I opened my eyes to the familiar high-intensity light and acoustic tile ceiling of the emergency room. It was a view I knew too well. I was flat on my back on an exam table.
In the corner of the room, Doc worked on something, his back to me. Even as blurry as my reality was, I could tell by the stoop of his shoulders that he was exhausted.
“She’s awake,” Tinkie said. Her face came into focus. “Good thing you were asleep when Doc set your arm. It was awful, Sarah Booth. He had to pull and twist and the bone—”
“Sarah Booth!” Graf appeared on the other side of the table. His fingers brushed a strand of my hair away from my face. “Doc says you’re fine. It was a compound fracture, but it should heal quickly.” He tapped the cast for effect. “Cece picked the purple paisley wrap.”
I noted my new fashion statement with some trepidation, but my concern was on the two people who’d tried to kill me. Twice. “Peyton? Where is he?”
“Down the hall, handcuffed to a bed.” Graf spoke carefully. “He said you shot him, but he’s going to be just fine.”
Graf’s gaze held mine. I nodded. “I did shoot him. I would have killed him if I’d been a better shot.”
“Coleman will make sure he has his day in court,” Graf said. He touched the corner of my eye and I realized I was crying. “You gave him a flesh wound, Sarah Booth, but I’m glad you didn’t kill him. Let the justice system take care of him.”
“Sonja? What about her? She’s the one who hit me with the bat.”
Tinkie answered. “She’s in critical condition. Coleman shot her in the chest. A rib punctured her lung.” She blinked back her own tears. “Nothing can ever make up for what she did, but I managed to get a few licks in before Coleman pulled me off her.”
Another voice came from the foot of the bed. “Dahling, we’re going to have to stop meeting this way.” Cece, her face still bandaged, patted my foot. “I checked with Doc, and there’s no possible way they could incorporate any type of plastic surgery into a broken arm. I thought maybe some silicone somewhere, but he said no.” She tightened her grip on my foot. “But I did try for you. My new nose is going to be . . . perfection.”
“Millie has come and gone,” Graf said. He held up a stack of magazines. The Globe. The Star. The National Enquirer—Millie’s favorites. “She left these for you to read while you heal.”
Graf wiped my face with a cool cloth. “Coleman needs to speak with you. He’s waiting in the hall. Are you up to it?”
“Yes. I have to tell him what I found out.”
Tinkie kissed one cheek and Cece the other. Graf kissed my lips softly, giving me a promise that made my eyes burn with unshed tears.
They left the room, Doc stopping by to give me a thumbs up before he, too, exited. Coleman stepped up to the exam table and we were alone.
“So we have the illegitimate heir to the Carlisle plantation and a scientist in cahoots to frame Bonnie Louise McRae for this mess,” I said. “Peyton meant to kill me and lay that at Bonnie’s feet, too.”
“Thank goodness he wasn’t successful,” Coleman said. His hand hesitated at my face, but then he brushed it gently across my cheek. “With Tinkie’s help, we tracked the financial backing for Janks Development. It came from his father, who’d assumed the name of Jon Unger. He faked his death in South America, stole the formula, and reinvented himself as Unger.”
“And Sonja? She must have flown to Jackson after I left her place in Chicago. She was in a hurry to get somewhere, but I never dreamed it was Mississippi.”
“She’s not talking.”
I held out my hand and he gave me his so that I could pull myself into a sitting position. The room spun for a moment, but then it righted. My broken arm pulsed with a red devil pain that made me inhale.
“Maybe you should lie back down,” Coleman suggested.
I shook my head. “I want to talk to Peyton.”
“He won’t talk to anyone,” Coleman said.
“It really isn’t about conversation.” I eased to my feet. Even that gentle movement made my arm scream. I wasn’t in a mood to take no for an answer.
29
The compromise I worked out with Coleman involved riding to Peyton’s room in a wheelchair. As Coleman pushed me into the hallway, Graf stepped behind the chair and took his place. Coleman yielded the position without hesitation.
“He’s in room 312,” Coleman said as he fell back beside Tinkie, Cece, and Doc.
He wouldn’t come with me. He had legal standards to uphold; I had blood in my eye. It was a testament to the bonds of friendship that Tinkie, Cece, Coleman, and Doc made no effort to halt me.
Graf pushed me down the hallway until we came to an open door. Oscar shuffled forward. He looked like hell, but he was on his own feet.
“Thank you, Sarah Booth.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I’ve thought all morning what to say to you. The only thing I’ve come up with is ‘thank you.’ ”
“Not necessary, Oscar.” Seeing him standing was enough for me. “Thank Doc. He’s the one who figured it out.”
He motioned down the hallway. “Regina and Luann went home and Gordon is next door. You should say hello to him. Looks like the worst is over. Fidellas and Kessler are under arrest . . .” His voice drifted into silence.
“Tinkie loves you more than you’ll ever know,” I told him.
“And the same applies to you.” He shifted from foot to foot before he stepped forward and patted Graf’s shoulder. “Take good care of her, Graf, she’s a rare breed.”
“I plan to do just that.” Graf set the chair in motion but I waved him to a halt at Gordon’s room. Now that Gordon was able to speak, he might be able to resolve one tiny part of the mystery. Graf tapped at the door and we entered.
The deputy was propped up on pillows in the bed. He looked like warmed over hell, but he greeted me with a wave.
“Gordon, do you remember when Lana Carlisle died?” I asked.
“It’s funny. I can count on my hands the number of times I ever saw my father commit an act of kindness. That was one. I was out of the house by then, but I remember one night he was talking about it on the front porch.”
“How do you mean an act of kindness?”
“Lana Carlisle had cancer. Ovarian. She was facing a long, difficult death. She got her ducks in order and killed herself. She fell down the stairs so it would look like an accident. She didn’t want her kids to have to live with a suicide.”
Of all the explanations, I’d never have guessed. But it made sense, in a strange way. Her visits back to West Point, the purchase of a cemetery plot. For years she’d yearned for her home, and once she knew she was dying, she made the arrangements to see that she would rest there for eternity.
“And Gregory?”
“The way he cheated on Lana, no one would’ve believed his love for her. In his own way, though, he did. That was one screwed-up family, no doubt about it. I remember the talk that Gregory had killed Lana or that Luther had killed them both, but I think in the end, Gregory took his own life.”
If Gordon hadn’t been comatose, he could have resolved at least this element, and perhaps I wouldn’t have been so willing to believe that Luther was one of the primary criminals. As it stood, both Luther and Erin were pawns in a dangerous game.
Luther’s greed had been his undoing and had nearly cost him his sister’s life.
“Thank you, Gordon.”
“I’m the one who owes you thanks, Sarah Booth. Especially you, but Tinkie, too. I’m glad you’re home. Zinnia isn’t the same without you.”
His words moved me, but before I let my softer side take over, there was something I needed to finish. Graf maneuvered me out of the room and we traveled in silence down to Room 312. He halted the chair at the door. “Sarah Booth, I’ll take care of this.”
“I have to do this myself.” I awkwardly pushed myself out of the chair. My arm throbbed, a bass note complimented by the tremolo of my other injuries. I d
idn’t have a gun or a bat, but I’d work with what I could find.
“I’ll be right outside the door.”
“Keep everyone else out.” I pushed open the door and stepped into the room where Peyton lay in bed, both arms conveniently handcuffed to the bed railing. I closed the door.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” His tone was so cheerful, I fought the rage that washed over me. Three people were dead. Oscar, Gordon and two realtors had almost died. I’d suffered a personal loss he’d never understand.
“Talking isn’t what I had in mind.” I kept my voice as dead calm as a cotton field in August. I moved up beside the bed. “I want you to clearly understand how much I want to hurt you. I have this fantasy of you screaming.”
The first doubt flickered across his face. “Where’s the sheriff?”
“In another wing of the hospital. He’s detained. Like Doc and the nursing staff and everyone else. For all practical purposes, it’s just the two of us, Peyton.”
He looked out the window and I walked around the bed and closed the blinds. The hospital wasn’t totally modernized, and an old air-conditioning unit cranked out cool air. I flipped it to high so the fan rattled loudly.
When I faced him again, he wasn’t so self-assured.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
I accepted then that I didn’t know. I’d followed my gut need to come here and hurt him, but my taste for blood had waned. Hurting Peyton wouldn’t undo anything. It wouldn’t even give me satisfaction. What really mattered was that my friends and fiancé stood behind me if that’s what it took to help me heal. That was the important thing to remember. I started toward the door.
“Defeated so easily?” he asked.
I gave him one last look. “No, actually, victorious. I’m not capable of the things I ought to do. And in the long run, that’s the real victory.”
I left the door open as I settled into the wheelchair that Graf held. His arms came around me and the stubble of his beard tickled my cheek. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you couldn’t hurt him.”
“Yeah, me too.” But I felt as if I’d fallen deep into a hole with no ladder to climb out.
Graf spoke softly in my ear. “He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. He’ll suffer more there than with any physical harm you could deal him.”
Graf’s confidence was the sunlight at the top of the hole. I turned my face up to it and closed my eyes, hoping that it would be enough.
Dahlia House settled around me. I crept out of bed and with Sweetie Pie as my companion walked across the dew-soaked grass to the pasture where Reveler and Miss Scrapiron grazed.
The night was soft and drenched in the sadness of wisteria. Inside, Graf slept. We’d talked until the early morning hours, and he’d held me while I cried. Now, I was alone with the past and the sense of loss that was as familiar as my own reflection.
A clear soprano cut the night sky. “Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee; ah, I know at last the secret of it all.” Jitty came across the yard in a beautiful gown.
I leaned against the fence railing and enjoyed the spectacle. I’d never known that Jitty had an operatic voice, but then she was quite the chameleon.
When she finished the Victor Herbert lyrics, I applauded gently. “The version I remember is Madeline Kahn in Young Frankenstein.”
“That would be the thing you remembered,” she sniffed. “Try Jeanette MacDonald in a little movie called Sweethearts.”
Jitty did resemble the chestnut-haired songbird. Still, I wasn’t certain how opera had become part of my evening.
I waved a hand toward Dahlia House. “Graf is exhausted.”
“He won’t hear me. No one hears me but you, Missy. And even you don’t listen.”
“I’ve had sort of a rough day,” I warned her. “I don’t mind a musical serenade, but I don’t want a lecture.” To be honest, I’d dreaded confronting Jitty. She was the only person who could fully appreciate what had happened, and she would be as wounded as I was. That was an additional burden of grief I simply couldn’t shoulder.
“Take a walk,” she said.
Jitty was prone to strolling through the dewy grass in ball gowns, wigs, and glass slippers, so I fell into step beside her. I wasn’t surprised when she aimed toward the family cemetery. Somehow, I’d known this night would end there.
The old wrought-iron gate creaked as I swung it open. My parents lay buried in the center of the plot, side by side, their tombstones plain. When they’d died, the fashion for grave markers had been simplicity. All of the details for their burial had fallen on Aunt Loulane, a woman overwhelmed with a grieving twelve-year-old.
“I should replace these stones,” I said. “Something more representative of—”
“They serve a purpose.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “I like the older ones, the flutes and angels and ivy columns. They tell something about the person.”
Jitty, with a columned stone topped with ivy, a lute, and an angel, was buried beside my great-great-grandmother Alice. Friends in life, survivors of the nation’s most tragic war, they’d been laid to rest side-by-side as the partners they’d been.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“This is just a place, Sarah Booth.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I told her. “This is a destiny.”
Her laugh was soft and warm. “Your mama would shake you ’til your teeth rattled for such foolishness.”
At last, she made me smile. “Death and taxes—the only certainties.”
“There’s this moment. There’s this land and these dogs and those horses. And that man asleep in your bed in that house.”
“And in a next few seconds, it could all disappear.” I ran my hand across the top of the smooth stone on my mother’s grave. I would have a new one done. One that symbolized who my parents were. And Aunt Loulane, too. She’d gone for the simplistic approach when she’d preordered her own marker.
“Would you really want to know when it will end?” Jitty asked. “Madame Tomeeka gets a glimpse sometimes, but she doesn’t know. And even that is TMI.” She held up a hand like a sassy character in a TV commercial. “You don’t want to know the time line of your life.”
“I had everything. For a couple of months . . .”
Awareness dawned in Jitty’s eyes. “I see now what ails you. Once before in your life, you had ever’thing. You had it all, love and safety and joy. Then your parents died, and you lost it. Since then, you’ve been tryin’ to pull all of that back into your life. Then you had it again, until that Peyton Fidellas took it. But Doc says you’re fine and healthy. No lingerin’ ill effects. It’s all still there, Sarah Booth.”
“And what do I do to protect it?”
“The gettin’ and the havin’ are two very different positions to hold.” She nodded. “Requires a different skill-set.”
I sighed. She’d hit the nail on the head. “So what do I do? Every decision I make in the future could be the one that destroys it. Like when I decided to go with Peyton . . .”
“Self-doubt isn’t the bed partner you want.” Jitty’s face had gone stern. “You took every precaution. You did your job to help Oscar. Ain’t no profit in beatin’ yourself up for the actions of a vile man.”
She was right. Jitty was most often right. But the doubt still gnawed at me. “If I’d only—”
The live oak that shaded the cemetery whipped in a sudden wind. The branches rattled, throwing wild moon shadows over the tombs. “You keep that up and you’ll surely lose everything.” Jitty was stern. “I came out here to make a point.” She held up a hand and took an operatic stance, her pure voice floating on the night. “All the longing, striving, seeking, waiting, yearning . . .” She stopped and walked closer to me, her gown and hair a pale shimmer in the moonlight. “For ’tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking,” she sang on. And then she spoke. “’Tis the answer, Sarah Booth. Now get in that house an
d stoke the fires of love. Because of you, Tinkie has a man to hug up on. Because of you, she has the life she almost lost.”
I felt the wetness on my cheeks, but I wasn’t crying. The pain was simply leaking out. “Thank you, Jitty. I’d expected you to be angry with me. I mean, you’ve waited so long for a Delaney heir.”
She shook her head and indicated we should amble homeward. “I hate to see you suffer, Sarah Booth. But I have faith. In you and in the future.”
I realized that she’d grown transparent. I could see Dahlia House through her beautiful gown. “Don’t leave,” I requested.
“Oh, you don’t want me around.” Her chuckle was soft and slightly wicked.
“What?”
And then I heard Graf calling me. He came out the back door, a flashlight in his hand. “Sarah Booth!”
“I’m here,” I answered. My feet skimmed the wet grass as I moved from a walk to a jog. The jarring sent shock waves up my arm and ribs, but Graf flicked on the back door light and I could see him, silhouetted against the house that I’d grown up in and loved. Sweetie ran forward, baying a greeting.
“I woke up and you were gone. What are you doing outside?” He came down the steps and softly brushed my hair from my face.
I’d worried him, and it was good to be the focus of his concern. “I couldn’t sleep. I went out to the cemetery.”
His arm came gently around me. “Come inside, Sarah Booth. I’ll make you some cocoa laced with a little Kahlúa.” His body was warm against mine. “Remember when you were little and your parents read you to sleep. I’ll read that script Federico sent to you.”
I nodded, taking comfort from his strength. “That sounds like a plan.”
Greedy BonesCover
Title
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Greedy Bones Page 26
