Them Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  We made the drive in silence while I pondered the message Gordon was so clearly giving me: Mind my own business. Delo had talked, and look what happened to him.

  It had not escaped me that Delo’s murder coincided with Hamilton’s unexpected return. But Hamilton was accused of his mother’s death, not his father’s. How would Delo’s death benefit Hamilton? Or, for that matter, Gordon Walters?

  Was it realistic to think a man would go to such lengths to protect his family name? There were numerous case studies of aberrant behavior of men and women who did terrible things for just that reason. Gordon had a manic glint in his feral eyes. And he had followed his father’s footsteps into law enforcement, a classic sign of the underdeveloped personality.

  “Very interesting.”

  Gordon’s tone of voice snapped me out of my reverie, and I looked up to find we were at Dahlia House and Hamilton the Fifth was sitting on my front porch. Hamilton flicked a cigarette butt over the porch rail and rose to his feet as we pulled to a stop.

  “Boll weevil!” I said with emotion, feeling a rush of warmth to my face. Of all the times for Hamilton to pay a surprise visit, it would be when I’d just been to a murder scene in a dove field.

  “I didn’t realize you and Mr. Garrett were friends,” Gordon said as he stopped the cruiser at the front door. He opened his door as if he was going to get out.

  “Thanks for the lift. Now go away.” I got out quickly and walked away from him. I had no idea what Hamilton was doing at my house, but I didn’t want Gordon hanging around eavesdropping.

  I started across the lawn. Hamilton, with his long hair gathered back at the nape of his neck, looked very Continental. As I walked up the steps, I suddenly wondered if he’d figured out I’d gone through his coat pockets at Harold’s party. Perhaps I’d been too rash in sending Gordon away.

  “I need to talk with you,” he said.

  The skin beneath my right eye began to twitch. I could feel it flutter every time he looked at me. “Delo Wiley was killed yesterday,” I said, and remembering the awful scene in the dove field effectively squelched my twitches.

  If I had expected a reaction, Hamilton disappointed me. I couldn’t tell if he’d already heard the news, or if he simply didn’t care. His lack of response provoked me further.

  “He was shot on the exact spot your father was killed.”

  Ah, I saw a narrowing of his eyes, but nothing more. He came toward me across the porch.

  “My father’s death was ruled accidental.”

  Perhaps he had spent so many years accepting the facts that he’d drained them of emotion. It still surprised me that he spoke so calmly, especially when I so clearly believed that Guy Garrett had been deliberately shot. And I had assumed that he believed that, too. Believed it and may have acted on it.

  “Your father was murdered,” I said. “You and I both know this. I suspect a lot of people know it, but no one wants to acknowledge it. Why is that?”

  Hamilton’s eyes had grown cold. “Sheriff Walters didn’t see it that way. He felt it was a hunting accident,” he said carefully. “This doesn’t really concern you.”

  “What do you believe?” I asked.

  “I believe this is a subject best left where it is,” he said, coming down the steps so that he stood beside me. “But your interest in it makes me wonder. Why do you care what happened to my father twenty years ago?”

  It was a good question. I wished I had a good answer. “I’m writing a book,” I said.

  “So I’ve been told,” Hamilton replied, and there was something hot in his eyes now. “Did it ever occur to you that I might object to being the vehicle you ride to save your home? Did you ever stop to think of the repercussions your book might have on my family?”

  He had me there. I had not thought of those things, because I had no intention of writing a book. But I couldn’t very well tell him I was prying into his business because of Tinkie.

  “It’s a work of fiction,” I fumbled.

  “Fiction based on my family tragedies,” he answered. He leaned closer. “Do you have any idea what it might have been like for me? My family destroyed, me forced to leave my home and everyone I knew. I don’t think you can possibly imagine, because if you could, writing a book would be the last thing on your mind.”

  One look into his eyes and I knew that though he presented himself as a controlled man, there were hot passions boiling beneath the surface. Unfortunately, they were not the kind of passions that ended up with sweaty bodies tangled in sheets.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said.

  “Then you’ll drop this and quit prying into my business?”

  I couldn’t go that far. “Don’t you want to know what really happened to your father?” I countered.

  Hamilton’s eyes narrowed. “I came to appeal to your conscience. I had hoped to make you understand that my family has suffered enough.” He stepped closer to me, so close I could feel his breath as he said softly, “Find another host to bleed.”

  He’d ambushed me on my own porch. I wasn’t responsible for what had happened to his family, or to Delo. I grabbed his hand and halted him. “Did you kill your mother?”

  I had hoped to shock him, perhaps even to wound him. I was disappointed. His lips thinned but held the shape of a smile. “I may have misjudged you. Perhaps a tabloid would be a more suitable employer than The Zinnia Dispatch.” He shook free of me and got in his car.

  17

  Jitty sat on the closed toilet lid as I slowly sank beneath the hot water in the tub. Instead of being irritated at her for invading my privacy, I was glad she was there. I didn’t want to be alone.

  “Sarah Booth, get out of that tub.”

  Neither was I inclined to be bossed. “I’m never getting out,” I answered as I surfaced long enough to turn the hot water on with my toe. “I’m staying here for the rest of my life. He thinks I’m slime. He thinks I’m a parasite, a tick, a leech, a maggot feeding on the corpse of his family.”

  “The best relationships start off with an honest awareness of each other,” Jitty said. “He knows the worst about you. It can only go up from here.”

  I wiped the soapy water out of one eye and looked at her. “Thanks.”

  “It’s true. All isn’t lost. Now you just have to figure out a way to make him see the other aspects of your character.”

  I didn’t like it that Jitty had accepted, without a qualm, that I was a bloodsucking insect. But I was surprised at her willingness to help me where Hamilton was concerned. She had begun to mellow toward him.

  “What do you suggest?” I asked, sitting up and turning off the water. “Give me one good plan.”

  “Hummm. Too bad he doesn’t have a dog,” she said.

  I caught the hint of her smile. I chuckled for the first time since Hamilton’s departure, and reached for a towel.

  “Seems to me Hamilton would be grateful to you if you discovered who killed his daddy,” Jitty pointed out.

  “Unless it was his mother, which then provoked him to kill her,” I explained as I dried off.

  “Climb on out,” Jitty ordered.

  I shook off a leg and put it on the floor, following with the other. It was noon and I was hungry again.

  “You got to come up with a plan,” she said. “You’re in too deep to back off now. And Hamilton will come ’round once he realizes you’re on his side.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d made a study of Pollyannaism,” I said sarcastically.

  “Seems to me the obvious step is a visit to that fancy sanitarium up at Friars Point,” she said as she vanished through the wall, her nose straight up in the air and her Afro shaking with indignity.

  I hung up the thick towel and considered my accomplishments for the morning. I’d eaten two thousand empty pastry calories, viewed a bloody corpse, given Gordon Walters food for thought by allowing him to see Hamilton at my home, pissed off the aforementioned Hamilton, and gotten Jitty in a snit. The day was proving
to be exceptional.

  Jitty did have a point, however. Since Hamilton was never going to speak with me again, it seemed Sylvia was the next best possibility. But could I put any trust in what a crazy woman said? Hah! That was the pot calling the kettle black. I’d just had a fight with a ghost.

  I went to my room and pulled on jeans and a red sweater. Something bright. But not even my reflection in the mirror cheered me as I applied some makeup and trudged down to the kitchen. I ate cold chunks of turkey and pumpkin pie and headed out into thin sunshine that was more glare than heat.

  I’d get to Friars Point, eventually. But first I was going to Billie’s Garage. I knew about as much about mechanicking as I did about sleuthing, but I wasn’t going to let that hold me back. I opened the hood of my beloved Roadster and wiggled one of the spark plug wires.

  When I turned the ignition, the car sputtered and coughed. The smooth purr of the engine was gone. And though it hurt me to drive it into town in that condition, I headed straight to Billie’s Garage, lurching and backfiring.

  I couldn’t remember if Billie was older or younger than Millie, or if they were actually twins, as their names implied. I pulled into the apron of the garage and got out. A slender man in his mid-fifties came toward me. He didn’t look exactly like Millie, but pretty damn close.

  “Mornin’, Sarah Booth.” He eyed the Roadster with great pleasure, even letting his fingers brush the Chinese-red paint of the fender. “Nice car, but it’s running a little rough.”

  “Can you fix it? I’ve got to take a trip, and it was running fine yesterday.” Not a lie. I’d begun to wonder if the weight of all my falsehoods would crush me.

  “Pull ’er into the garage,” he said, waving me into an empty slot.

  I did as he instructed and then went inside to wait while he examined the car. The waiting room was dirty, with a coffeepot smudged with greasy black fingerprints and a stack of Styrofoam cups that also looked as if one hundred and one dalmatians had shaken their spots all over it. Behind the waiting room was the office. It was a small, airless place, which offered not a single excuse for my presence if Billie caught me. So, of course, I went right in.

  In the movies or on television, spies and detectives go exactly to the place where the important documents are kept. Though I’d watched millions of those scenes, I still had no idea how they did that. I took the desk first, pulling open drawers only to discover heaps of screws, tape, paper clips, pens, wadded-up bits of paper, magnets, wires, screwdrivers, and assorted other tools, including a crowbar. There was an old check ledger, but all of the stubs were unused. Billie’s accounting system was eerily like mine.

  I banged open the old metal filing cabinet and came across a grimy series of manila folders. To my delight, they were organized by name, and all of the names were folks I recognized. The tabs were handwritten, some in a neat, feminine cursive hand and others in a crablike scrawl. Had Millie been here?

  The Garrett file was in its proper alphabetical place, and I felt a real thrill of excitement that I’d found it. Pulling it out, I sat down in the creaky, greasy chair and spread it open on the desk.

  The stack of yellow paid receipts was impressive. The fact that they ended in 1980 was a blessing, and more to the point, the receipt right on the top of the stack was for Veronica Garrett’s little convertible. I inhaled sharply at the date. Feb. 10, 1980. It was the day she died!

  The car had been in Billie’s shop. I closed my eyes as I thought of what Millie had said. I’d never really considered her a suspect. Until now.

  The bill was for a general checkup on the car, and I saw that Billie had replaced the oil filter, changed the oil, checked the timing belt and found it okay, rotated the tires, and lubed the chassis. He’d replaced a fuse for the horn and given the car a clean bill of health. He’d even noted that it had twenty-four thousand and five miles on it, a 1979 Jaguar XKE. Hunter green with tan leather interior. Veronica had done some serious road-running in the year she’d owned the car. But the Delta was so vast, and with shopping trips to Memphis, parties hither and yon, and two children in boarding school, the miles would add up, I supposed. Or she could have burned all that rubber meeting her lover.

  Outside the open door of the office I heard the motor of my car catch and run smooth and easy. My time was up. I closed the file, returned it, and made it into one of the plastic waiting room chairs just as Billie came in the door.

  “Loose spark plug wire,” he said.

  “What do I owe you?” I pulled my checkbook out of my purse.

  “Nothing.” He tilted his head. “I don’t mean to scare you, Sarah Booth, but it looked as if someone wiggled that wire off there deliberately. You had any prowlers out around your house?”

  “Only the repo man,” I answered with a smile.

  “I heard you were having some financial difficulties,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear of your troubles.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t pay for car service,” I told him, a little embarrassed that he wasn’t charging me out of charity. This was almost more than I could bear after my morning with Hamilton.

  “There’s no charge, because I simply pushed the plug back into place.” He picked up one of the pink cloths that always hang from the back of a mechanic’s pocket. “Go on and have a good day. I hope your luck turns,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be in a tight spot.”

  I had a couple of options open to me, but neither of them held any appeal. I could go see Isaac Carter at the Zinnia International Export office. Carter’s family owned the cotton gin for Sunflower County, and he had developed himself as the broker for cotton and other goods.

  The idea of confronting Carter after our powwow in the cornfield didn’t strike me as a lot of fun. So the other possibility was to go to Friars Point. The private mental institution called Glen Oaks was north of Zinnia, up toward Memphis in a small, scenic little river town near the Helena, Arkansas, bridge. I could get there by three with time enough to get back at dark, or just after.

  I didn’t mind talking with a crazy woman. Most of my family had been crazy women, so it wouldn’t be a hardship. What I did mind was the idea of what would happen when Hamilton found out I’d been to see his sister.

  He would be pissed.

  Too bad.

  The Mississippi Delta is extraordinary land. Black topsoil stretches flat into the distance, so vast and so fertile it’s hard to recognize it as part of the poorest state in the Union.

  As I drove through the winter fields, I saw the efforts hard work had begotten. My land had once looked this way—neat rows, fences up, combines working the land. And it would again. The land demanded it. It was a sin to allow such fecundity to lie fallow.

  With that reminder of my heritage, I hardened my resolve to do this thing for Tinkie. Hamilton had made me feel bad about myself, but there was nothing shameful in wanting to know the truth. How else could Tinkie make a decision that would affect the rest of her life? There was nothing wrong with my work as a PI. It was Hamilton’s misfortune that events pointed the finger of guilt at him. And if he was innocent of wrongdoing, then surely he would thank me for confirming it for the world. Or at least Zinnia.

  I left the flat fields behind me and headed toward the levee that signaled that the Mississippi River wasn’t far away. Friars Point was on the river, but protected by the giant levee built after the 1927 flood that struck the Delta with relentless devastation.

  I made good time and I was eager to discover if Sylvia Garrett would actually see me. She had no reason to. Then again, I didn’t think she had a busload of visitors. Perhaps curiosity and loneliness would work in my favor.

  I pulled into a Double Quick, filled the tank, bought a Coke and some peanuts, and got directions to the mental institution. The woman behind the counter was extremely cheerful about Glen Oaks and assured me that everyone in Coahoma County was delighted to have the hundred-bed facility—“for folks who’re havin’ a little trouble adjustin’ to the real wo
rld”—in their community.

  “Everybody’s a little crazy some time,” she reassured me.

  She was a big, rawboned woman with blond frizz and black roots, but she had the prettiest set of teeth I’d seen outside of Hollywood. Her big gray eyes were nicely set in her head, and there were laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. I liked her, and poured some peanuts in my Coke, prepared to chat. I’d been alone with my thoughts too long, and Ina Welford, as she introduced herself with a firm handshake, was a delight.

  “My uncle Tip was half a bubble off,” she said, lighting up a cigarette and taking a sip of strong black coffee. “We loved him, but he could be a handful when he decided that the Arkansans were coming across the river and trying to steal our land.” She chuckled. “I spent many a night camping on the river standing guard. It was easier to pacify him than it was to fight about it.”

  I had a terrible longing to have known a family that camped out on the riverbank to accommodate a crazy old man’s fantasy. “What happened to your uncle?” I asked.

  “Oh, he drowned one night. He saw a log floating down the river and he was sure there was an Arkansas man attached to it, so he jumped in the river and took off after it.”

  “Couldn’t he swim?”

  “Like a fish, but it was flood stage and one of the currents got him. Or else another log or some trash in the river bumped him in the head. It was dark, and we weren’t ever certain what really happened. We found his body downriver, hung up in the top of a tree. His eyes and mouth were wide open, like he was still searching for something.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Naw, not really. Think how he coulda died in a hospital or locked up somewhere. He loved the river and he died on her. Just hope that you get to die somewhere you love.”

  There was no arguing with those words. “Thanks for the story,” I said, starting out the door.

  “Hey, have a good time out at Glen Oaks. Just check your backseat before you leave. The patients sorta come and go. Like this weekend, one escaped and they didn’t round her up until Sunday night. I heard she’d gotten over to the Delta and was in the middle of a cornfield in her nightgown.”