Greedy Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  I had no idea. Tinkie and Oscar didn’t go around bragging about their good deeds. “I’ll tell her you asked about her and Oscar.”

  She nodded. “I wish I could do more.”

  “We all do.” I waved good-bye, then hurried to the car and my shift to sit with Oscar at the hospital.

  3

  On the drive to the hospital, I phoned Graf. He had an early call to read for a new movie, a Western written and directed by the Coen brothers. The part was perfect for him, and he would bring the cowboy/reluctant gunslinger to life. I wished him luck and told him that nothing had changed in Zinnia.

  “Say the word and I’ll come to you,” he said. “No movie role is as important as you.”

  “Just hearing those words is enough.” It was true, even though I wanted him beside me. I was always a bit startled to realize how much I’d come to rely on Graf for support. It was knowing that I could lean on him that made all the difference. Graf couldn’t change what was happening to Oscar and Tinkie, though I had no doubt he would if he could. With Graf working in Hollywood, I could focus totally on my friend and her requirements. “If I need you, I’ll pick up the phone.”

  “I miss you, Sarah Booth. When Oscar is well, I want to set a date for our wedding.”

  “You haven’t officially proposed,” I reminded him, though his words had set my heart to thudding.

  “I’m afraid you won’t accept. If I just pretend it’s a fait accompli, then maybe you’ll go along with it.” His voice was tense.

  “You have to take the risk and ask me.” A deep streak of traditionalism was a sudden discovery.

  “What will you say?” He sounded nervous.

  “I’m not sure.” I wasn’t stringing him along. I simply didn’t know if I wanted to be married. I loved him. Far stronger and deeper than the way I’d loved him in New York when we’d first met and fallen in love—and broken up. In recent months, Graf had shown himself to be a man of complex emotions and to have a willingness to do the right thing.

  “Haven’t you ever dreamed of walking down the aisle in a wedding gown?”

  “Maybe when I was eight. Right before I human-sacrificed my friend’s Bridal Barbie.”

  He laughed hard and long, and it made me love him even more.

  I owed him the truth, though. “Marriage isn’t a legal state that appeals to me. I don’t need an official document to tell me that I love you. There seems no point to it, unless we decide to have children. Then we should be married.”

  “That’s something we need to work on.”

  I loved his enthusiasm. “I agree. As soon as Oscar is well, I’ll be on a plane. You’ll have to clear your whole schedule just so we can practice.”

  “Deal.”

  I pulled into a parking spot at the hospital. “If anything changes, I’ll phone you.”

  “And I’ll be in touch later, because I love the sound of your voice.” He blew me a kiss and hung up.

  It was just eight o’clock—an hour too early to be considered civilized by most DGs—when I walked into the hospital. I’d barely gotten my foot in the door when Doc Sawyer materialized from behind a soft drink machine and grabbed my arm.

  “Holy shit!” I jumped at least eight inches. “Doc, don’t you have enough work without trying to give me a heart attack?”

  He drew me into his office beside the emergency room. “I want to talk to you, Sarah Booth.”

  His expression and tone immediately settled me down. “What is it?”

  “Oscar isn’t getting any better.”

  “Not any?”

  “His temperature goes down slightly, but then it rises again. There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to help him.” His eyes were bloodshot; his hair, always in the mode of Albert Einstein, was bedraggled.

  “What are you saying?” I swallowed.

  “His body can’t sustain these spikes of high temperature. He’s used the last of his reserves. And the truth is, there could be brain damage from the fever. The same applies to Gordon and the two women.”

  I heard Doc clearly, but my brain wouldn’t process what he was saying. “What about ice packs? Can we do that?” I’d seen something like that once in a movie.

  “They’re all on insulated pads that run cold water beneath them constantly. It isn’t really helping.”

  “Doc,” my voice cracked, “what are you saying?”

  He grasped both of my arms with his strong hands. “That Oscar and the others are probably dying. You need to make plans to stay in town long enough to get Tinkie through this.”

  I wanted to sit, but every chair in Doc’s office was covered with a textbook or some kind of papers. They all pertained to the symptoms the patients were displaying.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do? Some expert?”

  “I’ve spoken with medical men who’ve worked the worst countries rocked by famine. This is something no one has seen, Sarah Booth. This is new. Thank God it seems contained to only people who went to that damn plantation.”

  “We can’t give up on them.” My voice squeaked.

  “I’m not quitting. I’ll never stop as long as there’s a breath in any of them. But I had to prepare you for the worst. Tinkie will need you. She’s tough as nails, but Oscar is her Achilles’ heel.”

  I knew that better than anyone. “What could this be?”

  He cleared his throat. “Impossible to say without better information.”

  “You’re sure it came from the Carlisle place?”

  Doc hesitated. “All four were there within a twenty-four-hour span.”

  “Is there anything else that links all four victims?”

  He shook his head. “They’ve been too sick to tell anyone anything. After Coleman meets with the CDC, he may have some answers. How are you feeling, Sarah Booth?” Doc asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You’re a bit thin for my taste.”

  “In Hollywood you can never be too thin.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “I’m sorry about your movie.”

  I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Sometimes it seems like it never happened, that it was all just a dream.”

  “That’s the disappointment. It’s how we humans protect ourselves from loss.”

  Doc had been my physician since I was a small child, and his wisdom was considerable. On occasion since my parents had died, he’d been a surrogate father. “How’d you get to be so smart?”

  “It’s all in the coffee.” He motioned toward the pot in the corner of his office. It was a standing joke because he made it so strong, it could almost walk. “Try to get Tinkie to go home. We need to run some tests on Oscar this morning, so he won’t be in the ward. It’ll be hard on her, staring at his empty bed.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  The cotton fields—rich soil tipped with new growth—flashed past the window of my roadster as I drove Tinkie to Hilltop, the estate she shared with Oscar. She held Chablis in her arms, and Sweetie lounged in the backseat, occasionally slurping at Tinkie’s cheek with a long tongue. As it turned out, it hadn’t been too difficult to get Tinkie out of the hospital. Once they wheeled Oscar away for tests, the spell broke. Tinkie nearly collapsed.

  “I’ll take a shower and change. Then you’ll drive me back, right?”

  “Absolutely.” I intended to drug her with one of my sleeping pills and see that she got some rest. Doc had okayed my plan and promised he’d call me once Oscar was returned to the isolation ward. While Tinkie slept, I would sit vigil at the hospital window. Tinkie desperately needed a break. Cece said she’d stayed awake all night.

  “You won’t trick me, will you, Sarah Booth?” Her blue eyes held trust.

  “Nope.” I’d never expected to use my acting skills in this manner.

  “I think he’s a little better, don’t you?”

  “We’ll know more after the tests.”

  She stroked Chablis and looked out the window at a land as familiar as her own face. A rare pecan grov
e, the new leaves so bright, they were almost painful, flashed by us. “Where are we?”

  “Nearly home,” I said gently. She’d lost all bearings, geographical and emotional. Hilltop was visible in the distance.

  “If Oscar dies—”

  “Tinkie, don’t even go there.” She was breaking my heart. I thought Coleman had done sufficient damage that the old ticker was impervious to serious hurt. Tinkie had found a new place to crack.

  “No, listen. If he dies, I want you to promise you’ll go back to Hollywood and resume your career. I don’t want you hanging around Zinnia because you’re worried about me.”

  “I hadn’t given it a thought.”

  She confronted me. “Liar.”

  It was all I had to give her. “Only for my best friend.” At the front door Sweetie Pie and Chablis bounded out of the car, running around the house and exploring as if they’d been gone for half a century.

  Even Tinkie’s footsteps, usually so perky and authoritative, were subdued. She shuffled into the house and then into the bathroom while I brewed some coffee and whipped up her favorite breakfast, made from an old family recipe. Tinkie’s maid had kept the house well stocked while she was out of town.

  I crept upstairs until I heard the shower, then I crushed the sleeping pill in the batter for the French toast. By the time she came downstairs, a towel wrapped around her hair, I had breakfast ready.

  I handed her a cup of coffee. She smiled and traded it for the one I was drinking out of. Tinkie was exhausted but she wasn’t stupid. Of course, I was foxier than doping her coffee.

  Ten minutes after she’d eaten, the drug kicked in. She had time for one accusatory look before I tumbled her onto the living room sofa, made a bed for Chablis beside her, and left Sweetie Pie to guard them both.

  Tinkie would be out for at least eight hours, but I had only until Doc called to say Oscar was going back to the isolation ward. While I might drug my friend, I wouldn’t leave her husband without a champion.

  Happy Trails trailer park was ten minutes from the hospital down a narrow private road that in my childhood had been dirt. Now it was paved. What ever I’d anticipated with a name like Happy Trails, the place was neatly located under budding pin oaks. Oleanders bloomed in profusion around a flagstone patio that held a huge barbecue pit. Trailers and lots were neatly maintained. There was a goofy golf course, a swimming pool, and what looked to be a common area for gathering and parties. I felt transported back to the 1940s.

  A tall, slender man with sharp gray eyes, a straight, aristocratic nose, and thinning hair came out to meet me. Luther Carlisle. I had no high school memories of him.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, pleasantly enough.

  I introduced myself. When I told him I was a friend of Tinkie and Oscar’s, he nodded, inviting me into the trailer that served as his office.

  “That’s a tragedy,” he said, settling me into a chair in front of his desk. He had a carafe of coffee, and he served me without asking. I took the cup, noting the delicate china that was obviously a family heirloom. Luther Carlisle was a strange blend of things.

  “Oscar’s been very good to the Carlisle family.” He gracefully held his coffee cup and saucer. “He’s made certain the plantation was well managed. Mississippi Agri-Team leases the land, and while the lease is a pittance of the value of the land, MAT pays on time.”

  “Do you mind if I ask who wants to buy it?”

  Luther cleared his throat. “Janks Development. They got a big-time plan.”

  “They want to build what? A planned community?”

  “A staged subdivision and a shopping center. Ultimately there’ll be close to five thousands homes and all the stores necessary to support it. Jimmy Janks is certain this area’s about to grow. Lots of foreign interests are rebuilding the downtowns of Clarksdale and Greenwood. There’s talk of some big corporations moving industry here and training a workforce. The Delta’s going to shine again.”

  “That’s less than a fifth-acre per home.” I wasn’t a math whiz but I was good at figuring out the economics of land rape.

  “Folks don’t want a lawn to maintain.” He jerked his head to indicate the trailer park behind him. “No one here has time to mow or tend a lawn. I figure all of that into the lot rental fee. Why should folks spend all that time and energy on a lawn? When was the last time you saw a kid outside playing?”

  He had a point. Where I’d grown up blazing trails and concocting adventures in the woods and fields, kids

  today were wired to computers and televisions. “Did your sister agree to the sale?”

  “Erin won’t agree to anything, but she’s not here dealing with it. I filed in court, and when I get that document, the sale will go through and her share of the money will be banked.”

  Luther Carlisle was a bit on the defensive side. And well he should be if he intended to sell the land out from under his sister. From what I’d learned, Erin Carlisle hadn’t been seen in Sunflower County in years, but to force a sale was extreme.

  “Has Erin left the States?” I lobbed out a test.

  Outside, a pickup truck, radio blaring, eased past. “No.”

  “Did you hire someone to look for her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might be?” He didn’t want to find her.

  “My lawyer’s taking care of all these details. Far as I know, she may be dead.”

  “I need to speak with her. Where is she?”

  He took a breath, and I could tell he was weighing his response. “She doesn’t answer her mail or return my calls. My lawyer says I can file to move forward on the land sale. It’ll be settled in the courts. I’m not doing anything illegal.”

  I crossed a leg. It wasn’t the first time one sibling tried to roll over another where land or money was involved. But if Erin truly wanted to know what Luther was up to, she could easily find out. “How old was Erin when she left your parents’ home?”

  “She’d graduated high school. My parents were devastated by the whole ugly mess. Erin never thought of anyone but herself.”

  He was more than willing to talk about old family scandals—if it painted his sister in a bad light—and I was ready to listen. “What was the problem with Erin?”

  “For one thing, she refused a full scholarship to Ole Miss. She was a heritage Zeta Zeta Phi, and she told Mother she’d rather live on the streets than pledge to that sorority. Or any sorority.”

  “That hardly sounds like a reason for a family split.”

  “It broke Mother’s heart. She gave up her home and family to live here in Sunflower County. Zeta Zeta was her sisterhood, and Erin acted like it was some kind of cult.”

  I had personal experience in this area. “Maybe she simply wasn’t a sorority girl. Surely that’s not a reason to disown a daughter.”

  He watched me carefully. “Oh, the sorority thing was the proverbial straw. The real trouble came when she told Mother that Father was screwing the maid.” His mouth compressed into a thin line, and anger sparked in his eyes. “She inflicted a lot of pain on the family. She destroyed us.” He cleared his throat. “They both threw her out and told her never to come back.”

  “Was your father having an affair?”

  He looked out the window as another vehicle passed. “I never asked. Wasn’t my business to meddle in my parents’ marriage. All I know is what Erin did hurt them both.”

  The story was odd six ways from Sunday. Although the rumors of murder and mishap were still floating around the Carlisle family years after the fact, Luther expressed disinterest in a possible love triangle, the accusation of which he said had destroyed his family. Tinkie, when she woke up, would be a better guide into the crazed conduct of high society. She could explain how a woman would toss out her daughter instead of her cheating husband.

  “This developer you’re working with. Jimmy Janks. He isn’t local, is he?” I knew most of the builders around Sunflower County, but a project this big would
require some high-dollar funding.

  “Janks Development is an Alabama concern. Did a lot of the building along the Gulf Coast. Condos, malls, that kind of thing. Jimmy Janks is highly qualified.”

  That remained to be seen. I changed directions, hoping to throw him off. “Why don’t you live at the plantation, Luther?”

  His face showed no emotion. “I prefer it here.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “Too many hard memories, Miss Delaney. Imagine living in a place where your mother fell to her death and your father hanged himself.” What ever he felt, he didn’t show any emotion. “Perhaps you were out of Sunflower County at the time of Mother’s death. Some people thought my father pushed her down the stairs. They felt that guilt drove him to suicide. There’s not a room in that house that doesn’t hold some painful reminder of the way things used to be and how they ended up. Who wants to live with that?”

  I could sympathize, but the whole thing didn’t smell right. “Do you have sentimental attachment to the place?”

  “I miss the house,” he continued. “I miss those crisp mornings when Cook served us all breakfast together. Erin was young then. My parents were happy. I loved the farm and going out with Father to make sure the fields were in good shape and the crops coming along. I still dream about those days. But they’re gone. Trying to cling to a fading memory won’t change what’s happening all around us, Miss Delaney. Progress can’t be stopped. You can’t run fast enough to stay ahead of it. Try, and you’ll be crushed. This development deal is good for me and for Erin. Taxes are going up, the cost of farming is out the roof. It’s time to let go of the past and step into the future. This is best for Erin, too, whether she agrees or not.”

  My cell phone rang, producing a ripple of relief. Luther was not a scary man, but his worldview was pessimistic to the extreme. I was about ready for a drink and it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning.

  “Oscar’s headed back to the room,” Doc said.

  “Did you find anything?” A glimmer of hope would be welcomed.

  “No.” Doc’s voice said it all.

  “I’m on my way.” I hung up and moved to my last question. “The cotton on your land is unusually mature. What do you know about that?”