Somebody Killed His Editor: Holmes & Moriarity, Book 1 (25 page)

Her voice echoed hollowly as she started down the narrow staircase.

I followed slowly. The drop in temperature was noticeable. Fifty-five degrees for storing red wine, wasn’t it? And less for white. I wasn’t a wine drinker myself but I’d done quite a bit of research for
Last
Call for Miss Butterwith
.

The room immediately below us was lined with redwood racks. It was neatly laid out and carefully organized, the red bottles from the ceiling to the floor on one side, the white on the other end of the room.

An additional shelf held a quantity of hard alcohol: whiskies, gins, bourbons, etc. A large empty vat sat in the center of the room. An arched doorway led off to a shadowy interior.

Halfway down the steps, Debbie halted. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

She stood frozen in alarm.

I heard it too—Rita bellowing for her daughter from the kitchen like Demeter trying to recall Persephone from the Underworld.

“Shit,” Debbie exclaimed. She started up the stairs again, edging past me. “I’ll be right back.” She flew up the steps and out the door, easing it shut behind her.

I could hear her muffled yell in response to Rita.

Josh Lanyon

I waited but there were no further developments, so Debbie must have successfully diverted Rita.

Good. Diverting Rita was exactly what I wanted to have happen.

I went the rest of the way down the stairs and looked around. As prisons went, I could think of worse places to be locked up. There was a nice selection of liqueurs too, everything from Campari to X-Rated Fusion. If J.X. was here, he would not be in this part of the cellar, though. He’d be held in one of the unused sections.

“J.X.?” I called.

I didn’t really expect an answer, so when I heard an indefinable rustling sound from one of the next rooms, I stopped dead. My heart, however, kept going like the Energizer bunny…going and going and going…

Over the rushing in my ears, I listened feverishly, trying to pinpoint the sound.

“J.X.?” I called more softly. Switching on my flashlight, I started through the arched doorway. Light from the main room spilled into the adjoining room casting severe drunken shadows over more shelving units half-filled with glinting bottles. Another arched doorway led to yet another room.

Something shone near the doorway. I picked it up. A key. One of those thick, patented Schlage keys. I recognized it because I’d had the house rekeyed after David had exited stage left with Dicky.

I remembered J.X. saying he had dropped a key next to Peaches’ body. Of course, it could be anyone’s key.

Tucking the key in my pocket, I went through the next arched doorway. The light from the main room did not reach this far and the darkness was nearly complete. My flashlight beam played over still more shelving units—these were empty. A large wrought iron gate leaned against one wall. There was a quantity of empty fiberglass urns.

I shone my flashlight around. This was not a contained room like the two previous spaces. A long unfinished open stretch was broken only by ugly pillars and open beams. Several yards down I could make out more empty shelving units, old wooden crates and a pyramid of old-fashioned casks. Cobwebs trailed gracefully from the open beams like gauzy draperies.

I directed my flashlight beam to the stone floor, and time seemed to stand still. There, like fresh tracks in new fallen snow, were the perfect outline of footprints in the thick velvety dust. Footprints coming and footprints going. More going than coming.

Boot prints, unless I missed my guess. I’d opened my mouth to call out, but now I shut it.

I followed the path of the footprints in the dust straight down the length of the cellar, my heart thudding in a mixture of dread and hope. The only sound was the scrape of my own boots on the stone floor. I paced the rough length of several large rooms, about one hundred and sixty feet.

That odd stirring noise caught my ears once more, and I aimed the beam across from me. The bright white ray caught the gleam of eyes and teeth, and I nearly dropped the light.

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I managed to hang onto it, but I think my heart literally stopped while my brain fought to make sense of what it was seeing…

A bear.

A grizzly bear.

A
stuffed
grizzly bear, maybe eight feet tall—taller than me even without the stand it was mounted on.

The paws alone were the size of my head. The stained, outstretched claws were bigger than my fingers. The snarling muzzle displayed ferocious yellow teeth; the black eyes seemed to be staring right at me.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said faintly, and the echo of my voice rolled softly down the empty vault.

Lowering the flashlight beam to the floor, I saw that the footprints turned off to the left and vanished behind another stack of barrels. As I started forward again, I heard the distinct whisper of footsteps. I wheeled, my flashlight playing over the rough coat of the bear and catching movement. I swung the light.

Nothing moved.

I waited, listening over the thunder in my ears.

It could have been a mouse. A rat. But no rat or mouse made those footprints in the dust. Or dropped his house key. I waited more endless seconds.

Not so much as a shadow flickered. A growing unease was creepy-crawling up and down my spine, but I was not turning back until I’d seen what lay behind that stack of barrels.

Illogically, the longer I waited and nothing happened, the more convinced I became that someone was in the cellar with me…standing a few yards away, hiding in the shadows behind the broken shelving. I could
feel
that I was being watched.

I nearly popped a blood vessel at the muffled and eerie moan behind me. I swung the light, the white circle jittering its way over barrels and wall. Out of the corner of my eye I spied movement to my right, but I could only deal with one threat at a time, and the sound to the left indicated the more immediate danger.

It also gave me hope.

I darted a quick look around the wall of barrels. Was there a stirring in the darkness? A pool of shade on the floor still darker than the surrounding shadows?

I shone the light. A pile of tumbled clothes…that resolved itself into dusty boots, rope, filthy jeans, a formerly white shirt…a ghostly face with silver duct tape across the mouth.

“Oh God,” someone cried—and dimly I knew it was me. I threw myself down beside J.X., dropping the flashlight as I checked him over with frantic hands. He was warm—he was breathing—he was still alive. But his eyes were closed; he wasn’t conscious. I felt gently over his skull and found a sticky patch on the back of his head.

I propped the flashlight on a box so I could see what I was doing, and eased the tape from over J.X.’s mouth, trying not to take too much of his beard or skin with it. And then—God knows what gripped me—I www.samhainpublishing.com 149

Josh Lanyon

covered his mouth with my own. His lips were dry and chapped and he tasted terrible. No kiss was ever as sweet. He was breathing, alive, and that was all that mattered then.

His eyelashes stirred and lifted. He blinked at me dazedly.

“You’re okay,” I said, working the knots at the ropes around his wrists. “You’re going to be fine. I just have to get you out of here.”

His mouth worked. “Light’s…in…my eyes…” he managed huskily.

I rolled the flashlight away, still clumsily plucking at the knotted rope. “God
damn
it. Who the hell tied this?”

“Kit…”

“Don’t talk. It’s okay. I’ve almost got it.” I was babbling. I don’t think I could have shut up to save my life. “I hope to hell you’ve had your tetanus shots because you’ve been lying here with an open wound in a pile of dust for—for the longest fucking day of my life.” I jumped up and started yelling, “Help!

Help!
”

I never said
I
was the hero of this story. If there was a hero he was lying at my feet trying to get a word in between my shouts.

“
Kit
…calm…the hell…down,” J.X. said faintly, finally managing to make himself heard.

I dropped down beside him again and finished untying his arms. The rope fell away and he rolled onto his knees, groaning and swearing as circulation returned. I rubbed his arms, yelling frantically all the while.

“Where
are
you?” Debbie’s voice reached me.

“
Here
,” I cried. “I found him. Go get help.”

“Do you mind…not yelling in my ear?” J.X. creaked. He gave up trying to get to his feet and rolled back on his side, ineffectually chafing his wrists.

I crawled down to untie the rope around his legs. “Did you see who hit you?”

He moved his head slightly in the negative. His eyes were closed again. I got the rope off his legs as a dozen flashlight beams stabbed into the darkness and the cellar was flooded with people calling out to me.

“Good God Almighty,” Edgar exclaimed, reaching us. Debbie was with him and the skeleton kitchen staff was right behind, followed by George and an assortment of pink ladies.

“He’s alive,” I told them—unnecessarily since J.X. was feebly trying to push himself upright again. I got hold of him. “Lie still will you?”

He subsided against me, his face dropping against my shoulder. He swore indistinctly.

“Well, I guess you were right,” Edgar told me, grimly. “I should have thought of this place myself.”

He cleared his throat. “I have to admit I thought…”

“Yeah.” I bent my head to J.X.’s ear. “You’ll be interested to hear that you’re now everyone’s favorite murder suspect.”

His eyes, which had been closed—giving him a misleadingly defenseless look—popped open.

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There were more than enough helping hands, so I’m not sure why it was impossible for me to let go of J.X. as he was lifted to his feet and then pretty much carried out of the cellar. Granted, it wasn’t all one-sided. He was gripping my hand back, but we had to let go in order for them to lug him up the stairs. I followed the rescue party slowly, my legs unsteady with reaction.

It wasn’t until we found him that I realized how very much I’d feared J.X. was dead.

Hauling my weary carcass up the stairs, I paused and stared down at the motionless room below.

Nothing stirred.

I turned at last and trailed the sound of voices through the kitchen to the bar where J.X. was being tended to by a crowd of ministering angels—and Rita. Granted Rita’s part was mostly to stand there and make acerbic comments about blood being dripped on her clean floor. There was not a lot of blood, though the basin of water on the table was a definite pink. One of the women—an emergency room doctor in real life—was swabbing J.X.’s battered head. “Looks like you need a couple of stitches,” she pronounced at last.

“We’ve got medical supplies,” Rita said, and she pushed past Edgar and the rest of us who had formed a giant horseshoe around J.X.

“Did you see who hit you?” Mindy demanded.

“How could he? He was hit on the back of the head,” one bright young thing offered.

J.X. gave her a funny look, quickly concealed. “I don’t remember a damn thing,” he said wearily.

“The last thing I remember was…” His gaze fell on me standing at the end of the table. The faintest color rose in his face.

I felt blood warming my own cheeks in response. Not because we’d had sex—well, not entirely—but because of the asinine way I’d behaved afterwards.

“…was walking out to the cabins with Christopher,” J.X. concluded finally.

As though synchronized, nearly fifty heads turned my way. I held up a hand. “Don’t bother to say it.

I’ll go quietly. I could use a nap about now.”

Rita, returning with a professional-looking first-aid kit, said, “What sense does that make? You’re the one who found him.” To J.X. she said, “You never want to see a fuss like the one this bast—er—guy made over you going missing.”

Now I really was red. J.X. studied me soberly while the doctor took the first-aid kit and began sorting through supplies.

“Tell him about the icehouse, Christopher,” Espie put in jovially.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

That brought another round of those annoying giggles.

It was funny how quick everyone was to forget that less than an hour earlier most of them had been convinced J.X. was the killer. Now, in their relief to find him alive and mostly unharmed, not only had their www.samhainpublishing.com 151

Josh Lanyon

suspicions been discarded, it seemed to me that everyone was well on their way to forgetting two people had died and a murderer was still on the loose.

Rita said dourly, “Your buddy dragged Edgar down to the icehouse and insisted he open it up to make sure you weren’t tied up inside.”

More laughter from the handful of people who hadn’t yet been regaled with my idiotic adventures.

J.X. didn’t look like he found it all that funny—which I appreciated.

Testily, I said, “Okay, maybe I had the wrong location, but he
was
being held prisoner. I wasn’t wrong about that.”

“Don’t get in a huff. We’re teasing you,” Espie said, trying to placate. “We’re happy.”

“Me too,” I said. “Never happier. But doesn’t anyone wonder why J.X. wasn’t killed?”

There was one of those silences that often seemed to greet my comments.

J.X.’s gaze held mine. “Why do
you
think I wasn’t killed?”

Suddenly it was the two of us talking—as though we were the only people in the room. “Because you’re an ex-cop and everyone knows what happens to cop killers?” He blinked at me, mulling this over.

“Or maybe the killer doesn’t hate you the same way he or she hated Peaches and Krass? Maybe you were simply put out of the way to stop you from snooping around?”

“Maybe she likes your books,” someone suggested.

“Or he,” someone else put in.

More laughter. J.X. was still studying me in the owlish way of the semi-concussed.

“You should lie down when we get finished here,” the lady doctor told him.