It took me a couple of minutes to locate them. There were three in all. The first two were too small for me to fit through, but the third one seemed like a possibility, even if it did look just a couple of inches larger than a bread box. I knelt down in front of it. The rust on its frame flaked off when I brushed against it. I touched the pane. It jiggled slightly, a sign most of the caulking was gone. Breaking the glass wasn't going to present a problem. It would just take a tap.
I peered through the thick, cobweb-encrusted pane. A brick wall, concrete floor, and furnace came into view. So far, I didn't see anything I couldn't handle. I gave the window an experimental push. It was open. The Myers had slipped up. The frame scraped my back and sides as I wiggled through. If I were ten pounds heavier, I never would have made it. Coming down, I accidentally kicked over four gallons of paint. I hadn't seen them because they'd been stacked flush against the wall.
The cans clattered to the floor, the noise seemingly magnified by the stone. One thing was for sure, if anyone was in the house, they were going to be down here pretty soon. I froze as I listened for footsteps, for someone saying “did you hear that noise?” while I glanced around and tried to figure out where I could hide. But the only thing I heard was the hum of the furnace. After a minute or so, I let my breath out, brushed the snow off my jacket and my pants and took off my shoes and emptied them out. Then I tiptoed up the basement steps.
Even though I was almost certain no one was home, I had my knife in my hand when I opened the door, but I needn't have bothered. No one was on the other side. I found myself in the kitchen. An unremarkable, serviceable room, it had been outfitted with an eye toward economy and efficiency. You could probably see the same wood, Colonial-style cabinets, Formica countertops, and beige tile backsplashes in half the kitchens in the city of Syracuse. Everything looked neat and tidy. Nothing seemed out of order, a fact that, perversely, was making me nervous.
The refrigerator condenser began to hum as I made my way over to the phone mounted on the far wall. Before I went through the house, I decided to try and get hold of Manuel. If he wasn't here, maybe he was at his house or Eli's.
But he wasn't.
He was at mine. He answered when I dialed in to get my messages, hoping he'd left one on my machine.
“Where are you?” he cried when he heard me.
“Where do you think?” I hissed. “I'm at 1078. The place you told me to go to. What the hell are you doing at my house? I thought you were here.”
“No. I never said that.”
“You told Tim ...”
“He must have misunderstood,” Manuel protested.
“Right.” If Manuel had a specialty, it was misinterpretations. Loopholes were his subspecialty. I sneezed. I was going to get sick. I just knew it.
“Is Eli there?” he asked.
“No one is here. Listen, you better not have broken my window getting in like you did the last time.”
“That was an accident.” Manuel sounded offended. “You should be glad I'm here. James was stuck outside.”
James is my cat, although the “my” sounds too possessive, connoting a relationship based on ownership, a fact that is not true, since he comes and goes as he pleases, a sleek killer who takes delight in decimating the local bird population.
“Are you sure Eli isn't there?” Manuel repeated, leaving a note of urgency hanging in the air.
“Reasonably.”
“Jesus.” I could hear a catch in his voice.
I shifted the phone to my other ear, noticing as I did that I'd left a trail of wet footprints across the floor. “How about telling me what's going on?” I said as I made a mental note to myself to clean those up before I left.
“What's going on,” Manuel told me, “is that Sulfin spotted Nestor and Adelina going into the house.”
I absentmindedly reached over, grabbed a paper towel from the roll on the counter, and began blotting my hair. “Well, they're not here now ...”
“And he told Eli ...”
“Are you sure about this?”
“No. I'm not fuckin' sure of anything, okay?” Manuel's voice rose. “But Eli said he was going up there to get his suitcase back. He said he'd call, but he hasn't. That's why I rang you at the store, only you weren't there.”
“Well, I'm here now,” I said grimly.
“What should we do?”
“I don't think there's anything to do. I'm going to take a quick look around and then I'm leavingâif I can get my car out of the drivewayâbefore the people who live here show. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back. The roads were pretty bad coming up.”
“I know. I saw a couple of cars stuck on East Gennie.”
“If you hear from Eli, call me here in the next fifteen minutes,” I told Manuel, even though I didn't think that would be the case.
“You got it.”
I hung up, shucked off my shoes, no sense in leaving footprints on the light tan carpeting if I could avoid it, and took a quick peek around.
The house replicated the kitchen in its orderliness. The magazines on the coffee table in the living room, copies of
Reader's Digest
and
Time,
were arranged in a fan pattern. The arms of the sofa and chairs were covered with plastic sleeves. Reproductions of Degas ballerinas hung on the pale-blue walls. If anything had happened here, someone had done an excellent job of straightening up.
The dining room was equally unrevealing, except that the Myerses' taste in home furnishings and my taste were markedly different. A bowl of plastic fruit sat on a cherrywood table. The six chairs were all pushed in. Two plaster masks, dime store replications of tragedy and comedy, oversaw everything from their place on the wall. I opened the sideboard. It was full of crystal and china. Upstairs didn't yield much, either.
There were no bodies in the upstairs closets and no blood splatters in the bathroom. A determinedly cheerful room, it was decorated in bright blues and greens. A seashell motif predominated. The shower curtain sported seashells and seahorses. The rings that held the shower curtains on the rod were topped with tiny white seashells. Seashells were glued on to the tissue holder, the mirror, and the soap dish. The motif continued into the bedroom.
The lamps on the night tables were reproductions of Nautilus shells. A large wicker basket filled with seashells sat on the dresser. I picked up a copy of a guidebook to Sanibel Island off one of the nightstands. I wasn't surprised, Sanibel Island being a place one goes to collect shells. I wondered if the Myers were down there now strolling along the beach as I walked into their guest bedroom/office/ sewing room.
Conch shells and dried starfish, interspersed with postcards from Disney World, St. Augustine, and Miami lined the top of an opened four-shelf stand filled with popular romances and westerns. The bookshelf took up the left-hand side of the room. The rest of the space was given to a sewing machine, a desk, a computer, a file cabinet, and a twin bed with a chenille cover and little hand-embroidered throw pillows sporting the kind of cheery mottoes women's magazines seem to specialize in. I took a quick look in the file cabinet. If there was anything that would help me find Nestor, I didn't see it.
Then I went in to the last bedroom and got a surprise. It seemed that Mr. Myers (I was presuming it was he, because women don't usually get into reptiles as a hobby) was a collector. Glancing around, I felt a little offended that he'd never been in my store. I was pretty positive he hadn't. I would have remembered if he had, especially if he was a repeat customer, because I make it a point to know my customers' names, as well as their likes and dislikes. It's one of the ways I manage to compete against the chains.
The impeccably clean room contained four twenty-five-gallon aquariums, which respectively housed two king snakes, a large indigo, a beautiful, once common dark blue snake, as well as four baby albino pythons, which were both expensive and rare, three corn snakes, plus two fifty-gallon aquariums that the guy had turned into terrariums. It took a bit of looking before I spotted the poison frogs. Tiny, jewellike creatures, which come in vivid patterns of red, yellows, and blacks, they are surprisingly easy to raise and had recently become quite popular among home hobbyists, especially since you could now buy them through a mail order house for sixty dollars a pop.
I've always loved the little frogs, but I don't sell them because of liability reasons. My insurance carrier would not be pleased if I got sued because someone died handling them. When angry, their skin excretes enough toxin to kill ten men. South American Indians used their skins to poison their arrows. The trick, obviously, is to keep them from getting pissed off. Still, they're perfectly safe to own, if you observe certain precautions. Judging from what I'd seen so far of Mr. Myers's house, he was a careful, meticulous manâfor some reason I pictured him as a retired engineerâone that, I would bet, was not prone to taking chances.
Charmed, I watched the frogs for a few minutes more. As I closed the door softly and went downstairs, I briefly thought about why it was that in nature the most beautiful things were frequently the most deadly. Bright colors are always a warning. Too bad humans don't have a system like that. It would make things easier. Then Eli might not have roomed with Nestor and I wouldn't be here now, wondering if they'd been here, too.
So far I hadn't seen any sign that either of them had been and I wasn't inclined to continue looking. If one or the other of them was stuffed in some hidden closet somewhere, let someone else find them. It was definitely time to leave. I'd been here too long as it was. According to my watch, the ten minutes I'd planned to stay had turned into twenty.
I returned to the kitchen and mopped up the water stains on the floor, stuffed the paper towels in my pocket and headed for the side door. I was too tired and stiff to try to get back out the way I'd come in. I was standing in the little vestibule next to the door, putting on my wet sneakers and thinking about what an unpleasant sensation slipping into wet canvas is, and vowing that from now on in I would buy leather sneakers, when I noticed what I thought was a red spot on the floor.
I hunkered down to get a better look.
Thinking back, I don't know whether I heard something or smelled it or felt the air around me move, but suddenly I knew with absolute certainty that someone was behind me.
I remember thinking,
Robin, you moron, you should have your knife out.
But before I could even move my hand in the direction of my pocket, a pain exploded in my head.
I heard an odd gasp, which I realized was mine. Lights flashed. Then there was nothing.
Chapter 8
I
was lying on my side on the floor when I came to. My head was throbbing, my eyeballs ached, my mouth tasted as if it were filled with camel dung, and on top of everything else, I couldn't seem to remember where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I lay there for a few seconds panicking, before the answer flashed through my mind. I was in the Myers's kitchen, looking for Eli. When I finally sat up, it felt as if someone was playing the marimba on my brain.
Gingerly I ran my hand over my face and scalp. There was no blood. Aside from extreme soreness in the back of my skull, the various parts of my anatomy appeared to be where they were supposed to be, which, given the circumstances, was about as good as I could hope for. As for figuring out who had done this and why, that would have to wait for later when my mind was working again. Right now it felt as if it was stuffed with goose feathers.
I inched my butt over to the wall, leaned against it, and closed my eyes. Little flecks of light danced around my irises. My shoulder was killing me from being on the cold linoleum. The only bright note in all this as far as I could see was that the Myers hadn't come home and found me passed out on their kitchen floor.
It occurred to me, I had to get out of here. Now all I needed was the strength to do it. I was trying to gather itâthe sentence brought to mind little strengths playing in the meadow with me trying to herd them togetherâwhen I heard two loud thumps, followed by murmured voices coming up through the heat vent in the basement. I held my breath. Whoever had hit me in the head was coming back to finish the job. No doubt about it, it was definitely time to leave. My heart began pounding in time with my head. I reached for my knife as I stood up. It was gone. I looked down and broke out in a cold sweat. The floor did a cha cha in front of my eyes. Bile rose in my throat.
Not a good idea, Robin, I told myself as I lifted my head and concentrated on the clothes hook sticking out of the back of the side door. A few seconds later, the dizziness subsided. This time I kept my head still and just lowered my eyes. The knife wasn't there. Shit. It had to be around here somewhere. Not that it mattered because the way I was feeling it would take me longer to retrieve it then I had available. By now, I could hear feet pounding up the stairs. I backed up out of the kitchen towards the hall closet. Hiding in there may not have been a great plan, but it was the only one I could think of.
My hand was on the doorknob when I heard, “she better be here, that's all I can say.”
“George?” I croaked.
He came out of the kitchen, with Manuel trailing behind.
“See,” Manuel said to him. He was still brushing snow off the folds of his cargo pants. “I told you.”
“What are you doing here?” I cried.
“What does it look like we're doing here? We're rescuing you,” George replied. “I told you I had a bad feeling about this.” He handed me my knife. “Yours, I presume.”
“Where'd you find it?”
He scowled. “By the door. Are you okay? What happened?”
“Someone hit me over the head.”
“Did you see who?”
“No.”
He reached over and gently felt my skull with his fingers. “Everything seems to be in one piece. Except you have a bump here.” And he pressed a little harder.
“Ouch.” I ducked my head and brushed his hand away.
“Leave me alone.”
“Do you feel sick to your stomach?” George asked, ignoring me and continuing with his catechism.
“A little,” I admitted. “But I don't have a concussion if that's what you're getting at. Or at least not a bad one.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Experience.”
Manuel came up behind us. He was jumpy, looking at the door every few seconds. “Come on.” He took his hat off and put it back on. “We got to go. We still got to get her car out of the driveway before people start waking up.”
“What are you so hyped about?” George asked him.
“Because I'm on probation, man. I was gonna tell you,” he said to me. “I get caught, I'm gonna end up in Jamesville.”
“It might knock some sense into you,” George observed, but he put his arm around my shoulder and nudged me to the side door. “Come on. We'll go out this way. It'll be easier.”
“Just a minute.” I got the cold sweats. The room started spinning.
“We ain't got time for no just-a-minutes,” Manuel snapped.
George turned toward him. “Shut up,” he told him before turning back to me. “You want me to carry you?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. The room settled back down. “No. I'll be all right.” Even though I was shaky in the knees, being carried was an admission of weakness I wasn't prepared to make. “What time is it anyway?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the throbbing at the back of my skull.
“Four in the morning. A time most sane people are in bed.”
“I got worried,” Manuel explained, “so I called George.”
Imagining the conversation that must have gone on made me want to smile. Unfortunately it hurt too much. “Wait,” I gasped out as we hit the vestibule. I pointed to the floor. “I think I saw a spot of blood over there.”
“So what?” Manuel said. “People bleed all the time.”
I tried not to raise my voice. “I thought you were worried about Eli.”
“Eli is a schmuck,” Manuel told me.
“Maybe you should check it out,” I told George. “I got hit before I could tell.”
“Oh, this is just great,” Manuel said. “Just great. Jamesville, here I come.”
George whirled around. “You think you can be quiet for a minute,” he said as he bullied him back toward the kitchen.
Manuel raised his hands in an I-give-up gesture and George went over to look. I leaned against the wall while George knelt down and surveyed the linoleum. His jacket fell open. I could see he was wearing a crookedly buttoned plaid pajama top with his jeans. He'd run over to get me without bothering to get dressed. The thought pleased me.
“Come on,” Manuel whined, constitutionally unable to keep his mouth shut.
George glared at him.
“Well, you're not the one that's going to be doing time,” Manuel muttered. But he didn't say anything else.
After a moment or so, George stuck out his finger, brushed its tip against the spot on the floor, brought it up to his mouth, and gingerly touched it with his tongue. Manuel grimaced with disgust.
“Some sort of jam residue, I'd say,” George observed.
Manuel groaned. “I don't believe this,” he said, giving the belt on his pants a vicious yank.
“It's not as uncommon a mistake as you would think.” George got up off his knees. “Let's get out of here.”
Manuel practically danced to the door, while George helped me out. A minute later, the three of us emerged from the house. I stopped for a moment and closed my eyes. The cold air felt good on my skin. We made for his Taurus.
“It's amazing. You're like Mary and her lamb,” George told me. “Except wherever you go, chaos follows.”
“So, now you're telling me I'm a force of nature?” I got in the car.
“No. I'm telling you, you're a pain in the ass,” George replied as he reached in the back and got two shovels off the seat. “By the way, I got in touch with my cousin. He'd love to have us come down. See if you can live long enough to make it. And now, if you'll excuse me, Manuel and I have some work to do.” And he closed the door. The vibration made me wince.
Maybe, I remember thinking, as I watched flickering images of George and Manuel dig out my car, I did have a concussion after all. After ten minutes, both of them took their jackets off and draped them over the hood of George's Taurus. After twenty minutes, George managed to get my car out in the street and turn it around. Then he hopped out and Manuel hopped in.
Once we hit the main streets, the going was surprisingly easy. George looked over in my direction once or twice, but didn't say anything. For which I was grateful. I spent the trip staring out the window. A sliver of a moon hung suspended in the sky. Tree branches arched over in graceful curves under the weight of the snow. Flutters of windblown flakes sparkled under the streetlamps. At the corner of Ash and Oxford, a black cat slunk slowly along the side of the street, pausing every now and then to shake the snow off its paws.
“Let's drop in on Eli,” I said impulsively, breaking the silence, as we came up on Westcott. “I'd really like to hear what he has to say.”
“Haven't you had enough for one night? And anyway, we can't.” And George pointed out a pickup truck, stuck in snow up to its fenders, lying across the street. A little further back a bus sat at right angles to where the pavement would have been if we could have seen it. The street was blocked. We weren't getting through.
“You know, I've been thinking about Nestor being Chinese,” George said as he maneuvered around an abandoned car.
“Yes?”
“Well, one of tongs runs a heroin route up to Toronto through here.”
“So what? That's like saying because you're Italian you have connections with the mob. Nestor stole something of Eli's, not the other way around.”
“We don't know that for a fact.”
“You're right. We don't.” I sighed and massaged my forehead. “The only thing I do know for a fact is that I want to go home and go to bed.”
“Will you be all right?” George asked as we reached my house. “You want me to take you to the hospital?”
“I'll be fine.”
He helped me inside. “I can stay if you want.”
I took off my coat. “Manuel's going to be here in a minute. He'll call you if anything happens.”
“Promise?”
I nodded and regretted the action instantly. George kissed me good night and left.
I walked into the kitchen and called Eli. No one picked up.
“He never hears the phone when he's sleeping,” Manuel observed, having pulled into the driveway just as George was pulling out. He opened my refrigerator door.
I hung up. “
If
he's sleeping.”
“How old is that?” Manuel asked, indicating a takeout carton.
“Two weeks.”
“Don't you have anything else?”
“Some canned soup.” And I took six Advil and went to sleep, leaving Manuel going though my kitchen cabinets, looking for something to eat.
My dreams were all bad. I dreamt about my old dog, Elsie. She was running through the fields and I was trying to keep up with her but I couldn't because I kept on getting tangled up in the tall grass. Then I dreamt about Murphy. In my dream he shapeshifted into different people, only each one told me that they were leaving me for someone else.