Charlaine Harris - Dead Over Heels

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.

That 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 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.