mile out of town on the Mason Road, at approximately 2 P.M. yesterday.
Burns, a native of Lawrenceton, was not known to have any enemies. His wife, former teacher Bess Linton Burns, expressed bafflement at the motive for her husband’s death. “I can only think it must have been someone he arrested, someone out for revenge,” she said.
“The means of his death are not known now,” stated Sheriff Padgett Lanier. “Only the autopsy can tell us that.”
Lanier went on to say the sheriff’s department is investigating how someone else could have entered the Piper plane, rented by Burns from Starry Night Airport yesterday, and overcome Burns. The plane was found returned yesterday, and no one at the tiny airport can identify the pilot.
See Obituaries, Page 6.
I could imagine Sally’s frustration at being given so little to work with. When she’d called me the night before to offer me the tidbit about Jack Burns himself having rented the plane that took him to his final landing place, perhaps she’d been in search of some additional detail to pad out the story. Accompanying it was the usual grim shot of the two medics loading the covered stretcher into the ambulance. You could tell the covered bundle was sort of flat… I gulped and pushed the memory away.
I glanced at the clock. It was a relief to have to look at it again, to have something to plan my days around. I’d resumed working part-time at the library in Lawrenceton four weeks ago when Sam Clerrick had called me out of the blue to tell me his oldest librarian had suddenly turned to him to say, “I can’t shelve one more book. I can’t tell one more child to be quiet. I can’t deal with this new aide. I can’t tell one more patron where the Georgia collection is.”
Left in a bind, Sam had called me since I’d worked for him before. I’d agreed instantly to take the job; and Sam had agreed to see how my working part-time would do, at least while he scouted around to see if anyone wanted to work full-time. So I was working nine to one for five days a week, with one of the days changing every week, since the library was open on Saturdays from nine to one. No one wanted Saturday every week, including me. The aide took over in the afternoons, sometimes in conjunction with a volunteer.
I was ready to go in early. Might as well get the inevitable inquisition from my co-workers over with.
It was a beautiful spring Tuesday, with lots of sun and a brisk cool breeze. Angel was sitting on the steps leading up to the Youngbloods’ garage apartment, looking muddy, the result of pallor under her chronic tan.
“What’s the matter?” I couldn’t remember Angel ever being ill.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The past few days I’ve just felt awful. I don’t want to get up out of bed, I don’t want to run.”
“Do you have a temperature?”
“No,” she said listlessly. “At least, I don’t think so. We’ve never had a thermometer.”
I tried to imagine that. “Did you try to run today?”
“Yeah. I got about half a mile and had to come back.” She was still in her running clothes, sweating profusely.
“Look, let me take you in to the doctor. I’ve got an hour before I really have to be at work,” I said impulsively. I hated to think of Angel driving to the doctor by herself; she was so obviously ill.
“I’ve never been to a doctor except to get stitched up in an emergency room,” Angel said.
“Let me go call him,” I said, when I’d recovered from my shock. “You go take a shower and pull on some slacks.”
Angel nodded wearily and pulled herself up by the railing. She was trudging up the stairs as I went inside to call the doctor and the library. “I promise I’ll work the hours today,” I told Sam. “I just have to take a friend to the doctor. She hasn’t got anyone else.”
“There are disadvantages to having an employee who doesn’t really need the job,” Sam said distantly. “Is this going to be happening much?”
“No,” I said, a little offended, though I knew he was in the right. “I’ll be in on time tomorrow. It’s just today that I’ll be a little late.”
When I got out to my old blue car, Angel was sitting on the passenger’s side in white slacks and a yellow tank top, though it seemed cool for a tank top to me. I remembered how profusely she’d been sweating after her short run. She was leaning her head against the glass of the window.
Angel’s indisposition was worrying me more and more. I’d never seen her anything less than 100 percent physically, and I’d always envied her Superwoman physique-though not enough to work out every day so I’d have one like it. Angel was silent and listless during the short ride into town.
Dr. Zelman’s waiting room was not as full as I’d feared. There were two elderly couples; probably only one out of each pair needed to see the doctor. And oddly enough, there was blond Mr. Dryden, who was arguing with Dr. Zelman’s receptionist, Trinity.
“Would you please inform the doctor that I’m here on official business?” Dryden was saying in an exasperated voice.
“I did,” Trinity said coldly.
I could have given Mr. Dryden some good advice right about then, had he been in the market for it. “Never alienate the receptionist” is the first rule of all those who have a limited pool of doctors to draw from.
“Does he realize that I need to get back to Atlanta very soon?”
“He does indeed realize that.” Trinity’s face under its fluff of brown-and-gray permed hair was getting grimmer and grimmer.
“You’re sure you told him?”
“I tell Dr. Zelman everything. I’m his wife.”
Dryden resumed his seat in a chastened manner. It seemed the only two adjacent seats in the waiting room were the ones next to him. After we’d filled out the necessary “new patient” and insurance forms, Angel and I settled in, with me next to Dryden. I wriggled in my seat, resigned to discomfort. My feet can never quite touch the floor in standard chairs. So I often have to sit with my knees primly together, toes braced on the floor. I was wearing khakis that morning, and a sky-blue blouse with a button-down collar. My hair, loose today since I’d been in a hurry to get Angel to the doctor, kept getting wrapped around the buttons. Since Angel obviously didn’t feel like talking, once I’d disentangled myself I opened a paperback (I always keep one in my purse) and was soon deep in the happenings of Jesus Creek, Tennessee.
“Aren’t your glasses a different color today?” inquired a male voice.
I glanced up. Dryden was staring at me. “I have several pair,” I told him. I had on my white-rimmed ones today, to celebrate spring.
His blond brows rose slightly above his heavy tortoise-shell rims. “Expensive,” he said. “You must have married an optometrist.”
“No,” I said. “I’m rich.”
That kept him quiet for a while, but not long enough.
“Are you the same Aurora Teagarden into whose yard the body fell yesterday?” he asked, when the silence seemed to stretch.
“And you didn’t say anything at the Burns house last night?”
“What was I supposed to say?” I asked, bewildered. “ ‘Gee, Mrs. Burns, I saw your husband’s body. It looked as though someone had run over it with a meat tenderizer?’ Actually, she did ask me if he was dead before he hit the ground and I told her I thought he was.”
“I see.
“However,” he continued, “we need to interview you about the incident.”
I noted the terminology. “Then you’ll have to do it this afternoon. I have to go to work after I take my friend home. And I have to get my husband off to Chicago.” I added this last out of sheer perversity, since Martin, experienced traveler that he was, always packed for himself and drove himself to the airport in a company car, not wanting his Mercedes to be the target of thieves or vandals in the long-term parking lot. The only thing I had to do with Martin’s trips was to miss him.
I’d been missing him a lot lately.
Dryden suggested four o’clock at my house, I agreed, and I returned pointedly to my book. But Dryden had his
