"Elrod, P N - Vampire Files 09 - Lady Crymsyn E-Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elrod P N)

tiring, I often took advantage of the gift.
I materialized, annoyed and puzzled, in the bright light of the kitchen. "What
is it, a fire?" I asked, squinting.
"A call," Escott said, pointing to the phone on the wall by the pantry.
"Something wrong with Bobbi?" Past events made me more than a little anxious
about the welfare of my girlfriend.
"Miss Smythe is perfectly fine, so far as I'm aware. This has to do with that
club of yours."
"Oh." A whole different kind of worry for me. I hurried to snag up the earpiece.
"Yeah? Fleming here, what is it?"
"Mr. Fleming, we gotta problem." The voice belonged to Leon Kell, the foreman
I'd hired to take care of the renovations of the property I'd leased. He sounded
tense. "I donno how you wanna handle it, so I told the boys to back off until
you got here."
"What's the problem?"
"I don't wanna say over the phone."
I kept my cursing to myself. He'd apparently seen one too many gangster films.
"C'mon, Leon, the G-men don't wire phones of honest citizens," I lied. "What's
wrong?"
"The boys found something when they started knocking through that last cellar
wall you wanted cleared. It happened just before quittin', an' I told them to
hang around until you got here to tell us what to do."
Which meant a crew of half a dozen able-bodied men were all standing about with
their picks and shovels in hand getting paid extra by me to smoke cigarettes.
"Okay, then let them go for the night andЧ"
"That might not be such a good idea, considerin'."
"Considering what?"
"I don't wanna say, Mr. Fleming, an' if you come down here you'll know why I
don't wanna say it."
Shit and Shinola. This was a whole new side to Leon's otherwise sensible
character that I could have done without. "Okay, I'll be right there." I slammed
the earpiece back on its hook with more force than was really required.
"He strikes me as being a cautious soul," Charles Escott commented from his seat
at the kitchen table, where he'd heard my end of the conversation. Before him
was his modest evening meal, purchased on the way back from his office. A
sandwich and spuds tonight, making a change from his usual white cartons packed
full of Chinese food. "He gave you no clue to the problem?"
"Leon's crew found something in the cellar. He wouldn't say what."
Escott looked up, his gray eyes and lean face suddenly bright with interest and
grim concern. "It must be a body, then."
"Now where the hell do you get that?"
"If they'd ruptured a gas or water main, Mr. Kell would have been much more
forthcoming with information. If it had been buried treasure, he'd not have
called, period."
It was too early in the evening for me to deal with this kind of thing, I
thought.
"I'll accompany you, if you don't mind."
"You need to eat." It wasn't just his face that was lean. When he got busy on a
case Escott sometimes forgot about food unless someone bothered to remind him.
He didn't have a lot of friends, so that job usually fell to me. Besides,