Dead Secret

smiled, but his eyes still looked worried. Diane left feeling sorry for him.
    “He’ll be all right,” said Frank as they reached the elevator.
    “I know. It’s just that . . . that I’m beginning to feel like some kind of bad-luck charm to everyone around me.”
    The elevator doors opened and they stepped in. Frank put an arm around Diane’s shoulders and pulled her to him. “I know, but that’s not how it is. If Mike thought you were such bad luck, he wouldn’t still be interested in you.”
    “He isn’t, really. It’s become sort of a game.”
    “Oh, he’s interested.”
    “You enjoyed yourself inviting Neva to stay at your house, didn’t you?”
    “I am genuinely concerned about her.” Frank grinned. “Playing with Mike’s head was just a bonus.”
    They walked out to the parking lot. As Frank started the engine and put his car in gear, Diane laid a hand on his arm. “Do we have time to run by Neva’s? It’s on the way.”
    “Sure. What’s her address?”

    Neva lived on a dead-end street in a neighborhood that was a combination of blue-collar and student housing. Two police cars were parked in front of her white frame house. Across the street a small crowd had formed. Half of them looked like students. Diane got out of the car and scanned the faces. A young woman, stout and squarely built, dressed in cutoffs and a tank top, yelled from the crowd.
    “My house was robbed and I can’t get the police to even come and take my statement. One of their own gets robbed and you’d think it was the president’s house.”
    Diane heard a couple of people shout their approval and someone else tell her to shut the fuck up. Frank and Diane ignored them and walked up to the porch.
    “Neva,” she called.
    Neva came to the door. “They’ve done the porch and front entry. David’s processed a walkway though the house. You can come in.”
    Diane had been in Neva’s house several times, picking her up to go caving. Neva liked to call her decor “early attic.” Her furniture was a combination of hand-me-downs from her parents and inexpensive furniture from Wal-Mart and secondhand stores. Nonetheless, it had a style to it. Neva had an artist’s eye for decorating. It shocked Diane to see it now.
    The sofa and stuffed chairs were slashed and the filling pulled out. Everything had been sprayed with a swath of black paint. All the chairs were overturned. On the wall over her sofa the words stupid fucking bitch were painted in red and black paint. The sentiment was repeated in the bedroom, where her mattress and pillows were also slashed.
    “They did a number, didn’t they?” said Neva, surveying the ruins of her home. “Whoever it was spray-painted my clothes in the closets and drawers. I must have really pissed somebody off.” She blew her nose with a Kleenex and dried her eyes with another.
    The glass shelves that used to stand against the wall were shattered. Among the shards of glass, Neva’s collection of polymer clay animals that she sculpted were lying in fragments.
    David came in from the kitchen and stood beside her. “Notice anything funny about the glass shelves?”
    Diane knelt and looked at the broken glass. Frank stared over her shoulder. She glanced at the overturned frame that once held the shelves and back at the pattern of broken shards.
    “Whoever it was took the shelves apart, laid them on the floor, and stepped on them.”
    David nodded. “That’s what it looks like. The police can’t find anyone who heard anything. From the look of the place, you’d think all her neighbors were stone-deaf. But if you look closer at everything he or she did, you’ll see that the perp was quiet, deliberately going from room to room breaking things without making much noise.”
    A chill went up Diane’s spine.

    The ride to the airport was unexpectedly calming. Diane hated Atlanta traffic, even as a passenger. It was either moving really fast en masse, or at a dead standstill waiting for a wreck to be cleared. It was fast and crowded today, but sitting talking to Frank in the confines of his car was a comfort.
    “It will probably be easier than you think to get this mess with your mother sorted out,” said Frank. “I’ll do what I can from this end. I have some contacts in Alabama, and I’ll ask them to take a look at their files.”
    “I really do appreciate this, Frank. I’m glad you know about this kind of stuff.”
    He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Me too,” he