The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks - lanyon Josh - Страница 20

Jane Bridger broke in. “Perry’s not dead! What are you saying, Miss Dembecki? That’s Tiny. Perry found Tiny dead in Watson’s bedroom closet.”

“Tiny?” Miss Dembecki murmured bewilderedly. She looked around the circle of watching faces. “But then…?”

The gurney and the EMTs were making their precarious way down the narrow stairs, banging loudly against the banister. Tiny’s heavy carcass was no easy load.

“Where’s Perry?” Nick demanded of Jane.

She tore her gaze from the grim sight on the staircase. “Upstairs being questioned, I guess.”

Nick waited until the EMTs had made it safely to the bottom, then he took the stairs two at a time.

A deputy stopped him outside Watson’s apartment. Through the open door he could see Perry talking to an older man in uniform. The sheriff? Perry was seated on the low sofa. He wore jeans and a striped pajama top, his pale hair sticking up in bed-head tufts. He was speaking in voice so low that Nick couldn’t hear what was said. He could see the kid was gripping his inhaler.

“Listen, you’ll have to go back downstairs with the others,” the deputy warned.

Nick considered it, while the deputy bristled. There didn’t seem anything to be gained by insisting on staying -- Perry looked shaken but unharmed, and it was doubtful even the local police were dumb enough to think he was a suspect in a homicide.

Nick returned downstairs to wait with the others.

“Just what the hell’s going on up there?” MacQueen demanded, huddled in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. “Shut up!” she screamed suddenly.

There was an astonished silence, and then from down the hall came the sound of her mutts whining and scratching at the closed door of her apartment.

“Are they still questioning Perry?” Jane Bridger asked after a polite few seconds’ pause.

“It looked like it.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” David Center said worriedly. “The spirits would not harm a simple soul like Tiny.”

Speaking of simple souls. Nick studied him bleakly. Center wore an incredible dressing gown of paisley blue and purple, proving, in Nick’s opinion, that he really was blind.

Bridger patted Center’s hand in absent reassurance.

“Well, I’m going back to bed,” Mrs. MacQueen announced, heaving herself to her feet.

Stein laughed. “Good luck with that.”

“Ma’am, the sheriff will want to question everyone in the house,” the deputy stationed at the front door said.

“Then he can wake me up!” Mrs. MacQueen swaggered off, and the deputy looked around helplessly before following her down the hall.

Perry appeared at the top of the landing. “They want you, Janie,” he said hollowly.

“Me? Why am I next?” Bridger protested, and it was Center’s turn to soothe her with murmurs and hand pats.

“They’ll want to talk to everyone,” Stein said knowledgeably, and Dembecki began twittering anxiously.

Muttering under her breath, Jane went up the stairs, silk dressing gown whispering, passing Perry on his way down.

Nick was disconcerted at the flip his heart did as Perry’s heavy eyes met his. Just relief that the kid’s okay, he told himself. He’d have felt guilty as hell if something had happened to Foster on what should have been his watch.

Perry came to stand next to him. “You’re back.” He greeted Nick wanly and managed a twitchy smile.

Nick nodded curtly. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.” He turned the Bambi eyes on Nick. “They said I could go back to my rooms. My rooms. They’re sealing Watson’s apartment.” He swallowed hard.

“You can stay with me,” Nick said. Perry seemed to work to keep his expression stoic, but the ardent gratitude was right below the surface, and if they’d been alone Nick would probably have done something unwise like put an arm around those slender shoulders.

The deputy came back. “That dame has lost her marbles,” he announced.

“No argument here,” Stein said, and Teagle shook off his white-faced preoccupation long enough to make a disapproving noise.

Dembecki twittered some more. Nick wouldn’t have been surprised to see her take flight right out of this cuckoo’s nest.

To the deputy, he said, “I’ve been away for forty-eight hours. Am I a suspect or can I go to bed?”

“Sheriff wants to talk to everyone that lives here.”

Nick handed Perry his keys. “Get some rest.”

Without a word, Perry took the keys and disappeared up the staircase.

Nick watched him go -- tight little ass and those long, coltish jeans-clad legs -- till Perry vanished around the bend in the staircase.

He leaned back against the wall to wait, unobtrusively watching the others. Jane Bridger came down in a worse temper than she’d been in when she’d gone up. David Center was next. Bridger volunteered to escort him, but he declined brusquely.

Bridger retreated huffily to her own quarters.

Shortly afterward, Nick’s name was called.

He found the sheriff in Watson’s quarters. Sheriff Butler was a short, lean man with a neat silver mustache and piercing green eyes. Nick put him in the fifty-five to sixty-five range; he was the type who aged well.

“Ex-Navy SEAL, huh? That’s a pretty tough outfit.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. This could go a couple of ways. Some guys admired the dedication and discipline required to be a SEAL. Some guys were intimidated by it and tried to prove otherwise.

Indicating that Nick should sit, Butler proceeded to ask his name, age, occupation, flight details, and purpose of his recent trip before really getting down to it.

“So if I understand you correctly, Mr. Reno, you’ve been out of town since” -- he didn’t have to check his notes -- “Sunday the eighth.”

Nick said crisply, “You understand correctly.”

“When was the last time you saw Jasper Bryant?”

“Who?”

“The handyman. Tiny.”

“Sunday morning. He let us, Perry Foster and me, into these rooms.”

“And?”

“And what? He took some dead fish out of the fish tank and he left. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Where did he go when he left this apartment?”

Nick said shortly, “You must have me confused with the psychic next door.” He glanced at the sheriff’s notes -- Butler kept track in tiny, dark script that could have been printed by a machine. “I have no idea what he did after he left here. I take it he didn’t die from natural causes?”

“He was shot to death.”

Nick thought of the .45 caliber pistol taped -- hopefully still taped -- to the wall in the cupboard beneath his kitchen sink “He wasn’t shot to death in this apartment, I’ll tell you that right now. He sure as hell wasn’t in the closet when I left here.”

“You know that for a fact, do you?”

“Yeah, I do. I helped the kid carry some things down from his rooms. He hung a couple of shirts in the bedroom closet. I watched him. There was nothing in that closet but clothes and shoes and comic books.”

“How’d you know the deceased was found in the bedroom closet?”

“The Bridger woman mentioned it.” Nick met the sheriff’s bright gaze. He said dryly, “No way do you think that kid knowingly spent the night in this apartment with a corpse in the closet.”

The sheriff’s thin mouth pursed in something that might have been sour humor. “It doesn’t seem likely.”

Nick was silent, thinking about Tiny’s comments about the ghost with yellow socks -- thinking about those lost keys. The sheriff was watching him carefully.

“You got a theory?” he asked.

Nick said, “I’m sure Foster told you about the body he found in the bathtub.”

“We all heard about the body in the bathtub,” the sheriff said grimly.

“Maybe now you’ll believe it.”

Butler grimaced. “I don’t see that there’s automatically a connection between this homicide and the kid’s story.”

“Maybe not,” Nick said. “But your victim was blabbing about the ghost with yellow socks shortly before someone decided to take him out.”