people settled this town. But that was just a lot of gossip. Maura’s always been an angry woman, very bitter. And she had a well-known hatred for Eleanor. Jealousy, I always thought. You know how women are.”
Jeff said a silent thank-you that Lydia was not with them. She really had a distaste for misogyny and could not be counted on to hold her temper when faced with men like Henry Clay.
“Oh, yeah.” Ford laughed in a complicit man-to-man kind of way.
“She’s still alive?” asked Jeff.
“Yeah, that old bitch is too mean to ever die,” he said with a laugh that ended in a rasping cough. “She lives just up the road a piece in a big old house. Gorgeous old mansion from her husband’s estate. Heard it’s gone to disrepair over the years, though. She doesn’t keep it up the way she used to. Doesn’t let anyone on her property to help her. Like the Ross estate. Now, there’s a piece of property that’s gone to shit.”
“The house where Eleanor’s husband was murdered?”
“The same. The Rosses still own it, but it’s sat empty some fifteen years. They still pay taxes on it, though, so it stands as they left it. Furnished and everything. We have lots of trouble with kids up there, breaking in. They claim it’s haunted, course.”
The chief was loose and talking now, so Ford kept pumping. “Anyone else you thought at the time might be a suspect?”
The old man leaned back even farther in his chair and lifted his arms, folding his hands behind his head. He looked above them with his small blue eyes and squinted as if he were looking off into the past.
“Well, Eleanor’s brother was always trouble when they were growing up. Something wrong with him… you know, in the head. He was never right. There were always rumors about him and Eleanor. That their relationship was…” He stopped before finishing his thought and looked at them. He seemed angry suddenly, as if they had tricked him into talking about things he hadn’t wanted to discuss. “But that’s all ancient history.”
“Where’s Eleanor’s brother now?
“Paul? He disappeared more than thirty years ago. Most people think he’s dead,” he said, looking at his watch. Just then there was a knock at the door and Miss Jean pushed in before waiting for an answer.
“Sir, I just can’t find those files for the life of me,” she said, looking at them apologetically. Ford didn’t believe her for a second. “I’ll keep looking, though, and let you know if they turn up.”
“All right, then, Miss Jean,” the chief said with a nod. “Well, gentlemen, if you leave your card, I’ll give you a call if those files turn up.”
Ford handed him a card and the chief regarded it suspiciously before stuffing it in his breast pocket and standing. “If there’s nothing else…”
“Actually, Chief Clay, I’m just curious,” said Ford, leaning in and lowering his voice to a low, just-between-us- cops tone. “Do you think that Eleanor Ross killed her husband? Did she get away with murder?”
He looked at Ford and an ugly smile split his face. “Tell you what. You were thinking of marrying one of those Ross women? I’d tell you to think again.”
chapter fifteen
Word was that he wasn’t welcome in the tunnels any longer. But that was just too damn bad. Word was that Rain, the omniscient, omnipresent Rain whom the bottom-feeders had deified into their lord and savior, was angry over Violet’s murder and was planning to make him pay. Jed couldn’t give a shit less. He didn’t fear the wrath of Rain the way Horatio the Dwarf seemed to when he’d found Jed and delivered the news.
“You better leave, and leave soon,” he’d said, shifting nervously from foot to foot and wringing his hands. Jed handed him a black-and-white cookie for his warning. Horatio was funny that way. He didn’t care about money or drugs; he didn’t even drink. But he had a sweet tooth and kept Jed in the loop for fresh cookies and pastries from some of the fine food purveyors in the city. Horatio didn’t like packaged foods; only freshly baked would do.
“I’m not going anywhere, Horatio,” he’d said, patting the little man on the head.
“That’s what you said before. Where would you be now if you hadn’t listened?” he asked, his mouth full of cookie.
It was true. When Horatio had pounded on his door yesterday to warn Jed about the approach of intruders, he’d had only twenty minutes to pack his belongings and disappear deeper into the tunnels. He’d loaded Horatio up like a pack mule and sent him off while he waited in the darkness. When Jeffrey Mark and Dax Chicago burst into his hovel, he quickly and easily killed their guide, so they would have no choice but to turn around and go back. He’d thought about going after them, too, when they were trapped with no exit in his space. But Dax Chicago stood at the door, never turning his back. And he had the biggest handgun Jed had ever seen. That one couldn’t be trusted to go down easily; he was crazy. Not to mention incredibly strong. So Jed slung Violet’s body over his shoulder-she was surprisingly heavy for such a short woman-and disappeared. He dumped her where she would be found. He wanted the twisted corpse to be a warning to those who might think about trying to lead anyone to him again.
Now Horatio was the only one who was aware of his new location. The sudden move had been inconvenient at the time, but in the end he found himself a much better spot, closer to an exit. Closer to Lydia. The map he’d begun was lost, but he’d committed it to memory, had started to draw it in a notebook that he carried with him.
Horatio, who was not very bright and resembled nothing so much as a shabbily dressed, down-on-his-luck Umpa Lumpa, was the closest thing Jed had had to a friend since he was in grade school. With scraggly long black hair, a long, wide face covered with patches of hair that should have been a beard but didn’t really seem to grow in right, and bright blue eyes, he seemed more like a creature from Grimm’s than he did a man. He wasn’t much, but he’d proven useful and loyal.
“You’re the only one who knows where I am, right?” said Jed, turning his gaze from his notebook to Horatio, who seemed to jump a bit.
“Of course,” he said eagerly.
“Then we don’t have anything to worry about. Do we?”
“Rain knows these tunnels better than anyone. If he wants to find you, he will,” Horatio said, his brows knit, the rest of the cookie forgotten in his hand.
“You’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“How?”
“I have every confidence that you’ll find a way to lead them away from me.”
“I don’t know”
“Find a way, Horatio. You wouldn’t want Rain to know that you’ve betrayed him. Then it will be back up topside for you, doing little dances on the subway to make money.”
Horatio had made the mistake of telling Jed how frightened he was of the streets, how much abuse he’d taken as a homeless dwarf, how he’d almost been killed more than once. Rain had given him a home and community where he felt safe. Now Jed used the information to control him. The dwarf looked sadly at his cookie as if it were the reason for the predicament he found himself in and nodded.
“Good,” said Jed. “I have to keep a low profile for a few days. I’m going to need some help with a few things.”
chapter sixteen
The food was worse than the coffee at the Rusty Penny, where Ford, Lydia, and Jeffrey sat at a booth toward the back. New Yorkers never realized how spoiled they were when it came to eating out until they left the city. Even the worst greasy spoon in Manhattan usually had something to offer, a personality, a history, something. But the Rusty Penny was like a boil on the buttocks of Haunted, nothing you’d want to look at too closely and certainly producing nothing you’d put in your mouth.
Lydia picked at the sesame bun on her chewy and grizzled hamburger. Ford, however, hadn’t seemed to
