“Oh? Did he mention during that conversation that he was thinking about moving out of his mother’s house?”
“Why, I believe he did. Called her an old bag. Said he was fed up with her. I chastised him, of course. ‘She’s your mother,’ I told him.”
“That cheered him up, I’m sure.”
“Ah... not exactly. But I did give him food for thought.”
“Do you know where he might have gone?”
“He mentioned something about Texas, I think.”
Robideau contemplated the aging but still handsome face. He considered Tozer’s sudden departure, abandoned belongings, and forgotten cash. “Mr. Overberg, let me tell you my problem. I don’t often have missing persons to find, but here I have two of them. And you’re connected to both.”
Overberg chafed his thin, clean hands. “Hardly connected. I have many tenants, after all. And surely I’m not the only person to have spoken to Mr. Tozer in the last while.”
“Still, it’s strange.”
“It isn’t really. A small coincidence. One of life’s little pranks.”
He laughed dryly.
You’d better hope, the chief thought, that the joke’s not on you.
“What it is,” Leonard Boski indignantly informed his visitors, Wilmer Gates and Chuck Lang, with insistence, “kids nowadays got no respect. It’s like they figure they got clearance from God almighty to go slap gerfeedy all over the place. And I’m supposed to get it off? How? You answer me that!” His pals sat on crates in the furnace room with their beers in their hands, staring thoughtfully into space as if they expected the solution to leap into their minds, filling a blank spot. And Lord knew they had blank spots. Big enough to roll a combine-harvester through. But for some reason Leonard put up with them; maybe because they put up with him.
“We didn’t do gerfeedy when I was a kid,” Leonard announced, defying anyone to refute it.
“What did you do?” Chuck asked. He burped hugely and fisted his chest.
“When I was a kid,” Leonard said wistfully, “we’d sit around someplace and make rockets and stuff.”
Rockets? Both Wilmer and Chuck came to attention.
“You made rockets?” Incredulity flickered across Chuck’s simple face. “I never figured you for no rocket scientist.”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“Well, you never been the sharpest tack on the chair, after all. And you made rockets?”
“We didn’t invent ’em, you mutt, we just made ’em. A cardboard tube. Saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal shook in a jelly can with some marbles till our arms practically fell off, making fuel fine as baby powder. We launched her from a hunk of rain trough stuck in a picket fence. That sucker’d climb two hunnerd feet in four seconds.”
“You could of blown something off,” said Chuck. He winked at Wilmer. “Maybe he did.”
“Dangerous materials are no problem when you know what’s what.”
“Hoo,” said Chuck. “Hoo, haw! I feel safer already, don’t you, Wilmer?”
“Hoo, haw!” Wilmer said.
There was a far-off hollow clang, a growing, bumbling sound, then a sudden slam followed by a whump! as something shot into the heart of the furnace.
“That’ll be Mrs. Remillard tossin’ her cat poopies out,” Leonard muttered. He stood up and wandered over to a cluttered workbench overhung by shelving that groaned under containers of miscellaneous paints and chemicals. “Now, let’s see what we got to clean that gerfeedy off with...”
“I thought Robideau told you to seal up that chute,” Chuck said.
“He did. See the owner, I told him. What do I look like, I said. Some real estate baron?”
“You look,” opined Wilmer Gates, “like a gas fitter.”
“Thanks.” Leonard held out a can at arm’s length to read the fine print, then gave it up. “Anyways, the chief’s busy looking for one of the tenants that’s disappeared.” He recounted the chief’s visit. “I think those old ladies got too much time on their hands. Maybe they should clean off the gerfeedy.”
Someone coughed gently, and their heads swiveled toward the door, where an impassive, no-nonsense face was glowering in.
“Leonard, can I see you a moment?” the chief said.
Boski straightened. “Okay. But I ain’t received no instructions yet, what to do about the garbage chute.”
Out in the hallway the chief told Boski, “If I said that someone claims they heard voices in that chute, what would you say?”
“Depends who heard ’em, chief.” Smirking. “You?”
“Just answer the question.”
The janitor clawed at his grizzled chin. “Well, you could hear voices coming from any floor where there’s an access door standing open. But people usually drop their rubbish in, then beat it. The doors are heavy. They close on their own.”
“I know,” the chief replied, “I tried one.”
Leonard continued, “But there is another type of door on the chute, the kind that stays open on a latch. One here in the furnace room, another one upstairs.”
“Upstairs?”
“Way upstairs. On the roof, practically. In a storage room there.”
The chief nodded. “What do they keep there?”
“Not much, really. Lot of old stoves and fridges that crapped out. Some raggedy old carpet. A bunch of plumbing stuff.”
“I’d like to see in that room.”
“You would?” Boski got a clever look. “Okay, I’ll give you the grand tour. But on one condition. That you come out back with me after and see a real crime scene. The criminal gerfeedy vandalism plastered on the back of this building.”
The chief agreed.
But the storage room was a disappointment. It was a wide, bright area, windows on three sides, one large room. Nothing much in it but disused appliances and other odds and sods, as Boski had said. But there was indeed a chute access door that could be latched in an open position. The conversation that had so upset Betty-Anne Bretton could have taken place here.
“Is this room kept locked?”
“Pretty much.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“You can take it as a yes.”
“Thank you. We can look at that graffiti now, if you insist.”
The back of the building was a mess, all right. Someone had done a real number on it. Spray-painted markings galloped across an area some twenty feet wide.
“So?” growled Leonard, “don’t this break a bylaw?” He flung out a hand at the swirls and loops. “My boss is somethin’ hot about it. Never seen him so riled. Either the gerfeedy goes, he says, or I do.”
The chief backed away, studying the markings. They were highly stylized, almost Cyrillic, composed of fat puffy characters. Only with intense scrutiny could he flesh out any actual characters. One grouping looked as if it might be the word “secretary.”
“What’s it mean?” he asked.
“You tell me, chief.”
Then something clicked. The chief realized he’d seen markings like this before but on a smaller scale. It was much like the writing he’d seen in Ted Tozer’s room.
“How long has this been here?”
“About two weeks.”
Robideau let out an uneasy breath. The timing could be coincidental, but that required a faith in coincidence far beyond anything Robideau could summon.
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t want you to clean this off.”
“Huh? The boss said—”
“Never mind what he said. Play around with it, find a solvent that works on it, but don’t actually erase the words till I say you can. Got that?”
Seeking a few peaceful moments in which to compose his thoughts, Robideau stopped at a sleepy coffeeshop, the paper from Ted’s room, compliments of Mrs. Tozer, tucked into his pocket. It was too dark now to inspect the graffiti; he would do so first thing in the morning. For now he would content himself with mulling things over.