Tinkie swatted my arm, but her enthusiasm was restored. I bumped her shoulder with mine. “And what about you? How are you?”
“I can understand why Oscar would want to leave this bit of family history behind. Those awful men who kill their daughters if they defy tradition … it’s a form of the basest ignorance. No one wants that personal history, but blood isn’t destiny or identity. Speaking of which, the DNA results on the Lady in Red should be back soon.”
“Olive must have paid a pretty penny for such a fast track.”
“Obviously she thinks it’ll pay out big. It was bad enough listening to her bestseller brags. Now she’s moved on to movie options. She thinks Keira Knightley should play her.” Tinkie swung her legs like a kid. I realized she was wearing cutoff jeans, tennis shoes, and a tank top—far more my wardrobe choices than her normal polished style.
“Frances Malone called me, too.” Tinkie sat up straighter. “She’s bonding Jeremiah and Buford out of jail.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. They’ll go after Olive.”
“That’s exactly what she’s hoping.” She bit her bottom lip. “There’s a bloodthirsty streak in Frances I never suspected. She really wants Olive gone—or dead. She said if she’d never come here, none of this would be happening. I’m tired of this stupidity. I want Olive to leave town and everyone to stop hurting each other. Jeremiah and Buford are capable of tragic stupidity.”
“Can Oscar stop Buford’s release?”
“He tried. Too late. They were only charged with creating a public disturbance. Oscar didn’t have time to get a judge to rule on sending them to an institution. Now they’ve gone underground. Cece talked to Coleman about arresting them on spewing hate, but he can’t. Not until they do something in Sunflower County, and it has to be something more than flinging a few tomatoes.”
I stood and gave her my hand to pull up. She rose to her feet, glass in hand. We walked into the cool foyer of Dahlia House, our footsteps echoing. The house was empty.
“Where’s Graf?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen him. I went in and mixed a drink, but I figured he was with you.”
“Let’s head to the office and see what we can determine about who Jimmy Boswell really was. If he offered compromising video to Webber and then tried to sell information to Oscar, he might be more than just a mistreated research assistant.”
Tinkie linked her arm through mine. “There are days, Sarah Booth, you surprise me with your intelligence.” The ghost of a grin touched her lips. “Then other days I realize your brain is sound asleep.”
10
We hit a hot trail on Jimmy Boswell. Internet research led us to an unexpected revelation. And Tinkie’s phone work yielded even more strange fruit. The shadowy Boswell we uncovered was as different from Olive’s subservient research assistant as Jekyll was from Hyde.
And it all went back to the War Between the States.
The Boswell family history held every dark secret. “Some of his Boswell ancestors died during the siege of Vicksburg,” I told Tinkie, scanning a document I’d stumbled on. “Adrian Boswell was a prominent merchant in Vicksburg, Mississippi, who imported antiques and fine china from Europe through the port of New Orleans and up the Mississippi River.” I read aloud.
“Union gunboats closed off the river, stopping all supplies, and Union forces surrounded the city, closing overland supply routes, so the residents of Vicksburg dug caves in the bluffs and moved furniture there to escape the constant shelling. Horses, dogs, and cats disappeared, and finally residents were forced to eat rats and boiled shoe leather.”
Tinkie sat on the edge of my desk. “I hope we never have to endure anything like that, Sarah Booth. I don’t think I’m tough enough to last.”
“I know.” Talk of war always depressed me. Jitty didn’t often tell about the difficult times she’d been through—she was much more focused on the here and now and how she could torment me. The stories she’d recounted, though, were a testament to the strength of spirit of the survivors, on both sides.
Of all the Civil War battles, Vicksburg headed the list of horrific. A city under siege creates a lot of suffering. Vicksburg’s citizens held out under extreme conditions, and all told, some twenty thousand people from both sides died.
“Can the history lesson,” Tinkie said. “What happened to Adrian Boswell?”
“This is unauthenticated information.” I wanted to be clear the tidbits I’d uncovered could have been posted by anyone, including Jimmy Boswell.
“Stop acting like you’re on a witness stand. All I’m asking is what you found.” Tinkie was easily exasperated today, a sure sign of stress in her marriage.
“Adrian Boswell was allegedly hanged by Union soldiers after the city surrendered. The Union soldiers were court-martialed, but it didn’t undo the lynching.”
A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “That’s disgusting. Does it say why he was hanged?”
“He called the Union soldiers cowards, and he slapped one. Adrian was weakened from hunger and crazy with grief. His wife and daughter died of dysentery during the siege. He couldn’t find adequate food for them and they died in his arms.” It was a bleak bit of history. “The soldiers he accosted found a rope and hanged him from an oak tree near the riverfront.”
“So why would Boswell work for Twist, especially on this project where he would be confronted with the war and all the sadness involved?”
I put my hands on my hips and waited for her to arrive at the same place I stood.
She jumped to her feet and mimicked my pose. “Because he intended all along to thwart her research?”
“It’s possible. I mean, he was setting up meetings with Oscar and trying to sell embarrassing videos of Olive to Webber. It would appear he was intent on ruining her.”
“If she found out, she’d have ample cause to kill him.”
“Exactly.” We’d officially landed on the same page.
My view of Boswell had changed, which forced me to reevaluate Olive’s possible motives. He wasn’t the innocent victim of his employer, at least not completely. He’d joined Twist willingly and tolerated her abusive superiority, and now I believed he had an ulterior motive.
And we had evidence, or at least gossip. If Webber could be believed, Boswell was the asp clutched to Olive’s bosom. Had she discovered his intention to ruin her, she really might have murdered him.
“So, we may have given some credibility to the theory that our client is a murderer. That wasn’t what we were paid to do.” Tinkie shifted her head left to right to loosen her neck. “In fact, we haven’t been paid anything to clear Olive.”
“Which is why we’re behind the curve here. She keeps forgetting our check.”
Tinkie’s biggest interest wasn’t money. “Do you think Dr. Webber was involved in Olive finding out Boswell was against her?” Tinkie had taken the supposition to the next level.
“I wouldn’t put it past him. Will we ever be able to prove it?” I shrugged. “Probably not. What did you find out?” She’d been yakking like a magpie on the phone.
“Boswell was an exemplary graduate student at Camelton College and earned his master’s in English last year. He went directly into Olive’s employ. I spoke with some of his former classmates, and they said he was a loner. Most thought he was simply introspective, but his former roommate said Boswell was ‘the type to climb a bell tower and take out students and faculty.’”
I’d seen nothing of that nature in the young man. But someone who could plot to destroy Twist’s credibility and take the abuse she heaped on him without complaint and with seeming subservience was a master actor. “Did anyone corroborate that view of Boswell?”
“Not so strongly. He was engaged to a young woman when he started graduate school, but he broke it off. She was bitter about it, but she said Jimmy was struggling with his own demons.”
I cringed inwardly at the thought of what my past lovers might say about me. Perhaps an ex-fiancée wasn�
��t the most reliable character reference. “Anyone else?”
She withered me with a glare. “I spoke with three of his teachers. He was highly regarded intellectually, though each one said he was reserved and quiet. None characterized him as aggressive or vindictive or especially motivated. High marks came easily to him, and he didn’t take on extra work for the pleasure of learning.”
“So what’s your conclusion?”
Tinkie hesitated. “This is gut, Sarah Booth. I think Boswell went to that particular school to meet Dr. Twist. I think he intended to ruin her, if he could.”
“But Boswell had no idea Twist would write about Mississippi history. She could have gone in the direction of Native American burial grounds or seafaring tales from the Northeast. We need to look up Olive’s prior publications and see where her former interests lay.” I wanted to be logical, not emotional.
“You’re the one at the computer and you’re wasting time.”
Leave it to Tinkie to batter me with the bludgeon of reality. I started tracking Olive’s academic career. Top of the list was her journal article on the impact of the Civil War on the women of the Northeast. Many lost their men as more and more soldiers were poured into the war machine, and then their slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Farmers in the Northeast faced the same problems as those in the South. Without slave labor, there was no one to harvest the crops. While the farms weren’t as vast as the thousands of acres in the Deep South, the work was still labor-intensive and required hard, long hours when crops were ready.
“I wasn’t aware there were so many slave owners north of the Mason-Dixon Line,” Tinkie said, reading over my shoulder.
“History is written by the victors.” I clapped my hand over my mouth in horror. I truly was beginning to sound like my aunt Loulane. Not that she wasn’t a wonderful woman, but she was old and given to spouting platitudes around the clock.
“This article was written five years ago. Doesn’t she have anything fresh or new?” Tinkie was a bulldog when she got her teeth into something.
I typed in more search terms. Pretty soon I had a comprehensive list of Dr. Olive Twist’s publishing history. Her latest articles focused on issues regarding the South. I read over the titles, which was hard to do with Tinkie standing behind me giving a running commentary.
“Why, that witch! Would you look at that! ‘The Southern Male and the Umbilical Cord: How Peter Pan Lives in the Modern South.’” She spun me around to face her. “Is that history or psychology or hoo-ha?”
“Hoo-ha?” I guessed.
“Really, Sarah Booth, there’s a note of contempt for the South in everything she says and does. Our men are no more tied to the umbilical cord than other men.”
I looked everywhere except at her. Our view differed.
“I really can’t work for her, even if she comes up with the money. Which I doubt she will,” Tinkie continued. “You’ll have to handle this yourself.”
I considered it. “Nope. We’re a team. If you can’t do it, I’ll resign. I don’t like her, either.”
“Coleman’s job is to find Boswell’s killer. So far, we haven’t come close to proving Twist is innocent. I don’t want to work for a person who so obviously dislikes my home.”
We’d worked for former ballerinas, faith healers, murdering twins, and actresses gone bad, but Tinkie drew the line at geographical bigots. I couldn’t help but smile.
“It isn’t funny, Sarah Booth. Her arrogance and condescension make me want to pop her upside the head.”
This time I laughed. Tinkie didn’t “pop” people “upside the head.” I wondered how the phrase had even infiltrated her vocabulary. “I’m not arguing. But it’s interesting Boswell may have selected Olive as his boss so he could keep an eye on her research.”
“This is really far-fetched. You saw the way she treated him. He would seek that out?”
“This whole thing is bizarre.” I had to agree. “If we aren’t in Olive’s employ, should we alert Coleman to this information?”
“I’d hold off, at least for right now. Oh, there was something else.”
She always saved the best for last, dang her. “Well?”
“Boswell’s old roommate said that Boswell had a connection in Mississippi. As in a family connection.”
“Right. Adrian Boswell, the Vicksburg merchant who was hanged.”
“No, someone else. He said it was a beautiful woman who’d been murdered and buried on a plantation.”
The skin on my arms stood at attention and marched. “The Lady in Red? Boswell meant he was related to her?”
“The roommate didn’t know who or what. He said Boswell made several references to his personal Annabelle Lee. Like from the Poe poem, a woman shut away from love who died and was put in a sepulcher.”
“This is getting creepy.” The web cast by the Lady in Red was drawing tighter and more complex. For an anonymous woman buried in an anonymous grave for over one hundred fifty years, she was certainly having an impact on my world.
High heels tapped their way toward us. Someone had come in the front door. Unless it was Jitty, ready to reveal herself to Tinkie, which I didn’t think was the case, we had a visitor.
Peeking around the corner of the music room, I saw a vision in a teal and yellow sundress and high-heeled sandals. Cece Dee Falcon had arrived.
“What’s the word on the DNA from the corpse?” she asked, running her perfectly manicured fingers through her hair. The gesture told me that though she looked cool and unworried, her gut was in a knot.
“We haven’t heard anything,” I said. “And likely we won’t. We’re quitting. Well, we can’t quit because we’ve never been officially hired. No contract signed, no cash changing hands.”
Cece dropped her purse on my desk. “You can’t quit. You can’t. How else will we know what the enemy is up to?”
Good point, but I wasn’t a spy. “Sorry. Tinkie thinks Olive’s a bigot and I think she’s a bitch. We can’t work for her.”
“You have to work for her.” Cece blinked rapidly, and I realized she was about to cry.
“What’s wrong?” I seated her at my desk. “What in the world is going on?”
“Jeremiah and Buford are out of prison. Jeremiah called me, furious. That oaf of a man who saw us in the house told him I was in there, poking through his business. He’s going to press trespassing charges. Against both of us.”
I wanted to use a very emphatic Anglo-Saxon curse word, but I restrained myself. Jeremiah was an idiot. He could charge me with ten million counts of trespassing, but he could not hurt my friend again.
“I’ll take care of Jeremiah,” I seethed.
“If Jeremiah presses charges, Sarah Booth, you might be in the calaboose.” Tinkie’s little foot tapped like a dancer on speed. “Have you asked him to drop this matter, Cece?”
“That’s another job perfect for you.” Cece had reclaimed her élan. “I don’t have time for the rabble.” She fought hard for that arch tone. “And you’ll get a lot more out of him than I ever will. Remind him that once upon a time he was sweet on Sarah Booth.”
Her words stopped me dead in my tracks. “Jeremiah?” He was working for Chemron Fertilizers when I was still in high school. He was brilliant, and handsome. Cecil was his pesky kid brother and we were Cecil’s pesky teenage friends. Yet I remember him standing in the doorway, watching us as we played cards, or danced to the popular songs of high school. He’d been entertained by our antics, for sure. But was there something more in his presence?
“It’s true,” Tinkie said, awareness dawning. “He had a crush on you, but because he was so much older, it was inappropriate.”
“I was sixteen and he was, what, thirty?” A flash of Jeremiah hit me hard. Once I’d gone upstairs to get something from Cecil’s room. Jeremiah was in the hallway. He was visiting his parents over Christmas, on leave from his job at Chemron’s French headquarters. Mrs. Falcon had a photo gallery of her accomp
lished son working at sites around the globe.
“Why, if it isn’t Miss Sarah Booth Delaney.” Jeremiah wore a black turtleneck and black pants, and his long, dark blond hair fell across one eye. I’d been terribly intimidated by him, but boldly tried to speak my smattering of high school French.
And he was kind. He bowed over my hand and kissed it and told me I was beautiful in perfect French.
The memory must have shown clearly on my face.
“Oh, you little Lolita,” Tinkie teased.
“Sarah Booth, did you break my brother’s heart?” Cece asked.
“Not fair. I wasn’t even aware. He was kind to me. For one split moment, he allowed me to feel sophisticated. It was my Audrey Hepburn moment.” Despair was a step off a high bluff. How had that man become the hate-filled bigot that was Jeremiah Falcon now? “I truly didn’t know.”
“I sometimes wonder if Jeremiah was aware of his feelings. I mean, I don’t think he’s ever spent ten minutes exploring what he honestly feels. He thinks everything. Like his brain can rationalize his way through every situation.” Cece slumped. “I wonder if he understands how much he and my parents hurt me? I was his kid brother. I worshipped him. It would have meant the world to me if he’d given me his support, or even a shred of compassion.”
“Most people have no clue how much they hurt each other.” Tinkie hugged her. “Jeremiah fought an idea that happened to be you, Cece. It was never you he went against. It was the idea of it. People are terrified of anything sexual, and face it, to change genders is an act that forces people to define themselves in a sexual way.”
“I didn’t choose this.” Cece’s lower lip trembled. “I wanted to be Cecil. I wanted to be the son my parents were proud of. I was never the rebellious child, the one to start trouble. All I ever wanted was to please them. But in doing so, I couldn’t betray who I am. But it still hurts.”
The unnecessary pain people caused each other astounded me. Tinkie was right. Jeremiah stopped seeing Cece as a person and had viewed her only as an idea—as something he didn’t understand and therefore didn’t like. Once he lost his compassion for his sibling, he lost his ability to empathize and love. Not only Cece, but himself and everyone around him. Hate grew in the barren fields of his life.
Smarty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery Page 16
