Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Hidden. Purrfect Kill. Purrfect Boy Toy

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” said Odelia. “I walk around in slippers at home, too. It’s a lot easier to clean, isn’t it?”

“It’s because I have so many carpets,” Rita said, indicating a nice Persian rug in her living room. “And hardwood floors. If it were tile, like I had in Harrington Street, I wouldn’t mind so much. Tile is so easy to clean. These floors and carpets, though.”

The house looked squeaky clean, Odelia had to admit. In fact it looked a lot cleaner than her own place, but then she was a busy bee, and so was Chase, and with four cats it was hard to keep up. Or at least that was her excuse and she was sticking to it.

“So what can I do for you?” asked Rita as she took a seat in the living room salon, where several couches were lined up around a big-screen television. Flowers were everywhere, and plants, and it was obvious Rita missed having her own backyard. She’d been an avid gardener back in the day, and had intimated it was the only thing about having a house that she would miss when she moved into the apartment.

“This is a little delicate, Rita,” said Odelia. “And maybe you shouldn’t hear this from me, but…”

Rita frowned. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“My mom has issues with her plumbing,” said Odelia, deciding to take this from the top.

“Oh, well, I’m not sure I can help you with that. Back when we lived there, there were always issues with the plumbing. Old house, you know. What can you do?”

“I know. So she had Gwayn Partington come over, and he knocked out a piece of wall in the basement, looking for the connection to the water main.”

“Okay,” said Rita, not flinching or indicating she knew where this was going.

Odelia took a deep breath and plunged in. “He found a skeleton stuck in the wall. A skeleton that must have been there for several decades.”

Rita’s eyes went wide and she brought a hand to her face. “Oh, no,” she said.

“I think it’s your father, Rita. In fact, I’m almost positive that it is.”

“Dad,” said Rita in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah. So I expect my uncle to pay you a visit as soon as they’ve made a positive ID, but I figured I owe it to you to give the news personally, as we have a connection and I…”

Rita nodded, speechless, her eyes brimming with tears. “Thanks,” she said.

“Do you have any idea how he could have ended up down there?” she asked.

Rita was shaking her head, still making valiant efforts to control herself. “No,” she said finally. “I mean, someone must have put him there, right? If it’s really him, someone must have…” She blinked and reached for the box of Kleenex on the coffee table. “I never thought he ran away, like Mom thought. He was too loving a father to do that to us.”

“Your mom thought he ran away?”

“She did. He’d gotten into some trouble at work. I don’t remember the details. Also there was talk about a fight he had with a work friend over a loan or something. So the police at the time thought he’d run away when he realized he couldn’t repay the loan. Dad worked with some unsavory characters, and some of those fellas wouldn’t have taken kindly to not being repaid when someone borrowed money from them, so…”

“But you never believed that.”

“No, I didn’t. Dad loved me—loved us. We were a very warm, loving family, and he wouldn’t simply leave us. Just… vanish without a trace and not give us a sign of life for all those years. Mom died not knowing what had happened to him, you know, and until the very end she wondered—we all did, actually. Me, Mom and my brother.”

“Tom. Does he still live around here?”

“Brooklyn. He’s a Wall Street guy. He’s retired now, though. In fact he’s thinking about giving up his apartment and permanently moving back to Hampton Cove. One of the downstairs flats is up for sale, and he’s seriously considering putting down an offer.” She wiped at her eyes. “Oh, Odelia. Whatever I expected when I saw your face on the intercom just now, it definitely wasn’t this.”

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” said Odelia ruefully.

“It’s not bad news,” said Rita with a brave smile. “It’s good news. Now I know Dad never left us. Now I know what really happened, and how he was with us all this time.”

“Yeah, he was right there,” said Odelia softly.

“Amazing,” said Rita as she gave this some more thought. “How he was right beneath our feet all these years, and we didn’t know.” She directed a resolute look at Odelia. “You’re a private detective, aren’t you?”

“Um, not really. I’m a reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette .”

“But you do some private detecting on the side, right?”

“I don’t have a license, so it’s not official,” she said. “I help out my uncle and my boyfriend from time to time. Civilian consultant, they call it.” She had a feeling Rita was working towards something, and she had a pretty good idea what it could be.

“Can you find out what happened to my dad? Please? For my sake and Tom’s? Someone must have put him inside that wall, right? He didn’t crawl in there all by himself and brick himself in, did he?”

“No, I don’t think he did,” said Odelia, treading carefully now. “It seems very unlikely that he would have done such a thing.”

“Exactly. So he was murdered . Someone killed him and had the gall—the impudence—to bury him in his own house, right under our noses—underneath the feet of his wife and family. Please find out who did it, Odelia. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll talk to Tom. He has some money saved up, and I’m sure he’ll agree with me to hire you.”

“No, please, Rita,” said Odelia, holding up her hand. “I’m not going to accept any money from you. I’ll look into your father’s death, not for money, but because I want to know, too. You see, people in this town like to gossip, and already they’re talking about my grandmother being the one who put that body there. So it’s important for me to find out what really happened, and to prove Gran innocent.”

“Your gran! How could she possibly be involved?”

“Oh, you know what people are like. Gran went through an acrimonious divorce back in the day, and then my grandfather died, so now they think she killed him and—”

“Buried him in the basement? That’s ludicrous. Your grandmother didn’t even live there back then. We lived there, and continued living there for many years afterward.”

“Exactly, which is why…” She swallowed. “Can I show you something?”

“Of course. I’m sorry for being so emotional,” said Rita, who seemed more composed now. “It’s been a long time, and I always thought I was over my dad’s disappearance, but this was a big surprise, and it’s going to be a big surprise for my brother, too.”

Odelia took out her phone and showed Rita a picture of the skeleton she’d taken.

The woman sat stony-faced for a moment, then burst out, “Oh, my poor daddy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Odelia, then flicked through to the picture of the brooch she’d taken. “Do you have any idea what this could be? It was found at the same spot.”

Rita took Odelia’s phone, and pinched the picture out with her fingers, making it bigger. “It looks like a brooch of some kind,” she said.

“It is. It looks very valuable. Diamonds, probably.”

Rita shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before. Definitely not ours. Dad was a gardener, and Mom was a stay-at-home mom until after he disappeared. We weren’t rich. And definitely not diamond-brooch rich.”

“So you have no idea how it could have ended up buried along with your father?”