Them Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  I didn’t actually have to know her accomplice’s name, but I wanted to. It was a rare luxury to have Kincaid on the ropes. “Who usually pays?”

  “The man,” she said. “You remember that much, at least, don’t you?” The sarcasm was back.

  “Does this man have a name?”

  “Yes,” she answered, “I call him Mr. Sat-is-fac-tion.”

  “I can only hope he was worth it,” I pointed out to her. I could see that she still didn’t get the big picture. “Chew on this, Kincaid. You were probably the last person, other than the murderer, to see Delo alive. He knew things about you that you’d prefer to keep secret. Now the way I understand law enforcement, they look for someone with means, opportunity, and motive.” My brick-by-brick approach to the facts was having an effect. Kincaid had gone deathly pale. “I see you as the number one suspect in Delo’s murder.”

  “This can’t be happening,” she whispered, and her hand shook so hard I reached over and took the glass from her fingers. No point sloshing out perfectly good whiskey.

  “It is happening,” I said. I had another little time bomb to drop, but I didn’t want her to faint. When she reached for the whiskey and took another sip, I nodded. A little liquid courage. “There’s also the possibility that whoever you’ve been meeting at Delo’s set you up for his murder.”

  The swallow of liquor got caught in her throat and I thought I’d have to use the Heimlich maneuver, but she got her breath and stood up. She began pacing in front of the fire. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t,” she said, but it was clear she wasn’t talking to me.

  “Did Delo call and say he wanted the money?” I asked.

  “No.” She stopped and froze. “No, it was … him. And Delo acted a little surprised when I showed up with the check.”

  Betrayal is hard to watch, even when it’s so deserved. I led Kincaid to her chair and eased her back into it. She took the whiskey and drank again.

  “Who were you meeting?” I asked.

  “This can’t be real,” she said, and her eyes searched mine for some sign that I was in on the joke.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “My God,” she whispered. “You know Chas is absolutely going to kill me.”

  “Who?” I asked with a snap.

  “Isaac Carter.”

  I dreamed of fields covered in corn stubble. The stalks had been chopped and broken, and dead leaves and tassels rattled in the wind. I was hiding among the debris, listening to the sounds of the hunters’ boots crunching toward me. Their laughter seemed to expand in the early morning sun, golden notes hanging in the wind.

  They had come to kill. They would pull the trigger two times, quickly, buckshot scattering in an ever-widening pattern. It was a morning of recreation to them, small deaths that registered only as amusement.

  Hidden in the dry husks, I felt the ground seep blood, and I darted into the air.

  “There she is! Shoot her!” I was flying hard, but I looked over my shoulder and into the green eyes of Hamilton Garrett the Fifth. He stood among a cluster of men, all with shotguns to their shoulders. I heard the roar of the guns and felt the air around me shudder with the shock of the blasts.

  I woke up gasping for air. The sheets were soaked with sweat, and the bedside clock showed two in the morning. I had kicked away the covers, and though I was sweating, I was freezing. I hurried into the bathroom and lit the space heater that had become dear to my heart. In a matter of moments I was holding my nightgown over the heater, catching the hot drafts of air in the folds of the gown.

  “Mary Margaret Allen caught her gown on fire and burned to death two years ago doin’ that exact same thing. They said she flared like a human torch, runnin’ through the house and screamin’.” Jitty appeared sitting on the side of the tub.

  “It was a tragedy,” I agreed. After my dream, I would have been pleasant to Satan if he had stopped to converse. I was not ready to go back to bed.

  “You’d sleep better if you got laid. Call Harold. I’ll bet he’d be over here before you could hang up the phone.” At the mention of Harold, my thumb pulsed wickedly. I captured one last gust of hot air in my gown and ran back to the bed, jumping under the quilts.

  “You’ve been reading too many back issues of Cosmopolitan. You’re talking mighty trashy,” I said, to cover my own confusion.

  “I’ll rephrase it. You need the release of—now how does that book call it? Sexual climax,” she said, grinning. “I read some of your college books.”

  I had a terrible thought that Jitty would get too comfortable with Sigmund Freud. I could just see them both, in the parlor, deciding what was best for me, and I certainly didn’t want to hear about penis envy from her. “Psychology isn’t a science, exactly,” I reminded her.

  “I don’t need a book to tell me you need to work off your rough edges.” She pointed to the sheet. “More wasted sweat. If you’d applied that to Harold, our future would be secure.”

  “I’ll think on it,” I said.

  Jitty took a seat on the edge of the mattress, and in the glow from the alarm clock she looked slightly ashy.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. I had never seen her so gray and translucent.

  “I’m a little tired. You a full time job, Sarah Booth. You enough to wear a ghost to a frazzle.”

  “Tell me about it,” I answered. “Do you think Isaac Carter killed Delo?” I asked her. Since Kincaid left we hadn’t actually talked, but I knew she’d been privy to the entire exchange.

  “Strange that Isaac Carter keeps turnin’ up in that dove field. Ever’ time you turn around, he’s standing there at the scene of tragedy. Maybe Delo was trying to blackmail him.”

  “But to kill Delo in the exact same spot as Guy Garrett. That’s—”

  “Sick? So? Have you considered what type of man would crawl naked between the sheets with Kincaid Maxwell? He’s lucky he came out whole. Kincaid likes her meat sliced and portioned.”

  “Kincaid is pretty,” I felt obliged to point out.

  “Pretty bitchy. She doesn’t strike me as the type to risk her marriage and security for the pleasure of a little thigh rubbin’. Unless she was getting somethin’ in return.”

  “Like what?” I asked, curious about Jitty’s train of thought. Kincaid had always made it clear that for her, sex was a form of barter and a means to scale the social ladder. She only screwed the tennis pro for the prestige of saying she had him first—and she got a great deal on tennis lessons.

  “Like revenge.”

  “Against Chas?”

  “Who better? He’s the kind of man could make a woman’s blood run cold. I don’t lay claim to bein’ no psychiatrist, but I’ll bet life with Chas Maxwell has been about as pleasurable as summers on the Sahara.”

  I hadn’t actually thought of Chas as a man. Not ever. He was thin, effete, and prissy. And he was the heir to the Maxwell estate and railroad holdings. He spent a great part of his day in business negotiations with Isaac Carter.

  “But Carter’s old enough to be Kincaid’s father,” I pointed out. “In fact, he and her father are friends. They play golf.”

  “Exactly,” Jitty said, raising both eyebrows. Her skin flushed back to its full, rich color. “You got to admire the way Kincaid can pack a double whammy.”

  Kincaid’s visit had given me bad dreams, and the ammunition to enter the glass-and-wood office of Zinnia International Export. I had not looked forward to meeting with Isaac Carter, but now it was necessary.

  Kincaid wasn’t my client. Not officially. I had accepted three thousand dollars, cash, as a retainer, which I told her I would hold until I made up my mind whether or not I could help her. I wasn’t playing hard to get; I truly didn’t want to go out to Delo’s house and hunt through a dead man’s things. Then again, it appeared that Delo’s murder was firmly tied into the case I was already working on.

  Isaac did not look happy to see me, though he allowed his secretary to send me straight back to his office. He remain
ed seated and waved me into a chair—a faux pas, or else a deliberate move to let me know that he didn’t consider me to be on the same social level as he was. I took it as the latter and put an enormous “Bite Me” smile on my face.

  “You’ve left Kincaid in rather a bad position,” I said, gratified to see that his calm quickly turned to panic. “If she gets pegged for the Delo Wiley murder, you won’t walk away from this clean. I can promise you that.”

  “What do you want?” he asked, opening his drawer and bringing out a checkbook.

  Aha! He thought I’d come to blackmail him. That would be the first thought that jumped into a Buddy Clubber’s peanut-sized brain.

  “I want to know what happened on the day that Hamilton Garrett the Fourth was killed,” I said, glad to see that my change in conversational direction had caused him even more consternation.

  “What is it with you, Sarah Booth? Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”

  I had an answer for him. “Call it a Delaney gift,” I said. “We Delaneys have a thing about difficult paths. I suppose a search for truth after twenty years of lies could be considered one of those rock-strewn roadways.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me and took a breath. He was still a handsome man, though wattles—even small ones—were not something I found sexually stimulating. Still, there was snap in his gaze and tension in his lips as he returned my perusal.

  “Nobility is an expensive habit,” he said. “I never figured you for that kind. I always viewed you more as, shall we say, hedonistic and lazy.”

  “Unlike Kincaid, who is uptight and busy?” I asked. “But she is married, too, which adds a bit more spice to it. Especially for a man who never really had to risk much in business, since it was all handed to him.” I didn’t mind crossing swords with Isaac. Though he had been an associate of my father’s, I’d never heard his name spoken with any great degree of respect.

  “You’re a disgrace to your family name,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “We can trade complimentary observations all morning, or we can get this over with,” I said. “I’m not leaving until I find out a couple of things. Why was Guy Garrett in the dove field when he wasn’t a hunter, and who were the two strangers that you brought to the field with you?”

  “And if I tell you these things, you’ll keep quiet about Kincaid?”

  “You’ve set your mistress up for a murder rap. I’m a little curious about the reasons behind that, so I can’t make any empty promises. But I will agree to destroy the tape recording Kincaid made of you requesting her to pay Delo off.”

  It seemed that Isaac Carter brought out the very best in me when it came to doing PI work. I had no compunction about lying to him. Au contraire! It gave me great pleasure.

  “She taped me?”

  The tête-à-têtes between Kincaid and Isaac were now history. I had torpedoed their trust factor. Too bad. But I had also thought of a way to save Kincaid’s skin, only because I knew she hadn’t killed Delo. Kincaid was not passionate enough to pull the trigger twice at a man’s head. Besides, if she’d actually decided to kill someone, her husband would have been at the top of her list. Wealthy widowdom is the pinnacle of achievement for a Daddy’s Girl.

  My plan was to blackmail Isaac into stealing the check back, since he was the one who’d gotten Kincaid into the jam to begin with. Then I could keep the three thousand.

  “When you decided to take a Daddy’s Girl as your mistress, you should have been prepared for the consequences,” I told him. “We’re always prepared. Always.”

  “The men in the field were Arthur Lowry and Aubrey Malone.”

  The names were not familiar. “Should I know them?”

  His look spoke volumes about how I shouldn’t presume to know anyone who might be anybody. I had been born a Daddy’s Girl, but I was hanging on by my teeth.

  “They’re businessmen. From Memphis. They had come down to talk with Hamilton the Fourth about some investments. And that’s also the reason he was in the dove field. It was a business meeting, and though he wasn’t much of a shot, I’d talked him into going along with us. Guy sometimes gave the impression that he wasn’t really a man’s man.”

  I lifted my eyebrows for clarification.

  “He wasn’t gay, he just wasn’t …”

  “He didn’t feel the need to express his manhood in stupid, macho ways,” I supplied.

  “He put people off. His only saving grace was Veronica. Now she was all woman, and that was a good reflection on him.”

  If I’d had time I would have given him my thoughts on women who “reflected” on their men. But as Jitty would say, I had bigger fish to fry.

  “Who shot Hamilton?” I asked.

  He started to stand, then didn’t. “I don’t know.” The furrow between his brow spoke of his truthfulness. “I was down by the river with the rest of the boys. I meant to go check on Guy because I knew this wasn’t his sport, but I saw him walking off with Lowry and Malone, so I hung back. It was a business meeting, as I said.”

  “And what was the business?” I remembered Sylvia’s remark about a payoff.

  He placed a hand on his chest. “Some of us men had come up with a development plan for the county. We wanted to try to push it through the Board of Supervisors before too many questions were asked.”

  “And Hamilton was part of this?”

  “Not exactly.” Isaac picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk. “The plan didn’t come about. After Hamilton was killed, Pasco felt we should drop it.”

  “Hamilton was opposed to the plan?” This was tougher than pulling teeth.

  “Lowry and Malone were supposed to talk him into it.”

  “What was the plan?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a plan. It was more of a zoning thing.”

  I had always hated business. I knew instinctively that where there was a buck to be made, someone was manipulating the rules. Zoning was a perfect example. I signaled him to continue.

  “We had a county-wide zoning plan that would restrict commercial development in certain areas, and change residential to commercial in others.”

  “All to benefit—”

  “Don’t be so stupid, Sarah Booth. Who the hell do you think it would benefit?”

  “And Hamilton? Where did he fit in?”

  “He was president of the county zoning board.” Isaac put the pen down and clasped his hands. “And not likely to go along with this idea.”

  I really had him talking. “So …”

  “So a lot of the zoning changes were in the black part of town. There were plans for developing a county-wide park with a movie complex, bowling lanes, and eventually to attract a gambling boat on the river. It would have been a great thing for Sunflower County.”

  “And let me guess, the best location was where most of the black people live.” The Grove bordered the Tibbeyama River. For decades, the land had been considered worthless because it flooded and was the breeding ground for mosquitoes and other plague-carrying insects. With the prospect of gambling, it would have been priceless.

  “They would have gotten fair market value.”

  He might have believed it or he might not have. “There is no fair market value for someone’s home,” I said.

  He stood up and leaned on his desk. “You can say that because you’ve never done without. Not even now, when you think you’re impoverished. But the money we intended to offer could have made a big difference to some of those families. They could have relocated, bought more land, built new homes. Don’t be so quick to judge. It would have displaced some people but, in the long run, everyone in Sunflower County would have benefited.”

  It took about five seconds for me to put the rest of it together. “They were going to buy him.” The scene in the dove field became clear. The seclusion of the Mule Bog field, the men with their big hunting vests and gear, a perfect place for cash to change hands. “How much?”

  “A million dollars.”

  I swallo
wed. “And he had agreed to take the money?”

  “More or less.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I truly don’t.”

  I wasn’t certain I believed him. “Those men, Lowry and Malone, were the last to talk with him?” I wondered if they were businessmen or mobsters. “Did they give him the money?”

  “As far as I know.” He stood up. “But I don’t think they killed him.”

  I was surprised that Isaac had enough testosterone to set a perfect scapegoat free. “Why not?”

  “He wasn’t any good to them dead. Besides, the money disappeared.” Isaac straightened his shoulders.

  “Perhaps he didn’t agree, and they killed him and took back the money.” This had to be the money Sylvia had made reference to. It crossed my mind that Isaac Carter wasn’t above walking off with a cool million, either.

  He shook his head. “They didn’t have it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “They were as upset as I was. And they were too afraid to complain.”

  “Then who do you think took it?”

  He paced the room. “I always thought it was Veronica. It was a perfect opportunity for her. All of that money right in her hand. Then if she got rid of Hamilton, she’d be a wealthy widow. She told me once that being married to Hamilton was like being chained to a stone wall in a place that no one ever visited. She said she’d never been so lonely, and she wanted a divorce. I figured she saw that a widow was in a much better position, financially, than a divorcée.”

  “You think she knew about the payoff and had him killed?”

  He nodded. “A lot of folks don’t think a woman could pull the trigger and shoot a man in the back. I think she could have done it and then gone home and eaten a big supper. Veronica had a healthy appetite, for everything.”

  I couldn’t be certain if he was bragging that he’d sampled Veronica’s smorgasbord of delights, or if he was just gossiping. “But someone in the dove field shot him, whatever his or her motives might have been. And you helped cover it up.”

  “I did what I had to do,” he answered. “Hamilton was dead. The way I saw it, no one would benefit by filing a murder charge. Malone and Lowry had come up with the money from a variety of sources, none of which could stand the scrutiny of an investigation.”