Dead Over Heels by Charlaine Harris

talked about me?”
    “Yeah,” she said casually, slipping her hand through the plastic grips of the shopping bag. “He had a bee in his bonnet about you, Roe. Well, see ya later.” And she strode out, golden and tall and lean, and for the first time since I’d met her, radiantly happy.

Chapter Five
     

    W hen I came in to work the next morning, I was not feeling exactly cheerful. The discussion with Sam the day before had gone about as I’d expected it to go, Beverly stoutly denying she was difficult to work with, accusing me of many things, all but saying that had she had my education she would now have my job. That may have been true, but it was not the issue we were there to discuss. Even if I’d agreed with that assumption, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
    After an upsetting forty-five minutes, during which nothing had been settled and Sam’s hair had turned a little grayer right before my eyes, I’d gone to pick up Madeleine at the vet. They’d gotten the blood sample and sent it to a lab, Dr. Jamerson had told me with determined cheerfulness, and he expected to get a reply from the lab in a few days, maybe a week. I’d loaded Madeleine in my car with the strong feeling that the vet and his staff wouldn’t have minded a bit if the hypothetical drugger had used something stronger and more lethal, or perhaps tied that bow a little tighter.
    Somehow I’d expected Dr. Jamerson to have the answer ready right then—had Madeleine been drugged or had she not?—and not knowing had thrown me even further off course. As Madeleine yowled on the way home, I had found myself thinking of getting a dog, a medium-sized stupid one who was everyone’s friend. A mutt with brown rough hair and a black muzzle . . . but Jane Engle, who’d left me Madeleine and a heck of a lot of money, had somehow astral-projected her strongly disapproving face right into my consciousness.
    So I trudged into the library’s back door feeling dispirited. At least Angel had been out running this morning as I was driving in to town. She’d grinned and waved at me. A smiling Angel—and one with a bulging abdomen—was something I would have to get used to. I smoothed my own oversized orange T-shirt over my stomach; I was wearing orange leggings, too, and there was a big gold sun on the front of my tee. I was hoping the children would think it a cheerful outfit. I’d pulled my hair back with an orange-and-gold barrette, and I was wearing my gold-framed glasses. Just a blaze of color, that was me.
    “Who was that woman who came in to see you yesterday?” Perry asked, as I stowed my purse in my locker. He was using the microwave to make hot chocolate, which he drank regardless of the outside temperature; he had quite a sweet tooth, though by his leanness you wouldn’t have guessed it.
    Here I was, I thought wryly, glowing all over the place, and as usual, I was being asked about . . . my bodyguard.
    “Angel Youngblood.”
    “She’s not local.”
    “No. She’s from Florida.”
    “Married?”
    Well, well, well. “Very,” I said firmly. “And a black belt in karate, as is her husband.”
    Perry didn’t seem dismayed by this news. “She’s just stunning,” he said. “I could tell by the way she walks that she’s an athlete. And her coloring is so unusual.”
    “Yep, she’s gold,” I answered, burrowing in my locker for a tube of breath mints. I’d had this conversation with many men (and some women) about Angel. “I thought you were pretty tight with Jenny Tankersley?”
    “Oh, we’re dating,” Perry said casually, though his mother Sally had told me they were all but engaged.
    Jenny wouldn’t have been pleased to hear Perry dismiss her so cavalierly, from what I’d heard of her. She’d been married for a few years to a man who ran his own crop-dusting service, and when Jack Tankersley had made a fatal mistake regarding plane altitude one summer, Jenny had ended up selling the business and doing very well for