Bonefire of the Vanities

by Carolyn Haines

  I called Coleman and got his voice mail. All I could do was leave a message, but I made it urgent. We needed the firm hand of the law to help us find and contain Yumi.

  Yumi’s apartment yielded nothing else. I returned to the foyer, where the others waited.

  “Palk is fairly certain Yumi has gone after Amaryllis, but we have to tell the Westins she may still be in the house,” I said. “I’ve called Coleman and left a message.”

  “We have news, too,” Tinkie said. “We found Roger Addleson hiding out in our room. He’s upstairs with Shimmer right now. I hope he survives the encounter. She is furious. He admitted to paying Stella, the laundress, ten grand to drive Amaryllis out in her trunk. That’s how she got past the guards.”

  “I hope she has a fighting chance to get away from Yumi.” I didn’t like the odds.

  Tinkie crossed her arms. “We don’t know that Yumi has left Heart’s Desire, and we can’t leave with a chance the killer is hiding in the compound.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if we told the Westins that Jack the Ripper was walking the parapets, they aren’t going to do anything but barricade their rooms.” Oscar was adamant. “We should get out of here before we get hurt.”

  “If Sherry were any kind of medium, she’d know where to find Yumi and Amaryllis,” Tinkie said.

  “She’s a medium, not a psychic.” It really wasn’t worth pointing out the difference.

  “Sarah Booth and I will make one last attempt to try to talk to them,” Graf said as he linked arms with me. “Then we’re out of here. No second thoughts, no looking back.”

  My stomach dropped to my feet. “Pluto!” I’d forgotten all about the cat.

  “What about Palk?” Oscar asked unhappily. “Shouldn’t we be sure he’s safe?”

  Graf hesitated, and I made a decision. “Graf, you talk with the Westins. They like you, anyway, and they hate me. I’ll find Pluto and put him in his carrier. Oscar, you and Tinkie stay together and check for Palk at the gate. Graf and I can each drive a car and meet you there.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Graf put action to words as he passed me, fingers trailing through one of my curls. “Grab the cat. We’ll be on the road to Zinnia in five minutes. I think we’ll hit Millie’s for some late-night breakfast, and then I have plans for you that require a bed, privacy, and my imagination.”

  I’d shared more than a few of Graf’s imaginative encounters. “Will it involve warmed oil, the ceiling fan cooling my skin, and your hands touching my body?”

  “That and so much more.”

  I sprinted to Marjorie’s old suite. I couldn’t help but feel bad for Pluto. I wondered if he’d realize he’d been cast aside. I’d do my best to make him feel loved until Tinkie and I could find a new home for him. Right now, though, I wanted to put him in the carrier and haul him down to the front door.

  “Kitty, kitty,” I called softly. Pluto was rather slippery for such a large kitty. If he got the chance to dart out the door, it might take hours to catch him.

  There was no sign of Pluto in the room. Normally he was stretched across my clothes, but every flat surface in the room was bare. I poked in the closet, empty now without Marjorie’s abundant wardrobe. Nothing.

  I checked under the bed and chaise and other furniture, and finally in the bathroom. Not even a wisp of kitty hair. The damn cat had vanished.

  “Pluto.” I used my flashlight to check all of the corners. He had to be there. When I got down on my hands and knees to probe under the vanity, I saw the open vent. Somehow, Pluto had gotten the ornate screen off—again—and was now loose in the vent works. Ernest Angley with a hula hoop. I’d screwed that vent in myself. It had been tight!

  “Dammit, Pluto.” I had no clue where the cat might end up. He could get lost wandering through the internal structure of the house. If his luck didn’t hold, he might jump out where Yumi could get him.

  The last time he’d gotten in the vent, he came out in the Lotus Suite. I would work my way down the suites. Chasley’s old room was next door, and I started there. Since he’d left with his mother, the room was empty. I scurried inside. I reached for the light switch and felt something hot strike my arm. “Shit.” No time for inventive cursing when my arm was on fire.

  I flipped on the light and instantly saw the blood. A large slice had been cut in my arm, and the person who’d done it was standing only four feet away.

  Yumi Kato whipped a skinning knife through the air, missing my face by only an inch.

  20

  “Meddling bitch.” The blade whipped at me again. I ducked, but not fast enough. The tip caught the side of my head and sliced my ear. Blood gushed down my neck and shirt. I tried to console myself with words I’d heard Doc Sawyer speak in the emergency room—nothing bleeds like a head wound. Even nonserious ones.

  “You won’t get out of here,” I bluffed as I stumbled over an ottoman and went down. It seemed my coordination had abandoned me. I was left with empty verbal threats. Yumi didn’t strike me as someone who would give a rat’s ass about my predictions of her future.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Her smile never touched her eyes. Psychopath was the word that came to mind. Hired killer. Cold-blooded.

  Anger gave me courage. “Let me just point out what a slipshod assassin you are. Congressman Faver will be extremely agitated with the news stories resulting from this. He’ll be mocked in the media for hiring an incompetent.”

  My arrow struck the mark. Her face tightened and she advanced toward me. “You will beg for death.”

  “No. I won’t.” I pushed up into a squat. I wasn’t about to lie on the floor and let her stab me or cut my throat. “You won’t get out of Sunflower County. What a joke, at your expense. World-class assassin imprisoned in rural Mississippi jail. You’re a laughingstock.”

  “My escape route is already planned.”

  The longer she talked, the longer I lived. I’d searched around the apartment and didn’t see a single thing I could use as a weapon. A lamp on a bedside table held promise, but I’d never get there before she gutted me. She was quick and deadly.

  “My friends are downstairs. You’ll never make it out of the house.”

  She laughed softly. “I never thought you’d be so desperate.”

  Another tack was called for. “You haven’t harmed Pluto, have you?”

  “The cat.” She advanced toward me. “He will be next. I’ll put his head on the stump of your neck.”

  “You are one sick bitch.”

  The chitchat was over. She raised the knife. She meant to plunge it into my heart. I pushed off the floor and hurled myself straight into her. My action caught her by surprise, but the knife blade grazed my ribs. Blinding pain wrapped around my body. I struggled to gain control of her wrist and the knife. She was stronger, quicker, and trained in martial arts. But I had thirty pounds on her and I used it to my advantage.

  For one moment I thought I had a chance to overpower her, but she got a leg loose and kicked the back of my knee. I went down like a house of sticks huffed by a wolf. She gathered herself for the attack and rushed me.

  A lethal black blur hurtled from the shadows and smacked her right in the face, claws extended. Pluto took no quarter, raking his hooked digits into her eyes. Thank god Marjorie had never done the barbaric declawing.

  Yumi gave a strangled gasp. She drew back the knife. She couldn’t see—blood covered her face—but still, she meant to kill Pluto. I tackled her around her knees and sent her flying backwards. Her head struck the edge of the bedside table.

  Yumi Kato sank to the floor, unconscious.

  Bleeding from numerous injuries, I crawled to the door and yelled for help. Much to my joy, I heard feet pounding on the stairs. Graf, Oscar, and Tinkie burst into the room.

  A great weariness overtook me. I couldn’t faint. I only wanted to close my eyes for a moment. Just a moment. The last thing I remembered was Pluto walking up Yumi’s body. He sat on her chest and hissed right into her face. It was a t
hing of beauty to behold.

  * * *

  “You need stitches in your ear,” Graf said as he handed me a fresh, icy cloth to hold against the side of my face.

  “Maybe a few in her scalp,” Tinkie threw in.

  “Where’s Pluto?” I asked.

  “Right at your feet.” Tinkie reached down to pet the cat. My friends had lifted me to the bed. Yumi, her head swathed in bandages, sat on the floor, tied to the bedpost. She’d regained consciousness and refused to say a word. I feared her vision might be permanently damaged, but medical help was on the way. And Coleman.

  Pluto sauntered over and walked up my body to settle onto my chest. His purr was loud enough to hear across the room. “My hero,” I whispered before I gave him a kiss on the top of his head. “Pluto saved my life.”

  “I don’t think Pluto has to worry about a permanent home,” Tinkie said.

  “Never again. Graf?”

  “I told you I wanted a cat.” Graf scratched Pluto’s head. “This one may be smarter than both of us, Sarah Booth. He’ll be a handful.” His hand drifted to gently cup my cheek. “Our handful.”

  Doc came with the ambulance. I think it was morbid curiosity to see how I’d been injured this time, but he tended to Yumi and sent her, handcuffed to the stretcher, to the hospital and an ophthalmologist. “I don’t think the cat blinded her, but best to let the specialists deal with it,” he said. “Now, let me see that ear.”

  Ten minutes later, he’d glued my ear back together. “Hard as hell to stitch cartilage,” he offered. “Glue ought to hold it.”

  “Will it grow back?” I asked. I didn’t want a Spock ear, nor one that was notched like I’d been spayed by a feral cat society.

  “Can’t promise anything,” Doc said. “The skin should grow back, but the cartilage may never. Just wear your hair down.”

  Vanity was so simple for Doc, who looked like a dandelion with his nimbus of white hair. But I wasn’t seriously hurt, not even enough for stitches. I’d been very lucky. And I’d nabbed a paid killer. Not bad for a day’s work.

  “Where’s Amaryllis?” For a moment, I’d forgotten about the missing woman.

  Tinkie’s eyes brightened. “Coleman’s deputies found her at Stella’s house. Actually, it was a pretty good hiding place. I don’t think Yumi would ever have thought to look there.”

  “Brilliant.” I squirmed, trying to wiggle to the edge of the bed. Doc relented and helped me.

  “We’ve wrapped the case,” Tinkie said with well-deserved smugness. “But we still have a big problem.”

  “What?” I didn’t know if I could handle another problem.

  She pulled back the collar of her shirt to reveal at least two hundred grand in diamonds. “I forgot to give Marjorie her necklace she loaned me. If you’re up to it, let’s take it back to her. I don’t want to be responsible for it a minute longer than necessary.”

  Though I longed to go home to Dahlia House with Graf, Tinkie’s decision to return the jewelry was probably the smartest move. With our luck, someone would break in and steal the necklace before we could even put it in a vault. I looked at Doc to see if he’d veto the idea.

  “You’re too tough to kill and too ornery for me to try to make behave. Be off with you.” Doc packed his gear in his old-timey black bag.

  “Call Marjorie before you two go running off to her house,” Oscar suggested.

  I did just that. To no avail. “She isn’t picking up.”

  “How far is her place?” Tinkie asked.

  “Across the county. They should be home by now,” Oscar said.

  “Maybe they’re asleep. I know I’m exhausted,” Graf threw in.

  “Graf, will you and Oscar give your statements at the sheriff’s office while Tinkie and I run over to Marjorie’s?”

  “She could send her driver to fetch the necklace,” Graf reminded me.

  “I know. But still—” I indicated Yumi. “Coleman is going to be a little busy. And Marjorie is our client. I want to be sure she’s settled in at home. And I want to give her one more chance to keep Pluto.”

  He kissed my forehead. “Hurry home to Dahlia House. We have plans.”

  * * *

  Tinkie drove the compact we’d brought to Heart’s Desire. The guards waved us out of the compound without so much as a blink. The gates opened and Tinkie, with Pluto in a carrier in the backseat, revved up the car and drove for freedom. A heavy weight lifted from my shoulders as Heart’s Desire disappeared in the rearview mirror.

  It took forty minutes to drive to Marjorie’s home. Tucked down a long lane of old magnolia trees, the place would be beautiful in the daylight. In the spring when the trees produced blossoms, the scent would be like heaven. Marjorie also had plenty of privacy. The house was hidden from the road.

  “Have you ever been to Marjorie’s?” I asked Tinkie.

  “Honey, I didn’t even know she’d returned to Mississippi until Tammy asked us to help her. She’s lived in New Orleans, New York, and Europe most of her life, and she’s changed her name half a dozen times.”

  “We should call Tammy.”

  Tinkie stopped halfway down the drive. “Yeah, we should.”

  The first pink herald of dawn appeared in the east. “You think she’s up?”

  Tinkie shot me a disbelieving look. “Call her.”

  I did, and Tammy answered on the first ring. “Sarah Booth, are you hurt?”

  I hated it when Tammy asked questions like that. “Just a few scrapes, but Marjorie is out of Heart’s Desire and at home. She and Chasley have made up. She’s leaving everything to him.” It was too complicated to go into Pluto’s story. “In fact, Tinkie and I are pulling up at Marjorie’s house.”

  “Don’t go inside!”

  Her tone was so emphatic that I paused. “Why not?”

  “Don’t go in there, Sarah Booth. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Tammy’s feelings were nothing to sneeze at. “A dream, what?”

  “Call Cece. She was pretty upset.”

  “Why?” I was more puzzled than worried.

  “Something to do with that photographer. Speak to her before you do anything else.”

  “I’ll call her,” I promised.

  “Good. Now turn around and hightail it for home. Nothing for you to gain at Marjorie Littlefield’s.”

  “Are you going to tell me your dream?” I asked. I never wanted to hear Tammy’s visions. They often came true. But forewarned was forearmed.

  “It involved blood and a large knife. You were cut. I can’t bear the thought of you being injured because I asked you to look out for Marjorie.”

  My relief unclenched muscles I didn’t know were tight. “I was attacked with a knife, but I’m fine. It didn’t have a thing to do with Marjorie.” Yumi was another story too long for a dawn phone conversation.

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Hey, I’ll give Cece a call.” The eastern sky had brightened up nicely. Dawn was giving way to morning. “And I’ll call you when I get back to Zinnia.”

  I did call my journalist friend, but the phone went to voice mail, and I decided to let her sleep. Cece was Miss Cranky Pants if she didn’t get her eight hours of z’s.

  Tinkie drove down the lovely driveway toward a Grecian-inspired home that rose like a fairy-tale vision. Once we delivered the necklace and checked on Marjorie and her true wishes for Pluto, we could go home. Like Dorothy, it was the only place I wanted to be.

  The house was dark and shuttered as we pulled up to the front door. “Do you think they went somewhere else?” Tinkie asked.

  “They said they were heading here. Hey, leave the windows down so Pluto can breathe. It’s not hot right now, but if the sun lifts above the trees…”

  “Good thinking. What does Marjorie drive?” Tinkie asked.

  I didn’t have an answer. The limo had been hired. “Okay, we’ll knock.”

  Tinkie didn’t wait for an invitation; she went to the door, pressed the doorbell a do
zen times, and finally knocked. When that yielded no results, she took her tiny little fists and beat.

  At last, a bleary-eyed Chasley answered the door. He didn’t bother to hide his displeasure. “What the fuck do you two want?” His stiff upper lip and polished manners had been left behind.

  “I need to return something of your mother’s.” Tinkie didn’t waste her time on people she didn’t like.

  “Are you kidding me? This couldn’t wait until another day?”

  “No, it couldn’t wait. Let us in.”

  He started to slam the door, but Tinkie caught it. “Not so fast, Snidely,” she said.

  “Chasley,” he corrected her, obviously deprived of Saturday-morning cartoons, as well as the milk of human kindness.

  She wedged half into the house. “I want to talk to Marjorie.”

  “But she doesn’t want to talk to you. She said she’d mail a check.”

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “Too damn bad. She’s asleep, and I won’t wake her.”

  I wanted to give her one last chance to claim Pluto. I’d keep the cat, but he loved her. Maybe she’d change her mind if she knew he was right outside. “I want to speak with her now.” I added my bulk to Tinkie’s.

  He hesitated and I took the advantage, pushing hard enough that Tinkie could slip in, and then I followed. “Where’s her room?”

  “She’s asleep.” Instead of angry, Chasley looked panicked. “She’s sleeping and I won’t let you bother her.”

  “We’re not leaving until we speak with her,” Tinkie said. “Until we’re paid, we’re still on the case.”

  “Who are you people?” he asked. “She said she’d pay you. Why don’t you go home? Leave us alone.”

  “We will talk to Marjorie. Now.” Tinkie had dug in her heels.

  My cell phone rang. Cece was calling. It had to be urgent for her to be up at dawn. She wasn’t the farm-girl type. I turned aside and answered.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Marjorie’s.”

  “Get out now. Coleman is on the way there.”

  I was taken aback. “What’s wrong?”

  “Bert Steele called me, Sarah Booth. He was upset. He said he’d involved himself in something seriously wrong, and it had to do with the DVD you got in New Orleans. He rigged it. He sent you to the Pleasure Zone and made sure it was left for you to find. He and Annabelle Ralston are friends. Bert’s been in love with Sherry Westin for years, and he believes her mother is drugging her and holding her prisoner. This thing has been a setup from the very beginning. He didn’t do it for money. He thought you might be able to save Sherry from her mother.”