Angels Fall

bathroom?" Joanie popped up, went to have a look. "I don't see anything written in here."
    "Brody painted over it. I didn't put my hiking boots in the kitchen cupboard or my flashlight in the refrigerator. I didn't do those things, but they happened all the same."
    "Look at me. Look me in the face here." When Reece did, Joanie studied her face, her eyes. "Have you been taking drugs? Doctor-prescribed or otherwise?"
    "No, nothing but the herb tea Doc made up for me. And Tylenol. But all my security blanket meds ended up poured into my mortar."
    "Why would anyone do that? Or any of the rest?"
    "To make me think I'm crazy. To make me crazy, which doesn't take much of a push. Because I saw what I saw, but it's easy to dismiss a crazy woman."
    "They found a body—"
    "Wasn't her," Reece interrupted, and her voice began to rise and pitch. "Wasn't the same. It wasn't her, and—"
    "Stop that." Joanie's voice snapped out like a slap. "I'm not talking to you unless you calm down."
    "You try it, you try to be calm when someone's doing things to you. You stay rational when you just don't know what might happen next. Or when. My clothes are ruined. I barely had enough left till payday to wash them; now they're ruined."
    "You can run a tab at Mac's, or I'll give you an advance if you need to replace some things."
    "That's not the point."
    "Nope. But it's better than a stick in the eye. How long has this been going on?"
    "Little things since… almost since I got back from seeing that woman killed. I don't know what to do."
    "You ought to be talking to the sheriff."
    "Why?" Reece dragged her hands through her hair, just fisted them in it. "You think that pile of garbage in my trunk has fingerprints on it?"
    "All the same, Reece."

    "Yes." On a sigh, she lowered her hands to scrub them over her face. "Yes, I'll tell the sheriff."
    "Fine. For right now, you'd better go through those clothes, see what you can salvage and hang them up to dry. You need a new shirt or underwear, you can get it at Mac's on your break. You've got about five minutes before your shift."
    Joanie stubbed out the cigarette. She rose and dug a twenty out of her pocket. "For painting the bathroom."
    "I didn't. Brody did."
    "Then give it to Brody, you want to be a dumbass."
    Pride warred with practicality, and practicality had more muscle. "Thanks."
    "Brody knows about all this?"
    '"Yes, except for what happened today, yes."
    "Do you want to call him before you come down to work?"
    "No. I seem to be getting in his way."
    Joanie snorted. "Men have their uses, but unless you're under one having an orgasm, it's hard to see what else they've got to offer. Pull yourself together and come on down. Prime rib's the special tonight." Reece stirred herself, poked at the basket with her foot. "Prime rib of what?"
    "Buffalo," Joanie said with a thin smile. "Maybe you got a way to fancy that up."
    "As a matter of fact…"
    "Then get your ass down there and do it. I've only got two hands."

    BRODY CONSIDERED tossing a frozen pizza in the oven and thought of chicken and dumplings. She'd done that on purpose, he decided. Thrown that at him so he wouldn't be able to think of anything but her—of it, he corrected.
    He'd just wanted her to back up. Isn't that exactly what he'd said? But she overreacted, as women always did.
    A man was entitled to a little breathing room in his own house, wasn't he? A little solitude without a woman fussing all around him.
    He was entitled to frozen pizza if he wanted it. It just so happened he didn't. He wanted a good, hot meal. And he knew where to get one.
    He'd eaten at Angel Food before she came along, Brody thought as he went out to his car. He wasn't  headed there because she was there. That was just circumstance. And if she wanted to keep her nose up in the air, that was her business. All he wanted was a decent meal at a reasonable price. But when he pulled up at Joanie's, Joanie herself came out.
    "I was just coming over to see you," she said.
    "About what? Reece is—"
    "Yeah, Reece is." And in that instant concern, she saw what she'd expected. The guy was gone. "Take a walk with me. I got ten minutes."
    She told him quickly, overriding his interruptions, rolling over his temper. "Said she'd call the sheriff, but she hasn't. Not yet. Handles herself once she gets her balance back. That was a nasty bit of business, that garbage in her trunk. I don't like nasty."
    "It's all been nasty. I need to talk to her now."
    "She can have ten, if she