“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Okay, I guess. I still have a damn headache that won’t quit.”
“Will they give you some aspirin?”
“Took some, but it’s not helping.” He frowned as he looked beyond me. “Where’s Betty?”
I sighed. “She had hip surgery, don’t you remember? It’s still hard for her to get around. And hey, what am I—chopped liver?”
His face relaxed a little. “No, and I still can’t believe you eat that stuff. It’s disgusting.”
I grinned. Ah, the good old New York delis. They were the best—with their smoked salmon, corned beef, pastrami, and pickled herring in sour cream. I loved it all. “I can’t believe you eat scrapple,” I countered.
Scrapple is a Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy, and I use the word lightly, that’s made of a mush of pork scraps formed into a semisolid congealed loaf. It’s not for the faint of heart.
“What’s the status, Angus?” I asked as we sat down. “When’s your preliminary hearing? Have you talked to Warren?”
Angus shrugged. “I think it’s scheduled for early next week. I dunno. I’m beginning to feel like I’ll never get out of here. Seems like everyone’s made up their minds about me already anyway.”
I made a mental note to visit Warren and see if I could get some sense out of him, if not from Angus or Betty. If I wasn’t satisfied, I’d try to get another lawyer in place before the hearing.
“Angus. Look, I’m doing my best to help you, but I have to ask you a few questions.”
He sighed. “We’ve been through this before. I told you I don’t remember much about that night.”
I waved a hand impatiently. “Not about the night of Jimmy’s murder. Now, this might sound a little off base, but I was wondering if someone might have killed Jimmy simply to get you in trouble?”
He snorted, but I persevered.
“Someone with a grudge against you. Like the Perkins boys, for instance.”
His cheeks reddened. “I gave that family a good deal, fair and square. They were in such an all-fired rush to get their paws on the cash, they didn’t want to wait for an auction. I gave it my best guess in the time they gave me, but yes, it’s true, I didn’t go over everything as carefully as if I’d brought it back to the auction building and gone through it one item at a time.”
He shifted his chair closer to the table, the legs scraping against the floor. “Those boys act as if they made no money that day, Daisy, but they got a good price for everything, and the old lady’s house, too. They used the money to open their feed store. It’s not my fault they pissed a lot of it away at the bar.”
He pointed at me. “In fact, remember the stuff I gave you when you opened your shop?”
I nodded, a sinking feeling in my chest.
“A lot of it came from that buyout.”
Great.
“And what about the fight that got you in trouble when you were younger? The one that got you arrested the first time?”
Angus rubbed a large hand across his face. “What is this, Daisy? The Spanish Inquisition?”
“Yeah, well, you know me when I’m on a roll. Take no prisoners. Oops, pardon the pun.”
We grinned at each other, in a ghost of the old camaraderie.
His face grew serious again as he stared past me as if seeing the long-ago scene in his mind.
“It was a Saturday night. Betty and I had gone to the movies in Sheepville. We were coming out afterwards, and this guy backhanded his wife right in front of us. Smacked her straight across the face. Guess he didn’t like something she said.”
I sucked in a breath, memories like dark shadows hovering over my shoulder.
“I couldn’t stand by and let him treat a woman like that, Daisy. I saw red. Bright, fricking fire engine red. I could hardly see, I was so mad.”
“So you beat him up?”
“Hell, yeah. I beat the living crap out of him.” Angus pounded one fist into the palm of the other hand, making a loud smacking noise in spite of the bandages.
I gripped the edges of my plastic seat.
“I kept hitting and hitting and hitting him, and his face was just mush at that point, but I couldn’t stop. They had to pull me off of him. What was left of him.”
His eyes were full of remembered fury. As I stared into those blazing eyes, I wondered how well I really knew Angus Backstead. This man, capable of uncontrolled violence, was a complete stranger.
Whether it was a hot flash or an anxiety attack, I wasn’t sure, but a surge of panic swept over me, and sweat prickled across my face and down my back.
I fought the urge to jump up and get the hell out of the room.