The Blue Death by Joan Brady

Author:Joan Brady [Brady, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849839044
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The shock of it made her face tingle. She put the postcard back at once, shut the book, stared at it a moment, opened it again, took out the card, slipped it into her pocket. Then she started a systematic search, every paper, every drawer, every cupboard. When she was finished, she took a towel from the kitchen and wiped every surface in the house. It was evening by the time she dialled the Springfield Police station.

‘I want to report a missing person,’ she said.

32

SPRINGFIELD: The same time

That single night of rest and fluids in Memorial Hospital was all it had taken to get Becky back in her own bed, propped up on pillows. She loved her bedroom. The floor was inlaid wood, plantation shutters on the windows, as little cloth as possible because of her many allergies. But photographs and books covered the walls and made the simplicity rich and warm. She could look around and see the Atlanta of her childhood, her son Hugh growing up in Springfield, the Old Capitol in stages of the reconstruction that her own Springfield Arts Society had organized and overseen.

She held a clipboard in front of her; she’d spent the last hour on ideas for cartoons ridiculing Jimmy, his five-volume contract and his army of professional canvassers. Springfield’s artists supported the Coalition. They’d been wonderfully helpful with the protests against the Council vote, and many had volunteered for the campaign to overturn it – a cartoonist among them.

She was so absorbed that she heard the knock only when it came a second time. ‘I’m busy, Lillian,’ she said through the shut door.

‘It’s Mr Mayor Jimmy Zemanski and another gentleman,’ Lillian called back.

‘I’m in bed.’

‘I told him. He says he don’t mind.’

‘It’s not his affair to mind or not mind. What’s he want?’

‘Miz Freyl, he says you done sent for him. You want me to tell him you ain’t seeing nobody yet?’

Becky pursed her lips. She hadn’t sent for him. She was moving her legal affairs to Carrick & Kessler. Not that she’d told Jimmy. The referendum made dealing with Herndon Freyl & Zemanski seriously embarrassing, but it had only brought things to a head. A mayor must learn to delegate his professional commitments. Delays with her will had indicated an inability to do so. The first draft had demonstrated it. Her name was Rebecca Marianne Hogg Freyl, definitely not Rebecca Marilyn Freyl; there’d also been irritating punctuation errors. Which meant he couldn’t juggle the demands on him. He’d apologized abjectly – for the delay as well as the errors – and yet a week had gone by with no sign of the revision.

On the other hand, the ‘incident’ at the Auction of Promises emphasized the need to ensure that David could not benefit from Helen’s inheritance. Becky needed a signed document on record quickly, and instructing a new lawyer is a lengthy process; she could always amend the will later. She’d just decided to admit Jimmy – get the job over and done with – when he burst past Lillian and into her bedroom.

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