He is sitting at the base of a tree—a maple in this case—legs bent up, head bowed, arms crossed over the tops of his knees. As we approach him, I hear the faint murmur of his voice, though it’s too soft to make out any words. I’m afraid we’re going to startle him, so I put a hand on Bob’s arm to stop our approach.
“Let me,” I whisper.
Bob nods, and I take a few more steps, closing the distance between me and Danny. When I’m about ten feet away from him, I say, “Danny, it’s Hildy.” He lifts his head and looks at me with a tear-stained face. “What are you doing here?” I ask him, closing the remaining distance between us. He watches my every move and when I reach him, I sit down beside him, my back against the tree trunk. “Are you okay?”
Danny looks me up and down, a puzzled expression on his face, as if he has no idea who I am or how I got here. He looks shell-shocked, and tired.
“Talk to me, Danny,” I say. I reach over and put a hand on the arm closest to me. “I’m worried about you. Allie is worried about you, too.”
Danny looks away then and he spots Bob standing near a headstone about twenty feet away. “Are the cops after me?” he asks.
“No. He’s here because I’m on a date with him and I’ve been looking for you. When I heard someone had seen you here, I came right away. Detective Richmond came with me.”
Danny gives me a skeptical look.
“Hey, I don’t go out on many dates, Danny. And while I am worried about you, I’m not going to let that ruin my social life, what little of it there is. I don’t want to end up an old maid.” I say this in a jocular, teasing tone and I’m relieved when Danny cracks a smile.
“So, help me out,” I say. “Why are you here? What’s going on inside that head of yours? Are you hearing voices?”
Danny shakes his head. “No, not really. Not like I do when I’m sick. It’s different, a mix of voices with snippets of conversation. Nothing that makes sense to me, but I think it’s more of a memory than any of my voices.” He spits these words out in a frantic, hurried ramble, his eyes tearing up as he speaks. “And then I keep seeing Artie, his face staring at me with that purple and pink polka-dotted dinosaur behind him, and I can tell he’s wondering why I’m just standing there, letting him die . . . letting them kill him, and doing nothing.”
Since Danny seems to be having one of his more lucid moments, I ask him, “Who killed Artie?”
He closes his eyes, his face screwing into a grimace. “I don’t know,” he says with frustration. “I can’t see or remember any faces. I just keep seeing an image of Artie looking afraid and then I see an image of Artie dead.” He pauses and shudders.
“Could you have done something? Could you have stopped Artie’s death?” From the corner of my eye I see Bob inch closer, his head turned sideways in an effort—I assume—to hear us better.
Danny squeezes his eyes closed and a tiny moan escapes his lips. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if the image of Artie and that dinosaur is a real one or something my stupid sick brain cooked up.”
“Were there any voices talking to you when Artie died?”
He frowns, then nods.
“What were the voices saying?”
“That Artie had to kill Artie. It had to be that way.”
“Did Artie kill himself?”
Danny shrugs, then shakes his head. “He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want all the people to die. But the voice in my head kept saying that was how it had to be.”
“Did the voice in your head tell you to kill Artie?”
He looks at me then, his eyes wide open. “It did,” he whispers. “But I said no. The dinosaur knows.”
“What does the dinosaur know?”
“It knows Artie didn’t want to die.” He glances around, his expression wary. “That’s why Artie’s ghost is here. He’s mad that he’s dead.”
I’m about to ask Danny if he’s seen the ghost today when I hear a female voice call out his name. I recognize the voice as Allie’s, and sure enough I see her and Joel up near the top of the hill, hurrying down toward us. I curse their arrival and wonder how they knew to find Danny here. Bob fades into the long shadow of a tree, watching.
“Danny, thank goodness we found you,” Joel says, arriving first. He squats down beside Danny, a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, bro, you okay?”
Allie reaches us then, frantic and a bit out of breath. “For heaven’s sake, Danny, you had me worried half to death.” She seems to realize what she’s said and where she is then, because she looks around at the headstones and grimaces. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Danny says, and he sounds surprisingly calm and collected. “I came here because I needed to talk to the ghost.”
Allie shoots me a worried look. Joel casts a glance at our surroundings and then looks back at Danny. “I don’t see any ghost here,” he says in a calm, reasoned voice. “Did one put in an appearance?”
“Not yet,” Danny says. “I’m waiting for him.”
“You don’t need to be in a cemetery for a ghost to come to you,” I say. “Besides, Artie isn’t buried yet, so he isn’t here in this cemetery.”
“His ghost is,” Danny says adamantly. “I saw him last night. He came out of that tree.” He points directly to the tree where Bob is standing, partially obscured by the growing shadows cast by the setting sun. Allie and Joel both turn to look where Danny is pointing, an automatic reaction, their pending dismissals ready on their lips. But the sight of Bob standing beneath the tree makes them both gasp before they realize that the image they are seeing is made of real flesh, blood, and bone.
Allie clamps a hand over her heart. “Who is that?” she says breathlessly, squinting into the sunlight that is backlighting Bob and making it hard, if not impossible, to see his face.
“That’s Hildy’s date,” Danny says.
“He’s right, it is,” I say. “It’s Detective Richmond, the one who questioned you earlier.”
Allie flares at that. “Are you questioning Danny without our attorney present?”
“Nothing official,” I say. “And only me. Detective Richmond hasn’t said a word to him.”
“You should go and be with him,” Danny says. “This isn’t a very good date so far.”
“No, it’s not,” I agree with a chuckle.
Danny pushes himself up to a standing position, brushing dirt from the seat of his jeans. Joel stands, too, and then Danny turns and offers me a hand. I take it, and he hauls me to my feet.
“I’m hungry,” Danny says. “I’ll look for Artie again after I eat.” With this matter-of-fact comment, he walks to the path and starts trudging up the hill. Joel scurries after him.
Allie looks at me with lingering suspicion. “Are you really on a date?”
“Sadly, yes.”
She takes a moment to digest this, then leans in closer to me and in a whisper says, “Do you want me to help you out of it?”
“No,” I say with a smile. “But thanks.”
“In that case, I’m sorry Danny interrupted things. How did you know he was here?”
“The cops told us. I asked them to keep an eye out for him and let me know if they saw him. I assume they called you as well?”
“They did,” Allie says. She casts a look after her brother and Joel. “Do you think he’s okay?”
I sigh, watching the two men walk up the hill. “I don’t know,” I say honestly. I hate to equivocate, but Danny is a bit of a puzzle to me at this point. “I don’t think he’s in a crisis state, if that helps. But that doesn’t mean he won’t go into one sometime soon.”
Allie’s head lolls back on her shoulders and she lets out a little whimper. “He’s been doing so good for so long,” she says. “What’s sending him off the deep end?”
“I think it’s Arthur Fletcher’s death,” I tell her. “For whatever reason, whether he saw the man killed, watched him commit suicide, or killed the man himself, Mr. Fletcher’s death has be
en an emotional trigger for him.”
“Danny didn’t kill anyone,” she insists.
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I tell her. “But he was involved in some manner. We have to figure out what it was and how it fits into the bigger picture.”
“Allie, come on,” Joel yells from the top of the hill.
Allie lets out an impatient sigh. “I should go,” she says.
I nod. “Call me if... well... call me if you need anything, okay?”
“I will.” With that she scurries off, huffing and puffing her way back up the hill.
Bob Richmond walks down to where I am and says, “I must say, Hildy Schneider, dates with you are never dull. What’s next on the agenda?”
Chapter 12
After a brief discussion—brief, because I don’t have any spare breath after climbing up the hill to the parking area and Bob’s car—we decide to go to Bob’s house. He offers, or rather asks if I’d be willing to go there, first stating that it’s not far away, and then telling me that he’s thinking of redecorating the place and after seeing what I’ve done with my house, he wants to get my ideas. He tops it off by saying we can reheat our sandwiches there and finish them off.
I realize this could be a ploy to get me somewhere where we can be more intimate without the threat of a dog’s cold nose or a curious young neighbor appearing unexpectedly, but I kind of doubt it. Bob doesn’t have a lot of experience when it comes to wooing the opposite sex and I doubt he’s capable of being that conniving. Frankly, I’m not all that experienced myself, but after a mental debate of about two seconds, I decide to just go along and see what happens.
Bob’s house is a Craftsman style circa 1920 located on a five-acre plot of land along one of the highways leading out of town. It’s a bucolic country setting less than a mile beyond the city limits. The house is set back from the road several hundred feet and it looks every bit of its one hundred years. The outside is faded and chipped clapboard that might have been a colonial blue at one time but is now a dull beige with bits of blue clinging to the boards for dear life. The brick stairs leading up to the front porch are chipped and faded, with large chunks of brick missing. The wood columns on either side of the stairs and at the corners of the porch appear to have been white at one time, though now they are covered in a thin layer of green algae thanks to the house’s north-facing location. There is no garage, and the driveway is rutted dirt and gravel.
Despite the relaxing, country setting, the house is utterly lacking in curb appeal. The yard is a mix of yellow, brown, and pale green with large bald spots, and there are no bushes or flowers to speak of, just several large trees: a beautiful red maple on one side of the house and three giant oaks standing sentinel around the rest of the building. The lattice board that is supposed to be covering the area under the porch is broken and weathered, and I see something scurry away under there as we approach the porch.
“I haven’t done much with the place,” Bob says as we stand at the base of the stairs.
“That’s an understatement.”
He looks at me with a grimace. “Is it that bad?”
“Let me put it this way. It’s a good thing your house isn’t part of a larger neighborhood or you would have been tarred and feathered by now.”
“I was going to work on it when I was retired but by then I was so fat and lazy I couldn’t muster up the motivation.” He says this in a tone of remorseful grief, then adds, “Thank goodness I got shot.”
“Now there’s a line you don’t hear every day,” I say with a grin.
Bob surveys the front façade of the house and sighs. “Now there’s so much... it’s overwhelming. I don’t know where to start.”
“Just pick a project and start there. Figure out what you can do yourself, and what you need to hire out. If it were me, I’d hire someone to paint the outside and then I’d start on replacing that lattice around the porch. Maybe go to the gardening center and get some suggestions on landscaping and put in some plants. Trust me, once you start it’s easy to keep going. Easy and expensive. But you have to start somewhere before the place falls down around you. Think of it as an investment and take proper care of it.”
Bob nods. “You’re blunt and to the point,” he says, and for a moment I fear I’ve offended him. But then he adds, “I like that about you. Let’s go inside and see what your thoughts are there.”
We mount the porch stairs and Bob unlocks the front door and steps inside, holding the door for me. It’s like walking into a cave. The first room I enter is big and being used as a living room, judging from the chairs, sofa, TV, and tables. There is a lovely stone fireplace centered on the wall to the left with a large-screen TV mounted above it. Two windows flank the fireplace above built-in shelves with glass doors and both built-ins are filled with books. There are two more floor-to-ceiling bookcases built into the wall shared with the dining room, and these are also filled with books. The windows on either side of the fireplace are small but they face east and should let in some nice morning sun. But any light entering this room is likely to get sucked into the gloom. The walls and the built-ins are painted a dark brown color. The tray ceiling helps a little as it is, or used to be, white, but it’s bordered with heavy, dark wood trim that further dampens the mood of the room.
The furnishings look comfortable if old: a dark brown, stuffed sofa facing the fireplace, a brown leather recliner perpendicular to the fireplace, and across from the recliner is a love seat in the same material as the sofa. Mismatched end tables flank the love seat and recliner, and a huge, polished, irregularly shaped slab of crosscut tree on a pedestal sits in front of the couch. There are lamps on both end tables, and there is a small overhead fixture in the ceiling above the couch. Only one of the lamps is turned on and the light it emits is meager at best.
The only other potential source for light is a large picture window in the porch wall, but it’s covered with drapes made from a brown textured material. It seems that everything in the room is brown except for one bright yellow throw pillow on the sofa that stands out amidst the drab like a lighthouse beacon on a dark, foggy night.
Bob sees me eyeing the pillow. “I just got that,” he says. “I noticed how you have colorful pillows in your living room and I kind of liked it, so I thought I’d try something like that here. It gives the room a touch of brightness, don’t you think?”
Oh, dear. I don’t have the heart to tell Bob that his living room has all the ambience of a medieval dungeon and one neon yellow pillow isn’t going to fix that. That pillow is like a random piece of corn in the middle of a giant turd. Still, he’s trying, and I find his effort, and his interest in it all, endearing.
“You’ve got the right idea,” I tell him. “But I think it’s going to take a little more than one pillow. Is that yellow a color you like?”
“I suppose,” he says with a shrug. “I mainly picked it because it was on sale. Got it for a buck fifty.” He is clearly quite proud of this fact and it’s all I can do not to laugh.
“There is a ton of potential in this room,” I say. “You have a good arrangement with the furniture and the focus on the fireplace. Your seating also creates a nice conversation area. I think the biggest negative is that it’s awfully dark in here . . . dark and very brown. Do you keep the curtains closed all the time?”
He nods. “I like my privacy.”
“You’re quite isolated out here, so it isn’t like you have people walking by your window all the time. You could open those curtains to let in some light and still have some degree of privacy.”
“Yeah, but that window faces out toward the road, and people driving by can see in.”
He sounds pretty committed to some sort of drapery on that window, so I start thinking about alternative ways to lighten things up. I’m about to suggest a paint job when he says, “Why do I need to worry about a good conversation area? I live here by myself. It’s not like I’m talking to anyone.”
“Well, you might have
guests out, like me,” I say, smiling. “It’s nice if you have seating that allows people to easily converse without having to sit at an awkward angle, or crane their necks around.”
“Hmpf.”
“Does this room feel dark to you?” I ask, trying to get a feel for how much change this lifelong bachelor might be up for.
He gives the room a quick scan. “It does,” he admits. “And I’m thinking about getting some new furniture. I’ve had that couch for nearly twenty years, and it has some sagging issues.” He looks away, clearly embarrassed. “I used to sleep on it a lot when I was heavier because I was too damned fat and out of shape to climb the stairs to my bedroom.”
I glance over at the stairwell tucked into a far corner of the living room. It starts with three stairs that lead to a small landing and then it makes a ninety-degree turn for the rest of the steps. I wonder how many bedrooms there are upstairs and how they’re being used, but figure we have our work cut out for us with just the first floor for now.
“I would love to help you buy some new furniture,” I say, meaning it. “And I have some ideas for this room that I think will brighten it up for you but still keep it cozy. Show me the rest of this floor.”
Bob gives me a tour, starting with the dining room, which is right off the living room. Here the walls are covered with hideous wallpaper that has giant red and pink flowers on it, the only place to sit is at a picnic table located in the middle of the room, and there is a rusted metal and glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling that looks like a funhouse nightmare. The room’s saving graces are the light oak hardwood floors, which are in surprisingly good shape, and two large windows, one facing east the other facing south, that will give the room plenty of light once the heavy drapes—the same ones that are in the living room—are removed.
Night Shift Page 11