Free The Midnight Tour by Richard Laymon Page B

and indecent.”
    “It’s supposed to look lewd and indecent. But we wanta have the basics covered. You can’t see them, can you?”
    “The basics?
    “Nipples and vagina.”
    “Ah. All right.” Dana sidestepped back and forth behind the cordon, even crouched a couple of times. “I think you’ve got them pretty well covered.”
    “Okay, geat.” Tuck stepped over the cordon and headed for the door.
    Dana hurried after her. “How do you think it happened? You lock the place up at night...”
    “Might’ve been a break-in. I’ll have to check the windows and stuff. Or maybe somebody came in with a tour and didn’t leave. You want to wait outside while I take a look around?”
    “Why?”
    “Might be somebody in here.”
    Dana had already realized that. Hearing Tuck say the words, though, gave her a cold feeling. “I’m supposed to go outside and let you handle him?” she asked.
    Tuck shrugged and smiled.
    “Not a chance,” Dana said.
    The smile grew to a grin. “You’re a pal. True blue, gutsy, and large.”
    Dana laughed.
    “Let’s do it,” Tuck said.
    Together, they made their way quickly through the ground level of the house. As they searched each room, Tuck talked with barely a pause. “Every once in a while, somebody gets the bright idea to spend the night. Which can be a real kick. I don’t exactly blame them, but it’s against the rules and we do a pretty good job of stopping them. The thing is, everyone gets a tape player and a set of headphones before they come in. Then they turn them in at the front gate when they leave. We count the players at the end of each day. If we don’t get them all back, we figure somebody’s unaccounted for and we go looking. Then we usually find the culprits trying to hide somewhere.”
    Stopping in the kitchen, Tuck tried the knob of a shut door.
    “Nobody got in this way,” she said. She took out her keys, unlocked the door, and swung it open.
    Dana, close beside her, gazed down the stairway into the darkness of the cellar.
    “Anybody down there?” Tuck called.
    “Very amusing.”
    “I know.” Leaving the door open, she resumed the search.
    “It’s really not all that difficult to pull an ovemighter in here. You just have to be smart enough. You need someone else to turn in the player for you, or else you turn it in yourself and then find a way to sneak back into the house. It’s not that tough if you use your head.”
    “Is it usually teenagers?”
    “Almost always. I’ve caught a lot of them trying, and they’ve all been teens. Sometimes, it’s one guy doing it on a dare. But I’ve found three or four trying it together. And quite a few boy-girl couples. There are plenty of places to hide, if you’re clever.”
    “And I bet you know them all,” Dana said as they returned to the foyer.
    “Most of them,” Tuck said.
    They started up the stairs.
    “No matter how careful we are, though, people still manage to slip through. We’ve had plenty of evidence of overnight visits. Since I’ve been here, we’ve found cigarette butts, graffiti, candy wrappers, condoms, tampons...”
    “Oh, nice.”
    At the top of the stairs, Tuck resumed her search but didn’t stop talking.
    “Assorted undergarments, mostly bras and panties. A pair of eyeglasses, a single shoe, keys and loose change that must’ve fallen out of somebody’s pockets. And assorted examples of human fluids and excretions.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Some people are pigs.”
    “I’ll say. But it sounds like they’re getting in here all the time.”
    “It really doesn’t happen terribly often. But when it does... You know what they do sometimes? They hide out till after dark, then open a door and let in some of their friends. That way, you might get five or six people running around in here at night.”
    After checking a couple of rooms, Tuck stopped at the closed door to the attic. She tried to twist its knob. “Nobody got in here,” she said, then took out a key,