A Novel Way to Die (11 page)

She glanced again at Hamlet, who was busy kneading the beanbag chair into a more comfortable
shape to accommodate his furry self. He’d been darned lucky so far to have returned
home unscathed from his unauthorized forays outside the building. With luck, Robert
would eventually discover the crafty feline’s escape route, but until then, she intended
to keep a keen eye on Hamlet, as well as on her shop’s exterior fixtures . . . at
least, until the roaming scrap thieves were caught and jailed.

Though heaven help any scrap thief—or murderer—unfortunate enough to cross paths with
the official mascot of Pettistone’s Fine Books.

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.