High Noon

thunderstorms in the night—she’d heard them both. The stones in the courtyard were still wet from the rain that had pounded down in those quick and violent intervals. There was a haze in the air, the pretty kind that would burn off within an hour or two and leave everything sparkling.
    She sipped her coffee and watched drops of water drip, drip from the burgundy leaves of the little weeping peach Ava had planted the year before.
    She heard Carter’s feet on the path to the gate, and was opening the heavy cast iron before he reached it.
    His hair was sleep-tossed, his eyes still heavy. He wore sweats and a Savannah U T-shirt with a pair of ancient running shoes. A knight in the shiniest of armor couldn’t have looked better to her.
    He scowled, grabbed the coffee. “Where’s the damn body?” he demanded.
    “In the trash can.”
    He choked on his first swallow of coffee. “What?”
    “That one there.” She pointed, keeping her distance.
    “You kill somebody, Phoebs? Want me to help you bury him out here in Ava’s garden?”
    She just pointed again. With a shrug, he yanked off the lid. The coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug as he jolted, and that gave her some satisfaction. But then he just reached right in, even as she gargled out a sound of disgust, and pulled the dead snake out.
    “Cool.”
    “Oh please, do you have to—” She yelped, pinwheeled back as he turned, grinning, to wag the snake at her. “Stop that! Damn it, Carter.”
    “Irresistible. Damn big guy to come sliding down Jones Street and into Ava’s garden.”
    “I didn’t find it in the garden. Would you stop playing with that thing? I found it on the front steps, already dead.”
    “Huh.” He turned the snake’s head around as if to converse with it. “What were doing there, big guy?”
    “I thought maybe a cat killed it. There was a dead rat in the courtyard not long ago. A cat…But it’s so damn big, I started thinking that it might be hard for a cat to take on a snake that big. Or maybe not. But why the hell would this damn cat be leaving dead things around the house? So then I thought—”
    “Only way a cat killed this big boy is if the cat could swing a two-by-four.” He wiggled the head of the snake at Phoebe. “Cat might chew it up some, but it sure couldn’t crush the head flat as a pancake.”
    “Yeah.” She let out a breath. “Yeah, I thought it might be more something like that.” She kicked at the box she’d brought out. “Would you please put that ugly dead thing in there, then back in the can? And don’t you touch me or anything until you wash your hands.”
    He dumped it into the box. “You said you found it on the steps out front?”
    “Yeah.” He wasn’t grinning now. A little more satisfaction, she decided. “I got home about eleven last night, and—”
    “From where?”
    “I was on a date, if you have to know everything.”
    “With the lottery guy.”
    “His name is Duncan, and yes. In any case, that thing was draped right over the steps. Which means someone put it there.”
    “Some dumbass kid.”
    “Johnnie, you know Johnnie Porter around the corner? He’s top of my list for that.”
    “You want me to talk to him?”
    “No, I’ll do that. I couldn’t bring myself to go into that can and look at the damn thing again up close.”
    “That’s what brothers are for.” He dumped the box, closed the lid, then turned to her with evil in his smile. “Poor little Phoebe.”
    “Don’t you dare touch me with your dead-snake hands. I mean it.”
    “I just want to pat my sister, to give her comfort in her time of—”
    “You put one finger on me, your balls’ll be tickling your tonsils.” Defensively, she put up her dukes. “You know I can take you.”
    “Haven’t put that to the test for a while. I’ve been working out.”
    “Oh, come in and wash up. You get points for riding to the rescue, and at this hour.”
    She led the way in, then leaned on the counter while he washed his hands at the sink. “Carter, there’s this other possibility running in my brain. The one where it wasn’t some dumbass kid like Johnnie Porter around the corner.”
    He glanced at her. “You’re thinking asshole instead of dumbass.”
    “That’s right. Just nasty pranks, nothing life-threatening, but still…And there was this other nasty business,” she said, thinking of the doll. “I’ll be talking to Johnnie, but I’ve got this…uncomfortable sensation, we’ll call it. So I was