Bloodfever

“Who’s the landlord?” I was stunned. I’d been shut out. While I’d vacillated in indecision about whether or not to destroy the walls and floors in a thorough but damagingly expensive search for her journal, then been sidetracked by other things, I’d lost all my sister’s personal possessions!

Someone was living in her apartment. It wasn’t fair—I had one more day!

I would have continued to argue until the sun had gone down, the clock struck twelve, and the final bell finished chiming if the new tenant had said anything other than what she said next.

“The guy downstairs at the bar handles things for him, but it’s probably the owner you’ll need to talk to.”

“And who’s that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never met him. Some guy named Barrons.”

I felt like a rat in a maze and everyone else was human, wearing lab coats and standing outside my box, watching me run blindly up and down dead-end corridors, and laughing.

I left the new tenant without another word. I stepped outside, into the alley behind the pub, backed myself into an alcoved, bricked-up door to avoid the drizzle, and rang up Barrons on the cell phone he’d left outside my door last night with three numbers programmed in.

One was JB. That was the one I used now. The other two were mystifying: IYCGM and IYD.

He sounded angry when he answered. “What?” he snarled. I could hear the sound of things crashing, glass breaking.

“Tell me about my sister,” I barked back.

“She’s dead?” he said sarcastically. There was another crash.

“Where’s her stuff?”

“Upstairs in the room next to yours. What’s this about, Ms. Lane, and can’t it wait? I’m a bit busy right now.”

“Upstairs?” I exclaimed. “You admit you have it?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I was her landlord and you didn’t get the place cleaned out in time.”

“I was on time. I had through today!”

“You were beat up and busy and I took care of it for you.” A thunderous crash punctuated his words. “You’re welcome.”

“You were my sister’s landlord and you never bothered to tell me? You said you didn’t know her!” I shouted to make myself heard above the din coming out of the earpiece. Okay, maybe I shouted because I was furious. He’d lied to me. Baldly and blatantly. What else was he lying to me about? A clap of thunder above me made me even madder. One day I was going to escape Jericho Barrons and this rain. One day I was going to find myself a sunny beach, plant my petunia on it, and sprout roots. “Besides,” I snapped, “your name wasn’t on the letter we got about the damages to the apartment!”

“The man who handles my rentals sent the letter. And I didn’t know your sister. I didn’t know I was her landlord until my solicitor called a few days ago to tell me there was a problem with one of my properties.” There was a soft thud and Barrons grunted. After a moment he said, “He’d been calling your house in Ashford and no one was answering. He didn’t want to be responsible for setting a tenant’s property to the curb. I heard the name, did the math, took care of it.” There was a soft “oomph,” and it sounded like Barrons’ phone went clattering across the floor.

I was curiously deflated. I’d had one of those “aha” moments upstairs: I’d been immediately convinced he was hiding some personal connection between him and my sister, that I’d found evidence of it, it was proof of his villainy, and now things would fall miraculously into place and finally begin making sense, but his reply was perfectly logical. Two of my patrons at The Brickyard owned multiple properties and never got personally involved in the running of them unless there was a problem. They didn’t see any of the paperwork unless something had to go to court, and they never had any clue who was renting one of their apartments.

“You don’t think it’s terribly coincidental?” I demanded, when I heard him on the other end of the line again. He was breathing heavily, as if running, or fighting, or both. I tried to imagine who or what Barrons could be fighting that was giving him a run for the money and decided I didn’t want to know.

“I’ve been choking on coincidences longer than I care to think about. You?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “And I intend to get to the bottom of them.”

“You do that, Ms. Lane.”

He sounded positively hostile. I could tell he was about to hang up. “Wait a minute. Who’s IYCGM?”