Shades of Twilight

A stocky paramedic, Turkey MacInnis, entered the room and crossed to where Roanna was sitting, hunkering down in front of her. Turkey, so called because of his ability to imitate a turkey call without benefit of any gizmos, was both competent and soothing, one of the better paramedics in the county. Booley listened to the casual matter-of-fact voice as he asked the girl a few questions, assessing her responsiveness as he flicked a tiny penlight in her eyes, then took her blood pressure and counted her pulse. Roanna answered the questions in a flat, almost inaudible tone, her voice sounding strained and raw. She regarded the paramedic at her feet with a total lack of interest.

A blanket was fetched and wrapped around her, and the paramedic urged her to lie down on the sofa. Then he

brought her a cup of coffee, which Booley guessed to be heavily sweetened, and cajoled her into drinking it. Booley sighed. Satisfied that Roanna was being taken care of, he couldn’t put off his onerous duty any longer. He rubbed the back of his head as he walked over to the small group on the other side of the room. For at least the tenth time, Harlan Ames was recounting the event as he interpreted it, and Booley was getting heartily sick of that greasy, too-loud voice.

He sat down beside Lucinda.

"Have you found Webb yet?" she asked in a strangled tone, as more tears slipped down her cheeks. For the first time, he thought, Lucinda looked her age of seventy-three. She had always given the impression of being lean and strong, like the finest stainless steel, but now she looked shrunken in her nightgown and robe.

"Not yet," he said uncomfortably.

"We’re looking for him," That was an understatement if he’d ever made one. There was a slight disturbance at the door, and Booley looked around, frowning, but relaxed when Yvonne Tallant, Webb’s mother, strode into the living room. Technically no one was supposed to be allowed in, but Yvonne was family, even though she had 4istanced herself several years back by moving out of Davencourt into her own little house across the river in Florence. Yvonne had always been a woman with an independent streak. Just now, though, Booley wished she hadn’t shown up, and he wondered how she’d found out about the trouble here tonight. Ah, hell, no use worrying about it. That was the trouble with small towns. Someone in dispatch, maybe, had called home and said something to a family member, who’d called a friend, who’d called a cousin who knew Yvonne personally and had taken it upon herself to let her know. That was always how it worked.

Yvonne’s green eyes swept the room. She was a tall, slim woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair, the type described more as handsome than pretty. Even at this hour, she was impeccably clad in tailored slacks and a crisp white blouse. Her gaze lit on Booley.

"Is it true?" she asked, her voice cracking a little. "About Jessie?" Despite Booley’s own reservations about Jessie, she had always seemed to get along with her mother-in-law. Besides, the Davenport and Tallant families were so close that Yvonne had known Jessie from the cradle.

Beside him, Lucinda gulped on a sob, her entire body trembling. Booley nodded an answer at Yvonne, who closed her eyes against welling tears.

"Roanna did it," Gloria hissed, glaring across the room at the small, blanket-wrapped figure lying on the sofa. Yvonne’s eyes flew open, and she gave Gloria an incredulous look.

"Don’t be ridiculous," she snapped, and purposefully strode over to Roanna, crouching down beside her and stroking the tumbled hair back from the colorless face, murmuring softly to her as she did. Booley’s opinion of Yvonne jumped up several notches, though he doubted, from the look on her face, that Gloria shared it.

Lucinda bowed her head, as if unable to look across the room at her other granddaughter.

"Are you going to arrest her?" she whispered.

Booley took one of her hands in his, feeling like a meaty, clumsy ox as his thick fingers folded around her cold, slender ones.

"No, I’m not," he said.

Lucinda shuddered slightly, some of the tension leaving her body.

"Thank God," she whispered, her eyes squeezing shut.

"I’d like to know why not!" Gloria shrilled from Lucinda’s other side, rearing up like a wet hen. Booley had never liked Gloria nearly as much as he did Lucinda. She’d always been prettier, but Lucinda had been the one who’d caught Marshall Davenport’s eye, Lucinda who had married the richest man in northwest Alabama, and envy had nearly eaten Gloria alive.

"Because I don’t think she did it," he said flatly.

"We saw her standing right over the body! Why, her feet were in the blood!"

Irritably, Booley wondered why that was supposed to

L_TNDA HOWARD

have any significance. He reached for patience.

"From what we can tell, Jessie had already been dead for several hours before Roanna found her." He didn’t go into the technical details about the progression rate of rigor mortis, figuring Lucinda didn’t need to hear it. It wasn’t possible to pin down the exact time of a death unless it was witnessed, but it was still a sure thing that Jessie had died at least a couple of hours before midnight. He didn’t know why Roanna had paid her cousin a visit at two in the morning-and he’d definitely find out-but Jessie had already been dead. The little family group was frozen, staring at him-as if they couldn’t comprehend this latest twist. He took out his little notebook. One of the county detectives normally would have done the interviewing, but this was the Davenport family, and he was going to give the case his personal attention.

"Mr. Ames said that Webb and Jessie had a lulu of a fight tonight," he began, and saw the sharp look that Lucinda gave her brother-in-law.

Then she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders as she mopped a, her face with the mangled handkerchief.