“You gotta rest the head, dude.” Markie’s voice was cold. “Let me get you upstairs.”
“Screw that.” Ty grabbed a knife, but he was too messed up to be dangerous to anyone but himself. Chase and Markie wrestled the cleaver away from him. They dragged him out of the kitchen, Ty still yelling that we were all going to die.
I looked at Benjamin Lindy, who sighed.
“I believe those boys had one good idea.” Mr. Lindy pulled the chilled vodka out from between Chris Stowall’s feet. “May I buy you a drink?”
Lindy leaned into the freezer, putting his face nearer to Chris Stowall’s than I would’ve done. The old man’s breath turned to mist.
“Contusion on the back of the head,” he decided. “That slick of blood you found earlier on the kitchen floor.”
“I didn’t find it.” This seemed a trivial point to argue, but I was running out of ways to distance myself.
Lindy straightened. “What would you say happened here?”
“He was killed in the kitchen, not long after Longoria was shot. Hit from behind. No struggle. Either someone sneaked up on him, or the killer was someone Chris knew. Someone he didn’t fear turning his back to.”
“Someone reasonably strong,” Lindy added. “Strong enough to drag a grown man into this freezer.”
“Why go to the trouble of hiding the body and not clean the blood splatter on the kitchen floor?”
“No time. Perhaps the killer was interrupted. Or perhaps he simply overlooked the blood.”
I thought about that. A bloodstain in the middle of a white floor seemed impossible to overlook, but I’d heard of crazier things. Convicted murderers will tell you that killing someone puts you in a daze. You might cover your tracks perfectly except for something obvious…your wallet on the kitchen counter, your coat across the arm of the victim’s couch.
“The kitchen is a staff area,” I said. “The only people in here would be Chris, Alex, Jose and Imelda.”
“And thirsty college students, apparently.”
I nodded. I didn’t like the way Chase and Markie had been dressed, or the fact that they’d tried to drug their friend. “The service entrance is right down the hall,” I said. “They were planning on sneaking out the back door.”
“That would be insane,” Lindy said, “unless they had a very compelling reason. Like moving a dead body.”
I shook my head. “If that was the plan, why would Chase run up and get me?”
“I don’t know,” Lindy admitted. “But if they were sneaking out for some other reason, what would make them check the freezer?”
I didn’t have a good answer. Nothing logical. But, somehow, that was the part of Chase’s story I had no trouble believing. They really were looking for vodka, possibly to steel their nerves before…whatever they were going to do.
I looked down at Chris’s cold face. I thought about the little seagulls he’d drawn in his diary, the picture of Waikiki Beach hanging on his dresser mirror.
“Chris wasn’t the guy you’re looking for,” I said. “But he got tangled up with the killer somehow.”
“I’ll find him.” Lindy’s hand trembled as he held his glass of vodka.
“Your plan was to kill Calavera,” I guessed. “You were helping Longoria set some sort of trap for him.”
Mr. Lindy raised his eyebrows. “You understand that I’ll have to deny that.”
“Chris Stowall and Longoria are both dead. Do you even care?”
“Of course I care. I don’t want any more death. Not for anyone innocent, at least.”
I wanted to ask who, if anyone, Benjamin Lindy considered innocent, but I was interrupted by the sound of a woman’s scream.
“He’s in there!” Lane shouted.
She was on the floor behind Garrett’s overturned wheelchair, pointing at her closet. Garrett was sprawled next to her, rubbing his head and looking disgruntled. In her panic, Lane had apparently tripped over him and toppled him out of his chair.
Mr. Lindy and I shone our flashlights on the closet. The door was ajar, but there was no sign of movement. No noise.
“Who’s in there?” I asked Lane.
Her eyes were frantic and unfocused. “Bobby. My ex. I saw him. We came in and he was right there in my closet!”
I looked at Garrett.
“I don’t know, little bro,” he grumbled. “I didn’t see much. Lane backed into me. Next thing I knew we were both on the floor. But there was movement in the room. Somebody was in here.”
Mr. Lindy produced his .45 Colt Defender.
Footsteps came tromping down the hall, and Alex Huff appeared in the doorway. “What is it now?”
I shushed him then followed Lindy toward the closet. The old man threw open the door.
“There’s no one in here,” he said.
“There was!” Lane looked at us like we were about to give her medication. “I saw him!”
“Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”
“Son…” Lindy said uneasily.
“Check the bathroom,” I suggested.
Lindy did. He shook his head. No prowler in the room.
“All right,” I said. “Whoever he was, he’s gone now.”
“Who?” Alex demanded.
I looked at Mr. Lindy and gestured toward the door, hoping he’d get the hint. I figured the fewer men around Lane Sanford, the better.
“Come on, Mr. Huff,” Lindy said. “There’s something you need to see in the kitchen.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” Alex said miserably, but he allowed Mr. Lindy to lead him down the hall.
I turned to Lane Sanford. “Why don’t you sit down? I mean…on the bed.”
Garrett helped her up. He righted his wheelchair and climbed back into it, still looking disgruntled. For him, getting tipped out of his chair was about as bad as getting mugged—a complete violation of his dignity, such as it was.
“Lane.” I tried to sound soothing. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“My husband.”
“Back up. You and Garrett were coming down the hall…”
She nodded.
“Were you making much noise?” I asked.
“Just talking,” Garrett said, catching my meaning. “Nothing somebody inside the room could’ve heard over the storm.”
“Was the room locked?”
“Yes,” Lane said. “I used my key.”
I thought about that. A key didn’t make much noise compared to a hurricane. If there had been someone in the room, he wouldn’t necessarily have heard anything until Lane turned the handle.
“Okay,” I said. “So you opened the door and—”
“He was looking through my closet,” Lane said. “The closet door was open.”
“It was dark in the room?”
“Yes. I just had a flashlight. I shone it on him—”
“You saw his face?”
“Well…no.”
“What did you see of him?”
“A shape. But it was a man.”
“Clothing? Skin color?”
She shook her head hesitantly. “Dark shirt? Maybe that was just the shadows. I—I backed up into Garrett and dropped the flashlight…”
“Little bro, there was somebody in here,” Garrett insisted.
“Is there any way he could’ve gotten past you, out the door?”
“I don’t see how,” Garrett said.
I checked the closet. A garment bag hung on the rod. A pair of ladies’ slip-on shoes. Empty coat hangers. An ironing board on metal hooks. An extra pillow on the upper shelf. I checked the bathroom. Nobody was hiding behind the shower curtain. No one had dug an escape tunnel through the floor tiles. Back in the bedroom: nobody was hiding under the bed. The window was boarded over with plywood.
“Well, he vanished,” I said. “He went up in smoke.”
“Secret passage?” Garrett asked.
I stared at him.
“I’m serious, little bro! This was a damn bootlegger’s mansion during Prohibition. Ask Alex. They used to bring up cases of tequila from Mexico.”
“You want to check for secret passages, be my guest.”
Garrett huffed indignantly, rolled over to the closet and started banging on the walls.
I sat down next to Lane. “From what you tell me, you didn’t actually see your ex-husband.”
She took a shaky breath. “No one believes me.”
“I believe your ex is a dangerous guy. But you couldn’t tell if this person…whoever it was…was him.”
“I—I suppose it could’ve been someone else. Another man. But…”
“Let’s get you out of this room,” I said. “For peace of mind.”
Garrett wheeled himself over, having unsuccessfully banged inside the closet looking for a way to China. “For once, my little bro has a good idea. Come on, Lane. I’ll take you—”
“Downstairs,” I interrupted. “We should try to get everyone together. I’ll call the boys.”
Garrett glared at me. “Why? What else is wrong?”
“The kitchen,” Lane remembered. “Mr. Lindy was taking Alex to the kitchen.”
Even in the dim illumination of my flashlight, I could tell her face had gone paler. “It’s Chris, isn’t it?” she said. “You found him.”
I didn’t know any easy way to break the news, so I simply told her.
Lane twisted the sheets in her hands. “I want to see him.”
“Not a good idea.”
“No,” Garrett agreed. “Lane, you don’t need that.”
“Chris didn’t do anything,” she said. “I got him killed. He tried to help me and—”
“Hey, stop that,” Garrett said. “Come here.”
She slipped off the bed and into his lap, pressing her head against his. She let out a sob, and I lowered the flashlight. In the dark, they made a strange silhouette—like one large, misshapen person.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Garrett told her. “What happened to Chris isn’t your fault. Neither is your bastard ex-husband. You did the right thing. You saw an out and you took it.”
“I thought…I thought it was an out.”
The shadows closed around us. The wind battered the window. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but this was a good room for them. If I’d been the first one through the door, I wondered what personal boogie man I might’ve seen vanishing into the closet.
“Come on,” I told Garrett and Lane. “Let’s get out of here.”
22
Ty missed his gun. Markie pushed him onto the bed and said, “Stay,” like he was a dog. Ty wanted to shoot him.
Chase glared down at him. “You’re worthless, man. Fucking worthless.”
Ty’s head still ached from where Markie had sapped him. His vision was blurry and he wasn’t sure exactly what drugs they’d given him. His claustrophobia was still smothering him—hot and heavy like an extra skin—but it was muted now. His nerves felt deadened.