A Shiver of Wonder (8 page)

David’s breathing pattern was accelerating.
Johnson looked up at him, obviously concerned about the
interactions taking place above, never mind the words.

“I needed a place to live,” snapped David.
“I found one. Beginning of story, end of story.”

Another neighbor walked by, one of the
Martinez kids from 2A, heading out for the evening. A swift peek at
the two men, and then his head was down and he was out of
there.

“How would you characterize your
relationship with Janice Templeton?”

“We’re neighbors who are social. Friends
might be a bit strong. But if you want to call it that, it’s fine
with me.”

“Do you spend a lot of time alone with
Janice?”

“What? No!” David gave his head a shake,
trying to think clearly. “But yes, on occasion we have been alone
together.”

“Well, which one? Yes? Or no?” Ormsby
demonstrated no visible pleasure at having caught his adversary in
a distortion.

David drew a long breath. “We see each other
in the courtyard – the garden out back – reasonably often. We sit
and chat. About nothing. And everything. Stupid stuff, neighbor
stuff.”

“Were you ever a visitor in her
apartment?”

David hesitated, but then nodded. “Yes. We
had a Coke and crackers, or something like that. We talk, just like
in the courtyard.”

“How often has this occurred?”

“Which? Talking in the apartment or
outside?”

“Inside. And how exactly did your neighborly
chats get upgraded to indoor status?”

“The weather. If it was cold or rainy, we’d
talk inside.”

“Do you have a regular appointment with her?
Is this an ongoing thing? And you didn’t answer my question about
the frequency of these cozy little confabs.”

David closed his eyes for a few seconds,
wondering how the hell a single day could include such incredible
highs and lows. And then he faced Ormsby again. “We have no
appointment. If we run into each other, we talk. We’ve been
friendly for probably six months. I’ve been inside her apartment
perhaps seven or eight times.”

“The last time being?”

David thought. “A week ago. A few days
before it happened. The murder, that is.”

“Janice didn’t do her dishes too often, did
she?”

“How the hell would I know?”

Ormsby’s smile was back. “We found a set of
your prints on a glass in her kitchen. You had a Coke. Straight.
Some nuts, too.”

“My fingerprints? What is this? Am I a
suspect now?”

The smile evaporated. “You always were,
Wilcott. We lifted your prints from your own front door, by the
way, so don’t get your panties all in a bunch.”

“But…” David was entirely befuddled. “I read
in the paper today that Heck was killed probably because of some
drug connection! That the two guys – the two who came to the
building – ”

“Deke and Thickman?”

“Yeah, them. The drug guys! That they… they
had maybe killed him because of some money he owed them!”

“A lot of maybes and probablys in there,
Wilcott. You read your newspaper good. Except that in the Courier,
the word ‘allegedly’ was used about fifty times today. How well did
you know Heck?”

“Heck? Not well at all. We just knew each
other to say hi or nod.”

“Did you know he beat Janice? Had been doing
so for years, in fact?”

David’s eyes found his mailbox. “Yeah. I
knew that. A few of us did. Their relationship was… pretty
crappy.”

“Pretty normal, you mean, for a
lot
of folks who live this side of town. What’d you think about that,
about Heck beating the crap out of Janice on a regular basis?”

David shifted so he could glare right up at
Ormsby. “It sucked. All right? I thought it sucked. But what was I
going to do, tell him?”

The detective shrugged. “Maybe you did.
Perhaps last Wednesday, around noon or so.”

David gritted his teeth. “I wasn’t even here
then! Which you already know, since you visited Culpepper Mills to
ask about my whereabouts that day!”

“Don’t get tetchy. Remember, this is my job.
I’m merely serving the public interest.”

David wasn’t tetchy, he just wanted to drill
the detective a new one to serve his
own
interest.

“Did you know she had a crush on you? That
she considered you a Good Samaritan of sorts?”

“No! How would I know that? All we did was
talk. Nothing else!”

Yet another resident of the Rainbow Arms
strode into the lobby, and David felt himself turning red. Was he
going to be questioned and bullied in front of everyone for the
rest of the evening?

Detective Ormsby had followed his line of
thought. “Why don’t we step into your apartment for a few minutes?”
he said. “More private. I just have a few more questions to ask,
and then we’ll be through.”

“Ask them here.” David’s tone was as harsh
as anything he’d heard come out of his mouth in years.

Ormsby pursed his lips. “Well, to be honest,
I was going to ask if I could take a quick look-see around. I could
get a search warrant by Monday if I had to, but it would be so much
easier…”

David rolled his eyes at the casually
dangled implication. “What? You’re hoping you’ll find the murder
weapon in my apartment?”

“We don’t have it yet.”

“Yeah, I read that too! A blunt object,
probably stone or steel, with a slightly rounded edge. Perhaps
you’d like to examine my rock collection?”

“Do you have one?” Ormsby actually looked
excited by this prospect.

“No! No, I don’t!” David was torn, though,
as to whether giving in to the detective or making him get a
warrant, if that was what he was truly planning to do, was the
simpler means of ending this inanity.

“Fine. Go look around,” he finally said, and
then he and Johnson headed for his apartment with Ormsby trailing
behind.

David unlocked and pushed open the door.
“Have a ball,” he stated dryly.

As Johnson growled and attempted to lunge at
him, Ormsby wordlessly stepped by the pair. After a brief survey of
the living room, he headed for the kitchen and began opening
cupboards. David turned his back, knelt, and tried to calm Johnson
as he listened to his belongings being pored through and pawed
over.

Three minutes passed before the detective
was back. “You need to do laundry,” he uttered with deadpan
delivery.

“Are you through? Can I be crossed off the
suspect list now?” David asked.

Ormsby shook his head. “If and when that
happens, I might let you know.” He waited a few seconds, and then
feigned disappointment at David’s lack of response to his joke.

David stood to the side so Ormsby could step
back into the common area.

He didn’t move. “Don’t worry, Wilcott.
Almost done here. One more question: does your girlfriend know
about your relationship with Janice Templeton?”

But at that, David lost it. With Johnson
right beside him, he pushed himself directly into Ormsby’s face.
“You leave Genevieve out of this! I know that you know her. She
told me how you’re friends with Todd. I don’t know what kind of
game you’re playing here, but that’s
well
outside the bounds
of what’s appropriate.”

“This isn’t a game, Wilcott.” Ormsby leaned
forward until his chin was practically touching David’s nose. “But
a word of advice. A woman like Genevieve MacGuffie deserves better
than you. If I find evidence of anything,
anything
inappropriate that might have happened between you and Janice, it’s
going on the public record. Understand?”

David glowered upwards, pure hatred flowing
through him like molten fire. This time, though, it was Ormsby who
backed off first, calmly, taking a single reverse step before
striding into the common area and heading out through the
lobby.

David resisted the urge to slam his door
shut with all his strength. He had already drawn enough attention
from the neighbors this afternoon.

A long, hot shower hadn’t been enough to
purge the distaste regarding his encounter with the detective from
David’s thoughts. He’d pounded the stall’s tiles a few times just
to release some of his negative energy, but all this had
accomplished was to bring Johnson into the bathroom, the same
inquisitive look on his face each time.

“Goddamn it all!” David muttered to himself,
not even sure what it was that he was angriest about. Ormsby’s
cavalier superiority? His absurd allusions? His tenuous connection
with Genevieve, along with the ridiculous threats to expose David
should he unearth some impropriety with Janice?

But there hadn’t been any! What had they
done, other than talk, and share the courtyard, and eat a few
afternoon snacks together while she disclosed cautious hints about
her dreadful relationship with Heck?

Of course, the last couple of times they’d
been together, her caution had been absent, and she’d made quite a
few upsetting disclosures.

But a crush on him? From what source had
that
supposition been dredged?

David turned off the water and stepped out
of the shower. He grabbed a towel and began to dry himself. And
then he poked his head into the bedroom and winced: it was 5:45
already. So much for a leisurely perusal of the wine selection at
the liquor store en route to Genevieve’s.

He dressed quickly, and did his best with
his hair. And then he packed a backpack: sneakers, a tee shirt and
shorts, and a handful of dog treats. While he had managed to slip a
toothbrush and razor into a drawer at Genevieve’s house without
upsetting the applecart, his minor encroachments into her closet
space had been firmly rebuffed.

“You ready to go out again?” he asked
Johnson. Johnson leapt off the couch to paw at the front door. “All
right, let’s go.” David closed and locked the door behind them, and
was halfway to the lobby before he performed an about-face and
headed for Apartment 1D.

“Let me just see if she’s home,” he said to
his dog, who appeared confused.

But knocking on Janice’s door yielded no
response. Her doorframe still had shreds of yellow and black Do Not
Cross tape dangling here and there, and where a doormat should have
lain was a welter of jumbled footprints.

Fifteen seconds later, David found himself
bounding up the stairs to the second floor, only his third foray to
the Rainbow Arms’ upper level in nearly two years.

Knocking on the door of 2B, though, where
Clair and Mrs. Rushen resided, was also unfruitful. What David
would have
said
to either one of them was a mystery, even to
David, but he felt a strong urge to ask Clair if she could explain
things to him.

Which was insane. She was a child. She was
in first grade.

David closed his eyes for a few seconds
before turning to descend the stairs. What was going on at the
Rainbow Arms? A man murdered; David an alleged suspect in that
murder; the relationship of the victim’s girlfriend to David under
a microscope. Janice had been visiting her mother when the incident
happened, and a strange little girl with a freaky nutjob of a
guardian had apparently told her that she should do so. And just as
when Clair had stated so forthrightly that she liked Genevieve’s
name, or that she
didn’t
like Detective Ormsby, David felt
disoriented, out of his depth. As though he was unknowingly on a
precipice, directly above something that was far beyond either his
powers of observation or understanding to decipher.

“Hey ya. Ya headed out?” David blinked, and
found himself facing Bill Lopes, halfway down the walkway to Piston
Avenue.

“Yeah. Uh, yeah.” He shifted his backpack as
Bill reached down to rub Johnson’s head. “Going to Genevieve’s for
dinner.”

“Oh. Guess I’m gonna have to finish all
these by myself, then.” Bill grinned, and raised the paper bag he
was carrying a few inches. David heard the tinny clunks of a pair
of six-packs nudging against one another.

“Yeah. Wish I could. It’s been a crappy
afternoon.” Which wasn’t quite true. It had been a fantastic
afternoon until he and Johnson had returned from their walk.

“Ormsky, eh? Yuh, he was lookin’ for ya.
Asshole.”

“Did he come after you, too?” David
asked.

Bill turned, and with precision, shot a
stringy loogie about ten feet, straight into a bare patch between
two geranium bushes. “He had some questions. Nothin’ I couldn’t
handle. He wanted to know ’bout you and Janice. I told ’im ya
barely knew each other, that maybe ya sat and talked a few times
out back. He wanted to know everyone’s schedule for comin’ and
goin’, how many nights a week Heck stayed, if those two thugs that
maybe did ’im in had been ’round before.”

“And you could answer all that?” David
wasn’t sure if he was aghast or impressed.

“Hell, no! I just gave him the easy ones,
nothin’ that’d rub up against what anyone else’d say.”

“Has…” David adjusted the backpack again.
“Has Janice been back? I haven’t run into her since it
happened.”

Bill lifted his bag to tuck it under an arm.
“Yuh. She’s pretty skittish-like, though. Ducks in, ducks out. I
helped her clean up the mess. Good thing it were in the kitchen,
would’ve been hell if it’d been on the carpet. Finally fixed her
sink, too. She’s been botherin’ me for a couple weeks ’bout it
leakin’ down below.”

“Is she doing all right? I mean, about
Heck?”

Bill rolled his eyes. “She feels guilty.
Like it were her fault it happened. I pointed out that if she
hadn’t
gone to her mother’s, she would’ve been at Bargain
Bin instead. Same result, more trouble with the cops.”

“Yeah. And Clair told her to go.” David
scratched behind Johnson’s ears; the dog was being patient, knowing
that they were about to take another long walk.

“Creepy Clair, creepy Clair,” Bill said, but
that was all he had to offer on the subject. He shifted the beer
again. “Might not be able to knock all this down tonight. Feel free
to drop in tomorrah if ya want.”