Hard Aground

by Brendan DuBois

  “Looking for this?” he asked, holding it up by its butt.

  “Yes, Felix, damn you.”

  He went “tsk-tsk” and put the pistol down on my nightstand. Felix Tinios, originally from Boston’s North End and now an independent security consultant—he even had business cards, which I always found surprising—opened up a folding wooden table he had brought into my bedroom.

  “You look like a college professor dressed for a class,” I said, nodding at the tweed jacket he wore over a white button-down shirt and pressed blue jeans. “Preferably an all-female one.”

  “We all have our dreams, don’t we,” he replied.

  Felix moved surely and swiftly through my room, taking out my breakfast from a dark green insulated bag. There was coffee, cold milk, and two covered plates. On the larger plate was a collection of freshly made crepes with a side of maple syrup—and, Felix being Felix, I had no doubt it was the real stuff, and not that horrid sugar cane syrup flavored maple. The smaller plate had five thick pork sausages.

  I started eating and he wandered more about the room. “Why was your pistol out?” he asked.

  “Guess.”

  “Your alleged visitor came back last night?”

  “Nothing alleged about it, Felix. He was there.”

  “Sure,” he said, coming back and sitting on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Like I fell into a farmer’s thresher,” I said. “Cut up, banged up, and bruised.”

  “You’ll get there.”

  “Right now I can’t get out of my bedroom.”

  “Where did the ever-cheerful Lewis Cole disappear to?”

  “Someplace warmer and safer,” I said.

  When breakfast was done, I checked the time and saw Paula was late. Damn. Felix saw me looking at the clock and said, “What’s up?”

  “My nurse is late.”

  “What, your insurance company and your doc figure out their dispute?”

  “No, that looks like it’s going to be another Thirty Years’ War. The nurse is Paula.”

  Felix smiled. “Ah, the young and sweet Miss Quinn. Well, you can’t wait, so let’s get it done.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he said, coming over to me. “I’ll take care of those drains.”

  “But …”

  He grabbed my hands, nearly yanked me out of bed. “What, you think I’m afraid of blood? Really?”

  Felix worked quickly and efficiently, gently removing each plastic bulb, squirting it in the measuring cup, writing down the amounts, rinsing out the bulbs, and then securing them again.

  “There you go,” he said. “Uncle Felix’s drain and repair company, at your service.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re probably going to need a sponge bath by and by, but I’ll leave that to your reporter friend. In the meantime, I’ve got some dishes to do.”

  “Bring me back to bed, you can do what you like.”

  “Um, not going to happen, grasshopper. You’re coming downstairs with me and you’re going to keep me company while I wash up.”

  “But Felix …”

  “When was the last time you were downstairs?”

  “The day I left to go to the hospital, and the day I came back. The end.”

  “Then it’s time to go down and check it out, make sure your mysterious visitor hasn’t stolen a book or a rug.”

  “But Felix …”

  He gave me a look that, were I anyone else, would have caused me to lose control of certain bodily functions. “Trust me when I say this, you’re not getting around enough.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Of course it hurts, moron. That’s part of the healing process. Better a little hurt now than lots of hurt later on, trying to get your muscle tone back while lying in that comfortable bed and watching Ellen.”

  “I can’t stand Ellen.”

  “Why?”

  “Too much fake fun, fake dancing, fake smiles.”

  “Everybody’s a critic. Let’s go.”

  Felix took my arm and I moved slowly out of the bathroom, leaning on him as we went out to the landing and took our time going downstairs. “You poor fellow,” Felix said. “You’re walking like a sailor who hasn’t touched land for six months. Later today I’ll come by, drop off a cane that my Uncle Paulie used back in the day.”

  “Does it have a hidden bottle inside to carry around some illegal hooch?”

  We got to the first floor and Felix laughed. “No, Uncle Paulie was around too late for Prohibition, but it does have a cute hidden secret.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  We walked through the living room, with the large stone and brick fireplace, and into the adjacent kitchen. The kitchen appliances were new, as was most of the furniture on this floor, since my house nearly burned down several months earlier. In the living room were a couch, three comfortable chairs, a coffee table, and the television. There were also scores of boxes of books, bought either at local used bookstores or from the megamall that is the Internet.

  Felix helped me onto the couch, trotted back upstairs, and came down with my breakfast dishes. As he started washing them he called out, “Did Paula call to say she was going to be late?”

  “No, but I figured she was busy. She’s covering the story of Maggie Branch’s murder.”

  Felix had taken off his tweed jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He turned to me, dishcloth in hand, and said, “What do you know?”

  I shifted some on the couch. I didn’t want to admit this to Felix, but I was glad to be down here. It was nice to be out of the bedroom, to have a different view and different light coming in.

  “Not much,” I said. “Homicide. Killed by a shotgun.”

  Felix nodded, the dishcloth clenched in his strong hands.

  “What’s up?” I said. “You know Maggie Branch?”

  “I knew Maggie Branch,” Felix said.

  “How?”

  “Occasionally she would help look over antiques, other items that I had that were of interest,” he said. “A sassy, smart woman.”

  “Sounds … interesting.”

  He frowned. “Oh, come on. Nothing illegal. In fact, a week ago I brought in an old silver service that had belonged to a great-grandfather from the old country, back when it was the Kingdom of Sicily. It was just banging around in my house and I thought it would be good to get an estimate, either to sell it or to figure out whether I should stop using it as a place to drop off my keys when I came through the door.”

  “Oh.”

  He went back to drying the dishes. “Anything else you can tell me about her murder?”

  “Paula said she hadn’t heard if anything was stolen, but since her home and shop were so close to the Interstate, she thought robbery would be a good option.”

  “Hardly,” he said, “unless whoever was doing the robbery had a specific target in mind.”

  Felix’s eyes narrowed, and I said, “Like old silver from Sicily?”

  He carefully folded up the towel. “I guess I’ll just have to find out.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it, just reality,” he said. “And speaking of reality—”

  “Please don’t start,” I said. “I’ve had a rough month.”

  “So have a lot of people. But your mystery visitor … tell me more about last night’s visit.”

  I tried the stubborn approach, but Felix stared at me until I gave up.

  “I heard the door open,” I said. “And then it closed. Then I heard footsteps.”

  He leaned over my clean kitchen counter. “Anything else?”

  “I called out to him. Or her. Or it.”

  “No answer, then.”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you call the cops?”

  “No, and as you can tell, I didn’t call you either.”

  He drummed his fingers on the counter. “Do you ever hear the person leave?”


  “No.”

  “They just come in and stay and …”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Maybe you just sleep through it.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Want me to spend the night?” he asked.

  “I may be a patient,” I said. “But I’m not helpless. Maybe hapless, but I can manage on my own.”

  Later Felix said he was bored and he set up some of my bookshelves. I supervised him from my position on the couch, and seeing my old books emerge from the dusty cardboard boxes cheered me up, which I was sure was Felix’s plan all along.

  So the morning went by and the sun was coming in stronger, and Felix washed his hands in my clean kitchen and said, “You know there’s new technology, don’t you, where you can have a little handheld device and store hundreds of books?”

  “I’ve heard the rumor,” I admitted.

  “Then why don’t you make the technology leap? Enter the new century? Be one of the cool kids?”

  “I like books,” I said. “I love the feel of them, the scent of them, just the pleasure of holding them.”

  “But technology marches on.”

  “And when some idiots set off a nuclear EMP to fry all of our electronics, I’ll still be here with my books, and you’ll be stuck with a nice piece of plastic and glass.”

  “Boy, you’ve got one dark imagination.”

  “Can’t help it.”

  Felix gathered up his tweed jacket and said, “You need a hand going upstairs?”

  “No, I think I’ll be fine,” I said. “It’ll be nice to stretch my legs later.”

  “All right, then.”

  “What are you up to for the rest of the day?”

  “Some personal business,” he said, putting on his jacket, and from the look in his eyes and face, he no longer seemed like a college professor.

  “Relating to Maggie’s murder and your silver?”

  “Personal,” he said. “By the way, you got plans for lunch?”

  “My big plans are not to pass out while going upstairs.”

  “I’ll arrange something from the Lafayette House.”

  “What’s on the menu?”

  “I think I know what you like,” he said. “How does noon sound?”

  “One o’clock sounds better,” I said. “Had a generous breakfast from a generous chap.”

  “Glad to do it,” he said. “In the meantime …” He came to the couch, briefly squeezed my good shoulder. “Get healed, get better. You aren’t cut out to be a hermit.”

  “Thanks for everything,” I said.

  He smirked. “Wait until you get my bill.”

  When Felix left, I found the remote and switched on the television. I thought of the Springsteen song once again: fifty-seven channels and nothing on.

  I flicked the television off, found a three-month-old issue of Smithsonian magazine, and stretched out on the couch, only shivering twice from the pain, and started reading a fascinating story about the status of Biblical-related archaeology in the Middle East.

  Eventually the pages slid through my hands and the magazine dropped to the floor, and I took a midmorning nap.

  A knock on the door got me up, and a few random and dark memories popped out as I rolled and sat up on the couch. I checked a new clock on the fireplace’s mantelpiece. It was 11:45 A.M. I doubted very much that it was my lunch delivery from the Lafayette House, because Felix is quite specific in his instructions, and with Felix’s look and attitude, they are never forgotten.

  The knock repeated itself.

  I closed my eyes. The memories … of when I was back at the Pentagon, working in a small and obscure intelligence agency, and that day when we went out to Nevada for a training drill, a drill that killed everyone but me.

  Including the love of my life back then, Cissy Manning.

  In my dream I had been with her, and it had been one of those dreams that dug deep into memories, so you could hear the person’s voice, feel their touch, taste their skin … it wasn’t a dream as much as it was a time machine visit, and then the knock woke me up. I had briefly spanned two worlds, wondering how in hell I was going to tell Cissy and Paula about each other.

  Cissy.

  Dead all these years.

  I wiped at my face, surprised to find my eyes moist.

  The knock came again, harder.

  “Hold on!” I yelled, and then kicked myself for this mistake. I should have kept my mouth shut and the insistent visitor would have probably gone away. Because of where my home was located and the lack of a real driveway, I usually didn’t get much in the way of visitors, just the usual poll workers every four years trying to save their candidate, or religious missionaries intent on saving my soul.

  One more knock.

  Damn it.

  “Coming!” I yelled out, and later I realized too late that I should have never answered the door.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I opened the door and a man and woman were standing on my granite steps, both smiling widely at me. The man was in his fifties, with a closely trimmed white beard and bright blue eyes. He wore khaki slacks, a flannel shirt and open blue cloth jacket, and a tweed cap on his head, and there was a bulging manila file folder under his right arm. His companion seemed to be about the same age, though she looked colder, wearing a down jacket and a bright, multicolored knit cap even though it was probably in the low fifties. Her steel-gray hair fell across her right shoulder in a thick braid.

  “So sorry to bother you,” the man said, still smiling. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Barely,” I said, holding onto the doorknob, thankful for the support. “If you’re on a religious mission, congratulations and no, I don’t want to hear any more. If you’re selling something, I can’t think of anything you have that I might want to buy.”

  The woman frowned but her male friend wasn’t giving up. “My name’s Dave Hudson, and this is my wife, Marjorie. We’re neither selling nor preaching. We’ve come all the way from Albany, doing some genealogical research … and my”—he raised his head to look up at my house—“I’m so thrilled to see this structure standing. You’re Mr. … Cole, correct? The magazine writer?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And I’m sorry, I’ve just gotten home from the hospital. I’m not really up for a talk.”

  “Dear me, dear me, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll just take a minute. You see, my grandfather was once stationed here, at this very same house. Though it does look different from back then.”

  “He was with the Coast Artillery?”

  “Nope, later than that.”

  “I’m sorry, there was nothing after the Coast Artillery shut down, except for a radar station looking for Russian bombers, back in the fifties. And this place had been abandoned by then. Before the Coast Artillery used it for officers’ quarters, it had been a lifeboat station, back in the mid-1800s.”

  Marjorie rubbed her hands together and looked like she wished she were back home, among the charms of New York’s capital city, rather than here on this particular stretch of the chilly New Hampshire seacoast.

  “Well … hate to correct you,” Dave said, “since you’re the current owner, but there was a time right around when the artillery station was being shut down that this was a facility for Navy corpsmen, during the Korean War. They did training at the old hospital in Exonia, and this was where they were put up. My grandfather was stationed here.”

  My hand was starting to lose its grip on the doorknob, and my bladder was sending alarm bells that a bathroom visit was urgently required.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I’m being dense, but I don’t see how your grandfather being stationed here has anything to do with genealogical research.”

  Marjorie said, “David …”

  “Just a sec, just a sec,” he said. “The thing is, there’s always been a rumor in the family that granddad was a bit of a tomcat, and that he met up with my grandmom here, and well, you know. This was the p
lace where my dad was probably conceived. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Hilarious,” I said, and my bladder was now sending emergency signals to my brain. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude but—”

  “I know, I know, and I appreciate your time, but all I’m asking is for a quick tour of your house, take a few photos, a few measurements, and—”

  I shook my head. “Not today, please. Maybe in a couple of weeks.”

  Dave stepped forward as I started to close the door, and the folder under his arm slipped out and fell to the rocky soil. Papers and long sheets with scribbled notes flew around. Marjorie swore and his face went red as they both scrambled to retrieve the papers.

  Dave squatted down, grabbing them before they could fly, and Marjorie bent over and grimaced—it looked like her back hurt or something—and I felt guilty, but more than that, I really, really had to go to the bathroom.

  “Please,” I said, shutting the door. “Two weeks, all right?”

  And through a lot of hard work and some swearing, I made it upstairs just in time.

  At one P.M. I was back on the couch, rereading the section of Smithsonian that I had read earlier, when there was once again a knock at the door. It didn’t sound as harsh as before, so I didn’t bother looking through the peephole before opening it up.

  A young, tired-looking woman was there, dressed in black shoes, black slacks, and light blue down jacket with frayed sleeves, carrying two bulging plastic bags. Her face was red from the blowing wind and her blonde hair was cut short, like some sort of rich aristocrat from the 1920s.

  But there was nothing about her demeanor or clothing that said rich.

  “You Mr. Cole?”

  “I am.”

  “I got a dinner for you, all prepaid. I was told you just got out of the hospital and if you’d like, I can come in and set it up.”

  I stepped aside.

  “That would be great, thanks.”

  She came in and announced her name was Mia as she took off her jacket. From her white blouse and short black apron, I could see that she had probably just come over from the dining room at the Lafayette House. Mia went through my cabinets, looking for plates and such, and then expertly doled out the food. And there was a lot of it: sautéed sea scallops, hand-cut French fries, a large bowl of salad. Holy God, it looked like Felix had sent over enough food to feed a squad of hungry soldiers.