“I imagine he’ll survive,” I said dryly and closed the car door behind me.
The condo was deserted when I got back, although a strong odor of fresh paint permeated the place. The three bedrooms, both baths, the living room, and the kitchen ceiling, too, gleamed in the lamplight. Not only that, but all the furniture had been put back in place. True, there were still piles of books and clothes on the couch, but at least it didn’t sit in the middle of the floor any longer.
Happily, the pickup paint crew was gone, although, by the look of the buckets and brushes grouped on newspapers on the kitchen floor, they intended to come back tomorrow and do the cabinets.
My bedroom was disheveled and all my toiletries lay in the sink, but that was okay. The guys had made a surprisingly neat job of it. Beverly and Fred should be pleased when they came up for Parents’ Day.
I plugged my modem into the phone jack and fired up my laptop. Amid the usual spam were judicial notices, a political cartoon from Minnie, and an inspirational tract that had been forwarded through a half-dozen mailboxes before landing up in Naomi’s and thus to every family member currently online. At least I assume she sends them to everybody else and doesn’t single me out as the Devil’s only playmate. Portland had sent a delicious bit of gossip about a pompous state supreme court justice we both dislike, and there was a funny note of congratulations from Terry Wilson. He’s a special agent for the SBI and a onetime boyfriend who still goes fishing with Daddy and Dwight. He’d just heard about Dwight and me but claimed he’d seen it coming for at least a year.
Right.
And from Dwight himself?
Nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
CHAPTER 21
TUESDAY EVENING
While George Underwood waited for Deborah Knott to start her car and drive away, he called Fletcher’s pager and left a callback message. If that asshole had overlooked something that critical, he was due a serious butt- chewing.
Underwood’s cell phone rang as he circled the monument and headed on down toward the Trading Post, but it wasn’t Fletcher.
“Hey, hon,” his wife said. “I’m putting the biscuits in the oven. You gonna be here when they get out?”
He’d planned to stop and talk to Simon Proffitt, but the judge’s sweet rolls were all he’d had since breakfast and the thought of his wife’s biscuits and smothered pork chops was too tempting.
“Be there in fifteen minutes,” he promised.
For once, luck was with him. As he pulled up at the Trading Post, he spotted Simon at the door and waved the old man over.
“Get out and set a spell,” Simon invited.
“Can’t stop right now, but we need to talk, Mr. Proffitt.”
“
“Nothing, I hope, but I do have to ask you a few questions tomorrow. In my office.”
“’Cause Norman Osborne went and got hisself killed last night and somebody tattled that I told him to go to hell?”
“I hear you told Dr. Ledwig the same thing and offered to help him along with Lizzie.”
A nostalgic smile started to spread across the wrinkled face, till a scowl abruptly replaced it as Proffitt realized the implications of what the sheriff’s deputy was saying. “You ain’t trying to hang them two on me, are you? Ledwig won’t shot. Osborne neither.”
“I know, I know,” Underwood said in a soothing tone. “Be at my office at nine tomorrow. I’ll take your statement. You’ll tell me what you were doing when Ledwig died and who-all you talked to last night before Osborne went missing and then I can cross you off my list, okay?”
“Go to hell!” Proffitt said and turned to stomp back to his store.
“Nine o’clock,” Underwood called. He knew he ought to collar that old hothead and get his alibi right then, but it had been a long and hungry day, so he headed on down the hill to Howards Ford, where his wife and children and hot biscuits waited.
He was just pulling into his own driveway when his phone rang again.
“Hey, Captain,” Fletcher said. “What’s up?”
TUESDAY EVENING, 10 P.M.
“Mom?”
Tina Ledwig dragged her eyes from the television screen to her younger daughter standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Her new spaniel scrambled off her lap and bounded over to dance around Trish’s ankles, paws in air, till Trish bent down to pet it.
“Hey, honey. Homework all done?”
The girl gave the dumb question all the attention it deserved by ignoring it completely. “Have you seen a UPS package from Amazon?”
