by Ali Brandon
He recognized her almost as quickly as she recognized him, and he sneered.
“Whaddaya doing in front of my shop?” he demanded, his simian jaw thrusting in her direction. “No, don’t tell me. You’re looking to steal another one of my employees.”
“I most certainly am not,” she choked out, even as she reminded herself she didn’t owe the man an explanation.
His sneer morphed into a cold leer. “Well, then, let me guess. I know, you’re here to buy yourself one of those ladies’ toys. A single gal like you, all alone at night . . .”
He trailed off suggestively, and Darla felt heat flame her cheeks. She’d thought Curt with his extracurricular activities was bad, but Bill the Porn Shop Owner made him look like the model of civility. Thank goodness poor Robert didn’t have to suffer under this jerk’s influence anymore!
Fleetingly, she considered a few responses of the anatomically impossible kind and then decided dignified silence was her best resort. Given Robert’s accounts of the man’s foul temper, taunting him would be foolish at best . . . and dangerous at worst. Turning on her heel, she hurried on in the direction that she’d been going, trying as she did so to ignore the man’s mirthless laugh and his parting crude comment, “Hey, c’mon back! We got a two-for-one sale going on!”
A man like that definitely bore watching, she thought in outrage, though her burst of anger was swiftly replaced by an unsettled feeling. Why, she might have been standing within a few feet of Curt’s murderer. Reflexively, she glanced over her shoulder, suddenly fearing that the man might have followed her. Had Reese questioned him at all, she wondered, or was the cop so set on pinning the crime on Hilda that he’d overlooked someone who was, in Darla’s view, a far more likely suspect? Either way, she’d be steering clear of that particular block in the future.
She only hoped that Hamlet would do the same!
Just to be careful, she took a slightly circuitous route away from that neighborhood, checking another time or two behind her and breathing a relieved sigh when she saw no sign of Bill’s apelike visage leering after her. It wasn’t until she reached Barry’s brownstone a few minutes later that the heat in her face finally faded and her heartbeat was back to normal. Even though it was still midafternoon, the angle of the sun through the surrounding buildings left this portion of the block in early shadow. She shivered a little as she surveyed the house from the sidewalk. Without Barry there to lend his placid company, the feel of the building had changed. Something about the place now set off her hinky meter.
No longer was it simply a once-charming Greek Revival bravely holding up under the excesses of time and the previous owners’ careless remodeling. Instead, the building had assumed an air of cold abandonment that dared anyone to cross its threshold. It wasn’t simply that a murder had occurred on its premises, though that was bad enough! Wrapped in afternoon shadows, it hunkered behind its single shielding oak, its few unboarded windows seeming to watch for the errant passersby who strayed too close and needed to be taught a lesson.
At that last thought, Darla gave herself a firm mental shake. Shades of The Haunting of Hill House, she told herself with grin at her overwrought imagination. The place might be a dump in its current state, but Barry had mentioned nothing about any sinister history connected to it. The only thing that walked in that house was a mouse or rat or two—and possibly a certain black feline.
She softly groaned. Way to psych yourself up, kid, would have been Jake’s grinning response to the situation. But Darla cheered herself by remembering that she needed only to do an exterior search. Barry would have locked the place before he left. With that thought, she stepped around the woven construction fencing and made her way to the basement windows. There, she knelt in the damp earth. Clutching the security bars, she peered through the dirty glass into the darkness.
Or, rather, what should have been darkness. From what little she could make out through the layer of black grime coating the window, most of the basement was cloaked in deep shadow, save for a small light that seemingly had been left burning in one corner beyond the boiler. She frowned, scrubbing at the glass with her hand in an attempt to clean it.
She succeeded only in smearing about the dirt so that her view of the basement was even murkier, if that were possible. Had the crime scene investigators forgotten one of their flashlights? Or else maybe neglected to turn off one of Barry’s clip-on lamps? But the light meant that if Hamlet was in the basement, with luck she would spy him, or, at least, maybe a stray beam would catch his wide green eyes.
“Hamlet! Hamlet, are you in there?”
She strained her ears for some sound in reply; then, hearing nothing, she scooted over to the next window. Squatting in front of the glass, she tried again. “Hamlet! Kitty, kitty, kitty! Come on out!”
Barely had the words left her mouth than she thought she saw through the window’s veil of dirt a shadow move within the deeper darkness of the basement. “Hamlet,” she called again, reaching through the bars to rap at the window, “are you in there? Come out like a good cat, would you?”
The shriek of metal hinges nearby made her jump. She gave a reflexive shriek of her own and fell backward, landing with an ungraceful thud into a sitting position there on the grass. Heart pounding wildly, she shot a quick look toward the porch. Someone was hanging out at what was supposed to be an empty brownstone!
Her view of the door was blocked by the pile of brick and its wrapping of orange construction fencing, so her imagination—already running full bore—had a few fleeting moments to conjure various scenarios. Perhaps she’d stumbled upon the scrap thieves in their work, and they didn’t want any witnesses. Maybe Bill had guessed she suspected him of Curt’s murder and followed her, planning to drag her into the empty house and kill her, too. Or it could be that Curt’s ghost was lonely with Barry out of town and was looking for some company.
She scrambled to her feet, not liking any of these possibilities and poised to take off at a dead run. If Hamlet was in the basement, he’d just have to fend for himself until she could return with reinforcements—the kind wearing badges and carrying guns! But the adrenaline that had been rushing through her veins slammed into a figurative wall of confusion when she saw just who was standing on the porch staring down at her.
TWENTY
“BARRY? I-I THOUGHT YOU WERE IN CONNECTICUT,” SHE exclaimed as she self-consciously brushed the dirt from her pants. Not that he looked any better. His faded jeans were streaked with dirt, as were his well-worn running shoes, while the tattered plaid jacket he wore over an equally dirty T-shirt likely had never seen the inside of a dry cleaner’s. If it weren’t late fall, she would have guessed from his appearance that he’d been gardening.
Barry, meanwhile, was observing her with a look of surprise that seemed tinged with something very close to anger.
“Darla? What are you doing here?”
“Looking for Hamlet. The little wretch ran off again, and I was afraid he’d sneaked back into your basement.” She gave him a quizzical look of her own. “What happened to Curt’s funeral?”
Barry shook his head in disgust.
“There was a problem with the family,” he said with a dismissive wave of his heavy work gloves. “They couldn’t decide whether to bury Curt or have him cremated. He didn’t leave any instructions behind—hell, who expects to die at our age?—and it was turning into this whole family feud between his sister and their mother. I called this morning, and all the plans were still up in the air, so I figured I’d get some work done today and head out tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. There’s nothing worse than when a death touches off a war within a family.”
“You’re telling me.” His expression hadn’t lightened any. “So, about Hamlet . . .” He trailed off questioningly, and Darla realized that, for all intents and purposes, she was trespassing on the man’s property.
“Sorry,” she said, feeling unaccountably guilty. “I don’t normally go around lo
oking in people’s windows, but he’s been missing for almost a day now. We’ve looked everywhere else for him, so your place is kind of my last hope. Cats are creatures of habit. I thought there was a good chance he’d be here.”
Barry shook his head. “I was just down there putting a part on the boiler, and I didn’t see hide or whisker of him. But I’ll be glad to call you if he turns up.”
“Oh.” Darla didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in her voice. “Listen, would you mind very much if I took a look inside to satisfy myself? If he’s there, he might be afraid to come out if it’s just you.”
The man hesitated. Finally, he nodded, though she heard a note of reluctance in his tone as he replied, “I don’t mind if you take a look in the main house, but I really wish you wouldn’t go in the basement.”
“But that’s probably where Hamlet is, if he’s here!”
“Darla, I told you I didn’t see any sign of him down there, and I’ve been working in the basement for a couple hours now.”
He paused and spread his gloved hands in a helpless gesture. “I’ve got the boiler taken apart, and I had to move a few things, so it’s not easy walking around. Beside, with that whole Curt situation, I don’t like the idea of anyone going down there anymore. In fact, I’m thinking really seriously about plastering over that door.”
Then, when Darla stared at him, he added with a deprecating smile, “I know it sounds superstitious, but I don’t think I can keep working here in the house otherwise.”
“Sure, I understand,” Darla said with a sympathetic nod. “I’ll just take a look around the main floors and call for him for a few minutes, and then I’ll let you get back to work.”
He nodded and stepped aside so she could enter in front of him. Darla wrinkled her nose. It was obvious that no one had been there for the past few days. The place had taken on a stale and faintly unpleasant smell, as if the rats had had a field day in Barry’s absence. Opening the windows wasn’t an option, since all but those of the upper floors were boarded up.
“I have to say, I sure was relieved to see it was you on the porch,” she told him to break what once again had become an awkward silence between them. “While I was out looking for Hamlet, I ran into my employee Robert’s old boss, a guy named Bill Ferguson, who knew Curt, too. He owns an adult bookstore a few blocks from here. Maybe you know him?”
Then, when Barry gave her a surprised look, she realized how that must have sounded. “I didn’t mean to imply that you hang out at adult bookstores,” she hurriedly corrected herself. “I just thought that since Curt knew him, you might have run into him before.”
“Can’t say I have.” Then, with a frown, he added, “But what would this guy be doing at my place?”
“Maybe following me?”
The likelihood of such a scenario sounded pretty weak now that she said it aloud; still, considering how neatly Hamlet’s clues pointed to the porn shop owner, she forged on. “The last time Curt was in my store was when Bill came by to harass Robert. He didn’t hide the fact that he and Curt had some bad blood between them, which I mentioned to the police. So if Bill picked up on the fact that I think he might have been involved in Curt’s death, he could be gunning for me, so to speak.”
“Really?” His expression sharpened, and he gave her a quizzical look. “But I heard on the news that they arrested Hilda Aguilar for murder . . . not that your cop friend bothered to mention that little fact to me.”
“Reese did arrest her,” she agreed, relieved that Barry knew that much, so that she wouldn’t have to break her word to Reese about keeping her mouth shut. “I’m sure he planned let you know. But Hilda is out on bail now.” Darla paused and shook her head in dismay. “I don’t know what sort of evidence the police think they have, but I just can’t see Hilda murdering anyone.”
“Yeah, upstanding citizen and all that. The problem is, you never know about people, do you?”
His tone held a note of bitterness now, though she couldn’t really blame him. He’d just lost a friend that he’d known for almost a lifetime, and the person arrested for the crime was someone he knew, at least peripherally. Which, she assumed, must be almost worse than a random killing by a stranger. Feeling again like an intruder, although Barry had invited her in, she decided to get on with looking for her lost cat and then get the heck out of there.
“Hamlet, here kitty!” she called, poking her head into each of the downstairs rooms for a look. In between shouts, she listened, hoping for the sound of an imperious meow. Each time, she heard nothing.
She tried the next floor as well, carefully skirting the holes in the subfloor that were still to be repaired. Her search there and on the third floor yielded no results. Discouraged, she made her cautious way back downstairs to where Barry waited for her.
“No cat?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nope, no cat. I just don’t know where he could have taken himself off to.”
“Maybe you should call the humane society in the morning. Animal control might have picked him up.”
Privately, Darla doubted that any animal control officer would be able to snare the wily feline, but she nodded. “If he’s not back by morning, that’s what I’ll do.”
“All right, then.”
The words hung awkwardly between them, and Darla realized that he was looking for a polite way to tell her to go. So she would be polite and not make him say it out loud. “I’ve taken up too much of your time. I guess I should head back to the store now.”
“Probably. Sorry, I didn’t mean that like it sounded,” he added with an apologetic smile, looking more like the old Barry she knew as he pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in the back of his belt. “Normally, I’d be thrilled to have your company, but I’ve got things I need to finish before tomorrow, since I’ll be gone for a few days.”
“And daylight is burnin’, like my dad always says,” she answered with a smile of her own. “Don’t worry, I understand.”
Before she could wish him a good trip for yet a second time, however, her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket gave a quick look at the caller ID.
“It’s James. Maybe he’s calling to say that Hamlet is home.” Pressing the “Talk” button, she eagerly answered, “Hello, James. I’m still here at Barry’s place. Did you find Hamlet yet?”
“No, I am afraid he is still missing. But that is not why I am calling.”
“James, hold on a minute. Barry,” she said to the man before her, “James says that Hamlet’s still not back yet. Do me a favor and keep an eye out for him, just in case he does head in your direction, okay?”
“Darla?”
James’s voice was soft in her ear, his tone suddenly urgent. “I’m going to ask you a question. Don’t answer anything besides yes or no. Do you understand?”
I’m going to ask you a question. Don’t answer anything besides yes or no.
Darla abruptly frowned. For the first time since she’d know him, Professor James T. James was speaking in—dare she say it?—contractions. Something serious had to be going on, indeed.
“Yes,” she replied, turning a little so that she wasn’t facing Barry.
James’s voice was still soft but direct as he asked, “You said you’re at Barry Eisen’s place. Is he by chance standing there with you?”
“Yes.”
“All right, Darla, I want you to listen very carefully. Pretend I’m talking to you about the store, and step away from him as if you need a little privacy. We can’t afford for him to overhear anything. And whatever you do, don’t react.”
“Yes?” she answered, feeling her heart rate beginning to increase as she gave Barry an apologetic shrug—Sorry, it’s business—and walked a few feet from him. Obviously, this was something very, very bad.
“Do you recall before you left the store that I found the German-English dictionary lying on the ground?”
“Yes.”
“I suspect that Hamlet must have pulled it down befo
re he ran off. And I am embarrassed to say that I didn’t make the connection until just now, while Robert and I were looking at the other two books of Hamlet’s.”
“Yes?” she persisted, impatience and concern warring within her. Would the man just get to the point!
“The one word connecting all of Hamlet’s clues is ‘iron.’ The Man in the Iron Mask, Murders in the Rue Morgue, or rather, the song of the same name as sung by Iron Maiden. Do you know what the German word for ‘iron’ is, Darla?”
“No.”
“Eisen. The German word for iron is Eisen. Darla, I think Hamlet is trying to tell us that Barry Eisen murdered Mr. Benedetto.”
Barry a murderer!?
Darla’s grip on her cell tightened as she struggled not to physically react to the fact that her store manager had just informed her that she was standing within arm’s length of a cold-blooded killer. Assuming, of course, that James was correctly interpreting Hamlet’s clues, she faintly reminded herself. For even if Barry had killed his friend, the question remained . . . why?
“Darla, did you hear me? Darla?” came James’s voice in her ear, sounding oddly distant.
She gave herself a mental shake. Don’t go to pieces . . . not with Barry standing right there.
“Yes, James, I heard you,” she managed, assuming the tone of a serious shopkeeper who had learned that something was amiss at her store. “I’ll head back to the shop right away.
“You’re sure you can leave without his suspecting anything?” James persisted.
She glanced at the front door. The path to it was clear, and though the hinges stuck a little, she could manage it. All she needed to do was walk right out, just as she had been in process of doing.
She nodded, though of course James could not see her through the phone. “I was just telling Barry good-bye, anyhow. Try to keep everyone there happy, and I’ll be back soon.”
“I shall be timing you,” he warned, returning to his usual precise tones, “and if you are not here in a reasonable few minutes, we shall come looking for you. In the meantime, I shall notify Jake so that she can contact Detective Reese regarding the situation.”