Ham Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  “You’re letting all of them leave?” A terrible pang in my stomach made me hug myself. Coleman’s blue gaze told me he was dead serious. All the other suspects were leaving. “Even Graf?”

  “Graf has already left town, Sarah Booth.” Coleman’s tone was gentler, but he was still angry. “He blew through Sunflower County without stopping, headed south.”

  “Where did he go?” I couldn’t believe he left me in Zinnia to face all of this alone. I’d begun to believe he’d changed. At least a little.

  “Where do you think he went?” Coleman asked.

  “Hollywood?”

  “Would you have a specific address?”

  I shook my head. “Call Federico Marquez. That’s the director who was interested in Graf for a movie.” I looked at Tinkie. Her blue eyes were misty as she saw my dream begin to crumble at my feet. “If Graf is missing, that’s where he’s gone.”

  Now that Robert Morgan was dead, chances were good that Graf’s debt would be forgotten. He could go out to Tinseltown and live the good life, the life he’d offered to share with me.

  “Any other possible places he might go?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, you can console yourself with the fact that he hasn’t gone to Hollywood. And he won’t likely be going. I took a statement from the driver of the farm vehicle, one Calvin Rogers. Mr. Rogers said the driver of a silver Porsche was obviously in pursuit of Robert Morgan on the highway. We have a warrant out for Graf’s arrest for vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident. He won’t be going to Hollywood or anywhere else.”

  I felt the pain in my stomach tighten. “Graf didn’t kill Morgan. Coleman, that’s just not fair. Graf might have been chasing him, but it was Morgan who drove an SUV like it was a sports car. You can’t blame Graf for Morgan’s stupidity.”

  Coleman stood up. “Oh, but yes I can. Graf Milieu is somewhere in the state of Mississippi. If he tries to buy a plane ticket, I’ll have him in custody in nothing flat. There’s an APB out for him from here to California. We’ll have him before the weekend is out.”

  “Can I print this?” Cece asked.

  “Every word of it.” Coleman walked to the door and opened it. “You’re all free to go. For the moment. Sarah Booth, if you leave Sunflower County again, you’ll be in jail without even a chance to explain. Tinkie, you’ll be in the cell beside her.”

  When we’d all been evicted from his office, he closed the door and I heard the lock slide into place.

  Chapter 21

  Tinkie blazed a trail through the reporters, and I followed, abandoning the roadster and diving into the front seat of the Cadillac for the moment. When the journalists and paparazzi cleared the square, I’d go back and get my car.

  “Imagine what it must be like to be a celebrity every day,” Tinkie said. “This is what life in Hollywood will be like.”

  “The difference between celebrity and notoriety is vast.” I shielded my face from a hundred flashes as Tinkie drove slowly through the crowd.

  “Coleman was really pissed.” She stated the obvious.

  “Too freaking bad.” I was really pissed, too. He had no right to act so high-handed. Connie was nibbling him to death, but that didn’t give him cause to mood-swing all over the place. I had nothing to do with the complications of his life. I was only trying to save my butt from going to prison for something I didn’t do.

  I sat up taller as we left the reporters behind.

  “Where to?” Tinkie asked.

  We couldn’t go to Millie’s. The café was crawling with journalists. They’d found good coffee and a place to set up their laptops, and they weren’t going to budge. “Tinkie, what are we going to do? With Morgan dead ...”

  She headed out of town toward the wide-open spaces of the Delta. “We’re going somewhere quiet where we can think for just a minute.”

  We were a long way from Scarlett’s moment in the Georgia clay, but there was truth that the land sustained us. Whenever I was down, if I went back to the earth, that rich dirt that grew crops in such abundance, I found momentary peace. As we drove deeper into the land down poorly maintained farm roads, I felt my body relax. I didn’t care where we went.

  Careful not to cross the boundary of Sunflower County, Tinkie pulled into the driveway of the old Maxwell Plantation. Treacherous buck vines with half-inch thorns grew out of the untended azaleas and climbed the old oaks. The house itself seemed to slump. I closed my eyes, suddenly overcome with a desire to cry. The place retained an elegance that’s hard to describe in the middle of decay, but time had worked hard magic. Vines wound around the columns that supported the second story. The old bricks, baked by slaves, had begun to crumble. The massive oaks that lined the drive held Spanish moss that wafted in the gentle breeze and told a story of past lawn parties and laughter.

  Tinkie and I had grown close enough that I could speak my thoughts. “Dahlia House will look like this if I go to prison.”

  Tinkie’s hand found mine on the car seat. “No, Sarah Booth. It won’t. I’ll buy Dahlia House, if it comes to that. Harold and I have discussed it. Your home won’t be sold or razed. You have our word.”

  The tears slid down my cheeks. I hated to cry in front of anyone, but Tinkie was more than just anyone. She was the sister I should have had. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t help feeling sorry for myself.”

  She hugged me to her, and I felt her own tears wetting my hair. “It looks bad right now, but it isn’t over. You know that. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet.”

  “Do you really think Graf has left for Hollywood without me?”

  She looked at the Maxwell place. The processes of nature were at work even as we sat and watched. “Graf doesn’t take action, Sarah Booth. He reacts. If he has gone to Hollywood, it’s not because he didn’t want to take you with him. It’s that he fled in such a hurry, he couldn’t wait.”

  I saw that, but it didn’t make me feel better. “Everything he said was a lie.”

  “Probably. But did you really expect it to be different?” She smiled at me. “I think not. You always knew him better than the rest of us. We saw that gorgeous exterior, and we thought the outside was a preview of the inside. We were just wrong.”

  How to explain to her that I’d really felt that Graf was different? The first time I’d fallen for him, I’d been inexperienced and unprepared for a man who believed his own lies. I’d allowed myself to be swept up in his powerful beliefs. This time, though, I hadn’t. Yet Graf had played me again and made me believe in him. Or at least in his innocence.

  “I wonder where he is.”

  “Coleman will find him. Eventually. But Graf can’t really help us, Sarah Booth. We need someone who can corroborate your identification of Morgan as the man that sold that lipstick.”

  “And in the meantime, I’ll have my preliminary hearing and then be indicted by a grand jury for murder. That’s going to be a great recommendation for your future clients. ‘Oh, yeah, my former partner’s doin’ time for murder.’”

  “Let me worry about my future,” Tinkie said. “Why don’t we go for a ride? You have Miss Scrapiron over at your house. I could ride with you.”

  I sat back and felt Tinkie’s forehead to see if she had a fever. She didn’t ride horses. She didn’t like to get dirty. I didn’t think she even owned a pair of breeches, much less paddock boots.

  “Oh, pick up your jaw,” she said. “I took lessons at summer camp each year. And I dated a boy my freshman year at Ole Miss who owned a breeding farm in Lexington, Kentucky. I used to help him breeze the racehorses.”

  “You what?”

  She laughed. “See, there are still some good surprises left in the day, Sarah Booth.” She started the car and backed out of the driveway. “If you mess with me, I’ll have to race you, and then you’ll be humiliated when I win.”

  Surprised, yes. Humiliated, never. “You’re on.” I covered a big yawn. I was tuckered out.

  She pulled up at the
courthouse so I could get my car. The reporters had moved on, sharklike, looking for new stories. “Why don’t you grab some lunch and take a quick nap. I’ll give you a call to wake you up and be at Dahlia House at three, ready to ride. Then I’m going to make you eat my mud.”

  Food and nap, in that order. Tinkie was a genius. “I’ll be ready at three.”

  I watched her pull away before I drove home. Once inside I fell into bed, asleep before I could even slip out of my clothes.

  I dreamt of vines and old houses that moaned as each brick fell from the foundation. Behind the houses was a small black spring that whispered darkly of the future.

  “Look deep, Sarah Booth. Don’t back away. Look deep to see what’s hidden.” The spring called to me. Though I knew better, I was drawn there to gaze into the slick black surface.

  Renata floated up, hair streaming around her pale face. Her eyes were wide open, her expression frozen into victory.

  When I backed away from her she reached for me.

  “From the grave, Sarah Booth. We’re coming from the grave for you.”

  I looked deeper and saw Robert Morgan floating up behind her. His hands had talons for fingers and he snatched at me.

  I awoke at the sound of my own scream. Sweetie Pie was frantically licking my face, and once I sat up, I realized it was nearly five o’clock. I’d slept away the entire afternoon. Dusk was settling over me, and Tinkie had stood me up. I could only smile. She’d tricked me into focusing on a horseback ride so I could sleep. Pretty clever, my old friend. If the dreams had left me alone, I would have slept through until the next day. As it was, I awoke with a sense of dread and no plan for the afternoon.

  I scouted the house for Jitty, but she was nowhere to be found. Not even up in the attic, where I sometimes found her in Alice’s old rocking chair. The old rocker, armless and designed for nursing mothers, was covered in dust. No matter how much I knew about the past, or how much I cared, I couldn’t maintain the weight of it, as well as the present. The future was a dark spring that dared me to look deeply. My goal was to find that place of balance in the present.

  I tried Tinkie’s cell phone, but she didn’t answer. Cece answered but said she was on deadline, that she’d call me back. Millie sounded frazzled, but she told me she was bringing a boxed dinner and a stack of old tabloids for my entertainment.

  “There’s another big story about you, Sarah Booth. It’s in The Galaxy. They’ve got a great photo of you and Graf kissing, and they’ve drawn prison bars—like the two of you are locked up together. Very sexy, I have to say.”

  Great. Now some maniac was drawing me into prison. “Do they say I’m guilty of murder?”

  Millie’s chuckle was amused. “Honey, they don’t care if you’re guilty or not. It’s the romance of two stars locked up together. It’s a great story, even if it isn’t true.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll be by in fifteen minutes. And I have a doggie bag for Sweetie Pie.”

  “You’re the best, Millie.” Sweetie had been reduced to dry dog food for the past several days, and the food from Millie’s would be a real treat.

  I fed the horses, whistled up my hound, and made a Jack and water while I waited on the porch for Millie to arrive. True to her word, she was there before my butt had frozen. We went inside and I made her a wine spritzer. Millie wasn’t a big drinker, but she liked a light drink.

  The stack of old tabloids she’d brought was impressive. Maybe it would keep my mind off my woes. I picked up an issue while Millie opened the go-box and changed my dinner to a china plate. “No sense in eating out of Styrofoam,” she said. “I hate the way it sounds when a fork touches that stuff.” She shuddered.

  The plate she set before me included all of my favorites—fried chicken, fried okra, turnip greens, purple hull peas, and a corn muffin. My mouth watered as I looked at it.

  I saw that Sweetie, too, had a treat. Millie had brought her a half-dozen chicken tenders, broiled, and a dollop of homemade macaroni and cheese, one of Sweetie’s all-time favorites.

  “This is wonderful.”

  “Tinkie said you might be hungry.”

  “Speaking of Tinkie, where is she?”

  Millie looked chagrined. “I shouldn’t have mentioned her name.”

  Now I was really curious. “Where is she?”

  “She went to Memphis, Sarah Booth. She knew you couldn’t go, but she said she had something she had to do.”

  “What?” I lowered my fork.

  “She was going to that cosmetic shop. And she was going loaded for bear.”

  It was eight o’clock when Tinkie finally called me, and I could tell from her voice that she was both jubilant and tired.

  “Meet me at the sheriff’s office,” she said. “I’m about ten minutes from town. I’ve already called Coleman.”

  I didn’t argue, I just loaded into the car and drove. I took Sweetie Pie along. She liked to ride, and she enjoyed a visit to the jail, where she’d once spent several days—falsely accused of biting.

  The reporters had cleared out of the town square, leaving only the wind to whistle down the empty streets. It seemed much later than it was as I parked and walked along the sidewalk. A piece of litter skittered across the sidewalk in front of me, and Sweetie nabbed it. She carried it up the steps and into the courthouse where I put it in a waste can.

  The sheriff’s office was quiet, and Coleman was nowhere to be found. Gordon met us. “Coleman can’t make it,” he said. “Connie went into some kind of seizure. He’s at the hospital.”

  I didn’t believe a word of it, but I also didn’t feel the need to comment. Tinkie had plenty to say, though.

  “Gordon, I have a sworn statement here from Carlotta La Burnisco saying that Robert Morgan was in her shop the day Sarah Booth bought the lipstick. Carlotta turned the shop over to Morgan.” She produced a paper with a flourish and slammed it onto the counter.

  Gordon and I both peered at the paper, which was typewritten and signed by Carlotta La Burnisco. It was exactly as Tinkie said—a sworn statement attesting to the fact that Morgan had taken over the shop that day, that he’d torn a page from her ledger and that he’d paid Carlotta five grand to be absent and to lie to anyone who asked.

  “Well, looks like Ms. Carlotta La Burnisco has some serious questions to answer.” Gordon keyed the radio and called Dewayne. “Sarah Booth and Tinkie are up here at the sheriff’s office. We’re going to need some help from the Memphis PD to pick up Carlotta La Burnisco. Then you’re going to Memphis to pick up that cosmetic woman and bring her here to answer some questions.”

  “The bitchy one?” Dewayne asked, his voice loud on the radio.

  “That would be her.” Gordon turned back to us. “Good work, Tinkie. How’d you break her? We couldn’t get her to admit to anything.”

  “Oscar helped me,” Tinkie said, giving me a hug. “It was a financial thing. It took some digging around, but Oscar discovered some irregularities in the mortgage payments on the cosmetic shop. La Burnisco was about to go into default, and suddenly, the balloon note on the mortgage was paid in full.” Tinkie had our full attention as she talked.

  “Money was coming in from somewhere, but Oscar couldn’t get a clear picture. The bank was reluctant. It took him several days, but he finally traced the money back to Renata. A week before she died, Renata wrote Carlotta a check for nearly fifty thousand dollars, essentially buying in as a stockholder in the company.”

  “Damn.” I was ready to spit nails.

  “Why?” Gordon asked.

  Tinkie was triumphant. “Sarah Booth is innocent. She was framed, and she was framed by Renata herself! Renata is behind every move in this game.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense.” Tinkie was slugging back a strong cup of coffee though I’d begged her to go home and get some rest. “The facts don’t lie. But why? Gordon asked the right question. Why did Renata do this? Why, if she knew someone was going to kill her, did she spend her time pinning it
on you instead of trying to stay alive?”

  We sat at my kitchen table, and I pulled out the stack of tabloids Millie had brought. I’d noticed something in one of the stories from the past summer. I found the place again and scanned the story more closely.

  Photos of Renata, barefoot and wearing a sarong, showed her on a beach in Tahiti. She was walking alone down the beach, her smile resplendent. The reporter quoted her as saying, “My dream is to simply slip from the public eye and live out the rest of my days in an island paradise like this.” There were other pictures of her in a villa with a distinctive Mediterranean look, the surf pounding in the distance.

  I pushed the paper to Tinkie. “Read this. I think Renata was going to disappear. But not before she fixed it so that Graf and I would suffer.”

  Tinkie quickly read the article. She looked up at me. “Remember the letter she sent her brother? It said something about how she was going to vanish.” Her voice was threaded with caffeine-induced excitement. “Sarah Booth, that finally makes perfect sense. Renata intended to set up an elaborate frame to snare you and Graf, and then she was going to disappear. She didn’t intend to be killed, but she fully intended to make it appear that she was dead. So you and Graf would pay the ultimate price.”

  She pulled out her cell phone. “Gordon, have you heard from the Memphis PD?” She arched both eyebrows at me and whispered, “Carlotta’s in custody, and she’s agreed to tell everything she knows. Her lawyer is on the way so she can give a statement.” She turned back to Gordon.

  “That’s excellent, Gordon. Now I have something else. Was there anything left of Robert Morgan’s belongings in the car?” She paused. “Uh-huh. Can you check the Memphis airport and see if he had a ticket booked anywhere? Some far-flung getaway.” Her smile told me Gordon was willing to comply. “Thanks, Gordon, you’re the best.”