Going Through the Notions(31)

“I didn’t eat breakfast. Must be low blood sugar or something,” I mumbled.

“You want that I should get you a donut?”

I was too sick to correct his grammar. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”

A couple of minutes later, after I had sucked down more cold water, and I was okay apart from the sheen of sweat still covering my body, I accepted Ramsbottom’s help as he lifted me to my feet.

I clung to him for a moment. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I managed. “I had no idea.”

He nodded, his heavy-lidded eyes full of remembered grief.

For the first time I saw him as a person, someone else with a tragedy in their life. I’d dismissed him as an ignorant oaf, but now all I saw was a fatherless young man.

I stumbled over to the desk and retrieved my pocketbook from where I’d left it on the chair. Ramsbottom picked up his cup and drained the last dregs of iced coffee out of the bottom of it, the sound like water swirling out of the bottom of a bathtub.

“The man’s a menace, Mrs. Daly. For all intensive purposes, my father died outside the movie theater that day. Now you see why I could care less what happens to Angus Backstead.”

“You couldn’t care less.”

He stared at me. “That’s what I said.”

*



“When I got to Sometimes a Great Notion, it was well past opening time. Martha must have stopped by and left the covered plate that was sitting on the porch.

After the rain the day before, summer had returned, more determined than ever. The ninety-plus-degree humid air lay over the village like a hot, wet blanket, shutting down the supply of oxygen and making it difficult for its inhabitants to breathe. I hurried into the store, set the plate on the counter, and sank onto a stool behind the register.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, still struggling to process the events of the morning. I was convinced now that Ramsbottom would do nothing to try and find other suspects. If Angus was going to be saved, it would be up to me.

But seeds of doubt were prickling through my mind—from the last person I thought could have sown them. Things weren’t so cut and dried for me anymore.

Angus always talked about karma. This was karma with a vengeance.

Could the Angus Backstead I knew be the same person who, in a violent rage, had hurt someone so badly as to leave him brain damaged? Was it possible that Angus had mentally blocked out doing the same thing to Jimmy?

I squeezed my eyes shut against the insidious doubt creeping through my brain like the vines clambering over Reenie’s kitchen window.

The shop was blessedly cool. A UV film on the windows blocked the severity of the sun’s glare, providing filtered light to protect the fabrics. The hum of the powerful air-conditioning system Angus had installed was working full force.

Damn it, I needed coffee, but couldn’t seem to find the energy to get up and make it.

I glanced at the gold rococo mirror next to the counter. A reflection of an aging woman with swollen eyes, pale skin, and a thick gray stripe down the center of her hair stared back at me.

“But who the hell cares?” I said to her. I gathered my hair up into a bun, pulling the damp strands underneath off my neck and securing it all with a rhinestone hair clip.

I lifted up the edge of aluminum foil wrapped around the plate. Blueberry scones. They looked delicious. I folded the foil down again. Even though I hadn’t eaten breakfast, my appetite was gone.

It was silly, but I felt guilty for feeling sympathy for Ramsbottom, too.

Was it too far-fetched to think he might have killed Jimmy to frame Angus?

Well, no more far-fetched than thinking the Perkins boys did it. And Ramsbottom certainly had a better motive.

The detective wasn’t in great shape, though. He looked like one of those guys who’d had the size and muscle to play high school football, but the years and weight had crept up and softened him. He certainly couldn’t wield a heavy barn beam.

Wait a minute. Could Jimmy have been beaten up somewhere else, with some other kind of weapon, and brought back to the crime scene? To the place where Ramsbottom knew Angus’s fingerprints would be all over everything?

But that still didn’t solve the problem of the only footprints around the barn belonging to Angus.

Although who had said that? Ramsbottom.

And who’d said Jimmy had been hit with a barn beam in the first place? Ramsbottom.

If you were out for revenge, as a police officer, there were probably plenty of ways to mess with the evidence.

All my life, I’d been brought up to respect those in authority. My own father had been a firefighter. It was hard to believe that an officer of the law would stoop that low.

I shivered. In spite of the heat and humidity outside, now that the damp sweat had dried on my skin, I was suddenly chilled to the bone.