Martin, listening, shook his head absently, as he always did when my distaste for (most) strenuous physical activity crossed his mind. But he was still looking at the man embedded in our backyard.
“Do you think he’ll be recognizable when he’s turned over?” he asked the sheriff suddenly.
“No telling,” Lanier said. “We’ve never had one dropped from a plane before. Now I wonder, do you suppose that body landed here on purpose?”
He had our full attention now, and he knew it. I felt a jolt of dismay.
“Would you like some more ice coffee?” I asked. (I know it’s “iced,” but that’s not what we say.)
He glanced at his glass. “No, ma’am, I reckon I’m fine right now. Did that plane circle around before the man fell?”
I nodded. Lanier’s gaze moved to Angel, where it dwelled wonderingly. She was something to see.
“Mrs. Youngblood, you said you didn’t see it?”
“No, Sheriff. I had the lawn mower running and I was listening to a tape.” Angel, who’d pulled a white T-shirt on over her bikini, was getting plenty of surreptitious attention from the deputies and the ambulance men. It ran off her like water off a duck’s back. Angel is not pretty, but she is tall, very muscular and lean, and golden as a cheetah. Her legs are maybe a mile long.
“Miss Roe, you actually saw him fall?”
“Yes. But I didn’t see him come out of the plane. When I looked up, he was already in the air.”
“You reckon he was already dead?”
I hadn’t considered that. “Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes, I think he was. Because he was…” I had to take a deep breath. “He was all floppy.”
Martin moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.
Padgett Lanier shook his glass a little to hear the ice cubes tinkle against the sides. “I wonder, when we turn the deceased over, if you all would mind taking a look at him.” He held up a placatory hand before we could respond. “I know, I know, it’s an awful thing to ask anyone, especially these ladies, but we do need to know if you have seen this man anytime or anywhere, before today.”
I had never wanted to do anything less. My husband’s hands gripped my shoulders bracingly.
“Sheriff! We’re ready when you are!” called the taller of the deputies, as he pulled on an extra pair of plastic gloves. Lanier heaved himself out of his chair and strode over to the body.
This was a process I did not want to watch, and I covered my face with my hands. I heard some sounds I definitely didn’t want to match to an image.
“You needn’t bother, ladies,” called Lanier. His voice was very unsteady. I wondered if I ought to tell him where the bathroom was. “You needn’t bother,” he said again, in a lower voice. But the people in our yard were so quiet, it was easy to hear. “I recognize him myself… I think.”
I dropped my hands in amazement, caught a glimpse of what was being lifted from the lawn, and put them back up hurriedly.
“Who is it?” Martin called, close to my ear.
“Detective Sergeant Jack Burns, City of Lawrence-ton Police Department.”
Padgett Lanier, no doubt about it, had a certain sense of ceremony.
After some dreadful minutes, the envelope of broken bones and jellied organs that was Jack Burns’s body was maneuvered into a bag and then into the ambulance. Lanier, obviously shaken but still maintaining his official face, ambled over to the patio. I was feeling very shaky, and Angel was an interesting shade of green. I thought she might be sick again. Martin and Shelby looked even grimmer than they had before.
“How long has it been since you saw Jack Burns?” Lanier asked me. “Seems to me as though you and he never got along too well, am I right?”
“I never had any quarrel with Mr. Burns,” I said steadily. That was the truth. Jack Burns’s dislike of me had not had its basis in any one incident, but in cumulative distrust. “And I haven’t seen him in-maybe years.” Which had been fine with me; I’d feared Jack, with his blind zeal for his own brand of justice. It’s bad to have a policeman as an enemy.
“And you, Mrs. Youngblood?”
“We did have a run-in a couple of weeks ago,” Angel said calmly, though her color betrayed her. I tried not to show any surprise.
“And just what was that about-?”
“He ticketed my car downtown, for some completely bullshit city ordinance he’d looked up in the books.”
“Now why would he do that?”
Angel put her hands on her hips, and her arm muscles rippled. “I came out of the bank and found him putting a ticket on my car and we had a little talk, kind of sharp.”
“Anyone around during this little talk?”
“Sure,” Angel said wearily. “It was downtown on a Friday morning. I saw that man that works at the library with Roe-Perry Allison-and I saw that pretty round woman who works at Marcus Hatfield, the one with the dark hair who has the little girl.”
“Carey Osland,” Lanier decided.
“Right, if you say so.” Angel seemed indifferent to the question of the woman’s name.
Martin looked at me, his eyebrows arched: Did you know about this? I shook my head almost imperceptibly.
“Why do you think, Mrs. Youngblood, that a detective sergeant would give a parking ticket?”
“Because he thought it was Roe’s car,” Angel said bluntly. “We both have blue Chevettes. Mine’s the same age, I got it used. Though mine’s a slightly different shade of blue, we basically have the same car.”
“Did you have a conversation with Jack Burns?”
“Not what you would call a conversation,” Angel said dryly. “He looked kind of taken aback when he saw it was my car, but then it was like he figured if I lived out here in Roe’s garage apartment, giving me a ticket was almost as good as giving her one. And he was right, I probably was seven inches from the curb instead of six. But I wasn’t in a good mood.”
This had been a real speech for Angel, who did not tend to be chatty. But Padgett Lanier wanted more.
“So you had words?” he prodded her.
Angel sighed. “I asked him why he was giving me a ticket and he told me I was parked too far from the curb, and he asked me how Roe was doing, had she found any more bodies lately, and I told him he was giving me a bullshit ticket, and he said he was sure there was some ordinance still on the books about public bad language, and did I want to see if I could karate-chop my way out of a jail cell.”
Lanier stared at her, fascinated. “And what did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t respond?”
“No point to it. He’d decided he was going to give me the ticket.”
Lanier seemed nonplused. He eyed Angel a moment or two longer, then asked Martin if he’d seen Jack Burns lately.
“The last time I saw Jack Burns was two years ago, about the time I met my wife,” Martin said calmly. His fingers dug into the tight muscles of my neck and I tilted my head back.
“And you, Mr. Youngblood?”
“Hadn’t ever met him.”
“You weren’t mad about your wife getting a ticket?”
“If you park seven inches from the curb, you gotta take what’s coming to you.”
Padgett Lanier’s pale face had a tendency to flush easily. We watched now with some trepidation as he turned a tomato red. The sheriff dismissed us curtly, and turned his attention to the search his men were making in our yard. I wanted to beg them not to trample my poor little just-plowed garden: but I decided that would be unfeeling.
With the passage of a couple of hours, supper had become just possible. I called the Youngbloods’ apartment to ask Shelby and Angel if they wanted to share our meal, but Angel said she’d rather lie down than eat, and Shelby didn’t want to leave her.