Angels Fall

by Nora Roberts

  Okay, she thought. All right. "Yes. And, yes, someone took the clothes I'd washed and put in the dryer out of the dryer and put them back in the washer. I'd taken them down there, put them in to wash, went home, came back, put them in the dryer, came home again. And when I went back to get them, they were in the washer."

  He glanced up as Linda-gail brought his coffee, and a poached egg on toast for Reece. "Joanie says you're to eat that, Reece. Can I get you something else. Sheriff?"

  "No, just the coffee, thanks."

  "Linda-gail can tell you I wasn't upstairs more than a couple minutes before we went to Clancys."

  "Sure." The confirmation came after only a whisper of hesitation. "She was up and down, two shakes."

  "You didn't go up with her?" Rick asked.

  "Well, no. I just went in the bathroom here, fixed up my makeup and fiddled with my hair a little. Reece was right here waiting for me when I came out. Couldn't have been but a few minutes. Somebody played a stupid trick, a mean one. That's what happened."

  "Why would I turn the water on?" Reece demanded. "I was going out."

  "I'm not saying you did. And I'm not saying if you did you turned it on to cause any of this." He pulled at his ear. "Sometimes, when you've got a lot on your mind, you forget. Pot on the stove, phone off the hook. It's natural enough."

  "It wouldn't be natural to run a bath when you had no intention of taking one, then walk out and leave the water on. And that's not what I did."

  "'Course you didn't." Linda-gail laid a hand on Reece's shoulder, rubbed. And Reece wondered if there was a hint of doubt along with the comfort of the gesture.

  "Someone's been in my apartment," Reece said. ''This isn't the first time."

  Rick leveled his gaze at Reece. "First I'm hearing about it. Thanks, Linda-gail. I'll let you know if we need anything else."

  "All right. Reece, you eat now. You haven't had anything all day, and if that plate comes back untouched, Joanie's going to be mad."

  "It started right after I saw the murder." Reece began. She told him: the guidebook, the door, the bathroom, finding her things packed, the boots and the bowls. The pills, the photograph album. She forced herself to eat a little, hoping the action would somehow give her statements more validity.

  He took notes, asked questions. His voice was flat and cool.

  "Why didn't you report these incidents before?"

  "Because I knew you'd think just what you're thinking now. That I either did them or I imagined them."

  "You don't have a window into my head, Reece." There was a quality in his voice that warned her his patience was at a low ebb. "Have you noticed anyone loitering around? "

  "Half the town loiters here at some point."

  "Who has access to your key?"

  "I keep it with me. There's a spare in Joanie's office."

  "Brody have one? "

  "No, no, Brody doesn't have one."

  "You had trouble, had words with anyone in town?"

  "Not until I clocked Min at Clancy's last night."

  He gave her that faint smile again. "I think we can rule her out."

  "He must have seen me."

  "Who?"'

  "The man, by the river. The one I saw strangle that woman."

  Rick drew a breath, sat back. "Saw you, at that distance? The distance you gave in your statement?"

  "Not me. I mean he must have seen there was someone on the trail. It wouldn't take any effort to find out it was me, not after the whole town knew about it. So he's trying to discredit me as a witness."

  Rick closed his book.

  "What are you going to do?" Reece demanded.

  "I'm going to do my job. I'm going to look into it. Next time something happens, you need to tell me about it. I can't help you if I don't know you've got trouble."

  "All right. Have they identified the woman? They body?"

  "Haven't matched dental records yet. She's still a Jane Doe. Have you thought about it? Can you confirm she's the woman you saw?"

  "I can't. She's not."

  "Well then." He pushed to his feet. "You got a place to stay while these repairs are going on? "

  "I'm at Brody's."

  "I'll be in touch."

  Reece rose, cleared the table herself. Back in the kitchen Joanie scowled at the half-eaten egg. "Something wrong with my cooking?"

  "No. He doesn't believe me."

  "Doesn't matter if he does or he doesn't, he'll do what he's paid to do. I want some of those cluckers barbecued for the lunch special. You're behind."

  "I'll get right on it."

  "And make up some potato salad. You got your famous fresh dill in the cooler. Use it."

  REECE WAS ENDING the first of a double shift when Rick tracked down Doc Wallace. In strong, even strokes. Doc rowed his boat to its mooring on the lake. Rick grabbed the line, secured it. "You got a fishing license?"

  "You see any damn fish? You hear the one about the same warden come across this woman in a boat, reading a book. Asks her if she has a fishing license. She says she's not fishing, she's reading a book." Doc climbed nimbly out of his boat. "Game warden says 'You got the equipment for fishing in there, so I'm going to have to write you a citation." She says. 'You do that, I'm going to have to bring sexual molestation charges against you.'"

  Rick waited patiently while Doc took off his prescription sunglasses. polished them on the tail of his shirt. "Well, the warden says with some outrage, "Lady, I never sexually molested you."And she says, 'But you got the equipment for it."

  Rick's laugh was quick and easy. "Pretty good. Nothing biting today?"

  "Not a damn thing on my line." Doc laid his rod over his shoulder. "Pretty day not to catch fish though."

  "It is that. You got a few minutes?"

  "Got more than a few. It's my day off. Could use a walk after sitting in that boat the last couple hours."

  They fell into step, slowly following the curve of the lake. "Reece Gilmore's been to see you, I hear. Medically.

  "You know I can't talk about that kind of thing, Rick."

  "Not asking you to. We're going to be talking in the hypothetical area of things."

  "That's a shaky line."

  "It shakes too much, you can step off."

  "Fair enough."

  "You heard about what happened at Joanie's place."

  "Water damage."

  "I got a statement from Reece. Says she never turned the water on in the tub. Says someone's been getting into her apartment, doing things in there. Says someone took her laundry out of the dryer and put it back into the washer down in the hotel basement while she wasn't there. Now maybe somebody around here's taking a dislike to her. Though she's a likeable enough woman, if you ask me."

  " There are some people who take a dislike to the likeable."

  "True enough. Yesterday she all but falls in the lake. Then she's running down the street in her bare feet. She's climbing down Brenda's throat about somebody going down to the laundry, messing with her clothes. Last night she's in a brawl at Clancy's."

  "Oh now, Rick, I heard all about that foolishness. Linda-gail flaunting some tourist in Lo's face to get his goat. And she got it."

  "My point is, Reece was involved." The sun glinted off Rick's dark glasses as he turned his head to look at Doc. Behind them, boats sailed across the water, through the mirrored mountains. "We haven't had this much trouble in town all at once, not before she came around."

  "You think she's causing all this. Why would she?"

  Rick held up a hand as they walked. "I'm asking, hypothetically, if you had a patient with a history of emotional and mental problems, if that patient could likely function well enough for the most part. And have, well, what you might call delusions, or hell, just plain forgetfulness."

  "Hell, Rick, you could have just plain forgetfulness, and you could toss in a few delusions now and then."

  "This is more than forgetting where you left your keys. Could this be in her head. Doc?"

 
"Hypothetically, it could. But could's not is, Rick. There's no crime if she's been forgetful. But there's a crime if someone's doing this to that girl."

  "I'm going to keep an eye on it. On her."

  Doc nodded, and they walked a little more in companionable silence.

  "Well, I guess I'll go on up to the hotel, take a look down in the laundry," Rick said.

  He detoured by Reece's apartment first. The door was wide open, and rock pumped out along with the sound of hammer on chisel.

  Inside, Brody was on his knees in the bathroom, painfully from the looks of it, chipping up the ancient linoleum.

  "Not your usual line of work," Rick called out.

  "Change of pace." Brody sat back on his heels. "An ugly, sweaty, knuckle-scraping change of pace. It got dumped on me when it was discovered I have no latent carpentry talents."

  Rick hunkered down. "Subflooring's trashed."

  "So I'm told."

  "You should've come to me with these incidents with Reece before this, Brody."

  "Her choice. Understandable. I can look at your face and see you're not leaning toward believing her."

  "I'm not leaning any particular way. Hard to investigate if I don't know, don't see for myself. You painted over what was done in here before."

  "Took pictures first. I'll get you copies."

  "That's a start. None of these incidents happened at your place, or while you were with her?"

  "Not so far." He went back to chipping. "Listen, even objectively it's hard for me to buy her leaving the water on in here. She checks the stove every time she leaves the kitchen. Checks the lights, the locks. A person with a mile-wide anal streak doesn't forget she's running a bath. And she doesn't run one when she's got someone waiting for her downstairs."

  "I can't see any signs of that lock being tampered with, or forced entry."

  "He's got a key. I'm going to see the locks're changed."

  "You do that. I'm going to head down to the hotel and take a look in the laundry area. You want to come along?"

  "And leave this fascinating hobby?" Brody dropped the tools. "Bet your ass."

  BRODY COULD IMAGINE how Reece felt as she carted her basket through the basement. There was light, harsh light that cast shadows in corners. The furnace hummed, the water heaters clanged, all hollow, echoing sounds as you walked over the raw cement floor to the worn vinyl of the cramped laundry.

  Two washers, two dryers, commercial grade. A dispenser that sold laundry soap and fabric softener in miniature packages at inflated prices.

  There was a narrow jalousie window high above the machines, rolled closed, that let fitful light through frosted glass.

  "Guest elevators don't come down to this level," Rick began. "Got an outside entrance, too, back by the maintenance room. Couple windows. Not hard for somebody to get down here without anyone noticing. Still. How'd they know she was down here doing wash?"

  "She walked back and forth on the street. Easy to know if you're keeping tabs on her."

  Rick studied the lay. "Let me ask you something, Brody. If someone wishes harm on her, why haven't they harmed her? She's got it in her head the man she says she saw by the river's doing this."

  "I put it in her head."

  As if suddenly tired. Rick leaned back against a washing machine. "Now why the hell did you go and do that?"

  "It makes sense to me. Play on her weaknesses, scare her, make her doubt herself. Make sure everyone else doubts her, too. It's smart, and in its way, it's clean. Doesn't mean he won't harm her."

  And that, Brody thought, was why she wasn't going anywhere alone. "It seems to me it's escalating," he continued. "She wasn't isolated this time. Joanie got hit, too. Because it's not working. Reece is sticking."

  "Brody, did you ever forget you left laundry wet in the washing machine?"

  "Sure. But I'm not Reece."

  Rick shook his head. "I'll go up, talk to Brenda."

  Brenda was at the desk using her professional welcome voice on the phone. "We'll be expecting you on July tenth. I'll make those reservations for you, and send you a confirmation. It's absolutely my pleasure. Bye, Mr. Franklin."

  She hung up. "Just booked the second of our two suites for a week in July. We're going to be full up for the summer if this keeps up. How you doing?"

  "Well enough," Rick told her. "You saw Reece in and out of here yesterday'."

  "I sure did. I told Deb—"

  "You can tell me now. She came in to do laundry."

  "Had her basket. No shoes." Brenda rolled her eyes, "Got change for the machines. Zipped right down. Was out again in, I don't know, ten minutes at most. Had her shoes on when she came back, about a half hour later. Down and up, same as before. I didn't see her come in the last time. Must've been in the back, but she came up like a wild woman, let me tell you. Spitting mad. Claimed somebody was down there."

  "Did you see anyoue else go down?"

  "Not a soul. She said somebody'd put her dry clothes back in the wash. Now who'd do that?"

  "But you weren't at the desk the whole time?" Brody said, then glanced at Rick. '"Sorry."

  "Not necessary. You said you were in the back last time she came in. Were you back there long"'

  "Well. I can't say how long, exactly. Ten, fifteen minutes maybe. But most times when I'm back there I hear the door."

  "Most times." Brody pressed.

  "If I get caught on the phone back there or whatnot. I might not hear unless somebody hits the bell on the desk." Her tone turned defensive. "That's what it's for."

  "Anyone been in here asking about Reece?"

  "Well no. Rick, why would they? Listen. I like her. She's a nice worman. But she was acting damn strange yesterday. Never seen anybody so get up about some wet clothes. And I didn't tell you how she told Debbie she was training for some sort of marathon or whatever, and that's why she was running down here barefooted? Now, that's just crazy."

  "All right, Brenda. Appreciate the time."

  When they walked back outside, Brody turned to Rick. "Did Brenda get her sense of humor surgically removed recently?"

  "Oh now, Brody, she's all right, you know that. With all the hoopla's been going on, and Reece at the center of a lot of it, you can't expect everybody to understand how it is."

  "Do you understand how it is?"

  "Trying to. Why don't you drop those pictures you took of the bathroom off to me when you get the chance? And since you're a writer, maybe you could write me up your version of the events and incidents, Get me dates and times best as you can."

  Brody's jaw relaxed again. "Yeah, I can do that. It's a little more my line than hanging drywall."

  "Be specific," Rick added as they walked. "If it's something Reece just told you happened, make sure that's how you put it. Something you saw yourself, put that."