Cut to the Bone(39)
“Don’t worry, dear. I understand completely,” Cheryl Beth said.
“You do?” Annie said.
“Oh, yes, Lieutenant. Rayford brought that out in people, I’m afraid.” Back to Emily. “I wanted you to know I understand why you said it, and that I hold no ill feelings.”
Huh! “I appreciate your saying that,” Emily said, relieved. She wasn’t up for fighting Ray’s ghost. “Especially on a day like today.”
“Thank you,” Cheryl Beth said. “I also assure you it wouldn’t have happened.”
“What wouldn’t have happened?”
The foundation cracked another eighth-inch. “He wasn’t going to leave me for you.”
“Uh,” Emily said.
“It makes perfect sense that you’d want my husband,” Cheryl Beth continued. “He was strong and virile. A leader of men. It’s natural you’d find yourself intensely attracted. Especially since your husband - Jack, I believe? - dumped you so many years ago.”
“Ray said . . . that?” Annie said.
Emily heard the venom and thumped a warning fist in Annie’s back. You can’t win a fight with a grieving widow. Let it slide.
“Of course,” Cheryl Beth said, oblivious. “Rayford was a fine Christian man and kept no secrets from me. He told me how Emily tried to seduce him, and how he had to dissuade her, gently but firmly.”
“Gently but firmly,” Annie repeated. “Did Ray say how this, uh, seduction started?”
Cheryl Beth fanned herself. “Rayford offered her some career advice. He was a natural teacher and loved to help his fellow officers. She took it as a sign he was interested in her romantically. He wasn’t, of course. He was very happily married.”
“How could he not be happy with a woman such as you?” Annie purred. “Do go on.”
Emily thumped her again.
“Things escalated. Emily demanded Rayford make a commitment. That he choose her or me.”
“When was that again?” Annie said. “The day in the cemetery?”
“Yes,” Cheryl Beth said. “Rayford was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Emily’s infatuation. He had no choice but to be firm - the welfare of his department was at stake. He ordered Emily to stop the harassment or he’d file a formal complaint.”
“And that’s when Emily called him a goat.”
“So everyone could hear,” Cheryl Beth confirmed.
“But you hold no ill feelings,” Annie said.
“Of course not,” Cheryl Beth said. “Girls always got emotional around Rayford.”
“I know I did,” Annie said.
She turned to Emily. “Mrs. Luerchen has been totally honest about her husband, Detective Thompson,” she said, eyes glittering. “Do you have something equally honest to say in return?”
“Oh, yeah,” Emily said.
She moved in close. Began to say Ray wasn’t a goat but a jackass, got his badge from a Cracker Jack box, and his raisin-eyed wife was his pathetic enabler.
“I wish I hadn’t called him a goat,” she said instead. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Cheryl Beth patted her hand and walked away.
“‘Be kind to Rayford, Lieutenant,’” Annie cackled as they walked away. “‘He was one of us, Lieutenant. The man got shot, Lieutenant.’“
“Shut up,” Emily muttered. “Lieutenant.”
3:22 p.m.
“All right, ladies and germs,” the water crew chief said, slapping the multi-ton booster pump. The crane that would install it glittered orange in the hazy sun. “We need this bad boy piped, welded, and running by Friday. Folks up and down Royce Road are complaining about low water pressure, and this’ll give ‘em what they need.”
The crane operator lifted his long metal boom to a forty-five-degree angle.
“What they need, Larry,” the foreman said, laughing. “Not what they want.”
5:41 p.m.
Emily dove behind cover, rolled twice, shouldered the rifle, pulled the trigger, felt the buck, and leapt to her feet, muzzle wobbling with every wheeze.
“Again.”
Roll-blam.
“Again.”
Roll-blam.
“Again.”
Roll-blam.
“Again.”
“You’re killing me!” Emily howled.
“Better here than the street,” Annie snapped in the whip-tone she employed as a U.S. Army sniper instructor. “Again.”
Emily did thirty to her right and fifty to her left, then collapsed.
“Well, you wanted to scratch Mrs. Ray from your brain, right?” Annie said, squatting next to her. “No better way to do that than shooting.”