Bone Key (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

The Green Parrot was shuttered when Deal passed the bar for the second time that night—the crowd and the patrol car and the big, parboiled man in the bathing suit and flip-flops had long since disappeared, all of them gone to gather strength for the Saturday about to come, he supposed. The guardian roosters had deserted their post as well, he noted as he turned the Hog back down the narrow lane that led to Ainsley Spencer’s bungalow. Where did roosters go to sleep it off? he wondered.

The narrow street itself was as dark and quiet as the first time he’d been there, he noted, though the air that drifted through the open windows of the Hog had turned a bit cooler. Not more than an hour or two until dawn, he thought, glancing up at the sky.

A hell of a time to roust an old man out of bed to tell him that his great-grandson was dead. But what was the alternative? Deal reminded himself. Deputy Conrad pounding on the jamb with the stock of his riot gun?

He pulled the Hog to the curb in front of the gap in the picket fence, vowing to send someone over to make the necessary repairs. If it came down to it, he thought, he’d swing by a hardware store for the tools and fix the damned thing himself. The least he could do, he told himself, and never mind if he was beginning to repeat himself.

He pulled himself out of the Hog and walked slowly toward the porch of the bungalow, too exhausted to rehearse what to say. To hell with it, he thought. He’d handle matters on the fly.

He raised his hand to knock, then pulled the flimsy screen door open to use the brass clapper that was mounted on the solid inner door. He let the echoes of the sturdy knocker die away, then tried again. No sound of footsteps. He tried a third time, but still with no success.

He was considering trying the doorknob, maybe stick his head inside and call if it was unlocked, when he heard footsteps behind him and turned. At the gate that opened off the sidewalk stood a heavyset woman in a blouse and ankle skirt.

“He’s gone, mister.”

Deal eased the screen door shut behind him. “You mean Dequarius?”

“Is that who you’re looking for?” She rested one hand on a cane, he saw. Something in her voice suggested she didn’t use it just to get around.

“I was looking for Mr. Spencer,” he said.

“Again?” she said, a note of skepticism there. She had a broad face and her hair was done up in some kind of bandanna, but this was no jolly grandmother. He glanced up the dark street, wondering which of the quiet houses she’d been watching from. He wondered how many others were watching now.

He nodded. “I wanted to talk to him,” he began. “It’s about Dequarius.”

“He knows,” she said, cutting in. The tone of her voice left little doubt just what.

“You mean…?”

“Dequarius passed,” she said. “We know.”

With the last, Deal felt a chill run through him. He glanced back at the house, then up the deserted street. How on earth had word arrived?

He took a breath, trying to sort the thoughts banging inside his weary head. “Did Mr. Spencer say where he was going? When he was coming back?”

“He had to leave,” the woman told him, her voice flat but final.

So much for being the bearer of bad news, he thought, glancing again at the solid door behind him. “This was another reason I came,” he told her. He wondered about the propriety of divulging a confidence, then reconsidered. If word of Dequarius’ death was already common knowledge here, then what was he worrying about?

“The sheriff might be coming here—” he began.

“Maybe you left something inside, when you was here earlier,” she said, cutting in.

He stared down at her moon-shadowed face. He couldn’t see her eyes. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“Why don’t you go have yourself a look?” she said. “Spencer isn’t going to mind.” She lifted her cane and pointed. It seemed aimed at his breastbone. “Door’s open,” she added.

Deal gave her an uncertain glance, but she nodded encouragement. He turned and pulled the screen door, then tried the knob. The door opened easily in his hand. He gave a last look toward the woman who stood by the gate, then slipped inside.

A different odor greeted him this time—the tropical mustiness characteristic of any un-air-conditioned house in such a climate, of course, but changed somehow. This was the scent of a house that had been closed, unlived in, for weeks, or even months. Its silence was equally profound.

He fumbled for the light switch, then flipped it on, bracing for the sudden glare, but nothing happened. Moonlight streamed into the tiny living room from a lace-shrouded window, enough for him to get his bearings. He crossed to the hallway where the bedrooms were and felt about for another light switch, but found nothing.

The doorway to the old man’s room was a dark shadow on his right, the opening to Dequarius’ a matching stripe of darkness on his left. Deal hesitated, feeling the skin prickle on his arms, the back of his neck. He had the feeling he was entering a place he’d never been before, which was crazy, he told himself. He’d walked down this very hallway not two hours before.

He put his hand into his pocket for his keys and pulled the ring out with a jingle that sounded like a dropped garbage can lid in the confined space. He kept a tiny penlight clipped there, a Christmas stocking gift from his daughter. The thing was supposed to be used for locating keyholes in the dark, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. If his current run of luck held, the batteries would be long dead, he was thinking, then pressed the button with his thumb to find a wavering pool of light on the hallway wall in front of him.

He wouldn’t want to explore any caverns with the light, but it was enough to cast a dim glow on his surroundings. He saw the foot of Dequarius’ single bed jutting out from the wall and the dark lines of the wooden desk and chair across the room.

No bogeyman in sight, he thought, though he did check quickly behind the open door. The tiny light seemed to be weakening though, and he eased up on the thumb button to give the batteries a rest. A bit of light reflected in from the single window, but the house was close up against its neighbor here, and the angle of the moon was wrong. He crossed quickly to the closet and reached for the door, pressing the button for the light.

The slick plastic button slipped in his fingers and his keys fell to the floor with a resounding clatter. He looked downward after them, but the corner of the room was in full shadow. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the vague shadow of the hallway door and the glowing nimbus that was Dequarius’ bed. He thought briefly of going to check beneath it, then dismissed the notion out of hand. He was behaving like a child, he told himself. Driscoll would be beside himself with scorn.

He turned and eased himself down on his hands and knees and began to grope in the darkness for his fallen keys, ignoring the lunatic thoughts in his head—
This is when it happens, son. Someone coming through that door!

He wouldn’t have turned if he’d heard the thud of combat boots, he was telling himself…then stopped when his hands encountered something cool and hard on the floor in front of him. A floor grate, he realized, a source of ventilation or even heat, if such a thing was ever necessary in Key West. That would explain all the noise when his keys fell, he was thinking…and in the next instant, his fingers were probing the interstices of the grating, praying the clutch of keys was too big to fit through the openings.

He’d covered the entirety of the grate and gone over it a second time with his flattened palms, was about to pound his head against the wall in frustration when he caught a glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. He scurried on his hands and knees halfway across the room, where he found the keys bunched against the floorboard. He tried the penlight, relieved that it still worked, then pushed himself off the floor, intending to head for the closet at last.

He felt a stunning blow at his head, accompanied by a crashing sound—furniture being flung to a wooden floor—then he was staggering sideways across the room, his legs as rubbery as a day sailor’s in a storm. He threw his hand up to protect himself from what was coming next, then felt his legs hit the side of the bed. He went down in a sitting position, dazed, one hand held to the back of his head, the other pointing his penlight as if it were a weapon.

Some weapon, he was thinking, wondering what he’d been hit with and why he hadn’t been nailed again. He had to move, his brain told him, duck and cover, do something or he’d be toast.

Then he stopped, realizing he was staring at an empty room. He blinked, then tilted the penlight downward, as if an assailant might be wriggling toward him like a snake…but there was nothing.

Someone had clubbed him, then run away, he thought. But why hadn’t he heard footsteps? What kind of house was he in, anyway?

Then, as the weak beam of light swept over the room, he began to realize what had happened. The desk now sat askew, jolted out from its place at the wall a foot or so, the chair tumbled onto its back. But there was no killer hulking in the shadows, no club-wielding ghost about to beat his brains out.

In fact, no one had hit him. He’d nearly knocked himself out. As he’d searched for his keys, he’d lost track of where he’d been in the darkness. When he straightened up, he drove his head squarely into the corner of the oak desk. He felt the lump that was already rising and would have shaken his head if it weren’t so sore. What would Driscoll have to say about this? he was wondering, when the voice burst from the darkness and his eyes went blind with light.

Chapter Twenty

“Freeze!” Deal heard one man cry.

“Move a muscle and you’re dead,” a more familiar voice added.

The light in his eyes was blinding. A handheld torch, he realized, trying to shield his face from the beam.

“Police officers,” someone else cried. “Get your hands up.”

Deal did as he was told, turning his face to escape the glare. “Well, look who it is,” he heard as the whole room was bathed in light.

Deal glanced up at the illuminated ceiling fixture, now glowing brightly, then turned back to the doorway, where Conrad and two other deputies stood, pistols trained on him. One of the deputies stood with his hand still at the light switch he’d thrown.

“What the hell are you doing sitting in here in the dark?” Conrad asked.

Deal shook his head. Had he been that stupid? he wondered. Hadn’t even tried the switch in Dequarius’ room? Driscoll would have a field day with that one.

“Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?” Deal said to Conrad, who glared back at him.

“Fuck you,” Conrad said. He turned to the deputy who had his hand on the light switch. “Put the cuffs on him, Stroud.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Deal said as Stroud holstered his weapon and came forward.

“You’re the one made a mistake, buddy,” Conrad said. “Keep him covered,” he said to the third deputy, who nodded uncertainly.

Conrad gave Deal the look he probably reserved for perpetrators being dragged from a courtroom after sentencing, then strode across the room to throw open the closet door. Deal was already imagining how he’d begin his next phone call to Rusty Malloy when he saw Conrad stop short, as if he’d taken a punch to the solar plexus.

“Sonofabitch,” the big deputy said, staring into the closet in disbelief.

“What is it, Marcus?” The cop who was supposed to be cuffing Deal glanced up.

“Sonofa
bitch
,” Conrad repeated, swiping his arm across a row of empty hangers.

Deal stared over Conrad’s shoulder into the closet. No slacks, no jerseys, no boots, no rows of stacked boxes on the shelf that ran above the length of galvanized pipe where the hangers danced. Deal couldn’t tell whether the odor of marijuana might still be lingering there, but even if it was, that was the only thing the closet held.

“I don’t see anything,” the third deputy said.

Conrad turned a murderous gaze upon his partner, then strode to the painted dresser and began yanking open the drawers. He’d gotten to the last of them when a commotion sounded from the hallway.

“Get your hands off me,” Deal heard a woman’s voice cry, followed by a whacking sound and a yelp of pain.

“Put the club down, ma’am,” Deal heard a man call. Then came a louder thwack.

“Goddamn!” the man cried. “Somebody help!”

Conrad stared up from the empty drawers at his two companions, his face glowing with rage. “Why doesn’t he have cuffs on?” Conrad said, pointing at Deal. But Stroud was already on his way into the hallway, and the third deputy seemed paralyzed with indecision.

Seconds later, Stroud was backpedaling furiously into the room, followed by the woman from the sidewalk, who now brandished her cane like a rapier. There was a fourth deputy lurking in the hallway, but he seemed in no hurry to join the group inside the bedroom.

Conrad reached out and snatched the woman’s cane away, an eyeblink move Deal would not have thought the man capable of. “Just simmer down,” the big man said, holding up his free hand as if he were directing traffic to halt.

“You give me my cane,” the woman demanded, uncowed by Conrad’s looming presence.

“I’ll arrest you for assault, Auntie,” Conrad said. “Just cool your jets, right now.”

The woman hesitated, her cheeks glowing with fury. Conrad pointed to Stroud. “Get the cuffs on this man,
now
.”

Stroud, who had a circular red welt rising in the middle of his forehead like an outsized Buddhist’s beauty mark, nodded, then began to fumble at his belt, where a pair of handcuffs dangled.

“What are you arresting him for?” the woman demanded.

“How about breaking and entering?” Conrad countered. “Burglary in the night season. Possession of…”

He stopped, glancing back at the empty closet. Deal thought he could hear gears grinding beneath the dome of the man’s sheared skull. “Check his pockets,” he called to Stroud. “See what he’s got.”

Stroud paused, the cuffs finally unclipped from his belt. “You want me to cuff him or search him?” Deal thought he detected a bit of impatience in the deputy’s voice.

“Get out of my way,” Conrad said, snatching the cuffs from Stroud and advancing on Deal.

“I invited this man into my home,” the woman thundered. “How dare you be arresting him.”

Conrad stopped short, blinking up at her. “Your home?” He glanced around the room. “This is
your
house?”

“Of course it’s my house,” she said, “just like it says down at the courthouse. I’m Minerva Betts and it’s been my house for twenty-seven years now, bought and paid for by Mr. Marcus Betts himself, God rest his soul.”

“But, Ainsley Spencer lives here.”

Ms. Betts drew herself up, uncowed by Conrad. “Ainsley Spencer may spend time here, sir, but I don’t know that it’s any of your business. I demand to know what you and these—” she broke off to sweep a withering gaze over the three deputies “—these
men
are doing here.”

Conrad’s mouth opened and closed, then opened again. “We got a call there’d been a shooting,” he said, trying a new tack.

“And what time was that?” she demanded.

Conrad seemed to be calculating. “Midnight, or thereabouts,” he said, trying to regain his composure.

Her eyes widened. “And you show up five and a half hours later to investigate this so-called shooting?”

There was a tapping sound at the window of Dequarius’ room, and everyone turned to stare. “Miz Betts? You all right?” came a muffled voice from outside.

“What the hell is that?” Conrad said.

Stroud went to the window to peer out. When he turned back to Conrad, there was a concerned expression on his face. “There’s three or four people out there—”

“Tell them to go home,” Conrad said. “This is police business.”

He might have said something else, but the clapper on the front door was pounding now. “Miz Betts?” A woman’s voice this time. Deal heard the sound of footsteps, as if a crowd might be gathering on the front porch.

“Burt, maybe you ought to take a look at this,” the fourth deputy called from somewhere in the living room.

“I want you out of here this instant.” Minerva Betts had her jaw pointed at Conrad now. “There’s been no shooting in this house, and no one has called the sheriff. If you don’t get out of my house, I’ll see that harassment charges are filed on the lot of you.”

Conrad started to stay something, then broke off when a new pounding began at the back door. “You want me to call for backup?” Stroud asked, his expression one of woe. Sweat beaded on the forehead of the other deputy.

“With what?” Conrad demanded. “The goddamned phone’s tore out.”

Conrad sent Deal a glance intended to be withering. “You are getting to be a bad penny,” he said, then turned back to his men.

“Put that gun away before you hurt yourself,” he growled to the deputy cowering by the bedroom door. He tossed the handcuffs to Stroud, who managed to catch them as they bounced off his chest.

“You heard the lady,” Conrad said to the others, starting for the door. “Waste of time even coming down here.”

“She stabbed me with her cane,” Stroud grumbled, touching the welt between his eyes gingerly.

Conrad didn’t even pause. “Why don’t you put that down in your log, Stroud. ‘Old woman cleaned my clock.’”

Stroud gave him a wounded look but said nothing. The other deputy stumbled out of Conrad’s way.

“I’d like my cane back,” the woman called before Conrad had cleared the bedroom door. The big deputy stiffened as though he’d been hit in the back with a cattle prod. By the time he turned around, however, his face bore what passed for a smile. “Sorry,” he said, extending the knurled staff Minerva Betts’ way.

As she took it, he pointed a thick finger at her. “Better be careful how you use that thing,” he told her. Then he turned on his heel and led his party out.

***

“I’m sorry about all that,” Minerva Betts told Deal as the front door slammed behind Conrad and his men.

“Sorry?” Deal said. “You saved my skin.” The second time a woman had done so this night, he thought.

She waved a hand to dismiss such talk and went to the window where the tapping had come moments before. “It’s all right now, Jonsey. They’ll be going.”

Deal heard mumbled conversation outside, followed by the sound of receding footsteps. Minerva Betts gave him a contemplative look. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

Deal might have smiled, save for the serious expression on her face. “I must have left it somewhere else, Ms. Betts,” he said.

“That happens,” she said, then added, “My name is Minnie to my friends.”

“Minnie,” he said. “I’m John Deal.”

“I know,” she said. She took a closer look at him then and her expression shifted. “What happened to your head?”

Deal thought she was talking about the injury the desktop had inflicted on him a few minutes before, then realized she couldn’t even see that knot. He raised a hand to his forehead and felt about gingerly. Still sore, but the lump seemed smaller. Not even twenty-four hours, and that skirmish seemed like old news. “I ran into Sergeant Conrad earlier,” he told her. “We just can’t seem to get along.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. It wasn’t a sound of agreement. “You got to be more careful down here, you understand what I mean, Mr. Deal?”

Sage advice, Deal thought. He gave her a nod as he pushed himself up from the bed. He felt himself reeling suddenly and had to steady himself with a hand at the doorjamb until his head settled back on its base.

“You sure you’re okay?” Minerva Betts asked.

He nodded, but carefully. “I need some rest, that’s all,” he told her. “Maybe a glass of water.”

She took his arm and helped him into the kitchen, flicking on the wall switch for the overhead light with an expert jab of her cane. While she went to the cupboard for a glass, Deal leaned a hip against the table where he’d sat earlier with Russell and Annie, talking with Ainsley Spencer about where Dequarius Noyes might be. Not six hours had passed, but it seemed like ages ago.

Minerva Betts opened the same cupboard where Annie had gone for the aspirin earlier and shook her head disapprovingly at something she found. “Might as well eat sugar right from the jar,” she said, pulling a box of candied cereal down from the cupboard.

She stepped over the tossed and tumbled telephone as if it weren’t there and tossed the cereal into a trash can, then went back to the cupboard to bring out a glass and the aspirin container. Deal saw that the bag of rice was still there, but the bottle of wine seemed to have disappeared. Gone to ground along with Ainsley Spencer, he supposed.

He shook four of the aspirins into his hand and downed them with the water she’d brought. “That’s Miamah water, you know,” she told him, as she watched him chug. She used the pronunciation characteristic of many old-timers when referring to the city. His own mother had grown up knowing better, but maintained the practice to her dying day. “If it wasn’t for that water, wouldn’t be a soul alive on this island,” Minerva Betts added.

True enough, he thought. There was no source of fresh water in the entire Florida Keys, for that matter. Early settlers survived on rainwater trapped in cisterns or depended on water brought by boat. Now a two-foot pipe ran down the archipelago all the way from Miami, keeping paradise from going dry. How many more mouths would Franklin Stone’s new project add to all those already sucking at the tap? he wondered idly. He could also imagine Stone’s rejoinder: “Hell, it’s Key West. Let ’em drink rum.” Or words to that effect.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he asked when he’d drained the glass.

“You can ask.”

It got a smile out of him. “Is this really your house?”

She gave him a look that might have seemed disapproving if he hadn’t seen what she’d laid on Conrad. “You don’t think I would lie to the sheriff’s men, now, do you?”

“I guess what I mean is, do you
live
here?”

She fixed him with a stare, though it was still nothing to that megawatt glare she’d used on the deputies. “Just how much of my business do you need to know?” she asked.

Deal held up his hands in surrender. “Only idle curiosity,” he said, though it didn’t stop him from trying another question he didn’t expect an answer to. “You sure you don’t have any idea where Ainsley Spencer might be?”

“He’ll turn up when he needs to, that much I know,” she told him. Her glance turned more solicitous then. “You want me to have one of the boys drive you back to your hotel?”

He shook his head, happy to find that the movement didn’t turn his legs rubbery. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “Really. And thanks.”

He put his glass down on the counter, then turned and headed down the narrow hallway toward the front of the house.

“You remember what I said, Mr. Deal,” she called as he pulled open the front door and moved out into the soft gray light. “Man from Miamah needs to be careful down here.”

Indeed, Deal thought. He glanced around the porch, then checked the surrounding yards and streets, as empty now as they had been when he’d first arrived. If there had been crowds surrounding this bungalow just moments before, they had become invisible spirits now.

And, Deal couldn’t help thinking, had Dequarius Noyes stayed here in the quarter among them, he might have found a way to survive. He was at the sidewalk’s gate now, and turned to find Minerva Betts at the door of the bungalow with her hand held high in a gesture of goodwill. He gave her what he hoped was a suitable wave in response, then turned and moved blearily toward the dew-shrouded Hog.