Perry volunteered, “A couple of gift shops carry my work. I’m trying to get one of the galleries to consider me. So far, no luck.” He shrugged.
“Did you go to art school or something?”
Perry’s stared down at the patterns in the grain of the tabletop. “No. I wanted to go to art school, but it…fell through.”
“Yeah?” Nick didn’t sound too interested. He set a plate in front of Perry heaped with fried eggs, bacon, and hash-browned potatoes. A lot of food.
Perry faltered, “I usually don’t eat breakfast.” He was pretty sure Nick would not consider the delicious offerings from Kellogg’s a proper kick-off.
“Big mistake. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Nick said it deadpan; clearly daily nutritional requirement was not something he took lightly.
Perry tried the eggs. They were good. Why wouldn’t they be, coated in a heart attack’s worth of butter? He picked up a slice of bacon, wondering what Nick’s cholesterol level must be.
Sitting down with his own plate, Nick asked, “Have you been thinking about who might have known you were supposed to be gone this week?”
Back to business. It was nice of him to take an interest, though.
“Janie, like I said. And I think I mentioned it to Mr. Teagle. And Mrs. MacQueen.”
“Anyone else?”
“Here, no. I told them at the library because I was taking my vacation.”
“You work at the library?” The dark eyebrows rose as though Perry had confessed to being an exotic dancer.
“I like books.” Perry added defiantly, “I like people who read.” There were no books in Nick’s apartment, not even a cookbook. No magazines. There was the morning paper, but did that count?
Nick’s mouth twitched a little as though he found Perry’s defensiveness amusing. “Someone decided to use your apartment for cold storage while you were gone, that’s obvious. What doesn’t make sense is all this lugging a corpse around. Why not leave him where he died?”
“Well, because it would have been incriminating.”
“Sure, but because of how he died or where he died? Could you tell how he died? Could you tell if he’d been murdered?”
Perry remembered that green-toned face, the gaping mouth, the hollowed cheeks, and sinister slits of eyes. Nausea rose in his throat. He spoke around it. “I didn’t see blood, but I didn’t look carefully. I didn’t touch him.”
“Could he have been strangled?”
Perry shook his head. “No.” He’d read enough detective novels to know what that would look like.
“I guess he could have been poisoned. What did it smell like?”
Perry stared at Nick. His stomach rolled over once and then paused for station identification. “He smelled…dead.”
Nick looked unimpressed. Perry tried, “Maybe he died of natural causes, but because he wasn’t supposed to be in a particular place, he was moved to my rooms.”
“Why not dump him in the woods or on the main highway?”
“Maybe there wasn’t time? Putting him in my apartment had to be a temporary measure.”
“Maybe. I guess we need to focus on who had opportunity. You could have made up the whole story, except that I did see that smear, and the scuff marks, and the shoe, and you didn’t have opportunity to get rid of those before the cops showed up. The same’s true of the Bridger dame. I figure she was with you the whole time I was upstairs?”
“Well, yeah,” Perry answered, surprised. “And she was never out of our sight once you came back down.”
“Neither MacQueen or Dembecki could lift an unconscious man. I don’t think they could do it together, let alone by themselves. That leaves Stein and Center. What do you know about those two?”
“Mr. Stein used to be a cop,” Perry said. “He’s retired now.”
“Is he married?”
“Divorced, I think. I don’t know anything about Center except that he’s a medium. He holds séances. He can tell fortunes by reading tarot cards.”
“In other words, he’s a quack.”
Perry shrugged. “He did a reading for Jane once. She said it was…uncanny.”
“At fifty bucks a pop, uncanny is the word.” Nick polished off his eggs and studied Perry’s plate. “Eat up, kid.”
Perry shoveled in a mouthful of hash browns and confided, “I usually can’t eat when I’m nervous.”
Nick shook his head. “Eating right is essential.”
“Did you learn that in the SEALs?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
Perry nodded encouragingly. He recognized a fanatic when he saw one, and all fanatics liked a chance to spread the gospel. Sure enough, Nick was on his soapbox faster than you could say glycemic index.
“A proper diet provides the fuel to keep your engine running smoothly. It provides energy and promotes the growth and repair of tissue. And regulates your body processes.”
Perry bit back a grin. This was the furthest Nick Reno had unbent so far -- in fact, he was almost friendly in his enthusiasm.
“Carbs, protein, and fat are the three energy nutrients,” Nick concluded. “Best energy source is carbs.” He looked pointedly at Perry’s mound of potatoes, and Perry shoveled in another forkful automatically.
“Could the police be involved?” he questioned thickly and then swallowed. “They could have cleaned up the tub and switched shoes.”
“Why would they?”
“Why would anyone?”
“I don’t see this as an outside operation,” Nick said. “Someone could have used the ladder outside your window, but he would have tracked mud and rain all over the carpet. And he couldn’t have locked the window after himself.”
Perry weighed this, nibbling on a slice of bacon. When was the last time he’d had bacon -- good bacon that wasn’t all rind? A long time. Nick ate well, for sure.
“There’s another possibility,” Nick added. “The murderer -- assuming it was murder -- could have been in your place when you arrived and moved the body after you left.”
Although that thought had occurred to Perry too, he didn’t like it. It freaked him out: the idea of someone watching him, maybe ready to kill him too.
“Move it where?”
“Someplace on the third floor.” Nick added, “Not that I could find any sign of it.”
“What do you mean?” Perry put two and two together fast. “You checked? Last night? You went out alone?”
“I can handle myself.” Nick was amused by Perry’s horror.
Meaning Perry could not?
“Anyway, the situation’s secured, I guess.”
“Secured, sure.” That was clear enough. Perry pushed his plate away. “Thanks for breakfast and everything. I guess I should get back now.”
Nick gnawed his lip. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t think you should stay in your apartment till you know how this bogey is getting in and out.”
“I can’t afford a hotel,” Perry said hopelessly. “Last night I was desperate, but…” He offered a quirky, shame-faced smile. “I’m short my rent money now. I spent -- I spent too much this month.”
Nick’s face said it all.
“Then have MacQueen give you another apartment.”
“There aren’t any. Except Watson’s, and all his stuff is still there.” Perry shivered.
Nick said grimly, “You do what you want, kid, but I’d get the locks changed on my door ASAP.” After a moment he added reluctantly, “I can loan you money for that.”
“Thanks,” Perry muttered humbly. “Thanks for everything.”
Nick shrugged this off. He was doing the breakfast dishes as Perry retrieved his suitcase and trudged off down the hall.
Unlocking the door to his apartment, he stuck his head in and stared around suspiciously.
Everything seemed quiet and normal. He might have dreamed the events of last night. It all looked like it had before he left, giddy with happiness and excitement, for San Francisco. He remembered locking his rooms with the feeling that he was shutting the door on a chapter of his life.