The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks - lanyon Josh - Страница 34

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.

* * * * *

They returned to Nick’s apartment, and Nick went immediately to the kitchen to start breakfast.

“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.

“Help yourself,” Nick said.

The steam helped, or maybe it was just the soothing warmth of the water. Guiltily, Perry lingered longer than he should have, using all Nick’s hot water, but when he left the bathroom in a cloud of steam, he felt much better -- though exhausted.

They had breakfast -- pancakes that morning -- spread with real butter and drenched in the rich maple syrup for which Vermont was justly famous.