A Hard Day’s Fright (20 page)

“Police personnel only,” the young uniformed cop just outside the elevator door told me.

“I’m…I’m not…” I was wearing what I’d changed into when I’d gotten home from the park visit with Ella and Will, the running shorts I never ran in and a T-shirt my mother had once brought home from a medical conference in New Orleans. I was just as surprised as the officer was to see I hadn’t put on my shoes. “I just have to…I mean, I need to…”

It obviously wasn’t my eloquence or even my tears that finally convinced her to step aside. It was the voice that came from behind her.

“It’s OK, Barinski, I’ll take over.”

The man who stepped up was a middle-aged, balding double for the Incredible Hulk. Big shoulders. Square chin. He even looked a little green, but I suppose considering the circumstances, I couldn’t blame him. He was someone I’d met before at a Fraternal Order of Police picnic. Or a fund-raiser for the Police Museum. Or something. In better circumstances, I might have even remembered his name. He was wearing a suit and a badge on a chain around his neck. He took both my hands in his.

“Len Cranston,” he wisely reminded me. “Pepper, how did you hear?”

“Quinn…” There was a flurry of activity outside one of the rooms down the hall, and I looked over his shoulder but once it was over and there was nothing to distract me, I had no choice but to talk to Len. And face the truth. “Quinn, he told me—”

“I know.” Len patted my hands before he gave them back to me. “He told me you two were on the outs, too. This is a hell of a way to get back together.”

“That’s not…” I raked my trembling fingers through my hair. It was the first I remembered I hadn’t bothered to comb it before I ran out of the apartment. “That’s not why I’m here. I have to tell you…” I did my best to gulp down the ball of emotion that blocked my breathing and tried to sound calm even though it wasn’t how I was feeling. Like cops everywhere, Cranston would be far more inclined to listen to a calm woman than he would to a shocky one who wasn’t wearing shoes.

“I know how Churchill got out of that warehouse,” I told Cranston. “He stole a car, too. He’s in a dark-colored sedan and—”

“Quinn called you? He told you? Before that slime-bucket Churchill shot him?”

It seemed easier just to agree so that’s what I did. Right after I gave Len the license plate number Quinn had given me.

He sat me down on a bench against the wall and went into action instantly, making all the right calls, getting a bunch more. It was five minutes or more before he remembered I was there. It felt like five years.

“Sorry.” He didn’t need to say it, but really, it’s the sort of all-purpose word people use at times like this. “You want to go in and see Quinn?”

I was tempted to tell him I already had, but even if I was so inclined, I was sure the words wouldn’t make it past the lump in my throat.

“Come on.” He made the decision for me, tugging me to my feet at the same time he asked one of the nurses for a pair of those funny, stretchy hospital slippers. “I’ll take you in.”

I hung back. No easy thing to do considering the guy is as big as a building. Still, I was determined. Talking to the dead is one thing. Seeing a body…it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it before. But before, it had never been Quinn, and my heart had never been smashed and my legs paralyzed.

Cranston wasn’t taking
no
for an answer. Before I knew it, I had a pair of limey green slippers on my feet, and he was half walking, half dragging me down a hallway. He stopped just outside one of the rooms and stepped aside.

And me? I stood frozen to the spot, my chest aching like somebody in thick boots had kicked the hell out of me, my mind racing, grasping for any straw of logic in a situation that was anything but.

I’d done what I came to the hospital to do. It was time to run home and lose myself in the misery that made every breath a chore. When I flinched and turned to hotfoot it to the elevator, Cranston put his hands on my shoulders, spun me back the other way, and gave me a nudge inside.

The room was empty except for the body in the bed, a single light shining down on it.

It was quiet except for the swishing of some machine over on my left.

Rather than do what I had to do, and face the truth, I concentrated on details. Quinn’s charcoal suit, his striped shirt, and that damned sexy tie of his were lying over a chair at the foot of the bed. There was an ugly maroon-colored stain on the shirt.

“Last time…I go anywhere…without…bulletproof vest.”

I nearly fainted when I heard the raspy whisper from the bed.

“Quinn?” It wasn’t a big room, but I closed the space between us in record time. “You’re alive. Oh my gosh!” I grabbed his hand, which I probably shouldn’t have considering there were IV tubes in it. His skin wasn’t hot. I mean, not like the hot I was used to feeling when his skin met mine. But it wasn’t ice, either. Not like the Quinn who’d been in my apartment. I hung on tight, even when I figured I was cutting off his circulation. Heck, we were in the ICU. They could fix things like that.

Quinn’s eyelids fluttered. “Pepper…I think…” There was a smudge of blood in one corner of his mouth, and I found a cloth and wiped it. “I didn’t think…”

He closed his eyes on a wave of pain, and I squeezed his hand tighter before I realized me hanging on like a limpet might have been what hurt so much. I loosened my hold, but I didn’t let go.

I coughed around the tightness in my throat. “They said on the news that you were—”

For just a second, his eyes sparked with that old familiar flame. “Heard them talking…Nurses…Doctors…brought me back.”

“But not before you told me where Churchill was.”

The shake he gave his head was so weak, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if the tubes going in his mouth and nose hadn’t moved. “Not possible.”

“You know it is.”

Another shake. “I was…just…dreaming.”

“And you picked that particular moment to dream about me?” Like I hadn’t smiled in a lifetime and didn’t remember how to even begin, I tried for a bright expression. It hurt. “It wasn’t the drugs, either, so don’t try to tell me it was. You were there, Quinn. You were dead, and you were in my apartment. You remember, don’t you?”

I thought he was drifting away, but actually he was looking me over. “Same T-shirt,” he said. “Norleans. But…no. Can’t be.”

Recently dead and looking very much the worse for wear, and he could still make me mad enough to scream. I controlled the urge, but only because I didn’t want to bring half the Cleveland Police Force running. “You were there. I talked to you. And you told me Winston Churchill escaped through the basement door of the warehouse. You said he got into a dark-colored sedan. You remember that happening?”

He did his best to nod.

“Then tell me how I knew about it if you didn’t tell me.”

“Not…possible.”

If I could have ignored the tubes, the bandages, the machinery beeping around us, and the sickly smell of blood, I might have been able to remind myself to go easy on him. Quinn had had a rough night, being dead and all. In my book, that wasn’t much of an excuse.

I leaned in nice and close so that one of these days when he was up and around again and arguing with me about what a nutcase I was, he’d remember this moment.

“Ohio license plate,” I said, slowly and carefully, “AOY 6990.”

He shook his head.

And I guess we would have gone on just like that—me being the logical one for a change and him denying it for all he was worth—if Cranston hadn’t poked his head into the room. “Highway Patrol just picked up Churchill outside the county line,” he said. “He was driving that dark sedan, all right. That license number you gave us, Pepper, it was right on.” He gave us the thumbs-up.

And I smiled down at Quinn in a very superior way. But then, I could afford to be self-righteous. I’d just helped capture a dangerous serial killer.

“Believe me now?” I asked him.

“Don’t know…what to believe.” He closed his eyes, and just at that moment, a nurse walked into the room.

“He needs to rest,” she said.

And I knew a
get out of here
when I heard one. Even a polite one.

My knees were Silly Putty and my head was spinning, but I wasn’t imagining it when I heard Quinn say my name just as I got to the door.

I turned in time to see the smallest of smiles lightly touch his lips. “I guess…” He pulled in a breath and a wave of pain crossed his face. “The dead do talk.”

I
spent the next couple days ping-ponging between relief that Quinn was alive and panic when I relived that awful time before I knew the truth, and yes—in my worst moments when the warm and fuzzies I’d felt at the hospital wore off and I was back to thinking about Quinn the way I had been thinking about him in the previous months—jealousy. That would be because I wasn’t the lucky one who’d had the chance to take that potshot at him.

I cried a lot, too. Ella insisted that was just all the stress working its way out of my body.

It was more than enough to keep me busy, but not enough to turn off the thoughts constantly pounding through my head. No big surprise, they were all about Lucy and that empty spot at the park where her body had originally been dumped. While I was at it, I spent a lot of time obsessing over how I was never going to get at the truth.

And then there were Quinn’s parting words to me, of course.

The dead do talk
.

The phrase had become something of a mantra, and not because I wanted it to be. Every time I tried to work my way through the Lucy problem, my head was filled with memories of my visit to the hospital. There was Quinn, lying in that bed looking like nobody should ever look and scraping out those few words.

“The dead do talk.”

“What’s that?”

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. In fact, I’d forgotten that Ella was sitting not six feet away. Like I said, I’d been preoccupied.

“Nothing.” I shoved aside the new brochure about the cemetery’s horticultural treasures that I was supposed to be checking for typos and looked across the desk at her. She was there in my office because she was—allegedly—convinced it was the best place for her to remove old paper clips from stacks of ancient interoffice memos. At least that’s what she said. Since the conference room was just down the hall, no one was using it, and she could have spread her oldy moldy papers all over the table in there rather than keeping them balanced on her lap, I wasn’t buying it. Ella was keeping an eye on me. I guess the least I could do in return was tell her what I was thinking.

“It’s what Quinn said,” I told her. Of course I’d already reported almost my entire conversation with Quinn to her. A couple dozen times. But I’d left out all the parts about how I thought I was dreaming about him when I wasn’t, and about how he didn’t believe me at first when I told him what he thought he dreamed was real. It took that license plate number to convince him. Yeah, it seemed best to gloss over that stuff.

“At the hospital. He told me the dead talk.”

“He was delirious.” Ella plucked off paper clip after paper clip and dropped them into an empty coffee filter box. “The poor guy. He must still be on some major medications, and I can only imagine it was worse the other night. You know, right after
it all happened
.”

It was her way of sparing my feelings. Yeah, like substituting
it all happened
for
Quinn died
would make me forget that
it all happened
.

“I’m sure that was some of it,” I said, even though I wasn’t. “He was mumbling stuff about Churchill and all. But when I was leaving, that’s when he said that stuff about the dead talking.”

A shiver snaked over Ella’s shoulders. “Well, I suppose he would know. You know what I mean, since he was
gone
for a little while. Has he said anything like it since?”

He hadn’t. But that’s because the couple times I stopped down at the hospital to see Quinn, he was always sleeping. Or maybe he was just pretending to be sleeping. On death’s doorstep or not, I wouldn’t put it past him. That way he wouldn’t have to face me and the new reality that had dawned on him the night he died.

The dead do talk.

I drummed my fingers against my desktop, considering the words. It wasn’t like it was some big revelation. I’d known that the dead could talk to me ever since that day I took a spill and clunked my head on a mausoleum.

So why wouldn’t the thought leave me alone?

“What do you suppose he meant?” Ella asked.

I shrugged. It was a better strategy at this point than mentioning he’d visited me while his spirit hung suspended between this world and the next. “It’s just that every time I try to think about Lucy, I keep thinking about what Quinn said, and it’s driving me crazy.”

Apparently there wasn’t much else Ella could say about it. She plucked in silence. I drummed my fingers and racked my brain and spun my wheels.

“You know…”

I don’t know how long I’d been deep in thought. I only know that when Ella spoke, I jumped about a mile. She smiled an apology.

“You know,” she said, “Will’s just waiting for all the hoopla to die down. Before he turns himself in to the police.”

It wasn’t what we were talking about, but I was grateful for the change of subject. Maybe once my brain had a chance to disengage, it would settle down into thinking about what it was supposed to be thinking about. “You mean all the hoopla about—”

“About that terrible Winston Churchill fellow, and about Quinn being a hero. You’ve seen the newspaper, right?” She’d brought it into my office with her and set it on my desk, but I’d been so busy mulling and obsessing, I hadn’t paid any attention to it. She tapped the front page with a rusty paper clip. “They’re saying if it wasn’t for Quinn, Churchill would have gotten away.”

I craned my neck for a closer look. I was pretty sure those newspaper stories didn’t mention me, and I guess I couldn’t expect them to. It’s not like Quinn could tell the press he’d provided me with the vital clue while he was dead.

I sighed.

“That’s such a nice picture of your friend,” Ella said with another tap at the photo of Quinn, the one right under the headline about how he was expected to make a full recovery and what a miracle it was. “He’s so good-looking!”

Yeah, so good-looking, and so unwilling to believe it last summer when I told him the truth about how I talked to the dead, it took him dying to make him see I wasn’t a liar.

Rather than look at Quinn’s face looking back at me, I flipped the paper over.

“Hey!” I poked the newspaper, too, only not as delicately as Ella had. “You didn’t tell me there was a story about Darren Andrews in here.”

Antique interoffice memo in hand, she dismissed the comment with a lift of one shoulder. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Lucy. Or with our case.”

“We don’t have a—”

“In fact, I’m surprised they bothered to put it on the front page at all. Must be a slow news day.” I had no doubts the media thought so, too. Now that Churchill was behind bars where he belonged and Quinn’s service record had been examined from one end to the other—both in print and on TV—there wasn’t much else for them to talk about.

Ella brushed her hands together, picked up the box of paper clips, and headed for the door. “It’s just about five,” she said, and it struck me that this was probably the first time in the years I’d worked at Garden View that she’d ever had to remind me. “You going home? Are you sure you’re OK to be alone?”

“I’m fine,” I told her, because if I said anything else, she would hover.

“You can just throw those old memos into the recycling box on your way out,” she said at the door. “And the newspaper, too, if you’re done with it. Unless you’re keeping a scrapbook for that handsome guy of yours!”

I’ll bet she was twinkling when she said it. Since I didn’t need verification, I didn’t bother to look. Instead, I pulled the paper closer, ignored the story about Quinn completely, and scanned the article about Darren Andrews. It was all about that building of his down in the Flats, the one the city had scooped up through eminent domain. In spite of his feisty words about it at the news conference I’d crashed, it looked like Andrews had run up against a legal brick wall. Demolition had already started. Things like windows and copper plumbing—things that could be recycled—were already gone. What was left of the Andrews Building was set to come down the next day.

Ella was right. If that was front-page news, it was a slow day in Cleveland.

I tossed the newspaper aside, gathered my purse and the lunch I’d brought with me and hadn’t touched, and turned out my office light.

I already had my hand on the door when that irritating mantra floated through my brain again.

And that’s when it hit me.

That’s what my subconscious had been trying to tell me!

If my hands weren’t full, I would have given my forehead a slap.

The dead do talk.

All along, Lucy held the key to the mystery and all the proof I needed to put her—and this case—to rest.

And something told me Darren Andrews knew it, too.

I
t wasn’t hard to find the Andrews Building. There was yellow construction tape printed with do not cross warnings strung around the entire perimeter, and yes, just for the record, I crawled right under it like it wasn’t there. It wasn’t hard to get inside the building, either, but then, most of the windows on the second floor had already been removed, there was a conveniently placed Dumpster nearby, and—thank goodness—nobody was around to witness my less-than-graceful ascent.

It was practically an invitation to walk right in.

And walk right in I did.

Well, truth be told, I actually dropped from the window ledge. Fortunately, there was a small mountain of construction debris right under it, so I didn’t have far to fall. I landed in a pile of splintered wallboard, wadded-up fast-food bags, and old floor tiles. Good thing, too, that I had dressed for the occasion in my oldest jeans and sneakers. If I’d risked a decent outfit, I’d be plenty pissed.

I scrambled down from the pile and took a moment to look around. In the gathering evening gloom, the hallway that stretched out in front of me was muffled in shadows. The good news was that since most of the windows were missing, I still had some daylight to guide me.

Some squeaky something scurried across the floor about a foot in front of me, and I gasped and jumped back. I waited until my breathing steadied, then flicking on my flashlight, I scanned what was left of the building. There was a stairway right in front of me, and a bank of elevators over on my left. What were the chances? Rather than try and just end up disappointed, I hoofed it up the steps, my sneakers silent against the green tile.

I stopped at the third-floor landing, listening, and when I didn’t hear anything, I did a quick turn around the floor. The place was as creepy as hell, and except for the floors that creaked and moaned and the swoosh of the wind coming off the lake and in through all those gaping window holes, it was as quiet as everybody who doesn’t know the dead talk to me thinks it is over at Garden View.

There was no sign that Darren Andrews was anywhere in the vicinity.

I legged it up to the fourth floor, and the fifth, and the sixth.

By the time I’d scouted them all—and found them all empty—I was discouraged. Not to mention winded.

I allowed myself a couple minutes to sit on the steps and gather my thoughts.

So maybe I wasn’t so good at putting together clues and finding meaning in the words Quinn had mumbled when he’d had one foot in the grave?

Or maybe I was.

My head came up when I heard a sound from the floor above me, and I held my breath and listened for more. Sure, it might have been another furry intruder, but if it was, it was one with big feet, wearing hard shoes. My head tipped so I could listen more closely, my steps careful and quiet, I slunk up to the seventh and top floor.

The other floors I had examined each contained wide hallways and rows of doors. This one was different. Just to the left of the elevators, there was an archway that led back into a suite of offices. Carved over it were the words andrews incorporated.

“Bingo!” I whispered to myself. It beat listening to the sound of my heart knocking against my ribs. I stepped through the doorway and paused to listen. This time, there was no mistaking the sounds I heard. Pounding. Like somebody banging on a wall.

I followed the noise, and just outside an office at the end of the hallway, I heard it change. No more pounding, this was more like punching through. I heard the splat of plaster chips hitting the floor, and the grunt of labored breathing.

Silently, I stepped into the office. This was the corner suite, the one I had no doubt had once belonged to Darren’s father. It was roomy, and once upon a time, I bet it had been elegant. Though most of it had been salvaged, there were still a few remnants of oak paneling on the walls and chunks of thick carpeting over in the corners where it had obviously been too difficult to rip up. Two of the walls had once contained windows and a killer view of Lake Erie beyond.

Darren Andrews stood opposite them, in the farthest corner of the room. He had a shovel in his hands, and he smacked the wall one more time. In the quickly fading evening light, I saw the last of the plaster fall away. And I saw the look of relief that swept Darren’s expression.

But then, that’s because he saw what I couldn’t see. At least not until he stepped back and stepped aside.

An arm had flopped out of the wall.

Or I should say more precisely, what was left of an arm.

The bones were burnished the color of old brass, but there was no mistaking that the arm must have belonged to a woman. It was slim and delicate. The fingers were long and shapely. They clutched a gold chain, and I didn’t have to get closer to know what was dangling from it—that Saint Andrew’s medal Darren wasn’t wearing in his senior picture.

“Son of a gun, Quinn was right. The dead do talk. I just wasn’t listening. Lucy said she fought with you when you came around to the trunk and put that blanket over her face. She was so panicked, she didn’t realize she’d ripped off that medal of yours. I bet you didn’t, either. Not until it was too late. Bet you thought you lost it in the park. That’s why you went back there the next day. You never knew it was clutched in her hand, did you? You were too scared to look too close.”

Honest to gosh, I thought Darren was going to have a coronary, right then and there. His mouth open, his cheeks pale and pocked with plaster dust, he spun to face me. “What the hell are you talking about? You can’t possibly know—”