Charlaine Harris: Dead Over Heels

“What was I supposed to say?” I asked, bewildered. “ ‘Gee, Mrs. Burns, I saw your husband’s body. It looked as though someone had run over it with a meat tenderizer?’ Actually, she did ask me if he was dead before he hit the ground and I told her I thought he was.”

“I see. About damn time .

“However,” he continued, “we need to interview you about the incident.”

I noted the terminology. “Then you’ll have to do it this afternoon. I have to go to work after I take my friend home. And I have to get my husband off to Chicago.” I added this last out of sheer perversity, since Martin, experienced traveler that he was, always packed for himself and drove himself to the airport in a company car, not wanting his Mercedes to be the target of thieves or vandals in the long-term parking lot. The only thing I had to do with Martin’s trips was to miss him.

I’d been missing him a lot lately.

Dryden suggested four o’clock at my house, I agreed, and I returned pointedly to my book. But Dryden had his talking shoes on.

“So, your husband is the plant manager at Pan-Am Agra?”

“His job just got upgraded to vice president in charge of manufacturing.” I turned a page.

“Have you been married long?”

By golly, I was on the verge of being rude. Really.

“Two years,” I said briefly.

Then, thank goodness, Trinity called Angel’s name.

“Please come in with me, Roe,” my bodyguard said quietly.

Considerably surprised, but pleased to be escaping Dryden, I tucked my book in my purse and rose to my feet. Dr. Zelman’s new nurse took over from Trinity, leading us to a cramped examining room with rose-and-blue walls and a table that would barely hold Angel. Something about the nurse seemed familiar. As she talked to Angel about her aches and pains, efficiently taking Angel’s blood pressure and checking her temperature, I realized the woman in white was Linda Ehrhardt, whose bridesmaid I’d been in the long, long ago. She’d been Linda Pocock for years now. As she turned away from Angel, she recognized me too.

After the usual exclamations and hugs, Linda said, “I guess you heard I got divorced and moved back home.”

“I’m sorry. But it’ll be nice to see you again.”

“Yes, that’ll be fun. Of course I brought my children, and they’re in school here now.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten. Was that two girls?”

“Yes, Carol and Macey.” Linda extracted the thermometer from Angel’s mouth and glanced at the reading. She wrote it down on Angel’s chart without a change of expression.

“Mrs. Youngblood, you’ll need to disrobe for your examination,” Linda said rather loudly, as though Angel’s habitual silence meant she was short on wits rather than words. “There’s the cubicle in the corner, just put on one of those gowns.”

Angel glared at Linda after she’d looked at the cubicle, and I had to admit I couldn’t see Angel’s changing in that tiny area as a possibility. But she managed, grumbling to herself. So I wouldn’t be just sitting there listening to her, I brushed my hair with the help of the mirror over the sink, carefully drawing the brush all the way through the mass of streaky brown waves, trying not to break off my ends by pulling the brush out too soon. I gave up when it was flying around my head, wild with electricity. By that time Angel had managed to reensconce herself on the table with the obligatory sheet across her lap, though she was clearly unhappy with the whole situation and not a little afraid.

Dr. Zelman burst in just as Angel was about to say something. He never just came into a room, and he never just left; he made entrances and exits. He almost never closed the door completely, something his nurse or his patient’s friends had to do. (I crept behind him to do it now.) Now in his early fifties, “Pinky” (Pincus) Zelman had worked in Lawrenceton for twenty years, after a short-lived practice in Augusta that had left him inexplicably longing for something more rural.

“Mrs. Youngblood!” he cried happily. “You’re so healthy you’ve never been to see me before, in two years here, I see! Good for you! What can I do for you today?” Dr. Zelman caught sight of me trying to be unobtrusively solicitous, and patted me on the shoulder so heavily I almost went down. “Little Ms. Teagarden! Prettier than ever!” I smiled uneasily as he turned back to Angel.

Angel stoically recited her symptoms: occasional exhaustion, occasional queasiness, lack of energy. I winced when I thought of asking Angel to help me mow the yard the day before. Now quiet and intent, Dr. Zelman began examining her from head to toe, including a pelvic, which Angel clearly hadn’t expected (I hadn’t either) and which she barely endured.

“Well, Mrs. Youngblood,” Dr. Zelman said thoughtfully, rooting for his pencil in his graying hair (it was stuck behind his ear), “it’s really too bad your husband didn’t come with you today, because we have a lot to talk about.”

Angel and I both blanched. I reached out and grabbed her hand.

“Because, of course, Mrs. Youngblood, as I’m sure you guessed, you are pregnant.”

Angel and I gasped simultaneously.

“I’m sure you knew, right? You must have missed two periods. You’re at least ten weeks along, maybe more. Of course, with your wonderful physique, you’re not showing.”

“I’m not regular at all,” Angel said in a stunned way. “I really didn’t notice, and it didn’t occur to me to wonder, because my husband… has had a vasectomy.”

I sat down abruptly. Fortunately, there was a chair underneath.

For once, Dr. Zelman looked nonplused. “Has he had a recheck done recently?” he asked.

“Recheck? He got snipped! Why should he have a recheck?” For once, Angel’s voice rose.

“It’s wise, Mrs. Youngblood, wise indeed, to have that recheck. Sometimes the severed tubes grow back. I’m sorry I gave you the news so blithely, since it seems you and your husband had not planned to have any children. But a baby’s on the way, Mrs. Youngblood. Well on the way. You’re in such excellent condition and so slim that the baby may not show at all for another month or so, especially since this must be your first pregnancy.”

Angel was shaking her head from side to side, disbelievingly.

“If your husband wants to talk to me,” Dr. Zelman said gently, “I can explain to him how this happened.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s going to think he knows already,” Angel said dismally. “But I would never in this world…” She shook her head, finishing the rest of her sentence in her head.

I had to help Angel dress, she was so deeply shocked. I tried not to burble, since she was upset, but I was so excited by proxy that it was hard.

A baby.

“How can I work?” Angel said, but not as if she was really concerned.

“Pooh, as a bodyguard? I don’t need a bodyguard anymore, now that Martin’s out of-that mess,” I said soothingly. “If you still want to help me out around the place, we’ll work something out. Maybe I could keep the baby for you? Some?”

She heard the yearning in my voice.

“This should be happening to you,” she said with a faint smile on her thin lips.

“Oh, Martin’s worried about his age,” I said, and thought right away of kicking myself: Shelby Youngblood was Martin’s age, forty-seven, and Angel was twenty-eight to my thirty-two and a half. “Anyway,” I said bracingly, “you tell him to call Dr. Zelman, okay? He may get kind of upset, having had a vasectomy and all.”

“Oh, I just bet he will,” she said grimly.

Angel walked out to the car in a state of stunned silence. I made sure she was in the car and then I ran back in to get my purse, which I’d left in the examining room. You could tell I was excited and upset, since normally I’d be as likely to leave my arm as my purse. I explained to Trinity Zelman, who waved me on back, and Linda was waiting at the door to the examining room with the purse in hand.