Too Black for Heaven Read Online Free Page B

silver pitcher filled with ice. Only a telltale twitching muscle in his jaw gave evidence that he knew she was in the room. Dona hurriedly pulled the sheet up to her chin.
    The bellboy’s deep voice was professionally impersonal. “I’m sorry if I startled you, Miss. I knocked and thought I heard you say ‘Come in.’”
    “I did,” Dona admitted, “but I wasn’t talking to you. I was just thinking out loud.”
    The bellboy repeated, “I’m sorry,” as he transferred the ice in the silver pitcher to the glass one on the dresser.
    “What’s your name?” Dona asked him.
    “Beau. Beau Jackson, Miss.”
    Their eyes met in the mirror and held. Then, still looking in the mirror, Beau glanced at the two bills on the night-stand.
    “Will there be anything else, Miss?”
    Dona spoke sharply. “Yes. Mail the letter on the dresser and hand me my purse.”
    Beau brought the purse to the bed, then returned to the dresser for the envelope containing Charles’ ring.
    Dona took a dollar bill from her purse. “This is for your trouble.”
    He took the bill and tucked it in the pocket of his jacket. “Thank you, Miss.” The muscle of his jaw continued to twitch. He stood by the bed a moment longer than was necessary, as if debating whether to say anything. Then he limped slowly to the door. “Thank you very much.”
    The sick feeling she’d known when Estrella first told her returned to Dona’s stomach. She hoped God would damn Blair Sterling for this thing he’d done to her.
    The glass dropped from her hand, the mixed bourbon and melted ice spreading out over the carpet. She lay face down on the bed and shook with sobs until she was exhausted.
    Sometime toward morning she slept.

Chapter Five
    T HE L OBBY of the Yazoo Hotel smelled sweet and clean. The freshly-mopped tiles gave it an illusion of coolness, but beyond the metal marquee extending over the sidewalk, the noonday sun was bubbling the tar between the red Augusta bricks with which the main streets of Blairville were paved.
    Dona stood a moment at the foot of the broad stairs, looking out into the heat. There were six or seven cars, her own included, parked in front of the hotel. Farther up the street, in front of a feed and implement store, there were two battered pick-up trucks. As she watched, four women carrying shopping bags or baskets walked by on the far side of the street. One of the women with three children paused to look in the windows of the Montgomery Ward retail store. In the green square of the courthouse lawn, the benches under the trees were sprinkled with gaunt faced men in blue shirts and dungarees or overalls, talking, whittling, spitting tobacco juice, or just sitting.
    Nothing could be more peaceful. As she passed the mirror on the door of the closed cocktail lounge on her way to the desk, she repinned a lock of hair that escaped its mooring. Last night had been a mistake. She’d been terribly tired. She’d driven too far, too fast. Jack Ames, getting drunk, it was all a bad dream.
    A deeply-tanned man, wearing a silver badge pinned to the breast pocket of his clean khaki shirt, was talking to the desk clerk. Dona recognized him as the deputy sheriff who had curbed her car a few miles out of Blairville and warned her that she was exceeding the speed limit. He smiled and touched the brim of his white Stetson.
    “Mornin’, Miss.”
    Dona’s half-smile faded as she waited for him to continue but the deputy was merely being pleasant. His name, as she recalled it, was Ransom.
    He confided to the desk clerk. “I had the pleasure of meetin’ Miss Santos when she drove into town last night. ‘Miss,’ I sez to her, ‘
you
ain’t drivin’ too fast. What you’re doin’ is flyin’ too low.’”
    Both he and the desk clerk, a faded man in his middle forties, laughed at the aged joke. Dona forced herself to smile, conscious that the clerk was admiring the snug fit of her white cotton dress.
    As she laid her key on the counter, the clerk