Tropical Heat

Chapter One
The cardboard fans fluttering restlessly throughout the chapel of the Calvary Baptist Church of Hopewell, Virginia, reminded A. G. Farrell of nothing if not the tattered souls of his neighbors struggling to slip their earthly bonds. The fans had been provided to the congregation by the Creech Brothers (Your Friends In Need) Funeral Home and bore, on one side, the image of a gnarled, arthritic pair of hands clasped in prayer and, on the other, a grainy, slightly out-of-focus black-and-white photograph of the Creech brothers themselves, faces set in rictuslike grins. The vigorous, nonstop fanning of the parishioners notwithstanding, the small chapel was fiery hot, and although A. G. was wearing a fine linen suit that had belonged to his father, rivulets of perspiration raced down the small of his back.
A. G. tried and failed to stifle a deep yawn as the Reverend Jimmy Morton laboredmightily in the heat, bringing forth a long, disjointed, and exceedingly morose prayer seeking relief from any number of perceived earthly afflictions, including, among others, the extraordinarily hot weather and the specter of postwar racial integration. Roundly corpulent and possessed of a cheerfully optimistic nature when not in the pulpit, the Reverend Morton was prone to serious depression on most Sundays, the more so as he looked out on his copiously perspiring flock from his vantage point in front of the choir. A. G. yawned again, wanting to look at his watch but knowing that to do so would be rude.
"Sheriff."
If the whispered salutation, coming as it did as the Reverend Morton struggled unsuccessfully to tie up the many loose threads of his prayer, surprised A. G., he did not show it. Thirty-four years old and a bachelor, A. G. was a graduate of the University of Virginia, a distinction of some note in a county where fewer than 25 percent of the population could boast of so much as a high school diploma. He was tall, handsome in what his neighbors thought of as a bookish way, and had been born with only one kidney, a defect, if such it could be called, that had kept him out of the army and both the Second World War and the Korean conflict. Appointed sheriff in 1942 when the incumbent officeholder, caught up in the patriotic spirit of the times, enlisted in the Marine Corps, A. G. agreed to serve strictly as a favor to his community, fully intending to return to Charlottesville for graduate studies in philosophy as soon as the war ended. Twelve years later, his predecessor having died storming the beach at Iwo Jima, A. G., much to his own surprise, still held office.
Without taking his eyes off the pulpit, A. G. inclined his head sideways in the direction of Warren Elam, the young man crouched in the aisle next to A. G.'s family pew.
"Sheriff," Warren continued in a loud stage whisper that carried easily to all corners of the chapel, "Mr. Taylor says you got to come right away." Knowing that the entire congregation was now straining to hear his words, Warren paused for dramatic effect. "Mr. Taylor said to tell you that a dead body's done been found."
Warren, who did odd jobs and ran errands for Bud Taylor, badly wanted to relay to A. G., and of course the rest of the congregation, additional details of the exciting discovery, such as the fact that a bullet had passed through the unfortunate decedent's head, but a stern warning from his employer to reveal nothing beyond the existence of a cadaver inhibited him. But only for a second or two.
"Mr. Taylor don't know who found ..."
A. G., recognizing that Warren would blurt out anything that came to his mind, put a finger to his lips. "Hush, now," he admonished quietly, noticing that even the Reverend Morton had fallen temporarily silent. He carefully replaced the Creech Brothers fan, together with his hymnal, in the rack on the back of the pew in front of him and rose with a barely concealed sigh of relief at the prospect of missing the remaining half of Jimmy Morton's service. Leaving with as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances, he gently shooed Warren Elam down the center aisle as one might coax a child. Outside the church, A. G. asked Warren where the body had been found.
"It's in a car parked in front of Mr. Taylor's feed warehouse," Warren gushed as he climbed hurriedly into Bud's pickup truck. "We better get on over there. Are you going to run the siren?" he asked hopefully, nodding toward the sheriff's car.
"I doubt it's necessary since, according to you, the man is already dead. By the way, who is it?"
"I don't know, but he was wearing a ..." Warren suddenly paused, remembering Bud Taylor's unambiguous order to keep his mouth shut.
"Wearing what?" A. G. asked impatiently.
"A uniform," Warren blurted, starting the truck. "But don't tell Mr. Taylor I told you, okay?"
A. G. got into the black 1950 Ford sedan the city of Hopewell had purchased, used, two years earlier. It had a single red dome light on the roof and the word Sheriff painted in block letters on each side. The lettering had been done by a sign painter serving a three-year state sentence for bigamy who had been loaned to the county for a week's worth of painting. While he was working for the county, A. G. allowed him to take his meals at Francine Baker's boardinghouse. In the course of his week's stay in Hopewell he repainted both the mayor's and A. G.'s offices, lettered the sheriff's car, recaulked all the windows on the city's small administrative building, and impregnated Francine Baker's thirty-two-year-old daughter.




"Howdy, Bud."
"A. G.," Bud Taylor acknowledged A. G.'s greeting with ill-disguised annoyance. Sixty-one years old and a childless widower, Bud was short, bald-headed, and overweight. In addition to being the owner of the feed warehouse, a large general store on the outskirts of Hopewell, and several hundred acres of prime bottomland, he was the county Democratic Party chairman and, as such, considered himself, not wholly inappropriately, a man of some consequence in that part of the state. The telephone call from Fort Lee alerting him to the presence of a body in Hopewell had awakened him at home from a restless sleep on cotton sheets wet with perspiration. He opened a packet of headache powder, his second in thepast hour, and poured the contents on the back of his tongue, washing it down with a drink of lukewarm Coca-Cola. The sweet, syrupy flavor made him grimace, the overall effect of his unpleasant expression heightened by the fact that he hadn't yet shaved.
"What have we got?" A. G. asked, nodding in the direction of the 1951 two-tone DeSoto coupe parked in front of the warehouse Bud had inherited from his father-in-law in 1934. He and Bud were standing in the building, looking out one of the front windows. Warren, who had badly wanted to stay and listen, had been summarily dispatched by A. G. to find Henry Beal, a local army-trained photographer who had a contract with the county to provide whatever photography, crime-related or otherwise, might be needed from time to time.
"The provost marshall's office out at the fort called me about an hour ago," Bud said after he finished the Coke and put the sweating bottle in a wooden crate on the concrete floor. He belched indelicately, not bothering to cover his mouth with his hand. "Some lieutenant, the duty officer, said he had just gotten an anonymous telephone call saying there was a dead body in a car in front of the feed-company warehouse." Bud pointed unnecessarily out toward the DeSoto coupe. "Said he tried to reach the sheriff first," he paused to glare briefly at A. G., "and, since he couldn't, he called me."
The discovery of the body represented something more than an inconvenience, for it came at a time when the county was without the services of a coroner, the previous holder of that office having died unexpectedly, of natural causes, six weeks earlier. Bud, as the county Democratic Party chairman, had reluctantly taken on the newly vacant office until such time as the county could recruit a reasonably competent person for the job. He had obviously not anticipated, in the short time he intended to hold office, having to deal with a homicide.
"Man or woman?" A. G. asked.
"It's a man," Bud grunted, assuming A. G. was asking about the gender of the body in the car.
"No, I meant was the person who called to report the body a man or a woman?"
"How the hell would I know?" Bud took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. The two headache powders he had taken in the past forty-five minutes clearly had not yet begun to have a positive effect on his disposition.
A. G. smiled, unoffended by Bud's tone of voice. "Let's go take a look," he said, opening the door and stepping out into the harsh sunlight. As hot as it was inside the warehouse, stepping outside was like walking into an oven.
The automobile's two front windows were open, as were the window vents. A man lay slumped against the steering wheel, arms hanging straight down over the front edge of the seat. The head was turned toward the driver's-side window, both eyes frozen open in a stare of profound shock and dismay. The body was that of a Caucasian male, mid-thirties, A. G. guessed, wearing the army uniform and insignia of a captain in the Quartermaster Corps. The man had brown eyes, a close-cropped military haircut, and a five o'clock shadow on flaccid cheeks. An entrance wound was visible on the left temple, slightly forward of, and a little above, the left ear. Because the head was turned, no exit wound was visible. Leaning down and looking through the driver's window, A. G. could see that the headliner and passenger door were splattered with a copious amount of blood and what appeared to be fragments of the decedent's brain.
"Large caliber," A. G. murmured, more to himself than to Bud. He felt surprisingly calm, almost detached, as he looked at the body. Perhaps it was the war, he thought. Perhaps we all got so used to death on a large scale, even those of us who didn't go overseas, that we can now look at somethinglike this without it making us sick. "If so," he said quietly, "I wish we hadn't."
"What's that?" the older man asked. The hot sun, together with the aftereffects of the better part of a fifth of bourbon he had consumed the night before while playing gin rummy, made him more than a little queasy.
A. G. looked at Bud and realized he had been thinking out loud. "Sorry, Bud, I was just talking to myself." He looked back at the body. "This wound was made by a large-caliber bullet," A. G. explained, pointing at the hole in the man's temple. He held his thumb and forefinger approximately half an inch apart and sighted them over the wound. "I'd guess a .45."
A. G. walked around the front of the car to the passenger side, stopping at the front-quarter panel. The pavement in front of and below the passenger window bore evidence of blood spatter, as well as at least one piece of what he assumed was brain tissue. Before he could examine that side of the car more closely, Warren Elam returned in Bud's pickup followed closely by Henry Beal's 1950 Studebaker.
"Morning, Henry," A. G. called out, motioning for the freelance photographer to join him at the front of the DeSoto. "Sorry to drag you out on a Sunday morning." He nodded back toward the body. "I'm afraid it's not a very pretty sight."
Henry raised a hand to forestall further apology. "Believe me, I need the money. Sally is expecting again. Who was killed?"
"Don't know yet. Before we disturb the body, though, or anything else around the car, I want you to get a good set of shots from every angle, okay? Oh, and Henry," A. G. added, almost as an afterthought, "needless to say, I don't want you touching anything, and," he pointed to the bloodstains and tissue lying on the pavement outside the passenger window, "be real careful about where you step."
The photographer nodded absently, already busy with getting his camera ready. "Yeah, sure, no problem."
"Warren." A. G. walked back around to the driver's side of the car, crooking his finger at Bud's young handyman. "Come here, I want you to look at something." A. G. pointed toward the open window. "Look through there, and tell me what you see."
"See?" Warren asked, obviously confused.
"Look through both windows. This one," A. G. indicated the driver's-side window, "and the passenger window, out toward the vacant lot across the street."
Warren bent down and looked. He straightened up and turned to A. G., fearful that he was about to fail some sort of test. "Trees?" he said, his response more a question than an answer.
"Bingo." A. G. smiled. "Trees. Now, Warren, what I'm hoping is that one of those trees stopped the bullet that obviously passed through this unfortunate soul's head. What I want you to do is go over there and examine all the trees along the probable path of the bullet. Start on a direct line with the two windows and work out from there."
"You want I should dig it out for you if I find it?" Warren pulled out his Barlow pocketknife for A. G.'s inspection.
"No, don't touch anything. Just come get me if you think you've found it." A. G. turned to Bud Taylor as soon as Warren trotted away. "Come on, Bud, let's get you back in the warehouse and out of this sun while Henry takes his pictures."
"Don't you want to check the body for any identification?" Bud asked. "A wallet or something?"
Leading Bud into the relative cool of the high-ceilinged warehouse, A. G. shook his head. "I don't want to disturb anything until Henry gets done. There'll be plenty of time to look then." A. G. paused and fanned himself with his straw hat. "You don't look so good, Bud. It's going to be a whilebefore I've got things wrapped up here. Why don't you head on home, and I'll call you later."
"I just need a little hair of the dog that bit me last night," Bud assured him. "But you're right, there's no use to both of us sweating like field hands out in that hot sun." He mopped his brow one last time before putting on his white Panama hat. "What are you going to do with the body?"
A. G. shrugged. "Not much I can do. We'll have to keep it at least until I can arrange to borrow someone from the state to come do an autopsy. Probably be a day or two before a pathologist can drive over from Richmond." He pointed to the telephone on the desk. "I'll call Bob Creech to come pick up the body and store it in his mortuary for the time being."
"Well, keep me posted," Bud grunted. He opened the door and winced at the sudden blast-furnace heat. "Give Warren a ride home when you're done with him, will you?"
"You don't mind if I store the car"--A. G. nodded toward the dead man's automobile--"here for a day or two while I get it checked for fingerprints, do you?"
Bud took a single key off his key ring and tossed it to A. G. He left without another word.
A. G. made a quick call to the Creech Brothers Funeral Home and then walked out of the warehouse and watched Henry take the last of his photographs. "I appreciate your coming out," he told him.
"Like I said, I can sure enough use the money," Henry assured him, as he stowed his gear in the trunk of the Studebaker. "I swear, it seems that all I have to do anymore is look at that old gal of mine and we've got another young 'un on the way."
A. G. chuckled. "I'm thinking you two must be doing more than just looking at each other."
Henry shook his head good-naturedly and got into his car. "I'll develop these tonight and have prints ready for you inthe morning. Or I suppose I could print them up tonight, if you want them badly enough."
A. G. shook his head. "Tomorrow morning's fine, Henry. Call me before you bring them over."
"I found it, Sheriff." Warren's high-pitched, excited voice easily carried across the street and over the sound of Henry's departing Studebaker. He was standing some twenty yards into the overgrown lot, jumping up and down and waving both arms.
A. G. smiled and walked over to join the excited young man. "I believe you have," he told Warren after examining the tree trunk in question. "Good work." A glint of dull, gray metal could be seen at the base of a deep hole in the trunk at the approximate height of the DeSoto's windows. Splinters of wood stood out from the impact site, and a single golden teardrop of sap had already begun to harden an inch or two below the hole. "Tell you what you can do to help me," he said. "Dig out around the bullet so we can get to it easier." Before he could say anything else, Bob Creech drove up in an unmarked panel truck. "Don't touch the bullet or try to get it out, though," he added as he turned to walk back to the warehouse. "Come get me when you get real close to it." In front of the warehouse A. G. watched as the overweight undertaker slid out from behind the truck's wheel. "You would think," he teased, "that as much as you charge the county to pick up a body we could at least get the hearse."
Ignoring A. G.'s banter, Creech went to the rear of the truck and took out a telescoping gurney. "I've got Ida Mae Jones's funeral to set up in one hour," he said tersely, drawing on a pair of surgical rubber gloves with elongated cuffs. He took a second pair out of the truck and handed them to A. G. "You want to give me a hand?"
The two men removed the body from the DeSoto coupe, A. G. taking care not to soil his linen suit. He noted that thedecedent's uniform had relatively little blood on it, a fact he attributed to the forward-leaning, seated position the body had assumed after death. They placed the body on the gurney and rolled it over to the Creech Brothers' truck.
"Wait a minute," A. G. said as Bob Creech prepared to swing the gurney into the truck's cab. "I want to check for a billfold." He patted the breast pockets of the uniform blouse and, finding nothing, rolled the body partially onto its right side. He withdrew a leather wallet from the left rear pocket. It contained twenty-three dollars in cash--a ten, a five, and eight ones--and a military identification card. "Captain Martin P. Fitzgerald," A. G. said quietly, comparing the ID photo with the decedent's face.
"That how you want me to list the body?" Creech asked, wiping perspiration from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
A. G. shook his head. "Put him down for now as John Doe. Assuming his wife," A. G. nodded toward the plain gold band on the man's left ring finger, "lives at Fort Lee, I expect I'll be over later with her to make a positive identification."
"Anything else?" Creech looked pointedly at his watch.
"Be careful undressing him. Bag the uniform and make a list of any jewelry," A. G. pointed at the Bulova on the decedent's right wrist, "as well as anything else you find in his pockets. If I don't come over later today, I'll call you tomorrow," A. G. said, putting the billfold and ID card into his suit pocket.
"Bud Taylor going to be doing the autopsy?" Creech asked snidely.
A. G. barely smiled. He didn't much care for Bob Creech. "I doubt it."




A. G.'s first-floor, corner office in Hopewell's modest two-story City Hall, though large, was sparingly furnished--adesk, two filing cabinets, and three chairs. A ceiling fan circulated the air, and a row of double-hung windows opened out onto Hopewell's two-block-long commercial district. Waiting for a return call from the provost marshall's office at Fort Lee, A. G. leaned back in his wooden swivel chair and took a nearly empty pack of Chesterfields from his desk drawer. He held one of the cigarettes under his nose, savoring the sweet smell of the cured, bright-leaf tobacco. Lighting it, he watched the smoke rise slowly, almost regretfully, as if struggling against the thick, humid air. Although he had been expecting it, the sudden ring of the telephone startled him.
"Sheriff Farrell, this is Lieutenant Barry Giles, out at Fort Lee. I was told that you've been trying to get in touch with me."
"Yes, sir, I have." A. G. sat up and neatly flipped the ash off his cigarette onto the wooden floor of his office. He tapped at it with the toe of his cordovan wing tip. "I understand you're the weekend military-police duty officer out at the fort. The one who received an anonymous tip about a body here in Hopewell."
"That's correct. I had no way of knowing whether the information was accurate, but I thought I'd better pass it along."
"The information was indeed accurate," A. G. said. "The body was right where your caller said it would be."
"Were you able to establish a cause of death?"
"I was," A. G. said as he tapped more ash on the floor and then placed the cigarette on the edge of his desk. "At least until such time as an autopsy is completed." Reaching into his breast pocket, he withdrew the badly misshapen slug he and Warren had dug out of the sycamore that had absorbed the last of its malevolent energy. "It would appear to the casual observer that the decedent, a white male, was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Although state law requiresus to do an autopsy to establish a definitive cause," A. G. added dryly, "I'm guessing in the meantime that the gunshot wound is a pretty sure bet."
"A homicide." Lieutenant Giles, impressed, whistled a single, low note.
"Perhaps," A. G. conceded. "On the other hand, it could have been a suicide. Suicide is clearly a less likely hypothesis since there was no weapon near the body, but then whoever called your office might have taken it."
"How do you mean?"
"The caller could have innocently happened along and discovered the body, seen the pistol, and, realizing that the decedent had no further use for it, walked off with it. Depending on what kind of pistol it was, a man might could sell it over in Petersburg or Richmond for a fair amount of money."
"Do you have an identity on the body?"
"Actually, that was why I called you." A. G. put the bullet on the desk and picked up the military identification card, holding it up as if the lieutenant could see it over the telephone line. "The decedent appears to be, or I guess more properly appears to have been, an officer from out at the fort. A Captain Martin P. Fitzgerald. Ring any bells?"
Giles whistled again, a habit A. G. idly thought he would break quickly if the man worked for him.
"Does it ever," the young man said, excitement evident in his voice. "Captain Fitzgerald's wife called in a missing-person report to the provost marshall's office early this morning. She said he never returned home from the officers club last night."
"We may now know why," A. G. observed, more to himself than to Lieutenant Giles. "We'll need to arrange for Mrs. Fitzgerald to identify the body today if possible. And of course I'm going to want to visit with her at some length,although that can wait for a day or two if necessary."
"I'd better call Major Williams"--Fort Lee's provost marshall--"right away. He'll know how to handle this. I mean, how to notify Mrs. Fitzgerald, what to do about identifying the body, and like that. Could you wait there, at your office, and I'll call you right back?"
A. G. glanced briefly at his watch, although his stomach had already told him it was after one o'clock. He sighed. "I'll wait."
A. G. carefully locked the captain's wallet, military identification card, and the bullet in his desk drawer and stood up, yawning and stretching as he did so. Glancing out his first-floor window, he could see that the street outside was deserted, hardly surprising on a Sunday, and he knew that the asphalt would be soft and tacky in the fierce afternoon sun. While he waited he wondered idly what sort of man Captain Fitzgerald had been. Several of the ribbons on his uniform blouse indicated service in Europe during the war, so A. G. guessed he was a career soldier. The captain had worn no college or lodge ring, a fact that elevated him a degree or two in A. G.'s estimation.
The telephone rang.




"That's him."
The newly widowed Theresa Fitzgerald looked up from the stainless-steel embalming table bearing the remains of her husband. She was tall, five eight or five nine, A. G. guessed, and slender, no more than one hundred and twenty pounds. Long, blond hair had been gathered and pinned at the back of her head, a style coolly appropriate for the exceedingly hot weather, and other than an unadorned gold bracelet on her left wrist, she wore no jewelry, not even, he was somewhat surprised to note, a simple wedding band. Inasmuch as hercornflower-blue eyes were neither red nor swollen, A. G. assumed that she had not been weeping copiously since learning of the demise of her husband a mere hour earlier.
Behind them A. G. could hear the rapid breathing of Lieutenant Giles, who had accompanied Mrs. Fitzgerald to the Creech Brothers Funeral Home. Based on what sounded like hyperventilation, A. G. guessed that this was the first dead body Giles had ever seen or, at the very least, the first with a gunshot wound to the head.
"Thank you," A. G. said, carefully refolding the cotton sheet over the face of Captain Fitzgerald. He took Mrs. Fitzgerald's arm and escorted her and the lieutenant out to the olive-drab army sedan that waited under the funeral home's porte cochere.
"Have you any idea what might have happened?" she asked in a low voice as he handed her off to the sedan's driver, an obviously dull-witted but extremely polite private first-class in starched khakis that were rapidly wilting in the unrelenting late afternoon heat.
"No, ma'am, I don't, not yet." A. G. was acutely aware of the scent of her perfume as it volatilized off the flushed, slightly damp skin of her bare neck. "But I will almost certainly find out." He paused for a second as she got into the sedan. He courteously averted his eyes but not quickly enough to avoid seeing a flash of white thigh above her nylons as her dress rode up. The driver, seeing the same thing, shook his head as if unable to believe his good fortune while he carefully, albeit with obvious reluctance, closed the passenger door behind her. A. G. knelt down by the side of the sedan. "I would like to talk to you tomorrow, if I may," he said, slightly embarrassed by what he had seen. "About your husband," he added quickly, almost as if afraid that, assuming she had caught his inadvertent glance, she would misunderstand the nature of his interest in her.
"Would ten-thirty be too early?" she asked, not quite smiling.
"No, ma'am," A. G. assured her, standing up, "ten-thirty tomorrow morning would be fine."
"The lieutenant can give you directions to our, Marty's and my, quarters on the post," she said, fanning herself with a silk Japanese fan she took from her purse.
A. G. looked across the sedan at the ashen-faced young lieutenant. "You'll see that Mrs. Fitzgerald gets home safely?" he asked, rather unnecessarily.
Giles nodded, swallowing several times as if a wave of nausea was just then washing over him.
"Are you going to be okay?" A. G. suddenly realized that the sight of the captain's body had been more of a shock for the young man than he had initially guessed. Far more of a shock, as a matter of fact, than A. G. could discern on the widow's part. He quickly shrugged off the latter thought as unkind.
Giles nodded again and regained a modicum of composure. "Yes, sir, I'm fine." He wiped at his brow with an already damp handkerchief and took a last, deep breath. "Major Williams asked if you would come to his office first thing in the morning."
"Indeed I will," A. G. responded, stealing a last, covert glance at the widow Fitzgerald through the sedan's window.




Not a breath of air moved across the broad front porch of the house A. G.'s grandfather had built in the summer of 1880. A. G. had been born there, in his mother's bedroom, and, other than the four years in Charlottesville while attending the University of Virginia, had not spent five consecutive nights outside it in his entire life. The house had settled somewhat unevenly on its brick foundation, giving it a richness of characterthat typically comes to both people and their buildings only with age and a hint of imperfection. The main floor consisted of a living room, dining room, music room, and study. A large kitchen and pantry had been added on in 1918, when the original kitchen, contained in a small separate building to the rear of the house, was torn down. A sweeping staircase off the entry hall led to the second floor and five bedrooms.
Sprawled across a glider sofa with frayed and worn cushions, A. G. tried hard to relax himself into a good night's sleep, an effort he knew was all but futile in the relentless July heat. Although the sun had fully set over an hour earlier, the temperature remained above ninety degrees, with no significant cooling likely between dusk and dawn. His stomach rumbled loudly as he thought of the fried chicken and mashed potatoes he hadn't eaten earlier that day, and he sat up with a sigh, reaching for his cigarettes on the table beside the sofa. His evening meal had consisted instead of a far more prosaic can of tuna, a sliced tomato, and a cold glass of buttermilk, for not only had the discovery of Captain Fitzgerald's body badly upset his normally casual Sunday routine, but Dolores Anderson--the woman everyone in the county who thought about such things assumed he would marry one day, and who otherwise would have prepared the fried chicken and mashed potatoes--was in Raleigh, North Carolina, wrapping up the estate of a maiden aunt who had passed away the previous week.
"I hope she had a better supper than I did," he said somewhat peevishly as he lit his cigarette, the sudden flare of the lighter on the dark porch revealing that he was talking to himself. He shook his head, chagrined at having voiced so petty a thought, even though no one had heard it save himself. Dolores was due back on Tuesday, and he looked forward to seeing her after a week's absence. "Maybe we should get married," he mused, leaning back against the sofa's cushions.
As an owl hooted softly somewhere in the darkness, the sweet smell of a flowering magnolia drifted across the porch, stimulating in A. G. a sudden recollection of the scent of Theresa Fitzgerald's perfume. He closed his eyes and saw, with eidetic clarity, the astonishingly erotic image of the pale white skin of her inner thigh above her nylons, exposed when she bent down to get into the army sedan.
Copyright © 2002 by John A. Miller