“Did you have a conversation with Jack Burns?”

“Not what you would call a conversation,” Angel said dryly. “He looked kind of taken aback when he saw it was my car, but then it was like he figured if I lived out here in Roe’s garage apartment, giving me a ticket was almost as good as giving her one. And he was right, I probably was seven inches from the curb instead of six. But I wasn’t in a good mood.”

This had been a real speech for Angel, who did not tend to be chatty. But Padgett Lanier wanted more.

“So you had words?” he prodded her.

Angel sighed. “I asked him why he was giving me a ticket and he told me I was parked too far from the curb, and he asked me how Roe was doing, had she found any more bodies lately, and I told him he was giving me a bullshit ticket, and he said he was sure there was some ordinance still on the books about public bad language, and did I want to see if I could karate-chop my way out of a jail cell.”

Lanier stared at her, fascinated. “And what did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t respond?”

“No point to it. He’d decided he was going to give me the ticket.”

Lanier seemed nonplused. He eyed Angel a moment or two longer, then asked Martin if he’d seen Jack Burns lately.

“The last time I saw Jack Burns was two years ago, about the time I met my wife,” Martin said calmly. His fingers dug into the tight muscles of my neck and I tilted my head back.

“And you, Mr. Youngblood?”

“Hadn’t ever met him.”

“You weren’t mad about your wife getting a ticket?”

“If you park seven inches from the curb, you gotta take what’s coming to you.”

Padgett Lanier’s pale face had a tendency to flush easily. We watched now with some trepidation as he turned a tomato red. The sheriff dismissed us curtly, and turned his attention to the search his men were making in our yard. I wanted to beg them not to trample my poor little just-plowed garden: but I decided that would be unfeeling.