“No!”
“How else will you bring it up?” He blew out a breath. “Rather you than me.”
Annie felt silly. “I guess I buried that angle under all the enthusiasm to fix things. But I’m still going to do it. Don’t you worry, though. I’ll call Reb and ask if I can go out there. I’ve got my own car.”
“You’re not going anywhere on your own.”
She stared at him, took him by the sleeve and led him outside the dance hall. “Did you just say what I thought you did?”
“Probably. Did I say something wrong?”
Annie looked at the sky. The moon showed faint skeins of silver cloud trawling over its surface. A hot wind didn’t cool the humidity one bit. “You said I couldn’t go anywhere on my own. You don’t get to tell me that.”
He didn’t answer, just settled a big hand on the back of her neck. “Things are changing with us, Annie. If you don’t understand it, I’ll try to explain. But I think you do understand.”
Annie stood on the covered bridge and looked at the ground. She could read a lot into what he said and most of it would make her happy—if he knew and had accepted the whole truth about her. “Not one thing is stable for us. I know that.” And she had held back too much about herself. She knew that, too.
“Nothing stays the same.” He walked her forward. “All of this will pass. And you can avoid reality for now if you want to, but I’m a patient man. I’m not going anywhere.”
She hoped he wouldn’t change his mind about that.
“What will you say if we go out to see Lee?” he said.
“I don’t know. I kind of thought I’d trust that I’d know once I got there.”
“Never go to a meeting without being prepared,” Max told Annie.
“This isn’t a medical symposium,” she said. “I won’t be talking to a room filled with experts on something, just Lee.”
“Okay, then.” He swayed her toward him, kissed the top of her head. “Whatever you say, I’ll be along to back you up.”
He didn’t like any of this. Max parked in the small lot behind the shabby Toussaint Trumpet building. “Too bad Lee wasn’t at Cloud’s End,” he said.
“Yeah,” Annie said. “I surely don’t like this place in the dark. I can’t believe Lee feels good about spending nights here.”
“Relax,” he said. “You aren’t on your own.”
“Do you like it here?”
He laughed. “You’re something. I’m the big, tough male around here. Afraid of nothing. Of course I like it. Annie, will you promise me something?”
“Maybe?”
“You are one independent woman.” He liked her that way but it wouldn’t be a bad thing if she’d go along with him on this one.
“I wasn’t always independent,” she said. “I had to learn.”
He could imagine Annie being shy, reticent. Even now she was generally careful of what she said. But under the circumstances it was unfortunate she’d chosen to fight Lee’s battles.
“What you do and say is up to you, but do you think it might go better with Lee if you approached her as a concerned friend, rather than coming out and telling her you saw through what she wrote?” Of course Lee had been writing about Roche, damn his hide. Max knew his brother well enough to be certain he’d had plenty of encouragement but that didn’t justify whatever had turned ugly enough to make Lee so mad.
“We’d better get this done,” Annie said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be diplomatic. When she wrote about not trusting a person who wants something to hold over you, do you think that meant the man really had something? I mean, actual physical evidence?”
Max had kicked the same concern around all day. “It’s more likely he compromised her and told her he’d talk about it if she gave him away.” Max hadn’t finished with Roche and he anticipated an ugly scene to come, but threatening women wasn’t Roche’s style. Lee could well have been adding more drama to her editorial.
Annie hopped out of the car but didn’t shut the door until he also stood on the uneven lot. He offered her a hand and she held it quickly. Her breathing was too loud, and shallow.
“Backing out of this wouldn’t make you a coward,” he said.
Predictably, she pulled him to the back door which, according to Reb, was the one Lee used when the front office was closed.
An uncovered lightbulb shone from a fixture on the wall. Max rang the bell and stepped back. A glass, wire-reinforced panel gave a dusty view along a passageway inside.
“I’ve never been here before,” Annie said.
He shook his head, watching for Lee to appear. “We should have called first.” Or not come at all.
“I know. I didn’t want to risk Lee saying she didn’t want me to come.”
He pressed the bell again. “If she told you that you’d know you should stay out of this.”
Annie pulled on his arm. “Men and women are different. Women usually want to help other people if they can.”
“And men don’t?”
“Not in the same way, and I don’t want you gettin’ all touchy on me.”
“Maybe she’s gone out to eat,” he said. There was a car parked in the slot closest to the door but she could have walked somewhere.
“Yes,” Annie said. “You really want to give this up, don’t you?”
He really wanted to do whatever was best. “I’m half expecting a disaster if you do talk to her.”
“Her car’s here,” Annie said.
“I noticed.”
“I’ve got this feeling I’m supposed to do something for Lee.” Annie turned the handle and the door opened. She let it swing wider but stood where she was and frowned up at him. “Would she leave the door unlocked?”
“If she’s just gone out for—”
“She shouldn’t. Anyone could walk in.”
He grinned at her. “But most people wouldn’t, and small towns are famous for being more trusting, aren’t they?”
“This town has one woman missing and one woman in the hospital who says she was forced off the road.” Taking her hand away from his, she walked into the building.
With a sigh, Max followed. He knew better than to try to change her mind.
At the other end of the hall a door stood open. Reflections from front windows wavered through darkness in what was probably the main office.
Annie walked on tiptoe. Max didn’t point out that making some noise would probably be a good idea. Instead he called, “Lee? Lee, it’s Annie Duhon and Max Savage. You here?”
Annie shot around and stared at him, then let her shoulders relax. She listened with him.
“We should go,” he said. “If she walks in and sees us, all we’re going to do is shock her to death before she realizes who we are.” If Lee was furious with Roche, Max would be one of the last people she’d be glad to find waiting for her.
A wedge of dull light shone from a partially open door just beyond Annie. She glanced at it and gently poked the door wider.
“You don’t give up,” Max said.
If she heard him, she didn’t react. In she went and said, “This is where they print the paper, I think.”
“Come on,” Max said, grinning. He wouldn’t change her but she might give him less to worry about if she showed more caution.
“Max! Come here.”
He went after her, all but running by the time he arrived in the middle of a room filled with old but immaculately kept printing equipment. Annie stood just inside another door that opened inward. “What is it?” The foreboding he sensed was too familiar.
“I don’t know.” She put on the light. “I’m not sure.”
He joined her and looked down on Lee O’Brien. Wearing a T-shirt and panties, she lay facedown on the floor with one foot on an air mattress covered with a fitted sheet.
Rapidly, Max stepped over her and crouched down. Her eyes were open and horrified.
Her lips were drawn back from her teeth.
“Is she dead?” Annie whispered. “Is sh
e?”
“Wait in the other room,” Max said. “And call 911.”
On his knees beside Lee he felt for her pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find it.
He didn’t.
What he did discover was a body that felt about as warm as his. Whatever felled her had happened very recently. He whipped her to her back and started CPR. If she’d had a seizure of some kind he could get lucky. There was nothing to lose. “911,” he told Annie again, between breaths.
No blood evident. No obvious injury that he could see with each brief look he got at her. “Come on, Lee. Come on.”
She wouldn’t respond. “Nothing, dammit.” He pulled back his right arm and landed a single, hard blow to the center of her chest. “Come on!”
He felt for her vitals again, and heard sirens at the same time.
“She’s gone,” Annie said and he looked at her. Tears slid down her face.
“Yes,” he said.
CHAPTER 32
Reb O’Brien Girard, arms tightly crossed, sat down with Max and Annie in a dilapidated lunchroom across the hall from where Lee lay dead.
Even from their removed spot, Annie blinked at white light that seeped from spotlights at the death scene. Photographers were at work. She tried not to think about strangers taking pictures of Lee lying helpless like that.
“Why are they photographing someone who died of…”
“That’s why,” Max said. “It looks like natural causes but they do it just in case.”
“But what natural causes?” Annie persisted. “A heart attack, I suppose. As young and fit as Lee was and she just went off with a heart attack.”
“We don’t know what went wrong yet,” Reb said, her voice strained.
Max said, “There isn’t anything I can say that’ll make a difference, Reb. But I’m sick you’re going through this.”
“I can’t believe it. Lee was the most alive person I knew.” She shifted and blinked, raised her face to stop tears from falling.
Reb had insisted on being there, not just to identify her cousin’s body, but in the capacity of medical examiner.
“You don’t have to do this,” Max said. “They can bring in someone else.”
From her expression, she knew what he meant and shook her head. “I want to be here for Lee. I want to be the one to touch her and care about what I’m doing. That’s all I can do for her now, the last thing I can do for her. I’ll go back in when the photographers leave.”
Annie made a sound in her throat as if she’d come close to choking.
“You okay?” Max asked. She had a cool head. Even though what she’d seen had wounded her, she didn’t panic or show any sign of falling apart.
“I’m as okay as I can be,” she said. “Do you have any guesses about what killed her yet, Reb?”
“No, it’s a mystery so far,” Reb told her. “There’ll be an autopsy and I don’t think we’ll know much more before that. She wasn’t the type who showed up for physicals, but I took care of any medical issues she did have and she was a healthy woman. If it was a heart attack or a stroke I didn’t see any warning signs.”
Max hoped Reb wouldn’t start blaming herself for something she probably couldn’t have known. “I thought I heard Marc’s voice,” Max said of Reb’s husband.
“He came with me. He’s talking to Spike. Everyone’s going to feel so awful about Lee. She rubbed people the wrong way often enough but they liked her.”
“Does she have other family?” Annie asked.
“I’m the closest. In a way I should be glad she was here with us. I’m not lookin’ forward to telling Simon. I think it was understood they’d get together when they were both ready to settle down.”
Max glanced at Annie. She looked as blank as he felt.
“Simon Menard,” Reb said. “You probably never met him. He’s been overseas—Egypt, I think—on special assignment for a magazine. Simon owns half of the Trumpet, but I know he got involved so he and Lee would have a reason to keep getting together. I’ll have to track him down.”
“Rotten luck for the guy,” Max said.
“Reb?” Spike walked in. “As soon as you’re ready Lee can be…moved.”
Max stood up. “Is it okay if I come with you?” he asked Reb, who nodded, yes. “Will you be all right here, Annie?”
“Of course.”
He smiled at her and she tried to smile back but the result was more of a grimace.
Spike, Marc Girard and Guy stood in the printing room. Max was surprised to see Guy there and said so.
“Heard it on the radio,” Guy said. “Some habits don’t go away.” He took Reb into a quick embrace. “Sorry, kid,” he said.
“I’m expectin’ a crowd anytime,” Spike said, with his wry grin. “Listening in to official bulletins is a local pastime.”
Two medics arrived with a gurney and body bag and Max looked swiftly at Reb who stared straight ahead. Marc Girard held his wife’s hand and took it to his mouth. When they were together his dark eyes rarely strayed from her. Tonight he worried about her and it showed.
Wazoo flapped into the room, her hair wild. “What’s happened?” she said. “Me, I got to know. Who you got in there?” She pointed to the sleeping cubicle.
“I told you,” Spike muttered to the room at large. “Listening in. It’s a local pastime.”
“You told me nothing, you,” Wazoo said, her expression dark. “I got the feelin’ is all. I thought on it. I tried to see who was calling to me, but there was only the cold. Then I heard the bulletin on my radio so I come right away.”
Wazoo got “feelings,” Annie got “feelings,” hell, he’d even gotten some odd feelings himself. Max looked at the small, dark-haired woman in her swirling black lace and wondered what had happened to his well-formed opinions on the order of things.
“Annie’s across the hall,” he said. “In the lunchroom. She could use some company.”
“Just the one I want to see,” Wazoo said. She angled her head toward the cubicle. “Who is it, Reb?”
“Lee. She’s dead.”
Wazoo’s very black eyes narrowed. “Me, I didn’t expect that,” she said, shaking her head. She sped away, muttering as she went.
“Strange woman,” Max said.
“She’s got a good heart,” Reb said and went back to her cousin’s side.
Max joined her. “It was probably quick,” he said although they both knew every platitude in the book.
“Not so quick—she was terrified when it happened.”
“That’s how it looks,” Max said. “But sudden pain could cause that.”
“We’re done,” one of the photographers said while he disassembled equipment.
The medics hovered outside. Reb knelt again and touched Lee’s face, “I’d have tried CPR, too,” she said. “This is how helplessness feels, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he told her quietly. “But we know from the beginning that we won’t be able to save them all.”
“I looked her over and I swear there’s no sign of anything external. I think she died lying down, or at least she didn’t fall that I can see.” Reb rubbed her face. She ran her hands over Lee’s body again, bent to kiss her cheek and blushed.
Max looked away. “Do you have any reservations about this being a natural death?” he said quietly. “I’m not trying to upset you, just being objective.”
“I don’t have a good reason for reservations,” she said. “But I’ve got them just the same. I feel as if I’ve missed something but I don’t expect to find it.”
More of those feelings.
“May I?” Max said and when Reb nodded, he examined both sides of Lee’s arms closely.
“If she’d been a drug user I’d have known it,” Reb said.
He went over the body. Her back and buttocks were already darkening slightly as blood began to pool.
Reb had closed Lee’s eyes. Her fair hair made a cushion under her head. Not a blemish showed on pale skin. He automatically ran his fi
ngers behind her ears and down her neck. “What a waste,” he said, sitting back on his heels. He bowed his head closer to see a tiny mark on the side of her neck. It was almost invisible in a crease of skin.
“Did you see this?” he asked Reb.
She knelt beside him and peered up close. “No. Could be a tiny red mole or an insect bite, even. Wait, I’ve got a magnifying glass.”
“Here.” She took it from her bag and gave it to Max.
He brought the area into tight focus and Reb shone her flashlight on the spot. Wordlessly, he took the flashlight from her and handed over the magnifier.
“She could have…” Reb began.
“You think she could have done this herself? And lying on the floor in a dark room?”
“No.” Reb’s fair, freckled skin all but shone against her red hair.
“No,” Max said. “She was given an injection here.”
Annie listened for the gurney to leave. She couldn’t help staring at Wazoo who had come into the room and immediately gone into some sort of trance. Standing, her feet apart, her hands at her sides, with eyes closed she turned her face toward the ceiling.
And she’d been there for several minutes.
Voices grew gradually louder as if someone was coming slowly toward the lunchroom.
“Ooh, ya, ya,” Wazoo said, spitting it out venomously. “The conscious world has no sense of timin’ because it senses nothin’ it can’t see or touch.”
“Wazoo,” Annie said. “This is a really stressful time.”
Wazoo pointed from Annie to herself. “Just for you? I think for me, too. Where you got that bag I give you?”
An involuntary shudder rocked Annie. “It’s in my purse and I don’t want it anymore. I know the kind of thing it is and I don’t believe in any of that.”
“Hush!” Wazoo shot the heels of her hands toward Annie. “Don’t you offend. Open your purse.”
Annie did as she was asked but wouldn’t put a hand inside. Wazoo had no such reservations and whipped the brown bag into the harsh artificial light. Making a crooning noise, she cradled it in her palms. “Here,” she whispered to Annie. “Come close and see.” She smiled a purely delighted smile.
Looking at the nasty bag wasn’t high on Annie’s list of preferences but she went and looked at the thing Wazoo held out. “It’s a mess,” she said.
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