Dead Over Heels (23 page)

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Authors: Charlaine Harris

BOOK: Dead Over Heels
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The tension seemed to seep out of Jack as we watched, and the few remaining people scattered to reach their cars, trying not to look as if they were hurrying. Jack was crying as Martin and I turned away. I glanced over my shoulder to see Bess, Romney, and her brother make their way to Jack’s car, and leave.
I looked sideways at my husband. If there’s anything Martin hates worse than watching strangers pour out strong emotion, I have yet to discover it; that’s one reason I go to the movies with Sally or Angel. His lips were pressed together, his gaze straight ahead. Martin looked as if he were tempted to say, “Thanks a lot, Roe,” but was trying to forbear.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a certain bite in my voice, “for letting you know I wanted you to come.” I could hardly apologize for Jack’s behavior. I eyed him cautiously, waiting to see what his mood was.
“How many years will Lawrenceton recall that little scene?” he asked. I relaxed.
“Forever and ever. Do you think Jack Junior was right?”
“Yes,” said Martin after a second. “Yes, I think he was.”
I thought of the faces around the grave, all of them known, familiar. I shivered in the bright sun, and Martin put his arm around me.
“I have a feeling,” Martin said, looking straight ahead, “that we haven’t exactly been operating on the same wavelength lately.”
That seemed as good a way of putting it as any. I remembered Martin’s first wife telling me that Martin was not a man to talk about problems, and I felt he was doing the best he could, considerably better than I had anticipated.
“I’ve been working a lot of hours, and when I thought about it on the way home from Chicago, I realized I hadn’t been seeing you much, lately.”
This was going almost too well.
“I’ll try to be at home more,” Martin said briefly, but not without effort. “I guess I didn’t like it when you went back to work without talking to me about it first.”
The shadow of an oak branch tossing in the wind played over Martin’s face.
“Possibly,” I said very carefully, “we should talk to each other a little more.” We looked at each other cautiously and stiffly, like creatures from different planets who basically bore each other good will, but who did not speak the same language to explain that.
After a long pause, Martin nodded in acknowledgment, and we resumed the walk to his car. As we reached the Mercedes, shining whitely against the green carpet of grass, Martin swung me around to face him, gripped both my arms, and to my astonishment leaned me against the car and kissed me thoroughly.
“Well,” I said when I came up for air, “that was wonderful, but don’t you think we really ought to postpone this until we get home?”
“Everyone has left,” Martin said breathlessly, and I saw that that was true, for the most part. On the other side of the cemetery, the group of pallbearers (minus Jack Junior) was deep in conversation by Paul’s dark blue Chrysler, and I remembered all of them were police officers with murders to solve.
The funeral home staff had gone to work as soon as the widow had left. The casket was in the ground, the lowering device had been packed up, and the funeral director and another man were shoveling the dirt into place, while a third man loaded the folding chairs into the funeral home van. I knew from past experience that soon the dirt would be mounded, the flowers laid over it, the artificial turf removed. The tent would stay for a day or so. Then that would be gone; the cemetery would return to its slumber.
“I’ll see you at the house,” I told Martin, and rested the palm of my hand against his cheek.
As I bumped the Chevette along the gravel road leading out of the main gates of the cemetery, I passed Paul’s car. Paul and Lynn were the only ones left of the group that had been there a few moments ago; I raised my hand as I passed, and Lynn responded with a bob of her head, but she didn’t stop talking to Paul. Paul’s pallor and sharp features had never been more evident. I thought he was suffering from some distress. He had one hand extended, resting on the roof of his car, and that seemed to be the main thing holding him up. He didn’t acknowledge me at all by wave or smile, but fixed me in a stare that seemed to pin me like a captured butterfly. I was glad when I was by him and on the road home; I couldn’t imagine what he and Lynn could have been discussing that would make him look that distraught. I glanced once in my rearview mirror to see Lynn’s car leaving the front gate of the cemetery, turning left instead of right as I had done.
Perhaps Lynn, too, had come to the conclusion that the person who’d attacked Arthur was Perry, Paul’s former stepson and now his friend. That would account for the haggard expression on Paul’s bony face.
I thought of how upset he’d been last night, when Arthur had been stabbed; I thought of his unexpected choice of female companion, a woman with poor taste and judgment, so different from Sally. And yet, this was the woman whose rump he’d groped in front of me. I felt again that flash of uneasiness. That hadn’t really been Paul-like, had it? Paul had always been calm, controlled, and conservative.
He’d sure lost his calm the night before. His voice had certainly been ragged when he’d told Jesse he’d already radioed to the police station.
I braked and pulled over to the side of the road. Luckily, there was a shoulder; luckily, no one was behind me.
He’d called from his car
.
There
was
someone else who’d had a chance to hide a knife. Paul. The detective who’d guarded us till the other officers could get there.
But why? I raised my hands in front of me to cover my face so I could concentrate.
Why would Paul stab Arthur? They’d never liked each other much, but they’d worked together for years without actually harming each other. What could have precipitated . . . ?
Arthur had separated from Lynn recently. So?
And Arthur had shown up at the Pan-Am Agra banquet with an obviously unsuitable date, as, indeed, had Paul. But Arthur had eyed me all during the banquet. My husband had certainly noticed, and if he had, others would have too . . . why would Paul stab Arthur over Arthur’s lust for me? It just didn’t make sense.
Yes, it did. But it was hard to admit it to myself, because it seemed so bizarre, so ridiculous. It had been in front of me all the time, but I would not see it, I could not see myself as that kind of woman. Angel had suspected it all along: I remembered the look she’d given me the day Paul had deposited Beverly Rillington’s purse on her car hood, mistaking it for mine.
Paul had stabbed Arthur because Arthur had “dated” me for months, openly wanted me again.
Paul had attacked Beverly Rillington because Beverly threatened me in public, in front of Perry—who had relayed the scene to his former stepfather, uncle, and friend. Beverly’s purse was the evidence of Paul’s revenge for her slighting me.
Paul had hit Shelby over the head because Shelby was patrolling my yard when Paul wanted to—break in? Stare at my window? Serenade me in the rain with a mandolin?
I slapped myself in the cheek to keep concentrating, to keep from veering away from thoughts that made me sick. I laid my hands on the steering wheel. They were trembling violently. Think, Roe!
Jack Burns, my longtime enemy, a man known to publicly bad-mouth me, a man Paul had to see every day since he was Paul’s boss. The first death.
I’d been so fixated on Angel’s magnificence, I’d been unable to read the very clear message. Jack Burns, falling out of that airplane, head over heels, to land in my yard. Like the damn cat bringing me the mouse. A trophy.
See what I did for you?
Oh my God. And I’d left Martin at the cemetery with Paul. And in front of this obsessed man, Martin had just laid a kiss on me that had practically singed my hair.
Chapter Eleven
 
I
did the most reckless U-turn ever performed on a country road in Spalding County. I went as fast as I could bring myself to drive, and prayed heartily that this day above all days a county patrolman had set up a speed trap on this remote little road.
Of course that didn’t happen.
I had to think, I told myself frantically. I couldn’t just drive in there and make everything all right.
I slowed the car as I reached the cemetery. I swerved the Chevette across the road and into the ditch and didn’t care if it stayed there till it rotted. It was off the road.
As though my furious parking method hadn’t made any noise, I got out quietly and shut the door with great care. My car had entered the ditch a little above the southeast corner of the rectangular cemetery tract. The main gate was in the middle of the long east side, the two auxiliary gates were on the west, opening out onto a rutted dirt track that ran along outside the length of the fence to tie back into the county road forming the eastern boundary of the property.
From this corner, the trees obscured my view, but I could catch a glimpse of gleaming white up close to the north part of the cemetery where Jack had been buried; Martin’s Mercedes.
I shivered all over. I forced my brain to work, to plan.
The main gate on the east was too exposed, visible from most places in the cemetery. So I crept along the fence, through the high weeds, and tried not to let the throught of snakes cross my mind. Since church and funeral going had been the designated occasions when I’d dressed that morning, my clothes and shoes were hardly helpful in ditch-slogging or cemetery crawling. The rayon of the beige skirt caught on everything I passed, the low heels of the pumps sank into the wet earth, and my loose hair was collecting a fine assortment of seeds and burrs.
I reached the track at the southwest corner and followed it, ducking low while trying to run, one of the most difficult things I’d ever attempted.
Every three yards or so I’d stop to look and listen; I heard nothing, saw nothing, cursed the trees and bushes I’d thought so beautiful this morning.
I got to the first rear gate.
It was fairly exposed, though if Martin and Paul were still close to Jack’s grave, there were several tall plantings and grave markers between them and me. But I dropped to my stomach and crawled. I reached a good vantage point behind one of the few raised vaults in Lawrenceton, and peered from behind it.
My heart sank. Paul’s car was indeed still parked parallel to the west fence; I could see only the back of the tent left over Jack’s grave, but I could tell the hearse and the funeral home employees were gone.
I sidled up closer, hugging the granite of the vault. I confirmed what I already suspected—there were no other cars. Paul and Martin, alone here.
And me.
Then I saw them. Martin’s left side was toward me, his back against the thick trunk of a live oak, and he was looking several degrees whiter than he had when I’d left. His face was set in lines I’d seen only once before. This was how he must’ve looked in the war, I thought fleetingly.
Paul was standing with his right side to me, his back to his car, and he had a gun in his hand. He was talking to Martin; though I couldn’t hear him, I could see his mouth moving, and I saw from the way Martin had his head cocked that he was listening.
No weapon. I had no weapon.
I couldn’t run and tackle him; there wasn’t enough cover between the vault and where he was standing.
Would he shoot me?
Maybe not; maybe. He was supposed to love me, after all. But what if he did shoot, and his shooting me didn’t give Martin enough time to grab him? Neither of us would be saved.
I had to hurt Paul.
And by God, I wanted to.
But I hadn’t anything except my hands, and I didn’t think they’d do enough damage to stop him long enough.
What if the knife was still in his car? The thought burst on me like a beautiful firework.
After a moment I realized it was a stupid idea, but it was all I had. As I began my approach to his car, slightly to the rear of Paul’s peripheral vision, I realized just how dumb it was. But I considered for a second: he’d had to leave it there during the investigation at the community center. He’d had to leave it in there this morning, when he’d been at the police station, presumably; and he’d had to leave it in there for the funeral, because he couldn’t withdraw it during the service or later at the cemetery. So our whole salvation depended on whether or not Paul Allison had been too exhausted the night before to withdraw the knife and clean its hiding place.

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