A Novel Way to Die (25 page)

“Ms. Pettistone?”

“Darla?”

Both men stared at her with looks of shock, as if they’d not really believed to find
her there, and in such a state. By that point, the energy she’d summoned to drag herself
across the floor and play bell ringer had begun to seep away, so that she could do
little more than raise her bound hands in a semblance of a greeting.

“Watch out for the hole,” she croaked and then slipped into a state of semiconsciousness.

Vaguely, she was aware of the pair tearing the tape from her wrists and ankles, and
then James carrying her down the two flights of stairs, Robert hovering protectively
in front of him and carrying her jacket. They set her down again in the foyer, well
away from Barry—though she had seen with surprise that he was facedown, with Jake
standing over him and wielding what appeared to be a Louisville Slugger.

“Jake, any trouble here?” James wanted to know as he took off his coat and carefully
covered Darla with it.

The ex-cop gave him a cool smile.

“Nope. Reese and the ambulance should be here any minute.” Then, with a glance at
the prone figure at her feet, she added, “Oh, him? I had to give our friend a little
pop behind the knees with Mary Ann’s bat when he tried to take off. Unfortunately,
he smacked his head when he fell, so he’s feeling a little woozy right now. Robert,
come stand guard a minute. I need to talk to Darla.”

Handing off the weapon to the teen, who promptly shouldered the bat as if he were
at home plate, she hurried over to where Darla lay, her throbbing head pillowed by
her coat.

“Hey, kid, you look like hell,” she said with small smile, joining James in kneeling
beside her. She brushed Darla’s tangled red hair from her face in a motherly gesture.
“Are you up to telling me what happened? James told me on the way over that he and
Robert were certain Barry was responsible for murdering Curt. Given what happened
to you, I’m guessing they were right.”

Darla tried to nod, and then winced as her head began pounding again. “He killed Curt,”
she managed in a ragged whisper, “and Tera, too.”

“Tera?” Jake’s dark eyes opened wide, while James gave an audible gasp. “You’re sure
of that, kid?”

“All I saw was blond hair, but I’m sure it’s her. She’s in the basement.”

Struggling into a sitting position despite James’s protests, Darla pointed in the
direction of the basement door. Her voice still hoarse, she added, “Jake, she was
an innocent victim. She saw Barry kill Curt, so he killed her, too.”

“Oh my God.”

Jake’s words were little more than a whisper, and her olive cheeks went ashen. She
sunk back on her heels and slowly shook her head. “Tera’s dead. Damn it, she was just
a kid, too. I don’t know how I’m going to break it to Hilda.”

Then, with a sharp look in Barry’s direction, she added, “It’s a damn good thing there
are plenty of witnesses here, or I might be telling Reese how I had to defend myself
with a baseball bat against that son of a bitch when he attacked me.”

“Swing away,” James said in hard voice Darla barely recognized. “I will be happy to
testify as to an unprovoked attack and a necessarily prolonged attempt at self-defense.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Robert chimed in and raised the bat in a threatening gesture over
the prone Barry.

Jake, however, shook her head. “Satisfying as it might be, I won’t have you guys perjure
yourselves over that piece of garbage.” Then, turning her attention back to Darla,
she said more softly, “You said she’s in the basement. Can you tell me where, so I
can show Reese when he gets here?”

“Behind the boiler,” she whispered, swiping at a tear that had rolled down her cheek.
“She-she was wrapped in black plastic, like she was trash.”

She paused, wishing she could forget that horrifyingly poignant sight but knowing
she never would. Even though she had suspected all along that harm might have befallen
the girl, she had continued to hope until that last moment for her safe return.

“He told me he was going to Connecticut today,” she went on, “but instead he stayed
behind to take care of Tera. He was digging a hole in the basement floor to bury her,
and then he was going to plaster over the door so no one would ever go down there
again. But I messed up his plans when I came here to look for Hamlet.”

“Yeah, where is he? Where’s Hamlet?” Robert demanded.

Darla took a deep breath, the pain in her throat intensified by the sob she found
herself holding back.

“He was the one who found Tera first,” she managed. “I heard him meowing in the basement.
I ran down there to look for him, and he showed me where she was. When Barry went
after me, Hamlet tried to save me . . . that’s why Barry had scratches on his neck.
But then Barry hit him with a flashlight.”

She paused and then in a rush finished, “I-I think Hamlet’s dead.”

“No!” Robert’s disbelieving cry was that of a young boy. “Hamlet can’t be dead. I’m
going to go see for myself!”

“Wait!”

Jake leaped to her feet and hurried to intercept the youth. He had dropped the bat
and was headed for the basement, tears streaming down his face.

“Robert, I know you’re upset, but if there’s a body down there, it’s a crime scene.
I can’t let you go trampling around there, even for Hamlet.”

“But what if he’s not dead? Ms. Pettistone said she didn’t know for sure.”

“He’s right. I-I don’t know,” Darla choked out, aware that her own tears had begun
to spill in a similar storm of grief. “Please, Jake, let him look.”

Jake pursed her lips and then nodded. “Can you tell him exactly where you saw Hamlet
last?”

“He was lying on the bricks. Barry picked him up and threw him in the boiler firebox.”

At her words, Robert’s grief-stricken expression turned murderous. He rounded on Barry,
who had begun to moan and stir.

“Dude, you’d better hope that Hamlet is all right. My friend Alex Putin . . . he,
you know, likes cats,” he threatened and ran to the basement door.

“Don’t touch the handle of the firebox with your bare hands,” Jake called after him
as she returned to kneel beside Darla. “Fingerprints! Use your shirttail.”

Robert nodded and vanished behind the door. James, meanwhile, picked up the discarded
bat and took up position near Barry. Cocking his head in the direction of the front
windows, he said, “I believe I hear sirens.”

“About damn time,” Jake replied. She gave Darla’s hand a reassuring squeeze and said,
“Hang in there, kid. The paramedics will be here in a minute, and we’ll get you to
the hospital so the docs can check you out.”

Darla hugged James’s coat to her like a security blanket. In a small voice that reminded
her of herself thirty years earlier, she rocked back and forth there where she sat
on the floor and whispered, “I don’t want an ambulance. I want my kitty.”

As if in answer, a faint shout came from the basement. Darla couldn’t guess if it
reflected Robert’s shock at seeing Tera’s body or if it was an indication that he’d
found Hamlet. She hugged the coat more tightly, trying to tell herself that she didn’t
care that all much, that she’d never wanted a cat.

It didn’t work. All she could see in her mind’s eye was Hamlet valiantly trying to
hold off Barry so that she could escape from the basement, rather than slipping off
into the shadows and leaving her alone.

Now, the emergency sirens sounded like they were just outside, so Darla didn’t hear
Robert come back up from the basement until he abruptly emerged through the doorway.
He was cradling a furry black form that lay limply in his arms, looking like little
more than a large black pelt. Darla gasped.

“Is he . . . ?”

Is he okay? Is he dead?

She didn’t know which question to ask . . . didn’t dare ask either.

And then youth gave a tremulous smile. “He’s breathing. But we should, like, get him
to the vet.”

The sirens abruptly cut off then, and over the shouted commands of the emergency personnel
outside, Darla heard a querulous
meow
. The limp black form began to squirm, and a pair of emerald eyes blinked open.

“Hamlet!” Darla cried, or rather, tried to. Instead, what came out was a relieved
sob.

Robert, meanwhile, had broken into a grin as the squirming was followed by another,
more insistent
meow
. “Hey, little bro. What’s the matter? Do you want down?”

Gently, he set Hamlet down on the floor. The feline blinked and gazed around him,
as if taking roll of everyone in attendance. Spying a groggy Barry lying several feet
from him, he took a step back and gave an evil hiss.

“I think we all second that sentiment,” James remarked, and Darla saw him swipe away
what appeared to be a suspicious bit of moisture from his eyes.

Darla blinked back her own tears. “Hey, Hamlet, thanks for taking care of me,” she
croaked. “You’re a true cat hero.”

Hamlet stared at her, green eyes bright; then, quite deliberately, he padded his way
toward her.

It was at that point that the front door burst open, and Reese and two uniformed patrolmen
rushed in. One of the latter shouted an all clear, and the paramedics followed inside,
their gear clattering as they demanded to know where their patient might be. Jake
sprang to her feet and was telling Reese what had happened, with James chiming in
with his own version. At the detective’s quick word, the nearest officer slapped a
pair of cuffs on Barry and then dragged him to his feet—roughly, Darla was glad to
see.

But exciting as it all was, the distraction held her attention only until she felt
a soft paw touch her knee. She looked down to see Hamlet gazing up at her, green eyes
inscrutable. Then, with the flick of a whisker, he settled himself on her lap and
began to purr.

TWENTY-THREE

“HILDA SAYS TO TELL YOU THAT SHE HOPES YOU’RE FEELING
better,” Jake said as she snapped her phone shut again and leaned against the counter
not far from the stool where Darla sat behind the register. Then, setting a gift bag
embossed with the Great Scentsations logo on the counter, she added, “And here’s a
combination thanks and get-well gift from her.”

“Well, you deserve as much thanks as I do,” Darla protested. Still, she eagerly glanced
into the bag to find it filled with several products she recalled from her last foray
into Hilda’s shop. She smiled wryly when she saw that one was a jar of cucumber eye
compresses.

Jake, meanwhile, reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar, genie-bottle-shaped
vial, which she displayed with a satisfied smile of her own. “Hey, I got mine. Oh,
and Hilda said she’ll email you the names of some ointments that will help fade the
rest of that bruising.”

Darla put a self-conscious hand to her throat, which was wrapped in a bright blue
paisley scarf of Great-Aunt Dee’s that she’d found in a box in the back of her closet.
She’d donned it less as a wry fashion statement and more to stave off questions and
dismayed looks from her customers who might peg her for a battered woman and decide
she needed intervention. Of course, the concealing fabric was no defense against the
curious shoppers who’d seen the evening television news a few days earlier and already
knew her backstory, having caught the report about what Robert had been referring
to as the “Showdown at the Brownstone Corral.”

The aftermath of that event, while nowhere nearly as dramatic, had been in its own
way equally as trying. The ER doctor treating her had insisted that Darla stay overnight
in the hospital while they assessed her head injury.
A mild concussion, along with some tracheal trauma
, was the doctor’s determination.

Dressed in her green ER scrubs, the young doctor had looked to Darla like a kid who’d
escaped a slumber party. Still, her soft voice had an unmistakable air of authority
as she reminded Darla that not all her injuries were outwardly visible.

“Let’s not forget there’s a certain psychological trauma involved with being almost
murdered,” the woman had added, eyeing her over her clipboard with an expression that
seemed to indicate she’d seen a few things in her short tenure. “You don’t want to
go home and pretend everything’s normal, because it’s not.”

Though Darla had been determined to prove the doctor wrong, she’d not succeeded. Sleep
was hard to come by, mostly because her dreams invariably devolved into a hazy re-creation
of those frightening minutes when she’d truly feared for her life. And even safely
ensconced in her apartment, she found herself jumping at every small noise and constantly
looking over her shoulder lest Barry suddenly be there.

Physically, things were only a little better. Four days after her struggle with Barry,
the distinct pattern of splayed fingertips was still visible on her pale flesh. The
original reddish-blue coloring now had faded to a gruesome-looking combination of
green and yellow; still, Jake had warned her that it would take at least another week
or more for the bruising to fade completely. And while her voice was almost back to
normal—the hoarseness relieved by repeated doses of hot tea and honey—the bruises
were a constant reminder of just how close she’d come to being Barry Eisen’s third
victim.

Which brought to mind the man’s second victim . . .

“That’s nice of Hilda to think of me, considering what she’s coping with right now,”
Darla said, meaning it. “So how is Tera doing?”

That the missing girl had resurfaced later that same day, while Darla had been recuperating
at the hospital, had been the one bright spot in the whole tragic affair. Barely had
Darla learned to her immense relief that the body she’d found in the brownstone basement
had not been Tera—according to Jake, the victim was instead the blond ponytailed building
inspector who’d had words with Barry a few days earlier—than Reese had called her
hospital room. Fearing dire news, she’d instead been overjoyed to hear that Tera Aguilar
had been discovered alive, and relatively well despite a broken arm, and was being
reunited with her mother.

You won’t believe this, Red
, the cop had told her,
but the whole time she’s been holed up with a couple of her girlfriends. And the real
kicker? The girls are Alex Putin’s daughters.

The fact that Tera had been suffering from mild amnesia and was obviously in fear
of her life had convinced her friends that it wasn’t safe for anyone else to know
where she was.

This Putin guy made a couple of phone calls and got a doc to patch her up on the QT
, Reese had continued.
They figured she was hiding from an abusive boyfriend, so no way were they going to
let her out in public. And Tera couldn’t remember enough about what had happened to
know if it was safe for her to tell her mother where she was. It wasn’t until you
made the news, Red, that she knew it was okay to come out of hiding.

“The doctor said whoever set her broken arm did a decent job of it, so she won’t need
any follow-up surgery once she’d out of the cast,” Jake said. “And she doesn’t seem
to have any lasting damage from the concussion, though she really doesn’t remember
much of what happened before she crawled out of that Dumpster and went looking for
help.” Jake shook her head and added, “Too bad we can’t say the same thing for that
building inspector friend of Eisen’s. But if it comes down to a choice between either
his or her body wrapped in that plastic, I’m damn glad it wasn’t Tera.”

“Tell me about it!” Darla agreed with a sigh. “When I saw that long blond hair sticking
out of the tarp, I was sure that Barry had killed her, too. It never occurred to me
it could have been Toby who had been murdered.”

Now, Darla wanted to know, “Did Reese get anything out of Barry that would explain
what the heck happened there?”

“At this point, since Tera is still iffy as a witness, it’s mostly conjecture,” Jake
replied, idly playing with the tassels on the display of bookmarks beside her. “Eisen’s
no fool. He lawyered himself up and isn’t talking. But I can make a few educated guesses.”

“Go ahead,” Darla urged. “I want to hear it.”

“Okay. From what Reese pieced together from Tera’s statement, she showed up at the
brownstone Wednesday night sometime after midnight. That fits in with when Robert
said he saw her on the street. Unfortunately for her, she arrives just in time to
witness Eisen club her boyfriend with the crowbar. She panics and tries to run out
of there. Barry doesn’t want any witnesses, so he goes after her and gives her the
old crowbar treatment, too. That’s how she got the broken arm and concussion.”

“But the whole thing about the Dumpster . . . how did Tera end up in there?” Darla
wanted to know.

Jake let the tassels fall back into place and moved on to the cartoon pencil display.

“In the heat of the moment, Eisen probably didn’t check Tera too closely,” she replied.
“He just assumed he’d killed her. And then he had the problem of two bodies lying
around the brownstone. I’m sure he figured he would be pretty safe in trying to pass
off Curt’s death as an accident. And if the ME ruled it murder, he’d have the scrap
thieves or someone else to pin it on. That’s why he made sure that you were there
when the body was found, to bolster that story.”

Jake gave a humorless smile. “But Tera was one body too many . . . it would be pushing
things to have you find both of her and Curt dead. He probably assumed he was safe
enough stashing her in the Dumpster for a day or so until the cops released the crime
scene. Then he could get a car and dump her somewhere, or else bury her in the basement
like he was going to do with the building inspector. Then Reese threw a monkey wrench
in his plan by doing a little Dumpster diving before he could move Tera’s body.”

“Except that Tera wasn’t really dead,” Darla added, stating the obvious.

This time, Jake’s smile held true amusement as she nodded.

“The girl has more lives than Hamlet, and she’s just as gutsy. Apparently, when she
came to in the container, she managed to drag herself out—broken arm and concussion
and all—and get the heck away without Eisen knowing she was gone. But she left behind
her cell phone in the Dumpster.”

Jake paused and chuckled outright. “Can you imagine what was going through Eisen’s
head while Reese was digging around in that container looking for the phone? He had
to have been sweating bullets the whole time, expecting Tera’s body to pop up any
minute. And then the only thing Reese found was the cell. The man must have been going
out of his mind wondering where she was.”

“He did seem nervous,” Darla told her, “but when I asked him about it later, he said
it was because he was afraid Reese was there to arrest him for illegal dumping.”

“Yeah, the guy has an answer for everything, doesn’t he? I’m sorry that you got taken
in like that, kid.”

Darla nodded, not trusting herself to speak on that subject. She didn’t want to go
there . . . not now. Instead, she asked, “So how did Toby the building inspector fit
into this? Why did Barry need to kill him, too?”

“Unless Eisen sings, we might not ever know for sure what really went down. But the
police did identify the dead guy as one Toby Armbruster. He really was a building
inspector for the city, but let’s just say he was putting in some unauthorized overtime.
Reese found a couple of complaints against him that raised a few flags.”

As Darla listened with interest, Jake went on, “Best Reese can guess, Armbruster would
show up at a small restaurant or business, flash his city credentials, and claim to
find a problem with wiring or plumbing or something. Then he’d threaten to shut them
down if they didn’t get the issue fixed, pronto. The next day, they’d conveniently
get a visit from Barry Eisen, who would tell them he was an approved contractor for
the city. Long story short, Eisen pretends to make the fixes, collects the cash, then
Armbruster does a reinspection and tells them they pass. No one’s the wiser, and the
two of them split the money for work that wasn’t ever done.”

“And Curt found out about the scheme and wanted in on it,” Darla reminded her friend,
“which explains how he ended up dead. But wouldn’t killing Toby have been killing
off the goose that laid the golden egg?”

“That’s what I thought, too, so I’m guessing what happened there was semi-accidental.
Think about it: Eisen had to have been going crazy over the whole disappearing-Tera
situation. Then Armbruster comes poking around the place the other night for some
reason. It’s dark, and he’s probably wearing a coat. Eisen gets a quick look at him,
just enough to see that blond ponytail, and he jumps to the conclusion that Tera has
come back to blackmail him or accuse him, or something. A quick whack on the head—he
used a hammer this time out—and no more Tera. Except it turns out that he offed his
partner in crime instead.”

Darla gave a sober nod. While the dead building inspector had seemed a particularly
unpleasant sort, she still didn’t want to see him dead.

Jake, meanwhile, seemingly was ready to move on to a new subject.

“I don’t know why you’re working today,” Jake now scolded her. “Even a minor concussion
isn’t something you fool around with. You should be resting upstairs.”

“I’ve already done that, and I’m going stir-crazy. But I promise, I’m letting Robert
do all the hard work until James gets here.” Darla paused and gave her friend a conspiratorial
smile. “Don’t say anything to him yet, but I’ve decided to bump Robert up to full-time,
at least until after the holidays. So all Hamlet and I have to do is sit here behind
the counter and look friendly.”

She gave the feline a fond look. He was sprawled across the counter, taking up most
of the spot designated for checkout, where any customer making a purchase would be
sure to notice him. Normally, she would have shooed him off to a more convenient location.
For the foreseeable future, however, he had a free pass on obnoxious behavior. Besides,
he was on convalescent watch, just like her.

From what James had told her later, while Darla was busy protesting being loaded into
the ambulance for a ride to the hospital, he and Robert had retrieved her car—the
teen, to her surprise, proved to have an actual driver’s license—and transported Hamlet
to the emergency vet. Fortunately, Hamlet had been merely stunned by the flashlight
that had hit him, and his stint inside the disassembled boiler had done him no additional
harm. He’d been sent home with a couple of days’ worth of pills to soothe the pain
of a few minor soft-tissue injuries and a bump on his head.

James and Jake had suggested that while Darla remained in the hospital for observation,
Robert should camp out in her living room to keep Hamlet company. Darla had groggily
agreed. And she’d been touched to find on her return home that Robert had taken the
flowers sent by her family and customers and arranged them in bright bouquets around
the apartment.