Killer Chameleon Read Online Free PDF Page B

money, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
    Janeece. I checked the time and wondered when she’d get home. There would be no point in waiting around for her. She might have gone shopping, to the gym, anywhere. Janeece did what she wanted when she wanted, accountable to no one and enjoying it immensely. That would last for another few months before she would begin considering marrying her first husband again. They’d tried it twice, that is, after she had ditched the second husband, who’d turned out to be already married anyway. I wasn’t sure I understood my roomie’s definition of marital bliss, but that was her problem, not mine.
    I thought I heard her at the door and came out of the den to say hi just as the phone rang—a wrong number, but by the time I’d assured the caller that he had not reached Thrifty’s Rib House and hung up, she hadn’t come in. I opened the door in case she was loaded down. The hall was empty, the only sign of life a glimpse of red as the door to the stairs creaked closed.
    It was time to deal with boxes. I answered a call of nature, then went searching for my better slippers. The ones for every day were too ratty to be worn outside the apartment.
    I grabbed my keys and my Maglite and took the elevator to the basement, not one of my favorite places. It reminded me of a crypt, the twenty-five-watt bulb outside the storage units far too dim for anyone to see much clearly unless you were an owl.
    The elevator stopped at the first floor, which it did whether or not someone there had pushed the call button. The doors wheezed open onto pure chaos. The decorators were in full swing now, bellowing carols off-key while they jockeyed ladders into position and dangled ornaments from the branches of the tree. They’d obviously recruited help from friends as well as family; half of the faces I’d never seen before.
    Mr. Stanley, coming in from outside, raised his cane in a gesture for me to hold the elevator.
    â€œTake your time,” I called to him above the din of the carolers, and put my back against the rubber stop. “I’m going down, though.”
    He limped slowly across the lobby, his cane thumping against the marble floor. “Thanks, dearie,” he said loudly. “You’ll be a while down there. One of the dryers is on the fritz.”
    â€œNot a problem,” I bellowed back. “I’m heading for the storage units. How’s Mrs. Stanley?”
    â€œMiddlin’,” he said, stepping in. “This cold weather, doncha know.”
    He rode down with me, pressing the button for his floor as I got off. “You take care, now. Tell Miz Holloway I said hello.”
    â€œWill do,” I said, suppressing a grin. Janeece, a flirt from the day she was born, was a favorite of all the elderly men in the building.
    Relieved to hear one of the washers going in the laundry room at the far end of the hall, I turned left toward the opposite end. At least I wouldn’t be alone down here. I hurried toward the storage lockers, anxious to get in and out as soon as I could. Arranged along both sides of the narrow passageway, the cubicles were about five feet wide by nine deep, with solid side and rear walls and fronts of heavy chain metal so the contents were visible—or as visible as the dim bulb in each cell would allow.
    The one for my former unit was crammed with blanket and tool boxes, crates full of yarn, and pots of paints and brushes, testimony to Neva’s arts and crafts through the years. Janeece’s was across from it, jammed with as many clothes racks as she could get in, each groaning under the weight of her summer wardrobe swathed in plastic bags or tissue paper, the odor of moth balls and squares of cedar in assorted pockets pungent and stifling. Monster shoe racks took up most of the floor space, every niche containing a pair of spike-heeled sandals high enough to cause nosebleeds. And not a box in