Chapter Two
I was in the office by eight-thirty the next morning, already at my desk plowing through papers when Keisha, my take-care-of-all-things assistant, came in.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, giving me a raised-eyebrow look. Today her hair was pulled straight back from her face, accenting the fine bone structure, and she wore black stretch pants. Okay, Keisha is way too big for stretch pants—not fat, just big—but she likes them. Today she wore a flowing scarlet tunic over them, and she looked, well, dramatic. Life with Keisha is nothing if not colorful.
“Nothing. Why?” I knew what she meant, but I couldn’t decide whether to be offended or laugh, though ultimately I did the latter.
She looked at her watch. “You are never in the office before nine. Now I don’t even have time to do my nails ’fore I got to get to work.”
Grinning, I said, “No, and would you make a pot of coffee? I have to go downtown in a little bit.”
Raised eyebrows again. “Downtown? Your business don’t take you downtown.”
Zing! She figured things out way too fast for me.
I tried being lofty. “I’m going to court.”
“Hmmm. Court. You gonna’ to tell me about it?” By now she was bustling around the coffee pot and seemed to have put her nails on hold.
I pushed the papers away, leaned back in my chair, and gave her an abbreviated version of the story, ending with, “Claire wants me to be there, so I will.”
“I got a terrible sense you’re gettin’ yourself in trouble,” she muttered. “I read in the paper this morning about Mrs. Guthrie shooting her husband—well, it didn’t say that. It said he’d been shot in a domestic dispute.”
The paper! It was my morning ritual, but I’d slept a little late this morning since it was five before I went back to sleep. And then I’d rushed the girls around, getting them to day camp way earlier than usual. I’d have to retrieve today’s paper from the front lawn and see what it said about the “domestic dispute.” Meantime I thought how awful it was for Claire to have this in the paper.
“That’s not all,” I said. “My former neighbor, Florence Dodson, fell down her back steps and hit her head last night. She’s dead.”
“The one what always thought the girls were picking her flowers? Well, bless her heart. You call your mama about her?” Keisha asked.
Of course I didn’t! My mom and Florence Dodson developed a sort of distant friendship when Mom visited from Chicago, talking on the sidewalk when Florence walked her dog. Mom must have told her she was always worried about me, always sure the girls and I were in danger, and Florence used to call Mom if things were amiss at my house. If I told Mom about Florence Dodson, she’d be sure it was murder and she needed to come protect me. I wasn’t going to give her any reason to rush down to Texas to protect me and the girls.
“I don’t think I need to,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction.
“They were friends,” Keisha said with way too much common sense. “That’s what you do: when something happens to someone, you tell the friends who care.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
But not today.
****
I got my first glimpse of Angus Mitchell at the bail bond hearing. He was what my friend Joanie would have called “a fine specimen of a man”—tall, erect, with curly gray hair, and, I suspected, laughing eyes, though I hoped he wasn’t laughing this morning. He wore the requisite blue suit, but since I could only see his back, except for quick glimpses when he turned to Claire, I imagined the pin-striped shirt and red tie with a small, unobtrusive pattern. Claire stood beside him, wearing the same clothes she had last night; now they were pretty wrinkled, and her hair needed shampooing. When asked how she pled, she answered quietly but firmly, “Guilty.”
“Your honor! Approach the bench?” Angus Mitchell was quick. He talked briefly with the judge, then came back, whispered to Claire, and said, “The defendant will plead temporary insanity.”
Claire never blinked.
The judge set bail, and bailiffs took Claire away. I moved toward Angus Mitchell.
“Mr. Mitchell? I’m Kelly O’Connell. I…I’m the one who called you last night.”
When he turned to look at me, I saw that he was even more compelling and attractive up close. His eyes were deep blue and now that the proceedings were over, they were as full of laughter as I’d expected. A smile, welcoming but not too much so, was turned in my direction as though there were no one else in the room. His firm handshake lasted just a second too long, and he never took his eyes from me.
“Kelly, I’m so glad Claire has a friend like you.”
An ominous thought dashed through my mind.
Am I the only friend Claire has? Have I inherited her somehow?
“Thanks. What happens now?”
He turned back to his papers and began shuffling them, as though the question was awkward, and then he said, “She’ll be out on bail. But she’ll have to have someplace to stay, as we talked about last night.”
“She has a house—that is, they do.”
“I doubt Jim will want her there. He’s scheduled to be released tomorrow.”
I wasn’t smart enough to debate law with him, but I suspected it was half Claire’s house, and she had as much right to be there as Jim. While I thought this through, Angus Mitchell said, “I’m sure you see how awkward this would be. She could stay there tonight, but then Jim will be there tomorrow. No idea why they’re keeping him an extra day, but they are. You do understand, don’t you, Kelly?”
“Not really,” I said, “but let me ask something else. When will she be free? Can I get a message to her that I’ll wait and take her home?”
“I’ll see her, but it will take a while before bail’s arranged and all that. Why don’t you go on about your business”—was he mocking me?—”and she’ll call you when she’s free.”
“Any idea when that will be? I have to pick up my children at four-thirty.”
“Should be before that, but I’ll tell her. Nice to meet you, Kelly,” and he was gone. I didn’t like Angus Mitchell as much as I first thought.
****
I “went about my business” but I couldn’t concentrate, and Keisha brought my attention back several times when she saw me gazing out the window. “What you’re looking for ain’t out there,” she’d say.
In truth, I puzzled about Florence Dodson and how sudden death could be. One minute, she was at the top of those steps, getting ready to do who knew what? Water her plants? Walk the dog? The next minute she was dead. I’d fallen once and scared myself to death. I remember thinking I wished I could just replay the last few seconds. I wondered if Mrs. Dodson was up there somewhere, with that same regret. If she didn’t walk out her back door just when she did…no use going there in my thoughts.
Lunch came and went. Keisha brought in pasta and salads from Scampi’s, but I played with mine, while she gave me disapproving looks.
Claire called about three. I hadn’t done one useful thing all day. “Kelly, can you come get me? I’ll be at the downtown jail, on the north side. I’ll watch out the door for you.”
“Be right there,” I said, “Give me ten minutes tops.”
She came down the steps with all her usual poise, got in the car, and said, “I’ve got to get out of these clothes. They not only look like they’ve been slept in, they smell of the jail. I’m going to burn them.”
I thought she should at least take them to the cleaners or give them to a resale shop, but I kept that thought to myself. “To your house then?”
“Yes, I can shower, get some clean clothes, all that…but I don’t want to stay there. Angus as much as said I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t anyway. Though Jim Guthrie will find he has a fight on this hands for that house. It’s mine,” she said fiercely. “I’m the one who wanted it.”
I could understand that. “Where will you go?”
“Probably the Worthington,” she said, naming one of Fort Worth’s most expensive hotels. “My debts will be Jim’s debts, at least for a while.”
Didn’t sound like a plan to me. At that point, I’d have been saving my pennies. Mike said he didn’t want me to give her the guest house, but as usual my mouth kicked into gear before my brain worked through what I was going to say.
“Claire, why don’t you stay in my guest house? At least for a few nights, until you figure things out.”
She turned and studied me. “You sure you want to bring me and my problems into your house with the girls?”
I hesitated. “They’ve already figured out what happened—or at least Maggie did and told Em. And we won’t discuss details or motives in front of them.”
“If you’re sure you don’t mind, I’d be grateful. No one will know where I am.”
We agreed that I’d go get the girls, and Claire would be at the house by suppertime.
“Let me bring the supper. I made a good chicken casserole for dinner last night—god, that seems a long time ago—but we never got to eat it. And I’ve got some stuff in the refrigerator that should be eaten. Jim won’t eat it—and I don’t want it to go to waste.”
Spoken like a frugal housewife and not someone who shot her husband. “You don’t have to do that,” I protested.
“Please. I’d like to.” She got out of the car, gave me a slight wave, and marched up to her house, back as straight as always but perhaps a tad more rigid. I felt sorry for her. Not much of the world was on her side, and she knew it. But Claire Guthrie was a tough woman. Whose side was I on?
Since I was on the block, I drove by Florence Dodson’s house on the corner. From the street, it looked no different—beds of iris, now past their prime, in front of nandina bushes and a couple of yaupon trees and, in front of the iris, impatiens. It was what I described as “old-lady landscaping,” but never aloud to my clients. I drove around the back because I wanted to look at those stairs she’d fallen down. None of my business, and Mike would be furious, but something bothered me. An alley ran down the middle of the block, separating the houses on my old block from those facing the street behind. Mrs. Dodson had a carport, and I suspected the old garage that was original to the house gave up the ghost and was torn down, replaced by this metal carport which didn’t fit the neighborhood at all. Across the alley was an old clapboard garage, original but well maintained and just beginning to list a bit. It was painted in the last two or three years, and I could see that someone cared about the upkeep.
At the far end of Mrs. Dodson’s carport there was a table and shelves, loaded with pots. The lower shelves held potting soil, trowels, and various things that looked like insecticide, fertilizer, and so on. This was the command central from which she managed her precious garden. Behind the table, a wall ensured privacy in the garden. I couldn’t see any sign of the homeless person’s sleeping bag that Mike mentioned. No doubt the police took it, though chances of tracing ownership were negligible. But Florence must have come out to her potting place often enough that she would have spotted the intruder’s belongings. Why didn’t she call the police then? Or was that what happened—she confront her resident transient and he pushed her town the stairs? No, how would he have gotten her to the stairs from the carport? Maybe he came begging at the back door?
Trying to act assured, I pulled the car into the carport, cut the motor, and walked around the wall to the garden, ducking under the police “crime scene” tape. Like most lots in Fairmount, the back yard was small. Florence Dodson made it a garden spot, albeit a dated one. More nandina shrubs backed up against the house. In front of them were dusty miller, marigolds, and petunias, and then lantana creeping along the ground, showing yellow and purple blossoms. The center of the lawn was grass, recently mown—I did remember she hired a gardener—and the wall of the carport was lined with petunias. A straight walkway, with a border of monkey grass, went from the carport down the middle of the garden to the steps. I thought of my own garden, with the curved flagstone walks and imaginative landscaping, all left me by the former owners. The contrast was pretty strong, but in its own way this garden had charm.
The steps, leading to a small, roofed stoop, were indeed rickety—the boards split, nails sticking up. The railings were board also, too wide to give a good grasp. And each step was lined with a pot of petunias on both sides—except that at the bottom there were two broken pots, their contents spilling out, the plants now wilted. That was where—and why—she fell. Had she hit her head on the pots and broken them?
As I stood and stared a tentative voice behind me asked, “Excuse me. Can I help you?”
I turned to see a man in baggy khaki pants and a shirt that had been washed too many times. He was a bit bent over, not much, and his hair was gray and thinning, so he’d done a comb-over like too many balding men. His pale eyes were hidden behind wire-framed spectacles, and his expression was cautious. He could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy—I couldn’t hazard a guess.
