It was the sort of puzzle that I eagerly moved on to find the answer to in every fictional mystery I read. I never tried to figure it out myself when I knew the writer would supply the solution in a page or two. But I couldn’t flip to the end of the book now…
I rolled down the car window, letting the cool breeze toss my hair. I looked at the proper green tent-roof over Jack Burns’s grave. On its surface I replayed the banquet’s ending.
Martin and I walked out the door, and he took my hand. Arthur and his date were behind us. I remembered how irritated I’d been with Arthur; how he’d eyed me.
And when I remembered that, a little cold trickle started down my spine.
But I ignored it with a great effort of will. I was going to track this memory.
The cool, sweet evening. The parking lot. The little knot of people on the sidewalk. The quiet voices exchanging pleasantries. Jesse Prentiss introducing Verna, a stout sixty-year-old with a narrow mouth and a tight perm, to the anxious Andersons, who wanted only to be gone. Perry asking Jenny Tankersley if she wanted to go to his place for a drink… Paul with his hand in his pocket to retrieve his car keys, his date standing with her arms crossed on her chest; probably having circulation problems because her blue jeans were acting as tourniquets. Who else? Marnie Sands, groping in her purse, looking annoyed. I remembered thinking she couldn’t find her keys.
We’d moved to the right, facing out into the parking lot, preparing to cross to Martin’s Mercedes. The dog and the cat had provided the diversion necessary for the attacker to make up his mind; he’d try for Arthur… the idea of what extreme anger must be necessary to prompt such risk-taking made me shiver.
Then, of course, my fall to the pavement. I touched my bruised face; I had a blue bump on my right forehead, and a little scrape on my right cheek. I’d been lucky.
The confusion, the screaming, the moan and curse from Arthur. Martin helping me up, trying to find out where I’d been hurt. Jesse Prentiss, unexpectedly authoritative, telling Perry to run inside to call the ambulance… the sound of Perry taking off. There’d been running feet to and from the scene on the sidewalk: Dryden had run up to us, and Perry had run away.
Paul Allison had said, too late, that he’d called it in from his car already; Perry had been in the building by the time Paul had told us. Perry had had a perfect opportunity to get rid of the knife.
Okay, what about Dryden? His presence at the end of the parking lot was explainable; he was guarding the Andersons. But could he have thrown a knife, somehow? No, I decided reluctantly. Arthur had been facing Dryden’s car, and the wound had been in the back of Arthur’s shoulder.
Arthur’s date, the little gal with the ponytail? Nope. Not only did it not ring true, but she’d been searched. So had Deena Cotton, who hadn’t been carrying a purse; and if she’d had a gnat in the pocket of those jeans, I would’ve been able to count its legs. Jesse and Verna Prentiss had been standing too far away to reach Arthur, by any stretch of their arms or my imagination. Martin and I had been holding hands and had been in front of Arthur. Marnie Sands had been in the right position and had had her hand in her huge shoulder bag… but how could she have gotten through the search?
Paul had watched us every minute until his fellow officers had arrived, unless… yes, there’d been the seconds he’d knelt beside Arthur, his hand supporting Arthur’s head; he’d been staring down at his wounded colleague. There’d been seconds, then.
But as I’d left the community center, I’d seen the police officers examining the area where Arthur had been stabbed. If the knife had been there-and it could only have been concealed hastily-they would’ve found it.
No. Somehow, some way, Perry had concealed the knife on his way into the community center. Had to be Perry.
I thought of my friend Sally, about how cheerful she’d been the day we took the punching bag to the airport. She’d already been through so much with Perry, his bouts with depression and his run-in with drugs; the prospect of Jenny Tankersley as a daughter-in-law had to look like Easy Street in comparison. It was inescapable, though, that Perry looked like the best bet for this series of horrible events. He’d looked at Angel with wanting eyes; he’d had a chance to hide the knife.
But that wasn’t enough, even close to enough, evidence for an arrest.
I started the car and drove out of the cemetery slowly, not having the slightest idea of where I was going. It was noon, lunchtime. I bought a sandwich from our local barbecue place and ate it sitting in the car, a practice I normally detest. Maybe I should have called Martin. I thought of doing it, then I remembered the day before when I’d had to track him down, and I childishly thought it might do him good to wonder where I was for a while. But those were surface thoughts, ideas that just skated through the front of my brain.
I had the feeling you get when everyone begins roaring with laughter at a joke, and you sit anxiously waiting for the punch line to make sense. There was something big and obvious right in front of me, and I couldn’t see it. It was like there was a hole in my glasses. In that spot, I was blind, though I could see clearly all around it.
Chapter Ten
I surprised myself by driving to the hospital and asking to see Arthur.
“He’s got a police officer stationed outside his room, you’ll have to ask her,” said the stout, elderly volunteer at the information desk. So I trudged through the uncomfortably familiar corridors, thinking that if this kept up, I might even learn the floor plan and figure out the reasoning behind it.
Arthur was in a room at the end of the hall so visitors could be seen coming for a long time. The officer in blue outside Arthur’s room was indeed a woman, husky and tough in her uniform. “C. Turlock” said her little name pin, and it seemed an unpromising sort of name.
Sure enough, Officer Turlock was determined to be the snarlingest watchdog a wounded fellow officer ever had, and she found me highly suspicious. Since my head was approximately as high as her elbow, and I offered to leave my purse out in the hall with her, I couldn’t see the source of her suspicions-did she think my glasses concealed a hidden dagger?
If Arthur himself hadn’t called out to C. Turlock to find out what she was in a lather about, I would have had to give up; but when he found out who was at the door, he ordered C. Turlock to let me in.
Arthur had one of those horrible gowns on. I could see the bandage at the back of his shoulder, where the material had pulled to one side. He looked as if he was in pain; and I was reminded that being stabbed, even with a pocketknife, is a very unpleasant experience.
I stood beside him, looking at him and wondering what to say. He looked right back.
“So, did Perry do it and drop the knife in a garbage can inside the building?” I asked finally.
Arthur’s face went through the most amazing changes. First he looked stunned, then aghast, and at last he started laughing. It was a big laugh, from the belly, and C. Turlock stuck her head in to see what was so funny. Arthur made an imperious sweeping motion with his right hand, and she hastily shut the door.
That right hand kept on traveling and grasped mine, drawing me nearer to the bed. I looked steadily into the pale blue eyes that had once turned my legs to jelly.
“I should never have left you and married Lynn,” Arthur said.
“Yes, you should,” I said briskly. “And you ought to go back to her now, if she’ll have you.”
“Can’t I detach you from that shady bastard you married?” Arthur’s voice was light, but he was serious.
All the troubles Martin and I had flashed through my mind. I shrugged. “Not with a crowbar,” I answered.