Shadow of an Angel - By Mignon F. Ballard Page 0,1

woman wedged her head over my shoulder, almost nudging me into Cousin Otto's lap. His head sagged to one side, and he clutched what looked like a balled up handkerchief.

"Ye gods!" Gertrude Whitmire's breath was hot on my neck and smelled of the chocolates she kept hidden in her desk. "Well, Arminda, you were asking for your cousin. Seems as if we've found him."

This was my grandmother's fault. If Vesta had stayed at home just this once to pass along the key to the home place, I wouldn't be squashed in this toilet practically sitting on Cousin Otto.

"I'll probably be on the golf course when you get here," my grandmother had told me, "but you can get a key to the Nut House from Otto. He volunteers over at Holley Hall every other Saturday—if he's sober, that is."

Vesta liked to refer to our family home as the Nut House because it stands in a pecan grove, she said, but I suspected this was only part of the reason.

Failing to find my grandmother at home in her newly acquired condominium, I had dutifully inquired after my cousin at the town's one historic site.

Gertrude Whitmire hadn't seen him, she'd told me earlier, but directed me to the upstairs library, where she said he usually spent his time. Finding that room empty, I had taken advantage of the facilities, planning to stroll about the grounds until my cousin returned from what was obviously a late lunch.

"So, what do we do now?" I quickly shut the door and backed away from the pathetic tableau, stepping on my own feet and Gertrude's, as well.

"Get him out of here, of course, and as soon as possible. We can't have people in here gawking. It's a wonder some tourist hasn't stumbled in here already."

The only museum-goers I had seen that day were an elderly couple chuckling over a class picture in the hallway and a handful of young boys tussling over a football on the lawn. On a sunny Saturday in early November, it seemed, people had better things to do than poke about the musty remains of what once had been a school for young women.

Gertrude lowered her head, bull-like, and stepped forward, determined to do her duty, no matter how distasteful. "I suppose it's up to us, Arminda, to see that your cousin gets home to sleep it off." She emphasized, I noticed, the fact that Otto was my relative and left me no choice but to follow suit.

But as soon as I touched Otto Alexander's cold, stiff hand, I knew my cousin would be a long time sleeping this one off. I think I screamed, but my cry was cut short by a look from Gertrude that had the same effect as a splash of icy well water.

Later, in the building's austere parlor, we waited for the coroner by a gas fire that wasn't much warmer. Above the marble mantel, a dark portrait of Fitzhugh Holley, long-ago head of Minerva Academy and Angel Heights's contribution to kiddie lit, smiled down at me as if amused by the situation.

His grandson wasn't. Hugh Talbot, florid and fiftyish, bore little resemblance to his ancestor in the portrait. In the likeness over the fireplace, blue eyes gleamed behind rimless spectacles, and lips turned up in a slight smile, as if the subject of the painting might be dreaming up additional antics for his lovable storybook characters, Callie Cat and Doggie Dan. He wore his sandy mustache neatly trimmed above a firm, beardless chin. The portrait had been painted from a photograph, Cousin Otto once pointed out. The professor died in his thirties while saving one of his students from a fire. A pity, I thought. So young and so handsome—like my own Jarvis.

Don't go there, Minda! The thought of Jarvis, whose zany sense of humor and boyish sweetness made me love him from the start, could send me back into that dark pit of self-pity, and I didn't want to go through that again.

"I just can't believe this!" Hugh Talbot repeated for the umpteenth time. "What in the world made Otto go into the ladies' room? What could he have been thinking?" He paced the room, watching for the arrival of the coroner. "Do you suppose he had a heart attack? It was probably his liver. All that alcohol, you know."

He patted his toupee, which was at least two shades darker than his graying reddish hair. A lonely tuft of his own hair stuck out over his forehead