Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle by Jeffrey Round

Author:Jeffrey Round
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2015-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

The place looked dismal. Dan always wondered how buildings came to be abandoned. The obvious cause was through the death of the owner, but why was no one motivated enough to sell a piece of property after the owner had died? Of course, there could be any number of reasons — keeping the land in the family, waiting for the right time. Still, it gave him a haunted feeling to see an abandoned house with no explanation why it had been left empty.

The retirement home was a deserted, L-shaped configuration. In the parking lot, the pavement curled and wore away in pieces; weeds grew through it. The welcome sign was grey and weathered, strips of plastic backing falling off. The curtains had been drawn on most of the windows. A few were pulled back here and there as though invisible inhabitants were peeking out without wishing to be seen.

Dan parked a block away. He slipped into the yard during a lull in traffic. No use getting reported as suspicious by some overzealous commuter. One Crime Busters tip on a cellphone and he’d have the police on his back in minutes.

Someone had done him a favour by forcing the front door. A remedial padlock had met a similar fate. Surprisingly, the home’s glass was intact. In Dan’s youth, windows would have been the first things to go. Sudbury boys were amazingly adept at destruction. A grade school friend, Rex, had taught him first how to aim and throw and then how to break windows. The two went hand in hand. Windows on empty houses were for breaking — that was the rule. Construction sites were for getting into and undoing all the hard work the builders had done by day. A freshly plastered wall just invited a can of pop to be spilled over it, causing the surface to bubble and slide off. Mayhem and madness. Looking back, Dan thought with shame of his own renovation project, hoping Toronto kids had better things to do with their time.

His nostrils caught the tang of urine. Every abandoned building smelled of it. Inside, things were in a desperate state. What the owners hadn’t stripped before leaving had been attacked with vigour by trespassers once the home closed. The day room looked like a club for the insane and disreputable. The walls had been tagged and sprayed by a number of hands in a Gallery of the Anonymous. Mauves and golds predominated. Faded Doric columns floated to the ceiling,

while acanthus leaves littered the bases. A legion of naked gladiators tussled in erotic frenzy, dragging the local population of nymphs and cherubs into the X-rated arena. A dominatrix sporting black knickers and a see-through brassiere towered on foot-high stilettos. Madness gleamed in her eyes; lightning bolts blazed from her nipples. An erotic nightmare giving you the come on. It was as though Ilsa the SS officer had swallowed the Roman coliseum and vomited all over the walls.

Paint struggled to free itself from the walls in every room.

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