Bone by Bone

by Carol O'Connell

  ‘When he’s sleepwalking. That doesn’t count.’

  ‘And the judge believes in miracles. He even asked my mother for another one.’

  ‘When your father’s wide-awake, he ’s no believer in miracles. His perfect god died with your mother when she crashed her car on a rainy night. The judge believes in logical explanations. And you can believe in me when I tell you that Alice Friday has no idea how that board game works.’

  Oren had ceased to hear her. He was recalling the message spelled out at the séance: Do you still love me? ‘I’m betting that woman knows how to manipulate the Ouija board and the players. Like my missed shot – that was just one of your parlor tricks.’

  ‘Of course it was. And I’ve always explained my tricks.’ Two by two, she pulled balls out of the slot inside the table and set them back on the felt surface. ‘I didn’t raise you to believe in magic.’

  True enough. When he was a child, she had always shown him the works and the wires behind her illusions. And, after taking a Ouija board away from two terrified little boys, she had tried to explain the trick to them in terms of expectations and the power of belief in horror movies. She had assured Josh and Oren that the old woman from Paulson Lane, crazy as she was in life, would never curse children from her grave. The dead spoke to no one.

  Oren had not believed her then.

  Hannah racked up the balls inside the wooden triangle, no doubt sensing that he did not believe her now, either. Her hazel eyes looked up to question him, and then she damned him with, ‘Oh, never mind.’ She took back her pages of science and crumpled them into a tight ball. ‘I can see it was a waste of time explaining the witchboard.’ Hannah bent over the table once more, poised for the first shot of a new game. ‘For my next trick, I’ll show you how life works.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The outcasts of Peck’s Roadhouse had formed a loose union of drunks in the parking lot. And two more bars down the road, they had become an ugly crew as tight as family.

  Dave Hardy followed their weaving line of cars, trucks and vans. If he had been in uniform tonight – and sober – this would have been an easy twelve tickets for driving under the influence. The parade swelled in numbers with every little Podunk bar these yahoos had been thrown out of, and he was keeping count on the vehicles.

  The deputy reached down to the six-pack on the seat beside him, and then pulled back his empty hand. Maybe he should also be counting his drinks tonight. With a glance at the rifle rack above the windshield of his truck, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a box of shotgun shells.

  When the caravan of drunks pulled into the next bar, he waited awhile in the lot, loading his gun. After replacing it on the rack, he followed them inside, where the men were slowly gravitating toward the light of a television set that seemed to draw them by remote control. On screen was the same old film: Sally Polk was answering the same questions, and William Swahn was still limping. Long after day had turned into night, the sun was still shining in reruns.

  The drunks talked back to Sally Polk and saluted her TV image with raised glasses of beer.

  Dave wanted to put his fist through the screen.

  In another bar on the other side of the county, Hannah was saying, ‘I can’t help but win this game.’

  Oren agreed. At least no beers had been bet on this round. It would take Hannah another hour to finish nursing her first one.

  When all but a few balls had been sunk into pockets, the only ones remaining in play were the white cue ball, the black eight ball and a solid red. Sending that red ball into the corner pocket would be the easiest shot by far. It was so close to the edge, it might drop in of its own accord. And perhaps that was what Hannah waited for as she held her stick an inch from the cue ball. Seconds ticked by. ‘I can’t lose.’

  ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘So sink it.’

  ‘Now that’s not fortune-telling.’ She lifted her stick and waved it in small circles. ‘And it certainly wouldn’t take any skill.’ She leaned down once more to line up the white and the red. ‘You can see the outcome of this game. It’s in the way the balls are laid out. But even God Almighty can blow a simple shot now and then.’

  Apparently, so could Hannah.

  The cue ball wandered far from the mark and connected with the black eight ball, nudging it toward the corner pocket where the red ball was hanging. In Hannah’s parlance, the sneeze of a housefly could sink it.

  ‘Well, that’s life,’ she said. ‘Hits and misses. There’s a reason for everything, but you don’t need to know all the answers. So the next time you hear the judge asking your dead mother for another miracle, just let the old man slide.’

  ‘You’re throwing the game?’

  In answer, she stepped back from the table and lifted her glass for a swig of beer.

  His turn.

  Damn. No, she had not thrown the game. Hannah had simply picked a different way to win. The new position of the eight ball was no accident of a bad shot. It gently kissed the red ball hanging over the corner pocket. In every possible scenario of straight shots and bank shots, the eight ball would follow the red one into the pocket on the same stroke – and forfeit the game.

  With resignation, Oren aimed his pool cue.

  ‘Wait.’ Hannah’s voice carried a slight tone of alarm.

  Her left hand was raised high, and he followed the point of her finger up to the ceiling – where nothing was happening. He winced. He had not fallen for this ploy since he was ten years old. When he looked back at the table, he saw what Hannah’s right hand had been up to. The eight ball had vanished, leaving him with an easy shot and a win.

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ said Hannah.

  Sure. He laid down his stick, and lifted his beer. ‘Don’t you want to win?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Miracles take all the fun out of pool.’ He turned his eyes back to the table, where the eight ball had reappeared beside the red one. In what split second of distraction had she managed that? Hannah’s sleight of hand reaffirmed his theory that, in her distant past, she had been a magician or a pickpocket.

  ‘Some things in life just have to play out,’ she said. ‘If Josh hadn’t died that day, it would’ve happened some other time. You know why he died.’

  Oren was not ready to have this conversation yet. He pretended interest in his empty glass. ‘And your next trick?’

  ‘You’ll see. It won’t be long now.’ She held up her half-finished beer. ‘My capacity isn’t what it used to be.’ Hannah happened to be facing the door when it opened, and so it appeared that Mrs Winston had walked into the Endless Bar on cue.

  Sometimes the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. This was the thought of the barmaid in the lounge of a hotel on the coast highway.

  Twenty-two men were gathered in front of the television set, and she counted them all as one creature. Her hope was that this angry buzzing thing would take itself out the door before it turned ugly. The barmaid looked up at the TV screen above the shelves of bottles and glassware. The news story of Sally Polk and her suspect had run over and over in short clips of commercial teases. Now it played out in full length for the late evening news.

  The drunks were enthralled. Polk was their leader, their queen, though the CBI agent hardly said three words in this updated news story. Celebrity experts and an anchorman now put the words in the woman’s mouth.

  One studio guest, a man with a book to sell, said to the camera, ‘This is how Agent Polk will profile the killer. If he’s handicapped in some way, his only outlet for sex is prostitutes – and children.’ The screen image changed to a photograph of a tender boy with a comical smile. And the next shot focused on a man with a rollicking limp and a cane.

  The drunks hated the crippled man. They jeered and yelled at the television set.

  The barmaid sensed that the thing of many parts was about to swarm as twenty-two faces turned in unison.

  So creepy.

  They moved toward the door
as one giddy insect with many feet. The barmaid reached for the phone, planning to give the driving public a sporting chance to live through the night. But then she recognized a regular at the bar, a man with bleached highlights. This was the sheriff ’s deputy, the one who took his beer in a coffee cup when he was in uniform. Tonight, dressed in blue jeans, he drank from a glass, drained it and walked to the door.

  She could hear the sound of many engines starting up outside, the whooping and hollering, the spin of wheels and the spit of gravel. The barmaid walked to the window and watched the deputy climb into a pickup truck. He followed the thing out of the parking lot.

  No need to call 9-1-1.

  Though the dim light of the Endless Bar was kind to the champagne blonde, that beautiful face was showing damage, and it was more than the ruin that came with age. Mrs Winston was no longer the calm center of grace in every crowd. She had a startled look about her, eyes turning everywhere.

  On the lookout for enemies?

  That was Oren’s thought, as he racked up the balls for a new game – as if Hannah’s next game had not already begun. ‘You knew Mrs Winston would be here tonight. I guessed that much.’

  ‘Keep your eye on the man tending bar.’

  The bartender never acknowledged Mrs Winston, who sat down three stools away from him. He lifted the first hinged mahogany plank to leave the service station, a wheel within the wheel, and then he lifted the second plank to step off the revolving bar.

  ‘That towel over his hand,’ said Hannah. ‘It’s covering a brown paper bag.’

  Oren watched the man walk out the front door. A moment later, the bartender returned with his towel draped over one shoulder. Back at his station, he served Mrs Winston, who must be a regular, for he never bothered to ask for the lady’s order. He set her glass on a cocktail napkin and walked away without a word.

  ‘Sarah will only stay for one drink,’ said Hannah. ‘She ’ll leave a hundred-dollar tip under her glass. Then she’ll go outside and find a bottle in a brown paper bag sitting on the front seat of her car.’

  ‘OK,’ said Oren, ‘that ’s illegal as hell. Maybe this is a stupid question, but—’

  ‘Why break the law? You wonder why Sarah doesn’t just go to a liquor store – much cheaper, no risk. Well, no store in this county will sell her a bottle. Addison saw to that. He likes to control her liquor supply.’

  Hannah looked down at her wristwatch. She always wore a watch these days. When had time become so important to her?

  ‘Right about now,’ she said, ‘Ad and Isabelle think she ’s passed out upstairs in her room.’ Hannah looked up at him and smiled. ‘You can learn a lot from a séance. Evelyn tells me that the Winstons’ maid shows up at the cabin once a week, and that girl really appreciates a sympathetic ear. She hates Addison, bad-mouths him all the time.’

  Mrs Winston slowly circled in and out of his sight as the bar revolved. When Oren saw her face in a shadowed profile, there was Josh’s patron and friend, the most beautiful woman ever to set foot in Coventry. Revolving into better light, she became an aging barfly.

  Hannah lined up another shot with her pool cue. ‘Sarah lost her license years ago, drinking and driving. Keep one eye on her glass so you’ll know when she’s leaving. That bottle waiting in her car? She’ll try to empty most of it on her way back home. That means jail if she gets stopped by the law tonight. Or worse – she’ll wrap her car around a tree.’

  ‘So we ’re going to offer her a ride home, is that the plan?’

  ‘Well, not quite – but close. On your way to the Winston lodge, you’ll stop at the turnout on Bear Creek Road. That’ll be Sarah’s idea, not yours. A lady shouldn’t have to drink alone, so mind your manners. Don’t forget to wipe the bottle after you take a swig. With any luck, Isabelle will never hear about the nice long talk you’re going to have with her mother.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told me what Mrs Winston was going to say?’

  ‘You haven’t heard a word I said tonight.’

  ‘You bet I have. You don’t miss a thing, Hannah, and that ’s a gift I could use right now. So just spell it out for me.’

  ‘I tried that once with the judge. It didn’t work so well.’

  ‘When you told him to send Josh away?’

  ‘If I’d never warned him, he would ’ve grieved for a while and then moved on. And he would ’ve had one boy left to raise. You never should’ve left town, Oren.’

  ‘He sent me away.’

  ‘And now that old man lives with guilt. He thinks he could’ve saved Josh . . . if he’d only listened to me. He would’ve been better off if I’d just kept my mouth shut.’

  ‘How did you know Josh was in danger?’

  ‘Same way you did. That boy had a dangerous hobby, catching secrets in a camera.’ Hannah laid down her pool cue. ‘I heard you yell at him one day out in the yard. You tried to make him stop, but that was never going to happen. If the judge had sent him away, Josh would ’ve died in some other town, and the old man would still blame himself. I should never have interfered, but I was more arrogant then.’

  ‘You were right to try, Hannah.’

  ‘No, I should’ve let life play out the way it was meant to.’ She lightly squeezed his arm. ‘If you’d stayed with Josh that day, it would’ve happened some other time. Your brother was fated to die when no one was around to save him. Cold logic, Oren. A murder can’t happen any other way.’ She stared at the revolving bar. ‘Sarah’s almost done with her drink. Almost time.’

  ‘Do you know who killed Josh?’

  ‘What do you take me for? A damn psychic?’ Hannah plucked the car keys from her pocket. ‘I’m going home. Now you can tell Sarah Winston that you’re stranded without a ride. She’ll let you drive her car, and she won’t die – not tonight.’

  The BMW was a beautiful machine, bright red with a black ragtop – the stuff of dreams in his teenage car-crazy days. Oren watched from the distance of two parking spaces, confident that the lady would never be able to thread her key into the car’s ignition.

  He walked toward the convertible, calling out, ‘Ma’am? Mrs Winston?’ Stepping up to the driver-side door, he said, ‘You might remember me.’

  She looked up at him with a smile that was warm and wide. ‘Oren Hobbs. You still look so much like your brother.’

  ‘I wonder if I could get a ride as far as your house?’

  ‘Of course you can. Get in, and I’ll drive you all the way home.’

  ‘I noticed you were having a problem starting it. Could be the ignition. Want me to give it a try?’

  ‘How gallant. An officer and a gentleman.’

  ‘I’m not with the Army anymore.’

  ‘So I heard, and there’s nothing wrong with my ignition, but you’d never insinuate that I was drunk. Henry Hobbs did a good job of raising his boys.’

  The lady stepped out and did her best to walk in a normal fashion as she rounded the BMW to the passenger side. Oren followed and leaned in to open her door. Mrs Winston smelled of whiskey and roses. Her daughter had been wearing that same rose perfume on the day she had kicked him in the shin. Keys in hand, he slipped behind the wheel, and they were off.

  They had traveled no more than a few miles when he saw a pair of high beams coming up fast in the rearview mirror. The car behind him was weaving all over the road as it gathered speed, and there was no turnout in sight. Around each blind curve was the chance of a wreck with an oncoming car, but the vehicle behind him was a sure thing – close to climbing up the BMW’s back end. Oren pressed down on the accelerator and rounded a hairpin turn with only two wheels on the ground.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ he said to Mrs Winston. But she was slow to understand what was happening. In the rearview mirror he caught sight of more headlights behind his pursuer. When he made a sharp left onto Bear Creek Road, they all followed him.

  Up ahead, he saw the generous turnout carved into the shoulder. He pulled into it, slamming on the brakes a
nd shooting out one hand to keep Mrs Winston from hitting the dashboard. At least twenty vehicles whizzed past them to careen around the next curve.

  ‘Ma’am? I don’t suppose you have a cell phone.’

  ‘No. You’d have to drive twenty miles before you found a town with a cell-phone tower.’

  So much for their long conversation over a shared bottle of liquor. A caravan of drunks posed the problem of sudden death for anyone in their path tonight. He put the sports car in gear. ‘We have to find a phone.’

  The reporter’s rental car was the last vehicle to travel up the driveway.

  Dave Hardy sat in his pickup truck, counting money, five hundred dollars. He should have asked for more. An exclusive tip like this one was worth an easy thousand. One ear cocked toward his open window, he listened to the innocent racket of crickets and night birds. It made him smile to think that he’d been paid something for nothing – a better deal.

  After a short stop at a gas station, the sheriff ’s office had been alerted to a runaway pack of drunks on wheels. And the smell of gasoline on a summer night was almost as sexy as the rose perfume.

  They were under way again, Oren and Mrs Winston, and there was not another car in sight. The road belonged to them. The convertible’s top was rolled down, and the sky was banged with stars. The lady’s hair was flying in long blond tangles, and the radio played vintage rock ’n’ roll at the top of the volume dial.

  Oren smiled, and then he laughed. Life was hard.

  The night was ending all too soon, and he pulled into the Winstons’ driveway with some regret. After parking the car in front of the lodge, Oren assured her that he did not mind walking home from here. ‘I’m not that far down the road.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll drop by sometime. I haven’t seen Hannah and the judge for a while. And I’ve always wanted to see Josh’s photographs from the woods.’ She seemed puzzled by Oren’s surprise. ‘You’ve never seen his nature shots? I used to run into him on the trails from time to time. He always had a camera with him.’