said.
“So why would the—I don’t know, what do you call ’em, protectee? Why would he kill Jack?”
Martin raised his eyebrows at me. I’d missed something very obvious.
“I imagine whoever killed Jack Burns wanted the new name of the hidden person.”
Naturally. I should have seen that before. “But if these were the people this witness had testified against, wouldn’t they know what he looked like?”
“Maybe he’s had plastic surgery,” Martin said. “Or maybe these people only suspect they know who betrayed them.” But his interest in the subject had ebbed. Once he’d decided we were safe, not implicated, he’d begun losing interest in Jack Burns’s death, except as it upset or concerned me.
“But why in our backyard, Martin? You were worried about that earlier,” I challenged him. “Let’s hear a good reason.” I took off my glasses (I was wearing my blue-framed ones that day) and crossed my arms under my breasts. They were more or less covered in ivory lace, the top of a concoction Martin had given me for his birthday.
“Do you think our yard was picked on purpose?” Martin asked.
“Yes . . . maybe. I didn’t want to make a song and dance about it when Padgett Lanier was here, but the plane circled to get the drop right. The body could have been dumped in any of the fields around here and lain for days with no one the wiser and no way to trace the plane. They risked Angel and me seeing the plane, to dump Jack here .” I pointed down, as if our bed had been the target.
“It was a threat against the protectee, as you call him,” Martin said calmly. He seemed to feel better about the implications of Jack Burns ending up in our yard now. “Saying, ‘Here is the body of the man who knew you, we’re coming to get you soon.’ ”
“Could be. But why here?”
“They wanted the body found as soon as possible, to get their message across. They saw a nice big yard with two women in it who were sure to call the police right away.”
Not for the first time, I realized how much I’d come to rely on Martin’s decisiveness and authority. If he said this was nothing for me to worry about, I was fairly willing to accept it. And I also recognized something I should have spotted earlier; my husband was furious. Protective Martin did not like his wife frightened by falling bodies, especially when he’d decided the body had fallen near her by design. Martin was as full of pressure as a preeruptive volcano.
It was too bad we didn’t have a home racquetball court. That was Martin’s favorite method of letting off steam.
He had another one, however.
“Martin, I was really scared today.”
Instantly he moved to his side of the bed and slid in, and his arms went around me. I nestled my head in the hollow of his neck. He held me carefully, delicately. I know a man’s protection is illusory, but illusions can be awfully comforting sometimes. I raised my face to his and kissed him. When I was sure we were both thinking the same thing, I switched off my bedside lamp, turned back to him, and gave his neck a tiny nip.
We were much more relaxed when we went to sleep.
S ally Allison’s story in the Lawrenceton Sentinel the next day said nothing about two big men from Atlanta. Martin left it folded open on the table by a clean coffee cup, waiting for me; he’d had to go in early for a breakfast meeting with his division heads.
Jack Burns, longtime member of the Lawrenceton police force, was killed sometime early Monday afternoon. His body, thrown from a low-flying airplane, landed on the property of Aurora Teagarden and Martin Bartell, about a mile out of town on Mason Road, at approximately 2 P.M. yesterday.
Burns, a native of Lawrenceton, was not known to have any enemies. His wife, former teacher Bess Linton Burns, expressed bafflement at the motive for her husband’s death. “I can only think it must have been someone he arrested, someone out for revenge,” she