Dead Over Heels

I'd forgotten Martin had decided to drive to the airport directly from work. He'd leave his Mercedes at the plant and pick it up when he came in three days from now. The higher-ups of Pan- Am Agra had scheduled one of those events that made Martin's blood curdle: a seminar on sexual harassment, recognition and avoidance thereof. All the plant managers were flying in to Chicago to attend, and since Martin had no particular friends among them and hated meetings he wasn't chairing, his most positive attitude was grim acceptance.



When he called me to say he was leaving for the airport, he reminded me over and over about setting the house security system every night. "How's Angel?" he asked, just when he was about to hang up. "Shelby said she hadn't been feeling well."



"Um. We'll talk about it when you get back. She's going to be fine."



"Roe, tell me. Is she well enough to help you if you have an emergency?"



I was the only librarian in Lawrenceton, quite possibly in all of Georgia--perhaps even America--to have her own bodyguard. I thought of Angel, stunned and scared, in the doctor's office that morning, and I thought of calling her for help. "Sure, she's okay," I said reassuringly. "Oh, by the way, I saw one of the--well, I don't know exactly who Dryden and O'Riley work for ... they never said-- well, I ran into him this morning, and he says he has to come out here to talk to me this afternoon."



I'd almost said I'd met him at the doctor's, when I'd taken Angel; and then Martin would have asked what the doctor had said, and I didn't want to lie about it.



"Why does he have to talk to you?" Martin asked.



"To tell you the truth, I'm not sure."



"Roe, have Angel in the house with you when he's there."



"Martin, she's not well."



"Promise."



Now Martin almost never pulled that string, and it was one we both honored.



"Okay. If she's not actually throwing up, I'll have her here."



"Good," he said. "Now, what can I bring you from Chicago?" I thought of the big stores, the endless possibilities. I didn't like that many choices myself.



"Surprise me," I said with a smile he could hear in my voice.



We said some personal good-byes, and then he went back to his work world, which I could hardly imagine.



I piffled around the house for a while, cleaning the downstairs bathroom and sweeping the front porch, the patio, and the steps that led up from the covered walkway running between the garage and the side kitchen door. Finally, I called Angel.



She said dutifully that she'd be over before four o'clock, and I apologized for disturbing her on such a day. "Martin made me promise," I explained.



"It's my job," Angel said. "Besides, I don't want to just sit here and wait for Shelby to come home."



The doorbell rang.



"There's a florist's van in the driveway," Angel said. She must have been on her portable phone, looking out the front window of the garage apartment. "I'm coming down."



She hung up unceremoniously, and I went to the front door and turned off the security system. I heard Angel unlocking the side door leading into the kitchen as the doorbell rang a second time. By the time I shot back the dead bolt, she was standing behind me.



"Delivery to this address," said the young black man in blue coveralls. DeLane was stitched on the left chest pocket. He had in his hands a huge arrangement of mixed spring flowers in a tall, clear glass vase. It was lovely: daffodils, baby's breath, irises, roses.



"Who's it for?" I asked.



DeLane looked very uncomfortable. "It only says, `To the most beautiful.' You ladies have to fight over it, I guess," he added more cheerfully. He'd had a look at Angel, and I could tell he'd decided who would win.



"Who placed the order?" Angel asked sharply.



"We got it Call-a-Posy from Atlanta," he said with a shrug. "It seemed pretty strange to us, too, but the shop in Atlanta said it had been paid for. Probably someone'll call you ladies before long, tell you he sent it."



"Thanks," Angel said abruptly. She took the vase from his hands.



I said good-bye and shut the door.



Angel was holding the flowers, looking them over carefully. She put them on the low coffee table and peered at the stems through the clear glass; she gently poked the flowers apart with a long finger.



"I don't like things coming without a card, coming `to the most beautiful,'" she said. "That's creepy. Presents without names on them make me very suspicious."



I wondered if Martin could have sent them, perhaps stopped in at a florist's on his way to the airport. I didn't think so. He knew there were two women at this address, he would have signed a card, it just didn't feel right. And the same thing held true for Shelby, who was much more likely to buy Angel a new running outfit or a punching bag than a huge bouquet of flowers. (For Christmas he'd gotten her a new holster for carrying a concealed gun.)



"`Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who's the fairest one of all?'" I quoted, trying to make light of the situation. "You want to take them home, make Shelby jealous? Or maybe he sent them."



Angel shook her head morosely. "Having to answer questions about these flowers would just complicate things even more, and I know damn good and well Shelby didn't send them."



Our formal dining room lay between the living room and the kitchen, so I went through the large open archway to put a plastic mat in the center of the dining room table. Angel came after me, still frowning, and put the vase on the mat, wiping her hands on her jeans right afterward as if rubbing off the feel of the vase. We both stood and gazed at the flowers some more, but since they didn't suddenly communicate who had sent them, or blow up, or do anything but sit there looking like flowers, this had limited appeal. I was on the verge of suggesting to Angel we go stare at the inside of the refrigerator when the doorbell rang again.



"Oh, gosh, it's four o'clock," I said, glancing at my wristwatch. "It must be Dryden and O'Riley." I looked up at Angel. "I should be safe with them." I was smiling, but she was not.



"I said I'd stay."



"Okay." I went to the door, my heels making a little click on the polished wood floor, a sound which almost always improved my spirits. My house was now about sixty-three years old, and we'd restored it to wonderful condition. It was just an old family home, not even my old family home, but I loved it. I hadn't reset the alarm system, so Dryden was admitted more rapidly than the florist's deliveryman.



I looked behind him, but O'Riley was nowhere in sight. I was conscious of feeling glad, as I stood aside to let him in, that Angel had decided to stay. At that moment, Dryden's gaze lighted on her, and his mouth yanked up at one corner, an enigmatic twitch I was unable to interpret. It could have been anything from deep admiration for such a fine specimen of womanhood to irritation that I'd asked someone else to sit in on our conversation.



"You're by yourself," I said, since I've never been afraid to state the obvious.



"O'Riley's on another interview," he said, pushing his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses back on his nose. As if the gesture were contagious, like yawning in a meeting, I pushed mine back, too, and we stared at each other solemnly.



"Please have a seat," I told him. "This is Angel Youngblood. She was in the backyard when Jack Burns fell, too."



"Thanks for saving us a trip out here," Dryden said, and I still couldn't read his expression. He must have recognized Angel as the woman with me in Dr. Zelman's office in the morning. He must have read all the police reports, and must have known already about Angel's presence during the free fall of Jack Burns. Yet he didn't seem interested.



I was getting more and more confused by John Dryden.



He finally sat on the couch, and Angel and I picked single chairs opposite him. He turned down my ritual offer of coffee or iced tea, though it was a warm day outside and his suit jacket must be hot.



I looked at Dryden closely for the first time. He was big, and square-shouldered, and husky, but not fat, not at all. His eyes were blue behind the glasses, and if he had any gray hair, his light blond hair color concealed it. Of course it was cut very short, as I'd always been led to believe FBI agents wore their hair--if he was an FBI agent--and it lay on his head as smooth as polish. The only other man I knew with hair that blond was Detective Arthur Smith, once my significant other, now married and a father. Lately when I'd run across Arthur his eyes had been hungry. Suddenly I wondered if he'd sent the flowers.



I guess I got lost in conjecture, for a loud throat-clearing brought me back to the here and now with a jolt. Angel and Dryden were both waiting for me to say something.



I sighed. "Excuse me, I wasn't paying attention. Could you repeat that?"



"Do you know how to fly an airplane?"



I laughed at the idea. "No," I said, since he obviously wanted an answer on the record. "I don't think I've ever been in the cockpit of a plane."



"What about you, Mrs. Youngblood?"



"I had a few flying lessons in Florida," she said calmly. I noticed Angel's long fingers were resting across her flat stomach. It was incredible to me that a child could be in such a small space, invisible and unknown to anyone around Angel. What an amazing thing to carry inside you; the other choices were so mundane or deathly, like a cold, or cancer, or appendicitis ...



I had been drifting again.



"... you remember the name of your instructor?"



"Bunny Black. She was the owner of this little flying school, Daredevil ... but we had to move and I never had another chance to get my pilot's license."



Dryden was jotting all this down, which was plain ridiculous, since Angel had been standing, both feet very much on the ground, while the plane had been absolutely up in the sky.



I said as much, politely.



He shrugged, and continued to scribble.



If he was this exasperating at home, his wife would take a meat cleaver to him one of these days. I leaned over slightly to check his left hand. No ring. Well, I wasn't surprised.



Suddenly he looked up from his notebook, his eyes unexpectedly sharp and blue. We stared at each other for what seemed like a very long moment.



I eased back against the chair with an uneasy feeling I'd just contacted Mars.



We continued trolling drearily over the horror of yesterday, with Angel and me unable to add a scintilla of information to what we'd already told the county people. I began to be sorry I couldn't suddenly recall some amazing fact to tell him. "I just remembered! I had a camera in my hand and I think I clicked the button just as the pilot leaned out of the window of the plane!" I bet that would change the expression on Dryden's face ...



Shoot, I'd done it again. "About your relationship with Jack Burns, Ms. Teagarden ..." Dryden was saying, and I snapped to attention in a very big hurry.



I couldn't help glancing over at Angel. Her eyes narrowed, she was looking at Dryden carefully, as if deciding where her first blow would fall.



"I never had a relationship with Jack Burns," I said flatly.



"So it's not true that he expressed hostility to you publicly on at least two occasions?"



"I didn't count," I said flippantly, and was instantly sorry. "Truly, Mr. Dryden," and I abruptly remembered police remarking in some article I'd read that suspects invariably were lying when they prefaced a statement with "To tell the truth," or "Honestly." "To the best of my recollection, Mr. Dryden, I hadn't spoken to Jack Burns in over two years, so I don't think you can say that we had a relationship." Jack Burns had just seen me in the vicinity of too many corpses to suit his strong police sense. He'd felt I just about had to be guilty of something.



But I didn't want to try to explain this. And I didn't feel I should have to.



"Mrs. Youngblood, you live in the garage apartment over there?" Dryden pointed with his pencil to the garage, clearly visible out the south windows of the living room.



Angel nodded.



"You rent from Ms. Teagarden here?"



"We live there rent-free in return for helping Roe and Martin." Angel looked completely relaxed, completely blank. She just almost wasn't there at all.



"Helping?"



Angel raised her eyebrows very slightly. "We help with the yardwork, I help Roe with her housework, we do all the things you need an extra person to do. Martin travels a lot, and it works out conveniently for Roe."



I would like to see the day I asked Angel to help me with my housework. But a realistic answer--"We're bodyguards"--would require a lot more explanation than either of us wanted to give.



"And this working relationship has existed for how long?"



"Oh, come on, what possible bearing can this have on Jack Burns being murdered?" I asked, suddenly sick and tired of the presence of Dryden in my house, the boredom of these interminable and uncomfortable questions. I could think of lots of things I needed to be doing and would rather be doing than this. And Angel's husband would be home in about ten minutes, and she should be preparing for a tense and critical evening.



I rose to my feet.



"Mr. Dryden, I don't mean to be rude," though I suppose I really did, "but I assume you have better things to do than this. And I know I do. All we did was be absolutely random witnesses to this terrible thing."



Dryden, his mouth flattened in anger--at least, I thought it was anger--was putting away his pencil and notebook.



"I hope it won't be necessary to disturb you again," he said, quite calmly. He looked over my shoulder, through the archway to the dining room. "Pretty flowers," he said, still without inflection.



"Thanks for coming," I said, with, I hoped, firm civility.



Angel looked down at me, shaking her head, when he'd left.



"What?" I asked indignantly.



"When you do that, it's just like being bitten by a dachshund," she said, and drifted to the kitchen door. "Don't forget to set the alarm after me," she called over her shoulder. I watched her through the kitchen window, loping across the covered sidewalk to the garage, bounding up the wooden steps and unlocking her door. I obediently punched in the right numbers on the panel set in the wall, and I prayed for her and Shelby and the baby.



That evening I got another one of those annoying phone calls. I'd been getting quite a few lately, the wrong numbers that don't say anything when an unfamiliar voice answers the phone. The least the caller could do is say, "Excuse me, wrong number," or "I'm sorry to bother you." Finally I let it ring until the answering machine picked up. So of course, my next caller was Martin. I just let him assume I'd been too far from the phone to pick it up on the first three rings; no point in telling him about the hang-ups. He'd just worry, maybe call the Youngbloods and get them to worry, too.



I didn't tell him about the flowers, either.



I didn't tell him about Angel's pregnancy.



I did tell him about my interview with Dryden. When Martin realized Dryden had come alone, he did one of the things that made me love him; he didn't say one word about his foresight in insisting Angel be present. But I could hear the difference in his voice as we talked; there was the steel there, the hardness and the edge, that I seldom heard. Maybe that was how he was at work all day, and didn't bring it home; or maybe only danger brought it out, some perceived threat to him and those people or things he held dear.



And you couldn't accuse him of paranoia, of being too cautious; not with the things I heard on the news every day, not with the horrors he'd seen in Vietnam and Central America. It would be insane egocentrism for me to believe none of these horrors could happen to me.



From far away in Chicago, a city I'd never visited, Martin told me to use my common sense, and for God's sake to remember to set the security system.