Bless Her Dead Little Heart

CHAPTER 18

What in the name of Sam Hill was Dickce doing?

With one part of her brain, An’gel registered that her sister was standing over a chair, cushion in hand, staring down at the seat. The other part kept her spiel about the house’s history running right on course. She had given this talk so many times, she felt like she had a tiny on-off switch for it in her brain and connected to her tongue.

No one else seemed to have noticed Dickce’s odd behavior. No one, that is, except for the deputy by the front window. Dickce evidently called him over, An’gel realized, because he moved quickly to join her sister by the chair.

An’gel kept going, but Juanita Cameron must have noticed something about her expression because she turned toward where Dickce stood with the deputy. Once Juanita’s head turned, other heads began to turn as well, until everyone in the room was looking at Dickce and the deputy.

An’gel stopped in the middle of a sentence about repairs to the house after a fire in 1893. “What’s going on over there?” She stepped forward.

Dickce dropped the cushion back in place and turned to An’gel with a smile. The deputy left the room. “I found something—sat on it, actually—that I think Deputy Berry will want to see.”

“What is it?” Wade asked.

“Yeah, what is it?” Junior said, followed by similar inquiries from his cousin and his mother.

“I think the deputy should see it first.” Dickce stood in front of the chair.

An’gel was determined to find out, and she approached her sister. She reached down to pull up the cushion, but Dickce smacked her hand lightly.

“You have to wait, too,” Dickce said with a smarmy grin.

An’gel frowned at her. Dickce was being childish. It was one thing to keep her discovery from their guests, but surely she had as much right as Dickce to know what it was.

Before An’gel could protest, Kanesha returned with the deputy. She did not speak as she motioned for the deputy to remove the cushion. An’gel noticed that both Kanesha and her subordinate now wore plastic gloves.

She peered around Dickce’s shoulder to see what the cushion had hidden. Her eyes widened when she saw the water pistol. How on earth had it come to be under the cushion of that chair? Where had it come from in the first place?

One of the guests had to have brought it, An’gel decided after a moment’s reflection. There was no reason she or Dickce would have one in the house—although with Dickce’s occasionally odd sense of humor, she couldn’t be completely sure of that. She would be interested to hear what her sister had to say.

Kanesha indicated that her deputy should replace the cushion. “Thank you, Miss Dickce,” she said. “I’ll want to talk to you and Miss An’gel about this later, along with everyone else. Deputy Rhodes here is going to remove the chair for a little while to have a little closer look at it. He’ll be really careful with it”—she shot an admonitory look at the deputy—“because he knows it’s a valuable antique. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Mrs. Sultan.”

An’gel nodded. She turned back to face the curious glances of her guests as Kanesha and Deputy Rhodes left with the chair. Dickce found another chair farther away from the sofas while An’gel resumed her spot in front of the fireplace.

“What was so interesting about that chair?” Maudine’s voice was strained. “Was there blood in it?”

An’gel wanted to snap at the woman for such a ridiculous question. She held on to her temper as she replied, “No, it wasn’t blood. I’m not at liberty to say what it was, because Deputy Berry prefers to examine it first. I’m sure she will talk to each of you about it when it’s your turn with her.”

She barely registered the frowns of her guests. Her mind was busy grappling with the implications of her sister’s discovery. She realized that one person in the room, other than she herself and Dickce, knew about the water pistol because one of them had hidden it there.

After using it to squirt water on the stairs.

In a sense that water pistol was the murder weapon—along with the petroleum jelly on the banister. An’gel marveled at the devious mind that had come up with such a simple yet effective method of killing someone.

She glanced at each of her guests in turn. Which of them possessed that devious mind? She didn’t think Maudine was smart enough to think up such a plan—but perhaps that stemmed from her dislike of the woman. Maudine could be far more clever than she appeared.

Bernice didn’t impress her as being any more intelligent than Maudine, but that mousy demeanor could be the perfect cover for a cunning mind. An’gel thought that either Wade or Juanita was a more obvious choice. Junior appeared to be an innocuous young man, about as dim as his mother.

She also considered Rosabelle, mindful of the discussion last night with Juanita. The girl’s concern that her grandmother had dreamed up the prank in order to dramatize her imagined persecution had stuck with An’gel. She had told Dickce about the conversation this morning before Dickce had gone to set the table for breakfast. Her sister had been as troubled by the idea as An’gel herself was. After Rosabelle’s performance at the breakfast table, An’gel decided, she couldn’t dismiss Juanita’s worries.

She realized with a start that her guests were staring at her expectantly. Should she continue with her mini dissertation on the house? At the moment she couldn’t think of any other innocuous subject for conversation, and she wanted to forestall further questions about the water pistol.

“Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the fire of 1893. It started, I believe I told you, because a guest was smoking in bed, despite warnings not to.” An’gel glared for a moment. Thus far she had no evidence that any of Rosabelle’s family smoked, but if one of them did, she wanted it clearly understood that smoking was not allowed inside the house. She resumed her narrative. “Fortunately the fire was quickly contained, and the resulting damage wasn’t extensive.” She went on autopilot from that point.

During her lecture An’gel had been vaguely aware of the occasional flash of lightning, followed by a boom of thunder, but had paid them little heed since they appeared to be several miles away. Now, however, lightning struck somewhere nearby, and she heard thunder two seconds later. She felt the house shudder and heard the parlor windows rattle. She also noted the alarmed expressions of her guests. “I suggest that we move out of the parlor now, and gather under the back side of the stairs. The area between there and the kitchen. Now, please.”

The deputy had already moved away from the front window, and he held the parlor door open as An’gel and Dickce shepherded their guests out into the hall and toward the area An’gel suggested.

Their mother had been afraid of storms, particularly of violent ones, and she had passed that fear on to An’gel. Dickce was less bothered by them, but even she turned cautious during conditions like they were currently experiencing.

“Do you think there will be a tornado?” Bernice’s voice trembled. “Don’t you have a storm cellar?”

“There is a storm cellar,” An’gel said, “but I don’t believe there’s any need for us to get into it.” She worked hard to keep her voice calm. “The storm seems to be moving quickly, and I’m sure it will be out of here in a few minutes.”

“Thank goodness,” Maudine said with a shudder. “There are bound to be spiders in a storm cellar, and I can’t abide spiders. I’m not going in there no matter what.”

An’gel didn’t care much for spiders herself, but she’d rather share quarters with a few spiders than end up dead in a tree somewhere from the deadly force of a tornado.

Thunder rolled again, and it sounded like the storm was right over the house. An’gel felt the vibrations under her feet. Their position under the stairs should be safe enough, An’gel thought. They stood roughly in the center of the ground floor with no windows nearby and were protected by the house around them. She knew Clementine would have taken refuge in the pantry, along with her granddaughter, Benjy, and Diesel. An’gel prayed the storm would pass quickly.

For now they huddled close together as the thunder sounded loudly yet again.