Hazard and Somerset Off Duty Read online

  “Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re still rubbing your side; I feel bad. Oh, I know. I could wash your back.”

  “Somers.”

  “Come on, Ree. You know better than to ask him flat out like that. You’re getting in your own head about all this; on a real case, you wouldn’t have walked right up and asked something like that. Well, you might have, but not without thinking about it first.” Somers tugged him towards the guest rooms again.

  “I’m not going back to our room, Somers. Something is weird here. He was frantic about that wallet. He honestly believed someone had dropped it here, someone that he didn’t want us to know about. He would have ripped it out of your hands if he thought he could get away with it.”

  Nodding, Somers said, “Oh yeah. That freaked the shit out of him. And he looks wrecked anyway, like something’s gone wrong. Did you hear what he said?”

  “He was going to call the cops.”

  “That’s bullshit. No, the other part. He said ‘There isn’t anyone.’ Not, ‘wasn’t.’ Isn’t. Present tense.”

  “You think someone’s still here?”

  “I think there’s a man here with a baby.”

  “A man?”

  “The wallet. It doesn’t look like a woman’s wallet, but he wanted it bad. And he said that he’d see that it got to the right person. Not people. Not a family, which is what I had said.”

  “So there’s a man with a baby still on the premises,” Hazard said. “Hiding.”

  “Or a ghost.” Somers gave him another tug towards the rooms.

  “I’m not scrubbing your back right now.”

  “I know. I thought we should check the guest room. The one that’s supposed to be unoccupied. The trick is to figure out which one.”

  Hazard studied the hallway. Five guest rooms. Three that faced the back of Grant’s Retreat, with an overlook of rolling Missouri hills, and two that faced Grant Retreat’s gravel drive and a glimpse of asphalt. He and Somers had been put in the farther room on the front side.

  “That one,” he said, pointing to the farthest room on the back of the house.

  “All right. Why?”

  “Barbara and Richard Keminsky come here a lot. That means they have a favorite room. And nobody’s favorite room is going to face a weedy strip of gravel and the state highway. So they’re on the back side of the house. But Richard doesn’t look like he can walk very far, so they’re also probably in the first room.”

  “Unless he really got going on that scooter. That thing looks like it could chew up a mountain. Or he could drive that golf cart I saw out back—”

  “The same goes for the really old couple, the Meehans. They need a close room, but neither of them is as pushy as Barbara, so they’re probably facing the front. And they’re both on oxygen.”

  “So the first room on the front of the house.”

  “Exactly. We’re in the second room on the front side, which leaves the two rooms on the back. The Willises like to play bridge, but they’re not very good at it, so they’re in the middle room.”

  “What’s the logic there?”

  “They have an idea of what status entails. Playing bridge, for example. Or going to bed-and-breakfasts. But they’re not smart enough or sophisticated enough to do it well. They come to Grant’s Retreat, but they let Norwood Grant put them in whatever room he wants. And nobody chooses a room that has neighbors on both sides, so Norwood Grant puts them there because it’s the least desirable and they either don’t know they should make a fuss or won’t bother.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “I know it’s not a hundred percent, but—”

  “No. You’re ridiculously good at this kind of stuff.” Somers slapped his ass and said, “And you’ve got this killer can. It’s really not fair.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Until it’s time to wash your back.”

  In spite of himself, Hazard had to fight a grin as he approached the door. A killer can. Well, that was interesting. It took him an extra minute with the bump keys because he kept getting drawn back to those words. A killer can. Huh.

  “Focus. I’ll tell you all about your pretty ass later if you want.”

  Flushing, Hazard dragged his mind back to work, and a moment later, the door popped open. The room was sparklingly clean. Pristine. Not a mussed cover or curtain. Hazard walked the room once, scanning the trash cans and the nightstands and the dresser, and then let out a frustrated sigh.

  “They weren’t here.”

  VI

  MARCH 17

  SATURDAY

  11:11 AM

  WHEN NORWOOD GRANT went to the bathroom, Hazard and Somers crept past the front desk, past the sign that read Employees Only, and up the stairs. They found more guest rooms, furnished and ready for use aside from the fine layer of dust that covered everything. They also found a door marked Manager that was locked.

  Hazard pulled out his bump keys.

  “A common criminal,” Somers said.

  “Make yourself useful.”

  “How?”

  “You said you’re the body and the brains. Let’s see some brains.”

  With a grin, Somers swatted Hazard’s ass and trotted back to the stairs. Hazard worked the bump keys through the lock, and after a half-dozen tries, the door opened.

  Instead of an office, Hazard found a small living room with a TV, a plaid sofa, and a series of cross-stitched cats. The air held a medicinal smell, like liniment, and underneath that was another, sour odor. Something rancid. Or curdled.

  After listening for a moment, Hazard stepped inside. From downstairs came Barbara Keminsky’s warbling monologue, and the wind rattled the window, but the manager’s apartment was silent. One door opened onto a bathroom, another opened onto a kitchen, and the last led into a bedroom. The smells were stronger here, both the liniment and the sour scent.

  Footsteps thudded on the carpet, and Hazard spun. Somers stood there, crossing his arms. He looked damn well pleased himself, and that meant he was going to be impossible to deal with.

  The best strategy, for now, was to ignore him.

  “I got something.”

  Grunting, Hazard examined the surface of the dresser—loose change, a torn postage stamp, a Google Maps printout that led to an address outside Cape Girardeau, and a creased bank envelope with mud drying along one side. Hazard poked the envelope with the tip of a pen; empty.

  “You don’t want to know?”

  Hazard checked the nightstand. A Gideon Bible waited inside the drawer; was that some kind of meta joke, the hotel manager with a hotel Bible? Grant didn’t seem like the kind who read the Good Word. Or, for that matter, the kind who read just about anything.

  “You’re going to love this.”

  Tucked between the dresser and the nightstand, in a small spot invisible from the doorway, was a wastebasket.

  “Guess how many guests are registered at Grant’s Retreat.”

  Lifting the wastebasket, Hazard set it on the dresser and dug through it.

  “Go on. Guess.”

  “There are eight of us that we know of. But you’re excited, which means the number isn’t eight. If Grant were trying to keep one of the current guests off the record, then the register might show seven or six people staying here. But that wouldn’t make sense because all eight of us went to breakfast, and Grant freaked out when we implied we knew about another guest. So I’m guessing the number is higher. Nine. Maybe ten.”

  Somers was pouting. Even that looked good on him. “You’re no fun.”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “Twenty-two.”

  Hazard froze. “What?”

  Now, Somers was grinning. “Twenty-two, Ree. He has twenty-two people registered here. I looked. And next week, the bed-and-breakfast is booked up every night to full capacity. That’s fifty-six people.”

&nbsp
; “There aren’t twenty-two people staying here.”

  “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.” But that grin was damn infectious.

  Hazard’s hand closed over something soft and squishy at the bottom of the wastebasket. It rustled and crinkled at his touch. Hazard drew out the disposable diaper and displayed it.

  Somers’s pout was even more exaggerated this time. “First you ruin the guessing game. Now you ruin the ghost.”

  VII

  MARCH 17

  SATURDAY

  12:00 PM

  THEY MOVED THEIR search away from the main building.

  “It’s an old school,” Somers pointed out. “And old schools, especially boarding schools, had outbuildings.”

  So they went out. But first they got their guns.

  “You look ridiculous,” Hazard said as Somers slid the big .40 caliber Glock 22 into the holster at the small of his back.

  The blond man gave him a wink and tugged the shamrock-covered sweater down to hide the gun. “Good thing we’re not on a beach vacation. I’d have a hard time packing a gun in my bikini briefs. They’re already pretty packed as it is.”

  That vision was so powerful that it took Hazard three tries to holster his .38, and by the time he got the gun home, Somers was laughing and walking out of the room.

  The front of Grant’s Retreat was a grim stretch of gravel and grass, but the grounds behind the bed-and-breakfast were surprisingly beautiful. Aside from a golf cart snugged up against the building, everything looked like it hadn’t changed in the last hundred years. Even with winter still clinging on, the air was fresh and tasted like the woods: a mixture of evergreen and leaf-mold and bark dust. At one point, the grounds had clearly been meant to be used. Gravel paths wove between the trees, and although weeds sprouted between the crushed stone now, the trails were still visible. As Somers had predicted, several abandoned cottages marked one edge of the property, and they headed towards them.

  They hadn’t gone fifteen yards before a shrill, “Yoo-hoo,” chased after them.

  Barbara Keminsky was bent over a wheelchair, pushing Richard—who bounced in his seat, his dandelion-fluff hair flopping wildly, with a terrified expression. The pinkified woman came at them like she was driving a stock car; gravel sprayed under the wheels, and where the paths were uneven or rutted, Richard came close to flying free. When she caught their eye, Barbara freed her hand from the chair long enough to wave, shriek, “Yoo-hoo” again, and then rescue the chair before it veered off the path and carried Richard down a steep embankment.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hazard said.

  “Be nice. She’s my first paying client.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. You’re not an interior designer, you’re a—”

  “Oh, John-Henry, thank God. I honestly thought of the most perfect thing, and then I couldn’t find you. I had a flash of inspiration: what you said about triple hang instead of double. What if we took the west wall, divided it in half, and—”

  “He’s not working right now,” Hazard growled, taking Somers’s arm possessively.

  “Oh.” She blinked at them. But she didn’t leave.

  “We’re going on a walk. As a couple.”

  “Oh. Oh yes, I’m so sorry. I’ll just—if we could just get around you.” The pink ends of her hair fluttered against her feathery pink coat. “I shouldn’t have—Richard used to teach here, you see, and there’s a place he likes to see . . .”

  Flashing Hazard a look, Somers shook his head and disengaged his arm. “I’m sorry about that. Emery is protective. Sometimes it comes out more harshly than he intends.”

  “Oh?” Barbara’s pink, bedazzled nails tap-danced along the chair’s handles. “But he’s right, I really shouldn’t have—”

  “Why don’t you walk with us for a ways? Do you know anything about Grant’s Retreat?” Somers moved to her side and, with the same easy grace he handled everyone, nudged her aside and took the chair’s handles. “Ignore Emery if it helps. He’s a Taurus, but half the time I swear to God he’s a Leo.”

  Hazard had no idea what that meant, but it set Barbara Keminsky laughing, and her cheeks were as pink as her nails, and Hazard knew it hadn’t been good.

  With another of those insufferable winks, Somers eased the wheelchair over a rough patch in the gravel and set off with Barbara at his side. “No scooter?”

  “Oh, Richard doesn’t like taking it outside. It gets away from him. The chair is safer.”

  “Not if you shoot him straight off the path,” Hazard grouched, but quietly enough that she didn’t hear him, and then he trailed after them.

  “Richard’s much older than I am,” Barbara said, her gaze moving across the sparsely wooded grounds. “He’s really bearing up well, all things considered, but his age is starting to show. He taught here in the forties and fifties. I don’t usually tell people that because of the circumstances, but we’re all here, and he really does love to see the pool house.”

  “The pool house?”

  She gestured ahead, although a fold in the land hid whatever she was indicating. “That’s what I call it anyway. I only went inside once. I think they were planning on building a pool and only got that far. They’d done a great deal of digging—you can see that much. And the pool house has showers and tile. But then, well, you know.”

  “I don’t, actually.”

  “Oh, it’s a terrible story,” Barbara said, perking up, her whole pink frame quivering. “You really don’t know?”

  “Why don’t you tell us?”

  That seemed to remind her of Hazard’s presence, and she glared back at him, but when she spoke to Somers her voice was all sweetness. “It was a reform school. Grant House. That’s what it was called. They sent the worst boys here. Really terrible boys. But boys who came from money, you understand? Back then, well, things were very different. The boys were too much trouble to stay with their families, but they couldn’t be sent to a normal boarding school because of their behavior. Some parents tried military schools, but the boys who came here—” She quivered again, and Hazard couldn’t tell if it was excitement or horror. A mixture, he guessed. “They were truly terrible. Richard told me about one that he found dissecting a cat while it was still alive. He’d staked the poor thing out and started cutting it open.”

  “Vivisection,” Hazard called to them.

  “What?” Barbara asked. “What’s he saying?”

  “Never mind him. Keep going.”

  “It’s called vivisection when the animal is still alive.”

  Somers waved furiously at him to be quiet. “Go on, Barbara.”

  “Another boy had slashed his sister’s face to ribbons. They were Rockefellers, I believe, but a different last name by that point. One of the daughters. Or granddaughters, perhaps. The poor girl lived, too, with her face completely ruined. Another boy, well, some of the older teachers called him a sodomite.” She blushed the color of her feathery coat. “That’s not really fair, but you understand things were different. His father was a doctor, and he would steal morphine and drug winos and bums and then—well, he’d do things to them.” She drew in another titillated breath. “With a knife.”

  “Good Lord,” Somers said. “These boys weren’t sent to juvenile reform?”

  “Money,” Barbara said. “And, as I said, it was a different world. But the parents couldn’t handle them on their own, so they sent them here. Richard said it was a terrible time. He never minded telling me about the boys themselves—a little bit like ghost stories, you know. But he doesn’t talk much about the school itself. About the teaching, you know. I think—” She faltered, and when she spoke again, her voice had lost its glittering excitement, and she sounded tired and sad. “I think it was very bad.”

  “Why did they close the school?”

  “A boy was killed.”

  “He died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Oh, everyone said it
was an accident. They said he fell. But the boy’s parents didn’t believe that, and they pushed for an investigation, and the boy’s skull was broken in a dozen places. And then more parents started asking questions. Boys had been disappearing for years. Running away, the school would say, but they never turned up. Do you think they killed them? The boys, I mean? I do. Richard never said anything. He wouldn’t, of course. He was a sweet man when I met him, but I think—” Whatever she thought, she thought better of, and she cut herself off. They rounded the low hill, and a squat brick building came into view. “There it is. The pool house.”

  But it didn’t look anything like a pool house to Hazard. It was bleak and institutional, without the ornamentation that marked the rest of Grant’s Retreat. As Barbara had described, a clearing showed just past the building, and it was obvious from the perfectly level ground that the clearing was man-made. It could have been, as Barbara described, a spot where they had begun digging a pool and then, when the school closed, filled it back in. A flicker of memory worked its way inside Hazard, of a place his parents had sent him to. The Valley of Elah. He crushed the thought, but it was still there, hot and lightless, a black ember burning a hole in his gut.

  He knew one thing, though: they had never planned a pool here.

  “Right there,” Barbara said, indicating a gravel loop that closed the path. “You can just turn around right there and we’ll go back.”

  “Your husband doesn’t want—”

  “He just wants to see it. Isn’t that right, Richard? He just needs to see it every time we come. Look at his dear face. Just overcome with emotion. I know the stories make it sound like this place was just awful, and it certainly wasn’t easy on Richard—he still has dreams sometimes, you know, thrashing and screaming. Nightmares, really. But there must have been good times, too, don’t you think? That dear, dear face.”

  But when Somers cleared the loop, turning the chair and Richard back towards Hazard on the path, Hazard caught sight of that dear face. The little dandelion-fluff of a man was crying silently. There wasn’t really an expression on his face, nothing Hazard could tell clearly, but the tears rolled down in steady, silver lines, and Hazard was sure of one thing: Richard Keminsky wasn’t crying for happiness.