Red House Blues Page 19

  “That was easy. A few days later I waited until he’d left the house and returned the favor for the search. Found the packet under his mattress. Not too imaginative, but that’s Ferlin for you.”

  “But it wasn’t drugs,” said Suzan.

  “No, it wasn’t drugs.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if it had been?”

  “Probably not what you think. I’m not fool enough to mess with that shit.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “That’s okay. Considering your prior experiences with men who hide things it was a natural conclusion.”

  Suzan bridled at that crack but she had to admit he had a point.

  “So you found the notebooks in the packet.”

  “Right. Kind of a letdown. Just four small beat-up spiral notebooks.”

  “Weren’t you worried Ferlin would know right away it was you who stole them?”

  “Not really. I thought he’d suspect someone else in the house. Alexis maybe,” he said. “Looks like I was wrong. Who else but Ferlin would have cut my brakes?”

  “But why try to kill you? Why not just steal them back and burn them?”

  “Way it looks to me, he knew I might have read them by that time and known whatever Pike’s deep dark secret was.”

  “And had you read them?”

  “I couldn’t get past the bad poetry.” He took a gulp of Coke.

  “But if as you say the notebooks were hidden until a few weeks ago, they weren’t the reason Sean was killed.” offered Claire.

  “Obviously. The killer didn’t get the idea Sean might have written something incriminating until Suzan started snooping around.”

  “So, you’re saying it’s all my fault that you and I were attacked.”

  “Technically.”

  “Hold it, you two,” said Claire. “We have to stay focused on the issues and not start slagging each other off. Since everything keeps coming back to those notebooks we’d better find out what’s in them. Where are the notebooks now, Nick?”

  “Back in my room. It’s the last place Ferlin would look for them.”

  “They’re still in the house? Are you out of your mind!” screamed Suzan.

  “Where else was I supposed to put them, Pike? Don’t worry, they’re well hidden.”

  “Settle down,” said Claire. “Even if Ferlin can’t find them, how are we going to retrieve them?”

  “I still have a key to the house.”

  “And somebody in it might have tried to kill you,” said Claire. “You can’t show your face there even if you were strong enough, which you aren’t. I’m the only one of us that’s not walking wounded so that leaves me.”

  “No,” said Suzan. “Absolutely not. You’ve never even seen the house much less been inside. You wouldn’t find them before someone caught you. For another thing, this isn’t your fight, Claire.”

  “I agree with Suzan, as much as I hate to admit it,” said Nick. “You couldn’t find my room, never mind the books. I’ll be healed up enough in a few days to retrieve them.”

  “Dream on, Nick,” said Suzan. “And Elvis is coming back from the dead to give you a helping hand. I don’t think so.”

  The tiny plastic wastebasket beside the television stand/desk/dresser was overflowing with food wrappers, paper cups and a half-eaten burger. Suzan had taken her turn in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and changing into blue flannel pajamas. Unsexy, but under the circumstances it hardly mattered. Even had she felt better and was interested, the man sharing her room wasn’t going to be making any moves in his condition.

  Before heading to her room, Claire helped Nick walk to the facilities but he drew the line at letting her assist once he got there. He preferred to fend for himself. Suzan heard the toilet flush and wondered if she should offer to help him back to his bed. But that would mean getting up, which seemed like way too much work especially since her pain pills were starting to kick in.

  She knew she should be feeling guilty. If not for me, he’d be in the capable hands of medical professionals. Instead, he’s sharing a hotel room with a practically useless woman who is about to drift away on Vicodin.

  She turned off the bedside lamp and attempted to find a pain-free position. From the bathroom came the sound of water splashing and a stream of muffled expletives as Nick, despite stitches and bandages, struggled to get ready for bed. Yes, if she had an ounce of empathy she should have been helping him. No handy excuses sprang to mind.

  She burrowed into her pillow. At long last she heard the bathroom door open. Making his way across the floor to the bed Nick stumbled against the nightstand, swearing under his breath. For one insane instant Suzan wanted to whisper “Goodnight, John-boy”. Must be the drugs. She smiled and let herself sleep.

  * * *

  So warm. Sun beating down on my bare back. The rough wood of the swim raft smelling of salt and cedar against my cheek, rivulets of sweat worming through my hair. How familiar and comforting it is to doze soaking in the heat, feeling the soft sway of water beneath the worn boards. Primal, soothing. Have I fallen asleep? Never mind, don’t want to open my eyes. Way too soon I have to swim back to the dock, walk the gritty shell path up to the house.

  I shiver as a whisper of breeze trails across my shoulders. Is the tide changing? Must have been out too long. Shouldn’t do that. Don’t need to burn. A shadow slides over my closed lids . . . what? There is something unsettling, disturbing about this.

  Reluctantly I open my eyes. Black clouds are swallowing the sky, rolling in from the breakwater. Storm. Have to get to shore before it hits. A sitting duck for lightning on a raft in open water. Look toward the dock. Far away. How will I swim it in time? Slipping over the side, I gasp as the frigid water engulfs me. Thrash to the surface - kick away from the raft. Stroking hard in the numbing black waves with every bit of strength. Knowing it won’t be enough.

  And I’m caught. A vice clamps to my ankle, spring steel digging into my flesh - leg trap. Teeth. No, fingers, nails biting deep into my skin. A hand grips my ankle, pulls me under. I kick, twist to loosen the hold. It tightens, pulling me toward the bottom. How long will I be able to hold my breath? How long before . . . don’t dare form the words. No time. I double over, clawing at the hand, clawing toward where a face must surely be, kicking. If only I can break the hold long enough to surface.

  Stop fighting, Suzan, says the voice. Not my voice. Sean’s voice. I hear him. Please don’t fight me, Suzan. Come with me. Be with me. His voice. A remembered inflection. How can it be that I hear him through the water? Can’t see through the murky water. Wait, yes - something indistinct - floating. I think I see it there, a thing blotchy white and swollen - a hollow mouth hole, eye sockets - parts of a face disintegrating into the salt stream. Not Sean. Can’t be Sean. Suzan, come back to me, says the voice. You son of a bitch I yell, I kick at him but I’m moving in slow motion. He swirls away like kelp. My ankle pulls free. I scissor toward the light. He’s right behind me as I break the surface and gulp air. I’m ready, a fist clenched at he touches my arm - this is my one chance and I put everything I have into it - swing around toward him aiming for his face - smashing my fist into his gaping face. And I connect! I feel the bones shatter under my hand, hear a satisfying crack as my knuckles break through his nose and cheek. I’ve done it! I’m free. He’s gone.

  Sorry, Suzan my love, it’s not that easy, says the voice. Not easy at all. As the rotting remains trail away into the depths an algae-green stain spreads in spirals through the water, looping around me like tentacles - and a terror steals over me as I feel the first strands eating into my skin like acid. I will be consumed there in the roiling tide. I try to scream as it closes over my mouth.

  * * *

  Suzan is pinned to the ocean floor, sand clogging her mouth. She is drowning. There is no escape.

  She hears screaming. How can that be? On the ocean floor?

  “Damn it, shut up!”

  Sean? Is it Sean? No, t
hat can’t be. Someone else.

  “Damn it, wake up!” said the voice. “You’ll have the cops breaking down the door.”

  Door? In the sea? Ridiculous. If only she could see something through the murk. So dark. Of course. The hotel. I’m in a hotel room. And I am trapped.

  “Oopf,” she mumbled through the hand covering her face.

  “What?”

  The hand released her mouth.

  “Get off of me,” she said. “Please.”

  “Are you going to be quiet?”

  “Yes,” she lied, fully intending to scream her lungs out as soon as her captor let her go.

  “Okay, Pike. Just let me turn on the light.”

  Light flooded the room.

  “Nick? God, what happened to you?” Blood smeared his face and tee shirt.

  “You popped me a good one in the nose, crazy woman,” said Nick. “You’re not going to hit me again, are you?”

  He grabbed a fist full of sheet and held it against his nose as he slumped down beside her on the bed.

  “My god, you’re really hurt! Here, let me help.”

  He mumbled something through the sheet that might have been “Don’t help me.” She couldn’t blame him. So far she had nearly gotten him killed, then punched him in the face. Still, Suzan couldn’t just let him bleed. He looked like he could pass out any second. Even without a bloody nose the man belonged in a hospital.

  Suzan located her shoes, grabbed her jacket off the chair, stuffed the room key in one pocket and went in search of ice.

  If the hotel had video surveillance, the picture would have shown a beat up, blood spattered woman wearing a loden green L. L. Bean barn coat over striped pajamas, flapping down the hall with her Nike laces flying. Suzan wouldn’t have been surprised to find a SWAT team waiting for her when she got back to their room.

  Nick hadn’t moved but his eyes were open, wary. She retrieved a towel from the bathroom, damped it and filled it with the cup of ice from the machine in the elevator bay.

  The bed was a mess, blood spatters everywhere. We’ll owe the housekeeping staff a humungous tip. No telling what the talk would be in the housekeeping break room. She plumped the pillows behind Nick’s head and handed him the ice pack.

  “Thanks. I think it’s stopping,” he said, holding the ice to the bridge of his nose.

  “I really am sorry, Nick. I was having a nightmare.”

  “That would explain it, I suppose. You have those a lot?”

  “Not before Sean died. Lately it’s getting worse and worse. It’s one of the reasons I can’t . . . I can’t let go of this thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a restful night’s sleep until I can put it behind me.”

  “That’s understandable. You’re under a boat-load of stress. Not fun for someone sleeping with you though.”

  “What are you doing in my bed anyway?”

  “I was trying to keep you from waking the whole hotel,” he said. “Must have been an impressive nightmare judging from all the screaming. Jeeze, Pike, you must be a real thrill in the romance department. Remind me not to sign up.”

  “I’m a little busy staying alive to think about romance right now. And don’t call me Pike.”

  “Okay well, in that case would you mind if I stayed where I am for tonight? I don’t think I’m up to moving to the other bed. You can have mine. It’s blood free.” He used the towel to mop his face, then closed his eyes before she could respond.

  “Scoot over,” she said, slipping between the sheets next to him. She couldn’t bear to be alone just then. The dream lingered like the scent of decay on the fringes of her memory.

  “Lose the jammies, Pike.”

  “What?” Surely he couldn’t be suggesting . . .

  “Those are the ugliest damn pajamas I’ve ever seen. Where’d you get them, anyway, Goodwill?”

  “Suddenly you’re the fashion police?”

  “I’m just saying . . . “

  “My dad’s closet, if you must know.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll have to throw them out anyway. No way will I ever get all these blood stains out.”

  “At least something good came out of this,” he said. “g’night, Pike.”

  “Don’t call me Pike. Good night, Nick.”

  It had been years since she had fallen asleep next to a man. Suzan had forgotten how it felt. Or maybe it had never felt quite like this before. She thought she might be able to doze off after all. It was kind of nice. At least it was until Nick yelped in pain as she unthinkingly snuggled against his broken ribs.

  Chapter 24

  No doubt about it, Nick felt as if he’d been thrown under a truck. An apt description, of course, since that was pretty much what had befallen his sorry ass, a thought that brought a painful chuckle which he muffled against the pillow so as not to wake the woman sleeping by his side.

  What have you gotten yourself into now, Nikos? Nick could almost hear his father’s voice. Yes, good question. If he had called his father when he first got hurt he would already be back in Napa baking his battered body under the California sun. His mother would be fussing over him, pouring buckets of avgolemono soupa down his gullet like a solicitous mama gannet feeding her chick. But the first day or so he had been mostly unconscious and later when his brain cells were marginally functioning he decided not to call. Why worry his parents unnecessarily? He’d fill them in once he was on his feet.

  Then before he can recover this crazy bruised blond shows up with a cracked-brain story about rampaging homicidal maniacs and he goes weaker in the knees than he already was.

  She was breathing easily now, the top of her head snuggled under his chin. No nightmares for the time being. His leg was throbbing and his ribs felt like broken glass slicing into his lungs but he didn’t dare move a muscle for fear of waking her. He shouldn’t have left Madison Health and Convalescent. Maybe the beauteous and bruised widow Pike wasn’t the only lunatic. His dad would agree with the assessment. What, you crazy? Nikos, why you not come home and work in the winery? I give you the winery, you come home. You break your mother’s heart with this foolishness. It was always the same, come home and give up the foolishness.

  It wasn’t as if he didn’t like the wine business. He had grown up in the vineyard and as the only son of Big George Theophilos the entire extended family expected Nick would take the reins when his father finally decided to retire.

  Nick, however, had taken a wild turn and run off to San Francisco to enroll in college. To the family it was as if he had spit on three thousand years of Theophilos tradition dating back to the vineyards of Alexander the Greek.

  To add insult to injury he hadn’t majored in business administration or even oenology. He was a disappointment of truly heroic proportions. It wasn’t his mother’s heart that was broken, it was George’s. In his mother’s eyes he could do no wrong, though she still held out hope her darling boy would see sense eventually. As consolation she had his older sisters, Dorothea and Sophia, to keep her company and supply the grandkids. Both had married scions of Napa Valley vintner families.

  Nick had not intended to hurt them but he had to follow what he knew to be his true calling. There had been an ocean of tears when he told them.

  What will Suzan say if she should find out what I do for a living? The thought sprang fully formed into his mind. She hadn’t as yet actually asked what he was doing in Seattle. She asked why he had taken a room in what everyone in the neighborhood called the Red House, a question that he had deflected by telling her it was only a temporary solution to his housing needs. Which said next to nothing about his situation. Eventually if he stuck around, she was sure to get curious. He wasn’t going to be able lie to her. He would tell her the whole story and in all probability that would be the last he ever saw of her. She would lump him in the loser category along with her no-good junky husband and that would be that. At the thought of never seeing her again a pain that had nothing to do with
broken bones wormed its way through his gut. He wanted to hold her in his arms and not let go. It was suicide.

  If he were smart he would part company with Suzan and her friend as soon as possible before things got any more awkward than they already were. Not right now though. Right now he had to think. This wasn’t his fight unless he wanted to make it his fight. He could walk away at this point, steer clear of the neighborhood and hope that was enough to get him out of harm’s way. High-tailing it back to Napa Valley was not presently an option. He was obligated to finish the job he’d come to Seattle to do. You didn’t ditch a contract like that.

  But the crazy widow didn’t appear to be easy to dissuade. With or without him she would go after those cursed notebooks with their amateurish verses and illegible scrawl. She was a dog with a bone and she was going to get her pretty neck broken. He couldn’t turn his back on her until he knew she was safely back in Bellingham. Sure, you’ll be one hell of a bodyguard. You’re worse off than she is!

  On the up side his leg wasn’t so badly broken that he couldn’t get around if he had some crutches. He’d pick up a pair in the morning. Who knows, they might come in handy as weapons.

  Suzan stirred slightly, emitting a soft sigh. I am in such trouble.

  Suzan was already dressed when Claire arrived at their room the next morning. As was Nick, who sat at the small desk beside the TV table thumbing through a Gideon Bible.

  “Hi Claire,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “Always wanted to know if these were the real thing or if these Gideon’s were a cult of UFO conspiracy nut cases spreading the word that only traveling salesmen are going to be beamed up to heaven when the next comet sweeps by.”

  “Like Heavens Gate. Well, is it a real Bible?” said Claire.

  “From what I can see. At least from what I remember of Sunday school class,” he said. “I’m kind of disappointed, actually.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Nick. He’s been weird all morning,” said Suzan, laughing.