Charlaine Harris: Dead Over Heels

The fifth book in the Aurora Teagarden series, 1996

I’d like to acknowledge the fact that Joan Hess gave me exactly one suggestion for this book, when I was in a bind; and give thanks for a most informative morning spent with Jackie Cranford. But most of all, I’d like to give credit or blame to Dean James, who thought of the title for this book over a margarita in Austin, Texas.

My bodyguard was mowing the yard wearing her pink bikini when the man fell from the sky.

I was occupied with adjusting the angle of the back of my folding “lounger,” which I’d erected with some difficulty on the patio.

I had some warning, since I’d been aware of the buzzing of the plane for several seconds while I struggled to get the back of the lounger to settle somewhere between totally prone and rigidly upright. But Angel had one of those little tape players strapped to her waist (the plastic belt looked strange with the bikini) and the headphones and the drone of the lawn mower made her oblivious to the unusual persistence of the noise.

Circling low, I thought with some annoyance. I figured an aviator had spotted Angel and was making the most of his lucky day. Meantime, the ice in my coffee was melting and my book was lying on the little lawn table unread, while I wrestled with the stupid chair. Finally succeeding in locking the back of the lounger into a position approximating comfort, I looked up just in time to see something large falling from the little plane, something that rotated horribly, head over heels.

My gut recognized disaster seconds before my civilized self (which was pretty much just saying “Huh?”) and propelled me off the patio and across the yard to knock Angel, all five feet eleven of her, away from the handle of the mower and under shelter of an oak tree.

A sickening thud followed immediately.

In the ensuing silence, I could hear the plane buzzing away.

“What the hell was that?” Angel gasped. Her headphones had been knocked off, so she’d heard the impact. I was half on top of her; it must have looked as if a Chihuahua was frolicking with a Great Dane. I turned my head to look, dreading what I would see.

Luckily, he’d landed face down.

Even so, I was nearly sick on our newly mown grass, and Angel quite definitely was.

“I don’t know why you had to knock me down,” Angel said in a voice distinctly different from her flat south Florida drawl. “He probably missed me by, oh, thirteen inches.”

We were pushing ourselves to our feet, moving carefully.

“I didn’t want to have to buy a new lawn mower,” I said through clenched teeth. A side chamber in my mind was feeling grateful that our lawn mower was one of those that stop moving when the handle is released.

Angel was right about it being a man, judging from the clothes and the haircut. He was wearing a purple-and-white check shirt and brown pants, but the fashion police were not going to be bothering him anymore. A very little blood stained the shirt as I looked. He’d landed spread-eagled; one leg stuck out at a very un-alive angle. And then there was the way his neck was turned… I looked away hastily and took some long, deep breaths.

“He must be three inches into the ground,” Angel observed, still in that shaky voice.

She seemed preoccupied with measurements today.

Paralyzed by the suddenness and totality of the disaster, we stood together in the shade of the oak, looking at the body lying in the sun. Neither of us approached it. There was a stain spreading through the grass and dirt in the head area.

“And of course, the guys aren’t here today,” I said bitterly, apropos of nothing. “They’re never home when you need them.” Angel looked at me, her jaw dropping. Then she began hooting with laughter.

I was unaware I’d said anything amusing, and I was at my most librarian-ish when I added, “Really, Angel, we’ve got to stop standing around talking, and do something about this.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Angel said. “Let’s put some tulip bulbs in potting soil on top of him. They’ll come up great next year.”

“It’s way too late to put in tulips,” I told her. Then, catching myself, feeling the day had already spun out of hand, I said, “We’ve got to call the sheriff.”

“Oh, all right.” Angel stuck out her lip at me like a six-year-old whose fun had been spoiled, and laughed all the way into the house.

I hadn’t seen Angel Youngblood laugh that much in the two years she’d been my bodyguard.

She was serious enough an hour later, when Padgett Lanier was sitting on my patio with a glass of iced coffee. Lanier was perhaps the most powerful man in our county. He’d been in office in one capacity or another for twenty years. If anyone knew where all the bodies were buried in Lawrenceton, Georgia, it was this man. With a heavy body, scanty blond hair, and invisible eyelashes, Lanier wasn’t the most attractive man in my backyard, but he had a strong presence.

The “most attractive man” prize had to go to my husband of two years, Martin Bartell, vice president of manufacturing at Pan-Am Agra, Lawrenceton’s largest employer. Martin is a Vietnam vet, and at forty-seven he’s fifteen years older than I. He pumps iron and plays various one-on-one competitive sports regularly, so his physique is impressive, and Martin has that devastating combination of white hair and black eyebrows. His eyes are light, light brown.

Angel’s husband Shelby, who was lounging against the kitchen door, is swarthy and graying, with a Fu Manchu mustache and pockmarked cheeks. He is soft-spoken, polite, and an expert in the martial arts, as is Angel. Shelby and Martin are longtime friends.

Right now, Angel and I were the only women in sight. There were three deputies, the coroner, a local doctor, the sheriff, and our husbands. There were two men in the ambulance crew waiting to take “the deceased” to-wherever they took things like that.

Lanier gave me a thorough head-to-toes evaluation, and I realized I was wearing shorts, a halter top, and dried sweat, and that my long and wayward hair was sloppily gathered into a band on top of my head. “You musta been enjoying the sun, Miss Roe,” he said genially. “A little early in the spring for it, ain’t it?”

Now my friends call me Roe, but I’d never counted Lanier among them. I realized it was Lanier’s way of handling a problem. I’d kept my own name when I’d married Martin, a decision on my part that I don’t yet understand, since my laughable name had been the bane of my life. When you introduce yourself as “Aurora Teagarden” you’re going to get a snigger, if not a guffaw.

Padgett didn’t know whether to call me Miss Teagarden, Mrs. Teagarden, or Mrs. Bartell, or Ms. Teagarden-Bartell, and “Miss Roe” was his compromise gesture.

My husband was watching the activity by the mower, standing with the relaxed attitude of a guy who comes home every day to find a man embedded in his lawn. That is to say, Martin was trying to look relaxed, but his gaze was following every move the lawmen made, and he was very busy thinking. I could tell because his mouth was an absolutely straight line, and his arms were crossed across his chest, the fingers twiddling: his Thinking Stance. The slightly taller Shelby lounged over to stand beside Martin, his hands stuck in his jeans pockets to show how relaxed he was. With the synchronicity born of long association, the two men turned and looked at each other, some silent comment about the fallen dead man passing between them.