Until Proven Guilty - J. A. Jance [26]
“That you did,” I said. “Thank you.”
Another smile played around the corners of Anne Corley’s lips. “Who, Maxey? I gave him a piece of my mind too. Don’t I get any thanks?”
“Yes, of course you do,” I said. “Thank you.” And then the three of us stood there laughing uproariously as though we had just shared some outrageous joke. When we stopped laughing, Anne Corley introduced herself to Sophie.
“Were you a friend of Angela’s too?” Sophie asked, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.
“No,” Anne replied. “I never met her. I had a sister who died when I was eight. My mother wouldn’t let me attend the funeral. She thought it would upset me. To this day I go to the services whenever I hear of a child dying under unusual circumstances. I always cry. Part of me cries for the child who’s gone now, and part of me still cries for Patty.”
Sophie took Anne’s hand and held it for a moment, her rheumy old eyes behind cat’s-eye glasses studying Anne Corley’s young gray ones. “There were so few flowers.” Sophie said. “Your rose was beautiful and so are you.” Sophie turned and walked away with surprising speed for someone her age, her back stiffly unbowed as she climbed the steep hillside.
Anne Corley moved slightly downwind. For the first time I was aware of the delicate scent of her perfume, expensive and intoxicating. She stood next to me, saying nothing but driving my heightened senses into overload.
“Are you still on duty, Mr. Beaumont?” she asked.
I glanced around, dumbfounded to find that the entire funeral party had disappeared. Only Anne Corley and I remained on the windswept hillside. “I guess not, except I need to stop by the cemetery office to pick up a copy of the guest register.”
“Do you mind if I tag along? I have a feeling that Maxey may very well be waiting for me in the parking lot.”
I looked down at her in absolute amazement. “No,” I managed. “I don’t mind at all.” She took my arm with the calm assurance of someone used to getting whatever she wants. I’d like to pretend that I had the presence of mind to offer my arm to her, but that’s not the case. She reached out and rested a featherweight hand on my forearm; then the two of us walked up the hill through the Mount Pleasant Cemetery as though it were the most natural thing in the whole world.
It’s ironic to think that Maxwell Cole, a man who had been the bane of my existence for some twenty-odd years, was the catalyst that caused her hand to take my arm. I have a lot to thank Maxwell Cole for. Maybe someday I’ll get around to telling him.
Chapter 7
Anne Corley stood quietly near the door while an attendant photocopied the guest register for me. I tried not to stare at her while I waited. She smiled as I returned with the copy in hand. “Should I have signed that too?” she asked.
“Shouldn’t be necessary,” I told her. “I already know you were here.”
“What about you? Why are you here?” she demanded.
I explained briefly how killers often present themselves at the funerals of their victims.
“And do you think that’s true in this case?”
I shrugged. I thought of Pastor Michael Brodie piously intoning biblical passages over a small casket, of Benjamin Mason/Jason kneeling with his hands clasped in prayer under the flowing beard. “It could be,” I answered.
“Oh,” she said under her breath. Quickly I folded the piece of paper the attendant had given me and stuffed it into an inside jacket pocket. Out of sight is out of mind.
Back outside, walking toward the tiny parking lot. I noticed a rust-colored Volvo still very much in evidence. Maxwell Cole was observing us over the roof of it. I couldn’t help but feel just a little smug. “Where’s your car?” I asked Anne.
She nodded in the direction of a bright red Porsche parked at the far end of the lot. “What about yours?”
“I don’t have a car,” I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed about it. “I walked.”
“I probably should have,” she said unexpectedly,