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“No, I don’t really believe that, which is why I’m not here asking you to make an official statement. But you see the position it puts me—the department—in, don’t you? Lady makes out what they call a holograph will just before she dies, gets it witnessed up, and the man—the stranger—who finds her body also turns out to be the benny-fishie.”
“She must have been crazy about more than just her kids,” I muttered, and found myself thinking about that song Officer Zane had mentioned—“Delta Dawn.”
“Maybe sí, maybe no. In any case the autopsy’s probably going on as we speak. That’ll tell us something. And you’ll have to testify at the inquest, of course. That will be official.”
My heart sank. “When?”
“Maybe not for a couple of weeks. It’ll be by one of those computer video links. FaceTime, Zoom, I dunno. I can barely use this fancy phone.”
I didn’t believe that for a minute.
“In any case, it’d be good if you stuck around, Vic.” Now my first name felt like a trap. “In fact, I have to insist. The way things are, with the Covid running wild, it would probably be safest for you to stay right here, buttoned up and masked in town. Don’t you think?”
That might have been when I began to realize what Alita Bell had done, although it wouldn’t coalesce until that evening.
Or maybe it hadn’t been her. I thought of Donna on that last night. How she’d looked past me, her dying eyes growing bright one last time. Oh my God, she’d said. You’re all grown up!
Children couldn’t plot and plan. Adults, on the other hand…
“Vic?”
“Hmm?”
The smile lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Kind of thought I’d lost you for a minute.”
“No, I’m here. Just… processing.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot to process, isn’t it? For me, too. Like one of those mystery novels. I think you better stick to your original plan. Stay until September. Take your walks in the morning or in the cool of the evening. Have a swim in the pool. We need to figure this out if we can.”
“I’ll think about it.”
The smile lines disappeared. “Think hard, and while you’re thinking, stay in-county.” He rose and hitched at the belt of his shorts. “And now I think I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
“I’ll see you out.”
“No need, I can find my way.”
“I’ll see you out,” I repeated, and he raised his hands as if to say have it your way.
We went down the stairs to the garage. He paused partway and asked, with just the right combination of curiosity and sympathy, “How did your wife die, Vic?”
It was a normal enough question, no reason to believe he wanted to find out if there had been anything suspicious about it, but I had an idea that was in his mind. And not just in the back of it, either.
“Cancer,” I said.
He went the rest of the way down the stairs. “Very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. Will you be taking the stroller back to the Bell house? You could put it in the back of your truck.” I wanted to be rid of it.
“Well, yes,” he allowed, “I could. But what would be the point? It might just come back again, if this… prankster… is determined to have his little joke at your expense. We send a cruiser up Rattlesnake Road once or twice a night, but that still leaves a lot of dead time. And there are some officers down with Covid. Might be just as easy to leave it here.”
He doesn’t think there’s any prankster, I thought. He thinks it was me. Both times. He doesn’t know why, but that’s what he believes.
“What about fingerprints?”
He scratched the back of his seamed and deeply tanned neck. “Yeah, could do, I’ve got a fingerprint kit in my truck, but that would mean taking transfers of any prints I made, and I might mess it up. Hands aren’t as steady as they used to be.”
I hadn’t noticed that and didn’t now.
