"This is tougher than I thought it was going to be," Laura said as they picked their way through the rear door of the chapel into the casket room.
" It gets even more difficult if the proprietor of the establishment walks in on us."
Laura squinted, trying to adjust her vision to the new room, which was smaller and if possible even darker than the others. There seemed to be four or five caskets displayed on stands of various heights.
The walls were overhung with maroon velvet drapes, which emitted a mustiness competitive in intensity with the formalin.
Laura attempted to ignore the odors by breathing through her mouth. As she scanned the floor, trying to get some sense of the space, she stepped forward, bumping against one of the caskets. She put her hand out to steady herself, and set it down on the waxen face of a man.
Laura gasped, recoiling against another casket as her penlight clattered to the floor. Immediately, Nelson's flash sought her out.
"That casket." She struggled to clear the sudden hoarseness from her throat. "There's a body in there."
Bernard played his light down her arm, past her pointing finger, into an ornate, velvet-lined coffin, and finally onto the face of a man.
Laura gasped. '.That's Donald Devine!"
The mortician, his hands resting peacefully on his vest, stared sightlessly upward. In the center of his forehead, just above his wire-rimmed spectacles and just below his pomaded hairline, was a single small bullet hole, surrounded by a halo of dried blood.
"Less than a day, I'd guess," Bernard murmured, touching the back of his hand to Devine's pallid cheek and then halting the corpse's arm, which seemed stiff and plastic. "But I'm really not very good at that sort of stuff. I can tell you for certain that he didn't do this to himself."
"This is horrible."
"Maybe. But it tells me that you were right. Your friend here was into something shady. And whatever it was, he was obviously in over his head."
"Should we keep searching?"
"I doubt we'll find anything that whoever made this little hole didn't find, but you never can tell.
Besides, with the danger of Mr. Devine walking in on us lessened considerably, I think we might even risk turning lights on as we go."
"If you think it's all right. Do you mind if we skip this room though?"
"Not at all."
I" You know, I think he lived upstairs. Maybe it would be worth looking there."
"Maybe it would at that," Bernard Nelson said.
The staircase to Devine's apartment was off the back hallway. The apartment itself consisted of an eatin kitchen, a TV room, and two bedrooms, one of which was a small museum, overfilled with a startling collection of medieval weapons and armor, including mace-and-chains, broadswords, crossbows, lances, daggers, and several helmets.
"The mouse that roared," Nelson mused.
"This place is truly creepy," Laura said. "How about I do the bedroom and you do Camelot?"
"Just be sure there are no unshuttered windows before you Turn on any lights," Nelson cautioned.
"Check behind the drapes and pictures, and under any throw rugs.
Mark my words. This guy — kept detailed records of whatever he was into, and he kept them in a safe. Say, you wouldn't have an extra cigar on you by any chance?"
"Sorry. But listen, if we find the safe you predict, I'll buy you one-whatever kind you want."
"What a sport."
"Only one, though, and only if we find that safe."
Just ten minutes later, they did. Laura was trying to move a large oil painting-some sort of rural scene-when she backed against a black spokebacked chair, set on a small Oriental rug. The chair did not budge. Laura dropped to her knees and lifted the edge of the rug. The legs of the chair were bolted through it to the floor. Between the bolts she felt a small recessed latch. Releasing the latch, she tipped the chair backward. The rug and a hinged portion of the oak flooring tilted upward with it. The strongbox, a foot or so square with a dial lock and heavy metal handle, was concealed in the space below.
"Bingo!" she cried. "Mr. Nelson, you are truly a prince of your profession."
"I hope you're still considering that apprenticeship offer of mine," he said, first examining the lock, then rummaging through his medical bag for his stethoscope.
He spent the next fifteen minutes pressed against the floor, listening to the tumblers of Donald Devine's safe.
"There's a gizmo that does this electronically," he muttered, "but I'm just too damn cheap to invest in it.
Besides, half this business is the challenge, right?"
Laura sat on the dead man's bed, trying to draw some sort of connection between Devine and the drug dealers who had killed not only her brother, but almost certainly Roger Anseu as well. Ansell and Devine two men violently dead on the same day, and both of them connected in some way to her. She shuddered at the thought.
"Easy," Nelson was urging. "Easy… easy… and… Voila!"
He grasped the handle and slowly swung it down ninety degrees. At the moment he pulled the small door open, they heard the sound of voices beneath the window.
"Quick, the lights!"
Bernard gathered up what he could from the safe as Laura shut off first the bedroom light, and then the others upstairs. Stygian darkness returned to the apartment as the front door was unlocked and opened.
"To the stairs," Nelson whispered. "Up here we're trapped."
They felt their way to the stairs and tiptoed down, reaching the first-floor rear hallway just as the light snapped on in the front parlor. Reflexively, Nelson opened what appeared to be the basement door. The two of them stepped onto the staircase beyond it and pulled the door closed. Save for a sliver of light beneath the base of the door, they were once again enveloped in blackness. They huddled on the staircase, Laura midway down and Bernard near the door, listening as what sounded like two men moved toward them.
"Can you hear what they're saying?" she whispered.
"One of them's furious because the other didn't get Devine's records before he killed him. The other wants some sort of apology."
"Do you have your gun'?"
"What do you think?"
"what are they saying now?"
"I think one of them's headed upstairs. The other one may be coming here. You'd better move down a few more stairs; in fact, go all the way to the bottom.
If he opens this door, I'm going to need some room to help him make a rapid descent."
"Just be careful. It's pitch-black down here. I can't see a thing."
"Shhhh."
From upstairs they heard one of the men shout something.
"I'll be right up," the second voice called back from just outside the basement door. "I'm sorry, boss," they heard him say. "I didn't understand what you wanted me to do. Honest I didn't."
Several minutes passed. Laura remained motionless in the darkness on the bottom basement step Above her, she could faintly discern the bulky silhouette of Bernard Nelson, pressed against the door.
"What's happening?" she whispered.
"They may be leaving or looking for us. I can't tell. Not another sound until I'm certain they're gone-" His voice dropped off suddenly.
Laura could hear muffled footsteps and voices. Then she saw shadows moving in the thin slit of light beneath the door. Her heart skipped as a shoe scuffed against the wood.
Bernard Nelson remained still. Finally, after what seemed an eterrity, the footsteps began to recede to another part of the house.
Fifteen silent minutes went by. The light beyond the door was turned off. Another fifteen minutes passed, then still another. Finally, Laura could stand the tension no longer.
"What's going on?" she asked.