One Deadly Sin (25 page)

P
erception or reality, Edie’s growing notoriety proved the mayor wrong. Because it was good for business. At least for Red’s business. The night after her arrest was the busiest since St. Patrick’s Day. Seemed everyone wanted to glare at the black angel.

Edie felt the hostility like a stone wall she couldn’t penetrate. Customers avoided the bar, preferring to be served by Lucy. But that didn’t stop them from nudging each other and pointing at her. Even Howard and Russ sat at a table. She made a nickel in tips that night—slapped onto the bar by someone on his way out.

“Don’t you pay no attention,” Lucy muttered. “They’ll come round.”

After closing, Edie trudged up to her room. The door was spray painted with the word “killer,” the last letter dripping white paint.

The next day she bought her own can of paint and added the word “smile” below the original.

Which didn’t endear her to Red’s customers. As days passed, business dried up. Some came anyway—it was a hike to the next town, where the nearest decent bar was. But some stopped at the Pay N Go on the way back from their shift and drank their six-packs at home.

A week after Sam Fish kicked Edie out of jail, Red’s was abnormally quiet. Only a few customers scattered around the tables. The same group that had watched Holt haul her down the stairs in handcuffs sat in the corner nursing their beers and eyeing her balefully. Terry Bishop sat with them. Every time she looked over she found him watching her, a satisfied grimace on his face. She knew he’d been the one to tell Holt about running into her at the church. And Terry clearly couldn’t be more pleased about it.

She stood behind the bar, swabbed a cloth up and down the already dry and shiny surface, and watched them watching her. How long would the freeze last? It was not only cutting into her own paycheck, but Lucy’s and Red’s, too. They’d both been terrific—Lucy for continuing to be her stalwart champion and Red for not firing her. But that couldn’t last forever. Eventually he’d have to choose between his business and her. And she knew what his choice would be.

The front door swung open bringing with it a blast of hot night air. Behind it came a small, compact woman. Short hair in disarray, loose clothes soiled and wrinkled.

Amy Lyle.

She glanced around wildly, found what she was looking for, fixed on Edie. The entire room seemed to hold its breath.

“You should be ashamed,” she said, shaking with rage. “To walk around like anyone else. And you”—she pointed a quivering finger at Red—“to let her. It’s repulsive. Sickening!” She swept over to the bar like a hurricane hurled her. “Murderer,” she spat at Edie. “Murderer!” She slapped Edie, quick and fast and full of sting.

Edie iced over. The sound of the slap echoed in her brain and on her skin. Mrs. Lyle collapsed into horrible, hiccupping sobs, and Lucy rushed over, put an arm around her.

“It’s okay, now, hon. You just sit down.” She brought the widow to a table, but Amy refused to sit.

“Not here,” she wept. “Not with her in the room.”

Red hurried over. “Can I call someone?”

Amy Lyle sobbed harder. “No one to call,” she wailed. “No one.”

“Let me drive you home.”

“She did it for the money,” Amy said. “Don’t you see?” She grabbed Red’s arm, fingers clutching at his shirt. “She wanted Fred’s money. And now she’s got it. She’s evil. Evil!”

“Come on, hon,” Lucy soothed. “You let Red take you home.” She helped her up and urged her toward the door. “That’s right. Go on home.”

“Maybe someone else should be going home.” Terry Bishop stood up. Every gaze in the room swiveled to Edie. The grumble of assent was unmistakable.

Red stopped at the door, and turned to Edie. There was apology in his eyes, but also finality.

Edie shrugged, bitterness welling up. “You’ll be shorthanded,” she said flatly.

“Not if the crowds stay away.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t seem to matter much, does it?”

Ain’t that the truth.

“Better give up the key to the upstairs room, too,” Red said.

Son of a bitch.

She threw down the bar towel, and a cheer went up in the room.

31

W
ell, now,” Doc Ferguson said, “this was a real puzzler.”

Terrific. Holt frowned down at the sheeted body of Reverend Parsley. It had been over a week since the preacher had died. Holt had been on Ferguson’s ass every day, but when he called at last, it was after midnight. Holt had been flat out, dead asleep, the kind of black, drugging slumber he’d fallen into right after Cindy died.

“Knew you wouldn’t want to wait,” Ferguson had said. There’d been excitement in his voice, and Holt had groaned, rubbed the sleep from his face, and said he’d be right there.

Now it was near one in the morning, and Doc was blathering about puzzles.

Was it too much to ask for a clear-cut cause of death? Holt would take drowning, stroke, heart attack, hell, he’d even take strangulation, then drowning. But puzzles he didn’t want to hear about.

“Look, Doc, if it’s too much for you, I can call the state ME.”

“Hold on, hold on. Don’t get your britches in a twist, I didn’t say I haven’t figured it out.”

“So you do have a cause of death?”

“Well, he didn’t drown. Water in his lungs was postmortem.”

Holt’s gut clenched. Accidental drowning would have been nice. It would have let Edie off the hook.

“And I couldn’t find signs of a heart attack or stroke,” Doc continued. “Nothing, you know…
natural
.”

Holt’s gut tightened. He didn’t like the sound of that. But it was the perfect ending to the perfect hell of a week. Anger at Edie had given way to regret and a nagging hope that she was okay. He tried to bury it at work, doubling up on patrols, especially late at night when he missed her the most. He spent every spare minute going over his notes. Still found nothing to prove any of them was murder. Or any solid connection between the three men. Except Edie’s angels.

The vise around Holt’s middle tightened further. “If it wasn’t nature, what was it?”

Ferguson pulled down the sheet to the reverend’s neck. His face was blanched white, eyes closed, ugly black sutures around the incision in the front of his skull. Lifeless, soulless, a thing to be poked and prodded. Holt remembered the moment Cindy’s breath stopped. He’d held her hand and watched life seep from her eyes. Felt glad for her release, guilty at the gladness, and bereft of everything. And days later, when the morticians had finished with her, she had been waxy and unreal, not Cindy at all. Just some creature that looked like his wife.

“No bruising anywhere,” Doc said. “You noticed that at the scene.”

“Uh huh.”

“So there didn’t seem to be any cause of death.”

Holt stated the obvious. “Something killed him.”

“Yup. And that’s what I kept saying to myself. So I went over everything again. And finally—” he pointed to the minister’s closed eyes. “Take a look.”

Holt reached to open the eyelids.

“Not the eyes,” Doc said, “the lids.”

Holt gazed down at the reverend’s closed eyelids. They looked normal to him. Maybe a bit redder than usual, but that could be Parsley’s natural coloring.

“Petechial hemorrhaging. The purplish red spots on the lids. It’s called petechial hemorrhaging.”

Holt peered closer. The redness dissolved into tiny pixels of color. “And that’s what killed him?”

“Hell, no, Chief. That’s what
told
me what killed him. See, sometimes when the heart stops suddenly there’s these”—Doc clenched the air with two hands—“muscle contractions, which cause the blood pressure to rise. And in certain circumstances the increased blood pressure forces the capillaries to release a small quantity of blood into the skin. Petechial hemorrhaging.”

“And what are these ‘certain circumstances’?”

“Electrocution. Particularly in a wet environment.”

Holt stared at the doctor. “You’re telling me he was electrocuted?”

“Uh huh. Death by electrocution is hard to determine. Not much morphological evidence. Had to do a bit of research.”

“But you’re sure?”

Doc nodded. “There was evidence of hemorrhaging in the membrane surrounding the lungs, too. You didn’t find anything around the baptismal pool he could have used to electrocute himself accidentally?”

“You saw the same scene I did. Nothing there but the pool and him.”

“No radio, electric screw driver? Even a microphone could do it. Was a preacher once, down in Texas, died that way. Just about to do a baptism, too.”

Holt thought back. Saw the baptismal room, spare and dominated by the pool. Nothing in the water but the body. Nothing surrounding the pool but the ramp from the dressing room and the small expanse of floor. If Parsley had electrocuted himself, whatever he used would have still been there after he died. Which meant… someone else had to have engineered it.

Murder. The word echoed, unspoken, in the air.

It was difficult to imagine anyone arranging a heart attack or a lethal allergic reaction. But electrocuting someone? All you had to do was plug in a hair dryer and throw it in the water. Unplug it when the deed was done and take it away. A kid could do it.

Holt’s mouth dried up. He now had the first concrete evidence that someone in Redbud had taken a life. Was that someone Edie?

She’d been there in the morning. She’d warned Terry, as if she knew something would happen to Parsley. She could have gone by the church on the way to the All-Star party, taken care of business, and still shown up at his house when she did. She’d been late, hadn’t she? And keyed up when she got there. He’d attributed her nerves to the pressure of meeting his folks, but it could have been something else. Something far more lethal.

The thought that Edie had come to him right after killing Parsley turned his mouth sour and left him sick with revulsion. He wanted to believe there was another explanation for what had happened. But wanting and getting were two different things.

Edie didn’t bother packing up. She didn’t even take a change of clothes. She couldn’t face seeing the room above Red’s once more. She never was one to linger on a breakup. Never remained friends with her exes. Cut the ties and move on.

So the hell with Red and his freaking town. She counted her cash—enough to keep her in coffee and doughnuts if she was careful. Maybe a couple of nights in a motel. There was the Cloverleaf out on Highway Six. Not exactly walking distance. But Holt still had her bike and keys.

So if the town wanted her out, the town could damn well escort her out. And if it was too late for that, the town could put her up.

The municipal building was locked when she arrived. No surprise there. Except she’d heard that Holt was keeping late hours these days. So she set her butt down to wait. Didn’t have to hang around long. Holt’s headlights pulled into the parking strip in front of the building within half an hour.

It took him a few minutes to notice her. In the meantime, she had the luxury of watching him. His big body looked strained and tired. She had an impulse to run over, fling her arms around him, and tell him everything was going to be okay.

But it wasn’t. The doom she’d lived with her whole life was closing around her, and he was pulling the drawstrings. She didn’t want to surrender to fear, but seeing his powerful body and knowing it was ranged against her set her pulse banging. Is that what a warrior felt when he knew the enemy was not only worthy and capable but close? She didn’t want to battle with Holt. She wanted him on her side, fighting for her. With her.

Knowing that wouldn’t happen, that he believed the worst, sent a flutter of weakness up her legs and into her belly. Bad idea. Coming here had been a bad idea. She’d been all bravado and up yours, and hadn’t thought it through. Hadn’t realized what seeing him would do.

She jerked to her feet, hoping to slink away unnoticed, but the movement drew his attention. He stopped cold. A world of silence opened between them. Only a sledgehammer could have smashed it, and Holt’s was quiet and weary.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

He kept his distance, eyeing her. “Why?”