Janice Johnson - Revelations

“I don’t think so. I just vaguely wondered who’d made Leroy mad this time.”

So the voice wasn’t conversational. “Obviously, you didn’t glance out.”

She shook her head, her expression regretful. “If I’d seen Leroy up there like that, I would have called for Ron to go insist he get down. What was he thinking?”

“His wife thought she’d talked him into hiring a service to clean the gutters. She knew it wasn’t safe for him to do it.”

Mr. Blackman spoke up. “When he hired someone to work for him, he was never satisfied. A couple of years ago, he was working so much overtime he hired a lawn service, but he said they didn’t edge the lawn the way he liked and they overfertilized, so he’s been taking care of it himself since.”

There was a moment of silence as they all reflected on the fact that Leroy’s widow would now be hiring out all those jobs he would have been doing if only he hadn’t been an idiot and for all practical purposes killed himself.

Unless, of course, someone had given him a push.

Some neighbors weren’t home. Others hadn’t been home when Leroy died. Diaz did talk to Jack Gunn, who lived on the other side of the Pearces’. He came up with a different list of names of who’d been gathered to witness the tragedy. He shook his head and insisted that a couple of the people the Blackmans thought had been present weren’t there, and added a few of his own. Diaz knew from experience that every other person present would remember the scene differently, too. Neither, however, remembered anyone being there that they didn’t know.

Gunn, a beefy fellow in his forties, hadn’t heard voices before the accident, but admitted he’d been running a circular saw in his garage. “Stopped for a smoke. That’s when I heard Leroy yell and then fall.”

“Did you see or hear anyone leaving the scene?”

His gaze was sharp. “Leaving? Didn’t see anybody.” He frowned. “Thought I heard a car engine start up, though. Can’t swear to it. Just an impression.”

Back in his car, Diaz made notes of which neighbors he had yet to interview. He’d do better to come back on Saturday morning, when more people were likely to be home.

He hadn’t learned anything to prove Ann’s hunch, but he hadn’t disproved it, either. Pearce might have talked to someone in angry tones right before his fall—or he might not have. Someone might have started a car and driven away just as the neighbors were rushing to the Pearces’, but people did get in their cars and drive away for legitimate reasons.

He wouldn’t give up yet, but he wasn’t convinced.

“THIS POT ROAST is wonderful, Mary.” Ann sighed in pleasure. “I don’t do much real cooking.”

Mary Roarke, a comfortable, motherly woman, shook her head in disapproval. “You wouldn’t be so skinny if you did.”

Ann grinned at her. “Actually, considering my usual diet is Winchell’s for breakfast, McDonald’s for lunch and frozen meals I can microwave for dinner, my guess is I might actually lose weight if I started cooking good stuff.”

Mary shuddered. “My dear! I know you’re young, but you need to think about your health.”

“I was kidding.” Honesty compelled her to admit, “Partly. I eat more junk food than I should, but I actually start most mornings with a banana sliced on cereal, and I do have a vegetable with dinner.” Sometimes. Occasionally. “And I keep fruit around.”

“Are we going to have dessert or not?” her husband interrupted.

Mary stood as if invisible wires had lifted her. As cheerful as if her husband wasn’t glowering at her, she said, “Lemon meringue pie. Of course you’ll have a slice, Ann?”

“Couldn’t stop me,” Ann assured her. She waited until the plump woman in her fifties had disappeared into the kitchen before she said to her father’s old friend, “Reggie, I have something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Got to do with the job?”

“Uh…maybe. I don’t know,” she admitted.

Despite the couple of beers he’d downed, Reggie Roarke’s gaze sharpened. “Is this something we want to talk about in front of Mary?”

“I don’t know that, either. I was hoping you’d tell me more about your accident.”

His eyes bored into hers. “You got a reason?”

She hesitated. “I think I’d rather hear you tell me what happened first, if you don’t mind.”

He took a long swallow of beer from the can, his eyes never leaving hers. “All right. But let’s leave Mary out of it.”

His wife bustled back in with slabs of pie, dunes of meringue quivering above lemon filling. From the first bite, Ann forgot her purpose in being here. This pie was manna, the tart and sweet melting into a paean on her tongue.

Her husband ate his piece, grunted and pushed the empty plate aside. It was no wonder that Mary seemed so pleased at Ann’s heartfelt compliments.

“I made two. I’ll send you home with some. No, don’t argue,” she insisted, when Ann opened her mouth to make a polite if feeble protest.

“Ann’s here to talk business,” Reggie said brusquely. “We’ll take our coffee into the living room.”

Leaving Mary clearing off the table, Ann followed her dad’s partner to the front room, dominated by his and hers recliners and a big-screen television set. He sat in his recliner and waited while she took his wife’s. Ann found the effect rather strange. With both pointed at the TV, she had to turn her head to see him. She set her coffee cup to one side and saw that he’d brought a new can of beer instead.

“I remember hearing you talk about the accident once you were back at work,” she began. “But the details didn’t stick.”

Popping the top off the beer, he said, “I’ve got a ’71 ’Vette out in the garage. Been restoring it for a while.”

That day, he explained, he’d jacked it up so he could roll under it to perform some task that went right over Ann’s head. To her father’s disgust, she had never become fascinated by the workings of a combustion engine. Car talk, a staple of poker games with his friends, had bored her so completely she hadn’t even pretended to share his interest to please him.

“I was under the car when I heard footsteps coming into the garage.”

“From the street?” she interrupted.

“Right. Thought for a minute it was Mary and I wondered why she hadn’t come through the kitchen door, but she might have been out gossiping with a neighbor. I asked her what she wanted. Didn’t get an answer.”

“So this person was standing where your feet would have been sticking out from under the Corvette.”

He shook his head before she finished sketching the scene aloud. “No. See, that was a strange thing. Whoever it was went to the other side of the car. I tried to twist my head to see the feet, but I couldn’t. Whoever it was must have been behind the wheel. But I realized the footsteps hadn’t sounded like a woman’s. They were heavier than that. So then I started thinking, maybe it was Hank from two doors down. He likes to see how I’m coming. So I said, ‘Hank, that you?’”

She nodded, watching his face to judge whether he was telling the truth and nothing but. So far, she saw only outrage and residual fear.

“That’s when the car moved just a little. Scared the bejesus out of me, I can tell you!” His face flushed as he remembered. “‘Hey!’ I yelled. Something like that. Then I felt it rocking above me. I tried to shoot out from under there, but I didn’t want to use the under-carriage to move myself in case my push helped the bastard knock the ’Vette off the jacks. I was probably swearing.” He took a gulp of beer. The hand that set the can down might have had a tremor. “I didn’t make it. Turned out Mary was at the grocery store and I’d forgotten. She found me when she got home.”