A Novel Way to Die (7 page)

This is better?

On her last visit, the rooms had stood empty, forlornly stripped to their plaster,
with fixtures removed and wires hanging like pointy tentacles from open outlets. Now,
large sections of plaster were missing, revealing the original studs and wood supports
and what appeared to be new electrical wiring running through the recesses. A pile
of two-by-fours temporarily blocked the only other door, located beyond the foyer
and at the end of a short hall. Not that this last inconvenience particularly mattered,
for she knew from her previous visit that the rear door opened onto a miniscule enclosed
courtyard. And, unlike the brownstones on her block, the homes on this street had
no alley behind them, an alley being something of a rarity in Brooklyn, as Darla had
been surprised to learn.

As for the stained carpeting and torn linoleum—doubtless courtesy of previous remodels
that had gone for practicality rather than aesthetics—that floor covering had been
ripped up to reveal the original wood beneath. In some areas, all that remained was
the subflooring, or nothing at all.

She recalled Barry previously telling her that they’d turned off the electricity at
the box while they were redoing the wiring. As a result, heavy black extension cords
snaked along the floors and up the stairway, posing tripping hazards for the unwary.
To make up for the missing light fixtures, a scattering of portable lights—some heavy-duty
contractor floor lamps, and others the cheap clamp-on style with the big aluminum
shades—sat in corners or clung to exposed studs. At the moment, however, none were
turned on, so the only illumination inside the place came from the open door and the
man-sized gaps in the ceiling where portions of the second-story flooring had been
sawed out.

Barry, however, seemed concerned with something other than her lack of enthusiasm.
His earlier expression of amusement had been replaced by a frown. “Is something wrong?”
she asked in concern.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. But I know I locked the front door when I left here
yesterday, and it wasn’t locked just now when I stuck the key in.”

“Maybe Curt is already here?” Darla suggested, recalling how the man had mentioned
being at the brownstone at six in the morning the day he’d claimed to have seen Hamlet
wandering loose.

But Barry was eyeing the area with suspicion. “If he was here, he’d have heard us
and come out already, even if he was down in the basement. You can’t sneak into this
place, not with those rusty hinges. That’s one reason we never oiled them. Kind of
like a homemade alarm system.”

Darla smiled at what she assumed was a small joke. When she saw he was deadly serious,
however, she instinctively edged closer to him.

“Should we call the police or something?” she asked, her fingers tightening around
the cell phone in her sweater pocket.

Barry made no immediate reply as he reached for a bulky silver flashlight that had
been left on one of the stairs. Clicking it on, he took a few steps and shined its
beam through the open arch to their left that led into the next room. Gray shadows
danced behind the flashlight’s broad yellow swath of light, but they concealed nothing
more incriminating than a row of five-gallon buckets and a neatly folded drop cloth.
Then he shook his head.

“There’s nothing to call about. For all we know, Curt stopped by earlier and then
decided to run out for a cup of coffee without bothering to lock up. It wouldn’t be
the first time he’s done that.”

She heard a flicker of irritation in his tone, but he managed a strained smile for
her and added, “Why don’t you wait here while I take a look around?”

“No, I’ll come with you.”

She thought for a moment from his expression that he’d protest her decision, but then
he nodded. “Okay, but stick close,” was his doubtful reply. “With everything torn
all the hell up, I don’t want you smacking your head on something or twisting an ankle.”

Neither did she, but no way was she waiting there alone while Barry checked out the
place. After all, how many times in the movies did the character that remained behind
in the supposedly safe spot fall victim to the mad killer? Not that there was any
killer lurking about in your basic distressed brownstone, she reassured herself. Like
Barry said, maybe Curt had simply been careless. Heck, he’d probably show up in another
couple of minutes with a double latte in one hand and a cruller in the other while
swearing that he’d locked the place before he left.

Darla trailed Barry down the short hall to what was now the kitchen. She pulled her
sweater more closely about her, all too aware there was no heat source in the house.
Come winter, the place would be an icebox if they didn’t set up some of those big
portable heaters while they worked.

But the cool temperature was less on her mind than Curt’s warning to her the week
before about the salvage thieves. What if they had come back, breaking in to the place
in search of more spoils? Worse, what if they were still somewhere in the building?

“Curt,” Barry abruptly called, the sound echoing through the open rooms and making
Darla jump. “You in here, buddy? Darla and I are here on the first floor, looking
for you.”

That seemingly innocuous statement, she knew, translated to,
If someone’s here who doesn’t belong, you’ve still got time to hop out one of the
windows before we stumble across you and things get all nasty.

“Nothing here,” Barry said a moment later when they’d taken a look at the other two
rooms on the first floor. His voice louder than necessary, he added in the direction
of the stairway, “Hey, Darla, why don’t I show you what’s on the second floor.”

Which meant,
Last chance, suckers. Get out now while the getting’s good.

When no stampede of fleeing footsteps sounded overhead, Barry shrugged and gestured
for her to follow him toward the stairs. Darla complied. By the time she’d taken four
or five steps up, however, she was rethinking that whole victim-in-the-safe-spot theory
and wondering with a fleeting sense of panic if it wasn’t too late to stay downstairs,
after all. She wasn’t particularly concerned now about their stumbling across any
intruders up there. It was the stairway itself that was doing her in.

Not that the steps were all that narrow or rickety—in fact, the staircase seemed the
sturdiest structure in the place—but the balustrade had been removed, and only a ribbon
of yellow caution tape now drooped from newel to newel in place of the handrail. She
didn’t have much of a head for heights, and that open side did bad things to her sense
of balance.

Climbing the open staircase was a test of nerves for her in the low light. To make
matters worse, the dim lighting combined with Barry’s moving flashlight beam added
a distinct fun-house effect to the whole stairwell. By the time they reached the landing,
Darla was sweating despite the house’s chill, while bits of plaster were lodged beneath
her fingernails from where she’d been gripping the wall for moral support.

At least the balustrade at the top was intact, she saw in relief. She reached out
to take hold while she regained her bearings . . . only to feel herself grabbed by
her free arm and pulled back to the middle of the landing.

“Sorry, I should have warned you, it’s a bit wobbly,” Barry said with an apologetic
smile. He demonstrated by giving the handrail a gentle shake that caused it to sway,
and Darla’s stomach to pitch. “That’s actually on today’s list to repair.”

“Great,” Darla replied. “Any other death traps I should know about?”

“Just the holes in the floor.” He aimed the flashlight toward a pair of sawhorses
near the end of the short hallway. They were set across one of the cutouts in the
subfloor that she’d seen earlier from her vantage point on the lower level. “Don’t
worry, the rest of the floor is sound. Stay clear of the spots we’ve blocked off and
you’re perfectly fine.”

“Uh, maybe I’ll wait here while you finish checking out these rooms,” she suggested,
earning a sympathetic nod in return.

“Probably a good idea. It won’t take me more than a minute.”

While Barry made his way down the short hall, Darla gave a cautious poke at the wall
behind her. When it neither crumbled nor swayed, she figured it was safe to lean against
it. She’d end up with plaster dust on the back of her sweater, but that was a small
price to pay for regaining her equilibrium.

She shoved her hands into her sweater pockets and felt the slim weight of her cell
phone beneath her fingers. It occurred to her then that they were doing this all wrong.
Why not simply try to get hold of Curt first and see if he’d been by the brownstone?
If, as Barry had suggested, he was simply down the street grabbing a late breakfast,
that would eliminate the other more unsettling possible scenarios regarding the unlocked
door.

She pulled out her cell and swiftly scrolled through her contacts. She often used
her personal phone for business when James was tying up the landline with his negotiations.
Sure enough, Curt Benedetto was there under the “B’s.” She pressed the dial key and
listened while the phone rang on his end.

But while she waited for him to pick up, she abruptly heard a faint but unmistakable
cha-cha rhythm coming from somewhere below her. It took her a moment to realize what
that meant. By then, Barry had finished his exploration of the surrounding rooms,
and the last tinny notes of Santana’s “Smooth” had already faded. The sound of Curt’s
recorded voice—“
Yeah, too bad, I’m not here, leave a message”
—was now playing in Darla’s ear.

“What?” Barry asked as she pushed the “End” button and stared at him in dismay. “Who
are you calling?”

“Curt,” she choked out. “I forgot until a moment ago that I had his number programmed
in my cell phone. I called it to see if I could find out where he was, and I heard
his phone ringing.”

“Well, did he answer?” he replied with a frown, apparently not understanding her meaning.

She swallowed hard and clarified, “I meant I heard his phone ringing here . . . somewhere
downstairs.”

A look of seeming shock passed over Barry’s face, and he swiveled to look over the
railing. Then, turning back to her, he snapped, “Quick, call the number again.”

Fingers trembling, Darla hit the redial button and then strained her ears. Sure enough,
she could hear Rob Thomas singing his heart out and Carlos Santana strumming away
somewhere in the distance.

“Dial it again,” Barry demanded and rushed toward the stairs, flashlight bobbing as
he started down. “Keep calling it until we find out where the sound is coming from.”

Darla hit redial once more and then hurried after him, taking the stairs as swiftly
as she dared and pausing midway down to dial yet again. The familiar tune was far
louder now, and Barry, who had already reached the ground floor, was looking about
wildly. Darla joined him a moment later and redialed Curt’s number yet again. The
rhythm started up once more, and Barry pointed his flashlight at a closed door she
hadn’t noticed earlier.

“The basement,” he declared. “He must be down there. But why isn’t he answering?”

Maybe because he can’t
, Darla thought as her stomach did a small flip-flop. From the grim expression on
Barry’s face as made his way in that direction, he obviously was thinking the same
thing as she.

He yanked open the door, revealing a large area of gloom lit only by what daylight
was let in by the narrow exterior windows. A workmanlike set of open wooden stairs
with railings on either side led down into the darkness, where she could make out
the vague shapes of stacked boxes. Shining his flashlight into the shadows, Barry
headed down a couple of steps and called, “Curt? Buddy? You down there?”

When he got no reply, he turned back to Darla. “Call him one more time, would you?”

She nodded wordlessly and edged her way to the door while pressing the redial. This
time, it sounded like a concert was happening almost at their feet. Barry swung his
light down the stairs, searching . . . and then burst into laughter as his beam caught
and held on a slim metallic shape lying several steps down from them. Glancing back
up at Darla, Barry gave his head a rueful shake.

“The idiot, he must have come down here for some reason and then dropped his phone,”
he declared, his expression relieved. He turned again and started down the steps,
adding over his shoulder, “He’s probably wandering all over the neighborhood right
now trying to figure out where he lost it.”

“Hey, it happens to the best of us,” Darla observed a bit breathlessly as she heaved
her own sigh of relief. She’d truly feared something bad had happened to Curt. Now
that she knew it was nothing worse than a dropped phone, she and Barry could have
their lunch as planned. As for Curt, he likely could survive awhile without his smartphone.

While Barry bent to retrieve the errant device, Darla squinted into the dimness to
look around the basement. The requisite old-fashioned coal boiler was to one side,
along with storage boxes and a couple of old chairs. The floor appeared to be its
original brick, although sections of plywood had been laid near the stairs to give
a more stable storage surface. She hadn’t noticed any unusual exterior access other
than the windows. Her practical side kicked in. If Barry could convert the space into
a garden apartment like Jake’s, that would add even greater value—

She paused in midthought as the wavering flashlight beam momentarily revealed a flash
of blue as Barry pocketed the phone and started back up the steps toward Darla. A
chill swept her, and she gripped the doorjamb.

“Wait,” she choked out. “Shine your light all the way down the steps, and to the right.
I thought I saw . . .”

She trailed off, and Barry stared at her in seeming confusion for a moment. Gathering
her wits, she leaned past the doorway and pointed downward into the shadows. “It’s
probably nothing, just a blue rag, but you’d better take a look.”