Charlaine Harris - Dead Over Heels

“Has Bubba made plans for what to do if the baby comes while the legislature’s in session?” I asked.

“At least ten plans,” Lizanne said. “But maybe it’ll come before he reconvenes.”

Bubba Sewell, Lizanne’s husband, was a state representative and a local lawyer. Bubba was ambitious and intelligent, and, I think, basically an honest person. Lizanne was beautiful and slow-moving and somehow almost always managed things so that they pleased her. I could hardly wait to see what the baby’s character would be.

Lizanne left to eat lunch with her mother-in-law, to whose opinions on the baby’s upbringing she was blandly indifferent, and I helped some preschool children pick out books. One mother of a nine-year-old boy with a stomach bug came in to get some books and videos to keep him amused, and I collected a few natural history books with plenty of gross pictures of frogs and snakes.

My stomach was growling inelegantly at one o’clock when the library aide came to the children’s room to take my place. The aide was a heavy woman with pecan-colored skin named Beverly Rillington, who couldn’t be more than twenty-one. Whether it was because of race, age, or income level, Beverly and I were having a hard time geeing and hawing together. She and the previous children’s librarian had also had personality conflicts, Sam Clerrick had warned me. But Beverly, hired under a job-training program, was efficient and reliable, and Sam had no intention of letting her go.

“How’s it going today?” Beverly asked. She looked down at me as though she didn’t really want to know.

In an attempt to break the ice, I told Beverly about the morning story hour and the disconcerting answer I’d gotten from Irene.

Beverly looked at me as though I should have known in advance I’d hear more than I bargained for. If Beverly made me anxious, terrified I might step on her many sensitive toes, I clearly waved a red flag in her face just by being who and what I was. Beverly never volunteered anything about her home life and did not respond to references to mine. Making contact with her was one of my projects for the year.

(“I’m damned if I know why,” Martin had said simply, when I’d told him.)

As I told Beverly good-bye and prepared to go home to see my husband off and be interviewed by Mr. Dry-den, I found myself wondering why, too.

But the answer came to me easily enough, in a string of reasons. Beverly was naturally good with kids, any kids, a knack God had left out of my genetic makeup. Beverly was never late and always completed her work, i’s dotted and t’s crossed. And, oh happy day, Lillian Schmidt was so terrified of Beverly that she avoided the children’s area like the plague when Beverly was at work. I owed my aide thanks on many levels, and I was determined to put up with a certain gruffness of manner for those reasons, if no others.

I’d forgotten Martin had decided to drive to the airport directly from work. He’d leave his Mercedes at the plant and pick it up when he came in three days from now. The higher-ups of Pan-Am Agra had scheduled one of those events that made Martin’s blood curdle: a seminar on sexual harassment, recognition and avoidance thereof. All the plant managers were flying in to Chicago to attend, and since Martin had no particular friends among them and hated meetings he wasn’t chairing, his most positive attitude was grim acceptance.

When he called me to say he was leaving for the airport, he reminded me over and over about setting the house security system every night. “How’s Angel?” he asked, just when he was about to hang up. “Shelby said she hadn’t been feeling well.”

“Um. We’ll talk about it when you get back. She’s going to be fine.”

“Roe, tell me. Is she well enough to help you if you have an emergency?”

I was the only librarian in Lawrenceton, quite possibly in all of Georgia-perhaps even America-to have her own bodyguard. I thought of Angel, stunned and scared, in the doctor’s office that morning, and I thought of calling her for help. “Sure, she’s okay,” I said reassuringly. “Oh, by the way, I saw one of the-well, I don’t know exactly who Dryden and O’Riley work for… they never said-well, I ran into him this morning, and he says he has to come out here to talk to me this afternoon.”

I’d almost said I’d met him at the doctor’s, when I’d taken Angel; and then Martin would have asked what the doctor had said, and I didn’t want to lie about it.

“Why does he have to talk to you?” Martin asked.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”

“Roe, have Angel in the house with you when he’s there.”

“Martin, she’s not well.”

“Promise.”

Now Martin almost never pulled that string, and it was one we both honored.

“Okay. If she’s not actually throwing up, I’ll have her here.”

“Good,” he said. “Now, what can I bring you from Chicago?”

I thought of the big stores, the endless possibilities. I didn’t like that many choices myself.

“Surprise me,” I said with a smile he could hear in my voice.

We said some personal good-byes, and then he went back to his work world, which I could hardly imagine.

I piffled around the house for a while, cleaning the downstairs bathroom and sweeping the front porch, the patio, and the steps that led up from the covered walkway running between the garage and the side kitchen door. Finally, I called Angel.

She said dutifully that she’d be over before four o’clock, and I apologized for disturbing her on such a day. “Martin made me promise,” I explained.

“It’s my job,” Angel said. “Besides, I don’t want to just sit here and wait for Shelby to come home.”

The doorbell rang.

“There’s a florist’s van in the driveway,” Angel said. She must have been on her portable phone, looking out the front window of the garage apartment. “I’m coming down.”

She hung up unceremoniously, and I went to the front door and turned off the security system. I heard Angel unlocking the side door leading into the kitchen as the doorbell rang a second time. By the time I shot back the dead bolt, she was standing behind me.

“Delivery to this address,” said the young black man in blue coveralls. DeLane was stitched on the left chest pocket. He had in his hands a huge arrangement of mixed spring flowers in a tall, clear glass vase. It was lovely: daffodils, baby’s breath, irises, roses.

“Who’s it for?” I asked.

DeLane looked very uncomfortable. “It only says, ‘To the most beautiful.’ You ladies have to fight over it, I guess,” he added more cheerfully. He’d had a look at Angel, and I could tell he’d decided who would win.

“Who placed the order?” Angel asked sharply.

“We got it Call-a-Posy from Atlanta,” he said with a shrug. “It seemed pretty strange to us, too, but the shop in Atlanta said it had been paid for. Probably someone’ll call you ladies before long, tell you he sent it.”

“Thanks,” Angel said abruptly. She took the vase from his hands.

I said good-bye and shut the door.

Angel was holding the flowers, looking them over carefully. She put them on the low coffee table and peered at the stems through the clear glass; she gently poked the flowers apart with a long finger.

“I don’t like things coming without a card, coming ‘to the most beautiful,’ ” she said. “That’s creepy. Presents without names on them make me very suspicious.”

I wondered if Martin could have sent them, perhaps stopped in at a florist’s on his way to the airport. I didn’t think so. He knew there were two women at this address, he would have signed a card, it just didn’t feel right. And the same thing held true for Shelby, who was much more likely to buy Angel a new running outfit or a punching bag than a huge bouquet of flowers. (For Christmas he’d gotten her a new holster for carrying a concealed gun.)