Читать книгу A Fatal Romance - June Shaw - Страница 8

Knowing I could do whatever was necessary if Eve was in trouble, I mentally rummaged through my vehicle. I couldn’t reach the tire jack fast enough. The tool was in the truck bed beneath boxes of ceramic tile we would soon use in a customer’s bathroom. The toolbox behind my cab held hammers and crowbars I could reach in a minute.

Envisioning my plan to grab one of each and rush in yelling and wielding them, I was almost at Eve’s. Her front door opened. A man stepped out, followed by my sister. She wore spiky heels and a sky blue dress and wasn’t screaming for help or even looking unhappy. In fact, she nudged up to the guy and didn’t pay attention to the street.

From what I could see of him as I passed, he appeared slightly younger than some men she normally dated. Of course Stan had just left her house from his overnighter while I grocery shopped. And a new guy was already there?

I checked my rearview mirror. He stood a bit taller than Eve and looked thick in the shoulders and trim in the waist. The man pointed toward the front of her house while she smiled and kept nodding, looking at him, not where he indicated.

I drove around the block to my own place, hauled groceries inside, and phoned her.

“Hello,” she said like a happy sparrow.

“Who is he?”

“Who?”

“The guy standing beside you. Or that you’re standing against. Who is he?”

She took a minute in which I imagined she backed away from him and glanced around, expecting to see me. “Where are you?” she asked much softer.

“In my house. Just like you should be since yours was broken into yesterday. You should have your doors bolted against guys like the ones you have streaming in and out of your place.” She didn’t respond, so I kept going. “You probably don’t even know the name of this new one who stopped by right after your other guy left.”

What was wrong with me? I was being ugly and didn’t normally preach or pass judgment.

But when I was a child, I’d watched our other sister murdered. Now I was grown. I couldn’t let anything happen to Eve.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she said, tone snippy.

“I’m fixing shrimp creole for lunch today,” I got in before she disconnected. I stomped through my kitchen, wanting to dash to her house and protect her, but she sounded okay, at least for the moment. Eve might not have replied when I told her the dish I’d planned, but she would come over. Shrimp creole was one of her favorites. She didn’t eat it often since she didn’t cook much, but if someone served her the dish, she almost kissed the preparer’s feet.

With barely enough time to get everything ready, I filled a pot of water with a pinch of salt and turned the fire high. I chopped and smothered onions, bell pepper, and garlic—the trinity of southern cooking. When the salty water came to a rolling boil, I went for the rice and saw I hadn’t bought any.

Why not? I mused and recalled I’d been heading for the aisle with rice when I spied Daria and went after her. Since returning to the store would take too long, I called a couple of my neighbors.

At 11:59 a.m. my doorbell rang. One dong at a time. The front door. Eve wasn’t using her key and wanted to let me know she was still annoyed.

“So glad you came,” I said, letting her in.

She trotted past me, nose in the air. “If I hadn’t come here, you probably would have staked out my house. I figured this would be better.”

Her sarcasm made me grit my teeth. I told myself everything would be fine. The money I’d missed out on at Fancy Ladies this week didn’t matter. Taking the time to shop this morning and prepare her special dish wasn’t important, either. I followed her to my kitchen.

“You were pretty sure of yourself, believing I’d come.” She stood, fists on hips, and surveyed the table set for two.

“Maybe I have a date planned.”

“More likely you’d planned yourself a libido memorial.”

Her smart remark made me almost sorry I’d cooked for her. She stepped near the stove, checking the largest pot. “I thought you’d have shrimp creole. These are noodles.”

“I wanted to try something different.” And the only one of my neighbors who’d been home was also out of rice. “I know you like variety in your life.”

She flitted her eyes at me. Eve spooned some of the shrimp dish over the pasta. She took sweet peas from a smaller pot, set her plate on the table, and grabbed soft drinks from the fridge—Diet Coke for me, Sprite for her.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” She tasted the noodles coated with red sauce. “This isn’t bad.”

“You’re forgiven.” I tried the shrimp dish, also deciding it was tasty. My secret ingredient for any tomato dish was a couple of heaping tablespoons of sugar. I normally cooked the sauce longer, but hadn’t had time today. “Why were two men at your house this morning?”

“If you really must know, Stan left for his meeting in New Orleans. And no, we didn’t sleep together. After he was gone, Dave Price came over. He owns a burglar alarm company.”

“So that’s why he was pointing, showing where you needed alarms installed.”

She grinned, her empty fork aimed at me. “You really were in front of my house.”

“I drove by. And I’m glad you’re finally getting an alarm.”

“I didn’t say I would. I just had him come over and check things out. At the same time, I was checking him out.” She rolled her eyes expressively. “A good-looking guy, huh?”

“Who notices?” I asked with a shrug. Picturing him, I found it difficult to keep from smiling. “Oh, something strange happened at the supermarket. I saw Daria with a man.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

“First, she never returned my phone call from yesterday. And she didn’t have a thing in her buggy. She looked happy with that guy.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see much of his face.”

Eve dabbed her lips with her napkin. “She might have just wanted mints or to get out of the house. And looking happy with a guy isn’t strange, you know. I look happy with guys all the time.”

“Exactly my point.”

“Hmm.” She considered a moment, nibbling on a shrimp.

We ate more in silence, minds maybe working in sync.

“You could be the poster girl for women who never get happy around a guy,” she said.

I ignored her comment. “Besides all that, Daria doesn’t even care about what I have of her husband’s? She must have heard my message by now, but she still hasn’t called.” I shoved my chair back and stood. “I think we need to go talk to your widow friend.”

Eve carried her plate to the sink. “She isn’t my friend. I was only introduced to her.”

“Right. Let’s go see what she’s made of.” I headed for the foyer. “I’ll wear the jacket and give her the rest of her husband.”

My sister waited in her car she had driven over. The leather seats made a soft swish and caressed my hips. She glanced toward my jacket’s pocket. “How do you think she’ll get him out of there?”

Unconsciously, I’d slid my hand in and instantly jerked it away, checking to make sure no trace of him lodged under my nails. “She can pour his ashes back in her urn.” I pulled my pocket open without touching anything inside, hoping by some magic turn of events, he would have evaporated.

No such luck. Over the white tissue, ashy bits of a man resembled Eve’s abstracts. I’d found this pricey silk jacket at an end-of-season sale at Fancy Ladies. It was my favorite, lightweight with the rust color brightening some of my other outfits. I couldn’t afford another one anytime soon. Daria needed to remove her husband from it.

“Eve, you might not want to think this of your dead friend’s wife, but she could have a lover, maybe that guy with her in the store. I hope when we get to her house, he isn’t with her in a compromising situation.”

She drove, eyes toward the street. “That would be bad, but worse things have happened.”

“Yes, she could have killed her husband to be with that man.”

Eve pushed out a sigh. “You read too many novels—people killing for romance. He was probably just someone who didn’t get to go to the funeral.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering. “I talked to your first ex and his wife buying groceries.”

“I noticed them across from us in the church. I’ve heard Jacques’s new wife doesn’t like me.”

“Can you blame her? He’s sends you much more than he needs to.”

“I knew they were coming to the funeral, but Nicole wasn’t.” She flashed a lovely smile. “I can’t wait for my daughter to have a baby.”

“Maw Maw,” I called her as many in this area called their elderly grandmas.

She pushed her tight lips forward in a pout. “Let’s think of something nicer for the child to call me.”

We’d passed only a few other houses that trickled along this barren stretch of woods and grasses beside winding Felicity Bayou. The early afternoon felt like deepening dusk when we reached the Snelling home. The house was red brick with a black mansard roof, a rarity around here. The property sank into a thicket of trees shrouded with moss as though hiding from spying eyes. The scene, much darker than the area leading to it, emitted a sense of gloom. Daria had yelled at me the only time she saw me. How would she react now?

Eve gave me a quick glance. “Apprehensive?”

“A little.”

“We don’t have to stop.”

I glanced at my pocket. “Yes, we do.”

A windowless sliding door for the attached garage was shut. Its red bricks brighter than the rest of the house told me someone enclosed the double carport awhile after the house was built. Eve parked in front of the garage.

The minute I stepped along the slim path to the front entry, the tangy scent of pine trees and pungent swamp water activated my sinuses, making me sniffle. No one had planted flowers or shrubs to add a feeling of life to the grass out front. No music or noise came from inside. Drapes were shut.

“Can’t tell if anyone’s home,” Eve said.

I rang the doorbell. Maybe Daria was in her house. Possibly not alone. I shoved the bell once again. No sound or ruffled curtains. In case the bell didn’t work, I pounded on the door. We waited. Not even the whisper of a footstep.

“Let’s check the windows,” I said.

Eve followed to the left. A picture window in front of the house may have led to a den, but the drapes remained tight. Other windows with closed curtains would probably lead to bathrooms and bedrooms.

“Maybe we should go home,” Eve said. “We really shouldn’t intrude.”

Was she thinking this recently-widowed woman might really be in a sexual situation?

“But she might have killed him.”

Eve wrinkled reddish-brown eyebrows and shook her head. Still, she didn’t look certain. We’d both always enjoyed adventure with a little anxiety added to the mix.

A thicket of wild swamp vines and hackberry and cypress trees hemmed in the backyard, enclosing the large pond twenty feet behind the house that took Zane Snelling’s life. I felt a tug at my heart while I stared at the brown water where two geese decoys floated, knowing a man died in its depths. If Zane and his wife lived here almost three years, why would he fall into the pond this week, when no one was near? She supposedly shopped at the mall forty miles away, returned, and found him floating face down.

“Nice job with the pavers.” I nodded to the left of the pond. “Sorry I couldn’t finish them with you.”

“When you had achy joints and high fever?”

I shrugged. We’d dug the grass from that space and laid sand and crushed stone. I’d been using a pipe to screed the sand when chills and a hundred-and-two-degree fever struck. She sent me home. Eve returned the next morning while I shivered in bed, waiting for pain relievers to make my body feel half normal. My flu lasted six days.

“Those red-charcoal pavers were a good choice.”

“I think it came out all right. Except he fell right there.” The skin outside Eve’s eyes crinkled, and her eyes misted. She looked ready to cry, which I never ever would do again. She stared at the hard knees of the cypress trees that grew beside the seating area we created. Smooth ground around it sloped to the water.

I gripped her hand. “You told him a clearer spot would be better. He wanted it right there. It wasn’t your fault. Or mine.”

She turned her head away as though unable to stand seeing where he died any longer. “Look, a light’s on in the house.”

I moved close and peeked in a window. The refrigerator and square table with four chairs sat inside a brightly-lit kitchen.

“She could have gone out and left a light on,” Eve said, a sad touch of guilt remaining in her eye.

“You want an excuse to leave.” Seeing the site where he died surely made her uncomfortable, as it did me. “The woman might have killed her husband, who was your friend. Let’s just check,” I whispered.

“But suppose she did kill him. She could kill us.”

“She wouldn’t have a reason to. We won’t say anything that would let her know we considered she might be a killer. The police can check that. I just want to give her what’s rightfully hers.” I tapped my pocket. “The final remains of her husband.”

Eve shook her head. “But what if she had the urn buried? What’s she supposed to do with those other parts of him? Sprinkle them around his grave?”

“That will be up to her.” I rushed to the backdoor and rang the bell. We waited and looked at each other. Nobody answered. A small stack of leftover pavers stood near the door. I rang the bell again, knocked, and tried the knob. The door opened.

“Bells Will Be Ringing” ripped up my throat.

“What’s wrong?” Eve rushed behind.

The mistress of the house was right inside, blood covering her floor and head.