Grim Tidings by Caitlin Kittredge Page B

her lockbox the way some women carried small dogs. “Gonna be some housewife looking for her husband and I ain’t going to be screamed at because she can’t keep his fat ass at home.”
    I padded into the kitchen and picked up on the tenth or so ring. “Kate’s.”
    â€œPhyllis?” The voice was clipped and male, and I instantly went on guard. It wasn’t unheard-of for creeps to find Kathleen’s number once they’d moved on and become a pain in the ass, calling at all hours. “Phyllis Dietrich?” he said. “Is that who I’m speaking to?”
    â€œI’m sorry, who am I speaking to?” I said in my best vapid tone,
    which wasn’t all that hard with four glasses of gin warming the embers in my belly.
    â€œI’m a friend of Lady Williams,” the man said. “I’m sorry to report there’s been an accident and you’re listed as next of kin.”
    Lady. Sweet, round, blond Lady, who’d laugh at the dumbest joke the thickest john could pull out of his hat and make you laugh too, because she was just the type of nice girl who made you want to be nice back.
    â€œIs she dead?” I said, and the caller paused for a second. We both held our breath.
    â€œShe’s in bad shape,” the caller said, his voice softening in response to mine going hard. “I’d get here fast, Mrs. Dietrich.”
    â€œMiss,” I said. “It’s Miss. Where are you?”
    Lady had been driving down to Texas to see her family for the week—her dad was doing poorly, and her brother had wrapped his sedan around a tree, and they needed somebody around with a set of wheels.
    â€œHarper, Kansas,” the caller said. “We’re a little speck off SR 14.”
    I leaned my forehead against Kathleen’s mildewed kitchen wallpaper, pressing into the center of a purple cabbage rose. Lady hadn’t even made it out of the state. “Are you her doctor?” I said.
    â€œHarper, Kansas,” the caller repeated. “You should come.”
    I didn’t bother asking Kathleen if I could borrow her car. She’d just grunt obscenities at me. In a strange way, it felt good to know that the skills I’d acquired before I slipped into this life hadn’t totally abandoned me. I managed to get the old Packard running in two tries and eased out onto the snowy highway. It was a little before dawn, but the sky was still all dark except for a line of flame at the horizon.
    My cash lasted me to Harper, but after two fill-ups and a steak-and-eggs special at a diner that seemed to be constructed mostly of grease and stale toast, I only had change jingling in my purse by the time I pulled in to the hospital.
    A charge nurse directed me down the hall to a quiet room. The curtain was pulled, and I stood in front of it, unwilling to pull it back. Lady and I were friends, but I wasn’t exactly sit-at-your-bedside-during-your-last-moments close to her.
    The curtain whipped back of its own accord, and another nurse, not much more than a kid, popped her head back in surprise. “This is a private room,” she snapped. “Who are you?”
    â€œI’m her sister,” I said reflexively, the lie we used to visit each other in the hospital, jail, wherever Kate’s girls might end up where they needed a fake family.
    The nurse darted her eyes from my slender, dark-haired, five-foot-nothing frame to Lady’s blond hair and curves that went on for days. “Right,” she said.
    I should have kept lying, but the sight of Lady stopped me. Her hair was about all I recognized—her face was wrapped in gauze, both of her arms as well. The wounds underneath were bleeding through, little half-moons all over the field of cotton. The pungent, sticky smell of iodine wafted into my nose and I choked.
    The nurse, fortunately, softened at my silence. “Five minutes, all right? The doctor won’t be around for ten