A Voice in the Dark. Jenna Ryan

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      Chapter Three

      “Okay, so Lionel Foret was what? A Munster wannabe?” Liz stomped her feet on the porch of what was possibly the most decrepit house in Boston. In front of her, Angel rattled an old-fashioned key in the rusted-out lock.

      They’d already gone through Foret’s Boston apartment, top to bottom, and found nothing except a million newspapers, enough fast-food containers to fill a city Dumpster and one very fat canary which Foret’s mother, currently en route from Virginia, was planning to take home.

      “You heard his mom.” Angel used her shoulder on the stuck door. “Lionel wanted to fix and flip this place. He spent as much time here as he did in his apartment. The other third of his life unfolded in Washington.”

      “We’ve got people checking the DC condo, right?”

      “Yeah, and his buddy the Secretary is all over them. Bergman’s going down to talk to the man live and in person.”

      “Better him than us…Can I help you push?”

      “Nope.” Angel braced, gave a hard shove—and almost wound up flat on her face in the foyer as the engorged wood gave. “Got it.”

      She shone her flashlight over the wall. “I smell old dust, fresh paint and foo yung. What a combo.” Locating the switch, she flipped it up. “Well, that made a world of difference. One twenty-five watt bulb spread over how many hundreds of junk-filled square feet? Still, the foo yung and paint say he’s been here recently.” She pivoted in a slow circle. “Wow—this is great.”

      “It’s cold, it stinks, and it’s probably crawling with bugs.” Liz inspected the sagging ceiling. “Bergman’s a supreme ass for sticking us with this job while he takes a cushy flight to Washington.”

      Angel gave her shoulder a tap with the flashlight. “Better him than us, remember? Come on, Liz, where’s your sense of adventure? This is the Munster house. Scratch fixing and flipping. Foret should have added costumed workers to the cobwebs and marketed it as a hotel.”

      “You’ve got to be joking.”

      “People said that about ice hotels, and look what happened there. Do you want up or down?”

      “Kitchen’ll be down. I’ll go up. Reinforcements are coming, right?”

      “A team of four. Two rookies.”

      “Perfect, they can do the bathrooms.” She snagged the back of Angel’s jacket. “Be careful.”

      “Always am. Watch out for rats on the stairs.”

      “Like I could miss them,” her friend muttered. “Place like this, they’ll be as big as wolves.”

      “Werewolves,” Angel corrected and laughed when Liz flung a small chunk of plaster at her.

      Not that she enjoyed mold and mildew, but calling it the Munster house kept her on the upside of the fantasy. Because, God knew, on the down, she’d be envisioning bats by now. Big ones, grinning like little ghouls, and walking awkwardly as bats tended to do, across the floor.

      Her cell phone rang while she was forging a path toward the back of the house. By way of a greeting, she demanded, “Question, Noah, did Eddie’s pet Fang live under the house or under the stairs?”

      “Is this a riddle, Angel, or do you always do hallucinogenic drugs at 11:00 a.m. on a Monday?” But he sounded halfway amused, which helped with the bat phobia.

      Angel’s foot slid off a section of crumbled wall. “Bergman gave us the victim’s Mockingbird Lane fixer. Wasn’t that sweet? The lights are Edison originals, and if there’s such a thing as a furnace, I can’t believe it’d work.” She set a hand on the chair rail for balance. “There was no note in his downtown apartment. Liz and I spent hours yesterday searching. We had a hacker go through his Blackberry and laptop. Nothing. And both of his briefcases came up empty. If he was meeting someone on the dock, he kept the date, time and identity in his head. We have no witnesses so far and very few other clues. Even Joe doesn’t have anything for us yet. I’m thinking slow slog here.”

      “Keep looking.”

      “That’s my job—oh, yuck, something squished under my boot.” She wouldn’t look, she promised herself. Hearing a thud, she glanced at the massive staircase. “Spooky,” she decided, then strained to see around a peeling column, “Yellow walls ahead. Could be Foret was trying to force-feed sunshine into the place.”

      “You’re there for evidence, not ambience.”

      “Uh-huh. And you’re where right now? Fifty bucks says it’s some place warm, dry and mildew-free. Oh thank God, the squishy stuff was only a tube of caulking. Foret’s mother told us he СКАЧАТЬ