean it?”

“Certainly. How soon can you move in?”

“I can move in, like, now!” he exclaimed, his tone excited. Then he paused and glanced at Darla. “That is, you know, if Ms. Pettistone says I can leave for a few minutes.”

“Go ahead. You can make it up later.”

Robert gave a little whoop and reached under the counter for his backpack. Then he put out a triumphant fist to Hamlet, who obligingly bumped.

“Hey, little bro, guess what? I have a home. Maybe Ms. Plinski will let me get a dog or something, so you can have some company.”

“Oh dear,” Mary Ann said with a shake of her head as she let the youth escort her out, “let’s talk about that another time.”

As the front door closed after the pair, Darla turned to Jake. “Fist bump for finding Robert a forever home,” she said and touched knuckles with her friend. “I think this will work out fine for all of them.”

“Agreed,” Jake said with a matching grin. Then she glanced at her watch. “Sorry, kid, gotta run. I’ve got a client meeting in five. Will you be all right alone until Robert gets back?”

“Sure. Thursday is usually a slow day, anyhow. Besides, my official attack cat has my back.”

After Jake left, Darla reached under the register for the stack of invoices that had been piling up since her hospital stay. “Might as well work on these while we have some down time,” she told Hamlet and reached for her checkbook. But barely had she opened the register when she heard the shop door jangle, and a familiar voice said, “Hey, Red.”