Bones To Pick

by Carolyn Haines

  Tinkie had come to realize that most murders were about money. Money could buy sex and power, among other things.

  “Good idea.”

  She pulled into a parking space along the empty courthouse square. I got out and walked up the courthouse steps and down the hall to the sheriff’s department. It was going to be difficult to go in there and not see Coleman at his desk. He’d become such a big part of my life, both professional and personal. Since he’d taken an unpaid leave of absence and left for Jackson with Connie, I hadn’t heard a word from him and didn’t expect to. Whether it was vanity or deluded fantasy, I believed that it had cost Coleman a lot to walk away from a possible future with me and stick with his psycho wife. But I respected his decision. Coleman wasn’t a man who gave his word lightly.

  My footsteps sounded hollow on the linoleum, and Deputy Walters met me with a carefully blank expression. “I hear you’re working for the Tatums,” he said.

  Word did travel fast in a small town. “Humphrey hired us. Can we see Allison? Tinkie’s right behind me.”

  He unlocked the door to the jail and escorted me between two rows of cells. Only a few weeks before, Sweetie Pie had been incarcerated on trumped-up charges of biting. Coleman and Gordon had been good to her. I could see that Gordon had done what he could to make Allison comfortable. She had four pillows and three blankets, though the temperature was comfortable. She was a pretty young woman with her brother’s Nordic coloring and a petite but athletic figure.

  “Who are you?” she asked, rising to her feet. She came to the bars and grasped them to get a better look at me.

  “This is Ms. Delaney,” Gordon said. “She’s your private investigator. She was also at the crime scene and saw your footprints clear as day.”

  I didn’t dispute Gordon but merely waited until he was gone. While I was waiting, I took Allison’s measure. Her hair was cut in a chin-length bob, and her blue eyes were without make-up. She didn’t need any. Her long eyelashes were thick and dark, and her complexion as smooth as a child’s, except for three angry-looking scratch marks across her left cheek.

  “Why did my brother hire you? He hates me,” Allison said.

  “Why does he hate you?”

  She sighed. “I messed up his life. Quentin fell in love with me, instead of him.”

  That was something to ponder, but I filed it away and got down to the basics. “Where were you last night, Allison?”

  “Quentin and I had a fight.” She spoke softly and looked down, blinking her eyes rapidly. Her fingers drifted up to her cheek. When she looked back up at me, tears hung in her lashes. “We’d had a terrible fight. The first book was a tremendous success. Her publisher had already gone back to print another twenty thousand copies, and the book had only been out for a week. Quentin said she was going to write a second book. I didn’t want her to.”

  A good investigator learns there are always multiple ways to bend a motive. Allison had just handed me a gold-plated one. But somehow, I believed her when she said she’d had an argument with Quentin. That was a far cry from a desire to murder her. “So you argued. Where and when?”

  “We were having dinner at The Club. Several people overheard us. Quentin got rather loud.” She frowned. “That was about eight o’clock last night.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Quentin stormed out of The Club. By the time I got the car from the valet, she’d disappeared. That was the last time I saw her.” She wiped at her cheek. “I really loved her. I hate that we parted with angry words.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I drove around Zinnia for a while. Then I drove to Tatum’s Corner. I was so close to home, I thought I might see Mom and Dad.”

  This was good news. “Did you see them?”

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t stop. There were things in Quentin’s book that only I could have told her. I felt like a Judas, so I didn’t stop.” When she looked into my eyes, there wasn’t a hint of self-pity in her gaze. “Quentin and I both believed that people who built their lives on lies should be exposed. That’s what her book was about. Somewhere along the way, I guess I lost the taste for unadulterated truth. We hurt a lot of people.”

  “Which brings me to a logical question. Who would want to hurt Quentin?”

  Allison’s eyes filled, but she didn’t cry. “Who wouldn’t? Everyone hated us. I told Quentin that I just wanted to live our lives together. We could have moved to New York or London. We could have gone somewhere we’d be accepted, but she said we weren’t going to run away. We were going to rub their noses in it.”

  I’d learned one thing from Lawrence Ambrose, a truly famous literary figure who’d been murdered last Christmas: People will do a whole lot to keep their secrets out of print. “Can you give me some specific names?”

  “Lots of people were angry about the book. Yesterday afternoon at the book signing, Umbria, Quentin’s sister, was saying horrible things. I think she bought all the books and burned them.”

  I’d already planned to visit the McGee family members. “Anyone else?”

  “For the past six months someone had been sending Quentin threatening notes.”

  I gripped the bars and leaned closer. “Who?”

  “They were anonymous. I thought they were creepy, but Quentin just laughed about it. She said we were getting someone’s goat, and the book hadn’t even come out yet.”

  “Do you have any of those notes? Did she keep them?”

  “I’m not certain,” Allison said. “Quentin might have saved them. You could look through her things at the B&B or maybe at our cottage in Oxford.”

  2

  Tinkie was sitting on the courthouse steps when I finished my interview with Allison. To my surprise, my partner was deep in a phone conversation with someone who must have been distraught.

  “There’s no point in making yourself sick,” Tinkie said, and I knew she was talking to a man. In a well-trained Daddy’s Girl, there’s a tone that both soothes and strokes the ego of a MWP—Male With Potential. There was a pause and Tinkie continued. “Nothing can change it now. Sarah Booth and I will check it out, and I’m sure we’ll find everything is okay.” She looked up and blew her sun-glitzed bangs off her forehead in a gesture of impatience, but there wasn’t a hint of it in her voice. “I’m certain Sarah Booth doesn’t think any such thing. She’s always had great admiration for you.”

  I arched my left eyebrow—the only one I could arch after months of practice—as she hung up the phone.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get into the jail to interview Allison, but I knew you had it covered, and I thought it best to talk to Harold out here.”

  “Harold? What’s wrong with him?” Tinkie was only half right. When Harold had tried to buy my affections with a four-carat diamond, I hadn’t felt very warmly toward him, but he’d proved himself a good friend in the last eight months.

  “He’s worried.”

  “Is it about that book?”

  “Partly, but there’s something else. He’s in a real dither.” She patted the step, and I took a seat beside her on the cold cement slab. The courthouse square was lined with white oaks, their limbs all bare. In one tree a murder of crows hunkered down against the wind. It was a bleak and dismal day.

  “What’s wrong with Harold?” The faintest tingle in my thumb let me know that my appendage hadn’t totally forgotten Harold and his attentions. I reminded myself that Harold Erkwell was the president of the Bank of Zinnia, the bank Tinkie’s father owned and where her husband was chairman of the board of directors. I’d seen Harold in a fit of passion but never in a dither.

  “He had a run-in with Quentin McGee last night. Gordon has already been out to question him.”

  “It’s Allison who’s locked up. Why is Harold worried?”

  “He doesn’t believe Allison killed Quentin, and once she’s released, he thinks he may be the prime suspect.”

  “Why in the world would he think that?”


  “Because he threatened to kill Quentin in front of about eight people at The Club.”

  My mouth made a silent little O. “That doesn’t sound like Harold.”

  “He’d been drinking. I gather he just broke up with Rachel Gaudel and was upset. Then that ass Marcus Kline started teasing him about the book and some dirt on the Erkwell family. About that time, Quentin bumped into him and spilled her drink all over him. That was the last straw.”

  Harold normally was the most levelheaded person I’d ever met. It was hard to visualize him making rash death threats. “Did Harold say what time this happened?”

  “After nine and before ten, but he couldn’t be more exact. He knows that because Rachel left at nine, and Harold said he went home around ten.”

  That time frame put Harold talking to Quentin after Allison had left The Club. “Did Oscar have any information on the financial scene?” My butt was freezing off, so I stood and offered Tinkie my hand. She grasped it and rose.

  “He just said we’d better cash that check first thing in the morning and see if it clears.”

  “Damn.” I turned to face her. “I thought the Tatums were the wealthiest family in Crystal County.”

  “That was before 2000. A lot has changed in this country.”

  That was a vast understatement. “What about the McGees?” I asked.

  “Seems that Franklin and Caledonia McGee had much better financial advice. They bought low and sold high. They’re one of the wealthiest families in the Southeast.”

  “One thing about this case, we have plenty of suspects.”

  “Most of them are Oscar’s friends.” Tinkie started toward the Cadillac. “Want to go check out a few leads at The Club?”

  “I think we should forgo the champagne and see what we can find at The Gardens.”

  Tinkie sighed. “Harold is at The Club, and I think he could use a dose of your humor.”

  “I’ll catch him later today,” I promised as we got in the Cadillac and headed the few blocks to the bed-and-breakfast run by one of the matrons of Sunflower County.

  When we pulled down the shell driveway, Tinkie slowed. Live oaks lined the way, some with magnificent limbs that crossed over the roadway and touched the ground on the other side. The place hadn’t been named The Gardens without reason.

  Unfortunately, the owner of the place, Gertrude Stromm, bore no resemblance to the bounty and generous beauty of her establishment. Her pinched face held eyes that shifted left and right, as if she might miss some social faux pas. I’d heard from several people who’d spent the night at the B&B that she served breakfast at seven. If you were late, you didn’t eat. It was only the beauty of the place that kept her in business.

  “Mrs. Stromm,” Tinkie said as she stepped up to the front door. “It’s good to see you. Oscar sends his regards.”

  “You’re here to poke your nose into that terrible business with Quentin McGee.” She said this to me, not Tinkie.

  “Allison Tatum has asked us to pick up some things from her room,” I said smoothly. In the sunlight Gertrude’s red-tinted hair looked like tiny copper wires bent at the ends.

  “You’ll need a court order to get in there,” she said.

  “No, we don’t,” Tinkie said evenly. “Allison needs a change of clothes, and we’re going to get it for her. We’ve been hired by her brother, Humphrey, to help her out.”

  “The sheriff’s department has already sent someone here, tromping mud all over my polished floors. I won’t have this. I’m going to pack up all of their things and have them removed from the premises.”

  “How far in advance did Quentin pay the room?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t matter one bit. I don’t have to have snoops and cops disturbing my other guests.”

  “Mrs. Stromm, it looks as if you’re going to need a new roof here before long.”

  Tinkie’s observation was out of the blue, and it stopped both me and Gertrude in our tracks. It took only a few seconds for the meaning to register on each of us.

  “How dare you!” Mrs. Stromm was honestly shocked.

  “It’s very easy.” Tinkie laughed charmingly. “This is called business. Now we’d like to see Allison’s room, please.”

  The B&B was run like an old-time hotel, with a registration book on the front counter and pigeonholes behind the desk, where keys with large room numbers attached were kept. Gertrude got the key to Room 18. “Just follow me.” She started to stomp away, but I stopped her.

  “Who stays at the registration desk?”

  “I do. I have to check and be sure the people who stop by are quality folk. If I’d had any idea about Quentin McGee, I would never have rented her or her friend a room.”

  I didn’t doubt that for an instant, but it wasn’t my point. “So when you’re overseeing lunch or the gardens, who stays at the front desk?”

  She frowned, and her cool gray eyes grew even icier. “What are you implying?”

  “Is the desk left unattended?”

  “Perhaps.”

  It was as much as I was going to get out of her without thumbscrews, but it was enough to tell me that anyone could have picked up a key and gone into Allison’s room to steal her shoes. This was a point in our favor.

  The hallway was long and dark. The floor was polished pine with dark beaded board wainscoting edging the walls. The upper half was wallpapered with hunting scenes. Not my idea of great décor, but it was part of the planter tradition.

  When we got to Number 18, Gertrude unlocked the door and pushed it open. “I’ve made an inventory of every single thing in the room that belongs to me. If one thing is missing, I’ll have both of you in a jail cell beside your client.”

  “Do you think you’ll go with shingles again or perhaps steel?” Tinkie’s face was a careful blank.

  Gertrude made a sound like a dog choking on a bone and stomped down the hallway, leaving us alone.

  “Oscar would never hold up a loan on our account,” I said to Tinkie.

  “Of course not, but she doesn’t know that. You take the dresser, and I’ll take the suitcases.”

  The only interesting thing I found in the dresser drawers was a choice in undies—white lace thongs. Tinkie hit the mother load when she went through Quentin’s brown travel valise. She held the note out to me, satisfaction in her eyes. She read it aloud. “You’re going to pay for dragging your family’s name through the mud.”

  It was short, sweet, to the point, and virtually untraceable. Even I could tell it was printed on a laser printer. I held the note gingerly and finally dropped it into a plastic bag that had once held panty hose. “We’ll take this to Col—Gordon.” My correction had come too late. Tinkie gave me a look.

  “Coleman probably won’t come back to Sunflower County, Sarah Booth.” There was no malice in her tone.

  “I know. Just a hard habit to break.” In more ways than one. “Let’s take this to Gordon. He’s going to be testy because we found something and he didn’t, but we knew what to look for.”

  She nodded. “This is very good in Allison’s defense.”

  “Allison could have planted the note,” I pointed out, “but we can hope to find others in Oxford.”

  “And we can hope that Gordon has some technology that can trace these notes,” Tinkie said. “Or fingerprints.”

  Always the optimist, I thought. That’s why I loved Tinkie so. “Let’s get out of here. I’m afraid if I stay much longer, the Wicked Witch of the West will try to steal my dog.”

  We were laughing as we opened the door.

  Gertrude Stromm blocked the doorway. “I heard Quentin and Allison arguing,” she said. “It was ugly. That young woman killed her friend, and I’m going to testify to that.” She spun around and stormed back down the hallway. When she was at the end, she wheeled to face us. “For your information, Miss Sarah Booth Delaney, I don’t like dogs, or cats, or any other animal.”

  “What a surprise,” I replied, feigning shock.

  Holding
my second Bloody Mary of the day, I sat down at my desk to make a few notes on the Allison Tatum case. Tinkie had gone on to The Club to see her husband, and to see what new suspects she could dig up. The truth was, Tinkie would be able to function better without me tagging along. Zinnia was a small town, and everyone knew I didn’t have enough money to be a member of The Club. Since returning to Zinnia the year before—an unsuccessful actress trying to save her family home from the bulldozer—my economic woes were in the public domain. My presence would be a distraction.

  And I had other fish to fry. My hand reached out to pick up the phone.

  “Don’t you dare call that married man,” Jitty said.

  I looked up to find her gazing at me from behind a domino. “I have a right to call Coleman when I need some professional advice.”

  “You need to remember he’s chosen to honor his marital obligation. If he wanted you, he’d be right here at your side.”

  Jitty had a way of making her point. Coleman could have divorced his loony wife and stayed in Sunflower County, but he hadn’t. He’d left his job, his career, and me. All for Connie. And for his child—the child she’d deliberately conceived to hold him. I had to keep that in mind. This was all about Connie’s pregnancy, and it was the choice he should have made.

  I withdrew my hand and picked up my pen. “Okay, you’ve emotionally bludgeoned me into submission.”

  Jitty moved toward me on the soft rustle of petticoats and silk. “No Delaney woman has ever been desperate enough to go chasin’ after a married man.”

  I was sufficiently shamed; no witty retort came to my rescue.

  “Why don’t you call Hamilton Garrett V?” she asked.

  I considered it but knew I wouldn’t. I’d treated Hamilton shabbily. I had my reasons, just like Coleman had his, but in the long run, it wouldn’t make a difference to Hamilton. I’d chosen and he’d lost, or at least it would seem that way to him. After all, I’d left him in an airport waiting for me while I ran off to help Coleman. No, it was better to let Hamilton alone.