weather. She reminded herself that it was afternoon, which equaled prime catnapping time. Wherever Hamlet was, he likely was snoring away as he rested up for the arduous journey back to the bookstore.
She didn’t dare consider the alternative, that he’d had a run-in with a vehicle while roaming and that his sleep might be of the permanent sort.
By the time Maybelle was safely parked, Darla had mapped out a search route in her mind to include one particular place: the brownstone belonging to Barry. It had occurred to her that Hamlet, for reasons known only to his wily feline brain, might have made another trip to the basement where they’d discovered Curt’s body. With Barry on his way to Connecticut, she wouldn’t be able to go inside, but she could walk around the place and peer through the basement windows.
She did not slack on searching along the way, though. She peered behind garbage cans in alleys and behind decorative floor pots lined up along storefronts. She even made her stealthy way down to a few garden apartments to peek behind the bicycles chained securely at the bottom of their entry steps. Once, a sprawl of black fur atop a short concrete column sent her hurrying to check out a stoop halfway down one block. Unfortunately, the feline sunning itself there proved to be female and of the tuxedo variety—definitely not Hamlet.
“As soon as I find you, I’m going to slap a GPS collar on you,” she threatened, drawing a disdainful look from the tuxedo cat, who likely assumed the words were meant for her.
Shoving her hands deep into her coat pockets—as usual, she had neglected to bring gloves—Darla continued in the direction of Barry’s brownstone, one block over from where the tuxedo cat lived. Her pace was faster now, but she warned herself not to get her hopes up. Chances were he wasn’t there, either, and she’d just have to wait until it pleased His Furry Highness to come home.
Her next stop on the way, however, was one she hadn’t planned. Having made a detour down a street she’d never traveled before, Darla walked past a dingy shop front and then did a literal double-take. The neon sign in its window proclaimed in large red letters, “Bill’s Books and Stuff.” And, even worse, as she halted for a moment in startled confusion—his nasty porn shop was located this close to her nice store?—the shop door opened and Bill himself lumbered out into the daylight.
He recognized her almost as quickly as she recognized him, and he sneered.
“Whaddaya doing in front of my shop?” he demanded, his simian jaw thrusting in her direction. “No, don’t tell me. You’re looking to steal another one of my employees.”
“I most certainly am not,” she choked out, even as she reminded herself she didn’t owe the man an explanation.
His sneer morphed into a cold leer. “Well, then, let me guess. I know, you’re here to buy yourself one of those ladies’ toys. A single gal like you, all alone at night . . .”
He trailed off suggestively, and Darla felt heat flame her cheeks. She’d thought Curt with his extracurricular activities was bad, but Bill the Porn Shop Owner made him look like the model of civility. Thank goodness poor Robert didn’t have to suffer under this jerk’s influence anymore!
Fleetingly, she considered a few responses of the anatomically impossible kind and then decided dignified silence was her best resort. Given Robert’s accounts of the man’s foul temper, taunting him would be foolish at best . . . and dangerous at worst. Turning on her heel, she hurried on in the direction that she’d been going, trying as she did so to ignore the man’s mirthless laugh and his parting crude comment, “Hey, c’mon back! We got a two-for-one sale going on!”
A man like that definitely bore watching, she thought in outrage, though her burst of anger was swiftly replaced by an unsettled feeling. Why, she might have been standing within a few feet of Curt’s murderer. Reflexively, she glanced over her shoulder, suddenly fearing that the man might have followed her. Had Reese questioned him at all, she wondered, or was the cop so set on pinning the crime on Hilda that he’d overlooked someone who was, in Darla’s view, a far more likely suspect? Either way, she’d be steering clear of that particular block in the future.
She only hoped that Hamlet would do the same!
Just to be careful, she took a slightly circuitous route away