(4T) The Julius House Read online

  My mouth fell open.

  A number of things had hit me that day, literally and metaphorically. But the most telling thing, the moment of truth, was seeing that shotgun in Shelby Young-blood ’s hands.

  Someone had tried to kill me. That man had been trying to get me. Angel had just been an obstacle in his eyes; he’d had no idea of her function or capability. His focus had been on killing me. I thought of that ax coming down on my head. Suddenly my knees were wobbly.

  Shelby came in the kitchen door with a rush. Angel was on hand to lock it after him the instant he was in.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “Mad,” she said. “I’m mad as hell. I couldn’t get him. My feet went out from under me. She got the ax away from him, not me.” Angel obviously did not need or expect any fuss about her damaged face; Shelby’s dark eyes had assessed her injuries quickly and dismissed them. Angel was a professional, it was borne in on me more strongly every minute. If I was dealing with my own humiliation, so was she; she had failed in her job.

  “Roe got the ax?” Shelby said incredulously.

  “It’s in the middle of the front yard. She threw it.”

  “Roe did.” Shelby still couldn’t quite absorb it.

  “He got very close,” Angel said angrily. “If I hadn’t already been out of the house, he’d of got her.”

  I had to sit down quite suddenly.

  I pulled one of the breakfast-table chairs out. The legs made a scraping noise.

  “So I guess you didn’t spot him on your way through town.”

  “No blue Chevy Nova.”

  “Tags were covered with mud,” Angel said sullenly. I could tell she’d already told Shelby this on the phone and he’d been on the lookout on the way here.

  No one could say my married life was placid. No rut for the Bartells!

  I giggled.

  They glanced at me uneasily, then went back to their consultation.

  “It’s quiet out there now. We’d better get moving,” Shelby said.

  “I’ll call him,” Angel said. She was obviously bent on confessing her failure to someone. After a beat I realized she meant she was going to call Martin, and I just snapped.

  “Excuse me,” I said viciously. “If anyone is going to call my husband, I am.”

  They both looked startled at my speaking, and dismayed by what they were hearing.

  “You should pack, and talk to Martin tonight,” Shelby said gently. But the gentleness was costing him, I could tell. Good.

  “I will talk to my husband whenever I damn well please.”

  They were considerably taken aback. Though I hadn’t known the true nature of the Youngbloods, they were finding out a thing or two about me.

  They had Martin’s telephone numbers where he was staying. They knew where he was and why he was out of town. They knew all about our lives.

  They were my bodyguards. I had a little shock whenever the word entered my mind.

  Well, Shelby with his acne-scarred face and unruly black hair was nothing like Kevin Costner.

  “I will go use the phone in the other room,” I told them. I stalked across the hall to sit at Martin’s desk and call him in Chicago.

  The secretary who took the call was quite sure that Martin’s meeting (“He’s in conference with the president, ” she said severely) was more important than my call, but I said, “I really have to insist. This is his wife, and there is an emergency.”

  After a pause of nearly five minutes, Martin was on the phone, and at the sound of his voice I almost broke down.

  “What is it?” he asked tensely. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right.” My voice was shaky. I sat for a moment gathering myself. “Angel is a little hurt,” I said with shameful satisfaction.

  “Angel? You’re all right and Angel’s hurt? What happened? Is Shelby there?”

  “Yes, Martin, Shelby is here and you can talk to him in a minute so you guys can handle everything.” By golly, I was still mad at everyone. “A man was hiding in the garage, and if he’d had the sense to wait till I was in there, he would’ve had me. But I noticed something was wrong and he charged out and Angel was able to get there in time, and I got the ax away. But he ran and got in a car and left.” Now my voice was shaking again. I certainly wished I could pick an emotion and stick with it. Fear, anger, humiliation, shock. A cocktail of feelings.

  “Baby. Are you really all right? Hurt anywhere?”

  “Not physically, Martin,” I said with great restraint.

  “Does Angel need to be in the hospital?”

  “No, I took care of it with the first-aid kit.”

  “That’s good. Very good. Okay, honey. Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to do whatever Shelby and Angel tell you to do. They’re there to keep you safe. I’ll catch a flight home tomorrow morning. I’ll go to Guatemala once I make sure you’re going to be all right.”

  “Okay,” I said tersely. There really wasn’t any point in saying anything else.

  “Now, I need to talk to Angel and Shelby. I’m— thank God you’re okay. I’m so sorry.”

  I looked across the hall. They were standing close to the kitchen doorway. Shelby had his arms around Angel. A weak moment.

  “Phone,” I said. “Angel.”

  Looking as if she’d rather face wrestling an alligator, Angel Youngblood, my protector, came to talk to Martin.

  I went upstairs and lay on my bed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was a long night.

  Angel slept in the office/family room downstairs on the couch. Shelby was out patrolling the grounds. I lay awake in our bedroom. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I slept. Sometimes I brooded. In a million years, I could never have imagined myself in the situation in which I found myself now.

  I was glad my mother was out of town. I couldn’t envision successfully concealing from her all the misery and fear I felt.

  Before we’d all gone to our assigned spots for the night, Shelby had questioned us about the appearance of the man. It had all happened quickly, and he’d been in movement the whole time, but I found that if I shut my eyes and replayed him exploding from the tool-room door I could get a fair picture.

  “He had on a short-sleeved khaki work shirt,” I said first. Angel nodded agreement.

  “And safety shoes,” Angel contributed, rubbing her shoulder.

  “What are safety shoes?” I asked.

  “Steel toes,” she told me, looking faintly amazed.

  “Oh. And he had on dark brown work pants.”

  “So now we’ve got his wardrobe. What did he look like?” asked Shelby with very obvious patience.

  I had a good mind to stomp up to my room and slam the door, but I was aware that Shelby, of course, was just doing his job and my acting childish would not help the situation. I was sorely tempted, though.

  “He had dark curly hair,” Angel said.

  “He was Angel’s height,” I contributed. “He was young. Not more than thirty, I doubt that old.”

  “He does heavy work for a living,” Angel said. “Based on his musculature.”

  “Clean-shaven. Blue eyes, I’m pretty sure. Heavy jaw.”

  “He never said anything in any language?” Shelby asked us.

  “No.”

  “No.”

  And that was the sum total of our knowledge of the man in the garage.

  The next morning was clear again, definitely hotter. The Youngbloods switched; Shelby went up to their apartment to sleep, and Angel was detailed to stay with me. We ate breakfast and did the dishes in silence, and when we were facing each other dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts, we fidgeted. Angel hadn’t gotten her run in. I had finished my last library book, and I was not a daytime television watcher. After one round of the news on CNN, I switched the set off.

  Normally, at this time, I would be getting ready to start my round of errands, or at least figuring out what that round should consist of—cleaners, groce
ry, bank, library—making phone calls, or writing letters. But today I couldn’t; they didn’t want me to go into town.

  “Can we go outside?” I asked Angel finally.

  She considered.

  “Yes, in the front yard,” she said at last. “There are too many trees and bushes that block the view in the backyard.”

  That was one of the things I liked about it so much.

  “In the front yard I can see what’s coming,” Angel said. “Last night, Shelby took out that clump of bushes out by the road that hid the car.”

  “He what?”

  Taken aback, Angel repeated, “He cut down that clump of yellow bells.”

  “The forsythia is gone,” I said unbelievingly. During the night, Shelby had cut down my bushes, a huge beautiful growth of three forsythias that had been happily expanding and blooming for twenty years, I estimated.

  “They were down by the road, and they hid things from the house,” Angel explained further, puzzled at the degree of my dismay.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  I was punch drunk with lack of sleep and shock.

  “Got a Frisbee, Angel?”

  “Sure,” she said, as though I’d asked her whether she had a nose.

  “Well. Let’s play Frisbee.”

  So after a preliminary reconnaissance, we came out into the fresh day. I ignored the shotgun Angel carried out; she put it on the chair on the porch, where she could reach it quickly. Then she got her Frisbee and cocked her wrist to spin it to me, an anticipatory grin stretching her thin lips. I prepared myself for some running.

  Ten minutes later I was panting, and even Super-woman was breathing a little heavily. Angel had gotten surprised all over again. I was no mean Frisbee player. But my aerobic exercise videotape hadn’t prepared me for this, and I felt the first trickle of sweat for the summer season gliding down my back and then between my hips. On the whole, I was having a good time. I dashed inside for a drink of water.

  Angel must have felt mildly challenged. She had backed out toward the road a little, and as I was coming down the front steps, she flicked her wrist and the red disk took off. A sudden breeze gusting over the open field across the road picked up the Frisbee and wafted it even higher. With a thunk, the Frisbee grazed the top of the first roof peak (the roof of the porch) and rolled into the space under my bedroom windows.

  “Aw, shit,” Angel said. “Listen, I’ll be back in a second. Let me go blot my face, the sweat’s getting into my scrapes and making them sting.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be getting the ladder.”

  It felt creepy going into the garage and opening the door to the tool shed in the back. I knew the Youngbloods had checked it out and searched everything on the property before it got dark the night before, but in my brief hours of sleep, I’d had nightmares about a dark figure running toward me with an upraised ax.

  I maneuvered the long ladder out of the tool shed and shouldered it to get it to the front of the house. Angel descended the apartment steps with a tender look on her face; the sight of Shelby sleeping certainly still rang her bells.

  I pushed back the hooks that held the extension down parallel with the base of the ladder, and with Angel ’s help ran it up to the roof. Since the house was built up on a high foundation, the climb was no short one.

  “Do you mind,” Angel said almost shyly, “I know I threw it up there, but if there’s one thing I can’t handle, it’s heights . . . now if it bothers you, I’ll go on and do it, or Shelby can get up there when he gets up . . .”

  I gaped at her, before I remembered my manners and nodded matter-of-factly. “No problem,” I said briskly.

  She seemed to relax all over. “I’ll brace the ladder,” she said with equal briskness.

  So up I started. I am not automatically afraid of heights; I am fairly phobia-free. But it was quite a climb, and since I was showing off for Angel, I found I needed to keep my eyes looking up and my progress steady. Stopping, I had a strong feeling, would not be good.

  Actually—come to think of it—I had never been on a roof before. The porch roof was steep. Really steep. Nervously, I transferred from the ladder to the shingles, already warm from the spring sun. I’d never been right next to shingles before; I had a good look at their pebbly grayness while I was bracing myself to reach the peak. I stretched and grasped it, and pushed with the sides of my feet, glad I was wearing sturdy rubber-soled hi-tech sneakers. The Frisbee should be on the downslope of this roof, where it joined the roof of the house; I remembered Miss Neecy telling me about the feuding couple who’d built the house, Sarah May Zinsner’s last-minute insistence on a porch.

  “I hear a car coming, Roe,” Angel said quietly down below.

  I froze. “What should I do?”

  “Get over that roofline.”

  So I scrambled up and over in no time at all. A little incentive was all I needed. In the valley between the two roofs, formed like a forty-five-degree angle with the wall under my bedroom windows being the straight line and the upward slope of the porch roof being the angle line, lay the bright red Frisbee and an old gray tarp so exactly matching the shingles that I had to land on it to notice it.

  I peeked over the roofline to see what Angel was doing. The shotgun was in her hands now, and she was against the inside wall of the garage, the far side where Martin’s Mercedes was parked. The car was visible as it came closer, thanks to Shelby’s butchery of my forsythia, and it was a white car that was a little familiar. It turned in the driveway, and Angel raised the shotgun. The white car crunched slowly up the drive and pulled to a halt on the gravel a few feet behind my car, on the near side of the garage. The driver’s door opened. Martin stepped out.

  I was smiling without even realizing it for a second.

  Angel came out of the garage with the shotgun lowered, and though I couldn’t hear what they said, she pointed at the roof.

  “Up here!” I called. Martin turned and went to the front of the house, looking up with a quizzical expression. He wasn’t wearing a suit for once, and he needed a shave.

  “How are you, Roe?” he asked.

  I still loved him.

  “I’m all right, Martin. Be down in a minute. Here’s the Frisbee.” I sailed it over the peak down to them. Martin’s arm shot out and he caught it neatly.

  “There’s something else up here,” I called. “There’s a gray plastic tarp.”

  Angel’s expression changed to alarm. “Don’t touch it!” she and Martin yelled simultaneously.

  “It’s been here for ages,” I reassured them. “There’re pine needles and bird poop and dirt all over it.”

  The two faces upturned to me relaxed somewhat.

  “What do you think it is, builder’s material?” Martin asked.

  “Well, I’m going to find out.” I maneuvered a turn in the little valley in which I found myself. A gutter had been installed in this valley, to carry off rainwater, and the covered bundle had been shoved just clear of it under my bedroom window. In fact it was so closely packed into this one straight stretch of roof that I knew why I hadn’t ever noticed it: It was so close under my window that I would have had to stick out my head and shoulders and look down to see it.

  The tarp was stiff and crackly with age and exposure. It was weighted down with bricks. When I shoved one off the tarp and raised one corner, the whole thing moved, and I was treated to a comprehensive view of what lay beneath.

  It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. I tried to believe that someone had been up on the roof eating ribs and had thrown the discarded bones in a heap after he was through. Maybe lots of people; there were so many . . . I saw the ribs first, you see. They weren’t pretty and white: they were yellowish and had little bits of dried dark stuff on them. But there were other bones, tiny and large, one whole hand with a few strings of tendon still holding it together . . . The skulls had rolled a little, but I counte
d them automatically.

  “Roe?” Martin called from below. “What’s happening up there? Are you okay?”

  The breeze was gusting again. For the first time in over six years, it wafted under the gray plastic. The hair on one of the skulls lifted.

  I wanted off this roof.

  I flung myself upward, swung my legs over the peak, and began backing down in record time.

  “Roe,” called Martin again, definitely alarmed.

  My feet hit the first rung. It seemed like long minutes before my hands could grasp the metal and then my feet flew down once I was totally supported by the ladder.

  Martin and Angel were both asking me questions at once. I leaned against the metal, my feet finally on the ground, a safe distance from the horror on the roof.

  “They’re there,” I managed to say at last. “They’ve been there all along.”

  Martin still looked blank, but Angel, who had helped me look, got the point immediately.

  “The Julius family,” she told Martin. “They’re on the roof.”

  We did have to tell the police about this. Angel stored away the shotgun and made the phone call. Then I saw her bounding up her apartment steps, presumably to wake Shelby.

  We were sitting on the porch in one of the chairs. I was folded up on Martin’s lap.

  “Martin,” I whispered. “She still had on her wig. But there was just a skull underneath it.”

  Everyone came. It was like a lawn party for law en

  forcement personnel in Spalding County. Our house was just within the city limits, so the chief of police came first. Padgett Lanier was sharp-nosed, tall, with thinning blond hair and nearly invisible eyelashes and eyebrows. He had a paunch, and a mouth that was too small for his face. He had been chief of police of Lawrenceton for twenty years. I’d met him at various parties while I was dating Arthur Smith.

  I was sitting in a separate chair by then, but still on the porch, hoping to keep everyone out of our home. Martin had pulled his chair over by mine and was holding my hand. Shelby and Angel were sitting on the porch itself, blocking the front door, watching the activity with impassive faces.

  “Mrs. Bartell?” Lanier asked from the front lawn.