A Novel Way to Die (12 page)

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 . . .”