Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(77)

“What she needs,” he told the others, “is a good night’s rest. What she needs is to put the entire episode behind her.”

Before she’d finished even half the tea, Olivia began to yawn then she toddled off to the bedroom claiming she’d stretch out across the bed for a few minutes to rest herself. When the sound of snores echoed through to the living room, the neighbors left telling Ethan Allen to be sure to double-bolt the door behind them.

“Okay,” the boy answered, although that was not at all what he intended.

By midnight the building was so quiet that a passerby would believe every resident tucked beneath the covers and sound asleep; which they were, except for one small boy. While the rest of the residents slept, he was tiptoeing down the back stairs. Ethan Allen knew what he needed and he knew just where to find it.

Three of them were in Mister Porter’s storage bin. He’d seen them there, less than a week ago, squeezed in between a carton of books and a broken coat tree; but of course, there was no knowing whether or not they were in working order. Pushing the thought of such a disastrous possibility from his head, Ethan Allen shimmied across the partition holding Seth Porter’s belongings back from those of Bessie Morgan. He landed with a hard thud, waited a handful of minutes to make sure the sound had gone undetected, then pulled a flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. At first it appeared the guns were gone, vanished from sight, but such wasn’t the case for once he pushed aside a carton of sweaters which had recently been added to the mix, there they were, standing like a trio of soldiers lined up for battle—two Browning shotguns, one a single barrel, the other a side by side double, and a Winchester rifle.

Ethan Allen took hold of the Winchester—any one of the three might have suited his need, but a rifle was something special. A rifle was way more powerful than a shotgun and ten million times more accurate than the scattergun he’d used to shoot groundhogs. A rifle could hit square in the heart of what a person was aiming at and kill it dead. The Winchester was a gun that meant business. He released the lever action and pushed down—the chamber was empty.

If Seth Porter had a perfectly good Winchester he had to have bullets, Ethan reasoned as he began rummaging through carton after carton of the man’s belonging. He removed the books one by one, then took the time to flip open each cover and check for a supply of cartridges that might be hidden in a nest of hollowed out pages. When the books failed to produce anything, he began searching through boxes of games, after that it was cartons of kitchenware and numerous valises filled with clothing; time after time he bypassed a lone carton marked, Melissa’s things, dubiously shaking his head as he moved on to another carton with a more promising name. He rummaged through a barrel marked Camping, then tore into a box marked Sporting goods, but neither contained cartridges to fit the Winchester, in fact, they contained no cartridges at all.

As a last resort, he opened the carton of Melissa’s things; with a yellowed wedding gown right on top, it started out pretty much as expected. He pulled the gown from the box and set it aside. By now Ethan Allen was feeling pretty discouraged, having a Winchester with no bullets wouldn’t be much help—it could maybe scare the poop out of some knucklehead, but the Cobbs weren’t knuckleheads and they didn’t scare easy; matter of fact, they didn’t scare at all! He hauled out a swatch of lace that had fallen from the gown then a music box which tinkled a few notes and stopped.

Maybe, Ethan thought, he’d be better off disappearing, but if the Cobbs couldn’t catch hold of him, they might take it out on Olivia, seeing as how she was his grandma. No, he decided, he’d not run. “No more,” he grumbled as he thought back to how he’d trembled like a scared rabbit as he watched Scooter beat his daddy to death. On sleepless nights he could still hear his daddy’s screams. No, he decided, this time there wasn’t gonna be any running off, he was gonna stay and fight. He dug his way through a number of other dresses, a book of poetry and a bald-headed doll baby, then found what he’d been searching for, well, not exactly what he’d been searching for, but close enough. At the very bottom of Melissa’s things was a full box of twenty gauge shotgun shells—way too big for the Winchester, but they’d fit the double barreled Browning. The shotgun wasn’t Ethan’s first choice, because with several strips of black tape circling the butt end of the stock, it seemed somewhat worse for the wear, but a worn out shotgun with shells was a lot better than an empty Winchester.

He set the rifle back in place and took hold of the double-barreled Browning. Shoving the lever to the right, he cracked the gun open and checked the breech—it also was empty. Ethan removed two shells from the box, loaded them into position and then put the remainder in his pocket.

He returned up the back stairs and slipped into the apartment with Olivia never having been any the wiser.

He’d expected to climb into bed and sleep the sleep of a man in control of things, a man who was well-prepared for whatever might be headed his way; but instead, he tossed and turned with worries mounding like anthills in his brain. First off, he reasoned, he wasn’t all that prepared—he didn’t even know for certain Seth Porter’s relic of a shotgun would fire, and then there was always the chance that when he pulled the trigger, the gun would blow up in his face. Old guns were known to do that. Tommy Tristan’s daddy was killed in just such a way; he’d gone hunting one morning, promising to bring home a rabbit for stewing, and instead came home dead. An old shotgun, that’s what did him in.