Free 1 Bless Her Dead Little Heart by Miranda James Page B

prepared to her uncle and then returned to the cart to pour her own.
    “This is just what we need.” The young woman smiled at An’gel. “We’re all still in a state of shock over this terrible accident.” She cut her eyes toward Benjy, still engrossed in stroking Diesel.
    The young man seemed oblivious to what was going on around him, An’gel thought. She felt sorry for him. She wondered whether anyone besides Dickce had made any effort to comfort him over the death of his mother.
    Dickce poured coffee and added a couple of spoons of sugar, then enough half-and-half to turn the brew light brown. “Here, Benjy, you should drink this.” She held the cup out to the young man, and he stared up at her.
    An’gel wondered whether he had taken in what Dickce said. He nodded and accepted the cup. Diesel stuck his nose near the coffee, and Benjy smiled briefly. “I don’t think this would be good for you, kitty.” He sipped while the cat watched closely.
    An’gel and Dickce took their own cups and stepped away from the window toward the inside corner of the front wall.
    “Has anyone been talking?” An’gel asked.
    Dickce shook her head. “Not at all. It seems strange to me, but maybe having the deputy in here with them has put them off.” She nodded in the direction of the young man at the door.
    “Clementine is making another pot of coffee,” An’gel said. “I’ll go back in a moment to see if it’s ready.” She drained her cup.
    Kanesha Berry strode into the room. All heads swung in her direction, and An’gel tensed as the deputy prepared to speak.
    “Folks, my name is Kanesha Berry, and I’m the chief deputy in the Athena County Sheriff’s Department. I’ll be in charge of the investigation, and I’m going to need to ask you all some questions. I hope you’ll bear with me, because this is going to take some time. I know you are all distressed by what has happened, and I’m sorry for your loss.” She paused a moment to glance around the room. “I must inform you, also, that we are treating this as a suspicious death.”
    Wade rose from his chair behind the desk, the shock evident on his face. An’gel feared that he would faint, the way he was swaying on his feet. “Suspicious? Do you mean you think this was deliberate and not an accident?”
    “That’s what we have to determine, sir,” Kanesha replied.
    “If it wasn’t an accident,” Junior said, his expression thoughtful, “then that means one of us is a murderer.”
    An’gel was startled by a shriek. She turned in time to see Maudine topple off the sofa in a dead faint.

CHAPTER 10
    J unior scrambled out of his chair to kneel by his mother. Maudine lay on her right side, moaning.
    An’gel noted with relief that Maudine somehow managed to miss the low table with the Sèvres vase in front of the sofa. The vase was a souvenir of her grandmother’s honeymoon in Europe in 1900. Then she felt a bit ashamed of herself for worrying more about the vase than about Maudine—although she suspected Maudine of deliberately staging the incident. She
was
Rosabelle’s daughter, after all.
    “Mother, are you okay?” Junior grabbed his mother’s left arm and began chafing her wrist.
    As An’gel watched, Maudine’s eyelids fluttered, and she moaned yet again. Her eyes opened and focused on her son’s face. “What happened?”
    Juanita appeared beside Maudine’s head. “You fainted, Aunt Maud. Come now, Junior and I will help you up, and you can sit on the sofa while someone brings you water.”
    Kanesha’s young subordinate, whose name An’gel still didn’t know, responded to a signal from the chief deputy and came forward to assist. Juanita smiled and stood back. The deputy slipped his hands under Maudine’s right shoulder while Junior pulled his mother into a sitting position on the floor.
    Taking the hint about the water, An’gel started toward the door, but Dickce darted out ahead of her. An’gel turned back in time to see Junior and