LITMIR.BIZ

      III

      THE NEW ROSEMONT Retirement Hotel’s residents had picked through the Beaumont Journal’s front-page columns or watched Channel 4’s Evening Report—and spread the big story to others who hadn’t. Miss Delpha Wade, up in Room 221 at the top of the stairs, had killed a man in self-defense, and according to an astonishing paragraph farther down in the article, not her first. Why, when she’d walked into their lobby last spring, she had been fresh out of Gatesville Women’s Prison! There were dire looks and looks askance, clucking and jaws sagging below coffee-stained dentures.

      Delpha had avoided putting any of them on the spot. For the last ten days, if it wasn’t raining, she’d carried her coffee outside in the mornings and sat in the open air watching the downtown pass by. Last two of those days, she’d worn a skirt and blouse suitable for office work.

      Now her coffee was churning in her stomach, a mouthful gurgling back up into her throat, and again, she was dressed. The sky was lowering by the minute, a wood-handled black umbrella leaning against her hip.

      Droplets splashed her hair. Delpha cast an upward glance at the big, running clouds, purple along their bottom edges, then she stood and forced the umbrella to open its black vault.

      Phelan stared out the window at the rain, then at legs under an umbrella, crossing the street with less speed than might seem natural for such ugly weather. Walking deliberately in black flats. Wet black flats.

      Tropical Storm Celia was now whamming into Freemont for the second time, having hit land two days ago, sucked herself back out over the Gulf to do a HaHa U-Turn and then gathered her waters and her winds to boil into the same coastline. Beaumont was picking up the overflow wind and rain.

      When Phelan heard the steps on the stairs, not fast, not slow, he sat down in the boss chair. Then he stood up again. Ran a hand through his getting-long hair.

      Miss Wade came through the door of Phelan Investigations and stopped mid-stride. Her head swiveled as she surveyed the Apollo White walls.

      His neck warming up, Phelan surveyed her.

      The crease at the left side of her lips seemed etched a cut deeper. Her weight had fallen off some. Less than the 120 lbs. on her discharge paper from Gatesville Prison. Still five foot six. Still the gray-blue eyes, but something farther in their gaze. Not tough to figure. Jailhouse tan, long gone: there was sun on her cheekbones and in strands of her ash-brown hair. Miss Wade had been taking in the parade of downtown life from the New Rosemont Retirement Hotel’s outside chairs. He’d studied her from his window, being as the Rosemont was just across the street, wondered what was healing or not in her mind and in her body. Wondered did Phelan Investigations or its proprietor figure in anywhere.

      There was more than sun on her cheekbones now—there was deep pink embarrassment. She closed the door behind her, saying, “I shoulda called, but I decided to speak up face to face, so whatever way this went, I could tell you in person that I am grateful that you hired me and sorry you and your new business got pulled into such a dirty mess.”

      Phelan felt like he’d swallowed a bowl of concrete chili. The heat from his neck was lapping at his ears.

      She wasn’t coming back.

      “I got you into the mess, or Phelan Investigations did, and that’s the same thing. You know that’s the truth.”

      “Neither one of us to blame for that man, Mr. Phelan.” This judgment sounded settled.

      Phelan cleared his throat and went for it. “You well enough to come back to work?”

      They looked past each other, him to her mid-section, where a pale blue blouse tucked into a swirly skirt he’d seen on many days. She was glancing sideward toward the new furnishings. The pink on her cheeks spread down to her jaw.

      “Is there any work, Mr. Phelan?”

      “Matter of fact. We got a ten o’clock today.” He’d said that with a shitload of relief. Shoulda just sounded businesslike. And…we, he’d said we. “The gentleman who called you up before…well, before.”

      “The one wanted to be invisible? Yeah. I ’member.” She turned directly to the two-piece sectional and broke out a finer smile than people usually give to used furniture. “Where’d the plaid couch go? What’d you do to the urp-green walls with the scratched and chipped-off patches?”

      Phelan shrugged self-consciously. “Spiffing up our business image.”

      “I see that.”

      “Tax deductible, right?”

      “Right.” Her chin lowered. She scrutinized the fat-pillow couch. “That blue’s a nice color. But, you know, it could be two chairs, you pushed it apart. People might not want to sit right smack next to each other. And if we put a coffee table—”

      We. He exhaled.

      She looked down, shifted one black flat to the other.

      Hooked her hair behind an ear. “Guess we could start using first names now, Mr. Phelan, if you want. Being as there’s water under the bridge. Being as you’re keeping me on after what happened. Lotta people wouldn’t—”

      “If I’d a been down here like I should’ve been…” Phelan shoved his hands in his pockets, addressed his gaze to the floor. “…that good deed you did wouldn’t have fallen to you.”

      “That’s not how those people work, Mr. Phelan. Tom. You were here, he wouldna tried nothing. Still be out there.” A shudder crawled through her shoulders. Delpha turned and placed her umbrella in the coat closet. She went over and sat down at her desk. There she repositioned the Selectric an inch, pulled out the tray drawer and stirred the pencils. She opened her middle side-drawer and set a new manila file folder onto her desk, hovered a pen over its tab.

      “What’s the ten o’clock appointment’s name?”