other than her lack of enthusiasm. His earlier expression of amusement had been replaced by a frown. “Is something wrong?” she asked in concern.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. But I know I locked the front door when I left here yesterday, and it wasn’t locked just now when I stuck the key in.”
“Maybe Curt is already here?” Darla suggested, recalling how the man had mentioned being at the brownstone at six in the morning the day he’d claimed to have seen Hamlet wandering loose.
But Barry was eyeing the area with suspicion. “If he was here, he’d have heard us and come out already, even if he was down in the basement. You can’t sneak into this place, not with those rusty hinges. That’s one reason we never oiled them. Kind of like a homemade alarm system.”
Darla smiled at what she assumed was a small joke. When she saw he was deadly serious, however, she instinctively edged closer to him.
“Should we call the police or something?” she asked, her fingers tightening around the cell phone in her sweater pocket.
Barry made no immediate reply as he reached for a bulky silver flashlight that had been left on one of the stairs. Clicking it on, he took a few steps and shined its beam through the open arch to their left that led into the next room. Gray shadows danced behind the flashlight’s broad yellow swath of light, but they concealed nothing more incriminating than a row of five-gallon buckets and a neatly folded drop cloth. Then he shook his head.
“There’s nothing to call about. For all we know, Curt stopped by earlier and then decided to run out for a cup of coffee without bothering to lock up. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done that.”
She heard a flicker of irritation in his tone, but he managed a strained smile for her and added, “Why don’t you wait here while I take a look around?”
“No, I’ll come with you.”
She thought for a moment from his expression that he’d protest her decision, but then he nodded. “Okay, but stick close,” was his doubtful reply. “With everything torn all the hell up, I don’t want you smacking your head on something or twisting an ankle.”
Neither did she, but no way was she waiting there alone while Barry checked out the place. After all, how many times in the movies did the character that remained behind in the supposedly safe spot fall victim to the mad killer? Not that there was any killer lurking about in your basic distressed brownstone, she reassured herself. Like Barry said, maybe Curt had simply been careless. Heck, he’d probably show up in another couple of minutes with a double latte in one hand and a cruller in the other while swearing that he’d locked the place before he left.
Darla trailed Barry down the short hall to what was now the kitchen. She pulled her sweater more closely about her, all too aware there was no heat source in the house. Come winter, the place would be an icebox if they didn’t set up some of those big portable heaters while they worked.
But the cool temperature was less on her mind than Curt’s warning to her the week before about the salvage thieves. What if they had come back, breaking in to the place in search of more spoils? Worse, what if they were still somewhere in the building?
“Curt,” Barry abruptly called, the sound echoing through the open rooms and making Darla jump. “You in here, buddy? Darla and I are here on the first floor, looking for you.”
That seemingly innocuous statement, she knew, translated to, If someone’s here who doesn’t belong, you’ve still got time to hop out one of the windows before we stumble across you and things get all nasty.
“Nothing here,” Barry said a moment later when they’d taken a look at the other two rooms on the first floor. His voice louder than necessary, he added in the direction of the stairway, “Hey, Darla, why don’t I show you what’s on the second floor.”
Which meant, Last chance, suckers. Get out now while the getting’s good.
When no stampede of fleeing footsteps sounded overhead, Barry shrugged and gestured for her to follow him toward the stairs. Darla complied. By the time she’d taken four or five steps up, however, she was rethinking that whole victim-in-the-safe-spot theory and wondering with a fleeting sense of panic if it wasn’t too late to stay downstairs, after all. She