"Delivery to this address," said the young black man in blue coveralls. DeLane DeLane was st.i.tched on the left chest pocket. He had in his hands a huge arrangement of mixed spring flowers in a tall, clear gla.s.s vase. It was lovely: daffodils, baby's breath, irises, roses. was st.i.tched on the left chest pocket. He had in his hands a huge arrangement of mixed spring flowers in a tall, clear gla.s.s vase. It was lovely: daffodils, baby's breath, irises, roses.

"Who's it for?" I asked.

DeLane looked very uncomfortable. "It only says, 'To the most beautiful.' You ladies have to fight over it, I guess," he added more cheerfully. He'd had a look at Angel, and I could tell he'd decided who would win.

"Who placed the order?" Angel asked sharply.

"We got it Call-a-Posy from Atlanta," he said with a shrug. "It seemed pretty strange to us, too, but the shop in Atlanta said it had been paid for. Probably someone'll call you ladies before long, tell you he sent it."

"Thanks," Angel said abruptly. She took the vase from his hands.

I said good-bye and shut the door.

Angel was holding the flowers, looking them over carefully. She put them on the low coffee table and peered at the stems through the clear gla.s.s; she gently poked the flowers apart with a long finger.

"I don't like things coming without a card, coming 'to the most beautiful,' " she said. "That's creepy. Presents without names on them make me very suspicious."

I wondered if Martin could have sent them, perhaps stopped in at a florist's on his way to the airport. I didn't think so. He knew there were two women at this address, he would have signed a card, it just didn't feel right. And the same thing held true for Shelby, who was much more likely to buy Angel a new running outfit or a punching bag than a huge bouquet of flowers. (For Christmas he'd gotten her a new holster for carrying a concealed gun.) " 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who's the fairest one of all?' " I quoted, trying to make light of the situation. "You want to take them home, make Shelby jealous? Or maybe he sent them."

Angel shook her head morosely. "Having to answer questions about these flowers would just complicate things even more, and I know d.a.m.n good and well Shelby didn't send them."

Our formal dining room lay between the living room and the kitchen, so I went through the large open archway to put a plastic mat in the center of the dining room table. Angel came after me, still frowning, and put the vase on the mat, wiping her hands on her jeans right afterward as if rubbing off the feel of the vase. We both stood and gazed at the flowers some more, but since they didn't suddenly communicate who had sent them, or blow up, or do anything but sit there looking like flowers, this had limited appeal. I was on the verge of suggesting to Angel we go stare at the inside of the refrigerator when the doorbell rang again.

"Oh, gosh, it's four o'clock," I said, glancing at my wrist.w.a.tch. "It must be Dryden and O'Riley." I looked up at Angel. "I should be safe with them." I was smiling, but she was not.

"I said I'd stay."

"Okay." I went to the door, my heels making a little click on the polished wood floor, a sound which almost always improved my spirits. My house was now about sixty-three years old, and we'd restored it to wonderful condition. It was just an old family home, not even my my old family home, but I loved it. old family home, but I loved it.

I hadn't reset the alarm system, so Dryden was admitted more rapidly than the florist's deliveryman.

I looked behind him, but O'Riley was nowhere in sight. I was conscious of feeling glad, as I stood aside to let him in, that Angel had decided to stay. At that moment, Dry-den's gaze lighted on her, and his mouth yanked up at one corner, an enigmatic twitch I was unable to interpret. It could have been anything from deep admiration for such a fine specimen of womanhood to irritation that I'd asked someone else to sit in on our conversation.

"You're by yourself," I said, since I've never been afraid to state the obvious.

"O'Riley's on another interview," he said, pushing his tortoise-sh.e.l.l-rimmed gla.s.ses back on his nose. As if the gesture were contagious, like yawning in a meeting, I pushed mine back, too, and we stared at each other solemnly.

"Please have a seat," I told him. "This is Angel Youngblood. She was in the backyard when Jack Burns fell, too."

"Thanks for saving us a trip out here," Dryden said, and I still couldn't read his expression. He must have recognized Angel as the woman with me in Dr. Zelman's office in the morning. He must have read all the police reports, and must have known already about Angel's presence during the free fall of Jack Burns. Yet he didn't seem interested.

I was getting more and more confused by John Dryden.

He finally sat on the couch, and Angel and I picked single chairs opposite him. He turned down my ritual offer of coffee or iced tea, though it was a warm day outside and his suit jacket must be hot.

I looked at Dryden closely for the first time. He was big, and square-shouldered, and husky, but not fat, not at all. His eyes were blue behind the gla.s.ses, and if he had any gray hair, his light blond hair color concealed it. Of course it was cut very short, as I'd always been led to believe FBI agents wore their hair-if he was an FBI agent-and it lay on his head as smooth as polish. The only other man I knew with hair that blond was Detective Arthur Smith, once my significant other, now married and a father. Lately when I'd run across Arthur his eyes had been hungry. Suddenly I wondered if he'd sent the flowers.

I guess I got lost in conjecture, for a loud throat-clearing brought me back to the here and now with a jolt. Angel and Dryden were both waiting for me to say something.

I sighed. "Excuse me, I wasn't paying attention. Could you repeat that?"

"Do you know how to fly an airplane?"

I laughed at the idea. "No," I said, since he obviously wanted an answer on the record. "I don't think I've ever been in the c.o.c.kpit of a plane."

"What about you, Mrs. Youngblood?"

"I had a few flying lessons in Florida," she said calmly. I noticed Angel's long fingers were resting across her flat stomach. It was incredible to me that a child could be in such a small s.p.a.ce, invisible and unknown to anyone around Angel. What an amazing thing to carry inside you; the other choices were so mundane or deathly, like a cold, or cancer, or appendicitis ...

I had been drifting again.

". .. you remember the name of your instructor?"

"Bunny Black. She was the owner of this little flying school, Daredevil . . . but we had to move and I never had another chance to get my pilot's license."

Dryden was jotting all this down, which was plain ridiculous, since Angel had been standing, both feet very much on the ground, while the plane had been absolutely up in the sky.

I said as much, politely.

He shrugged, and continued to scribble.

If he was this exasperating at home, his wife would take a meat cleaver to him one of these days. I leaned over slightly to check his left hand. No ring. Well, I wasn't surprised.

Suddenly he looked up from his notebook, his eyes unexpectedly sharp and blue. We stared at each other for what seemed like a very long moment.

I eased back against the chair with an uneasy feeling I'd just contacted Mars.

We continued trolling drearily over the horror of yesterday, with Angel and me unable to add a scintilla of information to what we'd already told the county people. I began to be sorry I couldn't suddenly recall some amazing fact to tell him. "I just remembered! I had a camera in my hand and I think I clicked the b.u.t.ton just as the pilot leaned out of the window of the plane!" I bet that that would change the expression on Dryden's face ... would change the expression on Dryden's face ...

Shoot, I'd done it again.

"About your relationship with Jack Burns, Ms. Tea-garden ..." Dryden was saying, and I snapped to attention in a very big hurry.

I couldn't help glancing over at Angel. Her eyes narrowed, she was looking at Dryden carefully, as if deciding where her first blow would fall.

"I never had a relationship with Jack Burns," I said flatly.

"So it's not true that he expressed hostility to you publicly on at least two occasions?"

"I didn't count," I said flippantly, and was instantly sorry. "Truly, Mr. Dryden," and I abruptly remembered police remarking in some article I'd read that suspects invariably were lying when they prefaced a statement with "To tell the truth," or "Honestly." "To the best of my recollection, Mr. Dryden, I hadn't spoken to Jack Burns in over two years, so I don't think you can say that we had a relationship." Jack Burns had just seen me in the vicinity of too many corpses to suit his strong police sense. He'd felt I just about had to be guilty of something. something.

But I didn't want to try to explain this. And I didn't feel I should have to.

"Mrs. Youngblood, you live in the garage apartment over there?" Dryden pointed with his pencil to the garage, clearly visible out the south windows of the living room.

Angel nodded.

"You rent from Ms. Teagarden here?"

"We live there rent-free in return for helping Roe and Martin." Angel looked completely relaxed, completely blank. She just almost wasn't there at all.

"Helping?"

Angel raised her eyebrows very slightly. "We help with the yardwork, I help Roe with her housework, we do all the things you need an extra person to do. Martin travels a lot, and it works out conveniently for Roe."

I would like to see the day I asked Angel to help me with my housework. But a realistic answer-"We're bodyguards"-would require a lot more explanation than either of us wanted to give.

"And this working relationship has existed for how long?"

"Oh, come on, what possible bearing can this have on Jack Burns being murdered?" I asked, suddenly sick and tired of the presence of Dryden in my house, the boredom of these interminable and uncomfortable questions. I could think of lots of things I needed to be doing and would rather be doing than this. And Angel's husband would be home in about ten minutes, and she should be preparing for a tense and critical evening.

I rose to my feet.

"Mr. Dryden, I don't mean to be rude," though I suppose I really did, "but I a.s.sume you have better things to do than this. And I know I do. All we did was be absolutely random witnesses to this terrible thing."

Dryden, his mouth flattened in anger-at least, I thought it was anger-was putting away his pencil and notebook.

"I hope it won't be necessary to disturb you again," he said, quite calmly. He looked over my shoulder, through the archway to the dining room. "Pretty flowers," he said, still without inflection.

"Thanks for coming," I said, with, I hoped, firm civility.

Angel looked down at me, shaking her head, when he'd left.

"What?" I asked indignantly.

"When you do that, it's just like being bitten by a dachshund," she said, and drifted to the kitchen door. "Don't forget to set the alarm after me," she called over her shoulder. I watched her through the kitchen window, loping across the covered sidewalk to the garage, bounding up the wooden steps and unlocking her door. I obediently punched in the right numbers on the panel set in the wall, and I prayed for her and Shelby and the baby.

That evening I got another one of those annoying phone calls. I'd been getting quite a few lately, the wrong numbers that don't say anything when an unfamiliar voice answers the phone. The least the caller could do is say, "Excuse me, wrong number," or "I'm sorry to bother you." Finally I let it ring until the answering machine picked up. So of course, my next caller was Martin. I just let him a.s.sume I'd been too far from the phone to pick it up on the first three rings; no point in telling him about the hang-ups. He'd just worry, maybe call the Youngbloods and get them to worry, too.

I didn't tell him about the flowers, either.

I didn't tell him about Angel's pregnancy.

I did tell him about my interview with Dryden. When Martin realized Dryden had come alone, he did one of the things that made me love him; he didn't say one word about his foresight in insisting Angel be present. But I could hear the difference in his voice as we talked; there was the steel there, the hardness and the edge, that I seldom heard. Maybe that was how he was at work all day, and didn't bring it home; or maybe only danger brought it out, some perceived threat to him and those people or things he held dear.

And you couldn't accuse him of paranoia, of being too cautious; not with the things I heard on the news every day, not with the horrors he'd seen in Vietnam and Central America. It would be insane egocentrism for me to believe none of these horrors could happen to me.

From far away in Chicago, a city I'd never visited, Martin told me to use my common sense, and for G.o.d's sake to remember to set the security system.

Chapter Four

Madeleine had jumped on the bed in the middle of the night. She was there, curled in a large golden ball, when I woke up. Madeleine was an older cat now; she'd been at least six when I'd inherited her, and Jane Engle, her first owner, had now been dead for about three years. Madeleine still managed to catch the occasional mouse or bird, but she sometimes missed her jumps, and her facial fur seemed whiter to me. The vet gave her high marks on her annual checkups, and since everyone at his office would have loved to find an excuse to put Madeleine to sleep, I had to accept his verdict.

Now she purred in a rusty way as I scratched behind her ears. Martin hated Madeleine getting on the bed, so she only got to stay there when he was gone; I vacuumed or washed the bedspread before he came home. As my fingers tickled lower on her neck, they encountered something unfamiliar.

I sat up and really looked at Madeleine for the first time. In addition to her brown leather collar to which were attached her rabies disc and her name-and-address tag, something else had been tied around the cat's neck. It was a ribbon, a fresh-looking pink satin ribbon, tied in a precise, perky bow.

I tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for the bow. It was ludicrous that something as pretty as a pink bow could frighten me.

I looked at the clock. The Youngbloods would be up. I punched in their number on the bed-table phone.

"Yep," said Shelby flatly.

"I'm sorry to call you this early in the morning. But unless you or Angel did this, and frankly I can't see how or why you would, someone caught Madeleine and got her to hold still while he tied a ribbon around her neck."

"Run that by again."

"A man or woman. Got hold of Madeleine the cat. And tied a pink ribbon. Around Madeleine's neck."

"Why the h.e.l.l would anyone do that? That cat would as soon dismember you as look at you."

"Did Angel tell you about the flowers?"

"No."

Then I remembered they'd had more important things to talk about the night before.

"Someone ordered flowers delivered to this address yesterday. The card was unsigned." I told Shelby what the card had said. "Either your wife or I have an unknown admirer. This is unsettling."

"I'll be over there soon."

"To do what? Look at the ribbon? What good would that do?"

Shelby was silent for a minute.

"I'll take the cat to the vet this morning," he said.

"He needs to draw some blood to find out if she was drugged. And I do want a look at the ribbon. We need to keep it, in case we have to call the police."

"Okay. I'll cut it off with scissors."

"Then I'll come to get her in about ten minutes."

Very casually, so as not to alert Madeleine, I got my fingernail scissors from my vanity table. I began scratching her gently behind the ears again, and she stretched her neck and purred. Then I scratched her forehead, so she'd shut her eyes. Gently, gently, I slid the thin blade of the scissors under the pink band, and just as gently I closed the blades together. Of course, the little snick of the scissors and the feeling of release brought Madeleine's head up with a snap and she bit the h.e.l.l out of me. I'd expected it; Madeleine had never been a cat who'd known tolerance or temperance, and most often she was a sorry pet indeed.

After I'd sworn a little and put antiseptic on my wound, I wrapped my robe around me and retrieved the cat carrier from its storage in a downstairs closet. Right on time, Shelby knocked on the kitchen door.

I punched in the code to deactivate the alarm and let Shelby in. Shelby, so tall and pockmarked and grim, can be intimidating. I had come to be at ease with Angel, but Shelby still made me a little anxious.

This morning was different.