If Looks Could Kill (8 page)

"I heard it was just another senseless bowling ball accident," came a new voice from the doorway.

Chris turned to find Sue Clarkson sauntering in for her pre-work breakfast. The only reason anybody knew Sue's last name was that she was married to the town's general practitioner, a tall, slow-moving, good-looking ex-jock who liked his fishing and loved his wife. Even though the two of them had only relocated to Pyrite from St. Louis five or six years ago, they'd so ingrained themselves into the fabric of the town that people almost considered them natives. Especially Sue, whose success at her job was measured by the fact that instead of being known as Dr. Clarkson's wife, she was simply referred to as "Sue-Who-Runs-City-Hall."

Chris was glad to see her. Sue was her sanity in the small town, a dry dose of common sense that helped keep the rest of her life in proportion. Sue and Tom were also the basis for some of Chris's most profitable writing, but they never had a clue, and she hoped to keep it that way.

"Well now, you should know, Sue," Luella spoke up, already setting out coffee and juice for the tiny blonde woman, who hopped up on the stool and set down the brace of romance books she always brought to enjoy with her breakfast. "Just how did the chief come by that scar?"

"Shaving accident," Sue informed them all and attacked her coffee. Sue was also the repository for most of the town's better—and better-kept—secrets.

Chris couldn't help a smile, already feeling saner. The sun was up, the world of Pyrite went comfortably on, and Sue was here to sow normality like pumpkin seeds. In the daylight, Chris was always vaguely ashamed of her phobias. In the daylight, she couldn't understand how the night could be so hostile. But in sunlight, it was difficult for familiar things to take on unfamiliar shapes, the way they did under the moon.

"We was just wonderin'," Pete protested diffidently. "I mean, who knows how it might affect him? I hear that he's gonna make everybody in the department take more trainin' and stuff. Have a, like, weight limit or somethin'."

"Wouldn't hurt JayCee a bit," Chris mused.

Pete huffed a little. "A lot of bother, you ask me. I still say that for a mayor who only works an hour or two a day, Ray Sullins sure was full of hisself goin' all the way to Chicago to hire a new chief when there was perfectly good candidates here. I mean, what does a big city boy know about a place like Pyrite?"

Sue never bothered to look up from her coffee. "Exercise'll do JayCee a lot of good, Pete." JayCee being Pete's nephew and the light of his sister Serita Ruth's life. "You know perfectly well he's gotten just a little too fond of those pork rinds."

"It's not just that. JayCee says he's gonna have them all taking college courses and stuff. Refreshers. Well now, JayCee's been on the force here for ten years. He don't need no refreshers."

"Give the man a chance," Sue suggested with a pat on his arm. "I think the chief'll do just fine. Which reminds me," she said, swinging toward Chris. "Did he get in touch with you?"

Chris just nodded, still four cups of coffee shy of a state of readiness. "Introductions were made last night when he caught me breaking into the How Do."

Sue laughed, a sound not unlike air escaping a low tire. "I knew there was something I forgot to tell him."

After another ten minutes catching up on Sue's kids and the vagaries of small town politics, Chris wandered on up to the How Do to make use of the phone system there to get back in touch with the rest of the world. She was still smiling, even humming to herself, the caffeine finally kicking in, the comfort of the company at the Kozy Kitchen settling her. Chris's bonhomie lasted all of about fifteen paces.

"Chris Jackson, have you found Jesus yet?"

Chris winced. "Misplaced him again, have you, Harlan?"

She couldn't help it. With anyone else in town, she could be endlessly tolerant. This was her home, the people as close to family as Chris had—especially the more unique ones. Chris considered that only appropriate. But her patience evaporated like alcohol over heat the minute she heard the sonorous tones of the Reverend Harlan Sweetwater.

Harlan wasn't so much a preacher as he was a bounty hunter. Souls for Jesus, was his battle cry. Chris pictured them swinging from his belt like scalps.

Fifty and florid, Harlan thumped Bibles, tables, and baby's bottoms with equal enthusiasm. He ranted at aldermanic meetings against textbooks, dancing, and the danger of having Home Economy classes in school, and once missed his own service because he was over across the tracks at the tiny Catholic church slipping little comic books under windshield wipers alleging not only that the Pope was the Antichrist, but that he owned the
Los Angeles Tribune
and
Playboy
.

Considering the fact that Chris was usually found on the opposite side of any of Harlan's intense crusades against the devil in Pyrite—not to mention the fact that she wrote books starring a psychic, which Harlan considered witchcraft at its basest—she was considered fair game for his proselytizing. Which meant that every time he ran into her, he felt it his duty to charge for her soul. Chris was beginning to feel like a flag in a game of king of the mountain.

"You can only be born again in the Lord," he said, following right on her heels, Bible soundly in grip, hand out as she picked up speed toward her shop. "It's not too late."

"Closeout sale?" she retorted instinctively. It didn't really help to irritate Harlan. It was, however, great fun to see the various shades his neck could turn when he got upset.

"I know you, Chris Jackson!" Harlan called as she reached the door. "I know you and I'll expose you for what you are."

She had her hand on the door. She should have gone on through. Chris knew better. She kept letting Harlan get to her, and that was no way to start out a day, especially when that day included talking to the police about homicide. "I thought you were going to save me, Harlan."

"How can you be saved?" he demanded loudly enough that Pete, coming out of the cafe, turned to hear. "You have no respect for the Lord's word. Would you submit yourself to the will of a man, like a proper woman? Would you give up your evil ways and take on the righteous cloak of salvation?"

Chris smiled then, a bright answer that sent Harlan from mauve to puce. "No," she admitted evenly, "I guess I wouldn't. Have a nice day, Harlan."

She walked on into the shop.

All she did there was trip over three very large cats and a disgruntled Eloise.

"That woman called," Eloise announced in a huff as she patted at her hair. "And on the store line, too."

Chris sighed. And to think the day had so briefly been promising.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I'm sure Dinah didn't mean any harm."

There wasn't any question, of course, that it could be anyone else. Eloise responded the same way every time Dinah called. Eloise was a dear, but she was no match for Dinah Martin. Come to think of it, neither was anyone else, which was what made Dinah the perfect agent. Dinah wasn't called the Bitch Queen of the Eastern Seaboard for nothing. But then, anyone else might have objected to the term. Dinah had gone out and had a desk plate made with the words embossed in gold.

"Go on and get some breakfast," Chris suggested as she threw her purse onto the counter. "I'll watch the store."

Eloise was already gathering up her paraphernalia. "Should be some business. The Wickersham boy was killed in an accident this morning."

Chris looked up. "I thought I heard sirens." Actually, she'd thought she'd dreamed them. "Anybody else hurt?"

Eloise did enjoy her scoop. She was smiling like a preacher with the good word, which meant it must have been a busy night on the old scanner. "Well now, the way I heard it, Curtis Marshall was answering the call and ended up wrapping his cruiser around a light post tryin' to radio in and miss one of the victims on the road at the same time. Are you going to find out about that crazed killer thing today?"

Maybe the chief would work on driving right after fitness. Chris didn't think to correct Eloise. "Yes, Eloise, I am. If he's heading this way, you'll be the first to know. Are there any more surprises?"

Chris motioned to include the various recumbent bundles of fur in that statement. Widowed for the last fifteen years, Eloise had taken to salving her loneliness by adopting any stray cat in the county. She couldn't talk Chris into sharing the glorious burden, so she settled for letting the good cats be rewarded with visits to the shop. More than one customer had been pounced on during feline maneuvers among the foliage.

"Let's see," the little woman mused, counting off fingers. "Pesky, Frisky, Squeaky, and Lenny. That should be it today, although I'll have to go home to check in on Prissy. She was feeling just the slightest bit irritable this morning."

"PMS?"

"Pardon?"

Chris just shook her head. "Nothing." One encounter with Harlan was enough to threaten her relations with everyone. Chris satisfied herself with a wry smile at the thought of a bloated calico holed up with a box of Moon Pies and a Mel Gibson movie, and headed for the office.

"Thanks, Eloise," Chris said, picking one of the privileged off her coffee machine so she could get started. "I'll take care of it from here."

"Chris?"

"Yes?"

"Isn't that Harmonia Mae Switzer's dress you're wearing?"

"Not anymore. I bought it at the Rock of Ages rummage sale."

"Oh... it's, uh, nice."

Chris grinned to herself. It was nothing of the kind.

"Thank you, Eloise."

Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she played back the messages on her answering machine while picking errant cat hairs out of the liquid. Two more frantic calls from Trey, one each from Dinah, her lawyer, and her accountant, and five hang-ups. Considering the fact that hers was an unlisted number whose secrecy was guarded like a Swiss bank account, those hang-ups were getting irritating. Multiplying from singles a few weeks ago, always silent, always the long pause, beep to beep, as if it were Victor trying desperately to get the courage to say something. Chris erased them along with everything else as Eloise reached the door on her way to report to the Kozy Kitchen on the accident.

The bell over the door tinkled and three cats hissed. Chris looked up at the last minute.

"Eloise?"

"Yes, dear."

"Food or flowers for the Wickershams?"

"Oh, food. Definitely food."

"Thanks, Eloise. Enjoy breakfast."

The bell tinkled again and Eloise was on her way. Left behind, Chris found herself reluctant to actually breach the outside world.

It was the real recommendation for Pyrite. Isolation, insulation. For the last five years, Chris had successfully armed herself with the day-to-day simplicity of this small town on the edge of the real world. She'd fought long and hard to get here. She could leave it regularly to venture back out into the real world, where people had more on their minds than weather and ball scores. But it was this town, like a time warp, a bubble in reality where Opie Taylor was reincarnated as a wooden doll with a foul mouth and the main tourist attraction was a memorial to the mobile home, that helped keep everything else in perspective. Here Chris could be, for at least this time, whatever she wanted to be, and everyone let her.

She'd been feeling the old panic lately, that clutch of anxiety that couldn't be explained or chased away like an irritating insect. Maybe that was what it had been about. Maybe she'd begun to suspect that even Pyrite wasn't Shangri-La. There were ways over those mountains, and someone was sure to find them. She just didn't want it to be yet.

Business or pleasure, she mused fatalistically, looking down on the crumpled piece of paper with the chief's chicken scratch on it. Editors or police?

Chris needed to call the police first, but she didn't want to. She'd had a nightmare again last night, just as she'd known she would. A quick trip into hell on a fifteen-minute nap. Blank, black void. Even waking to the lights, to the soft strains of Mozart, she'd been lost, curled up in fetal position on the floor next to her bed with no idea of how she got there or why her heart was racing and her chest squeezed shut.

Well, at least she'd left the pillows alone. There had once been mornings when she'd spent hours cleaning up. She must have been quiet, too, because Shelly had slept right through it.

Like all nightmares though, it had followed her through to daylight, a stale taste at the back of her throat, an uneasiness that defied explanation.

She should call the St. Louis police and find out what was going on. After stalling long enough to change from avocado polyester to pink-and-green cotton, she called Dinah instead.

"Weekends been a bit dull in your little burg?" was the answer she got. "You had to go looking for some real fun?"

Chris almost choked on her coffee. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal."

The chuckle that met her protest was low and throaty, the sound of a woman who knew how to use her vocal chords to mesmerize. Chris, who had known Dinah since before her first publishing coup, was immune.

"You sound drearily cheerful at this hour of the morning," Dinah protested.

Chris doodled, sharp geometric shapes shaded in black. "This hour is later for you than it is for me."