Dead Over Heels (11 page)

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Authors: Charlaine Harris

BOOK: Dead Over Heels
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That should do it. I knew if I wasn’t at home at four she’d storm the bastions and get me released.
The car by which I parked at the police station/small claims court/county sheriff’s office/jail (known locally as “Spacolec” for
S
perling
Co
unty
L
aw
E
nforcement
C
omplex) seemed very familiar, and after a second I recognized Angel’s car, the one Jack Burns had ticketed. Then I recalled Angel telling me she was going to the funeral because they’d worked out together; the two stories seemed mutually exclusive.
I mulled it over for a minute as I trudged through the hot parking lot to the glass double doors leading into Spacolec.
It was still making no sense when I saw Arthur Smith waiting for me right in front of the wall-to-wall admissions desk. Arthur had changed little in the three years he’d been married to Lynn. Marriage had not put a gut on him or lined his face; fatherhood hadn’t grayed his tightly curled hair, though it was such a pale blond that the gray, when it did appear, would be envi ably hard to detect.
Perhaps he’d changed in the way he held himself, his basic attitude; he seemed tougher, angrier, more impatient, and that was so apparent that I wondered I hadn’t noticed it before.
Arthur, who’d been chatting with the duty officer, turned at the hissing sound of the pneumatic doors. He looked at me, and his face changed.
I felt acutely uncomfortable. I was unused to being the object of unrequited desire. Now, Angel (whom I now saw coming toward me out of the set of swinging wooden doors to the left of the reception desk) must have encountered panting men from adolescence onward. I would have to ask her how it made her feel. Right now she looked washed out, and her stride did not have its usual assurance.
“Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.
She nodded, but not as if she meant it. “I’m just going to go home and lie down,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my life. And I’m hungry. Really, really hungry.”
“Need help?”
“Nah. Shelby’ll be home in an hour.” She hadn’t spoken to Arthur directly, but her next words were aimed at him. “If you’re not home by then, I’ll call Bubba.”
Bubba Sewell was my lawyer.
“See you later,” I said, and she was out the glass doors and into the parking lot. I watched her reach her car, unlock it, stretch her arms up and rotate her shoulders to relax, each movement economical and controlled despite her weariness.
“Come this way, Roe,” Arthur said, snapping me back to the unwelcome present. He was holding open the wooden doors, nodding at the woman in uniform on duty at the desk behind bullet-proof glass, gesturing me forward. As I went through the doors, he put his hand on my back to steer me, a controlling gesture I particularly dislike. I don’t much care for being touched casually. I stiffened a little, but put up with it.
When I realized I was only tolerating his touching me because he had once been my lover, I stepped away a little quicker, leaving his hand behind, and his arm dropped to his side.
Arthur waved a hand at his own little cubicle to usher me in. He indicated the only other chair besides the one behind the desk, and murmured something about being back in a minute. Then he vanished, leaving me nothing to do but examine his “office.” It was a bit like being at a car dealership where each salesman has to usher you into a little area partitioned off at neck level, and there present you with pages of scrawled figures. I could tell Arthur worked there; there was a picture of little Lorna, though none of Lynn. But there wasn’t clutter, there wasn’t even much office material on the desk: no Rolodex, no blotter, no stapler. There were stacked in and out trays, and a chipped Christmas coffee mug holding some pens and pencils. That was it. I’d exhausted the possibilities of Arthur’s office.
Then I observed that though the partition walls were made of beige metal and padded with what looked like carpet, each panel contained a Plexiglas window. I could see down the row of similar cubicles. Lynn was two squares away, bent over some paperwork on her desk. She looked up as I was still gazing curiously in her direction. She gave me an unreadable stare and then looked down at her desk pointedly.
From being mildly uneasy at being here, I escalated instantly into very uncomfortable. Had I been brought here as some ploy in Lynn and Arthur’s marital wars?
Arthur reappeared just as I was thinking of leaving. He was holding two unmatched mugs of coffee, one with cream and sugar and one black. He put the black in front of me. “I remembered that was the way you like it,” he said.
I could read nothing in his tone. I thanked him and tried a sip. It was awful. I put it down carefully.
“Why am I here, Arthur?”
“Because you had a very public quarrel with Beverly Rillington yesterday. Because she was attacked and her purse stolen last night. When I heard Mrs. Youngblood had been present during the quarrel, I called her in too. Faron Henske just finished questioning her.”
So that’s why a robbery detective was handling the case. They were treating the attack on Beverly as a robbery gone berserk. “Why couldn’t you just ask me about it at my house, or over the phone, or at the library?”
“Because this was the best place,” he said, very male tough policeman.
I raised my eyebrows slightly. I pushed my gold glasses back up on my nose. “Then ask your questions.”
So we went through the miserable scene at the library again: the rising rage of Beverly, the arrival of Angel, Angel’s exchange with Beverly, the gradual defusing of the crisis.
“Did you think Beverly was physically threatening you?” Arthur asked quietly. He was sitting back in his chair, his gaze locked on me in a way I’d once considered flattering and exciting.
“I had a second of worry.”
“Weren’t you glad your bodyguard was there to handle it for you?”
I could feel my eyes fly open even wider, my shoulders stiffen.
Arthur looked pleased to get such a response. “Did you think we wouldn’t figure it out, Roe? Back when the Julius family turned up, we checked out your friends the Youngbloods. Shelby Youngblood and your husband have quite a history together, don’t they?”
“Martin and Shelby have been friends since Vietnam.”
“Involved in some murky doings after that, weren’t they?”
“What are you getting at, Arthur? You know Martin was out of town last night. Are you implying that one of the Youngbloods attacked Beverly Rillington because she gave me a few bad moments in the library?”
“There are telephones in Chicago.” Arthur had been leaning negligently back in his chair. Now he abandoned the relaxed pose and leaned forward, his hard eyes still fixed on me.
“So you’re saying that my husband was so upset that I had a few words with Beverly—in front of many witnesses—that he told the Youngbloods to beat her up.”
“I didn’t say that. But it seems pretty coincidental that after a decade of giving people grief, Beverly Rillington gets beaten within an inch of her life just after a quarrel with you and your bodyguard.” He gave the last two words a twist that was distinctly unpleasant. I began to think that Arthur had gone off the deep end of the pool without checking to see if there was any water.
“You’re certainly not suggesting that I did it,” I said reasonably, though I felt anything but reasonable. “I think Beverly has a few inches and pounds on me.”
“No,” Arthur said, never letting up on the stare. “No, not you. But someone who cares for you.”
I started to say, “What about someone who cares for Angel?” Because it seemed to me that Angel had been insulted publicly too, and if the theory that the incident in the library had sparked this attack held any water, Angel could be the inspiration for the beating far more feasibly than I. No one ever forgot Angel.
But expressing this would be tantamount to pointing the finger at Shelby, at least in Arthur’s present state of mind.
“So. You’re sure I didn’t hurt Beverly. So—why am I sitting here being questioned if you are telling me you’re sure I didn’t do it?”
And without pausing to give him a chance to respond, I gathered up my purse and stalked out of Spacolec. My back was tense with expecting him to call me at any moment, but he didn’t.
Like most of my grand gestures, this one was ruined by the situation I came upon out in the parking lot. Instead of sliding into my car and speeding away with a spray of gravel, I had to deal with two more angry people.
Angel was standing in front of her car, her face expressionless but her attitude tense. Beside her, talking into a radio, was Detective Paul Allison, who for once looked agitated. On the hood of Angel’s car, giving the impression of a spilled bag of garbage, was a battered black imitation-leather purse, gap-mouthed and leaking the miscellany of a woman’s life: comb, wallet, Kleenex, crumpled shopping lists, a tube of mints.
I recognized it. It was Beverly’s purse, surely the purse that had been stolen from her during the attack the night before.
Chapter Six
 
“
I
s 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 midforties. 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.

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