Chill Factor (37 page)

Dixie could’ve lied, but Ray’s eyes said he wasn’t guessing. He knew. She kept silent.

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Ray told her. “What I’ve heard about you is you’re fair and you’re good. So I’m taking a chance on you. But don’t come here again. Don’t go to my brother’s house again. And if you step in the middle and screw up the official investigation, I’ll fuck you over until you won’t see another bounty contract in this town.”

“I didn’t tell the newspapers,” Amy wailed when Dixie met her inside the funeral home. “No guests, just as Edna requested. The funeral director
swears
he didn’t tell them. Nothing’s working out!”

Seeing the desperate look in her sister’s eyes as she glanced at Marty, Dixie knew the strangers trailing past the casket weren’t the worst of her problems. She firmly closed the viewing-room door and stood alongside to open it for strays to leave until only her family remained.

“Our turn,” she told them.

Marty hung back. “You all go ahead. I’ll be along … after a minute.”

“He won’t,” Amy whispered. “I’ve had to kick him here all the way.”

“It’s all right.” Dixie waved her sister toward the dais and put a hand on Marty’s arm.

He jerked it away.

“What good have you been?” he demanded. “I thought you’d help. Did you find out why she did this? Did you find her journal? Here we are, about to turn her into ashes. Stuff her in a jar. Did you find
anything?
What
good
were you?”

Oh. So now your mother’s important again?

“Marty, I’ve learned plenty about how your mother spent her
time these last few months, but it doesn’t tell us why this happened.” She glanced at Ryan, looking all grown-up in his blue suit, nearly as tall as his dad, but maybe not grown-up enough to hear this. Then again, if he’d decided to be adult enough to trade in cyberporn, how could a dose of hard, honest facts hurt him?

“Your mother was grieving,” Dixie continued. “As you’re grieving now. And she was trying to deal with it.”

“By killing herself?”

“We don’t know—”

“Give me a break. I read the papers. Mom and that Ames woman—now
that’s
who you ought to be investigating—cooked up this whole charade to trick the cops into blowing them away. Suicide in a blaze of headlines. The insurance pays off—”

“Did it occur to you that maybe the insurance company dreamed up that story? They haven’t sent a check, have they?”

“Why else would she pull such a harebrained stunt? She
couldn’t
believe she’d escape with the money. A bank isn’t dumb enough to let an old woman hold them up and ride off a winner. They have alarms. They have marked bills and … and … and … all kinds of tricks. How could she think they wouldn’t catch her? Was this some kind of … of … of last-ditch thrill? Or was she … punishing me … for
disappointing
her?” His face twisted.

Dixie put her arms around him.

“She
hated
me, Dixie. She hated me for … being who I am and … for killing Dad—”

“She didn’t hate you, Marty. She was confused, maybe, and incredibly lonely. But nothing I’ve learned leads me to believe she blamed you for the way her life turned out.”

“She called me. The night before she …”

“
Monday
night?” Dixie pulled away to look at him. “The day before the robbery?”

He nodded.

“What did she say?”

“I … wasn’t there. I came home late. And the next day I kept planning to call her back later. And then the … the cops phoned, said she—” He jerked a handkerchief from his pocket and blew into it.

Was this the guilt he’d been dragging around all week? “Marty, what did her message say?”

“Nothing, I mean … nothing that helps. She said—” He tightened his lips. “She said, ‘I understand now, son. And I love you.’ Then she said, ‘Marty, your father loved you, too.’”

Dixie patted his arm. She’d been damned pissed off at Marty Pine the past two days while his life fell apart around him.

“Come on,” she told him. “We need to do this.”

He walked beside her to the dais.

The viewing casket presented itself well, with vases of flowers at each end, spring flowers, the kind Edna grew in her own garden.

Dixie gently pushed Marty ahead of her. Carl and Amy had already moved on, but Ryan still lingered. He plucked a bearded iris from one of the vases and placed it at Edna’s shoulder on the white satin quilting. A collage of images raced through Dixie’s head—campfires, pecan trees, peanut-butter cookies—but the one that stuck was Aunt Edna’s proud smile the night of the senior prom, as her handsome son pinned a pink rose from her own garden around Dixie’s wrist.

After a brief hesitation, Marty placed his hand over his mother’s.

“If my mom died,” Ryan said softly, “I’d miss her a lot. And we’d both miss Dad if he died, but I think maybe they’d miss each other most. Mom and Dad don’t know how to be without each other.”

“Yes,” Marty said after a moment. “I guess that’s right.”

When he moved on and Dixie took his place, she couldn’t help comparing this woman to the one she’d seen under similar circumstances only days earlier. Both had clear, translucent skin and a firmness to their flesh that even death hadn’t stolen.

“Sleep well, Edna,” Dixie whispered.

When she touched the still hand, a coin rolled from beneath it. She picked it up. Not a coin. A brass disk, engraved with three words:

WE THE PEOPLE.

Jean Gibson served her husband a perfect martini in the Waterford crystal, with two olives, chilled precisely the way he liked it. Her own glass contained olives, a touch of vermouth, and Evian water.

“Gib, there will be plenty of time before the next election to smooth over any doubts the voters may have.” She spoke carefully, logically. “You attended the officers’ funerals. You made a moving statement. Why stay here now?”

“I believe Wanamaker may resign.”

That stopped her. “Because of the letters?” The Chief of Police had always struck her as something of a coward. But Ed would never get another important position
anywhere
if he quit now. “What makes you think he’ll resign?”

“Banning and Wanamaker spent an hour with the task force today. Afterward, work slowed down on preparations for Banning’s Memorial Day presentation.”

“You think he’ll call it off?” Then there’d be no reason she and Gib couldn’t leave town for a while.

Jean stared distractedly at the olives in her glass. After the Mayor’s commemoration to Wanamaker and the dead cops tomorrow, Gib planned to set the press straight, to enumerate the stupid mistakes the police department had made since the Chief’s appointment and explain the sorry state their city
government was really in. But with the commemoration canceled …

Gib chuckled. “You can bet Wanamaker’s shaking in his shoes about climbing on that platform. By tomorrow the sniper’s thirty-six hours will have long run out.”

Jean didn’t exactly blame the Chief for being fearful. She feared for Gib. Her Gib was determined to call the sniper’s bluff, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Thirty-six hours from the time the letter came is just before the ten o’clock news tonight. What makes you think they’ll wait until tomorrow?”

“They’ll wait.”

Jean touched the long, faint surgical scar on her husband’s cheek that marked a skin graft. He had escaped death when a land mine exploded, seeing the trip wire and diving to cover just in time, he’d said. But he hadn’t escaped the bits of flying metal. Was he seeing the trip wire now … aware of something no one else noticed? He seemed to believe so emphatically that he was not the target. She wished she shared his conviction.

“Chief Wanamaker’s resignation makes leaving here even easier.” She set her glass down and stroked his arm. “Everyone will agree Banning made a bad decision appointing him in the first place. Who’ll even notice you’re gone?”

From his instant flush, Jean knew she’d said the wrong thing. “I didn’t mean it like—”

“You think nobody notices me? That I’m a blowhard? That I couldn’t have beat Banning in that last election? If I
had
won by a narrow margin,
I’d
be the one having to prove myself over and over. I made a wise business decision—to pull out and let Banning screw himself.”

“You did!” Jean said desperately. “And it’s working. Granny Bandits. Killer cops, cop killers! The voters are seeing their mistake, Gib, just as you said they would.”

“If I leave now, I miss a window of opportunity. That’s a business term, Jean. Something you don’t understand.”

No, she didn’t understand business. Or politics. She should, then maybe her husband would respect her more. But she believed in her heart that The People would deliver on their threat. And she couldn’t bear to lose Gib.

An inspiration struck her. “What if I had a heart attack? Remember how sympathetic the press was last year when I went in with that tremor? I can fake a heart attack, then you could—”

“Jean, don’t be stupid. Nothing is going to happen to me. It’s not me The People want.”

“How can you be so sure? You received the same letter as Banning and Wanamaker. And nobody else on the Council got one.”

“Guess that shows I’m not as
unimportant
as my loving wife seems to believe.” He pulled her into his lap and kissed her. “Come on. Let’s pick out a stunning suit for you to wear. Stunning, but suitable for a solemn occasion. One way or another, I expect Banning’s future to die on that platform tomorrow.”

Kaylynn Banning sat across the table from her husband, after a late lunch at The Courtyard, and despaired that life could be so unpredictable. Six months ago they’d sat at this same table and toasted Avery’s political success.

“I don’t see how anyone could blame you for not mounting that stage tomorrow,” she said, too quietly for diners at neighboring tables to hear. “Sweetheart, people don’t expect you to become the bait to catch this assassin.”

Slowly, he shook his head as he pushed strawberries around his dessert plate with a silver spoon.

“Unless we allow the radical who wrote those letters an opportunity to strike tomorrow morning, we’ll be looking over our shoulders constantly until we’re picked off one by one walking down the street. This way, we stand a chance of catching the killer cold. We’ll stop it right there.”

“You make it sound so reasonable. Until I picture you behind the microphone, people all around, giving the Chief his much-deserved commendation. Then I hear this sound, Avery—like a truck going down Walker Street, beside the park, and having a blowout … or a backfire. Only it’s not a truck. All the people hush as the Chief’s knees buckle under him, and I’m staring at Mira, praying, ‘Thank God it wasn’t Avery.’ Then
another
backfire. A red stain spreads on your chest—”

“Jesus Christ, Kaylynn!”

“When I see
that
in my head, Avery, your words don’t sound so reasonable anymore.”

“Do you think I should resign because the letter demands it? Is that what you want?”

“You’ve never been a quitter. I don’t expect you to bail out now. But there must be another answer.”

He polished off his wine. Kaylynn hated the fear and deceit she had seen in her husband’s eyes since the day that hateful letter had arrived. Frankly, she didn’t give a damn about his plebeian past. She never pried when he disappeared for hours—thinking, he claimed. Yet, she was no fool, and now she regretted not taking a firmer hand. In today’s world, a woman couldn’t depend on a man to protect her interests.

“You talked in your sleep last night,” she said. “You must have had a nightmare.”

He looked at her warily. “What did I say?”

“Not much. You shouted ‘beetles, beetles,’ and mumbled some words about control.”

“That was all?”

“What did it mean?”

He shrugged. “I walked around the park last evening with Ed. Saw bugs everywhere.”

Kaylynn could always tell when Avery was outright lying.

She’d married for love, but not without a plan for a prominent future. Her husband had the combination of charm and intelligence that could take him anywhere, and Kaylynn had recognized instantly that they made a magnificent couple. She enjoyed the envy she saw in other women’s eyes, and the admiration she detected in men. But she knew Avery had secrets. He had a lust for life and a lust for power. He might not be strong enough to handle both, and couldn’t an admiring public turn vicious when a leader failed to live up to their expectations?

At every step of his success, Kaylynn had praised her husband’s accomplishments. Now she prayed that whatever he was hiding wouldn’t destroy both of them.

“J. Claude!” Amy exclaimed. “Dixie, you remember Bill and Edna’s friend, J. Claude Hager.”

“I chased too many of your golf balls to ever forget,” Dixie agreed, shaking J. Claude’s hand. It felt cool and dry.

In his well-preserved seventies, wearing an exquisitely tailored black suit and a military spit-shine on his shoes, J. Claude Hager had a commanding presence. Guests had noticed his entrance. A few who remembered him from Bill and Edna’s backyard barbecues stepped forward to greet their distinguished old friend personally.

Amy’s house rocked with Meanstreak’s version of “Blue Moon.” The group had brought only their two guitars and keyboard to the party and had toned down their costumes considerably. Rick wore a shirt over his body art. Corinne wore tight black leather pants and a white silk blouse, her mouth and nails adding splashes of coral. Walt looked less stoned. Their retro music made a big hit with the guests, mostly Edna’s contemporaries, who were old enough to remember the original recordings.

Carl had pushed the furniture aside, rolled back the rug for dancing, and set up a temporary bar in the dining room. Amy defrosted all her therapy-baked goodies. Only the draped piano held any indication that this party celebrated Edna’s death:
Between a pair of glowing candles in crystal holders sat a photograph of Edna and Bill.

When J. Claude turned away to speak to another old friend, Marty gripped Dixie’s shoulder.