Bless Her Dead Little Heart

CHAPTER 20

An’gel checked her watch again. Quarter to one. Where was Dickce? She should have been home half an hour ago. A run to the grocery store shouldn’t take nearly two hours.

Plus she had either turned off her cell phone or was simply ignoring it, like she sometimes did, An’gel knew, when she didn’t want to talk.

“I’m sorry, Clementine,” An’gel said. “I don’t know where Dickce can be. I guess we’ll just have to set lunch back an hour.”

“Don’t fret about it, Miss An’gel,” Clementine said. “I made a big batch of potato salad. When Miss Dickce gets here, we can serve a cold lunch. I had sandwich meat on the list, and there ought to be plenty.”

“Provided Dickce didn’t forget it.” An’gel knew stress was making her grouchy, but she was frustrated by the unforeseen hitch in her plans. She had told her guests lunch would be at one thirty, and she didn’t want to have to tell them it would be delayed. They were fractious enough as it was, being cooped up in the house and subject to interrogation.

“You go on and stop worrying,” Clementine said. “Antoinette ought to be done with the bedrooms soon, and we’ll start getting everything ready for when Miss Dickce gets back from town.”

“I hope Diesel isn’t a hindrance,” An’gel said. “I’m not sure it was such a good idea for Antoinette to take him upstairs with her.”

“He was getting a bit stir-crazy cooped up in here.” Clementine laughed. “He won’t be no trouble. He’s been real good so far.”

“All right,” An’gel said. “I’ll be back to help when Dickce gets here with the groceries.” She headed out of the kitchen to the small room next to it that served as the study. She and Dickce had a desktop computer there that they used for e-mail and Internet searching. An’gel figured she might as well check her e-mail. She was in no hurry to rejoin her guests in the front parlor. A few minutes of quiet would do her good.

She left the door slightly ajar so she could hear her sister when she returned. Seated at the desk, she booted up the computer and logged in to her e-mail account. She stared at the screen for a moment but didn’t see anything that demanded an immediate reply.

An’gel leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. She tried to clear her mind, but to no avail. Her thoughts were full of the morning’s activities and her talk with Kanesha.

The chief deputy had departed twenty minutes ago after waiting as long as she could for Dickce to return. She finally told An’gel she would come back later in the day. Kanesha arranged for another off-duty deputy to be on hand through the day, and another would report for overnight duty that evening. On that score, at least, An’gel could rest easy.

She kept thinking about the water pistol. According to Kanesha, none of the guests admitted to having seen it before. One of them was obviously lying, just as he or she had lied about the tube of Vaseline. The problem was, any one of them might have had the Vaseline in his or her luggage. It was a fairly common item in a person’s toiletries.

The water pistol, however, was not. Its presence argued premeditation. Someone had brought it to use for a nasty purpose. Otherwise, why would an adult travel with such an item?

From conversations with her guests, An’gel discovered that Rosabelle had described the house to all of them on a number of occasions. They were all therefore aware of the presence of a marble staircase in the house.

A long and potentially deadly marble staircase. An elderly woman like Rosabelle would likely not survive a bad fall on it.

An’gel recalled one story from family lore in which the staircase had claimed another victim less than a year after it was installed. A neighbor’s son, part of a group of rowdy young men “with more hair than sense,” accepted a dare after a night of drinking to ride his horse bareback up the stairs at Riverhill. While the group cheered, the young man urged his horse up the steps, and all seemed well until they reached the top. One of the servants upstairs, hearing the fearful racket, had come to see what was going on. When she neared the staircase and a horse came lunging at her, she threw up her arms and screamed. The startled horse reared, and the drunken rider lost his grip on the reins. He cracked his head on the way down and died on the spot. The servant, though frightened, was not injured, nor was the horse.

An’gel sat up. What good were these morbid thoughts? You’re hiding in here to avoid Rosabelle and her family. Get up and do something; don’t sit there like a big bump of nothing.

With a heavy sigh she left her chair and headed for the front parlor.

Dickce and Benjy stayed at the veterinary clinic for about thirty minutes. The first sign of skittishness the animals betrayed was when they took them into an examination room. At first Dr. Romano was going to separate them, but Benjy protested politely.

“I think they’re used to being with each other,” he said with a shy smile. “They’ll be happier if you can keep them together.” Since the dog had whimpered earlier when Dr. Romano started to take the cat from the room, Benjy seemed to be right.

“No problem, then.” Dr. Romano, a cheerful, attractive woman in her late thirties, motioned for Benjy to place the dog on the examination table. She then positioned him so that the cat remained in his sight line. “Let’s check for a microchip first, since neither of them has a collar and tags.” She ran the scanner over the back of the dog’s neck.

“No chip?” Benjy said.

“Correct.” The vet turned to Dickce. “Miss Dickce, if you don’t mind holding the cat in your lap, I’ll check her now.”

“Certainly,” Dickce said. She put one hand under the cat’s stomach and patted her head with the other.

Dr. Romano scanned the cat. “No chip here either.” She put the scanner aside, then leaned against the cabinet to look at her patients and the humans with them. “From just a cursory glance, neither of them looks malnourished, so I’d guess they weren’t on the roadside long before you found them. No more than a day or two. They’re reasonably clean, too, though the dog has a few burrs and other debris in its coat.”

“You don’t recognize them, do you?” Dickce asked.

Dr. Romano shook her head. “They haven’t been in this clinic before, I’m certain. My best guess is either they got loose from a car passing through or someone deliberately dumped them by the road.”

“People who would do such a thing should never have animals in the first place,” Dickce said. “I’d like to see them dumped on the side of the road and left to fend for themselves.”

“I’d take a bat and knock them upside the head myself,” Benjy said.

Dr. Romano smiled. “I agree with both of you, though please don’t tell anybody I advocated the use of a bat upside the head.” She stood and came back to the examination table. “What is the plan for these two? I can call someone from the animal shelter and have them picked up after I’ve finished examining them.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dickce said. “They will be coming home with me. If anyone comes looking for them, I want to have a little chat with that person before he tries to take them back. Run whatever tests you need to run, and give them whatever shots they need. How long will all that take?”

“If you’ll leave them here overnight, that will be sufficient,” Dr. Romano said. “You can pick them up after lunch tomorrow. But give Wendy a call first to check.”

“That sounds fine. We’ll be back tomorrow.” Dickce rose and set the cat on the table with the dog. “Come along, Benjy. Dr. Romano and her staff will take excellent care of our new friends.” The cat rubbed against the dog and purred.

Benjy scratched the dog’s head behind an ear. “You’ll keep them together, won’t you? Let them sleep together, I mean.”

“We won’t separate them unless we have to,” Dr. Romano said. “They’ll be fine. After my examination I’ll be able to give you a ballpark idea of their age. They both look pretty young to me, I have to say.”

“Thank you, Dr. Romano,” Dickce said. She laid a hand on Benjy’s shoulder. “Let’s go now. An’gel will be wondering where we are before long.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Benjy gave the dog a quick hug and tickled the cat’s chin, and then he was ready to go with her. “You two be good, and I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The dog yipped, as if in acknowledgment, and Benjy smiled.

On the short drive to the grocery store, Benjy was quiet. Dickce knew he had much on his mind in addition to the welfare of the two animals. He would talk if he had something to say.

Forty-five minutes later they stowed the last bags of groceries in the back of the car, and Benjy pushed the two carts over to the cart rack. In the car, Dickce said, “That should be enough to keep us eating for a few days.”

Benjy nodded and looked out the window as Dickce backed the car out of the parking space and headed for the street.

She suspected that one of the boy’s concerns was where the dog and the cat would live. He seemed attached to the dog already, and he might be thinking about trying to take them both back to California with him. She didn’t think that was a practicable solution. For one thing, she didn’t think Wade Thurmond would permit it. He might not even want Benjy to remain with him, though since it was Rosabelle’s house, it would really be up to her, Dickce supposed. Rosabelle might allow the animals in her house, but Dickce didn’t think it likely.

She had already decided that the animals could stay with her and An’gel. That was the simplest solution, but it might be hard for Benjy to accept. In the emotional devastation resulting from his mother’s death, he might latch on to the two pets as a lifeline. Dickce was worried about what would happen to him once the investigation was successfully concluded.

Dickce sped along the highway toward Riverhill, and Benjy stared fixedly out the window. When she turned into the driveway, he stirred a bit and glanced over at her.

She had the feeling he was trying to get up the nerve to say something, probably about taking the animals home with him. When he did speak, however, he shocked her.

“Miss Dickce, I know where that water pistol came from.”