by Josh Lanyon
I’m not sure what was stranger: the fact that he was making the offer or that I was ready to start crying over it.
“I can handle it.”
He met my gaze. “I know you can. I’d like to do this for you.”
Hell. He did it again. It had to be that I was overtired and still shaken by the break-in. I worked to keep my face and voice from showing anything I was feeling, managing a brusque nod.
The cops, a man and a woman in uniform, were getting out of their car. I turned and started back through ladders and wooden horses and scaffolds.
* * * * *
I was sitting on the sofa sleeping with the cat on my lap when Jake let himself into the flat.
I must have been snoring, because the snick of the door shutting seemed to come like a clap of thunder in the wake of a windstorm. The cat sprang from my lap. I sat up, closed my mouth, wiped my eyes, and when I blearily opened them, Jake stood over me, looking unfairly alert for four in the morning.
“Was that a cat I saw running into your bedroom?”
I cleared my throat. “Was it?”
“It looked like it.” He sat down on the sofa next to me — all that size and heat and energy — and every muscle in my body immediately clenched tight in nervous reaction. I didn’t feel ready for…whatever this was liable to be.
I said lightly, “Maybe the building is haunted.”
“Could be.” He seemed to study my face with unusual attention. “Your burglary complaint is filed. Tomorrow, first thing, you need to tell that contractor to get real locks on those doors. In fact, I’d advise you to change all the locks on both sides of the building.”
I nodded wearily. “I’ve been trying to think what he was after.”
“The usual things.”
“Then why not break in to the cash register?”
“An empty cash register? Why?”
Good point. No point robbing the till after the day’s bank drop had been made. I must be more tired than I thought. Maybe Jake had the same idea, because he said, “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”
“I’m on my way. But I wanted to thank you…”
He said gravely, “Don’t mention it. I’m glad you called me. I’ve been wondering how you’re doing.”
My gaze fell. “I’m all right.” There was so much to say, and yet I couldn’t seem to think of anything. “I’m getting there. The worst part is being tired all the time.”
“Yeah.” I could feel him watching me — seeing right through me.
“Jake…”
When I didn’t continue, he said, “I know. I know it’s a lot to ask. Probably too much, although I won’t pretend I’m not hoping.”
Forgiveness. That’s what he was talking about. Forgiveness for any number of things, I guessed. I was talking about something completely different.
I shook my head. “It isn’t — I don’t know how to explain this. It’s not you, though. It’s me.”
He waited with that new calm, that new certainty in his eyes. He was expecting me to drop the ax on him. I could see that. He had been expecting it since the last time we spoke in the hospital and I’d asked him to give me time. That’s what he had expected when he answered my cry for help tonight — what he still expected — but he had come anyway.
Was that love or guilt or civic responsibility? He was the best friend I’d ever had — and the worst.
I said, “This isn’t going to make sense to you, because it doesn’t make sense to me. I know how lucky I am. I do. I know I’m getting a second chance, and even though I feel like utter shit, I know I’m getting well and I’m going to be okay. Better than okay. That’s what my doctors keep telling me, and I know that I should be really happy and really relieved. But…I-I can’t seem to feel anything right now.”
Nothing from Jake. Not that I blamed him. What was he supposed to make of that speech?
I concluded lamely, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You feel what you feel. You’re allowed.”
It was getting harder to go on. I felt I had to be honest with him. “I was happy enough with Guy, but I don’t want Guy. I don’t want…anyone. Right now.”
There was another pause after he heard me out. He said, “Okay.”
It was that easy. I wasn’t sure if what I felt was relief or disappointment.
I heard myself say, awkwardly, “I felt like I should —”
“Got it.” Was there an edge to his tone? He still looked calm. Actually, he looked concerned. He said, “Why don’t you go to bed, Adrien? I’ve seen snowmen with more color in their faces. You need sleep. So do I. In fact, I’m going to spend what’s left of the night on your couch.”
I said, despite my instant relief, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, Greta. You vant to be alone. But unless your need for space prohibits a friend crashing on the sofa, that’s what I’m doing.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with him — or myself. I nodded, pushed off the sofa, and headed for the bedroom. “There are blankets in the linen cupboard.”
“I remember.”
A thought occurred to me. I paused in the doorway, turning back to him.
“Jake?”
He was in the process of tugging off a boot. He glanced up. “Yeah?”
“Downstairs. With the cops. Was it okay?”
It seemed to take him a second to understand my concern. He smiled — the first real smile I’d seen from him in a very long time.
“Yes,” he said. “It was okay.”
Chapter Two
I woke to the knowledge that a cat was licking my hair.
“Ugh,” I muttered. “Don’t do that.”
“Meow,” Tomkins replied through a mouthful of hair.
I reached up to push him aside, but he was so damned soft, so nice to touch — even if he did start licking my fingers with that rough little tongue. I stroked and tickled him for a second or two. I remembered that Jake was sleeping on my sofa.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, gave myself a couple of seconds, and went to the door. The living-room sofa was vacant, blankets neatly folded on the foot.
I stood listening, sorting through the sounds of construction next door, the faint music from the shop below, thinking Jake might be in the kitchen; but after a second or two, I knew that the apartment was empty.
And that’s exactly the way I wanted it, right?
Sure it was.
I went back in the bedroom, glanced at the clock. Ten thirty on a Tuesday morning. Holy hell. Granted, I was still convalescent, and it wasn’t like I’d had a night’s undisturbed rest, though last night’s was the longest stretch of sleep I’d had since I’d regained consciousness in the hospital. Even at the Dautens’ I hadn’t been able to completely relax. Too many years of living on my own, I guessed.
Anyway, it was another day. The first day of the rest of my life, as the greeting-card people and physical therapists were so fond of observing. Time to get on with it.
I weighed myself on the bathroom scale. The good news was I hadn’t lost any more weight. The bad news was I still hadn’t gained any. I took my temperature: absolutely normal. Took my blood pressure and heart rate as I’d been taught to do in cardiac rehab. Good and good. I checked the incision in my chest. Healing nicely. There was an unattractive lump at the top of the incision; supposedly this would go away in time. Otherwise it looked perfectly normal — if you were a cadaver or related to Frankenstein’s monster.
I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Good thing I wasn’t interested in being with anyone, because I couldn’t imagine anyone, with the possible exception of body snatchers, finding me remotely appealing.
Still, there were things to be grateful for — beyond the fact that I was still alive and kicking. High on that list was no longer having to wear the white support hose prescribed after my surgery. Take it from me; support hosiery is not comfortable. And anyone who finds white support hose sex
y needs to check in with the nearest sex-offender outpost.
Also in the plus column: the weird clicking noise in my chest that only I could hear had stopped. Either I was getting better or the slide into madness had slowed.
I did a very cautious and very short session of tai chi, showered, shaved, dressed, took my meds, fed the cat, and drank a protein shake, which was all I could manage in the mornings right now, and I did feel better. Simply being home made me feel better: stronger, more in control again.
And although I felt guilty for calling him, I couldn’t deny it felt good that Jake had showed up when I needed him. Maybe there had been a fear in the back of my mind that if we weren’t going to be more than friends, he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.
It wouldn’t have been the first time.
I drained the last of the strawberry-banana shake — now there’s a flavor combo Mother Nature never intended — and started calling locksmiths until I found one willing to come by the shop that afternoon.
Mission accomplished, I headed downstairs.
I spotted Natalie, my stepsister, in conversation with an elderly man in a blue Hawaiian shirt. He had sparse jet-black hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and a camera around his neck. Tourists. We get a lot of them in this historic part of town. They don’t tend to buy a lot of books.
“Oh I don’t know,” Natalie was apologizing. “Maybe Adrien would know. He’s the owner. He’s lived here about ten years, I think.” She caught sight of me coming down the stairs and brightened. “Good morning!”
She’s the physical type Hollywood producers cast to play ambitious young DAs in TV crime dramas: tall and blonde and very pretty. No one would cast her as a bookstore clerk. I’d hired her after Angus, my previous bookstore associate (as Natalie preferred to be called), had departed under the proverbial cloud. I have to admit I’d resisted hiring her pretty vigorously, but it turned out to have been one of my better business decisions.
To be honest, the whole stepfamily thing wasn’t nearly as trying as I’d originally anticipated two years ago when my mother had unexpectedly decided to marry Councilman Bill Dauten. With Dauten had come three lovely and charming daughters: Lauren, Natalie, and Emma. Emma was the exact kid sister I’d have chosen if kid sisters were something you could purchase in a pet store.
Then again I didn’t even buy my pets in pet stores, as indicated by the slip of a feline doing his best to send me tumbling to my death on my way down the staircase.
“Morning,” I replied, grabbing at the banister in time to save my neck.
“Adrien, this gentleman —”
“Harrison. Henry Harrison,” the tourist supplied.
“Mr. Harrison was asking about the history of the building —”
“That’s right,” Harrison interrupted enthusiastically. “You might not be aware of this, but the facade of this structure is one of the finest remaining examples of art deco in the city. That black tile out front — what’s left of it — and those leaded glass transoms above the second-story windows and the grapevine design on the wrought-iron gates and window bars — aces.”
Aces?
“Are you visiting from out of town?” I asked, safely reaching the bottom level and joining them at the large mahogany front desk.
“That’s right. How’d you guess? I’m from Milwaukee. Old buildings are my hobby.” He looked around the crowded main room of the bookstore affectionately. “Yes sirree, Bob. If these old places could talk.”
“I hate to disappoint you. I don’t know a whole lot about the history. The place was built back in the 1930s. Originally it was a hotel called the Huntsman’s Lodge. This section and next door were all one building.”
“I was interested in the murder.”
I threw an uneasy look at Natalie. She was all pleased interest. “Murder? Really?”
“It was a long, long time ago.” I kept an eye on the other customers wandering about.
Harrison said, “That’s right. Took place back in the fifties.”
“You never said anything about it, Adrien.”
“It’s not like it’s preying on my mind,” I told Natalie.
“But that’s a great angle. A mystery bookstore in a place where there really was a murder. We could really do something with this.”
I smiled weakly, glanced at our visitor. Harrison had those dark, smile-crinkled Roy Rogers eyes. I got the feeling he was enjoying himself.
“So who was murdered?” Natalie persisted.
Harrison said to me, “I take it you own the other side of the building now?”
“That’s right.”
“How long has the renovation being going on?”
“Since May.”
“Who was murdered?” Natalie, like all the Dauten women, did not take kindly to being ignored. “Did they ever catch the killer?”
“It was a rumor,” I said. “I don’t think they ever found a body.”
“They didn’t find the body, but I bet you there was a murder, all right.” Harrison offered a quick flash of perfect dentures. “Like I said, I’m a history buff. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“What is the story?” Natalie asked him.
“Young fella by the name of Jay Stevens was staying here. He played clarinet in a jazz band called the Moonglows or some damned thing. Anyhoo, one night he disappeared out of his room.” He shook his head. “There were a few drops of blood on the floor, but no Jay Stevens.”
Natalie gave a delighted shudder. “And they never found him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Nope,” Harrison said.
“Maybe someone hit him over the head and he got amnesia and wandered away.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Harrison said, though personally I’d have had trouble coming up with many. I’d always thought there was a good chance Stevens had simply skipped out on his creditors. A musician living in a fleabag hotel was bound to have creditors after him. And possibly music critics.
“Why do people think he was murdered? What was the motive?” Natalie spoke like a true mystery buff. I was sort of proud of her, in between wishing she’d drop it and go reorganize the best-seller-paperback rack.
The door opened with a cheerful jangle of bells, and Mel Davis walked in.
Mel. My ex. My other ex. My first ex.
My first thought was that I was having a really weird dream. I’d had pretty bizarre dreams in the hospital, so why not? Or maybe this was Mel’s doppelgänger? Maybe hallucinations were the latest — and most unnerving — manifestation of my surgery? But Mel smiled that wide, warm smile, and I realized that it was quite true. It was Mel. Brought to me in living color.
“Hi,” I said, taking a few sleepwalker steps to meet him.
“Adrien English.” He was across the floor in three big steps, and we hugged. I suspected he might have recracked my sternum.
I got enough breath to gasp with a semblance of cordiality. “Mel.” It might have sounded like protest. It felt vaguely like protest.
We let go of each other self-consciously. Seven years later he still looked pretty much like he’d just stepped out to get a pack of antacids. Medium height, square shoulders, curly, dark hair, neatly groomed Vandyke, and cocoa brown eyes; maybe he was heavier; otherwise he hadn’t changed.
He must have read something in my face. His expression changed. “You didn’t get my e-mail.”
“E-mail?” I sounded like I was a stranger to the age of newfangled technology.
“I sent you an e-mail a few days ago and said I’d be down this way and maybe we could get together. For lunch or dinner.”
I nearly laughed at that awkward amendment, though it wasn’t really funny. “I’ve been…away.”
“Dad’s having heart surgery this week.”
“Sorry to hear it.” I didn’t know the old bastard had a heart; unsurprising it would need repair work.
“I drove down from Berkeley. I thought since I was here —” He
interrupted himself to say, “It’s so good to see you, man.”
“Great to see you too.”
Mel laughed the deep, husky laugh I remembered so well, held my gaze a few seconds too long, then looked away, staring around the bookstore. “I can’t believe what you’ve done with the place. It’s like… I wouldn’t have recognized it. Do you own the other side of the building now?”
I nodded. His grin widened. “At last. You’ve been coveting that square footage since the day we signed the escrow papers.”
I smiled despite the unexpected wrench of that memory. Why the hell hadn’t I checked my e-mail when I got home last night, so I could have had warning?
I looked around for help. Henry Harrison had moved away and was studying the bargain-book table. Natalie was clearly waiting for an introduction.
“Mel, this is my — This is Natalie Dauten. Natalie, Mel Davis.” I took a deep breath and said, “Natalie’s my —”
“Sister,” Natalie supplied.
They shook hands as Mel echoed disbelievingly, “Your sister?”
“Stepsister,” Natalie admitted almost grudgingly.
“Lisa remarried a couple of years ago.”
“Whoa.” His shrewd gaze was warm with concern and understanding, though it wasn’t necessary. I’d got over any hang-ups there long ago, and I was pretty fond of my overextended family — from a safe distance.
“And you work here?” Mel asked, eyeing the smiling-cat name badge that Natalie insisted on wearing.
“Adrien’s last assistant had to flee the country after he was arrested for murder. Angus was arrested, I mean. Not Adrien. Not yet anyway.”
Mel looked slightly bemused. I said, “Isn’t it about your lunchtime, Natalie?”
“No,” she said. “Actually, it’s your lunchtime. You’re not supposed to be here at all, remember?”
The look I gave her must have been suitably murderous, because her cheeks got very pink. Her jaw, however, took on a pugnacious jut eerily reminiscent of her old man’s.
“Is it your lunchtime?” Mel asked quickly. “Because if it is, and if you don’t have plans, I’d love to take you to lunch.”
I hesitated. But what the hell. The only plans I had were my morning nap — which, granted, I was about ready for. I was going to have to deal with Mel sooner or later; why not make it sooner and get it over with? God knew enough time had passed. I was long over any lingering romantic feelings for him, even if I were currently in the market for that kind of thing, which I wasn’t.