In the long, long minute before the weight was lifted, as I lay prone under the terrifying burden, I felt something wet on my face and opened my eyes to see blood dripping to the gleaming new sidewalk a half-inch from my nose.
After a frantic little inventory of pains, I was pretty sure it wasn't my blood.
Out of a cacophony of voices I discerned Paul Allison bellowing for calm, and I could hear one woman set up a steady howl for help-Bettina Anderson, I thought. "Ready on three," I heard Martin say, and the shuffle of feet all around me. "One, two, three!" Martin said, and the weight on top of me was eased off. I had had the breath knocked out of me, and was frantically trying to take in air, with the usual result that I was foiling my own attempt.
I saw some knees hit the pavement beside me.
"Don't move," Martin said tensely. "Baby, is anything broken? Are you hurt?" Struggling for breath, I couldn't answer.
"Call 911!" exclaimed a male voice, Jesse Prentiss's, I thought. "You! Perry Allison! There's a phone in the manager's office to the left of those glass doors!" Running feet, light; Perry pounding obediently into the community center.
Running feet, heavy. "Who got hurt?" Dryden, breathing raggedly. So I'd been right; he'd been parked at the far reaches of the lot.
"Move back, people, police are on the way," Paul Allison said loudly in his police official voice. "I've already radioed from my car. Step back, everyone, unless you're an EMT."
"I am," Jenny Tankersley was saying as I felt Martin's hands running over my body.
"Then get over here," Martin snapped, and Paul Allison said in a shocked voice, "Has Roe been hurt?"
"She took a fall, she's okay," Dryden said-rather cavalierly, I thought. "But this man here is really bleeding."
"There's blood on Roe," Paul pointed out tensely.
And then I could breathe. Nothing had felt as good in weeks as that deep intake of air.
"I'm okay," I croaked. "Just help me up, Martin, I don't think it's my blood."
I managed to push up with my arms to achieve a kneeling position, and then Martin lifted me up the rest of the way, frantically touching my head and neck to see where I'd been hurt.
We were a little apart from the activity now, which was centered on someone lying on the ground. The girl with the ponytail, Sue, was sobbing hysterically by one of the lampposts. "He just fell down," she said over and over, "he just let go of my arm and fell down."
"Not my blood," I reassured Martin. This time he listened.
"Tell me how you're feeling," he said.
"I bumped my cheek on the pavement," I gasped. I took another deep breath and started again. "I'm going to have sore hands and arms from trying to stop my fall, and my knees are scraped. Other than that, I'm fine. How'd I get knocked down?"
"Something happened to Arthur Smith," Martin said slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. "He was right behind you. Without any warning, he began to fall, and fell on you and took you down with him."
"Did he have a heart attack?" No, the blood. "Was he shot? How could he have been hurt?"
"Here comes the ambulance," Martin said. "Maybe we'll find out."
Jenny Tankersley had been working on Arthur, ripping off his shirt to find the source of the bleeding, checking his pulse. The EMTs pelted out of the ambulance.
"He's been hurt on his shoulder somehow," she told them, moving aside. No one was talking to Arthur himself, though I could see his eyes were open and he was taking in what was going on around him. He looked as dazed as I felt. But when his eyes focused on the first man out of the ambulance, Arthur seemed to collect himself. He said clearly, "Murray, I was stabbed in the shoulder."
A hush fell over the little crowd. Martin put his arm around me and I leaned on his chest. I had a moment of thankfulness that Martin had been holding my hand when the attack on Arthur occurred, so it was out of the question that Martin could have been involved. Not that he would do anything like that, but other people, knowing of the dislike between them, might make something of Martin's proximity.
Then I realized what must have already occurred to everyone there. If Arthur had been stabbed instead of shot, it had to have been by one of the people in the small cluster on the sidewalk.
As the ambulance rolled off with Arthur in the back, the Prentisses offered Sue a ride home.
"I'm afraid we're all going to have to stay here for a while," Paul said in his calm way, and to reinforce his words, two police cars flew into the parking lot, shortly to be followed by two more.
A police detective was down, and this made the second officer in a week who'd been attacked. Before the evening was over, I'd seen every member of the force come and go at the community center.
We were all searched, even me, which made no sense at all, as Martin pointed out several times.
"Martin, I don't mind," I told him wearily, as I got up to go to the women's room with a female officer- thankfully, not Lynn Liggett Smith. "I just want to get this over with and go home."
So off I trudged, my little evening bag tucked under my arm, to submit my bag and my body to an examination.
No knife or any other pointed object was found on any person in the group.
It was as if a knife had fallen from the sky, stabbed Arthur in the shoulder, and been pulled back up by an invisible cord.
Chapter Nine
I woke in the morning to a warm bed, Martin still asleep beside me, and rain lashing around the house outside. I peeked at the clock on my bed table; only seven-thirty. Plenty of time to get ready for church at nine-thirty. I squirmed over to press against Martin.
He's a quick waker. As soon as I heard his breathing change he turned over and put an arm around me.
"Martin, about last night," I said, my voice still heavy with sleep.
"Not right now," he whispered, his hands beginning to travel.
"Ummmm," was the next thing I said, and then I didn't say any more for a good few minutes.
In fact, I didn't say one coherent word until Martin was coming out of the shower I'd previously vacated. As I was tucking my beige-and-black silk blouse into my long beige skirt, I gave him an exaggerated leer. He held up a hand in protest, which caused the bath towel to droop interestingly.
"Don't even think of it," he said. "Remember my advanced age."
I laughed, and began brushing my hair. "I'm pretty sure I could overcome your feebleness," I said. "But I don't want to be late for church. Of course, there's all afternoon . . ."
"So you're not going to the funeral?"
"Oh, shoot." I put my brush down and made a face into the mirror. "I wish you hadn't reminded me. I guess I could think of an excuse, but I really ought to go. After all, he fell into our yard. I think that obliges me."
"You Southerners have the strangest sense of obligation," Martin observed.
He didn't often begin a sentence that way, so I forgave him.
"I know you have to go get Shelby, so you won't be thinking about going to church," I said carefully. "Do you think you'll be home in time for the funeral? Do you even want to go?"
"I should go out to the plant for a while," he said, pulling on his left sock, "especially since I was gone for a couple of days this week." I tried not to let my face fall. Martin felt he had to go in to work most weekends.
"I'll try not to stay long," he continued.
I made a resigned face at my reflection and rummaged among the lipstick tubes in my dressing table drawer. But I wouldn't change the sheets; I still had a faint hope that later in the day it would prove to have been wasted effort. Actually, I'd settle for sitting in the same room while we read. Though our sex life was often wonderful, our "together" time was minimal. I scanned the closet for my black pumps and slid my bare feet into them.
"No hose?" Martin said as he zipped up his blue jeans. He reached in a drawer to pull out a T-shirt. He seldom got to dress this casually.
"My knees have scabs from hitting the sidewalk last night, in case you didn't notice. And they're pretty sore."
"Oh, honey, did I hurt you? Earlier?"
"If you did I didn't notice! But now that I'm up and around, I can tell I hit the pavement." I flexed my leg and winced.
"Maybe while I'm at the hospital I'll check to see how Arthur Smith is," Martin said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
"That would probably be good for appearances, anyway," I said. "Thank God you were holding my hand when he was stabbed ... or whatever happened to him."
Martin stood behind me and bent to kiss my neck at the spot that always makes me gasp. "Some people that you dated, being around them doesn't bother me. But being around Arthur does, not because I think you have feelings for him but because he must still have some for you. He always gives me this look, 'I had her first, I know all about the mole on her back,' crap like that. And once Lynn and he have separated, what does he do? Puts himself right in your line of vision and looks at you as if he was a painter and you were the Mona Lisa."
"And gets stabbed," I said, to point out that Arthur's evening hadn't ended well, however much staring he'd done. I polished my black oblong-framed glasses, the ones I almost always wore to church, since they made me look serious. I peered into the mirror to check my makeup and decided I was entirely too pale. Maybe this year, for the first time since I was a teenager, I'd try to get a tan. If I went about it carefully, perhaps the sun wouldn't hurt my skin too badly. "You know, Martin, I'd think I had it worked out if it wasn't for Arthur," I said, pulling a Kleenex out of its box to blot my lipstick.
Martin, bent over to tie his Avias, said, "What? You worked out what?"
"All this violence."
"What's your theory?" Martin leaned his elbows on his knees to listen.
"I think it's because of Angel."
Martin was astonished. "How do you figure that?"
"Okay," I said, holding up my fingers. "Jack Burns's body was dropped in the yard while she was out mowing."
Martin nodded cautiously.
"Then Beverly was rude to Angel in the library, and Beverly got attacked."
I was busy folding fingers down and Martin was nodding.
"Then Beverly's purse was found on Angel's car."
"What does that mean?"
"Whoever did it was saying to Angel, 'Look what I did for you!' Like Jack's body falling in her yard. Just like Madeleine."
Martin raised his eyebrows, as if to say "Explicate."
"I was watching Madeleine the other day as she was hunting, and I was thinking how yucky it was to have to clean her kills off the doormat. Then I realized that she brought them as an offering to me: like, 'I'm a useful cat. See what I did?' "
Martin was looking a little dazed by my excursion into cat psychology.
"So, Jack was an offering. offering. Like a dead mouse. 'See what I did for you? He gave you a parking ticket, so here he is, delivered to your doorstep.' " Like a dead mouse. 'See what I did for you? He gave you a parking ticket, so here he is, delivered to your doorstep.' "
"You think someone is in love with Angel and is showing her that by hurting people who upset her?" Martin raised his eyebrows, the picture of skepticism.
"It makes a perverted kind of sense," I said stoutly. "And poor Beverly's purse being put on the hood of Angel's car. To underline the fact that the attack was- in Angel's honor."
"So, Shelby was hit on the head because he's her husband?"
"Right."
"Why wasn't he killed?"
"Maybe because I turned on the downstairs light?"
Martin nodded slowly, not as if he was in love with my theory, but to indicate he was giving it consideration.
"But what about Arthur?" he asked. "That won't wash, with Arthur. I don't think he and Angel have exchanged two words since she moved here."
"That's where you're wrong," I said smugly, having that instant figured out where Arthur might tie in. "Remember, Arthur had called her in to the police station before he questioned me."
"So this hypothetical admirer just decided he'd given Angel a hard time?"
"I guess. Actually, Faron Henske interviewed her, not Arthur."
"Angel," Martin said slowly, doubt in his voice. "I don't know, Roe. Angel's not the stuff dreams are made of."
"Not your your dreams. But I've seen men just about hang their tongues out when she walks down the street," I said. "It's because she's so strong and sleek, I expect." dreams. But I've seen men just about hang their tongues out when she walks down the street," I said. "It's because she's so strong and sleek, I expect."
"Hmmm. That's an interesting theory . . ."
He didn't believe it for a minute.
"And," I added, having had a few more thoughts, "the police won't think of it, I bet, because they're seeing this as attacks on two policemen. Beverly could've been mugged and Shelby could've heard a prowler."
"Roe, the police could be right."
"Well. . . maybe. But I think I am. I just can't understand," I added, as I slid the beige-and-gold-enamel barrette into my hair to hold the waves off my face, "why the police couldn't find the knife Arthur was stabbed with."
"They certainly searched us all thoroughly," Martin said, his voice dry. "Perry Allison had a pocketknife, but it was perfectly clean. I don't think the wound could have been deep at all, if they suspected a pocketknife could've done it."
"No blood on anyone ..."
We shook our heads simultaneously at the opacity of the mystery surrounding the parking-lot stabbing of Arthur Smith, police detective.