The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks Read online

  Perry got that inquiring look — as though Nick’s thoughts were always worth his full attention.

  Nick said, “Did anyone know you had changed your plans for the weekend? Did anyone know you were coming back early?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you come back early?”

  Perry stared at him. “I told you. It didn’t work out with my friend.”

  “Okay, what about this friend of yours? Where did you meet him?”

  “Over the Internet.”

  “Over the Internet? You mean, like in a chat room?”

  “Yes.” Perry’s chin got an unexpectedly mulish jut to it. “So what? Lots of people meet that way. We started e-mailing each other, and it turned out we had a lot in common. Marcel was —”

  Nick put his beer down. “Marcel?”

  “Marcel, yes,” Perry said shortly.

  “You were having a cyber-romance with someone named Marcel?” Nick was laughing at him, and Perry turned red with anger.

  “You make it sound stupid and weird. It wasn’t. We had a real friendship. A real relationship. We wrote each other every day, sometimes a couple of times a day. So then we finally called each other on the phone. We talked a long time, and we decided to meet, to see —”

  “And surprise, surprise,” Nick said cynically. “He was three feet tall, bald, fat, and pushing sixty.”

  Perry said hotly, “He was exactly like I expected. Like I hoped. He was perfect.”

  Nick’s mouth curved sardonically, but all he said was, “So what happened with Mr. AOL? You weren’t what he expected?”

  Perry stared at him, stricken. He said at last, “His ex-boyfriend wanted to get back together.”

  Even Nick blinked at that one. “Jesus. He couldn’t have picked a different weekend?”

  Perry’s anger was already spent. He smiled lopsidedly. “I guess it would have been nice if they’d figured it out before I spent all that money on plane tickets and three new shirts. It took forever to save up.”

  “So now you’re short rent money because you wasted it on new clothes and a trip.”

  Perry nodded.

  Nick studied him critically but not unkindly. “Didn’t it occur to you…?”

  “You don’t understand,” Perry said. “I thought I knew him. I do know him. He’s…he’s smart and funny and sensitive. He’s an architect. Someday he’s going to build something as amazing as…as Frank Lloyd Wright. We had a lot in common. We had the same favorite movie in high school — Come Undone — and we have the same favorite song — “Human” by the Killers. We both like our corn on the cob barbecued, and cinnamon and nutmeg in our cocoa. And neither of us watched Queer as Folk, and we both had golden retrievers when we were kids.”

  Strictly speaking, it was more than he and Marie had ever had in common. Nick said, “He didn’t mention the ex-boyfriend to you?”

  The prosaic question brought Perry up short. “Sort of. I knew he’d been in a relationship. Who hasn’t?”

  “Have you?”

  “I haven’t lived with anyone,” Perry said with great dignity.

  Nick shook his head.

  “It’s not that easy to meet people here,” Perry told him. “Vermont isn’t all…I mean, parts of it are conservative. Especially in the Kingdom. This is a small town.”

  “So move.”

  “Where?” Even in the murky light, Nick could see the delicate wash of color beneath Foster’s clear skin. “It takes money. First and last month’s rent, and I don’t even have this month’s rent. And I’d have to find a new job. I’m not really trained for anything.”

  Nick considered him. “I can’t help you there, but I’ll tell you what. My rent’s paid for the next two months. I paid six months in advance. When I go, you can stay on here. That should get you time to catch up.”

  Perry gazed at him, speechless.

  “Don’t make a big deal of it,” Nick warned.

  “No. Right.” Perry lowered his lashes. He seemed to be struggling to repress a smile as he devoted himself to his French fries.

  “Okay, that’s settled,” Nick said briskly. “Now all we have to do is figure out who dumped that body in your bathtub.” He wasn’t entirely serious. At least…he thought they might uncover information that might help the sheriff’s department with their lame-ass investigation, and he thought it was good to keep the kid’s mind occupied. But Nick really didn’t have hopes they would crack the case of the disappearing corpse.

  “Whoever killed Tiny,” Perry replied — apparently under the illusion that they were really going to bust this thing wide open.

  “Maybe.”

  “That had to be it. Tiny was going around blabbing about seeing the ghost with yellow socks, and that must have posed some kind of danger for someone.”

  Nick said, “But you realize he was talking about that to us while we were in Watson’s apartment.”

  Those ridiculous lashes swept up. “You mean someone was listening to us.”

  This was one of the things Nick did like about Foster. He could put two and two together without a song and dance.

  “Yeah. I have trouble believing in secret passages, but I think either someone overheard Tiny talking to you, or Tiny mentioned ‘the ghost’ to one too many people.”

  “Center and Stein are both on that floor. Center’s apartment is right next to Watson’s — and they say blind people compensate with their other senses. Maybe he’s got really acute hearing.”

  “Huh,” Nick said.

  They ate in silence while music played in the background. Christmas music. It was only November, but Bing Crosby was already hitting the airwaves. Nick found it vaguely depressing.

  “We could try the library archives next,” Perry said.

  Nick nodded. He wasn’t thrilled at the idea of spending the day in the library, but it wasn’t like he had a lot of other ideas. This was about as cold a case as they came, so the obvious avenues of investigation were eliminated. Too bad this hadn’t come up a few months after he had some P.I. training under his belt.

  Of course, in a few months he would be in California, and Perry Foster would be just another memory of a time in his life he couldn’t wait to put behind him.

  “Or,” Perry suggested suddenly, hopefully, “We could go see the Verity Lane film at the Players Theater.”

  “That sounds like a waste of time.”

  “We don’t have a lot of leads,” Perry pointed out. “It couldn’t hurt to see one of the principals, right?”

  Oddly, Nick discovered that he didn’t want to disappoint the kid — not that he could see any practical purpose in watching an old movie. Although he was mildly curious about Verity Lane.

  “Maybe we could go to the library and then go see the film?”

  When Nick didn’t respond, Perry said very casually, “If you’re worried about people thinking you’re gay if you go with me, you don’t have to be.”

  Nick met Perry’s eyes levelly. “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re not the type.”

  “There’s a type, huh? I thought that was a myth. What about those queer bodybuilders?”

  Perry shrugged. “I’ve never met one.”

  “You know a lot of bodybuilders?”

  “No, but I know other gay guys. You know, I haven’t lived my entire life here in Fox Run.”

  “I figured. Where are you from?”

  “Rutland.”

  Second largest city in Vermont and a commercial hub, so Foster should have been relatively worldly. But Nick thought he had the picture. A sickly, overprotected little kid — he was betting on only child of doting older parents.

  “What are you doing here in the boondocks?”

  “I thought it would be fun to live in a small town.” The cheerful cluelessness of that almost took Nick’s breath away. “You know, someplace where everyone knows your name, and you don’t have to lock your car or your doors. And I tho
ught it would be good for my painting to live someplace rural and quiet.”

  “It didn’t occur to you it might get a little lonely for someone with your orientation?”

  Perry was silent. “I wasn’t thinking about that so much. I wanted to get away.”

  “From what?”

  “Everything. Everyone I knew. Everything I knew.”

  Nick said mildly, “Sounds a little drastic.”

  Perry stared out the pub window at the Thomas Kincaid streets glistening in the rain. The colored blur of shop lights, streetlights, car lights reflected in the wet blacktop. Nick hoped he wasn’t going to confide his life story.

  Perry said matter-of-factly, “When I told my parents I was gay, they threw me out.”

  The background noise of the TV swelled and dipped. Nick sipped his beer, set the mug down with careful deliberation. “Why’d you tell them?”

  Perry looked confused. “They’re my parents.”

  “Exactly. You must have known them well enough to know how they felt on the subject.”

  “But I thought — it should — make a difference that it was me.”

  “You thought that they would feel different about something that shocked and disgusted them if their darling little boy told them he was one of them? You really are naive.”

  Perry reddened. “They love me. I love them. I had to be honest.”

  This idea was alien to Nick. He had enlisted in the navy when he was eighteen — five years younger than Foster was now. He would no more have discussed his sexual inclinations with his parents than he would have eaten the family dog. True, his mom and dad had been busy providing for six kids and his grandmother. Heartfelt confidences hadn’t been a big part of the Reno family life. Discussion in general hadn’t been something his folks had a lot of time or energy for. It had been all they could do to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs.

  Besides, Nick had married Marie right before he went into the service — mostly because that’s what people did in Island Pond. It had never occurred to him to do anything else — not for a very long time.

  Funny. Depending on how you looked at it, Foster was miles ahead of where Nick had been at that age.

  Perry said staunchly, “They’ll come around when they realize…”

  “It’s not a phase?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you sure it’s not?”

  Perry’s eyes darkened. “Of course, I’m sure.”

  “I mean, you’ve never been with anybody, right?” Nick was blunt. “Male or female? It’s my experience that a lot of young guys are scared of girls.”

  To his surprise, Perry relaxed, chuckling, “I’m not scared of girls. My best friends have always been girls. Guys never had time for me in high school — except the other misfits.”

  Nick eyed him irritably.

  “Girls don’t interest me,” Perry explained, as though spelling out the facts of life. “Guys like you interest me.”

  Nick dropped his cornbread.

  “Anyway,” Perry said off-handedly, “My parents threw me out, and there went my degree in architecture, which was okay. I wanted art school anyway. So I decided to go for it. Go after my dream and become a painter.” He smiled cheerfully at Nick. “Of course, it really doesn’t pay very well.”

  Nick felt like he had a headache coming on. It was his own fault. He’d just had to open his big mouth and ask, hadn’t he?

  * * * * *

  The rain was turning to sleet as they parked in the library parking lot. Perry wrapped his scarf around his mouth and nose, but he was coughing as they got to the top of the stairs leading into the brick building.

  “Don’t you take some kind of regular medication to control that?” Nick asked, frowning as Perry struggled to catch his breath.

  Perry shook his head. “I used to, but I don’t have health insurance now.”

  “Christ Almighty.”

  Nick was staring at him in exasperation. “It’s not bad in the summer. Or even the spring, really. It’s just when it gets really cold that I sometimes have trouble,” Perry assured him.

  “No problem, then. Except you happen to live in Vermont.”

  Perry shrugged this off. His breathing was already steadying again. He turned and led the way into the quiet building.

  “Can’t stay away from the place, can you?” A plump, dark-haired girl greeted Perry from behind the reference desk. Then she noticed that Nick was actually with him and not just waiting in line. Her gaze grew curious. “Why, hello.”

  “Hi.”

  “We’re just going to look through the archives,” Perry said, vaguely irritated by Patti’s instant interest in Nick. Nick didn’t even seem to notice it — maybe he was used to being a chick magnet. Maybe his thoughts were on other things — he wore that dark and brooding look again as he stared around at the brightly lit room, the construction paper decorations, the flyers of local events.

  Patti said, “Not much of a vacation, is it?”

  Perry smiled politely, but he was thinking that since Nick had shown up, his vacation had improved immeasurably.

  The next three hours they spent poring over books and old plastic-bound copies of the Gazette. Whether it was of any use was hard to say; it was clear that Nick did not think a lot of this kind of investigative work. He’d have preferred to be out pounding the pavement — and maybe a few heads. Every so often he would push back his chair and go stand at the window framed by little Christmas lights, staring out at the gloomy, wet afternoon.

  It wasn’t hard to picture Nick in a fedora facing down a pack of hired goons. He had the kind of face that would have looked perfect on a ’40s pulp fiction cover.

  “What are you looking at?” Nick asked suddenly, jarring Perry out of his reflections. He hadn’t noticed he was staring, and he colored.

  Nick’s hard gaze continued to hold his — a strange moment passed — then Nick glanced back out the window and said, “Anything interesting in those papers?”

  “Well, one thing,” Perry said slowly, still reading. “The Underground Railroad operated in these parts, and Oswald Hennesey was a fervent abolitionist.”

  “Oswald being a descendent of the Hennesey Farm Henneseys?”

  Perry nodded. “Did you ever read a book called The House of Dies Drear?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I read it in junior high. It’s about this kid who moves into a house that was used in the Underground Railroad. Everybody thinks the house is haunted by the ghost of an abolitionist named Dies Drear, but it turns out that the family next door is trying to scare people away so they can steal the treasure buried beneath the tunnels.”

  “Oh boy,” Nick said. “I see where this is heading.”

  “I’m just sayin’…” Perry was grinning as he returned to his reading.

  However he didn’t find anything indicating that Hennesey Farm was actually part of the Underground Railroad let alone that it contained secret passages, and it turned out that Oswald Hennesey had not even lived on the estate. After that brief excitement, Perry’s reading was pretty boring until he found a couple of 1920s newspaper clippings about Henry Alston buying Hennesey Farm.

  “Here’s a picture of Verity Lane,” he said, offering one of the books to Nick.

  Nick studied the smudged and faded photos. Lane had been a flat-chested, platinum blonde with a bow mouth and wide eyes. Vaguely reminiscent of a Jean Harlow, Lane had been beautiful in the way of women of her era.

  Perry was still reading through the clippings. “This file is almost all about the Alstons.” The papers had apparently routinely regaled Depression-era readers with reports of wild parties at the Alston Estate attended by the celebrities and VIPs of the day. Unsurprisingly, the Shane Moran robbery had made the headlines.

  “Here’s some stuff on the party itself.”

  Nick set aside the pictures of Verity Lane and looked over Perry’s shoulder.

  Perry read, “It was a gala event. C
hinese lanterns decorated the terrace. The guests dined on roasted squab and danced to the music of Ted Olsen’s Orchestra. Just before midnight, gangster Shane Moran burst in with his gang, robbing the gentlemen and relieving the ladies of their jewels. The famed Alston sapphires, including a necklace valued at over twenty thousand dollars, were snatched from the mistress of the house.

  “I wonder what that necklace would be worth now,” Perry interrupted himself to add.

  “Plenty,” Nick answered.

  Subsequent articles dealt with the police hunt for the gangsters. Two of the men were eventually captured at a speakeasy in Sugarbrush, but the others had disappeared. Moran, of course, had only eluded capture for a couple of days before being cornered in the woods surrounding the estate. The official story was that he had refused the chance to surrender peaceably and had been shot to death by local law enforcement.

  There was no explanation — oddly enough, there was not even speculation — as to why Moran had tried to return to the scene of the crime. No trace had ever been found of the jewels and other valuables taken on that long ago midsummer evening.

  Thoughtfully, Perry closed the binder.

  “What?” Nick inquired, studying his face.

  “There couldn’t be anyone still left from that fateful party, could there? If someone had been twenty then, they would be in their nineties now, wouldn’t they?”

  “Pretty old to be pulling pranks at the old homestead,” Nick agreed, seeing where this was going.

  “Nobody at the estate is that old. Mr. Teagle is in his seventies, and Miss Dembecki must be around there. Mrs. Mac is probably…” Perry squinted, trying to place Mrs. Mac.

  “Sixties,” Nick said with certainty. “Stein’s probably a little younger. Not a lot.”

  It was clear to Perry that Nick was getting restless.

  They finished poring over the records of houses in the area, and Perry found a map that he showed Nick.

  They bent over it, heads close together, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see the blue shadow beneath Nick’s smoothly shaven cheek, the flicker of his eyelashes, the strong, uncompromising chin and blunt nose.