"Is this your car?" Paul Allison said sharply, hanging up the radio in its place in his vehicle, a tan Ford, pulled in next to Angel's.
It took me a moment to realize that Paul was speaking to me.
"No," I said. "Mine's this one." I pointed.
I'd known Paul, at least to speak to, for years, and he'd never changed; he was about five ten, slim, with light blue eyes and thin light hair, worn cut short on the sides and combed straight back. Paul was in his mid-forties. He had a sharp nose and a square jaw, thin lips and a pale complexion. If you were a civilian, you had to know Paul for a while for him even to register; he was that nondescript in appearance.
But from the time I'd dated Arthur, I knew Paul was unpopular among his fellow officers who saw Paul as being secretive, self-righteous, and charmless. Paul didn't drink or smoke, and barely had tolerance for those who did; he didn't hunt, or watch football, or even buy nudie magazines. His brief marriage to Sally had been his only one. Apparently, law enforcement was Paul's life, as it had been for his former boss, Jack Burns.
"I told you it was my car," Angel said with barely maintained patience.
Since I was keeping a sharp eye on Paul, I could see rage roll over his face like a tidal wave. He was so angry I was surprised to see there wasn't a gun in his hand, that he wasn't ordering Angel down on the ground.
"Paul!" I said sharply.
He blinked and looked at me. I put myself right by Angel. His eyes went from Angel down to me, back up to Angel, with the strangest expression.
Being weighed and found wanting was never a pleasant experience, even being found wanting by someone you didn't give a flip for. I sighed before I said, "Could you explain why this purse is here?" It seemed safe to talk now; Paul's face had resumed its normal color and his eyes were focused and sane again.
"I was just about to ask this woman the same thing," Paul said, in a much calmer voice.
"I'm Angel Youngblood," she said, in an equally cool way. "I found this purse on the hood of my car when I came to get in after coming out of the Law Enforcement Complex, and then the convenience store." She nodded her head toward the Shop-So-Kwik about thirty feet from the end of the Spacolec parking lot. She had a little bag in her right hand. She waved it.
Paul made a gesture, and in response, Angel opened the bag. Inside was a little package of Tostitos, a Diet Coke, and a giant cookie in its own cellophane wrapper. "Hungry," she said by way of explanation.
I had never seen Angel eat food like this; tasty junk, but junk.
"So the purse was exactly like this when you returned?" Paul asked. His voice resumed its normal flat, faintly sour tone.
"No, I opened it and poked in it to try to see who it belonged to," Angel said with perfect logic. "I looked around the parking lot first to see if I could spot a woman who might have put it here, but when I didn't see anyone, I looked inside. I was just about to open the snap on the wallet when you popped out of your car."
Paul pulled a pencil out of his shirt pocket, turned the purse over on the hood of the car, and levered out the wallet. He stuck in the end of the pencil to work the snap, and unfolded the wallet with it. It fell open to a driver's license. The picture and the name were that of Beverly Rillington.
I wasn't surprised, since I'd been sure I recognized the purse. But Angel drew in a sharp breath, the equivalent of a scream for those of us who don't count on danger as a way of life.
"Maybe we'd better go in and talk," Paul said, and I didn't think he was making a suggestion.
"No." My mother would be arriving with troops if I didn't get home and call her, and there was no sense in making more of this than necessary.
"What?" Paul had a puzzled expression, as if he hadn't quite understood what I meant by "No."
"When I drove into the parking lot and stopped by Angel's car, the purse wasn't there. When Angel went by my car, the purse wasn't there. And what a senseless thing for either of us to do, put Beverly's purse out. We might as well go on and put the handcuffs on ourselves! Gee, here we are at the Law Enforcement Complex, let's put incriminating evidence on the hood of a car?"
Paul's thin mouth curved in a reluctant smile. It was the first time I'd had a glimpse of what Sally had seen in him.
"Okay, Roe. But if you didn't leave the purse on Mrs. Youngblood's car, and Mrs. Youngblood didn't, who did? Why?"
Angel looked down at me, and I knew our blank gazes were a match. But Angel could see when a thought reached my brain, and shook her head, a tiny gesture as firm as a hand clapped over my mouth.
"We're not detectives," I said, looking at Paul. Angel unwrapped the cookie from the bag and started to eat it. Since her mouth was full, she had to shrug.
Though Paul fussed at us some more, he eventually hooked a pencil under the purse strap and carried it into Spacolec. Angel had finished the cookie and opened the Tostitos and the Coke.
"Someone has it in for you," I observed.
"How do you figure that?" Angel asked around a Tostito.
"The flowers, sent to get you in trouble with your husband. The ribbon around the cat's neck, to let you know you weren't secure. The beating of Beverly Rillington after you had a standoff with her in the library. The placing of the purse on your car."
"That's the oddest thing," Angel said. She gave me a look full of significance. And I couldn't read it.
"Hell, it's all odd!" I said, puzzled. "But you mean, because putting the purse out here was so open? Everything else could be done in the dark or long distance, so to speak."
Angel looked away and finally nodded.
I had to restrain myself from asking her to explain all this Enigmatic she was giving me. We'd known each other for two years now, been neighbors for that time, and I thought we were as close friends as we could be, given the fact that she was my employee and we had very different characters. I did at least know Angel well enough to be sure that she would tell me what she was thinking when she was good and ready, and not a moment before. .
By the look she was giving me, I could tell Angel thought I was being as dense as I thought she was being secretive. Mutually baffled and exasperated, we got in our respective cars and went home, Angel obeying the speed limit meticulously all the way. I followed behind her, driving automatically. My state of mind might best be described as confused.
I couldn't help but remember Arthur's long absence, his return with the coffee. Had Arthur Smith planted that purse on the hood of Angel's car while she was in the market? If he thought discrediting Angel and perhaps by extension her husband and mine would somehow induce me to think more kindly of him, Arthur was not just mistaken, but seriously deranged.
I trailed slowly into the house, just in time to hear the phone ring. I dashed down the hall, past the stairs, to the second door on the right leading to our study/ library/television room.
"What now?" my mother asked in her cool voice. But I could hear the mixture of anxiety and exasperation underlying it, the two emotions that seemed to dominate in her dealings with me.
I glanced at the desk clock; of course, it was four on the dot.
"It's okay. I just got in from Spacolec."
"I think it's outrageous, them asking you to come in to that place. They should have driven out to your home or talked to you in that new wing you gave the library."
"Mother!" No one was supposed to know I'd given the kickoff donation for the new staff area. "How'd you find out?"
"I have my ways," she said calmly, without a trace of humor. "Well, don't you ever tell anyone else," I said hotly. If my gift became common knowledge, it would be pretty hard for me to keep working at the library; that wasn't logical, but it was true.
"Did that woman really get hurt badly, Aurora?" My mother was back on track, even if I wasn't.
"Sam told me that she might die."
"What a terrible thing. And since you had an argument with her the same day, I know what you must be feeling."
She did, too. It was a milder version of having a fight with your spouse, who subsequently drives off and has a car wreck. That had happened when Mother was still with my father, when I was twelve. He'd left soon after, neck brace and all.
We talked about Beverly Rillington for a little longer, and then my mother asked me which policeman I'd talked to today.
I'd been dreading that question. "Arthur," I told her reluctantly.
I swear, I could hear the phone line sizzle. My mother has never forgiven Arthur for dating me and then dumping me to marry Lynn Liggett, who was visibly pregnant at the wedding. (Well, it certainly hadn't been my favorite episode in the Life of Roe either, but I'd weathered it and eventually let it go.) God bless my mother, in some respects she was totally motherlike; anyone who made me suffer was in her black book forever.
"Roe, you stay away from that man," she said, in her Absolute Last Word voice. "He has separated from his wife. Last week Patty showed him a townhouse over where you used to live, and he was moving in by himself. You don't want to look as if you're paying him any attention whatsoever."
"I hope they work it out and get back together," I said fervently. My suspicion that Arthur had called me in to the station to wave me in Lynn's face was correct. I'd gotten over my initial rush of anger, and now felt simply appalled that Arthur would do something so low. I'd never seen that side of him, and I didn't want to believe it had always been there.
As I microwaved a low-fat dinner I'd gotten at the grocery for just such an evening, I realized I wasn't exactly looking forward to Martin's nightly call. It was going to be hard to explain some of the things that had happened to me today, and harder still (actually impossible) to explain them in a way that didn't make him angry at someone. And it would be futile anger, since he was too far away to act on it. Also, I didn't want the peculiar incident of the ribbon on Madeleine's neck to cause him concern.
But I don't like to lie, and I'm not good at it.
Luckily for me, it was late when he called. He'd gone out to dinner with some other executives, and they'd made an evening of it. Martin is not much of a drinker, since he despises people who lose their control; but I could tell he'd had up to his limit. So he was sleepy and sentimental over the phone, and it was easy to tell him that I'd give him a rundown on the day's happenings when he came home.
That night I tossed and turned, suffering an unusual episode of sleeplessness.
I couldn't track down the source of the anxiety that was keeping me awake.
The security system was on, so I knew no one could break in; but it was gusty and raining outside, and I could hear the wind moaning around the corner of the house. I would doze off, only to jerk awake with the feeling of having just missed something vital, something to which I should have been paying close attention.
Every time I woke up, I thought of something new to worry over, either Angel's pregnancy and its effect on her marriage, or the bizarre episodes of the ribbon and the purse, or the sight of Jack Burns falling, falling ... and Angel and Shelby would need a bigger place, they could never live in that glorified one-room apartment with a baby .. .
I got up to go to the bathroom, I went downstairs to get a drink of water, I worked a crossword puzzle, I finished the book I'd started in Dr. Zelman's office.
At four-thirty, I gave up. I wrapped myself in the dark blue robe Mother had given me for Christmas, slid into my slippers, and went downstairs, officially up for the day. The coffeepot's automatic timer hadn't had a chance to kick in; I switched it to On and heard the comforting hiss of the water starting through the brewing cycle.
Perhaps the paper had come? Morning coffee just didn't seem right without a newspaper. It was awfully early; I realized I really had no idea how early the Atlanta paper and the Lawrenceton paper landed in our driveway. Tying the belt of my robe more securely around me, I stepped out onto the front porch. The rain was still coming down lightly, giving the air a sharp cool edge. I reached inside the door for an umbrella and unwisely opened it before I pushed out the screen door. Of course it got wedged in the doorway and I had to do an inordinate amount of pushing, angling, and cursing to get it through.
Going outside at such a strange hour in the mild cool rain was a little adventure. I needed a flashlight, too, but the umbrella incident had made me so grumpy I refused to be sensible. There was a huge strong automatic light our backyard, but not one in the front; outside the range of the porch light the driveway was in darkness. I followed the stepping-stones leading to the right so I could walk down the driveway. We'd had it paved the year before: at least I wasn't stumbling over gravel, but the asphalt was streaming with rain, and my slippers were getting soaked.
I went to the area where the Atlanta paper usually landed, and sure enough, there it was in a plastic sleeve. Feeling that virtue had been rewarded, I tucked it under my umbrella-holding arm and lifted the skirt of my bathrobe with the other. I turned to go back inside, happily confident that the coffee would be ready and that I had cinnamon rolls in the freezer I could pop into the microwave. The Lawrenceton paper would just have to wait until light.
I was concentrating on watching my feet as I transferred from the driveway to the stepping- stones, but something butted on the edge of my awareness. The light had been behind me as I left the house, but now that I was returning, I could see a few things I hadn't noticed before; and one of the things I could make out was a bush planted where no bush had been the day before.
I paused on the seventh stepping-stone from the front porch. I tilted my head and stared, trying to puzzle out what I was seeing. A large dark heap, right in front of the foundation plantings ... my slippers would get thoroughly soaked if I left the stepping-stones to investigate. I shifted my feet, peering with no better luck at the vague and immobile shape, and realized that my slippers were doomed.
I stepped gingerly onto the soggy grass, clutching the paper and umbrella.
Seconds later I'd dropped both.
The dark shape on my lawn was Shelby Youngblood. He was unconscious, lying on his side, wearing a dark raincoat with a hood. He was immobile because someone had hit him on the back of his head. When I pulled the hood away from his face, the hood was filled with blood.
I foolishly wasted seconds trying to arrange my umbrella to shelter the wound. Finally realizing I was acting like a woman with no sense, I tore into the house and hit 911 on the phone in the study. Once I'd explained to the calm voice on the other end what my problem was and where I was, I hung up and punched in Angel's number. For some reason, I feared she was hurt too. But she answered, in the groggy normal voice of someone wakened at four forty-five by the telephone ringing.
"Come outside, now," I gabbled. "Shelby's hurt, but I've already called the ambulance." My eardrum echoed with the sound of her receiver crashing down. I slammed down my own telephone and ran back outside, my heart and lungs in a race to see which could work fastest. But I had pulled open the right-hand drawer on Martin's desk as I dialed Angel, and this time there was a flashlight in my hand.
I crouched by Shelby in the rain, which of course picked this moment to come down in torrents. Though anyone lit up by a flashlight in the dark is not going to look great, it seemed to me that Shelby was an especially bad color. I held the umbrella over him, wondering if there was anything I could do.
Well, I should see if he was still alive.
I slid my hand inside his raincoat, found that Shelby didn't have a shirt on, and lay my hand on his chest. It was moving in and out, how deeply I couldn't gauge; but Shelby was breathing, and at the moment that was all I cared about.
I'd been concentrating on him so hard that I didn't hear Angel coming. Suddenly she was crouching on the other side of her husband. She was barefoot and in a nightgown, with a shirt of Shelby's pulled over her. Her hair hung in a loose tangle around her narrow face.
"Is he breathing?" Her voice was sharp.
"Yes."
"You called 911?"
"Yes."
"How long ago?"
"Five minutes," I guessed. "They're on this side of town, they'll be here any minute."
Sure enough, I saw the blinking red lights far down the road toward town. I tried to pray, but the rain was plastering my hair to my skull and dripping down my neck, and Shelby seemed so close to leaving us that all I could do was urge the ambulance forward mentally, hoping that the best team Lawrenceton had to offer was on duty this cool spring night.
I had a flash of sense as the young man and woman were loading Shelby into the back of the ambulance. I dashed into the house, opened the coat closet, and yanked out Martin's lined raincoat. Pounding down the porch steps, I yelled to Angel just as she was about to climb in the ambulance. I could see the flash of annoyance on her face, but she realized she needed more body coverage than she had, and she turned her back to me and held her arms a little out and down, and I slid the coat over her wet arms and nightgown as quickly as I could.
With a scream of the siren the ambulance was off, and I could finally go inside. Everything I had on was soaked through, and though the morning was not really cold, I was chilled to the bone. I stripped right inside the front door so I wouldn't get more water on my wooden floors than I absolutely had to--I could see the splotches left from my previous entrances and exits-- and I sprinted upstairs to the shower to let the hot water wash the dirt and rain off. I dressed in record time, turning on the heat lamp in the bathroom to start my hair drying, and I plugged in my usual handheld dryer too; but with a mass of thick hair like mine, it took too long, and I drove to the hospital with damp hair that was curling and waving around my face like streamers of confetti.
I'd taken the time to use my emergency key to the Youngbloods' apartment to grab some clothes for Angel.
It felt very strange to be poking through her things, dropping the basic garments into a plastic Wal-Mart bag. I included shoes, a toothbrush, and a hairbrush at the last second.
Angel was sitting in the emergency waiting room at the little Lawrenceton Hospital, her hands folded and her face blank. She didn't recognize me for a moment.
"What have they told you?" I asked.
"Ahhh ... he's got a concussion, a bad one. He has to stay here for a few days." Her voice was expressionless, numb.
"He's going to be all right?"
"We'll see when he wakes up."
"Listen, then, Angel... are you hearing me?"
"Yes. I hear you." She was a pathetic sight. She was as wet as I had been, and she had pulled on Martin's raincoat over her wet clothes, so she was warm enough for the moment; but the damp was sealed inside the coat. Her blond hair hung in rattails down her back, and her feet were bare and streaked with dirt and bits of grass. The passivity of her strong body was so upsetting I had to retreat into briskness.
"I brought some clothes and shoes, and your toothbrush, and your hairbrush. Is Shelby in a room yet?"
"No, he's still in emergency. They brought in a portable X-ray machine, and since I'm pregnant I had to leave. They didn't even want me to put on the heavy apron, they wanted me out."
"Well. We're going to find out what room they're going to put him in, and you're going to go in there and take a shower, and by then the cafeteria here will be open, and we're going to go in there and eat."
Angel blinked. She seemed a little more aware.
"That sounds okay," she said hesitantly. "But no one will be with him."
"You don't need to watch him, they're doing it for you. He's going to be okay," I said soothingly. "Now, I'm going to find the admissions person, and see about getting all this started."
The "admissions person" was glad to see me, since she hadn't been able to get much out of Angel besides Shelby's name and his birthday. I gave the clerk Shelby's insurance program group number, the same as Martin's since they were both covered by Pan-Am Agra's group plan. I gave the clerk an address, next of kin, everything but Social Security number, and I promised her Angel would remember that after breakfast. By dint of being cheerful and persistent, I was able to get Shelby's future room number, and took Angel there, resisting the impulse to ask to see Shelby myself.
After fifteen minutes with Shelby's admissions hygiene kit, a hot shower, and clean clothes, Angel was a new woman, and after we talked our way into the employee cafeteria and she downed a plate of grits and sausage and toast, she was approaching normality.
It was while we were sitting there, Angel with another glass of orange juice and me with my third cup of coffee, that the deputy found us.
He was a young man I didn't know, dressed in a crisp uniform. He seemed concerned and wary, all at the same time. He introduced himself as Jimmy Henske.
"Do you have a relative on the town force?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am, my uncle Faron. You know Uncle Faron?"
"Yes, I do." He'd questioned Angel the day before, Arthur had told me. Faron was a good ole boy, with a heavy Southern drawl and an unreconstructed attitude about women on the force and black people having power and money. But Faron was also a courteous and anxious man who had no idea he was biased and would swear on a stack of family Bibles that he was fair to one and all.
Jimmy had the family coloring and build. The Henskes tended to be tall, thin, and reddish, with high-bridged noses and big hands and feet (including the women). Jimmy was trying to pay courteous attention to his conversation with me, but his eyes kept straying to Angel. I sighed, trying to keep it quiet.
"Now, Ms. Teagarden, I understand you found Mr. Youngblood in your yard?" He'd torn his gaze away from her to begin his questioning.
I told him what had happened, said I hadn't heard any noises in the night (though with the wind and rain it would have been surprising if I had), and explained that my husband was out of town. Jimmy Henske instantly came to attention; if he'd been a bird dog, he would've been pointing his nose. Clearly, he was wondering if Angel had bashed her husband because Shelby was sneaking over to see me. Or perhaps (and his gaze swung my way) I'd done it when he'd tried to make advances to me?
I did my best to disabuse him of those suspicions by telling him that while Martin was gone, Shelby sometimes patrolled the yard, and that I was sure he must have been doing so the night before because of the incident of Madeleine's ribbon.
It was lucky Shelby had taken Madeleine in to Dr. Jamerson, I thought as I explained the incident to Deputy Henske, because it was confirmation that we suspected someone had been on my property.
Jimmy didn't know what to make of a prowler sneaking into the yard to tie a ribbon on Madeleine's neck, and to tell the truth, I didn't either; but I was glad to think the solution was his problem rather than mine.
After a confused-looking Jimmy Henske left for Spacolec, his little notebook full of indecipherable squiggles, a nurse came to tell us Shelby was in his room, and conscious.
Angel was on her feet faster than lightning, and I put our trays on the appropriate rack and followed at a slower pace. She needed time alone with Shelby, and I had to call Pan-Am Agra and tell Martin's production head that he would be short a crew leader that day, and for several days following. I took care of that little chore, wondered if I should pick up Shelby's paycheck, and snapped to when an orderly eyed me curiously. I was standing by the pay telephone in the hall, my hand still resting on the receiver, staring blankly at the coin input slot. Lack of sleep was catching up with me as the emergency-produced adrenaline ebbed.
A glance at my watch told me it was all of eight o'clock by then.
It had already been a long day.
With a sinking heart, I realized I had to go in to work. With Beverly in the hospital, it was especially important for me to show up. I wondered how she was doing. Well, I was in the place to find out.
I went to the nurses' station and inquired about both Beverly and her mother, Selena. The nurse, a young woman I'd never seen before, told me briefly that both mother and daughter had died in the course of the night.
I sat in the waiting area for a while with a magazine on my lap, hoping no one would talk to me, feeling sick at heart.
When my mind finally began functioning again, I was almost sorry. My thoughts were all unpleasant ones. Could it really be a coincidence that Beverly Rillington, who had threatened Angel publicly, and Angel's husband Shelby had both been admitted to the hospital with head wounds in the same week?
Finally I roused myself to find Shelby's room, and knocked gently on the door. Angel stuck her head out.
"How is he?" I whispered.
"Come in."
Shelby looked horrible. He was asleep, but Angel told me in a low voice that the doctor had said he must not sleep long at a stretch. He had to be woken up periodically. There was a good reason for this, but my overloaded system didn't absorb it.
"He didn't see whoever did it, Roe, he doesn't remember anything since he ate supper last night. He didn't remember putting on his clothes and his raincoat, or why he thought he ought to go outside ..."
I stared at Shelby while Angel murmured on and on. She was chatty with relief now that she was reasonably sure Shelby was going to recover.
Shelby's face was stubbly with unshaven beard, a state I'd seen before, but the skin underneath the bristles was a distressing gray. The hair protruding from underneath the bandage was matted with blood and stringy from drying with rainwater on it. There was a huge dark bruise on his right arm, which Angel thought was a defense wound. Shelby had taken a blow on that arm defending his own head, but it hadn't worked a second time. One of his ribs was broken, too, Angel said... he'd been kicked when he was down.
I didn't have to look at Angel to know she would kill whoever had done this to Shelby if she could find him.
After a while, Angel ran down. She stood looking at Shelby as if her eyes could glue him to her, as if his life could not escape him if she were there to make sure it stayed.
I was thinking my own thoughts. Why hadn't Shelby heard the attack coming? He'd made his living as a bodyguard for years. He was tough and quick and ruthless. Had the sound of the rain and wind dulled Shelby's senses, so the approach of the trespasser was totally unexpected?
Or had he turned to see someone he knew, someone he did not think of as an enemy?