A Garland of Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  I had no desire to cast the production, but Tinkie stepped right up. She was at heart a director. “Coleman should be Robin. Oscar can be the Sheriff. Jaytee can be Little John. Harold can be Sir Guy of Gisborne. I’ll be Maid Marian and Sarah Booth, Millie, and Cece can be Mortianna, Aria, milady’s observant handmaid, and Friar Tuck, respectively.”

  I actually loved the idea of Mortianna, and I found her costume on the far end of the sofa, complete with a straggly wig and pasty makeup. This was going to be some party. “I get a solo scene where I predict the return of Robin Hood.” I was already highlighting my stage time. “How do you think Cece will react to being cast as a fat friar?”

  “Cece doesn’t care. Maybe we can work in a scene where Little John plays the harmonica and Friar Tuck sings.” Tinkie, in her mind, had made the casting decisions and was moving on to scene development. “How many houses do we mum at?” Tinkie asked Darla.

  “As many as you’d like. It’s only the big houses with lawns that participate, but there are plenty. I’ll give you a list and you can pick where you’d like to go. If you collect any money, it has to go to charity.”

  “Certainly,” Tinkie said. “This is for fun, not profit.”

  The front door opened and Cece and Millie joined us. The men were only ten steps behind. They entered in a huddle that reeked of conspiracy. I really wanted a word with Coleman about another law enforcement official—Jerry Goode. I certainly had not foreseen Goode’s entanglement with Spider-Woman Clarissa.

  Before I could take action to get Coleman alone, Darla herded us all to the parlor. “Tinkie has cast the story for tonight.” She gave a little drumroll, and I had to admire her ability to push her grief over Kathleen down deep inside in order to entertain her guests. “Tinkie, reveal your casting.”

  Tinkie assigned everyone their roles, and when she pointed to me and said Mortianna, everyone laughed.

  “I see we’re going with the Hollywood version. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”

  “Of course,” Tinkie said. “No one will ever top Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham, unless it’s Oscar.”

  Cece found the fat pads she’d wear under her monk’s robe and held them up. “These will be very warm.”

  “And protect you if someone throws rotten eggs at you,” Jaytee said.

  We sat down and worked out the simple story of Robin robbing a rich noble, to be played by Cece in a double role. The scenario would open with Mortianna speaking of Robin, describing how he made the sheriff and his followers furious by interfering with their robbery of local citizens to fatten the rulers’ purses. Robin would give a little talk about his love for Marian and his joy in his Merry Men. The rich noble would arrive on scene, and Robin would cleverly rob him, with some slapstick antics involved in distracting the noble. The sheriff would arrive and try to capture Robin. The Merry Men would suddenly appear to help Robin. Marian and her clever handmaid Aria would arrive to distract the evil sheriff. A sword fight would ensue; Robin would escape with his Merry Men. Mortianna would close out the scenario with another sinister prediction of future encounters between the bandit and the evil sheriff.

  “We can do this.” Tinkie was deeply invested.

  “Is anyone going to write lines?” Cece asked.

  “Ad-lib,” Tinkie said. “Improvise. But there is one thing we need to do. Set up a scene where Jaytee plays the harmonica and you sing the blues.”

  “There’s a pretty cool song called ‘Robin Hood Blues,’” Jaytee said. He hummed a few bars.

  “They could perform that for the finale, and we could all do a court dance,” Millie said, getting into the mood.

  “Do you know a court dance?” I asked. This was turning into a real production.

  “In fact I do.” Millie almost smirked. “I went to a Renaissance faire not so long ago and learned several. Very easy steps. Forward, back, walk around with your partner in a half circle, hands up—very simple.” She demonstrated as she talked.

  It was simple, and it would be fun.

  “We need to keep the play within about fifteen minutes,” Darla said. “And we’ll try to hit about six or seven houses. What are you going to do with the money you collect?”

  “How about the local animal shelter?” Cece suggested. “We can have a good time and help the local animals.”

  “Perfect,” Darla said. “And speaking of animals, I have Kathleen’s cat, Gumbo, in my apartment here. She’s very sweet. Is anyone allergic?”

  “No one in this group,” Jaytee said. “We’re cat lovers, in fact.”

  “She’s only here until Kathleen—” She broke off and turned away.

  “You don’t have to keep her shut away,” Tinkie said gently. “We’d love to have her roaming about the B and B. We’ll be careful not to let her get outside.”

  “Thank you.” Darla had composed herself. “That’s good to know. Now, while you rehearse, I need to finish baking some goodies I promised my neighbors.”

  “Darla, has there been any word from the searchers?” Coleman asked.

  “Nothing. No sign of her, alive or dead.” She turned away from us to hide her raw emotions. “One of the police officers said we should know something later today.”

  I didn’t know how anyone could predict when a body would rise from the depths of a river—if the body was even still in this vicinity and hadn’t been swept downstream—but if it gave Darla some comfort, who was I to open my yap otherwise? “Which officer said that?” I asked.

  “Officer Goode,” Darla said absently.

  I exchanged a glance with Tinkie. Our local police officer was Johnny-on-the-spot wherever we went. It was time to speak with Coleman about using his badge to check into Jerry Goode.

  23

  We took our costumes to our rooms and agreed to meet in the parlor to run through the story of Robin Hood that we were presenting. We had a little time to perfect it, and then we’d set out to the list of houses Darla provided. These were wealthy people we could count on for a significant donation toward our worthy goal. I hadn’t anticipated doing a fundraiser, but now that I was involved, I was eager to get after it. Animal shelters were always in need of food, veterinary care, money for spay/neuter surgeries, and a million other things that made living in a cage while waiting to be picked tolerable.

  After one run-through of my part in the play, I was comfortable enough to abandon the merry crew and step outside on the terrace for a moment of reflection. The image of Jerry Goode driving away from Clarissa’s house nagged at me in an unpleasant way. Goode’s role in this whole mess concerned me—a lot more than I’d let on to Tinkie. He was a key figure in so many aspects of what was happening in Columbus. He was investigating the woman who’d hired Colton Horn—without any success, I might add. He was investigating the dumping of the cement into the car and Bart Crenshaw’s tumble down the stairs—also without any arrests. It was almost as if he were stalling the investigations rather than looking for the guilty parties. Now he was also in charge of discovering what had happened to Kathleen. If she had been knocked off the boat, this was a murder investigation that he might be deliberately obstructing.

  There was a rustle in the lower branches of some thick shrubs surrounding the patio. I froze. The plants formed what was almost a solid wall around the outdoor area, which included a pool, a tiki hut and bar, and a pool house. The rustling came again, as if some creature crept along the ground. It could be a possum, a raccoon, or a dog, or it could be something more dangerous.

  I edged closer to the shrubs and tried looking into them, but they were so thick and lush I couldn’t really see past them. I held very still and waited. Farther to my right, the rustling came again.

  The creepy sensation that someone was spying on me crept down my back. I hadn’t brought a light or even my cell phone, and dusk had fallen. Night was quickly coming down. The B and B was on a bluff with a stair-like walkway that clung to the side of the cliff and zigged and zagged down to the river, where the Te
nn-Tom Queen was tied at the dock.

  By rights, no one should be anywhere near Darla’s backyard, which probably meant it was a wild animal I was hearing. Still, the creepy sensation persisted, until I realized it was also possible Jitty had returned to have more fun messing with me. “Jitty?” I waited. “Jitty, if you’re trying to scare me, I’m going to do something awful.” As I looked toward the river, there was only darkness except for the beautiful stars beginning to blink awake.

  The sound came again. I moved along the hedge, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was rummaging in the leaves. In the night, though, I couldn’t see anything. All the creepy stories about hauntings and ghosts that I loved to read about came back to me, and I thought of Kathleen, returning one last time to visit her friend Darla. Except the place Kathleen had fallen into the river was several miles south of here.

  I was so deep in thought that when a Texas twang came right behind me, I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “Sin doesn’t just happen.”

  I whipped around to confront a very young Sissy Spacek, all wide-eyed and cautious. As a fan of horror movies, I recognized her from Carrie. That movie had scared ten years off my life and became a classic trope-setter for future horror movies.

  “I don’t want to talk about sin with you.” Even though I knew this was Jitty pretending to be Sissy pretending to be Carrie, I didn’t want any part of this conversation. When dealing with someone with telekinesis, one didn’t take any chances. As if to prove my point, the cocktail I’d been sipping—a very tasty old-fashioned that Harold had made—flew across the patio table and into Sissy’s outstretched hand.

  “Good idea. Have a drink,” I said.

  “Are you a fanatic about sin?” she asked, her face so pale her freckles seemed electric.

  “Nope, not me. I have no quarrel with sin.” The plot of the movie came back to me clearly. Carrie had been abused by her crazy Bible-thumping mother. Then she was abused by the popular girls in high school. Then she lost her mind and burned the school gym down, stabbed her mother in a reimagined crucifixion, and finally burned her own house to the ground, with herself and her mother inside. She was dead, dead, dead. Until that one hand came out of the grave to grab her high school friend, the only survivor of the fire.

  Whew! Just remembering all of that had my heart pumping and my feet itching to make a run for it.

  “My mama says we’re born in sin.”

  Uh-oh. She had that crazy look in her eye. “Sip that nice cocktail,” I said.

  “I’m only sixteen. I’m too young to drink. That would be a sin.”

  Oh, legions of the devil, that was the wrong thing to say. “Sure.” I reached up for the drink. “I’m old enough to drink.” I knocked it back.

  “I’m going to the prom.”

  I realized then she was in a pastel prom dress. “Maybe you should rethink that choice.”

  “Tommy is taking me. I’m his date.”

  “Eh, maybe go to dinner instead of the prom.”

  She shook her head. “I have a date. No one is going to stop me. Not my mother, and certainly not you.” Sparks flicked in her eyes and I saw dancing flames.

  “Right. I have no desire to stop you. Just giving some alternatives. Dances are so … last year.” I had little experience talking with teenage girls. Especially not fictional teenagers from a bloodbath horror movie.

  Carrie held out her hand and a little flame jumped up from her palm. That was my signal to head inside and alert the others to run for their lives.

  “Ha-ha, hold up, Sarah Booth.” The voice that called out to me was rich, lazy with an old Mississippi Delta drawl. “I really had you going, didn’t I?”

  When I turned around, Jitty stood there with buckets of blood dripping off her. I gave a little shriek and nearly tripped over a wicker chair.

  “Hold up there, missy,” Jitty said, wiping the blood out of her eyes. “I never realized scaring you could be such fun!”

  “If you weren’t dead, I’d kill you.” I had been within twenty feet of rushing in the door of the B and B and making a total fool of myself.

  “Now, now. I was just spoofin’ you.”

  “I think you just aged my ovaries another two years.” That would get her goat. “Stress isn’t good for the reproductive system. What if you killed off my last viable egg? And what are you doing pretending to be the victim in a horror movie from the 1970s?”

  “Makin’ a point about sin.”

  Her very direct answer stopped me in my tracks. “What point?”

  “What was the biggest sin in that movie?”

  It was so Jitty to answer a question with a question. “Why don’t you just tell me to be sure I get it straight?”

  She grinned, and slowly the blood disappeared and my favorite haint, wearing some really bad 1970s fashion, took a seat on the arm of a sofa. “You can figure it out if you give it some effort. And you’d better figure it out.”

  “Jitty!”

  She was starting to fade just as a choir began singing an old classic hymn. “Are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb? Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?”

  “Jitty, you are going to burn in hell for co-opting a real hymn in your foolishness,” I whispered fiercely after her. Just as the back door opened I heard a little yip of laughter and she was gone. Cece stepped outside.

  “Are you out here rehearsing by yourself?” she asked.

  “Exactly.” It was better to own up to being an insecure actor than a crazy woman who talked to dead people and fictional characters.

  “Come back inside. It’s cold out here.”

  And indeed it was. I simply had been so scared that I hadn’t noticed. “Good plan.” I picked up my empty glass and hurried inside behind Cece before Jitty decided to pop out and scare another ten years off my life.

  * * *

  At last I had a moment alone with Coleman and I was able to share with him Jerry Goode’s actions. I tugged him toward the terrace to talk. He slipped on his heavy coat and followed me.

  “You sure you saw his shoes and shirt?” Coleman was having difficulty buying into the story that Goode was bumping uglies with Clarissa Olson.

  “The uniform shirt and those spit-shined black shoes were in her parlor.”

  “There’s more than one police officer in town,” Coleman pointed out.

  “I know what I saw. And then Tinkie and I both saw him driving away.”

  “In a patrol car?”

  “No, it was a silver sports car.”

  “Did you get the plates?”

  “No. But we saw him. He was wearing his uniform hat.”

  “That’s what I’m having trouble with.”

  I leaned my head against Coleman’s shoulder. “Why?”

  “Most officers don’t wear their hats when they’re driving. They take them off, then grab them as they get out of the vehicle, and put them on.”

  It was an action I’d seen Coleman perform at least a million times. He was right. Driving in a hat wasn’t all that comfortable. “So what are you thinking?” I asked him.

  “Not certain. Yet. Waiting for a hunch to kick in.”

  Coleman certainly had hunches, but he didn’t base his law enforcement decision on his “gut.” “I’m serious, Coleman, what do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to have a conversation with Goode. Until then, I withhold an opinion. Now…”—he checked his watch—“I’m going to find the good law officer. Make my excuses to Darla and the others. I’ll be back in an hour, in plenty of time to get into my costume and be ready for the mumming.”

  “What about something to eat?”

  “I’m stuffed full of Darla’s party snacks. She sure knows how to bake. And I think Harold was offering her some solace about her friend.”

  “Good.” Harold was tenderhearted to a fault.

  “Darla writes poetry. Harold says she’s pretty good.”

  That would be anoth
er shared interest between her and Kathleen. “Is it really good poetry?” Meaning, could I understand it?

  “Haven’t sampled the wares yet, but when Harold mentioned it, while you were outside, he said she’d been published.”

  “She and Kathleen had a lot in common. Darla is really going to miss her friend.”

  “And there’s nothing you can do about it.” He sighed. “The big Christmas parade is tomorrow, and then we head home.”

  He said the last with some longing. I understood. I, too, was missing Zinnia and Dahlia House. Mostly I was missing my critters. “I hope we can wrap up this case.”

  “Any indication of who’s behind all of this?”

  I thought about it. “I have a list of suspects, but no solid evidence. When you talk to Goode about Clarissa, get the latest on the search for Kathleen, please. That’s a murder, though not one Clarissa wants us to investigate. She’s interested only in herself.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.” Coleman took off toward the driveway.

  “You want me to call a ride for you?”

  “Not necessary” were his final words as he disappeared behind some hedges.

  “What are you up to, Coleman Peters?” I asked the Bissonnette House’s empty patio. I was just glad he was working with me instead of against me.

  24

  I didn’t have time to fret about Coleman’s disappearance. When I went back inside, Tinkie was in Darla’s office on the computer. Cece, Millie, Harold, Oscar, and Jaytee were in the parlor playing a raucous game of poker. I was glad to see that Darla had allowed Gumbo to join them. The little black, orange, and white kitty was perched on the arm of a sofa watching the humans with what could only be described as superior tolerance.

  Watching Gumbo, I felt a pang for Pluto and a wave of homesickness. I’d be back in Sunflower County in no time at all, and until then, I needed to find out who was playing deadly games in Columbus.

  I played five-card draw for a few minutes—until I realized I was outclassed by everyone at the table. Amidst good-natured teasing, I left the card table. I made a call to Coleman and got his voicemail.