Charlaine Harris - Dead Over Heels

“Yes,” I said happily. “Thanks a lot, Angel. I hope you bought yourself something?”

Angel looked proudly embarrassed. From her Marcus Hatfield bag she pulled a maternity T-shirt in white and blue, a white maternity blouse, and a black jumper.

“Oh, they’re pretty. Are pants going to be a problem?”

“Sure are,” she said, perching on the edge of my desk and refolding her purchases. “I’m too tall for all the pants and about four fifths of the dresses I tried on. This jumper’ll have to do.”

“You need a dress soon?” I asked. I’d never known Angel to wear a dress.

“Yes. The funeral,” she explained. “Jack Burns. You know?” And she made a graphic tumbling motion with her long thin hand, culminating in a splat on the surface of my desk.

“When is it?”

“Within a week. They’ll have the body back by then.”

“And you’re going?”

“I feel like I ought to, somehow,” Angel said. “I knew him, too. You know, besides the ticket thing.”

I tried not to stare. “No. I didn’t know that.”

“He had started coming to the Athletic Club in the evenings, getting on the treadmill. He knew I lived out by you.”

“He talked about me?”

“Yeah,” she said casually, slipping her hand through the plastic grips of the shopping bag. “He had a bee in his bonnet about you, Roe. Well, see ya later.” And she strode out, golden and tall and lean, and for the first time since I’d met her, radiantly happy.

When I came in to work the next morning, I was not feeling exactly cheerful. The discussion with Sam the day before had gone about as I’d expected it to go, Beverly stoutly denying she was difficult to work with, accusing me of many things, all but saying that had she had my education she would now have my job. That may have been true, but it was not the issue we were there to discuss. Even if I’d agreed with that assumption, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

After an upsetting forty-five minutes, during which nothing had been settled and Sam’s hair had turned a little grayer right before my eyes, I’d gone to pick up Madeleine at the vet. They’d gotten the blood sample and sent it to a lab, Dr. Jamerson had told me with determined cheerfulness, and he expected to get a reply from the lab in a few days, maybe a week. I’d loaded Madeleine in my car with the strong feeling that the vet and his staff wouldn’t have minded a bit if the hypothetical drugger had used something stronger and more lethal, or perhaps tied that bow a little tighter.

Somehow I’d expected Dr. Jamerson to have the answer ready right then-had Madeleine been drugged or had she not?-and not knowing had thrown me even further off course. As Madeleine yowled on the way home, I had found myself thinking of getting a dog, a medium-sized stupid one who was everyone’s friend. A mutt with brown rough hair and a black muzzle… but Jane Engle, who’d left me Madeleine and a heck of a lot of money, had somehow astral-projected her strongly disapproving face right into my consciousness.

So I trudged into the library’s back door feeling dispirited. At least Angel had been out running this morning as I was driving in to town. She’d grinned and waved at me. A smiling Angel-and one with a bulging abdomen-was something I would have to get used to. I smoothed my own oversized orange T-shirt over my stomach; I was wearing orange leggings, too, and there was a big gold sun on the front of my tee. I was hoping the children would think it a cheerful outfit. I’d pulled my hair back with an orange-and-gold barrette, and I was wearing my gold-framed glasses. Just a blaze of color, that was me.

“Who was that woman who came in to see you yesterday?” Perry asked, as I stowed my purse in my locker. He was using the microwave to make hot chocolate, which he drank regardless of the outside temperature; he had quite a sweet tooth, though by his leanness you wouldn’t have guessed it.

Here I was, I thought wryly, glowing all over the place, and as usual, I was being asked about… my bodyguard.

“Angel Youngblood.”

“She’s not local.”

“No. She’s from Florida.”

“Married?”

Well, well, well. “Very,” I said firmly. “And a black belt in karate, as is her husband.”

Perry didn’t seem dismayed by this news. “She’s just stunning,” he said. “I could tell by the way she walks that she’s an athlete. And her coloring is so unusual.”

“Yep, she’s gold,” I answered, burrowing in my locker for a tube of breath mints. I’d had this conversation with many men (and some women) about Angel. “I thought you were pretty tight with Jenny Tankersley?”

“Oh, we’re dating,” Perry said casually, though his mother Sally had told me they were all but engaged.

Jenny wouldn’t have been pleased to hear Perry dismiss her so cavalierly, from what I’d heard of her. She’d been married for a few years to a man who ran his own crop-dusting service, and when Jack Tankersley had made a fatal mistake regarding plane altitude one summer, Jenny had ended up selling the business and doing very well for herself. She’d stayed on as general dogsbody for the three pilots who’d bought it, doing every task from answering the phone to ordering supplies to making out the checks, and occasionally she flew herself, as she had with her husband.

Perry seemed drawn to strong women.

“Your friend Angel must be the woman Paul was talking about last night,” Perry said, stirring his Swiss Miss with a plastic spoon. I was standing awkwardly, my weight on the foot closest to the door, waiting to terminate this conversation so I could get to my area, though I was dreading seeing Beverly. I had a kindergarten class coming in fifteen minutes, and I’d left a note requesting yesterday’s volunteer to cut out twentytwo spring flowers, one for each child to write his or her name on, to stick to the ends of the bookshelves. Hopefully, each child would bring a parent into the library to see the flower, and the child and the parent would both check out books. I had to get out the yellow stickum, and I had to count the flowers…

“You had supper with your mom’s ex?” I said with some surprise.

“Paul and I have always gotten along. He’s been more like a father than an uncle to me. Especially since I’ve only seen Dad a few times in my whole life,” Perry added with understandable bitterness.

The fact that Sally’s latest ex, Paul Allison, was the brother of Sally’s first ex, Perry’s father Steve, made the situation a little complicated emotionally. I was glad there wasn’t a third Allison brother, and I was willing to bet Sally was too.

“Jenny’s giving flying lessons now,” Perry said, determined to chat. “I’m taking, and so is Paul, and your friend Arthur Smith…”

“That’s great, Perry, and I want to hear more about it later,” I said insincerely. “I’ve got to get to work now, I’ve got a group coming in.”

But even as I banished visions of the Lawrenceton police force on air patrol, focusing instead on visions of little kids who were going to want some individual recognition in about ten minutes, Sam came out of his office and strode over to us looking very worried. Sam is not very good with people; he is a great manager of things, but not a great personnel guy. He’s become aware of that in the past few years, and whenever he has to say anything that is going to upset someone, he stews over it.

That’s why I didn’t expect anything awful; he was probably going to tell me the board had decided to hire a full-time children’s librarian and my job was terminated. I had a moment to think of this before he put his hand on my arm and said, “In view of our conference yesterday, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but Beverly Rillington was so badly beaten last night they don’t know if she’ll live.”