Charlaine Harris - Dead Over Heels

“ ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who’s the fairest one of all?’ ” I quoted, trying to make light of the situation. “You want to take them home, make Shelby jealous? Or maybe he sent them.”

Angel shook her head morosely. “Having to answer questions about these flowers would just complicate things even more, and I know damn good and well Shelby didn’t send them.”

Our formal dining room lay between the living room and the kitchen, so I went through the large open archway to put a plastic mat in the center of the dining room table. Angel came after me, still frowning, and put the vase on the mat, wiping her hands on her jeans right afterward as if rubbing off the feel of the vase. We both stood and gazed at the flowers some more, but since they didn’t suddenly communicate who had sent them, or blow up, or do anything but sit there looking like flowers, this had limited appeal. I was on the verge of suggesting to Angel we go stare at the inside of the refrigerator when the doorbell rang again.

“Oh, gosh, it’s four o’clock,” I said, glancing at my wristwatch. “It must be Dryden and O’Riley.” I looked up at Angel. “I should be safe with them.” I was smiling, but she was not.

“I said I’d stay.”

“Okay.” I went to the door, my heels making a little click on the polished wood floor, a sound which almost always improved my spirits. My house was now about sixty-three years old, and we’d restored it to wonderful condition. It was just an old family home, not even my old family home, but I loved it.

I hadn’t reset the alarm system, so Dryden was admitted more rapidly than the florist’s deliveryman.

I looked behind him, but O’Riley was nowhere in sight. I was conscious of feeling glad, as I stood aside to let him in, that Angel had decided to stay. At that moment, Dry-den’s gaze lighted on her, and his mouth yanked up at one corner, an enigmatic twitch I was unable to interpret. It could have been anything from deep admiration for such a fine specimen of womanhood to irritation that I’d asked someone else to sit in on our conversation.

“You’re by yourself,” I said, since I’ve never been afraid to state the obvious.

“O’Riley’s on another interview,” he said, pushing his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses back on his nose. As if the gesture were contagious, like yawning in a meeting, I pushed mine back, too, and we stared at each other solemnly.

“Please have a seat,” I told him. “This is Angel Youngblood. She was in the backyard when Jack Burns fell, too.”

“Thanks for saving us a trip out here,” Dryden said, and I still couldn’t read his expression. He must have recognized Angel as the woman with me in Dr. Zelman’s office in the morning. He must have read all the police reports, and must have known already about Angel’s presence during the free fall of Jack Burns. Yet he didn’t seem interested.

I was getting more and more confused by John Dryden.

He finally sat on the couch, and Angel and I picked single chairs opposite him. He turned down my ritual offer of coffee or iced tea, though it was a warm day outside and his suit jacket must be hot.

I looked at Dryden closely for the first time. He was big, and square-shouldered, and husky, but not fat, not at all. His eyes were blue behind the glasses, and if he had any gray hair, his light blond hair color concealed it. Of course it was cut very short, as I’d always been led to believe FBI agents wore their hair-if he was an FBI agent-and it lay on his head as smooth as polish. The only other man I knew with hair that blond was Detective Arthur Smith, once my significant other, now married and a father. Lately when I’d run across Arthur his eyes had been hungry. Suddenly I wondered if he’d sent the flowers.

I guess I got lost in conjecture, for a loud throat-clearing brought me back to the here and now with a jolt. Angel and Dryden were both waiting for me to say something.

I sighed. “Excuse me, I wasn’t paying attention. Could you repeat that?”

“Do you know how to fly an airplane?”

I laughed at the idea. “No,” I said, since he obviously wanted an answer on the record. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in the cockpit of a plane.”

“What about you, Mrs. Youngblood?”

“I had a few flying lessons in Florida,” she said calmly. I noticed Angel’s long fingers were resting across her flat stomach. It was incredible to me that a child could be in such a small space, invisible and unknown to anyone around Angel. What an amazing thing to carry inside you; the other choices were so mundane or deathly, like a cold, or cancer, or appendicitis…

I had been drifting again.

“… you remember the name of your instructor?”

“Bunny Black. She was the owner of this little flying school, Daredevil… but we had to move and I never had another chance to get my pilot’s license.”

Dryden was jotting all this down, which was plain ridiculous, since Angel had been standing, both feet very much on the ground, while the plane had been absolutely up in the sky.

I said as much, politely.

He shrugged, and continued to scribble.

If he was this exasperating at home, his wife would take a meat cleaver to him one of these days. I leaned over slightly to check his left hand. No ring. Well, I wasn’t surprised.

Suddenly he looked up from his notebook, his eyes unexpectedly sharp and blue. We stared at each other for what seemed like a very long moment.

I eased back against the chair with an uneasy feeling I’d just contacted Mars.

We continued trolling drearily over the horror of yesterday, with Angel and me unable to add a scintilla of information to what we’d already told the county people. I began to be sorry I couldn’t suddenly recall some amazing fact to tell him. “I just remembered! I had a camera in my hand and I think I clicked the button just as the pilot leaned out of the window of the plane!” I bet that would change the expression on Dryden’s face…

Shoot, I’d done it again.

“About your relationship with Jack Burns, Ms. Tea-garden…” Dryden was saying, and I snapped to attention in a very big hurry.

I couldn’t help glancing over at Angel. Her eyes narrowed, she was looking at Dryden carefully, as if deciding where her first blow would fall.

“I never had a relationship with Jack Burns,” I said flatly.

“So it’s not true that he expressed hostility to you publicly on at least two occasions?”

“I didn’t count,” I said flippantly, and was instantly sorry. “Truly, Mr. Dryden,” and I abruptly remembered police remarking in some article I’d read that suspects invariably were lying when they prefaced a statement with “To tell the truth,” or “Honestly.” “To the best of my recollection, Mr. Dryden, I hadn’t spoken to Jack Burns in over two years, so I don’t think you can say that we had a relationship.” Jack Burns had just seen me in the vicinity of too many corpses to suit his strong police sense. He’d felt I just about had to be guilty of something.

But I didn’t want to try to explain this. And I didn’t feel I should have to.

“Mrs. Youngblood, you live in the garage apartment over there?” Dryden pointed with his pencil to the garage, clearly visible out the south windows of the living room.

Angel nodded.

“You rent from Ms. Teagarden here?”

“We live there rent-free in return for helping Roe and Martin.” Angel looked completely relaxed, completely blank. She just almost wasn’t there at all.

“Helping?”

Angel raised her eyebrows very slightly. “We help with the yardwork, I help Roe with her housework, we do all the things you need an extra person to do. Martin travels a lot, and it works out conveniently for Roe.”