Booty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery

by Carolyn Haines

  She selected a few of the best photos of the woman and sent them to the Sunflower County Sheriff’s Department with a note—“This woman is stalking Sarah Booth. Can you ID her?”

  “Not exactly truthful,” I noted.

  “But effective. You’d do exactly the same for a client.”

  No point denying it; she was right.

  “Let’s get out of here before they catch us,” she said. “You can confront Graf once you know the score.”

  She was right. Jumping the gun and rushing over the sand dune like an invading army would only put Graf on the defensive. I followed her down the beach side of the dune, and in a quarter of an hour we were back at the rental. Graf had left the keys to the SUV, so I drove Tinkie to pick up her car.

  “I know you need to get back to New Orleans,” I told her, though I desperately wanted her to stay. “Call me when you hear from Coleman.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Tinkie lifted my chin with one finger. “Cece doesn’t need me. Oscar has golfing dates back-to-back for the next two days. He’ll understand.”

  * * *

  Our tactic was normalcy. Tinkie and I agreed to strive for routine. I put together a seafood salad and served it on crisp lettuce and the last of the season’s fresh tomatoes. I’d just put the finishing touches on when Graf returned, wind-whipped and smelling of the sea.

  “Have a nice walk?” I asked, earning a hard look from Tinkie.

  “I did.”

  “You’re looking much better.” Tinkie said. “I can’t detect any signs of your injury, Graf. Sarah Booth was a genius to bring you here. You’re a lucky man to have someone who loves you as much as she does.”

  “I am indeed.” He walked through the room and out onto the balcony, closing the door after him.

  I swallowed hard and poured a large glass of wine. Alcohol wouldn’t fix this problem, but it might anesthetize me enough to get through the evening while we waited for Coleman’s response.

  Tinkie took the glass from my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The day had slipped away from us, and the sun vanished beneath a bowl of clouds that picked up the reflected light and turned the sky into a Cecil B. DeMille production.

  We walked toward town. The shops were mostly closed. Instead of slowing, we continued up the hump of the big bridge.

  “This place has a sad history.” I relayed the tragic story of the father who threw his four children off the bridge, allegedly because of a fight with his wife.

  “I can’t believe that.” Tinkie’s horror turned into denial. “No one could be angry enough to throw their children off a bridge.”

  But even as she spoke, I heard the faint echo of children crying. It wasn’t real, just a bit of geographic resonance. “I think sometimes people lose their minds.” It took effort to speak clearly and walk up the bridge at the same time. And I’d thought I was in pretty good shape.

  Tinkie pointed to the crest. “We’ll talk there.”

  She, too, was having a hard time making the climb and talking. I didn’t feel so bad about myself.

  Huffing and puffing like the hungry wolf in the Three Little Pigs, we finally made it to the top and stopped short at the stuffed teddy bear and a bouquet of black-eyed Susans someone had left to mark the spot of tragedy.

  “Time to go home,” Tinkie said instantly. She hadn’t brought me on a walk to make me think of even sadder situations than my life.

  “Look out to the southwest.”

  Night invaded the sky from the east, and lights on Dauphin Island blinked on. It reminded me of an old soap opera that my aunt Loulane adored. The Edge of Night. As I watched, darkness moved across the sky. We both stood and watched the magnificence of nature until the lights on the bridge blinked on with the orange cast of mercury vapor. It was a sickly contrast to the natural beauty of the sky.

  “We should—” I stopped as Tinkie’s cell phone rang.

  I tried, without success, not to eavesdrop and focused on a car headed toward us. In our long walk, we’d seen only a handful of cars headed in either direction. With the approach of night, the day-trippers had gone home. The island residents were settling in for a brisk fall evening.

  Tinkie arched one eyebrow at me. “Yes, Coleman. It’s a legitimate case—I assure you. Who is the woman?”

  As hard as she tried, she couldn’t hide her reaction. She lowered her eyes and bit her lip. “I see. You’re positive?”

  She thanked him and hung up.

  “Who is she?”

  Tinkie prepared her answer. “Her name is Marion Silber. She’s a screenwriter and director.”

  “I know that name. He has her script.” Relief. Sweet relief. This wasn’t so bad. Their talks were work related. But that wasn’t the complete truth. If it was work, why hadn’t Graf introduced her to me?

  Tinkie shivered. “Let’s go.”

  There was something she didn’t want to tell me.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And she and Graf had a two-year affair back long before he came south and found you again.”

  Marion Silber was an old lover. Someone he’d been close to. I wanted to sit down near the bridge railing, but I didn’t. I’d tasted defeat before, but never this bitter. “Why did they break up?”

  “Coleman didn’t have any details. He was just shocked we were asking about a Hollywood type. He’s not stupid, Sarah Booth. If he hasn’t figured out what’s at the bottom of this, he will. He could see the beach in the background of the photos I took.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t. If Graf was two-timing me with an old love, all of my friends would know sooner rather than later. My wounded pride was the least of my concerns. “I don’t want to go back to the cottage.”

  “Where do you want to go?” Tinkie asked.

  “Maybe we could pack up and head to New Orleans.” I didn’t want to go there, either, but I couldn’t very well take Graf’s SUV and leave him stranded, though it would serve him right.

  “Okay.” Tinkie didn’t voice her doubt, but I heard it in her tone.

  “Let’s move.” I started down the bridge’s hump, aware of a car speeding toward us. Out of habit, I grasped Tinkie’s upper arm and shifted her closer to the rail. The vehicle hit warp speed, and the driver seemed inebriated or worse.

  “What’s wrong with that driver?” Tinkie asked, alarmed.

  “Hell if I know.” We inched even closer to the rail. I took one long look down at the water. The steep drop would kill us.

  “Sarah Booth, he’s headed straight at us.”

  She wasn’t exaggerating. Grabbing her jacket sleeve, I yanked her to the other side of the road just as a sleek black sedan hit the curb and jumped toward the bridge railing. Just in time, the driver managed to regain control and aim the car toward the center of the lane.

  Red taillights gleaming in the dark, it disappeared over the crest.

  “He meant to hit us,” Tinkie said.

  I couldn’t dispute her deduction. I ran to the top of the bridge and watched the car disappear, the driver now completely in control. He hadn’t been drunk or distracted. He’d been intent on murder.

  Slightly out of breath, Tinkie stopped at my elbow. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Sarah Booth?”

  “I wasn’t certain Larry Wofford was innocent of the murder of John Trotter, but now I am. I’m trying to free an innocent man from prison.”

  14

  Tinkie spent the night in the bedroom with me. Graf had, once again, selected the sofa. Now I realized his sleeping arrangement wasn’t a choice of protecting his injured leg from an accidental jostle. He was on the sofa because he was guilty. He was two-timing me with an old flame. Maybe I should be grateful he had enough ethics not to sleep with me while wooing another woman, but I wasn’t.

  The intimacy Graf and I had shared was sacred to me. From the very beginning, we’d enjoyed our physicality, and the sex was great. No working at it as some couples reported.
Now it was gone—evaporated in the betrayal. I found myself trapped in that strange limbo of physical desire but emotional fury. Disgusting and unhealthy.

  My partner was still asleep when I left the bedroom and headed to the kitchen to brew coffee and let Sweetie and Pluto out. From the second-floor window, I watched feline and canine cavort.

  For the cat, the beach was an exotic world of small crabs, lizards, and birds that raced on foot along the edge of the surf, taking flight only as a last resort. To my keen eye, Pluto had lost at least three pounds. A good thing for such a hefty kitty. Sweetie simply enjoyed the wind flapping her long hound ears and bringing the seafaring smells to her nose.

  With a cup of java in hand, I stopped by the sofa to watch Graf sleep. It occurred to me that I might pour the hot coffee on him, but I didn’t. That wouldn’t make him love me. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single thing I could do—good or bad—that might reverse the choices of his heart.

  Who knew what emotions had played into his decision to spend time with Marion Silber, but he owed me answers. Had he planned on meeting his old lover at the beach? How had she managed to show up at the same time we were there? Had the relationship begun as a business meeting over a script and evolved?

  Even more important, why couldn’t he talk to me? Tell me what he was feeling or needing. Give me a chance to meet him halfway. In this last week, I’d surrendered my heart to him completely, and I feared I would pay a terrible price. Letting my guard down would result in pain and anguish. Yet it was done now, and there was no undoing it. I loved him completely.

  He stirred in his sleep, restless, as if ready to awaken and get away from me as fast as he could. I saved him the trouble and hurried down to the beach with my coffee and my four-legged family.

  Pluto had cornered a hermit crab and was trying to bat the poor creature into a game of chase. I saved the crab and earned a scowl from my cat. “Tormenting helpless creatures isn’t for us,” I scolded him.

  Sweetie played chase with the surf, and far down the beach I thought I recognized the turtle protectors, a group of five or six dedicated biologists and students who seemed never to sleep.

  I had a question for Phyllis Norris about her relationship with John Trotter. It would eat up some of the morning until Tinkie awoke, so I sauntered down the beach toward the group. It wasn’t until I was almost upon them that I realized Phyllis wasn’t with them.

  “Will Dr. Norris be here soon?” I asked a thin young man with a sunburned face.

  He shrugged. “She was here and she left.” He put aside the buckets of water he was hauling and wiped perspiration from his forehead. Temps on the beach would register under seventy degrees, but with a warm wind blowing and the sun reflected off the water and sand, it was hot.

  “She sure seems devoted to the turtles.”

  He rolled his eyes. “A little too devoted, if you get my drift. This is her life, and she expects us to feel the same way. Hell, I haven’t had a date in two months. We’re here every night and all day. This late clutch of turtles is like a mission for her. She’s more protective than a mother eagle, and she’s just as likely to attack anyone who threatens them.”

  “If you weren’t here, would the turtles survive?”

  “It’s a losing battle.” He squatted down in the sand. “We can save these, but then what? Pollution, fishing nets, oil spills—look at the rigs out there. We can’t stop that. People are stupid. They want cheap oil and gas, and they don’t care that the backend payment will be the souls of their grandkids.”

  I heard what he was saying loud and clear, but I had no solutions. My next car would be electric. Maybe too little too late, but at least it was an effort. And maybe some solar panels on Dahlia House. That would be nice. Graf would like—but Graf wouldn’t be there.

  I jerked my thoughts back to the present. “Did you happen to know John Trotter?”

  “The treasure hunter? Heck, everyone on the island knew him. He was a great guy. Always had these crazy stories.” His smile erased another five years from his features. He could easily be a high schooler. “Phyllis—Dr. Norris—spent a lot of time with him. She wasn’t all that keen on the treasure hunting, but I think she really liked him. He’d come along to help us with the turtles. I think they would have married if he hadn’t…”

  “Been murdered,” I finished for him.

  “Yeah, that. Phyllis said she really regretted the last time they were together they got into an argument about the treasure stuff.”

  I hid my keen interest. “Folks argue. It’s part of a relationship.”

  “Yeah, not the good part.” He stood up again. “I have to get back to it. If she pulls up and I’m jawboning and not working, she’ll jump my case. She can be tough. Really tough.”

  “People on a mission often are. Hard on themselves and others.”

  He picked up his pails of water and set off. Before he got out of earshot, I called after him. “Any idea where Phyllis went?”

  He turned but kept walking backward. “She was with that deputy. The asshole. I don’t know where they went, though.”

  Still chewing on that tidbit, I rounded up the critters and headed back to the cottage. While I had no appetite, Sweetie and Pluto bounded down the beach, knowing breakfast was just around the corner.

  The critters disappeared in the dunes, but I heard Sweetie barking. She made enough racket to wake the dead. Hurrying after her, I caught sight of a woman in a full-skirted black dress that swept the sand but left her creamy white shoulders bare. She stood among the dunes, hair parted in the center and pulled back to reveal an oval face. I knew it was Jitty, but in what guise?

  “You’ve suffered,” I said, taking in her solemn countenance.

  “There is no substitute for a mother’s love,” she said in a perfectly modulated tone. Very Victorian and proper.

  “Who are we today, Jitty?”

  “‘Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.’ How true that is,” she said. “We have both suffered a change.”

  “Give me another hint, please.” I’d pinpointed the historical era, but I couldn’t identify the young beauty.

  “If I cannot inspire love, then I shall inspire fear.” She waited.

  I knew her then. Creator of Frankenstein. I had read the book as a young girl and had wept in sympathy for the monster who wanted only to be loved.

  “I don’t want to inspire fear,” I told her. “And what is this great change?” I didn’t like the sound of that. Losing Graf would be a great change, a terrible one. “Is that what I should expect? To be alone again?”

  Already, I could feel the emptiness of Dahlia House without Graf. If he was truly in love with Marion Silber, he would leave me and Mississippi and live in Los Angeles, where his work was. “Is Graf leaving me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps it’s best that way. If Mary Shelley had known what her future held, would she have remained with her father and spurned the advances of a poet?”

  “Shelley was a bastard to her.” Sort of the understatement of the century. “She denied her talent and gave up so much, and it didn’t do a lick of good.”

  Jitty faced the water, still in the guise of the long-dead writer. “I wanted him dead, you know. There are times I prayed he would die. I was nineteen when I eloped with him. I lost everything familiar to me. My father disowned me. I gave up everything for Percy, and it never mattered to him.”

  If tragic love was the lesson Jitty meant to teach, she’d made her point. I’d been depressed before she showed up. Now I was scraping the bottom of the bucket. “You aren’t helping me, Jitty.”

  “Frankenstein came out of my personal grief and betrayal. I created a monster who sought love. A reflection of how I saw myself.”

  “You created a masterpiece and launched a genre of work. Science fiction grew out of your novel.” I found myself arguing her case. “Besides, there are those who would debate who was the monster. Both Dr. Frankenste
in and his creature were flawed and sad.”

  “Much like me.”

  “Not to mention Shelley. If you want to talk about flawed, let’s tweak the wart on the witch’s nose.” I’d read enough to know Percy Bysshe Shelley followed his pleasures and desires far more often than a code of honor.

  “I thought I could build a home, a family, and love would follow. It isn’t true. Like my creation, I was cursed from the beginning. But you, Sarah Booth, you have known the love of both parents. Of a community.”

  “Knock it off, Jitty. You’re about to send me into a spiraling depression that has no bottom.”

  Her creamy skin began to take on the mocha tones of the haint I loved. “Why is it that the need to bond with another takes precedence over everything else?” she asked. The hint of a Southern drawl had crept back into her voice.

  “I don’t know.” The truth was, Graf’s sudden actions had left me with no solid ground under my feet. I could psychoanalyze his actions and put them into cause and effect. The bigger question, though, was, Could I forgive him? Or perhaps the better question would be whether there was anything to forgive aside from his not telling me that an old flame, Marion Silber, had rented a cottage on the same island that we vacationed on. Much would depend on whether this was design or happenstance.

  “Don’t you have any questions for me about the Great Beyond?” Jitty asked.

  “No.” I didn’t want answers. Not yet. I was afraid of what they might be. “I need to work through this myself.”

  “You have Tinkie and the rest of your friends.”

  “Yes.” I hesitated to think what Cece would do to Graf if he cheated on me. Or Millie. The idea of it made me dread the Black and Orange Ball.

  “What you got planned?” Jitty asked. Though she still wore the Victorian dress, she was her regular self.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Don’t let it get to the point you wish him dead.”

  And I saw the wisdom of her widowhood as Mary Shelley. Love and hate were sides of the same blade. I couldn’t imagine that, but betrayal and grief had the potential to warp a person’s spirit. Jitty’s words were wise.