“Hello?”
The door gently closed.
I shut my eyes.
My second problem of the day. It had happened several times in the weeks since I came back home from the hospital. At various points during the night, I would hear someone enter my house. Twice I had called my friend Felix Tinios, and once I had called the Tyler Police Department, but each time Felix or the police arrived, they didn’t find anything. The door had still been locked, and there had been no sign that anybody had been in the house.
“Hello?” I called out.
No answer. But now I heard what seemed to be cabinet doors opening and closing.
I remembered the patient yet quizzical looks on Felix and the nice policewoman who had responded earlier, both no doubt thinking poor recovering Lewis Cole was hallucinating.
I reached under the mattress, wincing, and took out my 9mm Beretta.
So my night continued, and so did my second continuing problem.
CHAPTER TWO
I woke with a man looking down at me, and, half-asleep, I reached for my Beretta—but it was missing.
“Looking for this?” he asked, holding it up by its butt.
“Yes, Felix, damn you.”
He went “tsk-tsk” and put the pistol down on my nightstand. Felix Tinios, originally from Boston’s North End and now an independent security consultant—he even had business cards, which I always found surprising—opened up a folding wooden table he had brought into my bedroom.
“You look like a college professor dressed for a class,” I said, nodding at the tweed jacket he wore over a white button-down shirt and pressed blue jeans. “Preferably an all-female one.”
“We all have our dreams, don’t we,” he replied.
Felix moved surely and swiftly through my room, taking out my breakfast from a dark green insulated bag. There was coffee, cold milk, and two covered plates. On the larger plate was a collection of freshly made crepes with a side of maple syrup—and, Felix being Felix, I had no doubt it was the real stuff, and not that horrid sugar cane syrup flavored maple. The smaller plate had five thick pork sausages.
I started eating and he wandered more about the room. “Why was your pistol out?” he asked.
“Guess.”
“Your alleged visitor came back last night?”
“Nothing alleged about it, Felix. He was there.”
“Sure,” he said, coming back and sitting on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling today?”
“Like I fell into a farmer’s thresher,” I said. “Cut up, banged up, and bruised.”
“You’ll get there.”
“Right now I can’t get out of my bedroom.”
“Where did the ever-cheerful Lewis Cole disappear to?”
“Someplace warmer and safer,” I said.
When breakfast was done, I checked the time and saw Paula was late. Damn. Felix saw me looking at the clock and said, “What’s up?”
“My nurse is late.”
“What, your insurance company and your doc figure out their dispute?”
“No, that looks like it’s going to be another Thirty Years’ War. The nurse is Paula.”
Felix smiled. “Ah, the young and sweet Miss Quinn. Well, you can’t wait, so let’s get it done.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” he said, coming over to me. “I’ll take care of those drains.”
“But …”
He grabbed my hands, nearly yanked me out of bed. “What, you think I’m afraid of blood? Really?”
Felix worked quickly and efficiently, gently removing each plastic bulb, squirting it in the measuring cup, writing down the amounts, rinsing out the bulbs, and then securing them again.
“There you go,” he said. “Uncle Felix’s drain and repair company, at your service.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re probably going to need a sponge bath by and by, but I’ll leave that to your reporter friend. In the meantime, I’ve got some dishes to do.”
“Bring me back to bed, you can do what you like.”
“Um, not going to happen, grasshopper. You’re coming downstairs with me and you’re going to keep me company while I wash up.”
“But Felix …”
“When was the last time you were downstairs?”
“The day I left to go to the hospital, and the day I came back. The end.”
“Then it’s time to go down and check it out, make sure your mysterious visitor hasn’t stolen a book or a rug.”
“But Felix …”
He gave me a look that, were I anyone else, would have caused me to lose control of certain bodily functions. “Trust me when I say this, you’re not getting around enough.”
“It hurts.”
“Of course it hurts, moron. That’s part of the healing process. Better a little hurt now than lots of hurt later on, trying to get your muscle tone back while lying in that comfortable bed and watching Ellen.”
“I can’t stand Ellen.”
“Why?”
“Too much fake fun, fake dancing, fake smiles.”
“Everybody’s a critic. Let’s go.”
Felix took my arm and I moved slowly out of the bathroom, leaning on him as we went out to the landing and took our time going downstairs. “You poor fellow,” Felix said. “You’re walking like a sailor who hasn’t touched land for six months. Later today I’ll come by, drop off a cane that my Uncle Paulie used back in the day.”
“Does it have a hidden bottle inside to carry around some illegal hooch?”
We got to the first floor and Felix laughed. “No, Uncle Paulie was around too late for Prohibition, but it does have a cute hidden secret.”
“I look forward to it.”
We walked through the living room, with the large stone and brick fireplace, and into the adjacent kitchen. The kitchen appliances were new, as was most of the furniture on this floor, since my house nearly burned down several months earlier. In the living room were a couch, three comfortable chairs, a coffee table, and the television. There were also scores of boxes of books, bought either at local used bookstores or from the megamall that is the Internet.
Felix helped me onto the couch, trotted back upstairs, and came down with my breakfast dishes. As he started washing them he called out, “Did Paula call to say she was going to be late?”
“No, but I figured she was busy. She’s covering the story of Maggie Branch’s murder.”
Felix had taken off his tweed jacket
