Them Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  Though I could only see the curve of her cheek, shaded by the huge Afro, I knew that she was sad. “I’m sorry, Jitty. I didn’t mean to pry.” I actually hadn’t meant to upset her.

  “It was such a long time ago, you’d think a body would forget.”

  I knew better than that. There are certain things that a body simply doesn’t forget. Not ever. It is a cruel fact of nature that a subspecies that cannot wring out a dishcloth or understand the importance of one-syllable words such as “thank” and “you” can leave indelible marks on corporeal memory. There are certain moments that are branded into flesh, and for me, most all of them involved men.

  “Tell me about him,” I requested.

  She was still staring out the window, but I could see that her smile had rounded her cheek. “He was a man,” she said simply, “good in many ways. I fell in love with him when I was sixteen. For a long time we were separated, and then your great-great-grandmother, Miss Alice, discovered that I was in love with him and she arranged to buy him.” Jitty chuckled softly. “You know she was something else.” At last she turned to look at me. “She gave him to me.”

  “As in legally?” I was astounded.

  “She gave me his papers. I owned him.” Jitty shook her head, laughing softly at the memory. “She said that I had the perfect opportunity to make my man responsive to my desires. She said she would check on the progress.”

  Jitty got up and walked to the window, and I knew she was staring down into the cemetery.

  “Did you marry him?”

  “I never did,” she answered. “There was no need, and then suddenly we were at war. Coker went off with Mr. Karl to the cavalry unit in Nashville. Coker had his own fine horse, and he and Mr. Karl rode with General Forrest. Now Coker wasn’t part of the Confederate Army. He was with Mr. Karl. But he might as well have been a soldier for all it mattered.” She came back to stand at the foot of the bed, her hand on the poster. “Neither of them came back. Not Coker and not Mr. Karl. The story Miss Alice and I got was that Coker got hit first and Mr. Karl went back for him. They were both shot.”

  There was nothing I could say.

  She sighed and picked up her story. “That was the first year of the war. And then it was just a matter of days and weeks and months and years before everyone we knew suffered death. We were so busy trying not to starve or be killed by soldiers or deserters or renegades or the Home Guard that we didn’t look ahead or behind. When it was finally over, we didn’t remember what we’d been like before.”

  I sipped the hot black coffee and let the horror of the past wash over and through me. I was not immune. In some way I felt as if I, too, had been a part of it. It would be impossible to live in Dahlia House, filled with relics of the past, and not understand the undeniable link to history.

  “Grandma Alice remarried,” I pointed out.

  “She needed a man to organize the labor in the fields. The free Negroes and white trash wouldn’t work for her.” Jitty spoke without bitterness. “They wouldn’t work for me, either. We were women and not worth listening to.”

  “But the two of you brought Dahlia House back. You saved it.”

  “And your grandmother had to marry to see that it was safe,” she pointed out, and the sadness in her eyes was replaced by fire. “Which isn’t a point I intended to make, but it’s a dang good one now that I’m here at it.”

  “I’m well aware of the Delaney ability to sacrifice life, limb, and womb in the name of heritage.” And I was, but I wasn’t going to follow that particular martyr’s path.

  “So when are you seeing Harold?” Jitty asked.

  “I don’t know.” I finished the coffee, brushed the crumbs into the box, and flipped back the covers. “But I’m seeing Hamilton this afternoon.” I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to pay another visit to Knob Hill. “Cece has offered me a job if I can get an interview. It’s a good excuse to talk with Hamilton. He can’t deny me, because he knows I’m destitute without the newspaper job. Code of the South.”

  “How’d you get an appointment with him?” she asked.

  “I don’t have one, which isn’t the issue. The important thing is, what am I going to wear?”

  “Just go naked. It’ll save a lot of time,” Jitty mumbled.

  “Too cold to go naked,” I answered, popping out of the bed. I felt young and impulsive. “And I don’t have the right coat. Naked requires some magnificent fake fur.” I reached into the closet. “What about this red sweater dress?” I asked, lifting it from the rack. Even though Jitty wasn’t going to be any real help, I wanted to discuss wardrobe with someone.

  “Why not just wear a sign that says, ‘I’m a sexually frustrated slut’?”

  Perhaps the red sweater dress was a little clingy. “The green wool suit? I’m working on a holiday theme.”

  “You’ve been so fond of that muumuu, why not show him the real Sarah Booth Delaney?”

  “I don’t want to scare him off. At least not yet.” Jitty’s barbed remarks couldn’t dampen my spirit. I pulled out a beige suit and pushed it back.

  “Try your jeans and a sweater,” Jitty said, shaking her head. “You go all dolled up like the Queen of Sheba, he’s going to know you’re trying to impress him. Go the other way, real casual. That’ll keep him guessing.”

  I looked at her and realized the wisdom in her words. “Sometimes, Jitty, I’m almost glad you’re my own personal haint.”

  “I don’t belong to you, and I wouldn’t give you advice if I didn’t have a stake in the outcome here. I want a baby, and I guess it doesn’t matter to me how you get one. Just get one.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said as I headed for the bathroom with my jeans and a dark blue sweater with gold piping tucked under my arm.

  I hadn’t made it to the door before I heard the second disruption of the morning. Instead of the chime of the bell, someone was trying to beat the front door down.

  “Just a dang minute,” I called as I dropped my clothes and ran barefoot down the stairs. Jitty was right. We needed a butler. I looked out the peephole and stepped back from the door. Of all the people I expected to see, it wasn’t Gordon Walters all dressed up in his deputy’s uniform. He had that lean and hungry look that made me think he could beat up a suspect in a jail cell. I cracked the door slightly.

  “Yes,” I said. “Can I help you?”

  “Sarah Booth Delaney, I have some questions to ask you.” He didn’t sound friendly at all.

  “I’m getting dressed, and I have appointments all day. How about tomorrow?” I didn’t want to answer any of his stupid questions at any time. I didn’t want him in my house. He’d tried to intimidate me in the sheriff’s office, and he’d succeeded. But he was on my turf now.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone the activities you planned for today.”

  Now that stopped me short. “And why would that be?” I asked haughtily.

  “Delo Wiley was killed yesterday.”

  16

  I sat in the straight-backed chair beside Gordon Walters’s desk and resisted the impulse to scratch my head. My hair wasn’t dirty, but Gordon had hustled me out of the house without a chance to shower, much less soak in a hot tub. At the moment, I was more concerned about my personal hygiene than about the fact that the moron with the badge considered me a suspect in a killing. Or at least that was the implication, though he hadn’t come out and said as much.

  “What business did you conduct with Mr. Wiley at ten-hundred hours on the morning of November twenty-eight?” Gordon asked, his eyes foxy and mean.

  “We had a lengthy discussion about the weather.” I knew I was only prolonging my agony, but I couldn’t help myself. I hadn’t been offered a phone call, and though I had no intention of calling a lawyer, it did cross my mind to call Harold. The Bank of Zinnia no doubt held the mortgage on everything Gordon Walters owned or ever hoped to own. Gordon was messing with me—and one act of terrorism deserved another.

  “Strange tha
t you’d visit an old man you hardly knew to discuss the weather,” Gordon said, showing his willingness to play my game.

  I checked the time. It was ten o’clock. I’d give Gordon an hour for his fun. I settled back into the chair, crossed my legs man-style, and lifted my chin. “I’ve been thinking about growing corn at Dahlia House. The fields have been fallow for the last eight years. I think I could get a pretty good crop. Delo grew corn, so I stopped by for a chat.”

  Gordon picked up a pack of Marlboros and shook out a cigarette. He offered it to me with a grin that some women would have found intriguing. “Are you going to have time to farm while you’re writing your book?” Gordon asked.

  I considered the cigarette but shook my head. It had been three years since I’d smoked. “Working both activities simultaneously will produce synergy.”

  “No wonder your eyes are brown,” he answered, but there was something new in his expression. Open curiosity. “You’re not the average little Delta belle, are you?” he asked.

  I chose to ignore the condescending personal question and directed my answer to the real reason I was downtown in the sheriff’s office. “Look, I don’t know what happened to Mr. Wiley,” I said. “I talked to him, but not about anything that would get him killed.” I suddenly remembered his warning to me about stepping outside the boundaries of my “class.” He had said I was drifting onto dangerous ground. But it had proven more dangerous for him.

  “Something wrong?” Gordon asked.

  He was rather astute. I suddenly wished the sheriff would walk through the door. “Where’s Coleman?” I asked.

  “Gone to Jackson to pick up some state funds. He won’t be back until tomorrow.” Gordon grinned. “I’m in charge.”

  “Look, Deputy Walters, I’m not involved in this. But I have some ideas. Tell me about the body. How was he killed?”

  Gordon stared at me. “You want to see?”

  I most certainly did not, but there was a challenge in his question, and I wasn’t about to show that I’d never viewed a murder scene. In fact, Gordon hadn’t said whether it was murder or not. “Killing” was a rather generic term that meant death but not necessarily murder.

  “Sure,” I said, “let’s go.”

  He let me ride in the front seat of the patrol car, but he didn’t look at me or talk to me as we drove out of town toward the flat, open fields. It gave me a chance to study his profile, and I duly noted the roguish nose that had been broken, the rugged looks that might be considered handsome.

  “Was Delo shot?” I asked.

  “Very effectively.”

  “Could it have been suicide?”

  “Not unless he pulled the trigger with his toe and then got his boot back on with only a bloody stump for a head.”

  Now that was an image I didn’t want rattling around in my brain, but it bore a shocking resemblance to the death of Hamilton Garrett the Fourth. The graphic details were meant to deter me from asking other questions. “So it was a shotgun?”

  “A twelve-gauge.” Gordon turned right. “It must have happened about eleven hundred hours yesterday.”

  Just before Sunday dinner.

  “Where were you about that time?” he asked.

  “Painting my fingernails.” I held out my hands for him to see the Little Red Russet shade. I had indeed been getting ready for Harold’s soiree. I started to ask where the shooting had taken place, but we’d turned down Delo’s drive, passed the house, and headed out across the cornfield. The patrol car bumped gamely over the rows of brown cornstalks. A clutch of doves flew up to the right, and I watched them line out on the horizon and fly hard and straight.

  I remembered the dream I’d had. The one that Tammy had also had. Though it was morning, and bright and cold, the day had taken on the muted tones of the dream.

  We bumped over Delo’s fields until I spotted an ambulance and several other vehicles up ahead. It had not occurred to me that the body would still be at the scene. The parallel to Hamilton the Fourth’s death was unmistakable. No wonder Gordon was smiling that secret little smile. So this was going to be another of those warnings about consequence—as in each action has one. But I couldn’t help but wonder why both Gordon and Hamilton the younger seemed so determined to make that point with me. The obvious answer was that Hamilton had killed his mother, and Pasco Walters had covered it up. Gordon’s involvement came in protecting his dead father’s name. Honor has always been a tyrant of the South. A man’s good name is, often, all he owns.

  The car stopped, and I got out without being told and walked toward the cluster of men. Fel Harper nodded at me, and I recognized Isaac Carter, who looked out of place in his double-breasted suit and gleaming loafers. He stared at me before he turned a hateful look at Gordon. There was no love lost between the two of them.

  There was also another deputy, and two black men who were trying to put leashes on several hounds that lunged and whimpered at the overgrowth.

  “Sarah Booth,” Fel said. “I didn’t realize you were interested in current murders.” He shot Gordon a curious look.

  “I’m a woman with a lot of interests,” I said, determined not to be upset by whatever they showed me. My great delivery of the line was somewhat offset by the fact that I stumbled in a deep hole and almost fell down. Gordon’s hand steadied me. His eyes narrowed at the hole as he helped me to level ground.

  The men had gathered at the edge of a twelve-by-twelve-foot patch of thick growth, mostly young trees and weeds that were out of place in the otherwise open field. As I stepped closer, I saw the old stump in the center of the growth. Swinging around, I caught a glint of sunlight on the river in the distance. We were in the Mule Bog field—the same spot where Guy Garrett had been shot and killed.

  “Good thing Cooley and James followed the dogs over here,” Fel said. “No tellin’ how long Delo woulda laid here.”

  I looked at the black men. Their faces revealed no emotion, but the older one shook his head slowly. “It’s an awful thing,” he said. “Delo never harmed a soul.”

  “Delo got any folks?” Fel asked.

  The older black man shook his head again. “His sister died last year. There’s no one left.”

  “You ready for me to load him up?” Fel asked Gordon.

  “Let the writer have a look,” Gordon said.

  I was afraid I’d get sick, but I stepped through the men to the edge of the bushes and caught sight of Delo’s feet. I kept my focus there for a long time, taking in the laced-up work boots that looked almost new. He was on his stomach, indicating, I supposed, that he’d been shot from behind. The shotgun was beside the body.

  I finally let my gaze travel up to the place where his head should have been. Gordon had not exaggerated. I was strangely calm in the face of such harsh destruction.

  “That’s the murder weapon?” I asked. Why would the killer leave the gun? I bent down to examine it more closely. It was a Remington 870 pump. Something had been removed from the stock.

  “We’ll test it out for fingerprints,” Gordon said. “Ballistics can’t do much with a shotgun except confirm it was number eight pellets.”

  I was more than ready to leave, but I knew that I was not in charge. Whatever purpose was behind Gordon’s decision to bring me here, he wasn’t finished.

  “Did Mr. Wiley say anything to you that might indicate he was worried about someone being after him?” Gordon asked.

  “Not to me, but I wasn’t friends with Mr. Wiley. I wasn’t someone he would confide in.”

  “Don’t you find it odd that you pay a visit to a man and soon after he ends up dead?” Gordon asked.

  They were all staring at me, all except for Cooley and James, who had gathered the dogs and headed, wordlessly, back across the field. I started to call out to them to wait for me, but I knew they’d keep walking. They wouldn’t even turn around and look, and I didn’t blame them.

  “I find it odd that you connect my visit with his death.” I flipped my limp hair off my sh
oulder. “I find it odd that you connect talk of corn crops with murder.” I turned to address Isaac Carter. “And I find it odd that you’re out here, Mr. Carter, but since you are, I’ve been meaning to stop by and talk with you. When would be a good time?”

  Carter didn’t say a word.

  “I called Mr. Carter here because I was reminded of the death of Mr. Garrett the Fourth,” Fel said quickly. “I wanted someone who’d seen the prior accident to take a look at this one. To back up my memory.”

  “And it’s identical, isn’t it? Except there’s no reason to pretend this one was an accident.” I was surprised by the anger I felt. An old man was dead, and no one standing around his corpse really seemed to give a damn. “I’ll tell you something Delo told me that should be of interest. He didn’t hunt. And neither did Mr. Garrett. Yet both of them are dead in a dove field. That tells me that dove fields in Sunflower County are a mighty dangerous place to be.”

  I turned to Gordon. “You can take me back or not. I’ll walk. But I’m not staying here.” I wasn’t sick from seeing the body, but I was cold. It was an arctic freeze that went straight through the bone. “I’ll call for an appointment,” I said to Carter as I started walking across the field, dodging two more holes, one freshly dug and quite deep. Gordon hadn’t charged me with anything. He couldn’t hold me. I was going home.

  “Miss Delaney,” Gordon said, catching my elbow. “Get in the car. I’ll take you home.”

  I was too cold to argue. As I started back his way, another clutch of doves flushed out from just at my feet. The flutter of their wings was loud and crisp, and for one terrifying second, I thought I could feel the drumming beat of their hearts.

  The sky above me began to spin and I felt my knees buckle as the memory of the dream seemed to drown me. A strong hand gripped me and steadied me, and in another second I had regained my equilibrium.

  “Are you okay?” Gordon asked.

  “Yes,” I said, surprised that I could talk so calmly. “I’m perfectly fine. Just take me home.”