Page 47 of Death on Riddle Road

“Yes, they did.They’re such good women,” she said with pride.“Problem is, a lot of people won’t work as hard as they do to keep their differences from dividing them.It’s not something people talk about much, so it’s like a fissure right under your feet, just below the surface, and you have no way of knowing if the next step’s going to take you right down into the gap betweenusandthem.”

“You think Derrick’s murder opened the fissure wider and deeper?”

“I’m afraid so.”Her intake of breath lifted her shoulders.Her exhale stirred flowers in a nearby vase.“What’s next?”

“How about Evan Ferguson?”I proposed.

“If he’s working—”

“But he’s a teacher and it’s the holidays.He won’t be working.”

“True.We could—”

The rest of Clara’s sentence evaporated as her phone rang.

She answered, as we gathered our things and stood.

“Oh, yes, hello.”Clara stopped abruptly, putting her hand on my arm to stop me, too.“Uh-huh...Okay...Yes...Not long.”

She added a few more unrevealing phrases, then clicked off.

“What—?”

“Outside,” she ordered, shifting her grip on my arm and propelling me toward the door that led to the central hallway.We shared cheery thanks and good-byes with Tavern staff as we passed them.Even after we descended the outside stairs and reached the sidewalk, she kept propelling.

In my car, with the doors closed, she finally said, “Mamie.She and Robbie are at Kentucky Manor.She wants us to get right over there.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Did she sayexactly where they are or—?”

I’d concentrated on driving to get us here as fast as possible, so we hadn’t talked much on the way to Riddle Road.

Clara had used her phone to pull up a photo of Evan Ferguson from the time of the trial and showed it to me while we sat at a stoplight.He was attractive in a young, reedy, professorial kind of way.

Now, I broke off my question as we entered a reception area for the hospice center, where someone — erroneously — thought tweed couches and flowery curtains would mask the institutional foundation.I didn’t break off because of the décor, however.

I’d recognized I was on a collision course with a man coming out of a side hallway on our left.

He leaned forward as he came, a posture exaggerated by the fact that his shiny blue suit appeared to have borrowed shoulder pads from the 1980s.The good news was it meant I first spotted his large head and its frothy, see-through hair, then his puffy upper torso like the water-logged prow of a ship, giving me time to avoid any contact with his lower body.I pulled back with less than an inch to spare.

“Watch out,” he snapped.

He made a sweeping gesture toward me.

It was limited to a gesture because I’d stepped back, out of range, leaving him pushing against nothing and nearly losing his balance.

He snapped, “You pathetic, stupid—”

He broke off as he spotted Clara beside me.

And I realized his nastiness to me was merely his baseline when he said with true venom, “You.”

I swiveled my head to be sure Clara hadn’t been replaced by an alien.Maybe an evil dictator.Or the devil.

Nope.

Though she did not look her normal friendly self.