Dead End (18 page)

“You think an intruder came in through this window?” he said, getting up to look at it with his hands behind his back. The pull that had broken off was on the sill. “Did that land there, or did someone move it?”

“I picked it up,” Reb said.

Stupid was a weak word for the way Marc felt. He took a long look at the ivy-print wallpaper. “The wedge to keep it shut was my idea,” he said.

“Uh huh. But neither of you thought it might be a good idea to call us in? This town doesn’t show on a lot of maps. That means we don’t have a hifalutin’ police department standing by, and we surely don’t have a lot of the fancy stuff, but we’re keeping a pretty clean town, and we even know how to lift fingerprints.”

“I should have called,” Reb said quickly. “It was scary, but…well, I felt silly about making a fuss. For all I knew, glass broke in the dishwasher and got in the bowl.”

“You wash the dog’s bowl in the dishwasher?” Spike said.

Reb frowned at him. “Of course. I hope you do the same for your dog.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“Too bad,” Reb said. “It would be good for you and Wendy—maybe for your daddy, too.”

If an already reserved expression could close down, Spike’s did. The idea of a Mrs. Devol hadn’t crossed Marc’s mind.

“Anyway,” Reb said, “I’ve locked myself out before and managed to open that window to get in. I don’t even know for sure it was shut before. Although the latch was on the floor…I guess it could have fallen off on its own. See why I didn’t call?”

“Nope.”

“Could we get back to what happened tonight?” Marc said. He didn’t want to witness Reb falling apart before his eyes.

“I’d like you to show me the closet,” Spike said. He got up and held Reb’s chair.

She set Gaston down on waxed green-and-white linoleum tiles. “I didn’t touch anything,” she said.

“Let’s go,” Spike told her, leading the way into the hall. “We’ll see if we can put this one to bed.”

Marc crossed his arms and followed them up the stairs. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the direction Spike’s questions seemed to be taking.

In Reb’s bedroom the deputy said, “Now tell me exactly what happened after Marc left. Try not to leave anything out.”

Marc hadn’t heard all the details yet—other than how someone had pushed her down and hit her with something hard.

Sitting on an old cedar chest at the bottom of a mahogany bed with tall spindles at each corner, Reb spoke of taking a shower. Marc chewed a lip and tuned out that thought. The decor in the room was strictly Early American quilt-and-ruffles—not at all what he would have expected of Reb. But he figured this had probably been her room, and very much the same since she was a kid and cared for by her protective widowed father.

When he heard mention of a tearing noise, he looked toward the closet. The door was partly open, and it was dark inside.

“You could tell some of the fittings had broken?” Spike said. “So things shifted in there?”

“One of the rods had swung away from the wall. It’s a mess. Clothes all over the floor, and the things I kept on the shelves above fell, too.”

“So you went in to look at the damage?”

A teddy bear, worn smooth, sat on a wicker chair beside the bed. Perhaps she still slept with him at night. What a waste.

“I went in to hang up my dress,” Reb said. “I didn’t know the noise I heard was the rod till then. Another shelf started to tip, and I covered my head. That’s when I was pushed to the floor. The light went out. A hand covered my face, but I managed to turn over. He shoved down on top of me, and then I was hit on the head—twice.”

Spike wrote and Marc waited, watching Reb. She rubbed the space where she’d drawn her brows together.

“Let’s check this out,” Spike said, tucking his notebook back into the breast pocket of his shirt. He opened the closet door wider, pushing against the rubble on the floor, and reached for the light pull. It didn’t work. His flashlight showed the bulb was broken. “It’s a mess in here, all right.” Spike dug around in the closet, checked behind the clothes left hanging.

Reb looked forlorn. Her hair had been wet when Marc found her at the front door, but it had mostly dried and now stuck out in a tangle of red curls.

“More of the stuff in here will break away if it isn’t braced,” Spike said. “Best get some of the weight off as soon as you can.” He bent over, then turned around with a pottery vase in one hand. In the other he held a coconut carved into a monkey head.

He walked out of the closet and set both pieces on the bed. “Like you said—things came off that shelf,” he said, looking at the toes of his polished black shoes. “One of them could have broken the light-bulb.”

“Could have,” Reb said. She tightened the belt on her robe and sat straighter.

Spike cleared his throat, took out his notebook again, then returned it to his pocket. “You don’t know whether or not your kitchen window was opened from the outside, by someone else?”

“Not for certain.”

“Can you show me Gaston’s dish?”

Reb stared straight ahead, not looking at either of them. “I washed it again. Reflex.”

“You didn’t save the glass?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“Don’t feel bad,” Spike said, but watched Reb intently. “Each person reacts differently to these things.”

“And I did everything wrong,” Reb said.

“Those clothes in there—when they were all hanging on the rod they must have been pretty heavy. If they swung farther out with you there—well, they could be heavy enough to make you stumble over the stuff on the floor and fall.”

She didn’t answer him.

“D’you think one of those”—he indicated the vase and the coconut shell—“maybe both, or something else that’s in there could have come down on your head?”

Marc couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “What are you suggesting?”

“You went through the house before you left and didn’t find anyone,” Spike said. “And you didn’t pass someone in latex gloves on your way in again.”

“Yeah,” Marc said, seeing the deputy’s points but wishing he could rip his head off for not taking Reb seriously.

Spike puffed up his cheeks and let the air out slowly. “Are we all agreed that if someone had intended to kill you they could have done so?”

“He thinks I dreamed it all up.” The corners of Reb’s mouth turned down. “You don’t believe there was any intruder, Spike. I should probably be insulted, but it would take too much energy.”

Undeterred, Spike said, “With all that’s happened in this town—and all you’ve seen, Reb—you’re entitled to imagine a few things.”

Marc looked from Spike to Reb and almost laughed. Spike Boy had missed some basic warning signs around here. The lady was about to blow.

“All that’s happened in this town you keep so clean?” she said. “I suppose that could be enough to make some people unbalanced, but I’m not one of them. There are two possible reasons why I’m not dead in there. First, this was another warning and intended to scare me silent. Second, he was spooked by something, something he heard, and got away before he could be caught. It’s getting late. You need your beauty sleep, and I’ve got an early clinic.”

Marc smiled at her, reassuringly he hoped, “Reb—”

“Thanks for coming,” she told him. “I’d appreciate it if the two of you could see yourselves out.”

The instant Reb heard the front door close behind Marc and Spike, she wasn’t happy to be on her own. This time Marc hadn’t made any attempt to stay with her, not that he would in front of Spike—who thought she was a hysterical female.

Grimly, she walked through the house once more, checking each room downstairs and up.

Admitting, even to herself, that Spike could be right was out of the question. No, she hadn’t imagined that shove, or the hand over her face in the darkness. She shuddered at the memory. She didn’t know how someone had got in and out unseen, but she was sure they had.

From here on she’d go it alone. Guns frightened her, but she’d get pepper spray, or Mace, and carry it at all times, and she’d compile her own list of clues. She had a flitting daydream of marching into Spike’s office with however many criminals might be involved. They’d be completely under her power, their arms tied behind their backs, duct tape over their mouths, and she’d hand them over while Spike, and Marc, watched—amazed.

Maybe she was hysterical…

If she decided it was a good idea after all, she’d talk to Cyrus. He was logical, he didn’t think she was a moron, and he and Madge were no more satisfied that Pepper Leach was a killer than Reb was.

Back in her bedroom, she didn’t close the door. Better to be able to hear any unusual movement in the house.

Gaston’s rear stuck out from beneath the bed. Thick clumps of dust still clung to him. “Come out, you naughty boy,” she said.

The only thing that moved was his bottom—and his wagging tail. Reb got on her knees and lifted the bedskirt. “You know you don’t eat up here,” she told him, capturing him in one arm. “Disgusting. What do you have there?”

She pulled him out and looked into his face. Blinking slowly, he stared back, his head on one side while he allowed his body to sag as heavily as possible. A long, pink tongue passed around his lips and she peered closer. Crumbs of pastry and of meat clung to his mustache. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he’d been eating a meat pie, only she never had such things in the house.

No remnants were to be found beneath the bed.

Sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, she began to pick the fluff out of Gaston’s coat. His gray topknot bow hung by a thread. She undid and retied it as best she could. “There,” she told the miscreant, “you don’t deserve the attention, but you look better.”

The only place the dog could have found that kind of dust was in the attic. Such a prospect didn’t thrill her, but she decided to go up there and see what her buddy had got into. After all, Marc had looked there and hadn’t found a bogeyman.

A door at the end of the upstairs hallway opened onto a steep, narrow-stepped staircase. She carried Gaston as she climbed the stairs and slipped the light on at the top. She searched around and swallowed. Her father had preferred that she not come up here. Trunks and boxes lined the attic walls, which were covered with rose-sprigged paper so faded the flowers were brown on a yellowed background.

Reb’s mother had liked coming up here, or so her father had told her. She’d made it her hideaway. A seat had been built beneath a dormer window where dusty chintz curtains hung. Charlotte O’Brien used to sit on the velvet-covered seat cushions to read. Her books remained in three low bookcases visible behind trunks. Her father hadn’t wanted Reb to look in the trunks. Once she’d resented that—until she’d been mature enough to know he’d never stopped loving his wife and that all he had of their life together must be there. Now she could look at whatever she pleased, yet she continued to hesitate.

With a wild wiggle, Gaston shot free of her arms and landed on a room-sized braided rug with enough of a scrabble to raise clouds of dirt.

Reb sneezed and closed her tearing eyes. She would find the time to clean up here herself.

Gaston disappeared behind a pile of boxes, and a snuffling noise issued forth. “Gaston. Out of there,” Reb said, barely above a whisper. The attic had brought a kind of reverence upon her for as long as she could remember. “
Now.
Gaston, if I have to—”

He appeared, a piece of clear foodwrap in his teeth. At Reb’s feet he dropped to his tummy, held the wrap down with both front paws and licked hard enough to drag his mangled prize from the floor with each swipe.

Stroking him with one hand, Reb took the wrap away and turned it so that she could read the sticker that remained on one side. All Tarted Up. Sausage Roll. And the date was today’s, yesterday’s now that it was past midnight.

Reb’s heart beat too fast. The food had come from the bakery in the middle of Toussaint yesterday. The only way it could have gotten into the house was if someone else had brought it in.

Gaston hadn’t been barking when Reb had left the shower and walked into that closet. “You’re not easy,” she said to the dog, “but you can be bought, you traitor.” And that’s how the intruder had dealt with the poodle. He had used food to lure him up to the attic. The creep must have hidden outside until Marc left. Reb picked Gaston up and squeezed him till he yelped. At least he hadn’t been killed.

Alone used to feel so comfortable.

Reb didn’t like it so much anymore.

That hand over her face had been encased in a latex glove. She used them every day and knew what she’d felt and smelled. Two women had been murdered in Toussaint by someone who had worn them, too, or so it was believed. Gloves and some sort of rubber suit, or a wetsuit, they’d decided. How long had it taken her to feel normal enough to go downstairs after the attack? The front door had been closed when she got there, but that didn’t mean the intruder hadn’t got out that way, although it was more likely he left from the back of the house where he had the best chance of getting away unnoticed.

As Spike had pointed out, the man most likely hadn’t intended to kill her. This had been one more scare tactic. He’d carried it out really well.

Killing Gaston hadn’t been part of the plan either, or he’d have done that, too. And a dog known to be very protective of her but who didn’t raise an alarm made a great case for Reb having imagined the whole episode—because she was so jumpy.

She turned off the attic light and made her way to the bedroom. At each creak and sound of settling in the old house, she jumped. Her skin felt too small.

In the morning the closet would have to be fixed—or she’d try to get it fixed. The trouble with living in a tiny place like Toussaint was that there wasn’t any competition. Things moved like molasses, and so did people, including those who ran their daddy’s and granddaddy’s repair businesses. She’d be lucky if she could get the work done in a week or so. If necessary she’d try to find someone out of Lafayette.

Something snapped.

With Gaston still in her arms, Reb sat on the chest at the end of her bed. Her scalp prickled and her mouth dried out.