A Novel Way to Die (18 page)

SIXTEEN

DARLA GLANCED ABOUT, UNABLE FOR A MOMENT TO TELL
where the voice, which was obviously Robert’s, had come from. Then she looked down.

In the shadowed corner of the courtyard to the right of the door, she spied something
tucked away behind the bistro chairs and table where Darla and her staff often took
their lunch. Robert lay huddled on the bricks in his sleeping bag, his head propped
on his backpack as a makeshift pillow. That alone was enough to make her eyes widen
in surprise.

But what truly startled her was the fact that the AWOL Hamlet lay stretched atop Robert’s
shoulders, serving as an equally makeshift blanket. The feline raised his head, and
his green eyes caught the light. From his casual yet protective pose, she swiftly
caught the vibe from him,
It’s all under control
.

Leaning the rain stick against the doorjamb, Darla promptly hit “End” on her phone
and hurried down the two steps that led to the patio.

“Robert, what’s wrong? Why in the world are you sleeping out here in the cold?” she
demanded, her previous outrage replaced by a wave of concern.

Robert, meanwhile, was dragging himself into a sitting position. In the process, he
dislodged his feline guardian angel, who slipped off the teen’s shoulders and landed
neatly on the brick. While Hamlet paused for a quick paw lick, Robert managed to extract
himself from the sleeping bag and scramble to his feet.

“Sorry,” he mumbled through a yawn, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand,
while with the other he clutched his sleeping bag to him like a security blanket.
“I just needed a place to crash. I’ll go find somewhere else.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” came Darla’s stern reply. “Come inside right now where
it’s warm and explain to me what’s going on.”

He meekly followed her inside, trailed by Hamlet, who did not look meek at all. Darla
saw that he—the teen, not the cat—was wearing the same clothes as he’d had on earlier
that day, though now the garments were notably crumpled. Shaking her head, she locked
the door again and led Robert back to the register where the light above illuminated
that portion of the counter. She pointed him to the tall stool there and said, “Sit.”

He did, while Hamlet lightly leaped onto the counter for a better view of the action.
Once they both were settled, she said, “Now, talk. How come you’re not at home where
you belong?”

“I, um, don’t have a home anymore,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “My dad, he, you
know, tossed me out as soon as I turned eighteen back in the spring.”

“Your dad threw you out?” Darla stared at him in shock. “Why, you were still in high
school then, weren’t you?” At his nod, she went on, “What, were you doing something
illegal, and he didn’t want you in the house?”

“No! I was making all A’s in my classes and everything. It didn’t matter to him. He
said his time was up, he wasn’t responsible for me anymore. He said his dad threw
him out at eighteen, so he was, like, returning the favor.”

“But what about your mother? How could she allow that?”

“She’s somewhere in California. I haven’t heard from her since I was eleven.”

The youth’s matter-of-fact tone affected Darla more than any bitterness or anger.
How could a parent do such a thing to his or her child? If the youth had been sitting
around the house unemployed and using drugs, maybe that would have been different,
but he’d been in school and then holding down a job of one sort or another ever since
graduation. Apparently, his only transgression had been having a birthday.

Darla shook her head in disbelief. Even though she’d lived in the New York City area
for only a short while, she knew full well how hard it was to make rent there. With
only a high school education, and working jobs that paid little more than minimum
wage, no way could Robert support himself on his own or even scrape together enough
to get himself somewhere else.

“We’ll talk about this some more tomorrow,” she told him. “For tonight, why don’t
you go up to the lounge upstairs and sleep on the couch? You can use the shower in
the little bathroom up there in the morning, and I’ll bring you down some breakfast
around nine o’clock. And then we can figure out what to do.”

She paused, dreading the next question but knowing she needed to ask it. “And Robert,
about seeing Tera Aguilar the other night . . . tell me, what were you really doing
out on the streets that late?”

“I was, you know, heading back here,” he said, clutching his sleeping bag more tightly
to him. “Sometimes my cousin lets me crash at his place, but he wasn’t home, so I
thought I’d stay in the courtyard here. I figured it was, you know, safer than the
park.”

“That was all? Do you promise you’re not the one going around the neighborhood stealing
scrap metal to sell for cash?” she asked, though knowing his circumstances as she
did now, she’d be hard-pressed to judge him too harshly.

Robert, however, gave his head a vigorous shake.

“No way, I don’t steal. Besides, Alex . . . Mr. Putin . . . is pretty mad about whoever’s
doing that. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she replied, relieved to realize that she believed him. Though,
of course, one final question remained. “And you don’t know anything about who killed
Mr. Benedetto, either?”

He shook his head again, though this time he was stifling a yawn, as well. “No clue.
I just hope they catch him soon. It’s kind of, you know, creepy being out there at
night thinking some psycho dude might be running around.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that tonight,” Darla assured him. “Like I said,
you can stay upstairs. Now, get moving, so we can both get some rest.”

“Sure. And, uh, thanks for not being, you know, mad.”

He slid off the stool and started for the stairs, looking so young and vulnerable
that she wanted to run after him and give him a motherly hug. She suppressed the impulse,
however, and merely watched to make sure he made it up the stairs safely. Hamlet,
meanwhile, rose and looked from her to the departing teen.

“Go on ahead,” she softly told the cat. “I think he could use a little company.”

Seemingly agreeing with her assessment, Hamlet slipped down off the counter again
and padded his way up the steps. Darla gave them a moment to get settled in; then
she let herself out the side door again and headed up to her apartment. Once there,
she sent a quick text message to Jake—
All OK ignore voice mail I’ll explain tomorrow
—and then took a quick look at her computer screen. All stations were quiet once more.
Leaving the program open, just in case, she flipped out the lights and then headed
off to her bedroom.

One potential suspect in Curt’s death had been ruled out, at least to her satisfaction,
she decided as she shed her sweats for an oversized T-shirt and settled beneath her
comforter. The teen’s explanation regarding his involvement—or rather, the lack thereof—with
the scrap metal thieves had the ring of truth. As for the actual murder, so far as
she knew, Robert wasn’t anywhere on Reese’s radar. James would be equally glad to
learn that Robert had nothing to do with either the Curt situation or the scrap metal
thefts. But the older man would likely be as distressed as she to know of the teen’s
homeless plight.

Once again, Darla’s redheaded temper simmered at the thought of Robert’s father callously
throwing out the boy to live on the streets. If not for her changing the cameras and
thereby catching him, how long might Robert have spent sleeping in the bookshop’s
courtyard? And what would have happened once winter truly hit, when the temperatures
dropped well below freezing and snow filled the walled-in terrace? Hopefully James
could help her figure out a solution to Robert’s situation.

But even with Robert now accounted for, that still left Curt dead and Tera missing.

Darla groaned and pulled the covers over her head. She’d try again tomorrow with Robert’s
and James’s help to puzzle out an answer to Hamlet’s cryptic clues. And maybe by then
Reese would have learned something of value from Tera’s cell phone records and messages.

Which reminded her that she still had that piece of plastic in her corduroys that
she needed to give to Reese.

Which also reminded her that, despite all the unpleasantness of the past few days,
at least she’d had a very pleasant meal with a very pleasant man.

She smiled to herself in the darkness.
The proverbial sterling lining to the cumulonimbus
, as James would put it. For the dinner with Barry
had
been fun, and she was looking forward to a second time out with him. She suspected
that he was looking forward to it, too. And she could even overlook the slightly underhanded
way he’d managed to get her cell phone number.

Of course, the big question was, did he like cats . . . and more important, would
Hamlet like him? She couldn’t recall seeing the two of them in the same room together,
and so the feline’s opinion of the man was an unknown at this point. But she rather
suspected the two would get along well enough.

After all, if the persnickety Hamlet could become BFFs with a goth teen, then anything
was possible.

*   *   *

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU’VE NEVER HAD BISCUITS AND GRAVY FOR
breakfast before? What kind of uncivilized place is New York, anyway?”

Smiling, Darla set down a basket of fluffy biscuits in front of Robert, followed by
a bowl of white sausage gravy, and then sat beside him. They were upstairs in the
bookstore lounge, which up until a few minutes ago had been Robert’s temporary sleeping
quarters. Today, he was wearing what she could only term a mod black turtleneck over
his fashionably skinny black jeans. He’d tied the look together with yet another vest,
this one made of some shiny silver fabric with a distinctly futuristic vibe to it.

By the time she’d come upstairs, he was folding the blanket that normally was tucked
beneath the oversized coffee table that anchored the sofa with a pair of wingbacks.
The coffee table served equally well as a dining table, which was a good thing, since
Darla had decided to indulge her inner country cook that morning and go with the works.

First, however, she’d had to feed Hamlet, who had been sitting in her kitchen as usual,
awaiting his kibble and fresh water. Apparently, his teen-sitting duties extended
only through nighttime hours. While he crunched away at his breakfast, Darla gave
him a few “atta kitties” for watching out for Robert overnight. And, to make up for
the shrimp she’d not brought home for him from the Greek place, she’d cooked a small
chunk of thick-sliced maple bacon just for him. Hamlet had finished off the crispy
slab in a couple of appreciative bites and favored her with a
meow
of enjoyment in return.

At nine on the dot, as promised, she’d made her way down to the shop carrying the
essentials of a good southern breakfast. In addition to the biscuits and gravy, she’d
scrambled a few eggs, which she topped with cheddar, and cooked several slabs of the
same kind of bacon that Hamlet had just enjoyed. To counteract all the heart-clogging
grease, she had also carried down a carton of orange juice, all packed into an old
picnic basket of Great-Aunt Dee’s. The coffee was already taken care of, as she’d
recently splurged on one of those single-cup brewers and installed it in the lounge.

Now, Robert picked up a biscuit and stared at it in bemusement. “Don’t you have any,
like, grape jelly?”

“Jelly is for toast. No, no, don’t dunk it like a donut!” she exclaimed as he attempted
to dip the biscuit into the gravy bowl. Picking up a biscuit of her own, she went
on, “Hold your horses, and I’ll show you how to do this right.”

Though, of course, doing it right meant you also needed to follow said breakfast with
a five-mile run so as to unclog any arteries that had become dangerously plugged up
during the course of the meal.

“First, you tear the biscuit into little pieces that you put on your plate. Or, if
you want to be formal about it”—she paused and grabbed a second biscuit—“you can slice
it like a muffin and put both halves like so,” she explained, arranging top and bottom
alongside each other to form a flaky figure eight. “Now take your gravy and pour it
over the biscuits. And I don’t mean little dollops. Drown those suckers.”

Still looking doubtful, Robert followed her lead, pouring until his biscuit halves
were swimming in the creamy sausage and gravy mixture. “Now what?”

“Now eat it and thank God you’re a country boy,” she told him, grinning at the John
Denver reference that she was pretty sure went straight over that city boy’s head.

He took a tentative bite and swallowed. “Not bad.” And then, while Darla watched in
amusement, he went on to polish off four biscuits topped with gravy, most of the scrambled
eggs and bacon, and half the carton of juice.

They weren’t kidding about a teenaged boy’s appetite, she thought, suddenly understanding
why her contemporaries with high school–aged children were always complaining about
their grocery bills. Her amusement faded, however, when it occurred to her that in
addition to lacking a regular place to sleep, Robert might be missing a few meals
as well.