Katie stood in the back shoving various bins of flora aside in the humming refrigerator. She'd had no trouble cleaning up the few strewn flowers, torn plant-growth bags, the broken pottery and glass. Her frozen breath clouded around her throat. She'd been too preoccupied to notice the tinkling bell. I moved to her as she closed the refrigerator door. At the sound of my footsteps she wheeled and flung herself sideways with a startled gasp, barely stepping over the spider plant Anubis had been gnawing on. She grinned and let out an uncomfortable giggle. That usual sense of amazement I got from seeing the dimples flaring at the edges of her lips took such hold that I almost didn't spot her real fear.
"Oh, you're back already," she said.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I didn't hear anybody come in."
"You're trembling."
"I was just working in the fridge."
My grandmother might be highly accomplished at controlling her demonstrative side, but Katie didn't quite have the knack. I thought I might be able to let the things slide for maybe five minutes, and decided to give it a shot. I rested my elbows on the counter and she leaned over from the other edge facing me, and we kissed for a moment as I touched the nearly invisible blond down under her ears, brushing its softness back across her cheek.
"Sorry about the mess this morning," I said.
"It could have been a lot worse. Thanks for cleaning up before I got here."
"Anything missing?"
"Just a couple of orchids. They were crushed in the street, where he'd stepped on them." I could see Devington doing something spiteful like that, useless and without meaning. The least he could have done was bring the flowers to his mother and sister instead of dumping them in the gutter. Katie shrugged, still holding back. "Did you find out anything that might help Crummler?"
"I don't know yet. I need to talk to him."
"Will they let you in again?"
"I think so. Lowell probably rattled Dr. Brennan Brent's cage a little more by now. After Freddy Shanks' death, Brent knows there's some focus on the hospital. He'll probably be more careful and want to appear completely candid about his patients."
"The murder, you mean," she said.
"What?"
"You said ‘Freddy Shanks' death' as if it occurred naturally, like he died in his sleep. He was killed by Crummler's brother, who promptly ran off and is still hiding in town someplace."
"I thought maybe he'd gone back to Manhattan."
"That doesn't jibe with what you told me about him wanting to help Crummler. Why would he leave?"
"I don't know."
"You wanted to see him in the city?"
"I was hoping he'd stop in again."
Her lips looked too wet, the crimp between her eyes deeper than it should be. "It was murder, wasn't it? He did kill the man."
"And saved my life," I said. I'd been able to curb my concern for all of three minutes, which I thought was still pretty damn good considering the kind of day I'd had. I feared for the baby, and wondered if she'd miscarried.
"Tell me what's wrong, Katie."
"My tires were slashed this morning."
I exhaled deeply and it felt like the last stored breath shared by Jocelyn, Harnes, and me had been squeezed out of my chest. "What?"
"Three of them anyway, and busted a headlight. Wasn't it nice that the son of a bitch didn't go for all four tires, so he could save me a few dollars? It didn't matter, though, what's the point of buying only three new ones? The car's got fifty-two thousand miles on it, so I had to go for a full set anyway. Same with the headlight, I had a new pair put in. I don't think Duke weighted the tires properly though, the right side seems off. I'm going back to have him do it again."
"I'll get them done right now," I whispered. I sounded very far away from myself.
"I know how you are when you talk like that." She came into my arms and kissed me hard, and kissed me again, more gently as the icy sweat slid down my back. "Don't do anything crazy."
"Me?" I said.
It took Duke a half hour to correctly weight the four new tires, and he muttered and grimaced because I stood there watching him work the entire time.
"You don't have nowhere else better to be?" he asked.
"Believe it or not," I said. "I do."
He finished and wanted to charge me extra and instantly saw I wasn't having any. He tried to get me to thank him for putting in so much extra time and effort, instead of owning up to the fact that he'd fouled the job the first time.
I drove out without another word and pulled up outside McGreary's discount store at about four-thirty, where I waited almost forty-five minutes before seeing Kristin Devington leave for the day. I hoped to seem careless in my approach, but the gravel crunched loudly underfoot and I sounded like a lost water buffalo moving through the parking lot. She heard me coming and wheeled and waited for me to step up.
"Hi, Jonny."
"Hi, Kristin."
"You don't plan on causing any more trouble for Arnie, do you?" she asked. "Not just for his sake, because it took my mother two days to calm down. She's got high blood pressure and diabetes. She's supposed to take a couple of different medications and watch her diet, but she only swallows some of the pills and she eats a half pound of peanut brittle almost every night."
"No," I said. "I don't want to fight with your brother anymore."
"That's good to know. What brings you here then?”
“I thought we might talk for a few minutes."
"Okay.
Neither one of us had grown so much as an inch since we were seventeen, and she reached exactly the same place on me as back then, just about my shoulders. I put my hand on her arm, thinking about the night I'd taken her to her junior prom. I remembered how lovely Kristin had looked that evening when I'd pinned the corsage on her, both of us lit by the bug light on her front porch, back when Arnie and I and the rest of the team used to wrestle in the mud of the high school fields and go drink beer in the moonlight behind the gymnasium or the bleachers.
"What's been happening at your house?" I asked.
"He's been fighting with my mother something awful the past few months. She'll put her teeth in somebody's throat to defend him most of the time, but when she's alone in the house with him it's a different story, all right. It gets ugly a couple of times a year, and Sheriff Broghin had to put handcuffs on her once just so she'd settle down in her recliner long enough to keep from killing Arnie's dog with the meat cleaver." She tipped her chin aside and I saw her mother there in her face, lurking below. "Stupid dog died anyway a couple of weeks later from eating rat poison over in the tool shed. Arnie got out his shotgun and blew up the roof a little, aiming for the weathervane."
"Did he ever hit it?"
"No, but some of the shot nailed a passing crow and brought it down into the blueberry patch. He was pretty happy with himself over that."
"I'll bet." I could see him plugging at nothing and laughing morosely, creeping around that quarter-acre of crabgrass covered with trash and shards. The mold and ivy was so thick and heavy on the gingerbread trim that he must've felt as if it covered him as well. He'd be wishing his wife was still with him, his father back from the grave. Christ, we weren't so different after all. None of us.
"Why don't you leave?" I asked.
She shrugged with the same despondency I'd seen in most of my high school crowd after they found themselves still living with their parents ten years after graduation. "Where am I going to go?"
I watched the pedestrian traffic go by, thinking that Katie might be right, the bookstore could have a fair flow of business between ten and six. The Barbara Cartland and Danielle Steele shelves would turn over quickly because of sorrowful women who had nothing better to do than scarf down peanut brittle; the Mission M.I.A. and The Executioner series would be selling well due to the NRA enthusiasts flocking over from Oscar's hunting goods store.