Splintered Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  “That’s not what I mean.” Jitty was wearing me down. “There used to be a time when a man’s reputation meant something. Family members took the time and trouble to check those things out.”

  “Are you hearin’ yourself?” Jitty asked. “You want a consensus on the man you have feelin’s for? Girl, you better get one thing straight right now. The only person who can judge the right man for you is you. No one, livin’ or dead, can approve your feelin’s and make them right or wrong.”

  “Not approval, Jitty.” She was missing the point.

  “You’re just afraid to risk. Does the word ‘dowry’ mean anything to you? Too bad your daddy didn’t arrange a marriage for you when you were born. That would certainly make it easier now, wouldn’t it?”

  “You’ve stepped over the line,” I said with as much huff as I could muster. “I don’t have time to argue this right now. Since Kip is alive, I’ve got to find her.” I shut down the computer and stood up.

  “You can change the subject, but this conversation ain’t over until the fat ghost sings.”

  “Finding Kip is more important than a discussion of my nonexistent love life.” I pulled some clothes from the closet, determined to get out the door before Jitty could start a new harangue.

  “Who was the last person to see Kip alive?” Jitty asked.

  “Bingo!”

  I bathed, dressed, and hurried out to the car. I put Kip’s hair clip on the passenger seat, and beside that, the syringe in a plastic Baggie.

  As I drove up to Swift Level, the site of the barn was a charred and blackened skeleton. Except for the deputy Coleman had left at the scene, the farm appeared deserted. The yellow crime-scene tape fluttered in the quickening breeze. No one was there searching for bodies, which told me a lot.

  I parked in the shade of an oak and made my way over to the deputy, a new recruit I didn’t know.

  “Where’s Coleman?” I asked. I had a lot of things to tell him.

  “Gone.” He gave me a long look. “You’re the detective, aren’t you?”

  “Sarah Booth Delaney.” I held out a hand for him to shake.

  “You can call me Dewayne. Deputy Dewayne Dattilo,” he said. “Sheriff Peters went back to town.”

  “Did they find anything?” I was really asking how much Coleman knew.

  “Best to talk to the sheriff,” Dewayne said. “He told me if I said a word to anyone, he’d skin me alive.”

  No amount of badgering was going to pry a single tidbit from Deputy Dewayne Dattilo. The fact that Coleman was gone already, though, pretty much confirmed my suspicions. Neither Kip, nor Bud, nor the horse had been in the barn when it burned, and Coleman knew it.

  I went down to the main barn where the office was. The white paint on the outside wall had blistered and begun to peel from the heat of the fire. I brushed a few flakes off as I walked past.

  The office door was unlocked, and I found the medicine cabinet with ease. All of the vials and bottles were clearly labeled. There was no insulin, though there were a number of unused syringes the size of the one I possessed.

  Bud had lived in an apartment above the office, but I wasn’t certain where Roscoe lived, or if he even resided on the grounds.

  “Miss Delaney?”

  Roscoe’s soft voice called to me from a stall, and as I drew closer, he stepped into the hallway, manure rake in hand. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

  “Where’s Kip?” I had no intention of beating around the bush. “What about Bud and Avenger? Are they alive, too?”

  Roscoe leaned the rake against the wall with great deliberateness before he spoke. “Kemper was gonna kill that horse.”

  “What are you talking about? Kemper’s dead.”

  “Avenger. Kemper had been plannin’ on killin’ him. That Kemper Fuquar was a mean bastard. He owed those men money, and they weren’t gonna wait no longer. They come up here one night, three of them. They showed him a little bit of what it felt like to be knocked around. The next day, I heard him on the phone, gettin’ insurance on Avenger. But he had to kill the horse in a way that no one could tell, or the insurance company wouldn’t pay up.”

  I’d heard of people who killed racehorses for insurance money. It was a highly profitable scam. Horses were shot in pastures and labeled “hunting accidents,” or beaten to death with metal pipes and reported as “accidents in the starting gate.” It was a dirty, ugly business, and one I’d always associated with the lowest class of scum. The problem in my thinking was that just because Kemper lived at Swift Level, I hadn’t actually seen him for what he was.

  “Did Lee know about this?” Unfortunately, here was another motive for her to want him dead.

  He shook his head. “He worked on it while she was gone to shows. He planned it all out, but I was watchin’ him. And Bud was watchin’, too. Bud shoulda killed him.”

  I didn’t disagree.

  “Even the horse knew. Avenger hated Kemper. Hated him. He could smell him a mile away. That’s when he’d get crazy.” Roscoe shifted his weight. “I was wearin’ Kemper’s old jacket yesterday when Avenger took out after me in the arena. I shoulda known better, but I wasn’t thinkin’.”

  “Do you know how Kemper was going to kill the horse?” Maybe the horse could take the rap and plead self-defense.

  His gaze was intent when he looked up at me. “Insulin injection. I knew how he was gonna do it, I just didn’t know when. He had to wait until Miss Lee was out of the way. I guess when Dara had trouble foalin’, he saw his chance. I found the insulin in the syringe in the stall, before the sheriff got here. I know I shoulda told the sheriff, but things looked so black for Miss Lee, I thought that would look like another good reason she wanted to kill Kemper. I didn’t know what to do for a while. I was afraid whatever I did would only make it worse. Then I thought, you were Miss Lee’s friend and you’d know best what to do.”

  “You’ve given me too much credit, there. I’m not certain what to do either,” I admitted. “Please continue.”

  He took a long breath. “I figured it out, you know. I found the twitch he was using. Kemper thought he could put the chain on Avenger’s lip and hold him while he gave the shot, but he didn’t know Avenger. He’s a smart horse. He knew to act like he was caught. When Kemper went to pop him with the needle, Avenger knocked him down. Kemper never stood a chance. Avenger got him.” He lifted one hand, clenched in a fist. “The horse got him first. He stomped him to death, and Miss Lee is takin’ the blame.”

  I heard Roscoe’s ragged breathing and knew it was caused by the fury and frustration he felt. If only the scenario he had presented were true. But it wasn’t. I watched dust motes dancing on the weak sunlight that filtered through the stall windows, and a part of my brain registered that the thunderstorm was holding off.

  “Kemper had insulin in his body,” I finally told him. “The horse couldn’t have given him an injection. Someone else killed Kemper.”

  Roscoe shrugged. “Maybe he fell on the needle. It’s happened more than once around a strugglin’ horse.”

  “Can we find evidence of that?” I asked him.

  “Even if we can, Miss Lee won’t allow it. She won’t let Avenger take the blame.” Roscoe picked up the manure rake.

  “Then Avenger is alive?” I’d finally circled back to the question I’d come to ask.

  He stopped, his back still to me. “I didn’t see nothin’.”

  Roscoe pulled a wheelbarrow out of the stall and pushed it down the aisle to the next stall. “All I’m gonna say is that I believe that little girl, her daddy, and her horse have all gone to a better place. I wouldn’t worry about those three.”

  “Her daddy? You think Kemper went to a better place?” I was just a little startled by that sentiment. Most folks were soothed by the idea that Kemper was likely toasting at the feet of Satan.

  Slowly he turned around. His wrinkled face held many secrets, but this was one he was going to share. “Kemper’s not her daddy. Bud Lynch is.�
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  22

  My first impulse was to rush back to town. Coleman had figured out that Bud, Kip, and the horse were alive. He was probably tracking them down right this second. While I was at Swift Level, though, I wanted to look for a little more evidence. Coleman had searched the premises looking for evidence of Kemper’s murderer. He hadn’t been looking for the leavings of Cupid.

  Bud’s apartment was sparsely furnished, reflecting what little I knew of his nature. There were over a hundred books neatly stacked on shelves, many of them showing the signs of having been read more than once. I glanced through the titles, surprised at the names T. R. Pearson and Pete Dexter, and a host of Mississippi classics from Welty to Faulkner. Based on Bud’s vocabulary, I’d known he was well read, and yet I was still surprised at the scope of his literary taste. Horse magazines were piled beside a chair and lamp.

  There were no photographs on the shelves, no mementos of past good times. Several pairs of cowboy boots were neatly lined up in the closet, and his clothes hung above them, cleaned and ironed. Even the bathroom was ordered. Shaving gear, toiletries, all pushed to the back of the counter.

  The queen-size bed was covered with a patchwork quilt. I recognized the Rose of Sharon pattern, and wondered if it was his or Lee’s. The bed was an old iron frame, painted white and butted against an exterior wall. Beside the bed, curtains with a bronco motif fluttered in the light breeze.

  The drawers were my next line of attack. I shuffled through his personal items and found an old wallet, empty of everything. I couldn’t help but contrast his living quarters to my own. In Dahlia House each piece of furniture had a family history. Photographs and letters had been passed from generation to generation. The details of my character could be found scattered along library shelves or hanging on walls. Every item in the house was hooked to someone or something of importance to me. Even the pots in the kitchen could be linked to Aunt LouLane’s cheese grits or my mother’s corn-bread. Bud had deliberately eradicated any trace of his past. No photos of favorite horses, no old postcards or movie ticket stubs. Nothing.

  I decided to check between the mattress and the box springs, so I pulled the quilt off the bed. Military corners on the sheets. It was the most revealing thing I’d found so far. As I lifted the mattress, I heard the tinkle of something hit the floor. There was nothing under the mattress, so I let it drop and searched for the item I’d heard fall. I saw it sparkling against the polished wood floor. A gold pendant.

  It was beautifully crafted, an elegant horse’s head, wild mane flying over a magnificent emerald eye. Certainly not Bud’s, but one of his conquests’. It could easily belong to any of the women who took riding instruction from Bud. Any of them. But the unique design of it told me otherwise.

  I tucked the pendant in my pocket and took one last look around. I had not found what I was looking for, but I’d found something else.

  The need to talk to Lee pressed hard on me, but I went back to the barn office and went through every file again in a search for the insurance papers on Avenger that Roscoe and Mike had mentioned. Those papers could prove crucial to Lee. After an intense search, I had to admit defeat.

  Coleman was not in the sheriff’s office, and I didn’t bother asking Deputy Walters for permission to visit Lee. I opened the door to the jail and shut it behind me. I had to see Lee, and I had to see her alone.

  “Sarah Booth,” she said, rising from her cot. She was so pale she was almost ethereal.

  I held out the hair clip, my hand stuck through the bars at her. She took it very carefully. “You know they’re alive, don’t you?” I asked.

  “I had hoped,” she said. Her fist curled around the hair clip, holding it tightly. “Thank God.”

  “Where are they?”

  Her green eyes slowly lifted until our gazes met and held. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know or won’t tell?”

  “I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell if I did. It doesn’t matter where they are, Sarah Booth. They’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

  “So many secrets, Lee. So many unnecessary secrets.” I reached into my purse and brought out the insulin syringe.

  “What’s that?” she asked, a pulse jumping in her throat.

  “You tell me.” I waited. Lee was an accomplished liar, but she wasn’t as good at hiding her fear.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “One more time. I need the truth. What is this?”

  She reached for it, but I withdrew it. “An injection of some type.” She made a gesture to show it was of little importance to her.

  “My best guess would be insulin. Now tell me one more time how you killed Kemper. This time don’t forget the part where you injected him with insulin.”

  Lee didn’t move. She was frozen in place. Her gaze clung to mine, searching for some sign that what I was saying wasn’t true.

  “You weren’t even in the barn when Kemper was killed, Lee. You’ve been lying all along. It’s time for you to tell Coleman the truth.”

  “No.”

  “We need to find Kip and bring her home. We can get help for her.”

  “No.” She slowly shook her head. “No. She’s safe now. She’s with Bud. He’ll look out for her, make sure she doesn’t . . .” She stopped.

  “She doesn’t hurt someone else?”

  “She’s not like that. You know she isn’t.”

  “Coleman knows they’re alive. I’m sure of it. He’s hunting them now, and he’ll find them. Lee, help Kip. Tell the truth, get out of here, and help us find her.”

  The movement of her head was minute, but it was still a no. “She’s only fourteen.”

  “And she needs her mother.”

  “Bud will take care of her.”

  “Because he’s her father.” I knew all of her secrets now, and I was using them to tear her down, to bring her to her knees so that she would have to accept the truth of what had happened—what was going to happen.

  Her gaze was fixated on the syringe in my hand. “I should have killed him long ago, before he sank us in gambling debts. He wouldn’t stop. Nothing could stop him. He was going to tell Kip he wasn’t her father. He was going to hurt her because she’d disappointed him.”

  So Roscoe was right. Bud was Kip’s father.

  Lee’s chest moved in and out, but she didn’t look away. “I got pregnant, and Bud didn’t want to marry. We were young and wild. He wanted to live the cowboy life, which isn’t conducive to a wife and home. I was trapped, and I was prideful. When Kemper came along, he was so greedy for what he thought I would inherit. I thought I could make it work.” Her hands clenched in her lap. “It’s a mistake I’ve paid for every day of my life since.”

  “Would it have been such a terrible thing for Kip to know Bud was her father?”

  “Yes. Yes, it would have. Things were bad enough for Kip, but that would have been worse.”

  “I don’t see how,” I said. “Kemper was such an S.O.B. At least Bud didn’t beat you.”

  She turned on me. “You don’t know anything about not belonging, Sarah Booth. Don’t lecture me on what it’s like to discover that you’re a bastard child. Don’t ever try to tell me how it feels when you have your nose rubbed in the fact that the man you called Daddy has nothing for you but contempt. Every beating I took was for Kip. Every time Kemper struck me, it was only the thought of Kip’s face that kept me from killing him on the spot. Weston McBride isn’t my father. I don’t know who my real father is, but when I came home pregnant and told my mother the truth, that was the end of me.

  “ ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ my father said. Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.”

  23

  A large crack of thunder greeted me at Dahlia House. The old porch seemed to vibrate as I walked to the front door.

  “Keep that storm outside—the rain and that thunder-cloud on your forehead,” Jitty said before I could clear the threshold.

  “I’m not in the mood
for a sassy ghost who”—I checked out her black jumpsuit with the red racing stripes—“looks like an escapee from some sci-fi movie.”

  She put her hands on her slender hips, accentuating the spandex that clung in all the right places. “You’ve got mail, and somethin’ tells me you’d better read it,” she said defiantly.

  “Not another word,” I warned her. I went to the kitchen and began to rummage through the refrigerator for something to eat. I was angry, and any strong emotion required calories. I found a platter of leftover fried catfish and put it on the table. Catfish po’boys were an option. I turned back to rummage for other possibilities.

  Faster than a speeding bullet, Sweetie Pie made a lunge for the fish. Her houndish jaws snapped shut on all four pieces as she passed by, and before I could blink, there was nothing left on the platter but a couple of cold fries, some stray pieces of onion, and a puddle of grease.

  “Sweetie!” I started after her, but she was out the doggy door and free.

  “I told you that hound was gonna be nothin’ but trouble.” Jitty had come through the wall and was standing by the refrigerator.

  “Jitty, I don’t want to be chastised or lectured. Save it for a rainy day.”

  Prophetically, another deep echo of thunder rattled the windows, and raindrops the size of marbles began pelting down. Jitty walked past me, just a cool whisper blowing by. She went to the window and looked out at the Delaney family cemetery in the distance. I didn’t have to look; I knew by heart the outline of the old tombstones, and the newer ones that marked my immediate family. I suddenly wondered where Jitty’s bones had been buried. I was about to ask when the telephone rang.

  I answered it, fully expecting Coleman. Cece’s voice was low, as if she were whispering.

  “I’ve just heard that Kip is alive.”

  “Your sources are accurate,” I said. I wondered who was tickling Cece’s ear with whispers.