together. Beverly feels she’s carrying too heavy a load.”
“She does,” Sam said thoughtfully. I heard his chair creak as he leaned back. “It has been more work for her, not having a full-time librarian in that section.”
“We’d better make an appointment to meet with you and discuss it,” I said very evenly. “In
“Roe, do you have a situation out there?”
“As soon as possible,” I said, so calmly I could have been discussing spraying the roses for aphids.
“Right. I gotcha. Okay, then, one o’clock today when you get off.”
“That’s fine. I’ll tell her.”
“We’re to meet in his office at one o’clock,” I told Beverly, putting the phone down very gently. To my relief, her posture was less aggressive. Sally had gone back to talking to her son, but Perry’s eyes remained on us watchfully. Arthur was browsing through the new books, though he’d completed checking out the videos. A couple of other patrons who had tried to listen without showing overt attention, courteous Southerners that they were, went back to their activities with some relief.
Beverly turned to resume work, I thought, and spotted Angel. “Whatchu lookin‘ at?” Beverly snarled, in an exaggerated street drawl. The two women stared at each other for a long minute. But even Beverly had to concede defeat against Angel, and with a “Humph!” to show contempt and save face, Beverly returned to her book cart.
I bent back over the book on my desk and put my hands down in my lap to hide their shaking. Tears stung my eyes. Things happening in public were so much worse than things happening in private, and if anything had happened in the library… if it had come to blows between Angel and Beverly… in the
Oh, I just hated for people to see me cry. And of course there weren’t any Kleenex in my desk drawer. A crying child had used the last one two days ago and I’d forgotten to restock. Hellfire and damnation.
A hand appeared under my nose, a white cotton handkerchief in it. The hand dropped the handkerchief on the desk, and I swooped it up gratefully and applied it to my dripping eyes and nose.
“Thanks, Arthur,” I said in the clogged voice that is one of the more attractive features of crying.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “How’d you know it was me?”
“I remember your hands,” I said without thinking.
I looked up in horror when I realized what I’d said, and saw that Arthur’s face was slowly flushing red, as it always had when he… well, when we had personal moments.
If today got any better, I’d just spend tomorrow locked in the attic of my house. It’d be a safer place.
Angel was standing at a discreet distance, her eyes on Beverly, who had gone back to shelving books. At the front desk, Lillian was now eyeing Arthur and me with avid curiosity. Sally was gone, and Perry was watering the large, ugly potted plant (I am not an indoor plant person) that flanked the double main doors.
Arthur slowly returned to his normal coloring, said “Good-bye” in a rough voice, and left. The water in the plant overflowed into the large dish the pot sits in. Lillian bent down to get a book from below the counter to hand to the young man, and Angel handed me the gift-wrapped package.
It was as if someone had changed channels on a television. Suddenly, everything was back to normal. The Beverly incident might not have happened.
“It’s for you, for taking me to the doctor yesterday. And I don’t know what you said to Shelby, but suddenly he seems okay about this. Who’s the bitch over there?”
“Thanks for the gift. Shelby loves you. Beverly Rillington.”
“What’s her problem?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said quietly, hoping Beverly wasn’t listening. “Can I open my present now?” I tried to scrape up a smile that would pass for normal.
“Sure,” Angel said. “Guess what I’ve got in my shopping bag.”
Angel was being a will-o‘-the-wisp today. Generally, I’d found Angel to be a very thorough, slow worker, unless you were in her professional field, martial arts and protection services. Then she was quick and lethal.
Now, this quick, lethal woman had bought me a golden brown silk blouse that I thought was perfectly lovely.
I told her so.
“It looked like something you would wear,” she said shyly. “Is that the right size?”
“Yes,” I said happily. “Thanks a lot, Angel. I hope you bought yourself something?”
Angel looked proudly embarrassed. From her Marcus Hatfield bag she pulled a maternity T-shirt in white and blue, a white maternity blouse, and a black jumper.
“Oh, they’re pretty. Are pants going to be a problem?”
“Sure are,” she said, perching on the edge of my desk and refolding her purchases. “I’m too tall for all the pants and about four fifths of the dresses I tried on. This jumper’ll have to do.”
“You need a dress soon?” I asked. I’d never known Angel to wear a dress.
“Yes. The funeral,” she explained. “Jack Burns. You know?” And she made a graphic tumbling motion with her long thin hand, culminating in a splat on the surface of my desk.
“When is it?”
“Within a week. They’ll have the body back by then.”
“And you’re going?”
“I feel like I ought to, somehow,” Angel said. “I knew him, too. You know, besides the ticket thing.”
I tried not to stare. “No. I didn’t know that.”
“He had started coming to the Athletic Club in the evenings, getting on the treadmill. He knew I lived out by you.”
“He talked about me?”
“Yeah,” she said casually, slipping her hand through the plastic grips of the shopping bag. “He had a bee in his bonnet about you, Roe. Well, see ya later.” And she strode out, golden and tall and lean, and for the first time since I’d met her, radiantly happy.
Chapter Five
When I came in to work the next morning, I was not feeling exactly cheerful. The discussion with Sam the day before had gone about as I’d expected it to go, Beverly stoutly denying she was difficult to work with, accusing me of many things, all but saying that had she had my education she would now have my job. That may have been true, but it was not the issue we were there to discuss. Even if I’d agreed with that assumption, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
After an upsetting forty-five minutes, during which nothing had been settled and Sam’s hair had turned a little grayer right before my eyes, I’d gone to pick up Madeleine at the vet. They’d gotten the blood sample and sent it to a lab, Dr. Jamerson had told me with determined cheerfulness, and he expected to get a reply from the lab in a few days, maybe a week. I’d loaded Madeleine in my car with the strong feeling that the vet and his staff wouldn’t have minded a bit if the hypothetical drugger had used something stronger and more lethal, or perhaps tied that bow a little tighter.
Somehow I’d expected Dr. Jamerson to have the answer ready right then-had Madeleine been drugged or had she not?-and not knowing had thrown me even further off course. As Madeleine yowled on the way home, I had found myself thinking of getting a dog, a medium-sized stupid one who was everyone’s friend. A mutt with brown rough hair and a black muzzle… but Jane Engle, who’d left me Madeleine and a heck of a lot of money, had somehow astral-projected her strongly disapproving face right into my consciousness.
So I trudged into the library’s back door feeling dispirited. At least Angel had been out running this morning as I was driving in to town. She’d grinned and waved at me. A smiling Angel-and one with a bulging abdomen-was something I would have to get used to. I smoothed my own oversized orange T-shirt over my stomach; I was wearing orange leggings, too, and there was a big gold sun on the front of my tee. I was hoping the children would think it a cheerful outfit. I’d pulled my hair back with an orange-and-gold barrette, and I was wearing my gold-
