Bones To Pick

by Carolyn Haines

  “There are other fish in the sea,” Jitty said.

  “I prefer pork.”

  “Your palate will change.” There was a hint of softness in her tone.

  I examined her outfit, complete with sumptuous jewels and what appeared to be ermine on the collar. “You’re advocating an era when members of the court slept with whomever they chose, married or not, willing or not. It was a time without morals or decency. That’s what brought on the French Revolution.”

  “Change is inevitable.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re a walking advertisement for excess and out-of-control consumerism. I’m just glad no one else can see you!”

  “Jealous?”

  I pushed back my chair and got up. “When the guillotine drops, don’t come crying to me.”

  She was laughing softly as I walked up to my room for my riding boots. In less than ten minutes, I had Reveler saddled and Sweetie Pie circling my legs with eager anticipation. I mounted, and we set off at a trot across the cotton fields. Soon the picked plants would be disked under, and the ground would be prepared for next year’s crop.

  There was something about farming that kept a person connected to the soil, and I felt myself relax as I thought about the passing of the seasons. I’d started my career as a PI last fall. In that short time I’d saved Dahlia House from the developers, found a stray dog that turned out to be a real treasure, obtained the best partner in the world, and been gifted with a horse from my friend Lee McBride. All in all, romantic train wrecks aside, it had been a good year. I had to put aside my longing for Coleman and my regrets about Hamilton. I was where I was supposed to be.

  Reveler’s long trot was a pleasure to ride. The wind whipped my hair across my face, and my ears were numb with cold, but it was pure bliss. Sweetie Pie bounded along beside me as we rode the edges of the fields. We could cover miles without running into a single vehicle.

  The land spread out before me, a flat vista of wealth. The Mississippi Delta is some of the richest land in the world. Top soil eight feet deep. I could not imagine ever leaving it again, not even for Hamilton Garrett V.

  We made a circle of the surrounding properties, and then I turned back to Dahlia House as early nightfall was drifting over me. It was only about four, but the cloud cover blocked the light. I wanted to get home before it got too dark to see.

  Reveler eagerly took the canter, and I pushed aside all my negative thoughts and feelings and gave myself to the ride. When I trotted down the drive of Dahlia House, I saw a strange red Porsche in front of the house.

  Slipping off Reveler’s bridle, I walked him cool and left him grazing on the front lawn while I crept up the steps and into my front parlor. My mind was focused on who would enter my house without permission, and it was with relief that I found Harold sitting on Aunt Loulane’s horsehair sofa, sipping a Scotch.

  “I knew you were riding, so I made myself at home,” he said.

  “I need to take care of Reveler.” I waved him to follow me. “New car?”

  “Rachel encouraged me to get it. I’m selling it tomorrow as soon as the dealership opens.”

  “Nice color.”

  “I think I want a truck.”

  I burst out laughing. Harold was one of the most refined men I knew. He was a gourmet cook and a banker who kept a Haviland china service in his office at the bank. “Keep the Porsche. It suits you better.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  The worry in his eyes troubled me. Harold wasn’t paranoid, and he didn’t go around looking for something to obsess over. He occasionally paid me a visit, but not often. Perhaps it had been due to his involvement with Rachel, or perhaps it was my involvement with Coleman. It didn’t matter; I was glad to see him.

  I led Reveler to the barn by his mane, and Harold unsaddled him while I cleaned his hooves and poured up his ration of grain. We worked in companionable silence, but he’d come to talk with me about something important. I’d learned the art of waiting for the talkee to bring it to me.

  “Allison Tatum didn’t kill Quentin McGee,” he said.

  I could hear the comb running through Reveler’s mane as he worked. “I know. I think she was framed.” I walked around and put my hand on Harold’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “But I know you didn’t kill her, either, Harold.”

  His smile was warm. “Thank you, Sarah Booth.”

  “Thanks aren’t necessary. I know you wouldn’t harm anyone. Once Tinkie and I investigate further, we should have some viable suspects.”

  “I was so angry with her,” he said.

  I hugged him lightly. “If that were a crime, we’d all be in jail. Hey, I’m sorry about Rachel.”

  “Me, too. She’s a great woman. I was just never comfortable with all those French hairdressers. And she wanted to travel, something I’m not free to do.”

  I could see on his face that he’d cared for the eccentric businesswoman who’d built an empire of beauty salons staffed by handsome French stylists. It was a mecca of Daddy’s Girl fantasies—the sensual touch of a sexy, foreign man without guilt or repercussions. Rachel was a genius.

  He sighed. “Just think, if I’d gone to Paris with her like she asked, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

  “You aren’t in a predicament,” I pointed out. “No one has accused you of anything. Just wait and don’t borrow trouble.” Aunt Loulane’s words were out of my mouth before I could bite them back.

  “I can just see your aunt,” he said, and this time his smile was real. “I think of you sometimes, living here alone.”

  “But I’m not alone,” I answered. Harold’s concern was one thing. His pity was another. “I have Sweetie and Reveler.” And Jitty, but I wasn’t about to admit to a haint.

  “Let me take you to dinner, Sarah Booth.”

  “Okay, but let me go inside and clean up.” I didn’t have to look down at my stained breeches and muddy boots to know I needed a little feminine care.

  “Perfect. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes?” He waited for me to calculate the time allotment for cleaning up.

  I nodded. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s going to be a surprise.”

  3

  Highway 1, which topped the thirty-foot levee on the Mississippi River, was the perfect place to open up the Porsche. The road was one of my favorites. On the west side were the river breaks, small sloughs, and swamps, where wildlife flourished. On the east side were pastures filled with grazing cattle. Sometimes the pastures included part of the road. Harold left a whirlwind of leaves behind as we flew through the night. It was perfect November weather, cold with a hint of ice in the crackle of the leaves. With the top down, the wind was freezing, but also invigorating. It brought the first flush of color to Harold’s pale cheeks. As we left the levee and hit the interstate to Memphis, I watched Harold’s profile. He had begun to relax. I was glad, because I’d never seen him so tense.

  “What’s wrong, Harold? Did you have to evict some little old lady on a Sunday?”

  He smiled. “You give me too much credit, Sarah Booth. You think I might worry about someone else’s plight. It’s my own neck I’m concerned about.”

  For all his bravado, Harold was a kind man. There were several elderly matrons around town who owed their homes to his gentle intervention in banking rules. “Right, Harold, I know how hard-hearted you are.”

  He slowed the car enough so that he could really look at me. “Why didn’t we make a couple, Sarah Booth?”

  It was a hard question to answer. When I’d first met Harold, with his plan to raze Dahlia House and build a shopping mall, I had good reason to dislike him. Then, things had changed. Antipathy had turned into attraction. Yet we’d never followed through. Why? I still couldn’t say.

  “You’re just hurting over Rachel,” I said, touching his arm gently. “And you know what a muddle I made of my romantic life. I have no answers for either of us.”

  “Coleman Peters.” He said the name as if
it were the title of a book.

  I wisely said nothing as he pressed the accelerator and sped us through the night to a small, expensive Memphis restaurant called The French Connection.

  The food was good, the wine excellent, and the crème brûlée to die for. Throughout the meal, we talked about my past cases, Oscar’s reaction to Tinkie’s involvement in the private investigation business, and the passing of the year.

  “Will you be making fruitcakes this year?” he asked.

  “Tradition, Harold. It rules my life.” I’d had enough wine to believe I was witty, and I was rewarded with his bold laugh. Several patrons of the restaurant turned to look at us, and not without envy.

  We ordered coffee, and I watched his face change. “I need your help, Sarah Booth.”

  “Harold, you know that Humphrey Tatum has already hired us to help Allison. Besides, you don’t have a thing to worry about. Gordon would never seriously consider you a killer.”

  He frowned. “I’m not so certain. I don’t think Tinkie conveyed the full scene to you. Because I didn’t convey it to her.”

  Looking into his dark eyes, I could see he was genuinely worried. Though I might not take his predicament seriously, he did. To belittle his concern was not the action of a friend. “Tell me what happened.”

  He leaned closer, glancing left and right as if he were about to reveal a state secret. “I was in the bar at The Club. Rachel and I had had a terrible row in the dining room. It was”—he grimaced—“tasteless and regrettable.”

  “You really care for her, don’t you?”

  He dropped his gaze, and I could read nothing on his face. When he looked up again, he was composed. “Rachel has such a gift for life. To be with her makes me feel more fully alive than I’ve ever felt. But it isn’t fair for me to hold her back. She wants to travel, to live in Europe, to experience life. I’m happy here in Zinnia, living my dull life with the people I’ve grown to care about.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Hamilton. He’d offered me the chance of a lifetime, to live in an exotic city with a man who stopped women in their tracks, a man who loved me. For another woman, it would have been the perfect match. Somehow, though, Mississippi had gotten into my blood, and I couldn’t abandon her. My roots had grown too deeply in the rich Delta soil. I understood what Harold was saying. “I just played out this scene, I’m afraid.”

  “I know that Hamilton offered you Paris. I’m sorry. It’s hard to tear your heart in half.” He picked up my hand, and I felt the weakest pulse in my thumb. It made me smile.

  “We’re a lot more alike than you once believed,” he said.

  “We are.” It was an easy admission. “That’s how I know you couldn’t hurt Quentin. But tell me the rest of the story.”

  Harold released my hand and looked down at his coffee cup. “As I said, Rachel and I had had an argument. She’d given me back a ring. Not an engagement ring, but a gift I’d bought her. She left, and I went into the bar and proceeded to polish off my image as an ass.”

  I grinned. “So you got drunk.”

  “Drunker.” He signaled the waiter for the check. “I don’t remember everything I said or did, but Marcus Kline came up to me in the bar and started picking at me about the things Quentin had written in the book.”

  “I haven’t read it.”

  “She detailed my aunt’s unhappy love affair, her suicide.” He shrugged. “I swung at him, but Bobby Deneff pulled me off. I was spoiling for a fight.”

  “That’s when Quentin arrived.”

  “Right. She came in the bar with an attitude. She plopped a hundred down, and when Bernard Jacks couldn’t change it, she acted like a little bitch. I told him to put her drink on my tab. That’s when she got really nasty.”

  “How so?”

  “She told me that I couldn’t bribe her to leave my family out of her second book. She said she was going to dig up every bone I had buried and pick it to death. That’s when she stood up and stumbled. Her drink flew all over me. I was furious.”

  “Charming,” I said, hoping to take the edge off. Harold was frowning as he twirled his coffee cup in the saucer.

  “She downed the remains of her drink and stalked off, and I followed her outside. I intended to tell her off. In my drunken stupor, I thought it would be better to do it outside rather than in public.”

  This wasn’t good news. After a public argument, Harold followed a lone woman into the night—right before someone murdered her. On a positive side, no one heard what must have been a heated exchange between them.

  “So the only person who heard you was Quentin, and she won’t be talking,” I said, hoping to make light of the situation.

  “If only that were true.”

  “Who heard?”

  “Marcus.”

  “Good grief.” Marcus and Harold were bitter enemies. Long ago, Harold had foreclosed on the Kline plantation. The bank can carry a debt for only so long; it was an economic fact even I understood. Rather than accept that the bank had acted in a prescribed way, Marcus found it easier to blame Harold for his personal failure.

  “It gets worse. I threatened Quentin.” He refused to look up at me. “She said some nasty things, and I responded by telling her if she didn’t leave my family out of her books, I’d”—he finally looked up—“kill her.”

  “How long did it take Marcus to beat a trail to the sheriff’s office?”

  “He was there as soon as he heard that Quentin’s body was found. Gordon came by to talk to me. I admitted the whole thing.”

  My exasperation with Harold made my voice sharp. “Don’t you watch any television? The airwaves are filled with cop shows with the mantra ‘don’t talk to the police.’”

  “I didn’t touch Quentin.”

  “Neither did Allison, and look where she is.”

  “My point exactly. I need you and Tinkie to help me out.”

  I sighed. After the things Harold had done for me, I could hardly say no to him, yet I was obligated to work for Allison. When I hit on the solution, I smiled. “You’re both innocent, so when Tinkie and I find the real killer, it’ll clear you both.”

  He leaned forward and picked up my hand, his fingers stroking it gently. “You’re a clever woman, Sarah Booth.”

  I shook my head. “Not really. But you are a good man, Harold. I can prove that.”

  He squeezed my hand, and my thumb tingled. Then the waiter brought the check, and we were out in the cold night, with a starry drive back to Zinnia.

  Harold left me at the door with a kiss on the cheek. As I watched his taillights disappear down the drive, I felt a sense of foreboding. Gordon Walters knew that Harold wouldn’t kill Quentin or anyone else, but I had a feeling this case was going to get much larger than Sunflower County and the reach of local law enforcement. I was worried about Harold.

  Sleeping late is an art form at Dahlia House—and one that both Sweetie Pie and Jitty seem to take as a personal affront. The bedside clock showed eight when I heard Sweetie’s tail thumping the floor and felt her hot breath on my face. Groaning, I rolled over and tried to burrow beneath my pillows.

  “I would have thought you’d get more than a kiss from Harold Erkwell, Sarah Booth.”

  I opened my eyes to find Jitty standing at the foot of the bed, a shaft of morning sunlight falling directly across her. The peacock blue of her dress was so bright, I held up my hands in the sign of the cross. “You’re about to fry my eyeballs. Pull the shades!”

  Jitty, of course, didn’t move an inch. I got up and closed the shades. I gave the bed one last, lingering glance. “What do you want?”

  “Some action.” She swished by me as she took a seat on the side of the bed, petticoats rattling.

  I wasn’t ready for verbal combat with Jitty, but I had no choice. “What about a society that has no morality? I thought you were for rules and order and propriety. How would it be proper for me to sleep with a client?”

  “If he became a husband, it would be just fine. S
arah Booth, a whole year has passed, and you’re not any closer to the altar than you were in New York City.”

  “Go away.” I went to the bathroom and began my morning ablutions.

  “You like Harold.” She harangued me through the closed door of the bathroom.

  “Which is the best reason I know to stay away from him. Every time I get the idea that I like a man, he ends up in a world of hurt.”

  “My, my, who are you feeling sorry for, Hamilton or yourself?”

  I was saved from answering by the sound of the doorbell. As I zipped my jeans and ran barefoot down the stairs, I considered the advantages of finding a roommate. Jitty didn’t appear when anyone else was in the house. A roommate would solve a lot of problems.

  “You aren’t going to believe what I found out,” Tinkie said as she hurried through the front door and headed east rather than west. She was going to our office instead of the kitchen. That in itself intrigued me enough to follow along, my bare feet slapping on the cold wood floor as my brain murmured “coffee, coffee, coffee.”

  “What?”

  She went in the office and plopped down at her desk. She’d learned that from me. In her formal DG days, Tinkie would never have plopped. A true DG descended into a chair.

  “The McGee family has refused to claim Quentin’s body!”

  “Are you sure?” This was scandalous.

  “Absolutely. I heard it directly from the horse’s mouth—”

  There was a light in her eyes that told me more was to come. “And—”

  “Mrs. Virgie Carrington is coming down to claim the body and handle all of the funeral arrangements.”

  “The Virgie Carrington? Founder and director of the Carrington School for Well-Bred Ladies?”

  “None other.”

  “I didn’t realize Quentin had connections with the school.” I should have. She was a McGee, and as such, she’d undoubtedly graduated under Virgie’s guiding hand.

  “She and Allison both are graduates.” Tinkie frowned. “I just can’t imagine the family not handling the funeral, though.”