“What?”
“Suffice it to say that Kip believed it was an accident. In her mind it was a shoving match, and the other young lady fell into an open locker. I have no way of knowing what actually occurred, but as you can clearly see, Kip was in serious trouble at school.”
“Was Lee aware of the seriousness of Kip’s condition?” Even if I didn’t ask it, someone else would.
“We had several conversations about Kip. Mrs. McBride resented the fact that Kip was required to see me. She felt that Kip’s anger and frustration were justified.”
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Vance.” I hung up the phone consumed with a gnawing dread, and a slow burning anger at Lee. Her attempts to protect Kip from the truth had only made things much, much worse.
Dr. Vance had spooked me. Badly. The one thing I knew for certain was that if Kip was brought to trial for Kemper’s murder, somehow Lee was going to have to prevent Dr. Vance from testifying.
I got up and replaced the phone. The blinking red light on the answering machine indicated that I had missed calls. On the off chance that someone had something good to report, I punched the play button.
“Sarah Booth, it’s J.B. here. Sorry you didn’t make it to Playin’ the Bones this mornin’. I was lookin’ forward to seein’ you. But I do have something to tell you. Somethin’ important. The rats are really runnin’ around here, and you’d be surprised who’s head of the pack. Why don’t you give me a call, or even better, drop on around by the Breeze to talk with me. Maybe we can have a drink afterward. I’ll keep my ear to the wall until I hear from you.”
A drink with J.B. sounded like the best offer I’d had in a while. He’d also proven to be an accomplished eavesdropper in the past. It sounded like he’d overheard something big.
The clerk at the Holiday Breeze connected me with J.B.’s room, and I let the phone ring ten times before I gave it up and decided to drive over.
The motel vacancy sign buzzed neon orange as I turned off the highway just before an eighteen-wheeler rolled over me. The suction from the truck made me wonder how anyone slept in the motel. There were about five cars pulled up to the front of the rooms, including the black Town Car. I drove past the manager’s office, where I could see a slender man leaning forward intently into a television.
J.B.’s room was dark, and I knocked loudly. Zinnia wasn’t exactly a hotbed of late-night activities, so when there was no answer, I knocked again. Another truck roared down on me in the night, and I tried the doorknob. To my surprise, it turned easily.
The room was dark, but the truck lights briefly illuminated the double beds, the disarray of clothes, the television on the floor, and beside it a pair of legs that disappeared behind one of the beds. The black-and-white images were seared into my brain.
The passing truck suctioned the air out of my lungs as the lights faded and the room was returned to blackness. My hand was frozen on the doorknob. I stood there, breathing, unable to move. At last I reached inside and flipped on the light. This time the images were full color—a vivid bloodred.
Blood had soaked into the carpet beside J.B.’s outstretched right arm. I forced myself to move forward, to look at him. The blood seemed to come from a wound on the back of his head. His eyes were closed and his face was very, very pale.
“J.B.” I whispered his name as if I didn’t want to disturb him from a light sleep.
In my entire life, I’d seen only a handful of bodies. Finding Lawrence Ambrose dead last Christmas had been a trauma, my first view of fatal violence. Before that, my experience with death had been relegated to the paneled, carpeted chapels of the local funeral homes where the dead reposed with painted faces and crimped hair.
My impulse was to run, but I knelt beside him. Hand shaking, I touched fingertips to J.B.’s neck, surprised that he was warm. Beneath my fingers a thready pulse flickered.
“Nine-one-one!” I grabbed the phone by the bed and got the clerk on the line. “Nine-one-one,” I repeated. “Call them now. Send an ambulance and call the sheriff.”
“We don’t have no trouble in the Breeze,” the clerk said gruffly.
“There’s a man injured. Call an ambulance now!” I hung up and went back to kneel beside J.B. “Hang on, J.B. Help is on the way.”
I forced myself to look around the room. I tried to think of the things I should do—the actions a private investigator would take in such circumstances. My job was to observe, to note details, to register the small things that might be useful in determining who had attempted murder. I touched nothing, but I did note the suitcase thrown against the wall, clothes spilling out everywhere. J.B.’s possessions had been searched. The bathroom door was off the hinges.
The weapon was easy enough to identify: the base of the bedside lamp. It was a heavy, ugly piece that now lay beside J.B.’s cracked skull.
He moaned softly, and I pressed lightly on his chest to keep him from moving. I didn’t know the extent of his injuries, but I was afraid that if he began to struggle, he would only do more damage to himself.
“Find her,” J.B. said. His hand clamped suddenly over my wrist in a painful grip. “Find her!”
“I will, J.B. I will.” I looked again at the bathroom. Had his mother returned? Was she injured, or dead, in the bathroom? “Everything’s fine,” I said, attempting to soothe him.
In the distance, I could hear the sound of sirens approaching. It seemed to take forever before the flashing blue lights stuttered through the window blinds of the room.
Coleman came in first, his hand on the butt of his gun. As soon as he saw me, kneeling beside J.B. in all that blood, he called the paramedics into the room.
J.B. stirred again, his brow furrowing as he tried to open his eyes. “Find her,” he said again. “They’re goin’ to kill her.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “we’ll find her.” I nodded at the bathroom, and Coleman instantly moved toward it. This time he drew his gun. It took only a few seconds to determine that the room was empty. By then, the paramedics had arrived with a stretcher and were busy stabilizing J.B. so they could transport him to the hospital.
“I’ll follow the ambulance,” I told Coleman.
“Then I want to talk to you,” Coleman said. “I’ll be waiting at the courthouse.”
It was long past midnight when I left the hospital. J.B. had not regained consciousness, and there was talk of transferring him to Memphis. I had not wanted to leave him, but there was nothing else for me to do, and Coleman was waiting. I had no doubt of that.
Rumpled and tired, Coleman poured fresh coffee and pushed a cup across to me. We were standing in the main office, the counter between us. I was on the side of freedom, he on the side of the law.
“This is just one big tragedy,” I said, wondering what, exactly, Coleman wanted to talk about. He was a perceptive man, and the telephone interview with Dr. Vance weighed heavily on my mind. While Coleman was sworn to discover the truth, I was hired to protect Lee, which meant protecting Kip.
Coleman said nothing. His blue gaze merely held mine. His scrutiny made me even more uncomfortable. Putting down his coffee cup, he leaned across the counter and took my hand. He held it, palm open to the light. He studied it for a long time, then drew a finger lightly from my wrist to the tips of my fingers. The power of his touch caught me by surprise.
He looked back into my eyes. “I get the sense that no one has told the complete truth in this case. If you know something you haven’t told me, now would be the time.”
He still held my hand, the lightest of touches, and I had to admire his tactics of interrogation. They were incredibly effective. “Kemper was involved with Tony LaCoco in an insurance scam in Louisiana before he married Lee. It was the two of them and a third man named Mitchell Raybon.”
“Mitchell Raybon,” he said. “Should I know the name?”
“I don’t. I got it from a newspaper reporter in Lafayette.”
Coleman nodded. He smoothed his thumb across my palm. “Good
work. Now tell me where Kip is, and the horse.”
“I don’t know.”
He gently bent my fingers back as if he might find the answer to his question in my palm. “I have to find her, Sarah Booth. For her sake. Was J.B. Washington talking about Kip when he told you to find her?”
I sighed. “I really don’t know what he meant. He left a message at Dahlia House. He’s been snooping around a little, eavesdropping, that kind of thing.”
“And reporting to you,” Coleman finished, making it sound as if I were responsible for J.B.’s condition.
“He liked doing it.”
“It had nothing to do with him liking you?”
Putting it that way made me sound even more responsible. “He didn’t really know me.”
“But he wanted to, didn’t he?”
I could only stare at our hands on the countertop. “The message J.B. left said something about how the rats were really running now. He said he’d overheard something important. I went to the motel as soon as I got his message.”
Coleman eased my hand to the counter. “Whoever struck him meant to kill him. That’s an extreme measure to take if he was merely hanging around the motel, picking up gossip.”
“I guess it depends on who the gossip involves.”
Coleman leaned forward on his elbows. “That’s true. Be careful, Sarah Booth. Somehow the stakes in this case have changed.”
“Coleman, did you run across anything that might indicate Kemper had insured Avenger?”
He picked up his coffee cup. “Billy Appleton said he spoke with you, so you know his story. The horse wasn’t insured.”
“Not by Billy.”
“There are companies that specialize in insuring horses. I checked all of them. There’s no record of a policy taken out by Kemper Fuquar on a stallion.”
“Could it be in Kip’s name? Or someone else’s?”
He shook his head. His hand on the counter moved toward mine, but stopped less than halfway. “This case doesn’t add up. We’re missing something, Sarah Booth. Something very important. You need to know that Lee talked to Boyd earlier this evening. They’re trying to come up with some kind of involuntary manslaughter plea bargain. She’s decided to plead guilty and avoid a trial altogether.”
My frown must have tipped him off as to my thoughts.
“It isn’t what I want, but Lee refuses to help herself. This would be better than risking a trial for murder. She can do a little time, get paroled out, and pick up what’s left of her life without losing anything more.”
There was an element of sadness in his voice that chilled me. “I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t willing to give up.
He gave me that lopsided grin that made him look about fourteen. “You can be a bulldog, Sarah Booth.”
I took it as a compliment, which showed how far I’d fallen from my Daddy’s Girl ways. In my former incarnation as a DG, the only reference to a dog that would have been a compliment was being called a real bitch— in the sense that my high standards for a man were hard to meet.
“Connie called earlier. I’ve got to run home for a while. She’s been doing some thinking, and she wants to talk. Try not to stumble on any more wounded bodies tonight.”
“You got it,” I said as I walked out of the office and into the empty halls of the courthouse. My footsteps echoed hollowly off the vaulted ceiling, and I looked up the double set of staircases that led to the courtroom. This was the place where my father had told me that justice balanced the scales. He’d never told me how hard it was to find the evidence.
Jitty was sitting on the front porch steps, and I was relieved to see her. Sweetie Pie, too. The hound was stretched out, sleeping off the adventures of her day. Since Dr. Matthews had removed her regenerated ovaries, she was a more relaxed—and better-smelling— pet. Not too far in the distant past, when a man had a “disobedient” wife, he’d take her in for a bit of surgery. Once her ovaries were snatched out, she might get a little weird, but she lost all of those unfortunate impulses toward sexual identity.
Of course, a Delaney, like Sweetie Pie, would just have grown a new set of ovaries. I, personally, had regrown my tonsils after they were surgically removed. Regenerating body parts. It was a fine genetic tradition to uphold.
I sat down beside Jitty.
“Pretty bad day, huh?” she asked.
It didn’t take me long to fill her in on the graphic details of the assault on J.B.
“If I could hold a glass, I’d make you a drink,” she said.
“Grand idea!” I went inside and made a double, because it was only polite to drink for her, too. I rejoined her on the steps and stroked Sweetie’s silky hound ears. I’d neglected the water in my “Jack and water,” and the bite was harsh and welcome.
“You’ve done everything you could do,” Jitty said in the gentlest tone I’d heard her use in a while.
“I suppose.” I didn’t have it in me for an argument. J.B. Washington’s battered body was wedged on the edge of my subconscious, and I intended to drink that image away. Arguing would only hamper the process.
“Sarah Booth, I’ve been giving this some thought. What do you see in your future?”
Jitty had been on this kick about the future all month. Even tonight, she was tricked out in some glistening fabric that caught the moonlight and spangled it in the amber weave. Still, the future was better than her prior obsession—the fifties, where she’d taken the wholesome image of June Cleaver to the point of making me want to hurt her. The problem with her question was that I had no clear view of the future. “I see Dahlia House painted and looking like she used to look. I see me sitting at the kitchen table paying my bills, writing out checks without having to wonder if I might be arrested when they bounced.”
“And who do you see with you?”
That question opened a black hole in my heart. “Jitty, I don’t have that kind of imagination.”
“Harold would look nice standing there beside you.”
My smile was fleeting. “He’s a good man. You were right about him.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“If you had Harold sitting here beside you, there wouldn’t be a need for discussion. A man has a way of takin’ a woman’s mind off her troubles.”
“And, if everything is working properly, producing an heir to Dahlia House at the same time, right?” Jitty was as single-minded and pigheaded as all of my other acquaintances.
“That sheriff is a good-lookin’ man. Why don’t you find a reason for him to apprehend you? A thorough search might be fun.”
“Jitty!” I gave her a hard look, and realized that in the outfit she was wearing, a man wouldn’t have to touch her at all to get a list of her assets. “Where’d you get that dress? It barely covers possible, as Aunt LouLane so delicately referred to the female anatomy.”
“I love these modern fabrics. All suction and no ironing.” Jitty smoothed her hands over her torso. “But I’m not the focus of this conversation. You are. You and the future, which is pretty bleak if it only includes paint for Dahlia House and money in the bank. I want to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, and no matter how independent you are, Sarah Booth, you can’t get pregnant alone. That Coleman, now, he’d make a good daddy.”
I gave Jitty a sideways glance. “Perhaps you’ve missed the fact that he’s married.”
“Yeah, I guess one of us missed that fact.” She stood. “Maybe you should go to Paris and visit Hamilton. If you time it right, you could come back with the goods.”
“I can’t afford to give birth to ‘the goods,’ as you so charmingly call it. I can’t private detect and raise a baby. Besides, I wouldn’t use Hamilton that way.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please don’t throw Mr. Hamilton into that mean ol’ briar patch!”
She’d used her height as an advantage, so I stood and moved up two steps. “Jitty, I’ve had a really bad day. Can we talk about men tomorrow?”
�
��Fine, put it off ’til your innards are as black and shriveled as your heart. The future is just one second from now, you know.”
“Jitty, why don’t you focus on the present?” I thought it was a brilliant retort.
“Huh! You’re a fine one to talk. You cling to the past like it’s your favorite pair of sweatpants.”
The arrow of truth struck with a sting of pain. I did have a habit of living in the past. How could I help it, with a ghost from the 1850’s lurking in my home and the curse of tradition in every corner of the house? But there was more to Jitty’s accusation. I knew what she meant, and the truth of it was frightening.
“I don’t want to get hurt again. Loss is something I have no desire to experience again.”
“I know that, Sarah Booth. I know it well. I lost people I love, too. But the only thing that makes all the sufferin’ worthwhile is bein’ able to love again.”
Jitty’s words held wisdom. I turned to thank her, but I was alone on the porch with a gently snoring Sweetie Pie and the darkest hours of the morning ahead of me.
I got up and went inside. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a meal, so I went to the kitchen and made two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Dr. Matthews had fussed at me about Sweetie Pie’s rapid weight gain, but then the good doctor was thin as a rail and didn’t have to suffer the emotional flux of the Delaney womb. Chocolate would have been best, but peanut butter was a good second choice.
Sweetie and I smacked our way through the sandwiches, and I took myself off to bed and the Kinky Friedman novel that had seen me through the last long night. Like Kinky, I was blessed with good friends. Tinkie was the perfect partner. Her only drawback was that she was married and didn’t frequent bars.
I took my book and settled beneath the covers. The night was still chill enough to make the comforter a real comfort, and I immersed myself into the cigar-smoking, espresso-making world of the Kinkster.
26
When I woke on Monday, I was surprised to see the sun streaming in the bedroom window. Only seconds before, I’d been in a dark New York City bar sharing a bottle of Jameson with Kinky.
Splintered Bones Page 26
