Murder Between the Pages by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon [Lanyon, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: satire, LGBTQ, mystery, historical
Publisher: Josh Lanyon
Published: 2017-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Leonard

I turned my flashlight beam full into Day’s face, and he put an arm up, momentarily blinded.

“Do you mind?” he said with irritating calmness.

“Yes, I do,” I replied. “I mind very much being lied to. What happened to all that guff about enough people dying and leaving it to the police?”

“Turn that damned light off!”

I snapped off my flashlight. Day lowered his arm and walked up the last steps, joining me on the top landing.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well what?” His eyes shone in the pale oval of his face. How had I never noticed that he was the exact same height as me? His gaze was level with mine. Somehow he gave off the air of being taller, of looming over the rest of us.

“How did you know it was me? It might have been the murderer waiting for you up here.”

He said indifferently, “I guessed it would be you poking around and testing your trapdoor theory.”

And he wouldn’t have much cared either way? That’s the way it sounded to me. I didn’t like it. In fact, I liked it as little as I liked him lying to me.

“It turns out I was wrong about the trapdoor—” I broke off as Day’s hand fastened in warning on my arm.

“Did you hear that?” He spoke so softly it hardly qualified as a whisper.

“It’s the wind.” I kept my voice low however.

Day gave a sharp shake of his head, his hand tightening.

I heard it then. The scrape of a window sash inching open on the east side of the building. Someone was coming into the building the same way I had.

Day soundlessly sank to his haunches, drawing me with him. We knelt there, waiting…

We didn’t wait long. An elongated shadow fell across the floor below us. It was all sharps and angles, reminding me of the illustration on a Dell mapback cover. Dead or Alive or Dark Passage maybe.

Day was so quiet I couldn’t hear him breathing. I could hear his wristwatch, though, and I could smell the faint odor of herbal cigarettes and the faded memory of his aftershave. Knight Errant. Woodspice and leather.

Funny to be thinking of that now, but Day was a funny kind of guy…

The shadow slid across the floor below us and slanted up the far wall. A man stepped into view. I recognized him immediately—impossible not to recognize that gangly length and hair that looked green in the unearthly light.

Jerome Chastain.

I sucked in a breath, and Day’s hand rested in light warning on my knee. He didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going to cry out or charge down the stairs. Maybe I hadn’t worked for the OSS, but I didn’t get all my training from a Dick Tracy Junior Detective Kit either.

Chastain threw an uneasy look around the room and then went up to the stage. He stared down at the bloodstained platform for a long time. Then he turned, held his arm out like he was holding an imaginary pistol, and walked in a diagonal line through the rows of chairs.

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