Bone Key

by Les Standiford

  Deal stared up at his attorney from the soft leather couch where he’d collapsed. Malloy had pulled the cork on a bottle of red wine and was swirling a glassful in his hand as he surveyed the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows comprising two walls of the room. There was a view of a pool down below, for the sole use of the “suites residents,” the kid had assured them.

  “Anything else I can do, gentlemen?” the kid called from the bar, where he’d been arranging liquor bottles and ice. “Anything at all?” He’d regained some of his color, Deal noticed, along with a bit of his programmed solicitousness.

  “We’re fine,” Malloy said, handing him a bill. The kid seemed to find the tip more than generous, practically salaaming his way out.

  “Can I get you something?” Malloy asked, hoisting his glass, as the door closed behind the kid.

  Deal held up a hand. “Jack up the day and slide a new one under it,” he said.

  “You do have a way with words,” Malloy said.

  “That was one of my old man’s,” Deal said. “He had a million of them.”

  Rusty nodded. “Barton would have liked this place,” he mused.

  “He was always partial to the high-roller’s suite,” Deal agreed. He had another look at the glass in Malloy’s hand. “Maybe I’ll try some wine,” he added.

  Malloy glanced over at him. “I thought you were a beer drinker. There’s a six-pack of Red Stripe in the fridge.”

  Deal suppressed a sigh. The thought of explaining a diet right now seemed ludicrous. “As the president of a major development firm, I’m trying to refine my tastes,” he said.

  If he caught the irony, Malloy chose to ignore it. He nodded, going behind the bar for a glass. “I know what you mean. Everybody’s getting into wine these days. Half my clients are drug dealers or worse, but I swear they all subscribe to The Wine Spectator.”

  He checked the bottle, then poured a glass for Deal and brought it to him. “A Chilean Malbec.” He shrugged. “Tastes pretty good to me.”

  “So you’re into wine now, too?” Deal asked.

  Malloy shrugged. “In the old days it was the three-margarita lunch down here. Nowadays I have to bone up on my reds just to take somebody out to dinner.”

  “Sounds like a tough life,” Deal said, raising his glass to Malloy.

  “We’re a long way from Miami, John,” Malloy said, returning the gesture. He smiled and used his glass to point over Deal’s shoulder. “Did you catch the mirrored ceiling in the bedroom?”

  “I didn’t,” Deal said without turning. “But I’m going to go watch myself fall asleep, any second now.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” Malloy said, taking a healthy sip. “With any luck I’ll be able to get back to sleep myself.”

  “Sorry,” Deal said, reminding himself that Malloy was doing him a favor. He rubbed his face with one hand and glanced out at the soft blue nimbus of the pool. Like a glowing, happy cloud, he thought. He could dive in and sink straight to the bottom. Unfortunately, he still had business to attend to before the night was over.

  “I’m glad you came over, Rusty,” he said. “I was getting a little fried down there with our buddy Dickerson.”

  “No apologies necessary,” Malloy said, lifting his glass. “’Tis the barrister’s lot.”

  “You’re going to send me a bill for all this,” Deal added.

  Malloy waved his hand in dismissal. “We’ll take care of that part once you get under way with Stone. I’ll take enough out of his hide to make me and my heirs happy.”

  Deal glanced up. “There’s nothing certain between me and Stone, you realize that, don’t you?”

  “Oh sure,” Malloy said. “He’s a pain in the ass, but don’t worry. I’ve been down here long enough to know how to handle him.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Forget it, John. We’re pals, all right? Whatever happens.”

  Deal shrugged. He was way too tired for looking gift horses in the mouth.

  “So what were you holding back from Dickerson?” Malloy asked abruptly.

  Deal managed a humorless laugh. “Was I being that obvious?”

  “Not at all.” Malloy grinned back. “But now my curiosity’s up.” He raised his glass in a salute.

  “Pretty good the way you just did that,” Deal said.

  “You’re just tired,” Malloy said. “And besides, as your attorney, I need to know what my client’s interests truly are.”

  “If I was charged with killing somebody, you’d want to know whether I really did it?”

  Malloy held up his hand. “If you shot Dequarius Noyes, I do not want to know about it.”

  Deal shook his head. “That’s not it,” he said, then gave Rusty a quick version of what had transpired during and after the phone call he’d taken from Dequarius at the Dockside, leaving out any mention of the voice he’d heard after the shooting and of the papers he’d stashed.

  No need for his attorney to be aware that he might have in fact concealed evidence, he told himself. But the truth was more complicated than that.

  By the time he’d gone through it all, Malloy had finished his wine and was headed back to the bar for a refill. “Dequarius Noyes is like a bad penny,” he said, shaking his head as he poured.

  “Was,” Deal corrected, and Malloy raised his brows in acknowledgment.

  Malloy finished filling his glass, seeming to consider all that Deal had told him. “So what are you asking me, John?” Malloy said as he came back around the bar.

  Deal turned his palms up in a gesture of uncertainty. “I just didn’t want that old man to have to take it for some of Dequarius’ bullshit, that’s all. That’s why I didn’t call the cops earlier. Then, after I found Dequarius and realized Dickerson didn’t know about the old man—”

  “You’re telling me you want to go back over there and help the old guy clean out Dequarius’ stash before the storm troopers kick the door down?”

  “Something like that,” Deal said. “Also, I ought to be the one to tell him about his grandson. Or great-grandson.”

  Malloy laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Legally speaking, I think you’d be nuts to do it—you’d be open to charges of interference, concealment, I’m not sure what all.”

  He broke off and took a slug of his wine. “But, I can understand why you’d want to,” he added.

  “How I see it,” Deal said, leaning forward, “I go over there now, break the news to the old man, flush the dope down the toilet…then I go see Dickerson in the morning and tell him the rest of the story. That way Ainsley Spencer’s in the clear. It seems the least I can do.”

  Malloy stared at him, shaking his head. “What are you talking about, ‘the least you can do’? You sound like a man who’s guilty of something. Whyever Dequarius Noyes got himself shot, it wasn’t your fault,” Malloy said.

  Deal sighed inwardly. Part of him wanted to lay out everything in front of Malloy, but he worried that would simply confuse the issue.

  His own suspicions about who might have killed Dequarius, not to mention the imponderables concerning why, were far too nebulous to discuss. What was on his mind right now was far more practical.

  “You’re right,” Deal said to Malloy at last. He finished his glass and set it down on the bar. “But at least I can keep someone else from getting hurt.”

  Malloy closed his eyes, nodding his weary assent. He finished up his own glass, then started toward the door. “Do what you have to do, John,” he said. “And be sure and call me when they pick your ass up.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Green Parrot was shuttered when Deal passed the bar for the second time that night—the crowd and the patrol car and the big, parboiled man in the bathing suit and flip-flops had long since disappeared, all of them gone to gather strength for the Saturday about to come, he supposed. The guardian roosters had deserted their post as well, he noted as he turned the Hog back down the narrow l
ane that led to Ainsley Spencer’s bungalow. Where did roosters go to sleep it off? he wondered.

  The narrow street itself was as dark and quiet as the first time he’d been there, he noted, though the air that drifted through the open windows of the Hog had turned a bit cooler. Not more than an hour or two until dawn, he thought, glancing up at the sky.

  A hell of a time to roust an old man out of bed to tell him that his great-grandson was dead. But what was the alternative? Deal reminded himself. Deputy Conrad pounding on the jamb with the stock of his riot gun?

  He pulled the Hog to the curb in front of the gap in the picket fence, vowing to send someone over to make the necessary repairs. If it came down to it, he thought, he’d swing by a hardware store for the tools and fix the damned thing himself. The least he could do, he told himself, and never mind if he was beginning to repeat himself.

  He pulled himself out of the Hog and walked slowly toward the porch of the bungalow, too exhausted to rehearse what to say. To hell with it, he thought. He’d handle matters on the fly.

  He raised his hand to knock, then pulled the flimsy screen door open to use the brass clapper that was mounted on the solid inner door. He let the echoes of the sturdy knocker die away, then tried again. No sound of footsteps. He tried a third time, but still with no success.

  He was considering trying the doorknob, maybe stick his head inside and call if it was unlocked, when he heard footsteps behind him and turned. At the gate that opened off the sidewalk stood a heavyset woman in a blouse and ankle skirt.

  “He’s gone, mister.”

  Deal eased the screen door shut behind him. “You mean Dequarius?”

  “Is that who you’re looking for?” She rested one hand on a cane, he saw. Something in her voice suggested she didn’t use it just to get around.

  “I was looking for Mr. Spencer,” he said.

  “Again?” she said, a note of skepticism there. She had a broad face and her hair was done up in some kind of bandanna, but this was no jolly grandmother. He glanced up the dark street, wondering which of the quiet houses she’d been watching from. He wondered how many others were watching now.

  He nodded. “I wanted to talk to him,” he began. “It’s about Dequarius.”

  “He knows,” she said, cutting in. The tone of her voice left little doubt just what.

  “You mean…?”

  “Dequarius passed,” she said. “We know.”

  With the last, Deal felt a chill run through him. He glanced back at the house, then up the deserted street. How on earth had word arrived?

  He took a breath, trying to sort the thoughts banging inside his weary head. “Did Mr. Spencer say where he was going? When he was coming back?”

  “He had to leave,” the woman told him, her voice flat but final.

  So much for being the bearer of bad news, he thought, glancing again at the solid door behind him. “This was another reason I came,” he told her. He wondered about the propriety of divulging a confidence, then reconsidered. If word of Dequarius’ death was already common knowledge here, then what was he worrying about?

  “The sheriff might be coming here—” he began.

  “Maybe you left something inside, when you was here earlier,” she said, cutting in.

  He stared down at her moon-shadowed face. He couldn’t see her eyes. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  “Why don’t you go have yourself a look?” she said. “Spencer isn’t going to mind.” She lifted her cane and pointed. It seemed aimed at his breastbone. “Door’s open,” she added.

  Deal gave her an uncertain glance, but she nodded encouragement. He turned and pulled the screen door, then tried the knob. The door opened easily in his hand. He gave a last look toward the woman who stood by the gate, then slipped inside.

  A different odor greeted him this time—the tropical mustiness characteristic of any un-air-conditioned house in such a climate, of course, but changed somehow. This was the scent of a house that had been closed, unlived in, for weeks, or even months. Its silence was equally profound.

  He fumbled for the light switch, then flipped it on, bracing for the sudden glare, but nothing happened. Moonlight streamed into the tiny living room from a lace-shrouded window, enough for him to get his bearings. He crossed to the hallway where the bedrooms were and felt about for another light switch, but found nothing.

  The doorway to the old man’s room was a dark shadow on his right, the opening to Dequarius’ a matching stripe of darkness on his left. Deal hesitated, feeling the skin prickle on his arms, the back of his neck. He had the feeling he was entering a place he’d never been before, which was crazy, he told himself. He’d walked down this very hallway not two hours before.

  He put his hand into his pocket for his keys and pulled the ring out with a jingle that sounded like a dropped garbage can lid in the confined space. He kept a tiny penlight clipped there, a Christmas stocking gift from his daughter. The thing was supposed to be used for locating keyholes in the dark, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. If his current run of luck held, the batteries would be long dead, he was thinking, then pressed the button with his thumb to find a wavering pool of light on the hallway wall in front of him.

  He wouldn’t want to explore any caverns with the light, but it was enough to cast a dim glow on his surroundings. He saw the foot of Dequarius’ single bed jutting out from the wall and the dark lines of the wooden desk and chair across the room.

  No bogeyman in sight, he thought, though he did check quickly behind the open door. The tiny light seemed to be weakening though, and he eased up on the thumb button to give the batteries a rest. A bit of light reflected in from the single window, but the house was close up against its neighbor here, and the angle of the moon was wrong. He crossed quickly to the closet and reached for the door, pressing the button for the light.

  The slick plastic button slipped in his fingers and his keys fell to the floor with a resounding clatter. He looked downward after them, but the corner of the room was in full shadow. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the vague shadow of the hallway door and the glowing nimbus that was Dequarius’ bed. He thought briefly of going to check beneath it, then dismissed the notion out of hand. He was behaving like a child, he told himself. Driscoll would be beside himself with scorn.

  He turned and eased himself down on his hands and knees and began to grope in the darkness for his fallen keys, ignoring the lunatic thoughts in his head—This is when it happens, son. Someone coming through that door!

  He wouldn’t have turned if he’d heard the thud of combat boots, he was telling himself…then stopped when his hands encountered something cool and hard on the floor in front of him. A floor grate, he realized, a source of ventilation or even heat, if such a thing was ever necessary in Key West. That would explain all the noise when his keys fell, he was thinking…and in the next instant, his fingers were probing the interstices of the grating, praying the clutch of keys was too big to fit through the openings.

  He’d covered the entirety of the grate and gone over it a second time with his flattened palms, was about to pound his head against the wall in frustration when he caught a glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. He scurried on his hands and knees halfway across the room, where he found the keys bunched against the floorboard. He tried the penlight, relieved that it still worked, then pushed himself off the floor, intending to head for the closet at last.

  He felt a stunning blow at his head, accompanied by a crashing sound—furniture being flung to a wooden floor—then he was staggering sideways across the room, his legs as rubbery as a day sailor’s in a storm. He threw his hand up to protect himself from what was coming next, then felt his legs hit the side of the bed. He went down in a sitting position, dazed, one hand held to the back of his head, the other pointing his penlight as if it were a weapon.

  Some weapon, he was thinking, wondering what he’d been hit with and why
he hadn’t been nailed again. He had to move, his brain told him, duck and cover, do something or he’d be toast.

  Then he stopped, realizing he was staring at an empty room. He blinked, then tilted the penlight downward, as if an assailant might be wriggling toward him like a snake…but there was nothing.

  Someone had clubbed him, then run away, he thought. But why hadn’t he heard footsteps? What kind of house was he in, anyway?

  Then, as the weak beam of light swept over the room, he began to realize what had happened. The desk now sat askew, jolted out from its place at the wall a foot or so, the chair tumbled onto its back. But there was no killer hulking in the shadows, no club-wielding ghost about to beat his brains out.

  In fact, no one had hit him. He’d nearly knocked himself out. As he’d searched for his keys, he’d lost track of where he’d been in the darkness. When he straightened up, he drove his head squarely into the corner of the oak desk. He felt the lump that was already rising and would have shaken his head if it weren’t so sore. What would Driscoll have to say about this? he was wondering, when the voice burst from the darkness and his eyes went blind with light.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Freeze!” Deal heard one man cry.

  “Move a muscle and you’re dead,” a more familiar voice added.

  The light in his eyes was blinding. A handheld torch, he realized, trying to shield his face from the beam.

  “Police officers,” someone else cried. “Get your hands up.”

  Deal did as he was told, turning his face to escape the glare. “Well, look who it is,” he heard as the whole room was bathed in light.

  Deal glanced up at the illuminated ceiling fixture, now glowing brightly, then turned back to the doorway, where Conrad and two other deputies stood, pistols trained on him. One of the deputies stood with his hand still at the light switch he’d thrown.

  “What the hell are you doing sitting in here in the dark?” Conrad asked.

  Deal shook his head. Had he been that stupid? he wondered. Hadn’t even tried the switch in Dequarius’ room? Driscoll would have a field day with that one.