The Shop by J. Carson Black Read Free Book Online Page B

react to taking showers, because then she’d really be in trouble.
    After spending an hour Googling panic attacks and water phobias, she came to a conclusion. Panic attacks, it appeared, were tricks. Something unknown triggered the fight-or-flight reaction, and the body reacted, fooling a person into thinking he was in mortal danger. So the next time it happened, she would tell herself, calmly, that she wasn’t in danger.
    Mind over matter.
    Right now she had two choices. She could sit here frozen in fear. Or she could work the case.
    The case seemed to be wrapping up in a satisfactory way. Maddy’s confession had sealed it.
    But there were still things about the case that didn’t add up. Amy Perdue, for instance. Amy was Maddy’s employee—she worked at one of the apartment buildings Maddy owned. And Jolie was about eighty percent certain that Amy knew of Maddy’s cover-up of her husband’s suicide. That could be the reason for Amy’s fearful behavior in Bizzy’s parking lot, and the reason she’d driven to Maddy’s house at seven in the morning on the day Maddy’s husband died.
    But Amy Perdue was also Luke Perdue’s sister.
    Luke died in room nine. Chief Jim Akers died in room nine.
    For the first time, she wondered if she’d got it right. The coincidences piled up, yes, but all of them led to the same place. They led to a case solved. They led to a solid confession.
    But why did she feel as if she were missing something?
    Jolie went over the facts of the case in her mind. They seemed solid. But…
    She needed to make sure.
    It was time to talk to Amy.

14
    First thing you saw when you reached the outskirts of Gardenia was the pulp mill, which looked like a giant scorched shuttlecock. Beyond the pulp mill was a labyrinth of gray buildings and industrial pipes. Sometime in the late nineteenth century, the sign “Iolanthe Paper Company” had been affixed to a trestle above the main building. The sign, lit by two dim lamps from above, featured a beauty with long flowing hair and tiny wings—Iolanthe, Queen of the Fairies.
    Iolanthe was Big Paper in the Land of Big Paper. Jolie’s family, the Haddoxes, sold out in the early seventies, laying the groundwork for two Haddox senators and a plum cabinet job, culminating in regular visits by the vice president.
    Hard to be unmoved by such grandeur, but Jolie managed to keep a sense of perspective.
    The Royal Court Apartments weren’t royal at all, but just a regular stucco rectangle two stories high. Cramped little balconies fronted sliding glass doors.
    Jolie didn’t turn in the first time, but drove around the block and came back up the side street. On that first pass, she spotted a car parked alongside the outer wall of the apartments next to the office. A 1960s-era convertible. Cherry red, cherry condition. The writing on the trunk said Ford Starliner . A U-Haul truck was parked nose-out from the apartment closest to the office.
    The sky was baleful red, the last light of day. As Jolie drove in from the right side of the parking lot, a wind blew in all the way from the Gulf, hot and pregnant with rain and dust, foul-smelling from the paper mill. An ill wind, rattling the tall palms out front like sabers. It buffeted the car as she slowed. The door to the office was wide open, and the wind caught angry voices and kited them into the ether.
    A dark shape materialized in the doorway. As Jolie watched, it bent into a lurching run toward the U-Haul—a tall man, awkward running style, one arm folded across the other.
    Hurt.
    Young.
    He could have been hit, knifed, or shot. She would assume whoever was inside had a gun, or a knife, or both.
    Jolie stopped the car on a diagonal partway between the office and the U-Haul. Got out, crab-walked her way around the open door, and crouched behind the engine block. From there she could see both the office doorway and the U-Haul.
    Glad she’d thought to wear her vest.
    Another gust of wind and the office door blew shut. The