Charlaine Harris: Dead Over Heels

“I suppose the funeral date will be in the obituary in tomorrow’s paper?” my mother persisted.

He looked blank.

“I’m sure it will be,” he said.

We didn’t believe him for a minute.

“Jack Junior and Romney had better get home quick,” my mother said darkly as she slid her elegant legs into her car.

I drove home slowly, more questions in my mind than I’d had when I’d set out.

“I think Dryden and Pope-I mean, O’Riley-were some kind of federal agents,” I told Martin as he pulled on his maroon pajama bottoms that night. He just uses the bottoms, except on very cold nights, and we don’t get too many of those in Lawrenceton. I’ve never figured out what to do with the tops. Sometimes I wear them. “FBI or CIA or federal marshals.”

“As long as they weren’t interested in me,” Martin said.

“You’re out of all that now. Jack’s death couldn’t have anything to do with you, no matter who’s investigating it.”

Discovering Martin’s secret life had been the most terrible blow I’d ever sustained. Martin was born to be a buccaneer. For a while his love of danger had been satisfied by a brief stint working for a shadowy CIA-funded company following the war. After he’d begun working for Pan-Am Agra, he’d been approached again, and had resumed his clandestine activities. Only his complete withdrawal from the gun smuggling he’d been facilitating on his legitimate business trips to Central America had made our marriage workable.

I had just about recovered from the fact that he hadn’t told me anything about it before we married; but it had taken a while. For a couple of months, separation had been a real possibility.

I didn’t like remembering that time. Angel and Shelby dated from those days also, but I’d managed to regard them as friends and employees rather than bodyguards, for the most part. Martin had made some enemies along the way in his clandestine trade, and he was out of town a lot; installing Shelby and Angel had seemed like a wise precaution to him. Though Shelby had at first worked at Pan-Am Agra as cover for his real job-guarding me-it looked as if he actually had a career there now. He’d risen to crew leader and another promotion was looming on the horizon. That seemed the oddest by-product of the whole thing.

As I was sitting in our king-size bed with my crossword puzzle book on a lap desk resting on my knees, the thought occurred to me that, like Martin, Jack Burns was a tough man with a few enemies.

Jack, who must have been in his early fifties, had spent most of his working career on the Lawrenceton police force, though I remembered he’d tried the Atlanta police for a four-year stint. Jack had hated Atlanta ever after, and more than just about any other resident of Lawrenceton, he had resented our town’s ever-nearing inclusion in the sprawling Atlanta metro-plex. Jack had hated change, and loved justice, which couldn’t come pure enough to suit him. He’d had an almost total disregard for his personal appearance, beyond getting his hair cut and shaving every morning; he’d always looked as though he’d reached in his closet blindfolded and pulled on whatever came out, pieces that often seemed totally unrelated to each other.

“I wonder how he came to be in the plane,” I murmured, putting aside the lap desk and book. “Seems like to me he took flying lessons at one time. I think I remember Bess saying he thought it might come in handy on the job.”

Martin was brushing his teeth, but he heard me. He appeared in the bathroom door to make gestures. He’d tell me in a minute.

I heard gargling noises, and Martin emerged blotting his mouth with a towel, which he tossed back in the bathroom as an afterthought. It landed sort of in the vicinity of the towel rack.

He’s not good about hanging up towels.

“While you were out tonight,” he said, “Sally called.”

I raised my eyebrows interrogatively. Sally Allison was the kingpin reporter for the Lawrenceton Sentinel.

“She wanted you to know, for some reason, that Jack Burns had rented the plane himself, from the Starry Night Airport ten miles away on the interstate.”

“He rented it himself ?”

Martin nodded.

Good friend that Sally was, she knew I’d be intrigued by that little fact. I clipped my pencil to the puzzle book and tried to imagine how someone had gotten Jack into the plane and then killed him and thrown him out; could one person do that? Could little planes be set on autopilot? Wouldn’t someone be at the airfield to monitor arrivals and departures?

“From the very little Burns’s wife said to you, he knew the identity of someone here in Lawrenceton who’d been hidden by the Federal Witness Protection Program,” Martin said.

“So why would the-I don’t know, what do you call ‘em, protectee? Why would he kill Jack?”

Martin raised his eyebrows at me. I’d missed something very obvious.

“I imagine whoever killed Jack Burns wanted the new name of the hidden person.”

Naturally. I should have seen that before. “But if these were the people this witness had testified against, wouldn’t they know what he looked like?”

“Maybe he’s had plastic surgery,” Martin said. “Or maybe these people only suspect they know who betrayed them.” But his interest in the subject had ebbed. Once he’d decided we were safe, not implicated, he’d begun losing interest in Jack Burns’s death, except as it upset or concerned me.

“But why in our backyard, Martin? You were worried about that earlier,” I challenged him. “Let’s hear a good reason.” I took off my glasses (I was wearing my blue-framed ones that day) and crossed my arms under my breasts. They were more or less covered in ivory lace, the top of a concoction Martin had given me for his birthday.

“Do you think our yard was picked on purpose?” Martin asked.

“Yes… maybe. I didn’t want to make a song and dance about it when Padgett Lanier was here, but the plane circled to get the drop right. The body could have been dumped in any of the fields around here and lain for days with no one the wiser and no way to trace the plane. They risked Angel and me seeing the plane, to dump Jack here.” I pointed down, as if our bed had been the target.

“It was a threat against the protectee, as you call him,” Martin said calmly. He seemed to feel better about the implications of Jack Burns ending up in our yard now. “Saying, ‘Here is the body of the man who knew you, we’re coming to get you soon.’ ”

“Could be. But why here?”

“They wanted the body found as soon as possible, to get their message across. They saw a nice big yard with two women in it who were sure to call the police right away.”

Not for the first time, I realized how much I’d come to rely on Martin’s decisiveness and authority. If he said this was nothing for me to worry about, I was fairly willing to accept it. And I also recognized something I should have spotted earlier; my husband was furious. Protective Martin did not like his wife frightened by falling bodies, especially when he’d decided the body had fallen near her by design. Martin was as full of pressure as a preeruptive volcano.

It was too bad we didn’t have a home racquetball court. That was Martin’s favorite method of letting off steam.

He had another one, however.

“Martin, I was really scared today.”

Instantly he moved to his side of the bed and slid in, and his arms went around me. I nestled my head in the hollow of his neck. He held me carefully, delicately. I know a man’s protection is illusory, but illusions can be awfully comforting sometimes. I raised my face to his and kissed him. When I was sure we were both thinking the same thing, I switched off my bedside lamp, turned back to him, and gave his neck a tiny nip.