Body of Evidence

by Stella Cameron

“Couple more hours and it’ll be daybreak,” Finn told him.

  “Guess so,” Billy agreed. He waved his hat to the right. “That’s Rusty’s Harley by the garage.”

  “Could be,” Finn said.

  “He here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Billy walked past him, but Clemens hung back, looking apologetic. “Come on in,” Finn said. “Might as well. Everyone else does.”

  “What happened to you?” Billy asked when he saw Rusty. He immediately looked at Finn.

  “Fell off my damn bike,” Rusty said without missing a beat.

  Billy looked around the kitchen. He went to the sink and picked up the bowl Finn had used, which still contained used swabs. “You must have done it outside Finn’s front door, huh?”

  “Close.”

  “We’ll get into that later.” He looked at Finn’s mashed knuckles and cleared his throat. “We’d like you to come down to the station with us, Rusty. Any problem with that?”

  Rusty turned chalky. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because we’re asking nicely. It won’t take long, unless your lawyer’s not from around here. You got a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll want one. We can get one for you.”

  Rusty shot to his feet, pushed back his leather bike jacket and grasped his hips. “Whoa. Slow down here. Are you arresting me?”

  “No. We just want to check somethin’ out.”

  “What?” Rusty asked.

  Billy spread his feet. “You’d probably rather we discussed this in private.”

  Rusty looked at Finn. “I don’t give a shit if you talk in front of him.”

  Clemens wrote notes furiously, and Finn wondered what was being said that could possibly be worth preserving.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Billy said. “We want to run a couple of tests on you is all.”

  19

  Emma pushed open the door at Poke Around and called out, “Sandy? Where are you?” She and Holly Chandall had spent the morning with Emma’s lawyer—now Holly’s, too—in Toussaint, a town about thirty miles away. Emma had dropped Holly back at her place. When she finished at the shop she intended to hunt down Orville.

  “Up here,” Sandy said from beside a display of whimsical china set apart from the rest of the shop by bright paper screens. She was perched on a ladder, stacking boxes on top of an old wooden dresser with merchandise on its shelves.

  “Nice fuchsia underwear,” Emma said, and Sandy snickered, posing an exposed leg to greater benefit. “What there is of it. Come down. Sandy, I love you like a flower, but just in case the next person through the door isn’t male, would you cover up the suspenders?”

  Sandy climbed down, chuckling to herself. Her beige linen skirt, slit on one side to midthigh, wasn’t made to accommodate ladder climbing.

  Emma felt her own smile slip away. She turned abruptly, and looked outside at a hedge of red azaleas and a clump of banana trees washed to brilliant green by yesterday’s storm. The colors gave her a focus. Holly planned to pack some bags and move out today, while Harold was at work. She’d rented a room over Ona’s. Emma worried it was her fault Holly had decided to make her move so suddenly.

  “We’ve had quite a few customers this mornin’,” Sandy said. “Tapered off now, though. They don’t seem to come back after lunch.”

  “This place could use a couple of restaurants,” Emma said.

  “Well, that’s not goin’ to happen now, is it?” Sandy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, with the owner thinkin’ of sellin’ out. Doesn’t sound like restaurants and the like are in the works.”

  Emma swung around. “Where did you hear about that?” Her heart beat too fast.

  “Carl.” The sharp downturn of Sandy’s mouth showed her concern. “Emma, you must know about it. Carl’s been mentionin’ it for days. Orville’s in negotiations with the new owner.”

  It wouldn’t have hurt Orville to tell her. Emma’s palms became hot and sweaty; she felt her mouth tremble. “Oakdale’s beautiful. Will they take everythin’ that’s old and turn it into one more piece of cheap shit?”

  “Emma!”

  “Don’t give me that. I’ve heard you say a lot worse.”

  Sandy put an arm around Emma’s shoulders. “How about some of my cappuccino? I am now an expert.”

  “Yes. A double.”

  She walked into the back room, put her purse in one of the cupboard drawers and returned to the front of the shop. “Why didn’t you say somethin’ about the estate being sold?” Orville would never have enough; he would always be grabbing more.

  “I figured you knew and didn’t want to talk about it. I wish I hadn’t slipped just now.”

  The morning hadn’t been easy. Holly had clicked with the lawyer, Joe Gable, and was ready to go ahead with a divorce.

  For herself, she felt as if her own personality, the way she hung on to memories of the good times and let them make her unsure of herself, was holding her back. Joe insisted she would be fine, that he would make sure she came through as easily as possible, but after seeing the photos, he’d been shocked that Emma didn’t want to pursue a financial settlement. She’d told him she didn’t even want to use the pictures unless they had to. A man might not understand that a woman could be embarrassed at the thought of people seeing pictures of her husband with another woman, so she hadn’t tried to explain.

  She would leave Orville within the next few days, but she’d decided she would find neutral ground to tell him what she planned. A sneak attack wasn’t her style, not after so many years. Emma also had a proposition to make to Orville that could ease the way through the divorce for both of them.

  “Come and sit down,” Sandy said. “Did you eat lunch?”

  “Didn’t think about it.”

  “I anticipated that. Bought you a muffalleta at Ona’s. It’s still warm. Here. Eat.”

  Emma wasn’t hungry, but she sat down and started on the bun. “Mmm,” she said. “So good.” And it was. The coffee was better.

  “Secrets tonight,” Sandy said. She sat on the opposite side of the metal table and laced her fingers together so tightly the knuckles turned white. “Eileen Moggeridge called and said she’d like to come if you still think it’s okay. She was look-in’ for you.”

  Another reminder of Finn—as if she needed any at all. “Did you get her number?” When Sandy nodded, Emma said, “I’ll call her back after a bit. I should have talked to her about the group by now. How it works. If she still wants to come, she’ll be the first new member since Frances. That’s been years now—a couple, anyway. Maybe I can pick her up early and take her, so she won’t feel funny goin’ the first time. You feelin’ okay, cher?”

  “Great.” Sandy gave her a sideways look. “You would be the one to think of things like lookin’ after a newcomer. I’m a selfish bitch.”

  Emma poked her gently. “No such thing. It was just as well we decided you should stay and open the shop this mornin’. We don’t need to miss more business than we have to. Or I don’t.” Even if it wouldn’t be long before Orville would have a right to all the earnings from the shop he financed. “Holly did fine with Joe Gable.”

  “Emma,” Sandy said, “don’t think I’m goin’ weird on you, and you know how I love the group, but I don’t want to go tonight.”

  Emma cradled her cup in her hands and studied Sandy.

  “You and I can say anythin’ to each other, can’t we?” Sandy went on.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s Denise. It’s her bein’ gone and the police not havin’ any leads. Mostly her bein’ gone, though. Nothin’s the same.”

  “Denise wasn’t always there,” Emma pointed out. “But I know what you mean. I keep expectin’ to hear they’ve got someone in custody, or at least they’re followin’ a lead, but nothin’. Not a thing. Sandy, you’re jumpin’ out of your skin, and you’re tremblin’.”

  Sandy flattened her hands on th
e tabletop and pressed, as if to prove they weren’t shaking. They were. “The biscotti came in,” she said, and Emma sensed the other woman wanted to steer the conversation away from herself.

  “Good,” Emma said. “I’ve got to talk to Orville.” She couldn’t ignore reality, even if Sandy would like to.

  “Oh.” Sandy crossed her arms and shivered. “What happened at the lawyer’s?”

  “It was just a bunch of formalities today.”

  “So why do you have to talk to Orville?”

  Emma smiled a little and leaned to straighten copper poles in a big bucket. Each one had a crooked, wildly painted bird feeder on top. “Looks like we got rid of a couple of these.”

  “Yes,” Sandy said. “Look at the flamingoes.”

  Emma turned in the direction of the pink metal flamingoes with necks like vacuum cleaner hoses, eyes that lit up and duck feet, only they weren’t where she’d last seen them. “Where?” she said.

  “Gone. A woman bought all three of them and would have taken more if we’d had them. Wants me to call if they come back in.”

  Emma pulled up her shoulders. “We’ll get a couple.” Every sale delighted her, and the shop had started to do quite well.

  “So why do you want to talk to Orville?” Sandy said.

  “You don’t give up,” Emma told her. “Don’t worry about it. He isn’t at home, and he isn’t at the office. I really want to see him somewhere…” She let the sentence trail away.

  “Mmm?” Sandy said.

  “I’d rather it wasn’t at home,” Emma told her. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  Sandy’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Emma. Because you’re afraid of what he’ll do?”

  “Not really,” she lied. “I think it will be easier on both of us if we aren’t in familiar surroundings, or not where…well, you know. Not in Orville’s house.”

  “Well, you’re goin’ to get your wish, cher. The man himself is headin’ this way with my own dear husband.” Sandy coughed several times. “It’ll be okay, won’t it?”

  “Sure it will.” Emma smiled, but wouldn’t let herself turn to look at the approaching men.

  Sandy got up and opened the door, letting in a rush of hot breeze. “Hi, handsome and handsome. Come on in.” She kissed Carl with enough relish to be heard from where Emma sat.

  “Hello, Emma,” Orville said. He sounded quiet. They hadn’t seen one another for two days.

  She wiggled the fingers of one hand in the air. Her throat didn’t want to work.

  Sandy and Carl, arms around one another, strolled to stand by the table. Orville remained behind Emma.

  Average height, medium coloring and a pleasant face didn’t distinguish Carl Viator, but he gave off energy in waves, and he was probably the most fit man Emma knew—with the exception of Finn. What he lacked in physical good looks, Carl made up for in charisma. Emma liked him. He had calmed a storm for her with Orville on more than one occasion, and she would always be grateful.

  “How’s my girl, Emma?” he said, grinning when Sandy stood on her toes to nip the lobe of his ear.

  “I’m okay,” she said. Chatter was beyond her today. “How’s it going for you, Carl?”

  “Good enough. The guy who owns Oakdale now is skittish. Inherited from old man Thompson—he’s a distant relative of some kind—and he doesn’t know a thing about running a place like this. What he really wants is to be certain he gets as much out of it as possible—and one or two other items. I think he’ll sell—as long as he gets the special considerations he’s looking for. That’s a condition of sale. Not what we’d hoped for.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Orville said. “We shouldn’t bore the ladies.”

  “I didn’t know Mr. Thompson had died,” Emma said. “Or that the property was for sale.”

  “It’s all been on the hush-hush.” Carl laughed. “It wasn’t for sure until we got a great idea for the area and made the guy an offer he doesn’t want to refuse.”

  Emma took a huge breath. “What’s the idea?”

  “Mixed use,” Orville said, too fast for Emma. “Of course, we’ll hang on to the ambiance. I know how much that means to you, Emma.”

  “And me,” Sandy said.

  Seeing the quizzical expression on Carl’s face, Emma didn’t believe Orville, but she couldn’t say as much, and it was none of her business.

  “What does the owner want in order to sell?” Emma didn’t feel like being put off with a pat on the head.

  Orville shrugged. “It’s all in the family, so you might as well know. He wants the bundle I already mentioned, plus an invite into the golf club, and he’d like to be city manager.”

  Carl snorted. “He thinks it’ll give him the inside track on land deals.”

  “He’s the type who likes his fingers in all the pies,” Orville said.

  Like you. “We’ve already got a city manager,” Emma said.

  Orville gave her a pitying look. “That doesn’t stop this guy from thinkin’ I can make a change if I want to. I can, come to that.”

  “Will you?” She hated the maneuvering he took in stride.

  Orville laughed. “Well, let’s just say we couldn’t have something like that written into the sales contract for this place. It would only be an understandin’. And there are things a person expects that don’t happen, but you can’t exactly step forward and complain. That’s life. He’ll just have more time to play golf, and it’ll be no skin off any of our noses if he wants to spend his money at the club.”

  In other words, once Orville had what he wanted, there would be no new city manager. Emma was glad of that but detested Orville’s underhanded methods.

  “Will this old house stay?” Sandy asked.

  “Do you want it to?” Orville said to her, and when she nodded, he added, “Then it stays. We like to keep the little ladies happy, don’t we, Carl?”

  “Real, real happy,” Carl said.

  “I want you to be thinkin’ of any renovations you’d like made in the shop, Emma,” Orville said. “There’s bound to be construction goin’ on around here, so why not use the opportunity?”

  Emma got up and faced her husband. “I don’t like to interrupt you in the middle of a workday, but could you spare me maybe an hour?” Even to herself, she sounded ridiculously formal. “Shouldn’t take any longer.”

  Orville drew his mouth into a tight line, and she expected him to refuse. Instead he said, “Of course. Carl drove, so I’ll have to ask you to take me back to the office afterward, Emma.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  The four of them avoided looking at one another until Carl said, “I thought I could take you for a drink, darlin’.”

  Sandy didn’t answer him.

  “You go ahead,” Emma said. “I’ll manage just fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure,” Emma told Sandy, and the other woman gathered her belongings and her husband and all but ran from the shop, a huge, false smile on her face.

  “How are the RSVPs comin?” Orville said as soon as they were alone. “Less than a week to go.”

  “I think everyone wants to have a party with Mayor Lachance,” she said, afraid her smile must be every bit as false as Sandy’s had been. “The invitations could have gone out the same day as the event and they’d have accepted. So far, no regrets.”

  “I wish I didn’t have regrets,” Orville said, his hands deep in his pants pockets and his light hair falling boyishly over his brow. He jerked his head to move the hair back. “I went into Lafayette to see my doctor.”

  Her stomach rolled. “Are you ill?”

  “Not the way you mean. I’ve always been able to talk to Roger. You know. Man-to-man. I was straight with him. Didn’t pull any punches. I told him—well, I said things hadn’t been so good between us for some months.”

  Roger French, M.D., old pal of Orville’s and occasionally one of the gang at Pat Damalis’s from what Orville said, always looked at Emma as if she was somethi
ng he would like to study closely. She couldn’t stand him, and he wasn’t her physician, although he had been the one to examine her after she lost the baby, because he was at the house when it happened.

  “Roger said it’s natural for relationships to go through these patches. Disillusionment, he called it.” Orville glanced toward the door. “Close up the shop. We’ll go home for an hour or two.”

  Emma couldn’t move or think of the next thing to say. Her legs seems weighted down. Orville couldn’t be…yes, he was suggesting they have sex. Nothing between them could ever be love again.

  He went swiftly to lock the door and turn over the sign to show the shop as closed. “We can get your things and go out the back way. If we make sure we don’t bump into any customers, we don’t have to make excuses for disappointin’ them.”

  “Would you mind if we stayed here?” At least they were surrounded by windows, and Orville cared too much for his reputation to be seen losing his temper in public.

  He approached her slowly, taking off his jacket as he came and draping it over a ceramic dog. “No,” he said. “I don’t mind, as long as you don’t mind everyone watchin’ me kiss you.”

  The way he moved, deliberately slowly, the drawling delivery of what he said, would be pitiful if they didn’t unnerve her. Emma held her ground. “A lot has changed between us,” she said.

  He took her by the arms. “Roger thinks that’s partly my fault. You were young when we married, very young. Maybe I didn’t make enough allowances for that.”

  He didn’t make enough allowances? “I don’t know what that means but it doesn’t matter now. I intend to remember the good times.”

  Orville rolled back onto his heels and looked at her from beneath lowered eyelids. “You’ve gone back to the curls,” he said, studying her with his head on one side. “Maybe I like it after all. It’s in fashion now.”

  The kiss came without warning, a crushing, invasive kiss that unbalanced Emma. She grabbed on to him, and he took her touch as encouragement. He pulled the band from her hair and scraped his fingers across her scalp. She couldn’t get her breath or turn her head. Orville pushed a hand inside her blouse and bra to squeeze her breast.

  He gave her an instant while he caught his breath, and she jerked her head away. “Stop it. Anyone could walk by and see us.”