Prayers For Rain Part 51

"Yeah." I nodded at him. "The chips alone should balance out the B and E thing."

Diane Bourne looked at the videoca.s.sette between her feet and held up a silencing hand. "What do we do now?"

I looked at Bubba. He shot a confused look at Angie. Angie pa.s.sed it on to Diane Bourne. Diane Bourne looked at me.

"We eat," I said.

Diane Bourne actually helped carve the turkey with me and showed us the locations of all the ceramic bowls and serving dishes we'd have probably busted the place up looking for.

By the time we all sat down at her hammered-copper dining room table, the color had returned to her face and she'd helped herself to a gla.s.s of white wine and brought the bottle to the table with her.

Bubba had called dibs on both legs and a wing, so the rest of us ate white meat, politely pa.s.sed around the bowls of green beans and spuds, and b.u.t.tered our rolls with pinkies extended.

"So," I said over the volume of Bubba's teeth tearing a Hyundai's worth of meat off the bone, "I hear you're short a part-time secretary, Doctor."

She took a sip of wine. "Unfortunate, yes." She took a miserly bite of turkey and then another sip of wine.

"Police talk to you?" Angie asked.

She nodded. "I understand they got my name from you."

"Did you tell them anything?"

"I told them Miles was a valued employee, but I knew little of his private life."

"Uh-huh," Angie said, and drank some of the beer she'd poured into one of Diane Bourne's wine goblets. "Did you mention the phone call Lovell placed to you about an hour before he was attacked?"

Diane Bourne didn't miss a beat. She smiled around her winegla.s.s, took a delicate sip. "No, I'm afraid that slipped my mind."

Bubba poured a gallon of gravy over his plate, added half a shaker of salt, and said, "You're a drunk."

Diane Bourne's pale face turned the color of a cue ball. "What did you just say?"

Bubba used his fork to point at her wine bottle. "You're a drunk. Sister, you're taking tiny sips, but you're taking a lot of them."

"I'm nervous."

Bubba gave her the grin of one shark to another. "Right, sister. Right. You're a drunk. I can see it in you." He took a pull from his Absolut bottle, looked at me. "Lock her in a room, buddy. Thirty-six hours tops, she'll be screaming for it. She'd blow an orangutan, he'd give her a drink."

I watched Diane Bourne while Bubba spoke. The videoca.s.sette hadn't rattled her. Our knowledge of the phone call hadn't rattled her. Even our being here, in her home, hadn't shocked her too much. But Bubba's words sent tremors up her fine throat, tiny spasms through her fingers.

"Don't worry," Bubba said, his eyes on his food, fork and knife hovering above the mess like hawks about to descend, "I respect a woman likes to drink. Kinda respect that nympho-lesbian action you got going on the tape, too."

Bubba dove back into his food, and for a few moments the only sounds in that room came from his shoveling and snarfing.

"About the videotape," I said.

Diane Bourne tore her eyes away from Bubba and gulped the rest of her wine. She poured another half goblet, looked at me as a brazen pride swept over the unsettlement Bubba had placed there.

"Are you angry with me, Patrick?"

"No."

She took another meager bite of turkey. "But I thought Karen Nichols's death was a personal crusade for you, Patrick."

I smiled. "Cla.s.sic interrogation technique, Diane. Kudos."

"Which?" All wide-eyed innocence.

"Using the subject's first name as much as possible. Unnerves him, supposedly, forces intimacy."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not."

"Ah, well, maybe not, but-"

"Doctor," Angie said, "you're f.u.c.king both Karen Nichols and Miles Lovell on that tape. Care to explain?"

She turned her head, locked Angie in her calm gaze. "Did it turn you on, Angie?"

"Not particularly, Diane."

"Did it repulse you?"

"Not particularly, Diane."

Bubba looked up from his second turkey leg. "I got major wood, though, sister. Keep it in mind."

She ignored him, though another of those tremors found her throat for a moment. "Come, Angie, no latent desires to experiment s.e.xually with another woman?"

Angie drank some beer. "If I did, Doctor, I'd pick a woman with a better body. Call me shallow."

"Yeah," Bubba said, "you need to get some meat on those bones, Doc."

Diane Bourne turned her eyes on me again, but they were less calm, less certain. "You, Patrick, did you enjoy watching?"

"Two girls and a guy?"

She nodded.

I shrugged. "It was a lighting issue, really. I like my p.o.r.n with higher production values, to tell the truth."

"Plus the hairy a.s.s factor," Bubba reminded me.

"Good point, Ebert." I smiled at Diane Bourne. "Lovell had a hairy a.s.s. We don't be digging hairy a.s.ses. Doctor, who shot that video?"

She drank some more wine. In the face of her probes into our psyches, we'd grown more glib. One of us she might have been able to make progress with, but all three of us together could outglib the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Neil Simon combined.