Foursome, page 33
An edge in her voice. “Not very.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Not much.”
“Because you weren’t good at it?”
“No, because …” Nancy seemed to realize how sharply she’d spoken and toned down. “No, because I really wanted to play the saxophone, but the music director thought the sax was a ‘boy’s instrument,’ so I couldn’t.”
I thought back over the evening so far. “That also why you didn’t find the altar boy story funny?”
“Because I wasn’t eligible to be one?”
“Yes.”
“Probably.” Another glance, but this one full of warmth and heart. “God, could it be that I’ve fallen for a man who actually gets it without having to be beaten over the head with it?”
“Probably. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have fallen for me, right?”
“I retract the last implied compliment.”
We arrived in front of her house a few minutes later. There were empty spaces up the street, but given the weight of the bureau it seemed more sensible to double-park, which she did. Nancy went inside while I played with the bungee cords and the blanket. She came back with a long face.
“What’s the matter, Nance?”
“Drew Lynch is on the four-to-twelve.”
“Meaning he’s not here to help us with this.”
“He just swung on today. I should have called him, but I knew he’d been working days all week, and—”
I put up a hand. “Not to worry, we can handle it.”
“John, it is awfully—”
“Hey, Nance, it doesn’t weigh more than both of us put together, and besides, why do I do Nautilus if I can’t manage some stevedoring once in a while.”
“I don’t think this is exactly stevedoring.”
“Whatever. We’ll work with you on the upside and me on the down. There’s a carpet runner on the stairs, so we just have to slide it, and we can rest a little on each step and a lot on the landings. Okay?”
“Maybe we should just wait for Drew to get home.”
“And do what in the meantime, stand guard out here over a Civic with a dresser sticking out of its trunk?”
A smile toyed with the corner of her lips. “Hatchback.”
I smiled back. “Hatchback.”
“If you really think we can.”
“I do, but why don’t you take my jacket inside and change into shorts yourself so we can maneuver this thing more comfortably.”
“Good idea.”
She gave me a hug, took another look at the bureau, and trotted to the front door, returning changed with a pair of gloves for each of us.
“This pair should fit you. Drew uses them in the garden.”
We slid the dresser out of the car carefully, no scratches I felt or heard. Carrying it on relatively level ground wasn’t too hard, but I didn’t look forward to heaving it heavenward a step at a time.
We set the thing down so Nancy could prop open the front door, and again inside so she could close it. As she was doing the door, I surveyed the staircase. A lot steeper than I remembered from simply climbing it.
Rocking the bureau, I moved it enough so that Nancy could get on its upstairs side. We lowered the back of the dresser onto the carpet runner. It took a lot of pushing from my downstairs end to move the thing up just one step.
“John, this isn’t going to work.”
“Sure it is. We just have a problem with the friction coefficient of your carpet runner.”
She gave me the sort of withering look lawyers reserve for scientific information.
I said, “Tell you what. Go out and move the car to a legal space, then bring back the blanket.”
Nancy climbed over the bureau and left, returning two minutes later, blanket in hand.
“Okay, now what I want you to do is put the blanket on the next step, and we’ll use it as kind of a flat roller under the thing.”
We tried that. A little easier to move it up the second step.
“Nance?”
“What?”
“Let’s try it with the blanket again, but this time with the bureau on its side.”
“That won’t scratch it?”
“With the blanket, I don’t think so.”
We got the dresser on its side and made better, but still slow, progress as I had to recover the blanket every two steps and toss it back up to Nancy, the strain on my shoulder, back, and legs pretty impressive. We finally covered the rest of the steps to the first landing. Halfway home.
“John?”
“Yes?”
“My arms and legs are pretty tired.”
“Blame it on your desk job.”
We rested for five minutes, then started in again. It was harder after the rest, but we’d gotten only two steps from the top, from Nancy’s landing, when I heard her foot skid and her voice yell my name and her bottom hit the deck. The full weight of the bureau slammed into me, my left shoulder feeling as though someone had drawn a razor blade across guitar strings, my left knee buckling as I managed to stop the slide after only one step lost.
“John, are you all right?”
“My shoulder and knee aren’t great. You?”
“I think I’m just going to have a bruise on my rear end. What should we do?”
“Try to get this the rest of the way up.”
“Can you?”
“I think going up will be easier than sliding back down.”
She heard something in my voice that made her say, “John, thank you for this.”
Using my right shoulder this time, I managed to drive the dresser back up the remaining steps like it was a blocking sled on an inclined football field. At the top, we got it upright, and Nancy maneuvered around the thing to give me another hug.
“That was above and beyond the call of duty, sir.”
“I’ll remember that.”
When Nancy opened the apartment door, her gray-tiger cat scuttled out. Renfield was getting used to his rear legs not working quite right from an operation he’d needed on them, so he could move crablike pretty well. The sight of the bureau at first intimidated him, making him hide under the kitchen table. Then, once we had it against the wall in the bedroom, he couldn’t get enough of it, sniffing and rubbing against the carved legs.
I said, “A good thing you had his front claws removed.”
“Yes, but you know how they have to do that.”
“No.”
“They actually chop off the first knuckle of his toes.”
“Hope they won’t have to do that with me.”
“Why?” she said, slipping out of her shorts.
“Because of the grievous injuries I suffered on your staircase.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I mean it, Nance. This may have to go to court.”
“Forget it. The legal fees would eat you alive.”
“I could represent myself.”
A laugh.
I said, “Does that mean that if I represented myself I’d have a fool for a client?”
Nancy undid the buttons on her blouse. “John, anybody who represented you would have a fool for a client.”
“Care to kiss a fool?”
“And then some.” She opened the blouse and reached both arms up and around my neck. When she applied a little pressure on my left side, the shoulder twinged and the knee started to buckle again.
Breaking the kiss, Nancy said, “What’s the matter?”
“My shoulder and my knee can’t seem to take much weight.”
She canted her head. “Does that mean no hanky-panky for the assistant D. A. tonight?”
“That may depend.”
“On what?”
“On how much you remember about playing the clarinet.”
Nancy canted her head the other way. “John Francis Cuddy, I do believe that is the raciest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“The circumstances demand it.”
“So long as you never do.”
“Never.”
She smiled the great smile. “I think … a concerto, then.”
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1994 by Jeremiah Healy
cover design by Brendan Hitt
978-1-4532-5312-0
This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
THE JOHN CUDDY MYSTERIES
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
Jeremiah Healy, Foursome
