Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,49

were slow in getting up to answer the doorbell. Creaky arthritic limbs can’t be rushed, right?

Her cell rang. Carla slipped off a glove and dug a hand into her coat pocket. It was probably her mom, checking to make sure she was okay. Carla would act all perturbed at the overprotective parent stuff—but the truth was, she kind of liked it. She liked the idea that Bell was there.

She looked at the caller ID.

She recognized the number—but it wasn’t her mom.

Carla felt a hard torque of panic in her stomach. The blood rushed out of her head, or so it felt, as if somebody had pulled a cord and emptied the lot. The rigid chill that overtook her had nothing to do with the temperature.

She had to get hold of herself. She had to do her job. She had to carry on. She had to. And so she did what she’d been doing for the past week and a half, which was to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t happening.

I can do this, she said to herself. Chanting it, really: I can do this. I can do this.

She turned off her cell. She opened the car door.

* * *

Ava Hendricks was waiting for Bell at the courthouse. She sat on the small butternut couch across from Lee Ann Frickie’s desk, feet flat on the floor, hands flat on her lap. Bell had never met her. She’d never seen her picture. But based on their brief phone conversation two nights ago, and on the extraordinary poise she witnessed now, the name “Ava Hendricks” came into Bell’s mind the moment she saw the visitor.

“This is Dr. Hendricks,” Lee Ann said. Her secretary did not get up. She was typing on her computer keyboard, and she simply lifted one hand and motioned toward the couch. “She’s been waiting an hour and a half. Wouldn’t let me call you.”

And I bet she hasn’t moved a muscle in all that time, Bell thought.

Ava’s expression did not change. “I know how annoying it is to be interrupted in the middle of work,” she said to Bell. “I didn’t mind waiting.”

She had crinkled, shoulder-length black hair that widened out from the top of her head in a frizzy A-frame, a small flat nose, and wire-rim glasses with lenses the shape of slender ovals. Bell put her age at somewhere between forty-five and fifty—same as her own. Same as Darlene’s. Her suit was royal blue. An expensive-looking winter coat was folded on the seat beside her.

“I thought you might come yesterday,” Bell said.

“Remember that eight-year-old? The one I told you about?”

“You operated on her.”

“Yes. She took a turn for the worse. I had to go back in. I wasn’t free to leave the hospital until today.”

“Come into my office,” Bell said. She glanced at Lee Ann, knowing her secretary would understand: no calls.

As soon as they’d resettled themselves, Bell offered coffee.

Ava grimaced. “I don’t drink caffeine. It’s been definitively linked to hypertension and gastrointestinal motility.”

“Yeah, well—I guess I like to live on the edge.” Bell rose and fussed with the curmudgeonly Mr. Coffee machine on top of the file cabinet. There was no sink in here; she kept a full carafe of water by the pot, ready for service.

A few seconds later the space was invaded by a loud hissing wheeze that sounded like a row of old men simultaneously blowing their noses. Then the lapel-grabbing aroma of brewing coffee hit the room.

“Damn,” Ava said. “That smells pretty good. Maybe just this once.”

Bell gave her a thumbs-up sign and scrounged in her desk drawer for a second mug. Good, she thought. Ava was human, after all. Her perusal of the hyper-impressive biographical information that Rhonda compiled had made her doubt it.

“I want to tell you again,” Bell said, “how sorry I am about Darlene.”

Ava did not answer. Bell was mystified. There were indeed all varieties and manifestations of grief, as she had pointed out to Rhonda, and it was true that each person grieved in her own way, but this was downright peculiar. An observer with no information would have assumed that the person named “Darlene” had been a causal acquaintance. Nothing more.

She handed Ava the filled mug. “It’s hot. Be careful.”

Her visitor nodded. “You know,” she said, “we were probably two of the most mismatched people in the world. But I knew right away. And so did Darlene.”

She stared at the front of Bell’s desk. Her voice was low and soft, imbued with the faint tremolo of