Quiet Dell A Novel by Jayne Anne Phillips

Author:Jayne Anne Phillips
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Retail, Suspense, Thriller, Fiction
ISBN: 9781439172537
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

“Eric, we must go in. I’ve something to say to them.”

“Emily, I ask you to humor me. Stand well back from these women. Agreed?” They got out of the roadster, Emily with her notebook and a copy of the Tribune, Eric with his camera.

A sunburned, sweaty boy, his chambray shirt hanging open, his dark hair in his eyes, stood squinting at the roadster. “That your car, mister?”

Eric locked the car and addressed the boy. “It is my car, sir, and I shall pay you a quarter to watch it for me, standing just there.”

“I’ll watch it, mister,” the boy said.

Eric took Emily’s arm, and crossed the street with her. They ascended steps to the sidewalk and began walking to the entrance. Emily half expected Eric to open the door with his handkerchief, but it wasn’t necessary. Another reporter, exiting, held it open for them.

The inside was dim, for there were no windows but the two in front. The room, with its three rows of partially stocked shelves, smelled of sawdust, and the counter was to the right. A few reporters stood interviewing the sisters. The cash register, once ornate, was tarnished black. A tall thin woman, evidently Eva Belle Strother, stood behind the bare wooden counter and smoothed a newspaper that lay open before her. She was sallow, rigidly upright, her gray hair pulled back in a tight knot. Her long apron seemed an accessory.

“All I know is that we are thankful we are here,” she was saying. She looked down at the newsprint, posing for photographs while reading the story of her narrow escape.

“Miss Strother,” a reporter called out, “there’s a rumor, now that your sister has been held and questioned, that you are leaving town. Any truth to that story?”

Eva Belle shrugged and looked up. “Why should we leave?” she said, defiant. “We own this property, not Powers.”

She was colorless, ironfisted. She had not signed Powers’ document, or even considered doing so.

Luella Powers sat in a chair to her sister’s right, partially hidden behind the counter. Her hair was reddish, badly dyed; she wore rimless glasses, had a weak chin, and pursed her lips like a mole peering at daylight.

Reporters, one after the other, directed questions at her.

“Mrs. Powers, you first told the Exponent that you have known Harry Powers for decades, that your mother and his father were friends years ago. In fact, you met him through a matrimonial bureau, didn’t you, and married him in 1927, in Oakland, Maryland.”

“We have nothing to say,” Eva Belle Strother remarked.

That number again, Emily thought. Had Powers hypnotized Luella? He’d affected bedraggled captivity at the jail, but his blue eyes could seem almost mesmerizing. Their focus was searing.

“You told police he had visited Chicago three different times,” a reporter said, “and then that Chicago was merely halfway to his former home in Cedar Rapids. What is the address of his former home?”

“What about his frequent trips from home, Mrs. Powers? Did you never question his long absences?”

Luella sat upright for a moment and declared, “I was never afraid to trust him.

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