Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

She straightened and raked both hands through her hair, which just made it stand up. Then she took another considered look at the house. "The first thing I have to do," she said, "is challenge the accepted perception of what is or is not arson."

At the house just east of Victor's a curtain lifted in what was probably the kitchen, and then fell back into place again. Which meant that if the neighbor was active as well as nosy, Murphy and his accomplice had about five more minutes of quiet before a cruiser showed up to evict them from their perch.

"There is one more thing," Murphy said. "How do you think Billy Mayfield's involved?"

Timmie's face immediately clouded over. "Oh, God. Billy."

"You do think he was murdered, don't you?"

No answer. No eye contact.

"He have something to do with the hospital?"

For the first time since Murphy had spotted her, Timmie Leary-Parker turned to take a considered look at him. Murphy noticed how sunken her eyes had gotten. How she seemed to be a little puffy and discolored in places. She also had a splint on her little finger. She'd been a lot busier this week than he had, that was for sure.

"You know," she said, oddly enough brightening. "I didn't even think of that. I don't have a clue what he did. But it would make sense. You know, if he knew Victor, which he probably did. Their wives worked together. Maybe he worked there at some time. Maybe he was a patient."

"He was. You killed him."

"I didn't kill him," she retorted, stiff with outrage. "Somebody else did."

"You gonna tell me about it?"

After his last meeting with her, Murphy expected an argument. What he got was a chagrined smile.

"Yeah, I guess I am."

"And then you can get his social security number, too."

She told him about it. Murphy probably could have easily lived the rest of his life without learning about the interesting connection between Billy Mayfield and the Puckett County coroner. He probably would have lived a happier, albeit more boring, life if he hadn't heard the word "poison."

But once she said it, she couldn't take it back. And Murphy knew that if nothing else, he at least had to salve his curiosity. And so, with that in mind, he sent Timmie Leary-Parker back out into the world of hospitals to check on the results of Victor Adkins's autopsy, and he headed for the phone.

* * *

"Price University?" Pete Mitchell asked the next day over lunch. "You think Price University is doing something nefarious?"

Murphy took a second to sample his chili before answering. God, it had been a hundred years since he'd eaten at Crown Candy. A lifetime ago when he'd worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He'd been fired from that job, too, of course. Not for being a drunk or a drug addict. Nobody much cared as long as he got his stories in. Cops had driven him home from cop bars and crime scenes, and editors had shrugged off complaints. Like a star athlete with a penchant for punching girlfriends, Murphy had been immune as long as he'd produced. And he'd produced one of his Pulitzers for the paper. It wasn't until he'd been caught with his pants down by a TV crew that they'd finally shown him the door. That had been about eight years ago.

Pete Mitchell had worked under him then, the junior woodchuck assigned to keep him out of major trouble. Now balding and paunched and content, Pete edited the business section. And instead of inviting Murphy to Missouri Bar and Grill, where the print news guys really hung out, he'd suggested Crown Candy, one of the few standing buildings in the wasteland that had become north St. Louis, where TV camera trucks vied with police cruisers for parking, and the town's politics were discussed over chili and ice cream instead of scotch and cigar smoke.

So Murphy sucked down four-alarm beans under a high stamped-tin roof and ticked off the aging, balding, uniformed faces he still recognized around the room, all the while fighting that old feeling of a visit from Christmas past.

"There's just some action going on out in Puckett, and Price seems to be involved," Murphy finally hedged.

Pete laughed so loud that half the room turned. "You're lyin' like a dog. But that's okay, because I still owe you for the Growth and Commerce Association story."

"And Price?"

Pete went back to his sandwich. "Nothing. Not a whisper of distress. The university is in the top ten, which is crowding the other med schools in town, and the hospital seems solid. Too many beds, but working hard to stay a contender."

Murphy ate some more chili. He might have had lots of problems, but his stomach had never been one. It obviously still wasn't. "And Memorial?"

Pete paused, belched, and waited, as if expecting applause. "A master stroke." Waving his sandwich at Murphy like a soggy wand, Pete grinned. "Every hospital in town has been layin' odds on where the next big population shift is gonna happen. Barnes went into St. Charles, St. John's into Washington, and Price bet on Puckett. The word on the big Monopoly board is still out on who's going to win, but I'm betting on Price. Not only the population, but the population with expendable cash. Price is also giving every sign that they believe it hard, too."

"How?"

"Feasibility studies. Busy real estate lawyers. Spending the money to bring in a hotshot like Paul Landry and then stuffing him out in Memorial instead of the university hospital itself."

Murphy forgot his chili. "Landry, huh? Johnnie Cochran clone with a degree in corporatespeak?"

"The very same."

The man standing right next to Alex Raymond when the shots had been fired. The one Timmie had said made white folks nervous.

"He's hot, huh?"

"Specializes in hospital turnarounds. He just came off a big job in Dayton, where they wanted to give him the keys to the city and an armed escort out of town. Within another four months, I guarantee you'll see a solid business where a charitable hospital once stood."

"Definitely a man of the nineties."

"My own considered opinion is that Price set him up out there to lay the way for the big shift in Price services. I figure that in another ten years the only thing left of Price in the city is gonna be clinics for the med students to practice on. The real money-making services are going to be out in beautiful, bucolic Puckett."

"Like Restcrest."

Pete nodded happily. "Perfect example. I mean, they set that place up as the Temple of Aging. Did everything but cement Mother Teresa into the cornerstone. It is, my son, the way of the future, and Price is preparing itself to own the market."

Murphy was so out of practice that it took him a good few minutes to recognize his reaction. Itchy. Restless, like somebody was pumping electricity through him, right below his skin.

Instinct.

For a second he forgot the hum of conversation in the echoing room. He lost the clink of china and the almost constant whine of sirens beyond the green screen door. He was thinking of big business. Big money. Big power. Big risk.

Money and power and sex. Murphy's trinity of motivation.

The kind of motivation that could lead to murder.

He damn near smiled. "And Alex Raymond?" he asked.

Pete picked a stray shred of lettuce off his white shirtfront. "Mother Teresa's twin brother," he said. "I don't know what you want to hear, but the guy is beloved. He and his partner are really making advances in Alzheimer's research. The partner's a geek of the first order, but like a good Frankenstein, he stays in the lab. Alex Raymond pats hands and fights governments for medical breakthroughs."

Murphy did look at Pete then, and it was to see a familiar edge in the editor's eyes. A faint reflection of old reporter's lusts, which both of them had long since used up and washed away.

A perfect man in a perfect hospital doing good works. Nothing a reporter distrusted more.

"You'll keep an eye out for me?" Murphy asked.

"For like considerations."

This time Murphy gave Pete the kind of smile that would once have sent half the people in that room running for cover. "I do have a small one. Save it up for when you need it."

Pete's leaned forward. "Yes?"

"Paul Landry. Have you heard his 'poor marine wounded in a foreign war' story?"

"The beginning of his long and illustrious career as a savior of hospitals, from what I hear."

Murphy nodded as he finished the last of his chili and let his spoon clatter into the bowl. "You might want to check to be sure, but my guess is that he missed a paragraph in his military history. He put himself in Chu Lai about three years after the marines had gone."

Pete damn near held his breath. "You're sure?"

"That's what I heard him say. My guess is that he hasn't been any closer to Vietnam than the Time-Life series."

Pete wasn't glowing anymore. He was laughing. "You want some help on the rest of the story?" he asked. "Like old times?"

Murphy was touched. There hadn't been any old times. By the time Pete had signed on, Murphy's ship had been sinking fast. All Pete had been able to do was hold his coat and the door.

"Thanks, Pete," he acknowledged. "I'll let you know. Right now, though, I have somebody helping me. And, unless I'm mistaken, she is already, even as we speak, doing undercover work right inside the hospital itself."

Chapter 10

Timmie wasn't at the hospital. She was at another funeral. Victor Adkins was being laid to rest in the same cemetery as Billy Mayfield, and the sense of déjà vu was just a little too intense.

The good news was that at least Timmie didn't feel nearly as bad about it. Not that she was thrilled to be burying Victor. Victor didn't deserve to die any more than Billy had, no matter what the SSS had to say about it. But at least this time Timmie didn't have to wade through a morass of ambivalence on the way to the services.

There was no question about the cause of death. Victor had died from smoke inhalation and thermal injuries to the bronchial tree. Hot smoke and gases, just like Timmie had told Murphy out in Victor's backyard the day before. Definitely not a survivable diagnosis. ETOH level of 350 mg/dL, which meant that Victor had drunk himself into a coma and slept right through the working smoke alarm, the flames, and the searing heat that had, in effect, melted his lungs and airway. Which also meant that the murderer had at least had the decency to anesthetize him before burning him to death.

Also no question. Victor had been murdered. Timmie was sure the fire had been set, which meant that Victor had probably been deliberately... what, drunked? Tanked up? Intoxicated with intent? In any case, premeditated to death.

If Timmie could have gotten the fire puppies to pay more attention to her, she might at least have gotten them to send someone to Victor's neighborhood to ask about recent Greeks bearing beer. But her second contact with them had been as productive as her first. Fire puppies did not appreciate being told their jobs by as-yet-unknown nurses.

She'd also spent a solid twenty seconds considering a phone call to Van Adder, who had demanded primary jurisdiction as coroner on Victor's case. But if the fire puppies had trouble talking to a nurse, Timmie could well imagine Van Adder's attitude.

At least this time she wasn't out there staring into the sun all by herself. Murphy listened. Murphy believed. Murphy would at least help her solve the puzzle, which was enough right there to propel her out the door this morning with a smile on her face.

Murphy also had the potential of being a real predicament for her on an entirely different level. Murphy was sexy, and Murphy was sharp, and Murphy was walking the end of the same road she was on, which made him a heck of a conversational partner in a town without many. And while Timmie was into stage four of divorce, she wasn't all that far from three, which meant that her hormones still tended to rampage like juveniles'.

But Timmie knew better than most that hormones weren't enough for anything but a stockpile of batteries or a pile of regrets. Murphy might hold down a job. He might even smile on occasion so that she could see that cute dimple of his, but he still walked with that brittle "I haven't been out long" air Timmie knew much too well and hated far too much. She knew a dead-end street when she saw one, and Murphy was the poster child for dead-end streets, no matter what Timmie wanted.

But that was a problem for another day. Today, her job was to watch and see if anything of interest happened at the funeral.

And to that end, the other difference. Today Timmie was the one driving Cindy, Ellen, and Mattie in her battered old Peugeot as they followed the procession up toward the Eternal Rest Chapel.

"You sure we shouldn't just bury this thing along with Victor?" Cindy demanded from the backseat as the car coughed into a gear change.

"I'll have you know that old Cyrano here got Meghan and me all the way from L.A. to Baltimore in four days to see Cal Ripken break Lou Gehrig's record at Camden Yards," Timmie said proudly as she patted the car's cracked and faded dashboard, which carried not only a statue of the Virgin Mary, but St. Christopher, St. Patrick, and St. Jude, who as patron saint of the impossible was Timmie's most important talisman against automobile decrepitude.

"Cyrano?" Ellen asked.

Timmie grinned. "Ugly but faithful. A heroic car with many good, unnoticed qualities."

"You really drove all the way cross-country just to see some skinny white boy play baseball?" Mattie asked.

Timmie smiled at the memory of hot dogs and fireworks and a lone man trotting all the way around a stadium to say thank you. It had almost restored her faith in the game. In the memories she'd hoarded since childhood of perfect summer days and her father bent way over her so she could smell Old Spice and Lucky Strikes as he taught her to keep score.

"Some things are worth a little extra effort," she said.

"Not baseball," Mattie assured her. "But you might think of putting a little time in on the air filter on this thing."

"I've been busy," Timmie said.

"I drove cross-country once," Cindy offered. "I decided to go surfing and just took off. Had a great weekend in San Diego with a bisexual biker named Jose."

"Did you get your father taken care of?" Ellen asked Timmie.

Timmie just nodded and kept her attention on the cop car in front of her. They'd had a good turnout for Victor. Police had shown up from twenty or so municipalities and the highway patrol to form the procession that snaked through the often-repaired cemetery lanes, and the last thing Timmie needed to do was ram old Cyrano's nose into the ass end of a cop car.

"Alex Raymond really got him into Restcrest?" Cindy asked, leaning forward between the seats.

"This morning."

Timmie had badgered her father to get dressed. She'd lied to him about where they were going. She'd strong-armed him from the car and then walked away from him when he'd pleaded with her to tell him why she was abandoning him to strangers.

He was going to be happy there, the staff had kept assuring her. He was going to be busy and active. They kept patting her hand when they said it the same way she'd patted her father's when she'd promised he could come home again if he'd just stay at Restcrest for now. He'd sobbed as she'd left. Even though she'd done it before, even though she knew this time was really for the best, Timmie had cried all the way home.

But that wasn't something she was going to think about right now, either.

"I think he likes you," Ellen offered.

Timmie looked away from the procession for a split second to check Ellen's passive face in the mirror. "Who?"

"Alex Raymond. Why else would he go out of his way for your father like that?"

Timmie's laugh was abrupt. "Because he's a nice guy?"

"Of course he's a nice guy. But there's a waiting list for every one of those beds."

"And just what would he see in her he doesn't see in me?" Cindy demanded, damn near sitting on the stick shift. "I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue."

"And my girl here can quote Tennyson and Shakespeare," Mattie said, arms across chest where she was shoehorned into the other front seat. "Whatchyou got to top that?"

Cindy's smile was rapacious. "The Kama Sutra."

"'The pleasure is momentary,'" Timmie quoted instinctively, "'the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.'"

"Tennyson or Shakespeare?" Ellen asked with a grin.

"Lord Chesterton."

"He never dated me." Cindy assured them all.

"He the only one," Mattie retorted.

"You really want the truth, I think it was my contribution got your father in," Cindy offered with another big, secretive smile. "I laid it all out for you, ya know."

"I'm sure you did, Cindy," Timmie agreed.

"You've been known to lay it all out for ice cream and a bad movie," Mattie retorted.

"Not this time," Cindy assured her with a pat to her arm. "This time it's love."

"Uh-huh."

The procession was slowing to a final stop. Taillights flickered like before, doors opened. Men in uniforms spilled from sedans and lifted hats to heads with gloved hands. It was time to watch the crowd and see if anything shook free.

"It reminds me..." Cindy said inevitably.

"We're not going to the chapel again, are we?" Ellen said in a faint voice.

"No," Timmie assured her, pulling to a careful stop behind a Puckett cop car and yanking on the brake. "Up by the green tent."

Just another little irony in life. Billy had ended up ashes, and Victor, who was already ashes, was going to take up ground space with a bronze casket. Go figure.

Billy. Timmie had to ask about Billy, how he might have known Victor. A lot of the same people had showed up at his funeral, but Timmie wasn't sure whether that was because there was a connection or just because this was a small town.

Up by the limo, Timmie saw Barb bending to adjust the coat on her youngest daughter. Barb looked no different than usual, cool, composed, deceptively relaxed. No one who saw her take that fragile little girl into her huge arms and gently guide her other children toward the grave site would have recognized her two nights earlier when the red-headed detective had identified the disaster on their table as Victor.

She'd laughed. Loud. High. Hard. With astonished tears in her eyes, although no one could have said whether she'd been astonished at Victor's appearance or her own reaction. Dr. Chang had taken over from that point and they'd at least managed to get Victor as far as a burn unit in St. Louis before he died.

"I hope this isn't going to become a regularly scheduled event," Timmie announced as they all collected purses and prepared to decamp. "I like cemeteries about as much as I like working the ortho ward in winter."

"'Specially this cemetery," Ellen agreed heartily.

"There has to be one more," Cindy allowed as she tugged her micro Lycra skirt a millimeter lower over pencil-thin thighs. "Everything comes in threes, ya know. Maybe we should start drawing names from a hat."

"This isn't a game," Ellen retorted as hotly as Ellen knew how.

Halfway out of the car, Timmie turned to see Ellen sitting as stiffly as a hurt child. Cindy must have seen it, too. Her own expression wilted and she laid a hand on Ellen's knee. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "You're right. It's not a game at all."

Ellen, being Ellen, patted back. "It's okay, Cindy," she said gently. "I know you didn't mean it that way. You've been such a good a friend these last few days."

"My Johnny wasn't perfect, either," Cindy said, her voice soft and almost as hurt as Ellen's. "You want the honest truth, he hit me sometimes. It didn't mean I didn't miss him. It didn't mean that I didn't want to die right along with him."

"I know," Ellen soothed, wrapping her arms around the other woman. "I know."

Timmie shot Mattie a look over the top of the car. Mattie just rolled her eyes. Amazing, Timmie decided. Ellen comforting Cindy. But then, maybe that was what Ellen needed right now.

"Excuse me, Ms. Leary?"

Timmie had just bent over to release the driver's seat so Ellen could get out. She straightened instead at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Yes?" She turned before she'd gotten her balance, and almost lost it again.

The redheaded detective. Standing in the middle of the cemetery drive as if he'd been waiting for her.

"Yes?" she asked again, forgetting Ellen completely.

People passed the two of them like a stream sweeping past rocks, but the detective didn't budge. He was medium height, but wide. Solid. Unsmiling, as if he weren't given to it, not as if it had been taken away. Kuppenheimer suit and Lenscrafters steel-rimmed glasses, regulation-cut mustache and suspicious brown eyes.

"I'd like to talk to you," he said.

Timmie actually laughed. "Now?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Timmie?" Ellen asked, still caught.

Chagrined, Timmie spun around and released the seat. "My name is Leary-Parker."

He didn't answer. He didn't move. Neither, once they managed to get out of the car, did Cindy, Mattie, or Ellen. The rest of the procession, however, was picking its way around tombstones and tree roots to get to the green tent.

Finally Timmie waved her friends on. "Go ahead. I'll be there in a minute."

"You sure?" Mattie asked in her most intimidating mode.

Timmie grinned. "Yeah."

"All right," she conceded. "Just remind that man who he has to come see, if he ever gets hisself shot." And then she turned and led everybody else off.

Timmie turned back to the cop. He didn't seem amused by Mattie's threat. On the other hand, he didn't seem upset by it, either.

"And you are?" Timmie prodded him.

"Detective Sergeant Bernard Micklind. You a friend of Victor's, were you?"

"A friend of his wife. Why? Was I headed to the wrong side of the aisle?"

For just a second, Sergeant Detective Micklind let his gaze drift up the hill to where the ranks were forming up for the service. Then he was right back with Timmie.

"You've been asking questions. Talking to the medical examiner up in St. Louis and the arson investigator here."

"Yes, I have."

He seemed surprised by her honesty. "Why?"

"Several reasons. I knew the St. Louis ME had done Victor's post, and I wanted to make sure Victor's death wasn't preventable in our ER. And, as I tried to explain to your arson investigator, I think that fire was set. I thought he should know."

Actually, he'd laughed. Kind of the way Van Adder had when Timmie had mentioned the words "forensic nurse." Don't teach a grandmother to suck eggs, the fire puppy had told her, and then hung up. Interesting that a cop now showed interest.

"But you said you're a friend of his wife," the officer said, not relaxing his posture a millimeter.

Timmie did her best to keep her patience. "Even assholes don't deserve to end up charbroiled."

A common theme lately, she thought blackly.

"He was a good cop," Micklind retorted finally, with some emotion.

Up on the hill the preacher opened his book and asked the gathering to pray along. Timmie considered the taut line of officers who had come in their off hours in uniform when it hadn't been necessary. She thought of Micklind's instinctive defense.

"I'm sorry," she said, relenting. "You're probably right. Just 'cause he was a lousy husband doesn't mean he was a bad cop. It also isn't reason enough for me to overlook a possible murder. I thought something was wrong, so I told somebody. I wasn't aware that was an indictable offense."

"Not indictable. Just... complicating. We're investigating the fire, Ms. Leary. We'd prefer you didn't interfere."

Timmie would have felt relieved if this guy didn't still seem so evasive. There was a message here, and she wasn't getting it just yet. "So you do think it was arson?"

"The file isn't closed."

"Uh-huh. Well, that's good. I'm glad. I don't suppose you want to tell me if you have a suspect."

He didn't. It didn't matter. Timmie saw it by the way his attention drifted back uphill as surely as if he'd pointed a finger square at Barb's back. "We're looking into that."

Timmie's jaw dropped. "Are you nuts? Barb couldn't have done anything like that! You saw how she reacted when she found out that was Victor. My God, she was there when he came in!"

"She wasn't when the fire started."

Timmie opened her mouth to argue. She couldn't. He was right. Barb had walked in right after the call had come through.

But Barb couldn't have committed murder. Especially not that murder. Because if Barb had, Timmie would have to go back to suspecting Ellen, too, and Timmie simply couldn't stand that. Not Ellen, with her quiet comforts and gentle words. Not either of them.

"No," Timmie said with a definite shake of her head. "It's something to do with the shooting he was investigating. I'm sure of it."

Micklind gave her a stone-faced cop glare. "Shooting? What shooting?"

"At the horse show."

"Don't be ridiculous. He wasn't investigating any shooting. Vic was a patrol sergeant, not a detective."

"Of course he..." It took that long for it to sink in.

Micklind was standing there staring at her as if she'd told him Victor had set the fire himself. Blank, solid, noncomprehension. Micklind was telling the truth. He didn't have a clue that Victor had been making the rounds.

Suddenly everything shifted again. Timmie had just assumed that Victor had come in an official capacity, there to fill out forms until the problem went away or was forgotten. But he'd been serious. He'd also been working outside the loop.

Which meant what? Which meant she should do what?

"Victor was asking questions," Timmie insisted deliberately. "He talked to Daniel Murphy and me. He even showed Mr. Murphy some pictures. Doesn't that even interest you, when you know the fire that killed him was probably set?"

Micklind just stood there as if this weren't the biggest surprise of the day. Behind Timmie the crowd responded to a prayer in hushed tones. A breeze cut through the leaves in the mature trees that survived in the older part of the cemetery. Nearby, a maintenance worker was swinging one of those big tractor-mowers in around tombstones as if it were a timed obstacle course.

And Timmie stood there thinking she should ask something. Well, hell, she thought. She was trained to question victims, survivors, perpetrators. She wasn't trained to grill cops. Especially cops who might be involved somehow. What the hell was she supposed to do?

"Why do you think Victor was investigating the shooting on his own?" she asked.

Micklind froze completely. Wrong question first time out. Oh, what the hell. She might as well go for it.

"Are you investigating the shooting at the horse show?"

Wrong again. Now he was glaring.

"Is anybody investigating the shooting?"

"It's an ongoing investigation," he recited dutifully.

Timmie laughed. "Don't insult my intelligence, Detective. Just tell me why nobody wants to know any more. Is it because you're pretty sure it was a one-time deal and you don't want to hurt the person involved for making a stupid decision in a moment of stress, or is it something else?"

Now he sighed. "It's nothing, Ms. Leary. This might be a lot for an overeducated bedpan handler from L.A. to understand, but we take care of our own here. And we're taking care of it."

"If you were," she retorted, cheeks hot, "don't you think Victor would have left it alone?"

* * *

Another SSS wrap party at the Rebel Yell. Another several rounds of drinks, fueled by Cindy's close encounter with another cop funeral and Ellen's with the Eternal Rest cemetery. Alex showed up again for one drink and spent the time asking Timmie what she thought of Restcrest. Barb arrived for the first toast. Calm, collected, pretty in her testifying duds, as she called the sharp red suit she said made her look like a brewery wagon. Timmie drank and laughed and recited the best of her father's lines and wished she were home with a pencil, ruler, and sheet of paper so she could graph out what little information she had.

Micklind had clammed up like a pregnant teen. And by the time Timmie had made it up the hill to watch the rest of the service, the service had been heading back down the hill.

She did ask Alex if he'd heard anything more about the shooting investigation, only to be met by bland indifference. She asked the general crowd what they'd heard from Van Adder, only to be booed. She sipped her soda and watched people having a wonderful time and decided that she shouldn't have listened to Murphy after all. If she hadn't, maybe she could enjoy her first afternoon out without having to worry about anything more than what she was going to fix Meghan for dinner. As it was, she spent it watching everyone for ulterior motives and deciding that she was the worst detective since Clouseau because she didn't see a one.

* * *

"I didn't come home with you to play another game o' Clue," Mattie griped as the two of them closed Cyrano into the detached garage at the side of Timmie's house an hour later.

"They think Barb killed Victor," Timmie argued, her keys jangling in her hand as she turned back toward the front walk. "Don't you think that's reason enough to ask questions?"

It was getting on toward three. Meghan was due home from school, and traffic had picked up on Timmie's block. The sun was losing out to a thin layer of clouds, and the wind seemed to whip around at ankle level. Timmie shivered with the as-yet-unaccustomed-chill.

"Why bother me with it?" Mattie demanded.

"Because I trust you. Because you watch everything and keep your mouth shut. Because you're not sleeping with Van Adder."

Mattie did everything but spit on her fingers. "Don't even go there, girlfriend. I got nightmares enough as it is."

Timmie laughed, her attention on separating her door key as they walked. "I'm telling you, Mattie. There have been two murders and one attempted murder that nobody's talking about, and I just don't think it's all a silly coincidence."

"Why not?" Mattie demanded, yanking off her gold lame church hat as if this were a statement itself. "People get murdered all the time where I grew up. Shoot, girl, you wouldn't'a had a job in Los Angeles if people didn't get capped on a regular basis. Why you got a problem with this?"