Yet a Stranger (The First Quarto #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,18

pulled out.

Auggie opened the closet. A tennis racket stood in one corner. There was a hang rod and a single shelf. Auggie pawed through the clothes—two button-ups, a single polo, and the rest jerseys and t-shirts—and then began removing the shoeboxes that lined the shelf. Nike. Adidas. Saucony. A lone pair of Reeboks.

“I know he thinks he’s in charge because he’s older than us,” Auggie said. “But that’s not how this works. We’re partners. The three of us.”

“Augs?” Orlando said from the pile of clothes he was sorting.

Auggie made a questioning noise as he reached for the next box. He was on the back row now, and he was starting to wonder what Cal had needed with all these shoes.

“You’re kind of being a dick,” Orlando said.

“Jeez, everybody’s so—” Auggie began.

Then he stopped and stared at what he was pretty sure was a bag of cocaine.

10

“Theo,” Auggie shouted from Cal’s bedroom.

Theo ignored him, pulling out breakfast cereals, toaster pastries, individual packets of oatmeal—the kind with the dinosaur eggs that ‘opened’ in hot water. He had the vague idea that he would pull everything out of the cabinets first and then search each box more carefully. At that particular moment, though, he was mostly focused on slamming each cabinet door as hard as he could.

“Theo!”

Then footsteps.

“Theo,” Auggie said. He and Orlando stood at the edge of the kitchen’s tile. Auggie was holding a shoebox. “I think we found something.”

“What?”

“Drugs.”

Theo dropped a box of Honey Smacks and went to look. In the shoebox, a small plastic bag held off-white powder.

“Is it cocaine?” Auggie asked. “I think it’s cocaine.”

Orlando was pale under his scruff, his dark eyes huge.

Using the hem of his shirt, Theo opened the bag.

“What are you doing?” Auggie said.

Theo stuck a finger in the powder, smelled it—no odor that Theo could detect—and rubbed it on his gums.

“What are you doing?” Auggie shouted.

“It’s cocaine,” Theo said. The rush was barely anything, but it was there.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Theo raised his eyebrows.

“What the actual, living fuck,” Auggie said, “is wrong with you?”

“Do you have a chem lab?” Theo said.

“Do you have any idea how stupid that was?”

“Or were you going to call the police and ask them to test it?”

“I cannot even believe what I just saw you do.”

“Because I thought I remembered Orlando telling us he didn’t want to take this to the police precisely because Cal had drug problems.”

“Are you kidding me right now? What is going on with you?”

“Auggie, it was a tiny amount that I dabbed.” Theo paused, hovered on the precipice, and then it was too late. “Grow up.”

Auggie looked like Theo had slapped him.

“So,” Orlando said, “you guys are shouting really, really loudly, and I think maybe we shouldn’t, you know, shout so much. Not right now.”

Auggie was still staring at Theo.

“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” Theo said.

He didn’t look back as he left; he didn’t think he could stand it.

The neighbor in 3G didn’t answer, although the lights were on and Sam Smith was playing inside. The neighbor in 3E kept the door on the chain. She was thin, with stringy gray hair, and she could have been any age between forty and seventy. When Theo mentioned Cal’s name, she shut the door, and he heard the bolt go home.

The day was impossibly hot, and sweat made Theo’s shirt stick to his back. He walked to the end of the corridor and leaned on the railing. Below him, heat shimmered up from the asphalt. Sunlight ran across the cars, gleaming back from chrome trim, warping along glass. The hot tar smell still hung in the air. Theo clutched the rail with both hands, his knuckles white, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Then he went down to the second floor and tried 2F. The woman who opened it was in scrubs, and she was hopping on one foot as she pulled on a sneaker. She smiled when she asked if she could help him.

“This is kind of strange,” Theo said, “but I’m trying to help Wayne Reese track down his brother. Do you know them? They live above you.”

“I probably know them better than anybody else in the building,” the woman said as she switched feet. “Not that that’s saying much. Their arguments are my personal soundtrack at this point. Well, all the ones I’ve been home for. I work second shift at the hospital.”

“Do they argue a lot?”

Her smile got a little bigger. “You don’t know them very well, do