the fact that Viper said he and Quilla were here yesterday lingered in my head. If Nolan was indeed the killer maybe he had let something slip and Quilla had picked up on it or he sensed that she was a loose cannon and could jeopardize his cover. Despite the fact that I was leaning more in favor of Nolan being innocent I knew I had to keep checking to see if Quilla were here, which meant going inside and looking around.
Getting in wouldn’t be a problem. Because Nolan lived by himself he had a phobic fear of dying alone at home and not having his body discovered soon enough to prevent decomposition. He’d worked on his share of single, divorced and widowed people who died in their sleep or keeled over in their basements, only to lie there undiscovered for days and weeks at a time. What was left of the bodies, as Nolan liked to say, “Looked nasty and smelled like four day old catfish.”
Once I began working at Henderson’s, Nolan had made a point of emphasizing that he was extremely prompt and if he was a few hours late for work there was a good chance he had died at home and that I or Lew or Clint was to drive straight to his house and check on him. He kept duplicate keys in a fake, hollowed out rock behind the central air conditioning compressor which was located amidst some shrubs next to the rear door to the house.
I crept along his driveway, then went around back looking for the compressor, but couldn’t see it, partly because of the dark and also because it was hidden by a fifteen foot long row of shrubbery. As I made my way through the shrubs I could hear the soft hum the unit. For a second I wondered why he had the air conditioning on at such a late hour on such a cool October night.
When I got to the compressor, which was behind the fifth shrub in from the driveway, I felt around the back, looking for the fake rock with the keys. There was nothing, except smooth dirt and a few twigs. With my foot I felt around the entire perimeter of the unit and still found nothing, but as I was about to get down and feel around my left hip bumped into something solid that I knew wasn’t the next shrub.
It was a second air conditioning compressor. Before I had time to ask myself why Nolan had two units to keep such a small house cool, I reached down and immediately found the rock with the keys. I opened it and one Medico key was inside. It would open the back door, which was a few shrubs from where I was standing.
The door opened easily. I stood in a small landing with three steps leading up to the kitchen and a stairway to the basement. I went to the kitchen. It was smallish and neat with a breakfast nook. The appliances looked old. Directly through the kitchen was a dining room with a table, buffet table and hutch, and through it was the living room with an old comfortable-looking couch. I stared at the Oberfuolner name on the crest hoping that up close it would be spelled differently than the headstone at the cemetery. It wasn’t. The crest’s design was two Crossed swords resting on a laurel wreath with the name of a city and country: Landkern, Germany.
The mantle and fireplace wall were also filled with a dozen or so framed photographs, two of which
Off to the left side of the house was a bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which Nolan used as a den. There was a small desk with a computer, 40” High Def TV, DVD player and stereo system that looked years old. There were more record albums than CDs. The bedroom had a queen-sized bed and a dresser. The entire house was furnished not so much in a bachelor-like manner, but it sent off a vibe that it needed a woman’s touch.
The physical appearance of the inside of Nolan’s home was so normal, so ordinary that I was at a loss for words. There were no unusual smells except possibly cleanliness. I knew that Nolan was finicky about keeping the Embalming Room spotless so it stood to reason that he would be a neat freak about his residence. Nothing struck me as unusual. If Nolan had indeed taken Quilla I couldn’t see or hear anything that suggested her presence. There were no signs of a struggle. I didn’t see blood or broken furniture or weapons or knives.
Although I was beginning to feel ill at ease being in the house, I decided that since I was there I might as well check the upstairs. Because of the design of the house, to get to the stairs that led to the second floor, I had to go through Nolan’s den. Just like in the house I grew up in there was also a door that led to the attic.
I turned the doorknob, but the door was locked. I was curious enough to wonder why it was locked, but the overriding feeling I had was guilt for suspecting Nolan of being a killer when the only thing he was guilty of was having the same last name as that on an old headstone.
I tried the door a few more times to see if it was stuck, but it was definitely locked. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t about to knock it down and I didn’t know how to pick a lock, so I decided to leave. This had been a moronic idea. Nolan wasn’t exactly my friend, but he was an acquaintance and a co-worker and we had a history that had to stand for something. If I made good time I could get to the Home in fifteen minutes. Nolan would beat me there and I would have to come up with a lie about where I was and where the body I’d told him about was.
I moved quickly out of the den and through the small hallway that led to the dining room. It wasn’t until I was passing through the dining room that I realized I was sweating, dripping wet, actually. For a second I attributed it to my nervousness at breaking into Nolan’s home, but then I remembered that one of the air conditioning compressors outside was on.
Then why was I so hot?
For the first time since I’d entered the house I realized that the entire first floor wasn’t cooled at all. It was normal October weather outdoors and the temperature inside reflected that.
So what was being kept cool?
I decided to check the basement. I went to the stairs and flipped on the light. It was divided into two sections, the first serving as what could best be described as a giant workshop. My first reaction was that it looked like the set of a handyman show on TV. Professional-looking carpentry tools of all kinds hung neatly on the walls in pegboards. Wood was piled in a corner. The smell of sawdust permeated the air. Paint cans, opened and never used, were on a five feet high metal shelving unit. There was a long workbench against one wall and a smaller worktable in the center of the room. Two types of electric saws were in another corner.
I poked my head into the second section of the basement and found the utility sink, washer and dryer. I was about to leave when the smell of the sawdust was overtaken in my nose by the faint smell of something else, an aroma that I had lived with virtually every day of my adult life.
Formaldehyde.
It was coming from somewhere in the utility room. I flipped on the light, getting a clearer view of the washer and dryer. Other than a couple boxes of detergent and large can of bleach placed neatly on a shelf next to the washer, the small area was empty. I stepped inside, sniffing the air, following the smell which led me to another door on the far side of the washing machine. The door was secured by a bolt from the outside. I opened it and before I even stepped inside felt the full force of the formaldehyde.
I reached my hand to the wall and flipped on the light only to discover that I was in an Embalming Room. My heart started to pound. It wasn’t as spacious or sophisticated as the Embalming Room at the Home or in most of the embalming rooms I’d seen. There was only one embalming table and instead of a large utility sink, the one in here was much smaller. But all the tools of an embalmer were there.
What Nolan was doing with an embalming room in his basement I didn’t know, but what I saw on the walls caused me even more concern.
There were a couple of dozen articles dealing with the preservation of bodies, including several on Eva Peron. I checked them out quickly. Some were yellowed with age, others seemed newer. I could tell by the color and texture of the pages that some had originally appeared in newspapers, while others had been in magazines, undoubtedly embalmer trade publications. Like everything else in Nolan’s house, the room was spotless and orderly. And again, like every other room I’d been in, the temperature wasn’t cooled. The only place I hadn’t seen was the attic. And even though the door was locked, I was determined to get inside.
I felt in my bones that the innocence or guilt of Nolan had something to do with whatever was in that room.
Chapter 23
I headed up stairs, knowing I would have to break down the locked door. I got to it, shook the doorknob again, hoping that maybe it wasn’t really locked.
