Tiffany shook her head.
Arlo shook his head.
“Who, me?” Jerry said.
Haddon nodded gravely. “Good night to all,” he proclaimed, drawing himself up, “and to all a good night.” A moment later they heard a clatter as he stumbled against one of the wicker chairs on the patio.
“The man’s swacked again,” TJ said.
“Swozzled,” agreed Jerry. “One of these nights he’s going to fall in the fountain and kill himself on his two a.m. rounds.”
“He makes rounds?” Arlo asked. “At night? I knew he was an insomniac, but-”
“You don’t see him,” Jerry said. “Your window faces the other way. He prowls around till two or three in the morning, talking to himself and falling over stuff.”
TJ was shaking her head. “You know, it’s really not that he drinks that much. It’s the interaction with the medications he’s on that does it; that stuff for anxiety, or depression, or whatever he takes. I’m surprised he can see straight.”
“Now what in the world does he have to be depressed about?” Arlo asked. “We’re the ones who have to work for him.”
Jerry laughed. “If you had to be Clifford Haddon, you wouldn’t be depressed?”
“You certainly have a point there,” Arlo said, pressing his eyes with his fingertips. “Well, I guess I’d better get to bed too.”
“Not me,” Jerry said, stretching. “I left Forrest and his crew over in the annex with some six-packs and pizza, and I bet they’re still there. I know I could use a couple of beers.”
“God knows, so could I,” TJ said fervently.
“You can say that again,” said Arlo after a moment’s reflection.
Chapter Five
Whatever aura of mystery had hung over the storage enclosure the night before, it was not in evidence in the dusty, flat 9 a.m. sunlight of the next morning. The enclosure looked like what it was, a squalid, fifteen-square-foot pen crammed with the household and workplace castoffs of years. Most of it-the shabby, anonymous clothing, the moldy automobile cushions, the time-grayed newspapers-was peacefully disintegrating. Some-the broken toilet bowl, the warped plastic coat hangers-would be around for future generations of archaeologists to potter blissfully among.