Dead Over Heels (3 page)
Authors: Charlaine Harris
“The last time I saw Jack Burns was two years ago, about the time I met my wife,” Martin said calmly. His fingers dug into the tight muscles of my neck and I tilted my head back.
“And you, Mr. Youngblood?”
“Hadn’t ever met him.”
“You weren’t mad about your wife getting a ticket?”
“If you park seven inches from the curb, you gotta take what’s coming to you.”
Padgett Lanier’s pale face had a tendency to flush easily. We watched now with some trepidation as he turned a tomato red. The sheriff dismissed us curtly, and turned his attention to the search his men were making in our yard. I wanted to beg them not to trample my poor little just-plowed garden, but I decided that would be unfeeling.
With the passage of a couple of hours, supper had become just possible. I called the Youngbloods’ apartment to ask Shelby and Angel if they wanted to share our meal, but Angel said she’d rather lie down than eat, and Shelby didn’t want to leave her.
Martin and I had pork chops, fried green tomatoes (a rare indulgence), Waldorf salad, and I’d made some biscuits. But we were just picking at the food. Martin had been quiet throughout the meal, which was unusual. Normally, we talked to each other at the table, before we went about our separate pursuits in the evening. (Sometimes they were mutual pursuits, but that usually came later. About bedtime.)
Our house felt very quiet after the onslaught of county and city police. We hadn’t had that many people around since the last year’s Christmas party.
“Roe, I’m worried about this,” Martin said finally. His pale brown eyes focused on me; Martin looks into the eyes of the people he’s talking to. That can be intimidating, or exciting.
“I know. I am, too, of course.”
“Not just Jack Burns being killed, but him being dumped here.”
“Of course,” I said again, not understanding what Martin was getting at.
“As Sheriff Lanier pointed out, people know that you and he didn’t get along.”
“But I was absolutely, provably on the ground when he landed. So I couldn’t have done it,” I said dismis sively. “Besides which, I can’t fly a plane.”
“There’s something wrong about it.” Martin was having some problem formulating his thoughts, unusual for him. He’s used to expressing himself quickly and decisively in front of a lot of people.
I didn’t want to say “Of course,” again, but that was what I was thinking.
“How long has it been since you talked to him?” Martin asked.
“The sheriff asked me that this afternoon. The best I can recall, I haven’t seen Jack to speak to since . . . two and a half years ago at the Anderton house. Same as you.” The day Martin and I had met. He smiled at me now, warmly but briefly, to show me he, too, remembered that day very well.
“Did you think Angel reacted normally today?” Martin said suddenly.
“No, I don’t think so at all,” I said, glad he’d said it instead of me. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Angel’s not one to flinch away from anything unpleasant, and she has the strongest stomach of anyone I know. For some reason, this just threw her for a loop.” And I remembered Jack Burns rotating in the air, and was sorry I’d used that expression. I put my napkin by my plate and pushed the plate away.
“Something’s up with her,” Martin said. “I could tell Shelby was worried, too. And I could swear he’d never heard this story about the ticket.”
“Would you mind doing the dishes tonight?”
“No.” Martin seemed glad to shake off whatever dark thoughts he’d been having. “Are you going out? Is it Friends of the Library night, or some church meeting?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got to go pay my condolences to Bess Burns.”
“Roe, do you think that’s wise?”
“I’ve always liked her, even if I didn’t like him. I’ve gotten to know her at Friends meetings.”
Since I’d resumed working at the library on a part-time basis, I’d met everyone who worked there as a volunteer. And Bess Burns, since she’d retired from teaching, was one of our best workers.
Martin continued to look at me in a troubled way, but he nodded. “I don’t mind doing the dishes,” he said. “Have you fed that cat yet?”
“I’ll do it before I go,” I promised. Martin and Madeleine, the fat old cat I inherited from a friend, have a touchy relationship at best. Madeleine’s favorite perch is the hood of Martin’s Mercedes-Benz, and Martin is very proud of that car. We even got doors installed on the garage and we check to be sure they’re closed every night, but we have to search for Madeleine before we do.
I went up the stairs in a hurry, mentally selecting my visit-to-the-widow outfit. Not black, I wasn’t a member of the family . . . navy. My new navy blue dress with the white trim. I’d just bought it at Short ’N Sweet in Atlanta—a petite shop, I’m four eleven—and I glanced at the label, gloating over the smaller size I’d been buying lately, before I pulled it over my head.
Living with a health- and exercise-conscious man like Martin, and having the athletic Angel as a companion, had had a happy result as far as my figure was concerned. I’d even gone to the beauty shop my mother patronizes, Clip Casa, and gotten Benita to streak my hair. It took hours, since it’s thick, tightly wavy, and halfway down my back. But the result was worth it. Overall, what with being happy with Martin and secure financially, I looked and felt better than I had at any time in my life.
After wiggling into pantyhose—a process I wouldn’t let Martin watch—I slid my feet into pumps and pulled my frivolous streaky hair back with a barrette. I fed Madeleine hastily, grabbed my food offering from the refrigerator, and backed out my old Chevette, a car Martin detests almost as much as he detests Madeleine’s paw prints.
Though we live a mile out of town, I can almost see the back of my mother’s house from my own backyard, and the Burns home was only one street south of hers. But it was a street that made a lot of difference; Mother’s home on Plantation was a roomy two-story with a large lot, and Bess and Jack owned a fairly modest three-bedroom ranch.
There were two cars parked in front of the Burns home, one of them a familiar blue Lincoln Continental. It would have taken Mother five minutes to walk, but she would never willingly arrive anywhere flushed with exertion. Mother was actually coming toward me with a bowl in her hand as I got out of my old car, clutching my own dish.
“What you got there?” I asked.
“A cold pasta salad. It’s all I had in the house to make.”
My mother, Aida Brattle Teagarden Queensland, is a slim, husky-voiced Lauren Bacall look-alike. She is also a very successful Realtor, and a few short years ago she married John Queensland, a retired businessman. Since then, she’s become a stepgrandmother a couple of times. Once the shock wore off, she’s enjoyed it.
I peered through the plastic wrap. “Looks good.”
“Thanks. I see you brought your Waldorf salad. Well, are you going to ring the doorbell?”
I did so, and the door swung open after the correct interval. The Burns’s neighbor to the right, Marva Clerrick, had on her formal smile. It changed into a less strained one when she recognized us.
“Am I glad to see you!” she exclaimed in a violent whisper. “The strangest people are here talking to Bess! I have no idea what’s going on!”
Marva, an athletic extrovert and the wife of my sometime boss, Sam Clerrick, was one of the most popular teachers at Lawrenceton High School and a good friend of the recently retired Bess Burns. Marva had been aptly named by parents who must have had some premonition that Marva would be able to cook, teach English during the week and Sunday School at Western Hill Baptist Church, bring up two very good girls, and cope with the moody Sam. In the summer, her off-season, Marva taught swimming at the local pool and led rug-hooking classes at Peachtree Leisure Apartments.
For Marva to be confounded by a situation, it must be strange indeed. Of course, we were agog.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a stage whisper.
“There are two men here I’ve never seen before in this town,” Marva hissed back. “And to fall out of a plane! How could that happen by accident? What was Jack doing up in a plane?”
“I hate to bring this up, but I think Jack was already dead when he came out of the plane,” I said hesitantly. No one had asked me not to tell, and if Mother found out from another source she’d never forgive me.
“Already dead?” my mother said. She and Marva stared at me with twin expressions of distaste, fascination, and horror.
“He sure looked like it,” I said, involuntarily seeing the body turning in the air. “Of course, someone else was flying the plane.”
“Oh, girl, you don’t mean you
saw
it?” Marva asked breathlessly.
saw
it?” Marva asked breathlessly.
I nodded, surprised at this failure of the rumor mill.
“I heard it was that young woman that lives in your apartment out there, the gal with all the muscles,” Marva said indignantly.
“Oh, we were both out in the backyard.”
“Did you see the airplane, too?” Mother asked.
I shrugged. “It was just a little ole plane, red and white. I didn’t notice any of the numbers on it.” It would be hard to find someone who knew less about airplanes than I did.
“I can’t believe it, in our little town,” Marva said, forgetting to whisper. “Maybe it was somebody Jack had sent to prison?”
Mother and I shrugged simultaneously, and shook our heads to back the shrug up.
“Well, see what you make of this situation here, and let me know,” Marva said. “I’ve been minding the door for an hour now, but I have to go home soon, I’ve got bread coming out of the oven and I don’t know if Sissy will remember to get it out of the loaf pan after ten minutes’ sitting.”
“Where is Bess?” my mother asked directly, tired of all this hissing by the front door.
“Straight through,” Marva said, nodding her head at the door at the rear of the foyer. “The kids haven’t gotten here yet, but she’s talked to both of them on the phone. They have long drives.” I remembered the Burns children, Jack Junior and Romney, went to different colleges in different states.
“We’ll put our bowls in the refrigerator before we talk to her,” Mother told Marva firmly.
Bess’s kitchen looked just like mine usually did, basically clean but messy around the edges, with bills sticking out of a letter caddy on the wall and an open box of teabags by a pitcher. Another neighbor was working out her helpful impulses by wiping the counter, and we smiled and nodded at each other in a subdued way.
I opened the refrigerator to put in my offering. It was half-full of similar dishes, plastic-wrapped food that people had brought to Bess Burns in her time of trouble, to help feed her surely incoming family. By noon tomorrow, there would be no available shelf space.
Somehow reassured by the correctness of the refrigerator, Mother and I made our way to the den at the back of the house.
Bess was sitting on the couch with two big men flanking her. I’d never seen either man before. They wore suits, and ties, and grim expressions, and as the slim red-haired widow blotted her face with a white handkerchief, they offered her no comfort.
“We’re so sorry,” Mother said, in a perfectly calibrated tone of sympathy calculated not to start the tears again.
“Thank you,” Bess said. Bess’s voice was almost expressionless from exhaustion and shock. The lines across her forehead and from nose to mouth looked deeper, and traces of red lipstick stood out garishly on her pale face. “I appreciate you coming, and Aurora, too,” Bess said with great effort.
I bent awkwardly across the coffee table to give her a hug. Bess, who had only retired at the end of the previous school year, was still wearing her schoolteacher clothes, one of those relaxed cotton knit pants sets with the loose tunic. Hers was blue with a giant red apple on the front. It seemed ludicrously cheerful.
“Do they know why, yet—?” my mother said, as if she had a perfect right to ask.
Bess actually opened her mouth to answer, when the blond man to her right held up a hand to silence her. He stared up at us from behind tortoise-shell-framed glasses.
“It’s still under investigation,” he said heavily.
Mother and I glanced at each other.
Mother was not to be bested on her own territory. “I am Aida Queensland, a neighbor,” she said pointedly. “I don’t believe I’ve met you?”
“I’m John Dryden from Atlanta,” he said, which was an answer that told us nothing.
I didn’t like people being rude to my mother.
“You would be Mr. Pope, then,” I said to the other man, who was darker and younger.
“Pope?” He stared at me curiously. “No. I’m Don O’Riley. From Atlanta.”
Though Mother was trying to give me a censorious face, she was really stifling a smile.
“Bess, why don’t you come with us out to the kitchen?” I said. “Show us what we should put out for you and your friends to eat.” They clearly weren’t friends, and whoever they were, they were upsetting Bess even more than she already was. “It’s so late, and I’m sure you haven’t had a thing.”
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