If Looks Could Kill (27 page)

Chapter 11

"You look like hell."

Chris didn't even bother to move as Sue opened the door and stepped inside. "I had a little trouble sleeping last night."

"It looks like it, honey..." Sue got as far as the foyer before coming to a dead stop. "Chris?"

Chris turned after her and considered the state of her house. She wasn't surprised that Sue felt it necessary to stop. Sue had been in her house enough times to know how carefully she kept it, how even though the floor of her living room looked like a secondhand shop, every item had its particular place, and woe unto any person who tried to move it. There were no places left this morning. She'd upended the entire house.

Sue turned on her, real fear in her big blue eyes. "Honey? What happened? Are you all right?"

Chris just rubbed at her temples and smiled. "I'll explain over coffee. I have some streusel. Interested?"

It took Sue a moment to answer. "Sure."

They proceeded past piles of CDs, nests of cushions, towers of stereo equipment, and at least one shattered ceramic ashtray on their way through to the kitchen. Chris could tell by the set of Sue's shoulders that it wasn't making her any more comfortable. Chris understood perfectly. She hadn't unearthed anything, anything at all that would have explained the noise. Nothing more than a few dust bunnies and a 1898 silver dollar that had somehow found its way beneath her couch.

"Tom said that Cooter's murder really upset you," Sue said as gently as possible as the two of them sat down in a kitchen that looked like a tornado had swept through and fulfilled the familiar rituals of morning coffee. Chris poured and Sue cut and passed around the coffee cake. Neither of them looked over to the counter where every one of Chris's glasses, cups, and plates rested in uneven piles, like modernistic sculpture, on the white counters.

"It's another copycat murder," Chris admitted, her attention on the swirl of cream she'd added to her coffee.

That brought Sue to an upright position. "And Tom didn't tell me?" She immediately blushed at her less than altruistic reaction.

"Don't get out the superglue yet," Chris advised. "He didn't know, either. From what I gathered, that information was classified."

Handily mollified, Sue considered the situation over her first sip of coffee. "But how could that have been a copycat?" she demanded. "I've read all the C. J. Turner books, and not one mentioned a bloated body in a garage. I would have remembered."

So Chris told her. In plain, unemotional words. In clinical detail. Even Sue came close to blanching.

"It's my fault," Chris said in defeat. "Somehow I set this in motion without even knowing about it, and now he's dead."

"Chris, how can you say that?" Sue leaned over, hand on Chris's arm.

"Because," Chris admitted. "I think it's true."

I've created it, she wanted to say. Molded it like a golem out of the clay of my own guilt. Out of the lies I've lived.

"Well, I wouldn't waste my sympathies on Cooter Taylor." Sue sniffed. "For whatever reason it happened, you know he got what he deserved."

A popular idea, evidently. Chris hadn't had to make the coffee cake after all. One had appeared on her doorstep that morning, still warm and moist, with an attached note that simply said, "Thank you. Cooter received his just punishment."

As if Chris had been the instigator. The town's avenger. She wondered if that meant she would also be responsible for her own judgment, since both Harlan and Louise Axminster had decided she deserved it. She could go into business. Write a book about the person you would most like to see punished. Any particular style of execution? Lethal injection too tame for you? How about shotguns or slow poison? We're running a special on Colombian neckties today...

"Mac's putting a protective guard on you, isn't he?" Sue asked, her pragmatism winning out. "After all, whoever this is has shown up here... God, that's enough to make you want to buy a gun and lock the doors." She shook her head, unnerved. "Here." She said it with that same kind of amazement every upstanding, average neighbor used when crime hits the neighborhood. Anywhere but here. We're safe from all that here.

"I don't know," Chris answered truthfully.

"Why don't you come stay with us?"

Chris almost gave herself away by answering too fast, too loudly. Instead, she hid behind another long sip of coffee.

"No," she finally said, as if she'd really been considering it. "I'm far enough behind on my deadline as it is. I'd never get any work done on the book if I stayed with you guys." She smiled. "I'd end up playing Chutes and Ladders with Ellen all night. But thanks."

Chris knew Sue wasn't happy with her answer. The little blond would probably find a thousand excuses to stop by, or have Tom stop by, or have Curtis, JayCee, and Buddy in their patrol cars, just to make sure Chris was safe. It helped ease just a little of the isolation. It didn't do a thing for the disorientation, the minutes that ticked inexorably away like heartbeats toward death, back to the dark from which Chris's dreams had finally begun to escape.

The doorbell chimed. A hand restraining Chris from getting up, Sue took over the chore. "You aren't really still working on a book, are you?" she asked over her shoulder as she picked her way through the mess in the living room. "Can't you talk your editor, or whoever, into holding it until this is all over?"

"I might try as soon as I find somebody," Chris allowed.

"Find somebody?"

She rubbed a little at the headache that had taken up residence behind her eyes. "They all seem to have been out of town this weekend."

Chris heard the exchanged greeting, heard the staccato of shoes across her floor, and looked up, her headache suddenly worse.

Shelly was red-faced and trembling. "What did she do?"

Behind her, Sue slowed to a stop in the doorway to the kitchen. Sunlight poured down on the three of them, gilding hair and brightening eyes. A beautiful day, bestowing health and sensuality. A special gift from God, illumination and warmth. An odd sensation considering the three women so blessed were discussing madness and death.

"What did she do?" Shelly demanded, her voice a jagged slice of disdain and shame.

Chris fought the urge to walk out on both of them. "I should have talked to her, Shel. It was my fault."

"Talked
to her?" the girl countered shrilly, all angles and motion. "Talked to her? Why? So she could tell me that it's an ungrateful child who turns away from her family? That I didn't get anything I didn't ask for? So she could tell you to your face exactly what she thinks of you?"

"I found out," Chris admitted.

That made Shelly laugh again, that strange, harsh laugh that sounded like crows over a dead body. "Not in a pig's eye, you didn't. She was drunk last night. Wait until you catch a load of her sober."

Chris climbed to her feet, too worn out to finesse her way around this one. "Shelly, you're still not my daughter," she said.

The girl stiffened, stilled, her hands clenched as tightly as her jaw. Chris saw tears glint against emotions she'd only suspected in the girl, seething whirlpools of loss and betrayal and pain. Chris braced herself, buffeted by that hostile silence.

"Well, we sure know that," Shelly accused. "Don't we?"

And without another word, she turned on her heel and slammed back out the front door.

Five minutes later, Mac walked in.

"We need to get some work done, Chris. I need that list of people you think might have something against you."

Chris just looked at him. "Alphabetically or chronologically?"

* * *

Mac was not happy with the looks of her. He'd expected her to be a little washed out after trudging through that nightmare the day before. Maybe a little drawn around the eyes. She looked as if she'd just survived Chernobyl. Pale as death, and almost as quiet, when he'd arrived. Picking at things and losing the train of conversation.

And her house...

At first look, Mac had been sure she'd had an intruder in the night, even though he'd had Curtis parked out front almost all night long. He'd seen neater prison riots.

But nothing was destroyed—except that worthless little hunk of ceramic she used for an ashtray—and nothing missing. Except, initially, her objectivity.

"You want to tell me what this is all about?" he asked, settling in at the pine kitchen table with his back to the wall so he could watch house and yard at once. It gave a person a great sense of space, an illusion of control. Too bad he couldn't enjoy it.

Chris fiddled with her coffee cup. "I, uh, had a little trouble with finding a surprise guest in the house last night."

Mac took a cursory look around. "So you decided to put everything out for the Rock of Ages rummage sale?"

He almost got a ghost of a grin. To his right, Sue watched with hawk eyes, not in the least shy about her concern.

"I figured I could keep busy today putting everything away," Chris retorted quietly, still not looking at him, still making him very nervous.

"I thought you wanted to help solve murders."

Her gaze flickered and lit. Lifted. Mac caught that same hint of indecision, that dark shudder of something private. There wasn't a chance in hell she'd unload in front of Sue, though. He was going to have to be patient.

"What can I do?"

Mac pushed the pile of folders he'd brought closer to the center of the table. "Go over the murders with me. Go over possible suspects. We need to come up with something."

For some reason, that made her look like she wanted to cry. Mac waited, not at all sure what was going on, experienced enough to know how to wait it out. Chris climbed to her feet, still picking at the royal purple-and-yellow sweatshirt she wore, the hand that held onto her coffee mug trembling.

"Can we do it someplace else?" she asked finally.

Mac scooped up his files and followed her. "No problem."

He really wouldn't have minded basking a little in all that sunlight, watching the new leaves on the trees outside or the birds dipping and swooping around the feeders. Keeping half an eye on the town from Chris's back window.

He wasn't going to get any kind of coherent answers from her here, though, either about the murders or the reason she'd found it necessary to pile all her worldly belongings in one big heap in the middle of the floor. And the other answers he needed were going to have to wait on his call to Chicago.

"How 'bout city hall?" he asked, pulling out his keys. "Nobody's there on the weekends."

Nobody except Weird Allen.

Mac saw him when they pulled into the parking lot, standing over by the back windows, his hands in his jeans' pockets, his attention on the street. Mac caught the glint of something silver on the back of Allen's belt and realized it was the handcuffs. Just what he needed to deal with right now.

"Chief..."

"Allen."

Mac kept his hand on Chris's arm and felt her stiffen at Allen's approach. She was spooking real easily this morning, he thought in passing. Not that she didn't have reason. Allen would have been spooky enough even without his own restraint devices.

"Considerin' what's been goin' on," the young man began in his curiously high voice, "I thought I'd help with surveillance around town... you know, when the patrollin' officer is unavailable."

Mac didn't turn away from where he was unlocking the city hall door. "And did you see anything, Allen?"

"Yes sir, I did. I observed Victor and Lester committing a 10-65 last night."

That brought Mac to an uncertain halt. "He committed a mad dog?"

Allen did his best to bluster. "No, sir, of course not. He was trespassing."

"Where?"

Allen swung his attention toward Chris in a way that let Mac know just how he'd discovered his information. "Miss Jackson's place of residence, sir. The subject... subjects were sitting out on the sidewalk at approximately oh-three-hundred hours."

Mac didn't want to betray the fact that he was intrigued. The last thing he needed to do was encourage Allen. On the other hand, he wondered why he hadn't heard about it from Curtis.