Dead Over Heels (12 page)

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Authors: Charlaine Harris

BOOK: Dead Over Heels
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I wasn’t surprised, since I’d been sure I recognized the purse. But Angel drew in a sharp breath, the equivalent of a scream for those of us who don’t count on danger as a way of life.
“Maybe we’d better go in and talk,” Paul said, and I didn’t think he was making a suggestion.
“No.” My mother would be arriving with troops if I didn’t get home and call her, and there was no sense in making more of this than necessary.
“What?” Paul had a puzzled expression, as if he hadn’t quite understood what I meant by “No.”
“When I drove into the parking lot and stopped by Angel’s car, the purse wasn’t there. When Angel went by my car, the purse wasn’t
there
. And what a senseless thing for either of us to do, put Beverly’s purse out. We might as well go on and put the handcuffs on ourselves! Gee, here we are at the Law Enforcement Complex, let’s put incriminating evidence on the hood of a car?”
Paul’s thin mouth curved in a reluctant smile. It was the first time I’d had a glimpse of what Sally had seen in him.
“Okay, Roe. But if you didn’t leave the purse on Mrs. Youngblood’s car, and Mrs. Youngblood didn’t, who did? Why?”
Angel looked down at me, and I knew our blank gazes were a match. But Angel could see when a thought reached my brain, and shook her head, a tiny gesture as firm as a hand clapped over my mouth.
“We’re not detectives,” I said, looking at Paul. Angel unwrapped the cookie from the bag and started to eat it. Since her mouth was full, she had to shrug.
Though Paul fussed at us some more, he eventually hooked a pencil under the purse strap and carried it into Spacolec. Angel had finished the cookie and opened the Tostitos and the Coke.
“Someone has it in for you,” I observed.
“How do you figure that?” Angel asked around a Tostito.
“The flowers, sent to get you in trouble with your husband. The ribbon around the cat’s neck, to let you know you weren’t secure. The beating of Beverly Rillington after you had a standoff with her in the library. The placing of the purse on your car.”
“That’s the oddest thing,” Angel said. She gave me a look full of significance. And I couldn’t read it.
“Hell, it’s all odd!” I said, puzzled. “But you mean, because putting the purse out here was so open? Everything else could be done in the dark or long distance, so to speak.”
Angel looked away and finally nodded.
I had to restrain myself from asking her to explain all this Enigmatic she was giving me. We’d known each other for two years now, been neighbors for that time, and I thought we were as close friends as we could be, given the fact that she was my employee and we had very different characters. I did at least know Angel well enough to be sure that she would tell me what she was thinking when she was good and ready, and not a moment before.
By the look she was giving me, I could tell Angel thought I was being as dense as I thought she was being secretive. Mutually baffled and exasperated, we got in our respective cars and went home, Angel obeying the speed limit meticulously all the way. I followed behind her, driving automatically. My state of mind might best be described as confused.
I couldn’t help but remember Arthur’s long absence, his return with the coffee. Had Arthur Smith planted that purse on the hood of Angel’s car while she was in the market? If he thought discrediting Angel and perhaps by extension her husband and mine would somehow induce me to think more kindly of him, Arthur was not just mistaken, but seriously deranged.
I trailed slowly into the house, just in time to hear the phone ring. I dashed down the hall, past the stairs, to the second door on the right leading to our study/ library/television room.
“What now?” my mother asked in her cool voice. But I could hear the mixture of anxiety and exasperation underlying it, the two emotions that seemed to dominate in her dealings with me.
I glanced at the desk clock; of course, it was four on the dot.
“It’s okay. I just got in from Spacolec.”
“I think it’s outrageous, them asking you to come in to that place. They should have driven out to your home or talked to you in that new wing you gave the library.”
“Mother!” No one was supposed to know I’d given the kickoff donation for the new staff area. “How’d you find out?”
“I have my ways,” she said calmly, without a trace of humor.
“Well, don’t you ever tell anyone else,” I said hotly. If my gift became common knowledge, it would be pretty hard for me to keep working at the library; that wasn’t logical, but it was true.
“Did that woman really get hurt badly, Aurora?” My mother was back on track, even if I wasn’t.
“Sam told me that she might die.”
“What a terrible thing. And since you had an argument with her the same day, I know what you must be feeling.”
She did, too. It was a milder version of having a fight with your spouse, who subsequently drives off and has a car wreck. That had happened when Mother was still with my father, when I was twelve. He’d left soon after, neck brace and all.
We talked about Beverly Rillington for a little longer, and then my mother asked me which policeman I’d talked to today.
I’d been dreading that question. “Arthur,” I told her reluctantly.
I swear, I could hear the phone line sizzle. My mother has never forgiven Arthur for dating me and then dumping me to marry Lynn Liggett, who was visibly pregnant at the wedding. (Well, it certainly hadn’t been my favorite episode in the Life of Roe either, but I’d weathered it and eventually let it go.) God bless my mother, in some respects she was totally motherlike; anyone who made me suffer was in her black book forever.
“Roe, you stay away from that man,” she said, in her Absolute Last Word voice. “He has separated from his wife. Last week Patty showed him a townhouse over where you used to live, and he was moving in by himself. You don’t want to look as if you’re paying him any attention whatsoever.”
“I hope they work it out and get back together,” I said fervently. My suspicion that Arthur had called me in to the station to wave me in Lynn’s face was correct. I’d gotten over my initial rush of anger, and now felt simply appalled that Arthur would do something so low. I’d never seen that side of him, and I didn’t want to believe it had always been there.
As I microwaved a low-fat dinner I’d gotten at the grocery for just such an evening, I realized I wasn’t exactly looking forward to Martin’s nightly call. It was going to be hard to explain some of the things that had happened to me today, and harder still (actually impossible) to explain them in a way that didn’t make him angry at someone. And it would be futile anger, since he was too far away to act on it. Also, I didn’t want the peculiar incident of the ribbon on Madeleine’s neck to cause him concern.
But I don’t like to lie, and I’m not good at it.
Luckily for me, it was late when he called. He’d gone out to dinner with some other executives, and they’d made an evening of it. Martin is not much of a drinker, since he despises people who lose their control; but I could tell he’d had up to his limit. So he was sleepy and sentimental over the phone, and it was easy to tell him that I’d give him a rundown on the day’s happenings when he came home.
 
 
 
 
 
T
hat night I tossed and turned, suffering an unusual episode of sleeplessness.
I couldn’t track down the source of the anxiety that was keeping me awake.
The security system was on, so I knew no one could break in; but it was gusty and raining outside, and I could hear the wind moaning around the corner of the house. I would doze off, only to jerk awake with the feeling of having just missed something vital, something to which I should have been paying close attention.
Every time I woke up, I thought of something new to worry over, either Angel’s pregnancy and its effect on her marriage, or the bizarre episodes of the ribbon and the purse, or the sight of Jack Burns falling, falling . . . and Angel and Shelby would need a bigger place, they could never live in that glorified one-room apartment with a baby . . .
I got up to go to the bathroom, I went downstairs to get a drink of water, I worked a crossword puzzle, I finished the book I’d started in Dr. Zelman’s office.
At four-thirty, I gave up. I wrapped myself in the dark blue robe Mother had given me for Christmas, slid into my slippers, and went downstairs, officially up for the day. The coffeepot’s automatic timer hadn’t had a chance to kick in; I switched it to On and heard the comforting hiss of the water starting through the brewing cycle.
Perhaps the paper had come? Morning coffee just didn’t seem right without a newspaper. It was awfully early; I realized I really had no idea how early the Atlanta paper and the Lawrenceton paper landed in our driveway.
Tying the belt of my robe more securely around me, I stepped out onto the front porch. The rain was still coming down lightly, giving the air a sharp cool edge. I reached inside the door for an umbrella and unwisely opened it before I pushed out the screen door. Of course it got wedged in the doorway and I had to do an inordinate amount of pushing, angling, and cursing to get it through.
Going outside at such a strange hour in the mild cool rain was a little adventure. I needed a flashlight, too, but the umbrella incident had made me so grumpy I refused to be sensible. There was a huge strong automatic light in our backyard, but not one in the front; outside the range of the porch light the driveway was in darkness. I followed the stepping-stones leading to the right so I could walk down the driveway. We’d had it paved the year before: at least I wasn’t stumbling over gravel, but the asphalt was streaming with rain, and my slippers were getting soaked.
I went to the area where the Atlanta paper usually landed, and sure enough, there it was in a plastic sleeve. Feeling that virtue had been rewarded, I tucked it under my umbrella-holding arm and lifted the skirt of my bathrobe with the other. I turned to go back inside, happily confident that the coffee would be ready and that I had cinnamon rolls in the freezer I could pop into the microwave. The Lawrenceton paper would just have to wait until light.
I was concentrating on watching my feet as I transferred from the driveway to the stepping-stones, but something butted on the edge of my awareness. The light had been behind me as I left the house, but now that I was returning, I could see a few things I hadn’t noticed before; and one of the things I could make out was a bush planted where no bush had been the day before.
I paused on the seventh stepping-stone from the front porch. I tilted my head and stared, trying to puzzle out what I was seeing. A large dark heap, right in front of the foundation plantings . . . my slippers would get thoroughly soaked if I left the stepping-stones to investigate. I shifted my feet, peering with no better luck at the vague and immobile shape, and realized that my slippers were doomed.
I stepped gingerly onto the soggy grass, clutching the paper and umbrella.
Seconds later I’d dropped both.
The dark shape on my lawn was Shelby Youngblood. He was unconscious, lying on his side, wearing a dark raincoat with a hood. He was immobile because someone had hit him on the back of his head. When I pulled the hood away from his face, the hood was filled with blood.
I foolishly wasted seconds trying to arrange my umbrella to shelter the wound. Finally realizing I was acting like a woman with no sense, I tore into the house and hit 911 on the phone in the study. Once I’d explained to the calm voice on the other end what my problem was and where I was, I hung up and punched in Angel’s number. For some reason, I feared she was hurt too. But she answered, in the groggy normal voice of someone wakened at four forty-five by the telephone ringing.
“Come outside, now,” I gabbled. “Shelby’s hurt, but I’ve already called the ambulance.” My eardrum echoed with the sound of her receiver crashing down. I slammed down my own telephone and ran back outside, my heart and lungs in a race to see which could work fastest. But I had pulled open the right-hand drawer on Martin’s desk as I dialed Angel, and this time there was a flashlight in my hand.
I crouched by Shelby in the rain, which of course picked this moment to come down in torrents. Though anyone lit up by a flashlight in the dark is not going to look great, it seemed to me that Shelby was an especially bad color. I held the umbrella over him, wondering if there was anything I could do.
Well, I should see if he was still alive.
I slid my hand inside his raincoat, found that Shelby didn’t have a shirt on, and lay my hand on his chest. It was moving in and out, how deeply I couldn’t gauge; but Shelby was breathing, and at the moment that was all I cared about.
I’d been concentrating on him so hard that I didn’t hear Angel coming. Suddenly she was crouching on the other side of her husband. She was barefoot and in a nightgown, with a shirt of Shelby’s pulled over her. Her hair hung in a loose tangle around her narrow face.
“Is he breathing?” Her voice was sharp.
“Yes.”
“You called 911?”

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