Dead Over Heels

Chapter Two

“I think Dryden and Pope-I mean, O’Riley-were some kind of federal agents,” I told Martin as he pulled on his maroon pajama bottoms that night. He just uses the bottoms, except on very cold nights, and we don’t get too many of those in Lawrenceton. I’ve never figured out what to do with the tops. Sometimes I wear them. “FBI or CIA or federal marshals.”

“As long as they weren’t interested in me,” Martin said.

“You’re out of all that now. Jack’s death couldn’t have anything to do with you, no matter who’s investigating it.”

Discovering Martin’s secret life had been the most terrible blow I’d ever sustained. Martin was born to be a buccaneer. For a while his love of danger had been satisfied by a brief stint working for a shadowy CIA-funded company following the war. After he’d begun working for Pan-Am Agra, he’d been approached again, and had resumed his clandestine activities. Only his complete withdrawal from the gun smuggling he’d been facilitating on his legitimate business trips to Central America had made our marriage workable.

I had just about recovered from the fact that he hadn’t told me anything about it before we married; but it had taken a while. For a couple of months, separation had been a real possibility.

I didn’t like remembering that time. Angel and Shelby dated from those days also, but I’d managed to regard them as friends and employees rather than bodyguards, for the most part. Martin had made some enemies along the way in his clandestine trade, and he was out of town a lot; installing Shelby and Angel had seemed like a wise precaution to him. Though Shelby had at first worked at Pan-Am Agra as cover for his real job-guarding me-it looked as if he actually had a career there now. He’d risen to crew leader and another promotion was looming on the horizon. That seemed the oddest by-product of the whole thing.

As I was sitting in our king-size bed with my crossword puzzle book on a lap desk resting on my knees, the thought occurred to me that, like Martin, Jack Burns was a tough man with a few enemies.

Jack, who must have been in his early fifties, had spent most of his working career on the Lawrenceton police force, though I remembered he’d tried the Atlanta police for a four-year stint. Jack had hated Atlanta ever after, and more than just about any other resident of Lawrenceton, he had resented our town’s ever-nearing inclusion in the sprawling Atlanta metro-plex. Jack had hated change, and loved justice, which couldn’t come pure enough to suit him. He’d had an almost total disregard for his personal appearance, beyond getting his hair cut and shaving every morning; he’d always looked as though he’d reached in his closet blindfolded and pulled on whatever came out, pieces that often seemed totally unrelated to each other.

“I wonder how he came to be in the plane,” I murmured, putting aside the lap desk and book. “Seems like to me he took flying lessons at one time. I think I remember Bess saying he thought it might come in handy on the job.”

Martin was brushing his teeth, but he heard me. He appeared in the bathroom door to make gestures. He’d tell me in a minute.

I heard gargling noises, and Martin emerged blotting his mouth with a towel, which he tossed back in the bathroom as an afterthought. It landed sort of in the vicinity of the towel rack.

He’s not good about hanging up towels.

“While you were out tonight,” he said, “Sally called.”

I raised my eyebrows interrogatively. Sally Allison was the kingpin reporter for the Lawrenceton Sentinel.

“She wanted you to know, for some reason, that Jack Burns had rented the plane himself, from the Starry Night Airport ten miles away on the interstate.”

“He rented it himself?”

Martin nodded.

Good friend that Sally was, she knew I’d be intrigued by that little fact. I clipped my pencil to the puzzle book and tried to imagine how someone had gotten Jack into the plane and then killed him and thrown him out; could one person do that? Could little planes be set on autopilot? Wouldn’t someone be at the airfield to monitor arrivals and departures?

“From the very little Burns’s wife said to you, he knew the identity of someone here in Lawrenceton who’d been hidden by the Federal Witness Protection Program,” Martin said.

“So why would the-I don’t know, what do you call ‘em, protectee? Why would he kill Jack?”

Martin raised his eyebrows at me. I’d missed something very obvious.

“I imagine whoever killed Jack Burns wanted the new name of the hidden person.”

Naturally. I should have seen that before. “But if these were the people this witness had testified against, wouldn’t they know what he looked like?”

“Maybe he’s had plastic surgery,” Martin said. “Or maybe these people only suspect they know who betrayed them.” But his interest in the subject had ebbed. Once he’d decided we were safe, not implicated, he’d begun losing interest in Jack Burns’s death, except as it upset or concerned me.

“But why in our backyard, Martin? You were worried about that earlier,” I challenged him. “Let’s hear a good reason.” I took off my glasses (I was wearing my blue-framed ones that day) and crossed my arms under my breasts. They were more or less covered in ivory lace, the top of a concoction Martin had given me for his birthday.

“Do you think our yard was picked on purpose?” Martin asked.

“Yes… maybe. I didn’t want to make a song and dance about it when Padgett Lanier was here, but the plane circled to get the drop right. The body could have been dumped in any of the fields around here and lain for days with no one the wiser and no way to trace the plane. They risked Angel and me seeing the plane, to dump Jack here.” I pointed down, as if our bed had been the target.

“It was a threat against the protectee, as you call him,” Martin said calmly. He seemed to feel better about the implications of Jack Burns ending up in our yard now. “Saying, ‘Here is the body of the man who knew you, we’re coming to get you soon.’ ”

“Could be. But why here?”

“They wanted the body found as soon as possible, to get their message across. They saw a nice big yard with two women in it who were sure to call the police right away.”

Not for the first time, I realized how much I’d come to rely on Martin’s decisiveness and authority. If he said this was nothing for me to worry about, I was fairly willing to accept it. And I also recognized something I should have spotted earlier; my husband was furious. Protective Martin did not like his wife frightened by falling bodies, especially when he’d decided the body had fallen near her by design. Martin was as full of pressure as a preeruptive volcano.

It was too bad we didn’t have a home racquetball court. That was Martin’s favorite method of letting off steam.

He had another one, however.

“Martin, I was really scared today.”

Instantly he moved to his side of the bed and slid in, and his arms went around me. I nestled my head in the hollow of his neck. He held me carefully, delicately. I know a man’s protection is illusory, but illusions can be awfully comforting sometimes. I raised my face to his and kissed him. When I was sure we were both thinking the same thing, I switched off my bedside lamp, turned back to him, and gave his neck a tiny nip.

We were much more relaxed when we went to sleep.

Sally Allison’s story in the Lawrenceton Sentinel the next day said nothing about two big men from Atlanta. Martin left it folded open on the table by a clean coffee cup, waiting for me; he’d had to go in early for a breakfast meeting with his division heads.

Jack Burns, longtime member of the Lawrence-ton police force, was killed sometime early Monday afternoon. His body, thrown from a low-flying airplane, landed on the property of Aurora Teagarden and Martin Bartell, about a 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.

No, I’m a different one. There are several of us in Lawrenceton. “Yes.”

“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. About damn time.

“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 talking shoes on.

“So, your husband is the plant manager at Pan-Am Agra?”

“His job just got upgraded to vice president in charge of manufacturing.” I turned a page.

“Have you been married long?”

By golly, I was on the verge of being rude. Really.

“Two years,” I said briefly.

Then, thank goodness, Trinity called Angel’s name.

“Please come in with me, Roe,” my bodyguard said quietly.

Considerably surprised, but pleased to be escaping Dryden, I tucked my book in my purse and rose to my feet. Dr. Zelman’s new nurse took over from Trinity, leading us to a cramped examining room with rose-and-blue walls and a table that would barely hold Angel. Something about the nurse seemed familiar. As she talked to Angel about her aches and pains, efficiently taking Angel’s blood pressure and checking her temperature, I realized the woman in white was Linda Ehrhardt, whose bridesmaid I’d been in the long, long ago. She’d been Linda Pocock for years now. As she turned away from Angel, she recognized me too.

After the usual exclamations and hugs, Linda said, “I guess you heard I got divorced and moved back home.”

“I’m sorry. But it’ll be nice to see you again.”

“Yes, that’ll be fun. Of course I brought my children, and they’re in school here now.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten. Was that two girls?”

“Yes, Carol and Macey.” Linda extracted the thermometer from Angel’s mouth and glanced at the reading. She wrote it down on Angel’s chart without a change of expression.

“Mrs. Youngblood, you’ll need to disrobe for your examination,” Linda said rather loudly, as though Angel’s habitual silence meant she was short on wits rather than words. “There’s the cubicle in the corner, just put on one of those gowns.”

Angel glared at Linda after she’d looked at the cubicle, and I had to admit I couldn’t see Angel’s changing in that tiny area as a possibility. But she managed, grumbling to herself. So I wouldn’t be just sitting there listening to her, I brushed my hair with the help of the mirror over the sink, carefully drawing the brush all the way through the mass of streaky brown waves, trying not to break off my ends by pulling the brush out too soon. I gave up when it was flying around my head, wild with electricity. By that time Angel had managed to reensconce herself on the table with the obligatory sheet across her lap, though she was clearly unhappy with the whole situation and not a little afraid.

Dr. Zelman burst in just as Angel was about to say something. He never just came into a room, and he never just left; he made entrances and exits. He almost never closed the door completely, something his nurse or his patient’s friends had to do. (I crept behind him to do it now.) Now in his early fifties, “Pinky” (Pincus) Zelman had worked in Lawrenceton for twenty years, after a short-lived practice in Augusta that had left him inexplicably longing for something more rural.

“Mrs. Youngblood!” he cried happily. “You’re so healthy you’ve never been to see me before, in two years here, I see! Good for you! What can I do for you today?” Dr. Zelman caught sight of me trying to be unobtrusively solicitous, and patted me on the shoulder so heavily I almost went down. “Little Ms. Teagarden! Prettier than ever!” I smiled uneasily as he turned back to Angel.

Angel stoically recited her symptoms: occasional exhaustion, occasional queasiness, lack of energy. I winced when I thought of asking Angel to help me mow the yard the day before. Now quiet and intent, Dr. Zelman began examining her from head to toe, including a pelvic, which Angel clearly hadn’t expected (I hadn’t either) and which she barely endured.

“Well, Mrs. Youngblood,” Dr. Zelman said thoughtfully, rooting for his pencil in his graying hair (it was stuck behind his ear), “it’s really too bad your husband didn’t come with you today, because we have a lot to talk about.”

Angel and I both blanched. I reached out and grabbed her hand.

“Because, of course, Mrs. Youngblood, as I’m sure you guessed, you are pregnant.”

Angel and I gasped simultaneously.

“I’m sure you knew, right? You must have missed two periods. You’re at least ten weeks along, maybe more. Of course, with your wonderful physique, you’re not showing.”

“I’m not regular at all,” Angel said in a stunned way. “I really didn’t notice, and it didn’t occur to me to wonder, because my husband… has had a vasectomy.”

I sat down abruptly. Fortunately, there was a chair underneath.

For once, Dr. Zelman looked nonplused. “Has he had a recheck done recently?” he asked.

“Recheck? He got snipped! Why should he have a recheck?” For once, Angel’s voice rose.

“It’s wise, Mrs. Youngblood, wise indeed, to have that recheck. Sometimes the severed tubes grow back. I’m sorry I gave you the news so blithely, since it seems you and your husband had not planned to have any children. But a baby’s on the way, Mrs. Youngblood. Well on the way. You’re in such excellent condition and so slim that the baby may not show at all for another month or so, especially since this must be your first pregnancy.”

Angel was shaking her head from side to side, disbelievingly.

“If your husband wants to talk to me,” Dr. Zelman said gently, “I can explain to him how this happened.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s going to think he knows already,” Angel said dismally. “But I would never in this world…” She shook her head, finishing the rest of her sentence in her head.

I had to help Angel dress, she was so deeply shocked. I tried not to burble, since she was upset, but I was so excited by proxy that it was hard.

A baby.

“How can I work?” Angel said, but not as if she was really concerned.

“Pooh, as a bodyguard? I don’t need a bodyguard anymore, now that Martin’s out of-that mess,” I said soothingly. “If you still want to help me out around the place, we’ll work something out. Maybe I could keep the baby for you? Some?”

She heard the yearning in my voice.

“This should be happening to you,” she said with a faint smile on her thin lips.

“Oh, Martin’s worried about his age,” I said, and thought right away of kicking myself: Shelby Youngblood was Martin’s age, forty-seven, and Angel was twenty-eight to my thirty-two and a half. “Anyway,” I said bracingly, “you tell him to call Dr. Zelman, okay? He may get kind of upset, having had a vasectomy and all.”

“Oh, I just bet he will,” she said grimly.

Angel walked out to the car in a state of stunned silence. I made sure she was in the car and then I ran back in to get my purse, which I’d left in the examining room. You could tell I was excited and upset, since normally I’d be as likely to leave my arm as my purse. I explained to Trinity Zelman, who waved me on back, and Linda was waiting at the door to the examining room with the purse in hand.

“Knew you’d come back for it,” she said. “Give me a call, now!” She hurried down the hall to the little lab, and I turned to go out, passing the first examining room on one side and Dr. Zelman’s office on the other on my way to the waiting room. Dr. Zelman’s office door was typically ajar, and I heard Mr. Dryden’s pleasant accentless voice inside. He’d finally gotten his five minutes with the doctor.

“I see that the widow has urged me to talk with you about her husband’s condition,” Dr. Zelman was saying without much enthusiasm. “So I’ll answer your questions.”

I walked slower.

“In your opinion, was Jack Burns an alcoholic?” Dry-den asked directly.

“Yes,” said Dr. Zelman. “Just this past two or three years, he came to me on several occasions with drink-related injuries. He’d hit his head when he fell, one time. Another time, his car had hit a tree. There were a couple more things like that.”

“Did it seem to you, from what you knew of Jack Burns, that his judgment was impaired?”

“Yes, he…” and then I had no excuse to loiter, though I dearly wanted to, because Trinity came out of the reception area and started to go to the doctor’s office with some files.

I had more to think about than I could cram in my brain. I’d dropped Angel off at home, promising to take her prescription for maternity vitamins to the pharmacy on my way home from work. Angel clearly wanted some time to herself, and I could understand why. Telling your forty-seven-year-old vasectomied husband that he’s about to be a dad was not an enviable proposition. I wanted to talk the situation over with Martin, but of course I couldn’t tell him Angel was expecting until she told her own husband. So probably it was just as well I had to go to work.

The Lawrenceton Public Library is a large two-story block with a low addition to the rear of the building for offices. This brand-new addition, achieved mostly by a bequest from an anonymous patron, a few other donations, and matching community improvement funds, is easily the nicest part of the library, and it’s a pity I get to spend so little time in it. It consists of a large employee break room with a row of bright lockers for personal possessions, a microwave, refrigerator, table and chairs, and a stove; Sam Clerrick’s office (with space outside for a secretary, though now he only has a volunteer part-time); and a “community interest” room, where various clubs can meet free of charge if they are careful to schedule it well ahead of time. And there’s a nice employee bathroom.

The rest of the library, where I get to spend my working hours, is a plain old creaky public building, with indoor-outdoor carpeting that resembles woven dead grass with trampled-in mustard, the usual row upon row of gray metal shelves, a two-story entrance and nice staircase up to the second floor, which has a gallery running all the way around with various Dewey Decimal categories lining it, and lots of table-and-chair sets for kids doing homework or genealogists doing research. There’s an area set aside by clever use of shelving and extra bulletin boards, and it’s designated as the Children’s Room.

Whatever its drawbacks, overall there is that wonderful smell of books, and the relaxing, intelligent feeling of being surrounded by generation after generation of thought.

I’ve got libraries in my blood.

Of course, there are a few things I have to put up with to work in this wonderful place, and one of them was bearing down on me. Lillian Schmidt, buttons bulging and girdle creaking, had her eyebrows up in that “Hah! I caught you!” look.

“Late today, aren’t we?” Lillian fired as her opening shot.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I had to take a friend to the doctor.”

“Wonder what would happen if all of us did that? Guess the library just wouldn’t open!”

I took a deep breath.

“I’m late enough as it is,” I said with a smile. “Excuse me, Lillian, but I can’t stand here and chat.” I pulled out the little key to my locker, used it, and stuck my purse inside, pocketing the key in my khaki slacks. I was due to tell a story in two minutes.

The librarian I was replacing, at least temporarily, was the children’s librarian.

Perhaps ten preschoolers were already seated in an expectant semicircle when I plopped down in the big chair in the middle.

“Good morning!” I said with enough glee to raise a hot-air balloon.

“Good morning,” the children chorused back politely. This was the First Church of God the Creator day-care group, with a couple of other loose kids thrown in, story-time regulars. The moms and the day-care providers sat in a little group over in one corner, their expression one of relief that someone else was shouldering the burden, at least for a few minutes.

“This morning, I’m going to tell you about Alexander’s bad day,” I said, casting a covert glance at the book the volunteer for the morning, my friend Lizanne Sewell, had left by the chair: Alexander and the No-Good, Awful, Very Bad Day. Most of the kids turned hopeful faces in my direction, though a few were looking anywhere but at me.

“I’ll bet some of you have had bad days at one time or another, am I right? What happened on your bad day, Irene?” This to a little girl with a wonderful, large easy-to-read name tag. Irene pushed her shaggy black bangs out of her eyes and squashed the slack in her T-shirt in one grubby fist.

“On my bad day my dad left my mom and me and went to live in Memphis,” Irene said.

I closed my eyes.

It was only ten o’clock in the morning.

“Well, Irene, that was a bad day,” I said, nodding soberly to show I was giving due weight to her problem. “Has anyone else ever had a bad day?” I looked around the circle, hoping no one could top Irene’s.

“I knocked over my cereal bowl one day,” offered a little boy the color of ground coffee. I tried not to look relieved. His mother was not so guarded.

“That was a bad day, too,” I acknowledged. “Now, let me tell you about Alexander’s bad day… and if you sit still, you can see the pictures in the book as I tell the story.”

Over to one side, Lizanne was shaking her head gently from side to side, her lips pursed to hold in a giggle. Not daring to glance again in her direction, I began the book, one of my favorites.

The rest of the story time went by without a hitch, and most of the children seemed to enjoy it, which was not always the case. Only one had to go to the bathroom, and only two whispered to each other, which was quite good. Irene was one of the day-care children, so her mother wasn’t there to upbraid me for traumatizing Irene with my probing interrogation.

“It would be better for Irene if he didn’t come back,” one of the day-care workers murmured in my ear as they gathered up their flock to return to the church. “He drank like a fish.” I thought briefly of Jack Burns driving his car into a tree, then forced myself back to the present.

I realized the woman was trying to make me feel better, and I smiled and thanked her. “Come back soon, kids!” I chirped, being perky all over the place.

The little ones all smiled and waved, even the ones who hadn’t listened to a word I said.

Lizanne was ready to help me change the bulletin board, and in fact she’d made most of the items to go on it. With construction paper and some contact sheets, we’d created butterflies, hummingbirds, fish, books, baseballs, and other signs of warm weather. Maybe we were being unduly optimistic about the books, but the summer reading program had always been one of the library’s best features, and Sam was counting on me to start plugging it early.

After we’d commented on the way story time had gone, Lizanne and I began to work together companionably, referring to our sketch of the finished product from time to time, handing each other push pins or border and so on. From time to time Lizanne would stop and press a hand to her protuberant stomach; the baby was moving a lot, since she was in her sixth month. Every time, Lizanne would smile her beautiful slow smile.

“Has Bubba made plans for what to do if the baby comes while the legislature’s in session?” I asked.

“At least ten plans,” Lizanne said. “But maybe it’ll come before he reconvenes.”

Bubba Sewell, Lizanne’s husband, was a state representative and a local lawyer. Bubba was ambitious and intelligent, and, I think, basically an honest person. Lizanne was beautiful and slow-moving and somehow almost always managed things so that they pleased her. I could hardly wait to see what the baby’s character would be.

Lizanne left to eat lunch with her mother-in-law, to whose opinions on the baby’s upbringing she was blandly indifferent, and I helped some preschool children pick out books. One mother of a nine-year-old boy with a stomach bug came in to get some books and videos to keep him amused, and I collected a few natural history books with plenty of gross pictures of frogs and snakes.

My stomach was growling inelegantly at one o’clock when the library aide came to the children’s room to take my place. The aide was a heavy woman with pecan-colored skin named Beverly Rillington, who couldn’t be more than twenty-one. Whether it was because of race, age, or income level, Beverly and I were having a hard time geeing and hawing together. She and the previous children’s librarian had also had personality conflicts, Sam Clerrick had warned me. But Beverly, hired under a job-training program, was efficient and reliable, and Sam had no intention of letting her go.

“How’s it going today?” Beverly asked. She looked down at me as though she didn’t really want to know.

In an attempt to break the ice, I told Beverly about the morning story hour and the disconcerting answer I’d gotten from Irene.

Beverly looked at me as though I should have known in advance I’d hear more than I bargained for. If Beverly made me anxious, terrified I might step on her many sensitive toes, I clearly waved a red flag in her face just by being who and what I was. Beverly never volunteered anything about her home life and did not respond to references to mine. Making contact with her was one of my projects for the year.

(“I’m damned if I know why,” Martin had said simply, when I’d told him.)

As I told Beverly good-bye and prepared to go home to see my husband off and be interviewed by Mr. Dry-den, I found myself wondering why, too.

But the answer came to me easily enough, in a string of reasons. Beverly was naturally good with kids, any kids, a knack God had left out of my genetic makeup. Beverly was never late and always completed her work, i’s dotted and t’s crossed. And, oh happy day, Lillian Schmidt was so terrified of Beverly that she avoided the children’s area like the plague when Beverly was at work. I owed my aide thanks on many levels, and I was determined to put up with a certain gruffness of manner for those reasons, if no others.