Last Scene Alive at-7 Read online

  "Yes."

  "Do you think that's a good idea?"

  I could feel my eyebrows draw together in a frown. "If I weren't comfortable with it, I wouldn't do it, Arthur," I said, in a final tone.

  Because I'm short, some people think I'm helpless, or feeble, or silly. Arthur had known me for years; Arthur had even told me he loved me on more than one occasion. Why he would love a woman who would live in a place that terrified her when she had adequate means to move, I don't know, but he had that little smile that made me nuts. Patronizing.

  "Do you really think you're safe out here?" he asked, trying ever so hard to sound gentle.

  "Hell, Arthur, I've got a security system that's hooked up to the police department switchboard!" I could feel my face getting hot. Arthur had an amazing ability to make me angry. I was not about to tell him that this very day I had made up my mind to move.

  "Okay, okay!" He held up a hand, palm outward, placatingly. "But for a woman alone, living in town is safer."

  Much more of this, and I'd feel the steam coming out of my ears. "If you've gotten all you need from Angel and me ..." I said, making sure there was a nudge in my voice.

  "I ought to be going, too," Robin said. "They may need me back at the motel. I'm sure Joel is having a meeting this afternoon to decide what to do."

  "I have to pick up Joan at the sitter's," Angel said apologetically. "Roe, would you like to come back to town with me? Spend the evening?"

  There was no way in hell I was going to admit I wanted to be with someone, not while Arthur was standing there looking sorry for me. "I have a lot to catch up on here," I said, keeping my face calm as a pond. "Thanks for visiting, Robin. I'll talk to you later, Angel. Tell me when you need me to take you to pick up your car." Angel patted me on the shoulder. She'd asked Robin for a ride back into town, and he'd seemed glad to oblige. If I'd been him, I wouldn't have been too enthusiastic about getting back to the motel to face Joel Park Brooks, either.

  To my dismay, somehow Arthur managed to linger while Angel and Robin left.

  "How is Lorna?" I asked brightly, fishing the little girl's name out of my memory with a desperate yank.

  "She's great," Arthur said, his eyes focused on my face. Not too many people look at you so directly, but Arthur had always been a forceful and direct man. Except when he'd been dating me, and sleeping with Lynn Liggett. And asking her to marry him, when she was pregnant. Except for that. "She's in the first grade."

  "Oh gosh," I said, the impact of the years that had gone by hitting me between the eyes. I remembered how jealous Martin had been of Arthur, when he found Arthur pursuing me after Arthur divorced Lynn. All that emotional energy, wasted.

  "Yes, I know." Arthur laughed a little. "They've moved into Atlanta. Lynn wanted to put Lorna into a private school, so she took a job with a big company that installs security systems for businesses. She's pulling in the big bucks."

  "How often do you manage to see Lorna?" I was struggling to keep the conversation going.

  "I have her two weekends a month," Arthur said. "And some holidays."

  "Did you remarry?" I asked, all too aware that my voice was too bright and social.

  "You know damn good and well I didn't," he said. He didn't sound angry—-just as if he were dusting off my pretense of ignorance. "You would have known. I've dated a lot, come close to being that serious once."

  I automatically wanted to know who the close call had been, but that wasn't something I could ask.

  "How are you recovering?" he asked.

  I bit my lower lip and looked down at the hardwood floor. "I'm probably doing better than I thought I would," I said.

  "That sounds pretty uncertain."

  I considered that. "I thought I'd really collapse," I said. "Then I thought I was just being brave for a while and I'd collapse after that. But I guess I won't ever."

  "You seem surprised."

  I nodded.

  "He never was..." Arthur began, and I held up a warning hand. There was a long silence.

  "I'm leaving," Arthur said. He rose wearily from the couch, ran a hand over his pale hair. "Do you... would you like someone to stay out here at night with you?"

  "You offering?" I was trying to get a little lightness into the conversation.

  "I'd do it in a minute," he said flatly, and I was sorry I'd spoken.

  "Thanks, but I'm used to being by myself at night." I did appreciate his thinking of my feelings. But the habit of turning Arthur away had gotten so strong I couldn't break it, and it would really be bad for me to begin asking someone to spend the night at the house to keep me company—not to mention what it'd do to my reputation, though I was pleased to find that consideration was strictly secondary.

  "If you need me, you call," Arthur said. "But I know I make you rattled." He looked resigned to that. "There's someone who'd love to stay out here with you, and she needs money, if a paying situation would be more comfortable for you. The new young patrolwoman is just panting to meet you. She'd be glad to keep you company, especially if there was money involved."

  "Oh, she's on the poor side?" Why on earth would anyone want to meet me? Oh... the movie. Someday, I'd quit being completely naive.

  "Her husband ran up all their credit cards as high as he could before he left," Arthur said, carefully showing no expression.

  "He ran off with someone?"

  "Her stepbrother."

  I let that soak in for a minute, until I was sure I had understood Arthur correctly. "I guess my own problems aren't too bad," I muttered, and Arthur nodded.

  "That does put your life in perspective," he agreed. "Plus, the SOB took their car."

  "That's one of the worst stories I've ever heard," I said after I'd thought it over.

  "Tell me about it. So, if you want Susan to stay with you, give me a call." Arthur patted me on the shoulder, walked across the front porch, and opened the screen door. "And call me if you think of anything about this morning, or about last night. Anything that might have happened while you were having dinner with the movie people."

  "I will," I said, feeling sure I'd already told Arthur everything that could have a bearing on the murder of Celia Shaw.

  I stood in the living room, all alone, and looked at the clock on the table. Amazingly, it was only noon. Equally amazingly, I was due at work.

  Breakfast (two pieces of toast) had been an eon ago. I got some chicken salad out of the refrigerator and ate it out of the bowl, with crackers to scoop it up. I was glad I had a job where I was due, glad something had broken into the dreary pattern of my life...

  Where had that come from?

  I wasn't glad Celia was dead, was I?

  No, not really. I was just glad something had happened to change things, jolt me out of my misery, cause people to treat me as something other than pitiful.

  Because I wasn't, I told myself crisply. I was not pitiful, and I was not just a forlorn rich widow. I was no tragic figure to be wrapped in cotton batting, either. I was a kick-butt rich widow. I began to feel better and better as I cleared away the cracker crumbs and the glass, and by the time I got in my car to go back to town, I was in a mood to take on a grizzly.

  No one looking at my four-eleven exterior could tell I was loaded for bear, and it was a considerable surprise to Lillian and Perry when I told Janie Finstermeyer that her son had way too many overdue books, that it was getting to be a real habit of his, and that she'd better energize him into getting to the library with those books before the day was over or we'd yank his card.

  I turned away from the telephone to find them staring at me as if I'd dyed my hair green.

  "Can we even do that?" Lillian asked.

  "You just watch me." But it wasn't necessary to put the threat to the test, because Josh Finstermeyer flew into the library as if propelled within an hour, money in hand and an apology on his lips. He even took his baseball cap off in the library.

  I tried to be equally gracious.

  Chapter Eightr />
  Of course, I heard from my mother that night. My mother, tall and elegant and reminiscent of Lauren Bacall at her coolest, might as well have been born on a different planet from me; I cannot imagine her carrying me in her womb, no matter what evidence there is to the contrary. I am an only child, and I've seen pictures of her pregnant, so I guess I'm really hers.

  I was never much a child of my father, except biologically. He left when I was in my teens, my early teens. My mother, in her excellent vengeance, became a real estate tycoon in a modest way—if a tycoon can be modest—and lived in more affluence than I ever would have if I'd stayed with my newspaperman father. He'd remarried, and had a son named Phillip, my half-brother. I hadn't seen Phillip in years. My father had decided I reminded the boy of a traumatic incident, and that seeing me was bad for Phillip.

  When he got his own computer, Phillip began emailing me. I could tell, in his first messages, Phillip considered himself daring, contacting his dangerous older sister. I replied so calmly and matter-of-factly that it made my teeth ache, but at the same time I tried to make it clear that I was very happy to hear from him. Now we exchanged news once or twice a week. I hadn't had much to tell him since Martin died (Phillip had sent me the biggest, most sentimental card he could find, covered with a glittery substance). That wasn't the case tonight.

  When the phone rang I was busy trying to tell Phillip about the excitement of the movie shoot, without dwelling on the death of Celia Shaw. Seeing the movie set and the movie people through different eyes made me feel better about the whole thing, myself.

  I picked up the phone absently, my mind still on my composition.

  "I hear you met up with Arthur Smith today," my mother said.

  "It's the first time I'd seen him in years," I said. "He looked pretty much the same."

  "Not dating anyone now," my mother informed me, and I didn't ask her why she'd bothered to find that out. She wasn't giving me information about an opportunity, she was warning me. She'd never forgiven Arthur for dating Lynn while he was dating me, and especially for getting Lynn pregnant while I should have been. Mother's slacked off on the grandkid issue since she has some stepgrand-children through her husband, John Queensland. Especially once I told her that I had a malformation of the womb, and it was very unlikely that I would ever be able to have a baby: I'd tried to keep that to myself as long as I could.

  But even if I told her I was dying to present her with a grandchild, she wouldn't want Arthur to be the father— not any more. In her opinion, he'd publicly humiliated me. (Actually, that was true. But I had given up minding.)

  "So, that poor girl who died was the one who was going to play you in the movie?"

  "Yeah, the composite me. Weird feeling."

  "Do you know Robin Crusoe is here?"

  "Yes, I've seen him."

  "How does he look?"

  "Much the same. He dresses better. His hair's still red."

  "Are you coming to dinner tomorrow night?"

  "Oh... oh, sure." I rolled my eyes at the computer screen. The last thing I wanted was to go to a family dinner with all John's kids, their spouses, and the children. But I'd agreed a few days ago, guilted out because I'd skipped the last two such gatherings.

  "I'll see you tomorrow night, then, at six. Please don't be late. You can bring someone if you want."

  She always said that.

  "I won't be late," I said firmly. I never was: Roe Teagarden, punctual librarian. Didn't I sound exciting? I sighed after we'd said good-bye, pretty much standard ritual after a phone conversation with Aida Teagarden Queensland.

  But my mother had always done her best by me, and she loved me. I loved her too. It would have been nice if I hadn't had to constantly remind myself of that. Abruptly, I was fed up with my own whininess, and decided it was high time I went to bed.

  This had certainly been a highly eventful Saturday, compared with my normal weekend routine. I suppressed the memory of Celia's appearance when she was dead, and instead spun myself a fantasy in which Joel Park Brooks came to my door and begged me to take her place in the movie, and I did so with completely unexpected talent and grace, and some incredibly attractive actor—not anybody obvious like George Clooney or Mel Gibson, but someone more cerebral, like John Cusack—came to my door and begged me to return to Hollywood with him and tan by his pool and be his love goddess, since I was far more genuine and original than the shallow movie beauties surrounding him...

  There's no age limit or personality conflict in fantasies, and this one merged pleasantly into sleep.

  Next morning was a good Sunday for church. I attend on most Sundays, but sometimes I'm more enthusiastic than others. I wasn't sure what was happening to me, what process had been set in motion this past week, but I was relieved to feel better. I didn't realize how long a dark cloud had hung around me until it began to lift. I slicked my hair back and put it up as smoothly as I manage, and I wore a fall suit of a russet color. I put on my gold-rimmed glasses, and I had suede pumps and a purse to match. Amber earrings, I decided, and a dab of perfume.

  "You look good," I told my mirror earnestly. "Pretty darn good."

  I got to St. Stephen's about nine-fifteen. We had an early service, since Aubrey also preached at another church about thirty miles away at eleven o'clock. I slipped into the pew I usually used, noticed my mother and John hadn't gotten there yet, and slid to my knees to pray. Our church is small and beautiful, and just breathing the air of it makes me feel better. The organist began her playing before I'd finished, and I eased back into the pew and listened with my eyes closed. I don't have much of an ear for music, but I thought I was listening to Handel. The pew creaked as someone sat by me, and I opened my eyes after listening a little longer. Robin was on his knees next to me, wearing a perfectly proper suit and tie. He sat back by me, and began the business of book-marking his hymnal and turning to the proper place in the Book of Common Prayer. When he was arranged to his satisfaction, one of his long, slender hands reached over and patted mine. I turned my hand palm up so he could clasp it, and he gave my fingers a squeeze. His untidy hair was freshly washed and floating around his head in a coppery nimbus, and I averted my face so he couldn't see me smile.

  Robin released my hand with another pat, and the processional began. We stood to observe it, and bowed at the passage of the cross. I was reminded all over again of how much taller he was than I. As Aubrey, the lector, and the two acolytes disposed themselves at the front of the church, I saw Will Weir, the cameraman, scuttle into the back pew on the other side. He was wearing a sports jacket, a white shirt, and jeans; not standard churchgoing garb in Lawrenceton, but he was a visitor, after all. My mother and her husband had slipped in late, as well.

  The sun poured in the windows of the church and I watched dust motes dance in the beams. The ritual unfolded exactly as it ought, and as the congregation knelt and stood in unison, I felt a deep calm wash over me.

  Will scuttled out of the church as fast as he'd scuttled in, so he apparently didn't want to meet and greet. Astonishingly, Robin went through the whole ritual. I gave him every opportunity to detach himself from me, because I was naturally aware that there was going to be speculation. But with the greatest tenacity, Robin stuck to my side and walked me to my car.

  "My mother wonders if you'd like to come to dinner tonight," I heard myself saving. Actually, that was true. She'd yanked me aside and ordered me to extend the invitation.

  "How would you feel about that?"

  I looked up at his small hazel eyes, fringed with rusty lashes. I looked down at my feet. "If you'd like to come, that would be fine, of course."

  "Come by and pick me up at the hotel?"

  "All right. Five-thirty okay?"

  "Sure. Casual dress?"

  "Oh, yes. I'll go home and change to pants and a shirt."

  "Will you let your hair down?"

  "I don't know. I hadn't thought about it," I said, more than a little surprised. I started to ask him why he w
anted to know, but reined myself in. I also felt an impulse to ask him if he wanted to come home with me for lunch, and zapped that idea, too. Instead, I gave Robin a small smile and wave, and got in my car to go back to the house.

  What an interesting morning it had turned out to be.

  Arthur was parked in my driveway when I got back.

  "I like the hair," he called.

  I sorted through my keys and nodded in reply as I went to the side door. "Come on in," I called, unlocking the door and deactivating the alarm.

  Arthur was wearing a suit, and he was clean-shaven, but I was fairly sure he hadn't been at church.

  "You're dressed up," I said tentatively.

  "I was on the news." He looked embarrassed. "You wouldn't believe how many news people are down at the station."

  "I haven't been watching the television. I guess it was everywhere on the news." Arthur nodded. I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, tucking my keys back into my purse, and thinking as hard as I could. "Oh, this is bad. They'll be coming around again."

  "Soon as they get directions to your house."

  I said a very unladylike word.

  Arthur laughed. "You can say that again. You know if it gets bad you can come stay with me."

  "I think not," I said, smiling. "Notorious Widow in Cop's Love Shack?"

  Arthur took a deep breath. "Listen, Roe, who in that movie crew was especially close to Celia Shaw?"

  "Almost anyone would know more about that than I know." I slung the purse onto the counter, slid out of my pumps, and made some fresh coffee. I got a mug out of the cabinet and put it by the coffeepot, and I got out some sugar and milk for Arthur's coffee. Funny, if you'd asked me how he took it, I wouldn't have thought I remembered—but here I was, setting out the things he took.

  "I have reasons for asking you."

  "I'm sure you do. Well, of course, Robin dated her...though there were signs that the relationship was over."

  "Like her going to bed with your stepson?"

  "Yeah, like that. No, really, there were indications before that."