wife and mother, but talked about her husband and daughter until you wanted them to be swallowed up in an earthquake; she knew her job and did it competently, but with so much groaning and complaining about minute details that you wanted to smack her. Reacting to Lillian, I sounded like a wild-eyed Communist, an incurable Pollyanna, and a free-sex advocate.
"It's so hot outside, I feel like I need another shower," she said by way of greeting. Her forehead was beaded with perspiration. She pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table and dabbed at her face. "I hear you had a windfall," she continued, tossing the tissue into the trash and missing. With a deep sigh, Lillian laboriously bent over to retrieve it. But her eyes flicked up to take in my reaction.
"Yes," I said with a bright smile.
Lillian waited for me to elaborate. She eyed me wryly when I didn't say anything. "I didn't know you and Jane Engle were such good friends." I considered several possible responses, smiling all the while. "We were friends."
Lillian shook her head slowly. "I was a friend of Jane's, too, but she didn't leave me any house."
What could I say to that? I shrugged. If Jane and Lillian had had any special personal relationship, I certainly couldn't recall it. "Did you know," Lillian continued, switching to another track, "that Bubba Sewell is going to run for state representative in the fall?" "Is he really." It wasn't a question.
Lillian saw that she'd made an impression. "Yes, his secretary is my sister-in-law, so she told me even before the announcement, which is tomorrow. I knew you'd be interested since I saw you talking to him at Jane's funeral. He's trying to get his house in order, so to speak, so he doesn't want even a whiff of anything funny that might be dug up during the campaign. He's going to be running against Carl Underwood, and Carl's had that seat for three terms." Lillian had gotten to give me information I hadn't possessed, and that had made her happy. After a couple more complaints about the school system's insensitivity to her daughter's allergies, she stumped off to actually do some work.
I remained seated on the hard chair in the tiny coffee-break room, thinking hard about Bubba Sewell. No wonder he hadn't wanted to know what was fishy in Jane's house! No wonder he had catered to her so extensively. It was good word of mouth for him, that he would go to such lengths for his elderly client, especially since he wasn't gaining anything from her will - except a fat fee for handling it. If I told Bubba Sewell about the skull he'd hate me for the rest of his life. And he was Carey Os-land's first husband; maybe somehow he was involved in the disappearance of Carey's second husband?
As I washed my mug in the little sink and set it in the drainer, I dismissed any urge I'd ever felt to confide in the lawyer. He was running for office; he was ambitious; he couldn't be trusted. A pretty grim summation for someone who might be my elected representative in the statehouse. I sighed, and started for the check-in desk to shelve the returned books.
On my lunch hour, I ran over to the house on Honor to let the cat out and check on the kittens. I picked up a hamburger and drink at a drive-through. When I turned off Faith I saw a city work crew cleaning the honeysuckle and poison ivy from around the dead end sign at the end of the street. It would take them hours. Vines and weeds had taken over the little area and had obviously been thriving for years, twining around the sign itself and then attaching to the rear fence of the house backing onto the end of our street. The city truck was parked right in the middle of the road down by Macon Turner's house. For the first time since I'd inherited Jane's house, I saw the newspaper editor himself, perhaps also returning to his home for lunch. Macon's thinning, brownish-gray hair was long and combed across the top of his head to give his scalp some coverage. He had an intelligent face, thin lipped and sharp, and wore suits that always seemed to need to go to the cleaners; in fact, Macon always gave the impression that he did not know how to take care of himself. His hair