“He could be waiting for us,” Perry objected.
“Good,” Nick said grimly. “Because I’m sure as hell coming after him.” He’d had it with this slippery rat bastard sneaking away through the woodwork every time they got close to him.
He headed for the stairway, moving quietly, keeping well to the side. His night vision was very good, but it was like a cavern down here and all his senses were working to guide him safely.
Once there would have been lanterns hanging from the posts -- there were still a few of them, but they had not been touched in years.
His focus was on his quarry, but he was conscious of Perry tagging close on his heels.
The kid’s breathing had that rushed, strained sound, and Nick knew even before they reached the staircase and found it empty that he needed to abandon mission and get Perry back to warmth and safety.
“Stay here.” He took Perry by the arm, moving him safely to the side before turning on his flashlight. He shone the beam around.
Perry’s flashlight lay at the bottom of the staircase. The shaft of Nick’s flashlight played over the steps. Perry’s white hanky lay at the top. There was no sign of anyone.
Whoever their enemy was, he had to be concerned with discovery in a way that they did not. He’d probably already blustered back to his rooms and was setting about making sure everyone in the house knew he was not running around secret passages shoving people down stairwells.
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Or he could be lying in wait for them a few yards ahead.
If Nick had been on his own there was no question of what he’d do, but he couldn’t risk Perry’s safety.
He retrieved Perry’s flashlight. “Come on,” he whispered and directed the younger man back the way they’d come.
“What is it?” Perry asked, and Nick was obscurely pleased that the kid sounded calm.
Tense, but calm. A lot of that was trust in himself, but a lot of it was Perry. He wasn’t cut out for this, but he wasn’t falling apart, either.
Nick told him, “I think there’s a way out down here. I was trying to find the catch when I heard you.”
They started back the other way until they came to the spot where Nick had been working before. He shone his flashlight along the wall.
“Feel that draught?” he muttered. “There’s a breeze coming through here.”
Perry murmured assent.
Nick felt along the top of the panel, but there was no latch.
“There it is,” Perry said suddenly, pointing.
Sure enough there was a much more primitive-looking latch close to the bottom of the panel.
“You notice these things have all been cleaned and oiled,” he said over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Perry said. “Someone is using these tunnels on a regular basis.”
Nick wiggled the latch, pressed, and the door swung out.
They were looking onto a pond inside what appeared to be a tumbling-down barn.
There were broken slats in the roof above them. Cold gray daylight left pale rectangles on the still black water. Several large boulders jutted out of the water. Frost powdered the earth ringing the still water.
“We’re in the old ice house,” Perry said. And then his breath caught raggedly.
Nick shot him a glance, then followed the direction of his stricken gaze. It took an instant for his eyes to make out that long, pale form glimmering in the water.
A man lay facedown in the shallow. His hair was soaked and muddy, he wore a filthy sports coat of yellow and brown plaid checks. Without shoes, his wet feet bobbed gently in their garish yellow socks.
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Perry said very calmly, “Maybe now someone will believe me.”
“This ought to do it,” Nick agreed. He fastened a hand on Perry’s shoulder, guiding him to one of the boulders at the edge of the water. “You stay put; I’m going to call the cops.”
Perry, who had started to sit, jumped back up. “I’m not staying here!”
Nick summoned patience. “Someone’s got to stay. You want to take the chance of running into your friend from the tunnel?”
Perry wrapped his arms around himself, his expression defiant. “He could show up while you’re calling the sheriff.”
Nick handed his weapon to Perry. “Here’s the safety. You point it and squeeze till the guy stops moving. Aim for the center of him.”
Perry took the pistol without looking at it. “Why does anyone have to stay?”
“Because this body disappeared once.”
“Let him disappear. I don’t care anymore!” Perry’s voice wavered. Nick kept his own level.
“Foster, knock it off. Someone’s got to stay. I don’t have time to argue with you.”
That chill tone was like a slap. Perry stared at Nick, then nodded once, tightly.
Nick turned, striding toward the wide wooden door of the icehouse entrance, and pushed on it. It gave a few inches, but then bounced back. Nick swore.
“It’ll be locked,” Perry informed him tersely. He sat down on the boulder and stared bleakly at the body in the water.
Nick nodded, coming back. He studied Perry and said, “I won’t be long.”
Perry gave him a long, unfriendly look.
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Nick turned and went through the open panel of the secret passage.
It was very quiet after the whisper of his footsteps faded away.
Perry hugged himself against the bitter cold. His breath hung in the dim light. He should have worn a jacket, of course, or at least a sweatshirt, but he hadn’t planned on anything like this.
Minutes went by. He tried to look anywhere but at the corpse in the water, but his eyes kept being drawn back to it. He had never seen a dead body before he moved to the Alston Estate. Now he’d seen two in one week.
And less than an hour ago someone had tried to kill him.
Of course, a fall down the stairs wouldn’t necessarily kill him, but the intent to do grievous bodily harm had been there -- he had felt it.
Now his chest was too tight, and he could feel a cough welling up. He took out his inhaler and puffed, taking a couple of shaky breaths. He was okay, really, just angry with Nick for leaving him here; he was pretty sure the man who had attacked him in the passageway was long gone.
He tried to think if there had been anything to clue him into his attacker. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember those terrifying moments. The light in his eyes had blinded him, but when the man had grabbed him…Perry had an impression of someone taller, certainly broader than he. There had been softness there, though. When he had snatched at the other, trying to prevent himself from falling, he had clutched softness, flab -- very different than if he’d grabbed Nick who was all lean, hard muscle. Center was tall and thin -- and this person had definitely not been thin.
There had been something else. The smell of tobacco? He wasn’t sure. It had been such a transient impression.
How far were they from the main house? Far enough that no one would hear him
yelling for help.
The cold and darkness of the icehouse began to press in on him; the soft gurgle of the spring sounded like a dying breath. He began to feel lightheaded, and he pictured himself fainting, falling off his rocky perch, and drowning in the pond. When Nick got back with the sheriff, they could find two corpses -- and serve them all right.
In fact, it probably was not more than ten minutes before the chain jangled at the wooden door to the icehouse.
Perry stood, putting aside his inhaler and picking up the pistol, bracing for…he had no idea what.
The door swung back, and Nick stood there in the pallid early morning sunlight.
“Okay?” he called.
“Where is the sheriff?” Perry asked, lowering the pistol. His teeth were starting to chatter.
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Nick came around the spring.
“I figured you’d prefer I didn’t wait for the sheriff.” He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it over to Perry, who took it gratefully, handing over the pistol. “Why the hell didn’t you put some kind of sweater on? Kid, are you nuts?”
“I wasn’t expecting…” He fumbled his way into the jacket with cold-numbed hands.
Nick shoved the MK23 into the back of his waistband. “Here, zip it up.” He reached for Perry, brushing his fingers aside and doing up the zipper. “You have to conserve body heat.”
Perry nodded. His chest felt tight and itchy. The longer he spent in this damp cold, the harder it was to breathe, but he was not about to admit that to Nick.
But maybe Nick knew, because he was gazing very seriously into Perry’s eyes. His hands were a warm weight on Perry’s shoulders, and just for a second they tightened, and Perry thought Nick might kiss him.
Instead, Nick let him go, turning away.
Perry said shortly, “And I’m not a kid, by the way.”
“What?”
“You said, ‘Kid, are you nuts?’ But I’m not a kid. And how nuts was it to go off without telling me -- telling anyone -- what you were doing last night?”
“How did you find me?” Nick asked, without answering Perry’s question.
Perry told him, and Nick said, “Not bad.”
“Gee, thanks. But since I found you by accident, I don’t think it counts. And by the way, Philip Marlowe,” Perry continued shortly, “the shoe you used to prop the doorway open was the one from my room. The one he was wearing.” He nodded to the corpse floating in the water.
“Are you shitting me?” Nick’s chagrin was some consolation.
“Yeah, don’t feel too bad,” Perry said kindly. “After all, you only saw it the one time.”
Of course, Perry had only seen it the one time, too. Nick opened his mouth, caught Perry’s gaze, and snorted. “Smart ass.”
And Perry felt a little better.
It took the sheriff’s department half an hour to show up. They turned out with enough personnel to take in Bonnie and Clyde, uniforms flooding into the ramshackle building, shouting directions to each other and then countermanding the directions with more directions.
Perry and Nick were escorted outside and questioned -- if you could call it questioning.
Sheriff Butler was on the defensive, having dismissed the original finding of the body -- and for not having noticed there was a hidden door in the closet where the other dead man had been found.
“You’re sure you don’t know the victim?” he asked Perry for the third time.
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“I don’t know him. I never saw him before he showed up in my bathtub.”
“Why pick your bathtub do you think?”
Perry replied patiently, “Because I was supposed to be out of town.”
Butler had obviously forgot this little fact, and the fact that it irritated him showed in the clipped way he ordered Nick to present the opening to the secret passage.
Nick led Butler back through the icehouse, and the sheriff and his deputies swarmed inside the tunnel to investigate.
“Let’s go,” Nick said to Perry stepping outside again.
The sun was making a determined effort to throw a little feeble warmth over the muddy yard. A thrush -- late in leaving for the winter -- was singing sweetly from the middle of a thicket.
Perry and Nick walked back to the house. Perry said -- not with any great conviction --
“That should be the end of it, don’t you think?”
Nick shook off his preoccupation. “How do you figure that?”
“Well, whoever this lunatic is, he’ll have to give up now.”
“I don’t think he’s going to give up. He’s killed two people so far.”
“But now that everyone knows about the tunnels -- now that the sheriff knows --”
Nick said grimly, “I hate to burst your bubble, but the cops are liable to start suspecting you.”
“Me?”
“People who discover bodies are always suspects.”
“Why would they be?”
“Because pretending to find somebody’s body after you’ve just killed them is one of the oldest tricks in the book.”
Perry said nothing, frowning as he thought it over.
“Look at from the view of the sheriff’s department,” Nick said. “There are a lot of suspicious coincidences here. The dead guy was originally in your apartment --”
“But no one believed me.”
“Then you find Tiny. He practically dies in your arms.”
“But he’d been shot hours earlier. Maybe even the day before.”
“No one saw him after he let you into Watson’s apartment.”
“But you were with me.”
Nick shrugged.
“Why would I kill Tiny? Why would I kill anyone? I don’t have a motive. Or a gun.”
“Motive is a secondary consideration. The cops look for means and opportunity first.”
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“That doesn’t make any sense. Motive is the most important thing. I don’t have any reason to want someone dead.”
Nick said calmly, “Motive is too subjective. What one person considers a good reason to kill might not make sense to someone else. There are people who kill because they don’t want to lose custody of their children or split their assets or go to jail for embezzling or because they get caught burgling a house or because they want someone else’s wife -- or car.”
Perry bit his lip. “You think I’m really a suspect?”
Nick glanced at him. Perry’s profile was uncharacteristically hard. “Only if they’re complete idiots -- but I haven’t seen any proof that they’re not.”
Perry nodded wearily, and Nick thought, Oh, what the hell. He put his arm around Perry’s shoulders and gave him a hard, brief hug.
The smile Perry gave him almost took his breath away. But when Perry spoke, it was mundane enough. “What do you think those jewels would be worth now?”
Nick shook his head. “If it was a fortune in jewels then, I guess it would be a king’s ransom now. That stuff appreciates considerably. Assuming, wherever this loot has been stashed, it’s still intact.”
Perry knew Nick was thinking that the jewels might be at the bottom of the spring in the icehouse -- or scattered through the garden and woods. Anything was possible.
* * * * *
“Is it okay if I take a shower?” Perry asked. His chest had that constricted, scratchy feeling again, but he didn’t want to use his inhaler too much -- he couldn’t afford to replace it anytime soon, and he only had about fifty sprays left in it. The way things were going, he could use that easily in the next day or two.