Dead Over Heels

“What does that mean?”

“Whoever did it was saying to Angel, ‘Look what I did for you!’ Like Jack’s body falling in her yard. Just like Madeleine.”

Martin raised his eyebrows, as if to say “Explicate.”

“I was watching Madeleine the other day as she was hunting, and I was thinking how yucky it was to have to clean her kills off the doormat. Then I realized that she brought them as an offering to me: like, ‘I’m a useful cat. See what I did?’ ”

Martin was looking a little dazed by my excursion into cat psychology.

“So, Jack was an offering. Like a dead mouse. ‘See what I did for you? He gave you a parking ticket, so here he is, delivered to your doorstep.’ ”

“You think someone is in love with Angel and is showing her that by hurting people who upset her?” Martin raised his eyebrows, the picture of skepticism.

“It makes a perverted kind of sense,” I said stoutly. “And poor Beverly’s purse being put on the hood of Angel’s car. To underline the fact that the attack was- in Angel’s honor.”

“So, Shelby was hit on the head because he’s her husband?”

“Right.”

“Why wasn’t he killed?”

“Maybe because I turned on the downstairs light?”

Martin nodded slowly, not as if he was in love with my theory, but to indicate he was giving it consideration.

“But what about Arthur?” he asked. “That won’t wash, with Arthur. I don’t think he and Angel have exchanged two words since she moved here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said smugly, having that instant figured out where Arthur might tie in. “Remember, Arthur had called her in to the police station before he questioned me.”

“So this hypothetical admirer just decided he’d given Angel a hard time?”

“I guess. Actually, Faron Henske interviewed her, not Arthur.”

“Angel,” Martin said slowly, doubt in his voice. “I don’t know, Roe. Angel’s not the stuff dreams are made of.”

“Not your dreams. But I’ve seen men just about hang their tongues out when she walks down the street,” I said. “It’s because she’s so strong and sleek, I expect.”

“Hmmm. That’s an interesting theory…”

He didn’t believe it for a minute.

“And,” I added, having had a few more thoughts, “the police won’t think of it, I bet, because they’re seeing this as attacks on two policemen. Beverly could’ve been mugged and Shelby could’ve heard a prowler.”

“Roe, the police could be right.”

“Well… maybe. But I think I am. I just can’t understand,” I added, as I slid the beige-and-gold-enamel barrette into my hair to hold the waves off my face, “why the police couldn’t find the knife Arthur was stabbed with.”

“They certainly searched us all thoroughly,” Martin said, his voice dry. “Perry Allison had a pocketknife, but it was perfectly clean. I don’t think the wound could have been deep at all, if they suspected a pocketknife could’ve done it.”

“No blood on anyone…”

We shook our heads simultaneously at the opacity of the mystery surrounding the parking-lot stabbing of Arthur Smith, police detective.

Martin gave me a kiss and left to go to the hospital, and I finished preparing for church.

As I started a load of clothes in the washer on my way out the door, I reflected that this had been the best morning Martin and I had had in a while; longer than I liked to count up. For the past few months, Martin had been traveling more, had stayed in the office longer hours, had never let more than a day pass without going into the plant. Outside of work hours, the Athletic Club took up more time, and the meetings of all the boards and clubs he’d been asked to join-Community Charity Concern, Rotary, and so on and so on-ate into his lunchtimes and his evenings. I’d been increasingly on my own or thrown into the company of Angel and Shelby, with whom I had little in common, fond as I was of both of them.

As I retrieved my car keys from the hook by the south kitchen door, I realized Martin and I hadn’t gone out together at night, except for four community functions, in maybe three months.

This was not the life the young wife of a handsome, older, wealthy man was supposed to lead, right? He should be hitting all the nightspots flaunting me, right?

I’d heard the stupid phrase “trophy wife” behind my back on more than one occasion, and I thought it offensive and absurd. Of course I was quite a bit younger than Martin, and I was his second wife; but I was no voluptuous bimbo who’d married Martin for money and security. When Martin wanted to establish himself as the alpha male, he tended to challenge another man to racquetball rather than encourage me to wear low-cut dresses.

It might seem-to an outsider-that Martin, to some extent, had lost his taste for me. That our honeymoon was so far over that I was housekeeper and occasional companion to Martin, only. That I’d gone back to work because I was bored and unfulfilled as full-time wife. Or that my married life was sterile because I’d found out I was.

Well, I’d certainly succeeded in ruining my morning, all by myself.

I yanked open the garage door and backed out my lowly car, blotting my tears and listening to country and western music all the way to St. James’s. I pulled into the parking lot at nine-thirty on the dot. Aubrey, our rector, to whom I’d once been nearly engaged, conducted another service in a nearby town at eleven, so we were his early Eucharist.

My eyes were still red, but I powdered over my makeup again to look passable. I could hear the organ playing, so I stuffed my handkerchief and compact back into my purse and slid out of my car. As I slammed the door behind me and began trotting to the church, I heard another car door slam and registered that someone else was even later than I.

Standing at the back of the church, I spotted a familiar head of carefully styled Clairol-brown hair. My mother and John Queensland were ensconced in their usual pew in front of the pulpit (John had been having hearing difficulties the past two years). Aubrey, the lay reader, the chalice bearer, and two acolytes were already lined up behind the choir for the procession to the altar. Aubrey and I exchanged fleeting smiles as I scooted past to duck into the next-to-the-back pew, which happened to be empty.

I had no sooner pulled down the kneeler and slid to my sore knees, grimacing with the discomfort, than I became aware of a man falling to his knees beside me.

I finished my belated prayer, shot to my feet, grabbed the hymnbook, and began trying to find my place in the song all the rest of the congregation was singing as the procession went down the central aisle. Suddenly, a hymnbook was thrust in front of my face, open to the correct page. I took it automatically and glanced up.

Dryden was looking down at me, his face unreadable, his eyes expressionless behind his heavy glasses. We exchanged a long look, searching on his part, quite blank on mine, since I hadn’t a thought in my head as to why Dryden would be here in my church juggling a prayer book with a hymnbook in the Episcopalian shuffle. He did not make the mistake of trying to establish a bogus rapport by sharing the hymnbook; but he pulled another one from the rack and joined in the singing with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Was this man everywhere? I couldn’t throw a stick without hitting him.

As we were preparing to listen to the First Reading, he whispered, “I put the Andersons on a plane this morning.”

I nodded curtly and kept my eyes straight forward. I couldn’t think of any good reason why I should be the recipient of this information.

“She said to tell you good-bye, that she appreciated you listening.”

I gave him a quelling look, the look I saved for teenage boys cutting up in the library.

It seemed to work pretty well on Dryden, because he sat through the rest of the service in silence, affording me some much-needed peace. I wondered if he would follow me up the aisle to take communion, but he stayed in the pew.

As we pushed the kneeler up after the final “Amen,” Dryden said quietly, “They’re not coming back. After the incident last night, she’s too afraid.”

I nodded acknowledgment. People were chatting all around us, and so far we weren’t attracting too much