Crossed Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  The last three words hung between us. I'd stepped over the line and I knew it. So did Coleman. So did the deputies. They bent over the black case they'd brought and got very busy.

  Coleman took several steps toward me, then stopped. His blue gaze, no longer distant, searched my face. I don't know what he saw, but his features didn't soften. He turned abruptly and walked away. I followed at a distance, my pride bloodied and my sense of shame flying like a tattered flag.

  24

  After the deputies left, I sat out on the front porch in the darkness drinking Jack on the rocks. I was in no mood for triflin' water.

  In the tinkle of my ice, I heard Jitty's gold bangles. She took a seat on the porch railing. “Fine night for a pity party,” she commented.

  “Go away.” I wanted only to be alone, which might well be my natural state.

  “Only drunks drink alone.”

  “Fine, so I'm a drunk.” I had reaped the rewards of argument earlier in the evening. I wanted no more.

  “My, oh, my. Black is black.”

  “Jitty, please.”

  She shifted from the balustrade to a chair beside mine. “Why are you so upset?”

  There was compassion in her question, not censure. “I slept with Scott, and I argued with Coleman about his wife in front of his deputies. I'm just a slut.”

  Jitty rocked softly. “Now what part's upsetting you? Scott or Coleman?”

  I thought about it. “Not Scott. It was good with him. Really good.” A tingle of the afternoon came back to me and I felt the despair lift a fraction of an inch.

  “You saw things in him that you didn't expect?”

  “I did.”

  “And Coleman. What about him?”

  “He took up for Bo-Peep.”

  “Sarah Booth, what he said to you and what he says to her may be two very different things.”

  I hadn't really thought of that. Knowing Coleman, though, it was his nature to publicly defend his employees unless it was something illegal. The fact that in doing so he was tormenting me, was awful only to me. In other words, Coleman wasn't being deliberately cruel to me. But it still stung.

  “Reality is hard on heroes,” Jitty said slowly. “Seems like we build 'em up for the pleasure of tearin' 'em down. Look at Martin Luther King Jr. No man did more for equality, but we all wanted to know what he was doin' in the bedroom. We drew in our breath at the scandal and begged for more. And John Kennedy, too. Even Jimmy Carter. We couldn't just let him be a good man runnin' the country. We had to fault him as a bumpkin, tear at his public admission of religious principles.” She shook her head. “Human nature is a sad, sad thing, Sarah Booth. You're just sufferin' from the common state of affairs for all mortals. You thought Coleman was more than a man. He can't be, and you can't expect it of him. He's just a man, like you're just a woman. You slept with a sexy bluesman. You want Coleman to leave his wife. You're selfish. News flash, Sarah Booth, so is everyone else. The difference is, and it's a big one, you didn't do anything to make Coleman break up with his wife. You could have and you didn't. So cut yourself some slack and quit drinkin' alone.”

  She stood up, shimmering. I thought it was the dazzling gold tunic she wore, with thigh-high boots, but it was her translucence. She was simply gone.

  Headlights swung off the main road, and I watched the car coming toward me. Coleman? Tinkie? Scott didn't have a car. I waited.

  The big Plymouth pulled up and J. B. Washington, the man who'd dropped this case in my lap, came up the steps. He noted the empty drink and the slump in my shoulders. “Let's go,” he said, putting a hand under my elbow and levering me out of the chair.

  “Where?”

  “Scott's at Playin' the Bones. An impromptu performance. Ida Mae's going to sing with him.”

  I needed no further prodding. We were off into the Delta night.

  As far as I could tell in the neon lighting of the club, all evidence of the murder had been carefully scrubbed away. I hadn't noticed when I was there in the daylight, but Ivory had blown some bucks on very hot neon. The bar was a hot pink, while cool blue slithered and sizzled over the booths. I loved it.

  J. B. left me at a table right at the edge of the stage while he got his guitar ready. He, too, was playing. Scott was nowhere in sight, but Ida Mae came out of the back and I gasped out loud. She wore a tight, sequined gown of blood-red that hugged a body still ripe and curvaceous. Her hair, always so neatly pulled back, hung in curls down to her shoulders, and the white gardenia that had always been Billie Holiday's trademark bloomed beside her left ear. In the stage lighting, Ida Mae was ageless.

  Word of the performance must have spread like wildfire. Folks, black and white, began thronging into the club. I remembered that Ida Mae had once been a club singer, but had given it up for the church. Judging by the buzz of excitement from the crowd, some folks had heard Ida Mae sing. I was in for a treat.

  Scott came on stage with no fanfare. He instantly started playing and the band picked up. The spotlight found Ida Mae and stayed on her. This was her night, and the lights were making that plain. Still, my gaze was riveted on Scott. I knew his body so well, but I'd never seen it in the one-dimensional lights of a stage, where his leanness was made both harsher and sexier. His guitar was slung low against his hips, and he held it tight across the neck, his fingers working up and down the frets while his right hand made it growl and whine. After a thirty-second intro, he picked up the melody of a Holiday classic, “Lover Man.”

  At the first note, I gave up on Scott and transferred my attention to Ida Mae. I'd heard a lot of good female vocalists sing that song, but none like Ida Mae. She sang with heart and gut. I was blinking back tears when she finished.

  Ida Mae sang five songs before she began to talk. “I'm glad to see all of you here. I know there are other things you could be doing on a Monday night.” It hadn't occurred to me before, but I saw it then, Ida Mae was fighting the black community meeting. She was fighting back with Ivory's chosen weapon—the blues.

  “I don't know the future of this club, but I do know how much my husband loved it. And how much Scott, here, loves it. I don't know if we can keep it open, but if we can, Scott has promised me he'll stay here for a while.”

  The applause was wild. Those in the club had obviously decided to believe Scott. I looked around. The mix was half and half, but even better, race just wasn't an issue. These were music lovers undefined by anything except that passion. It was a hopeful moment.

  Like all dreams, though, it lasted too briefly. There was a hubbub at the front door that flowed across the room. At first I didn't recognize Emanuel as he blasted onto the stage. A half-dozen men were with him, clean-cut thugs in business suits. He snatched the microphone out of his mother's hand in a gesture that made two men beside me rise to their feet and step forward. Emanuel Keys was begging for an ass-whipping, and he was about to get it.

  “Every black person in here should be ashamed. Goody's Grocery is burned to the ground, the hand of the white man reaching out and squeezing us again. While our community is being torched you're in here laughing and drinking! This club is closed!” He shouted the words, his face contorted with rage. “Get out! All of you, get out!”

  There was the flash of a camera and his face was caught in that rictus of fury. I looked around to find Cece holding the newspaper's Nikon. She fired off another shot of Emanuel, momentarily blinding him.

  “Give me that camera!” he ordered.

  “Come and get it, dahling,” Cece replied drolly. “I've been itching for a good First Amendment lawsuit.”

  “Emanuel,” Ida Mae said in a voice remarkably cool and restrained, “stop acting like a total fool. Get off the stage so we can play.”

  “This isn't your club, Mother,” he said harshly.

  The two men beside me took another step forward. Emanuel was breaking one of the fundamental laws of the South—and probably everywhere else. Public ill-treatment of a woman, especially a mother, was not easily tol
erated.

  “It's not yours, either,” Ida Mae said. “Not yet, anyway. You know that.”

  “I'll call the sheriff.”

  “Go ahead,” Ida Mae said. “I checked with a lawyer. I'm within my rights. Now you get off this stage. Find a seat and sit down and enjoy the show. You can stay if you behave.”

  “Mama, you're letting them walk all over us.”

  “You're wrong, Emanuel. I'm doing what I love, what I want. What I denied because I knew you needed one parent who didn't sing the blues.”

  That was the final straw. Emanuel turned from Ida Mae to Scott. “You murdering bastard. I don't know how you have the nerve to stand up here with my mother.”

  “Your biggest problem, Emanuel, is that you're jealous of me. You're jealous because your daddy loved me. He loved me and I loved him. You hate me because of that. The awful truth is, Ivory would have given everything he owned for the chance to love you. You wouldn't let him. You threw it all away because there's no room for love in your heart. It's too filled with hate.”

  Emanuel's fist connected squarely with Scott's chin. Scott went down, guitar flying out of his hands. The two men beside me were on the stage, restraining Emanuel with a few side jabs to his ribs, while Scott got slowly to his feet, his hand to his jaw. “Feel better?” he asked Emanuel. “I hope so. But nothing has changed. Violence can't change any of it. Funny that I should know that so well and I'm the one accused of murder. Your daddy was a good teacher.”

  “Take him out,” Ida Mae told the two men. “Make sure he stays out.” She turned her back on her son and put a hand on Scott's face. “Can you still play?” she asked.

  His smile was his answer. He took the guitar that someone handed him. There was the click, click, click of the drummer starting the count, and the band was playing “St. James Infirmary.”

  J. B. drove me home around one o'clock. I was feeling no pain. I'd had several drinks and danced until my feet were blistered. From the doldrums, I'd ascended to the top of Mount Jack.

  Just as we turned in the driveway I caught a flash of moonlit gold through the sycamores. J. B. slammed on the brakes as Reveler flew into the driveway out of the trees. We came within inches of hitting him.

  “Shit!” J. B. gripped the wheel as I opened the passenger door and ran into the night, calling my horse. Reveler was gone. I could hear his hooves thundering through the cotton field to my right.

  The loud report of a rifle split the night.

  “Reveler!” I called his name but knew he was too panicked to listen.

  J. B. gunned the car, spinning gravel as he headed toward the house. He didn't slow in front but drove around back. I had no halter, no feed, no way to entice or hold my frightened horse, but I had to prevent him from running into the paved road at the front of my property. I took off through the night, tearing through the rows of cotton, searching the darkness for a glint of ghostly dun in the moonlight.

  When I finally saw him, he was standing still, blowing. His sides heaved with exertion and fear, his nostrils wide.

  “Reveler,” I said softly. “Hey, boy, it's me. Come on.”

  As I got closer, I could see that he was trembling. Someone had really spooked him, possibly injured him. I kept my fears and my anger tapped down. Reveler would sense both. It would only excite him more.

  Step by step I drew closer to him until I stood at his shoulder. I laid my palm flat against his withers and spoke softly in a singsong whisper. I could feel him calm beneath my hand. When his muzzle came around to nudge against me, I knew he wasn't going to run away. Now I had to get him to follow me to the barn so I could make sure he wasn't injured.

  When I started to walk away from him, he hesitated, then fell into step behind me as we both walked to the driveway and headed home.

  We were halfway there when headlights swung down the driveway, illuminating us. After a moment, the lights went out. A car door slammed and there was the scrunch of leather on gravel as J. B. came my way.

  “The sorry bastard got away,” he said. “I chased him through the cotton field, but he gave me the slip.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Not good enough to tell anything about him, except he had a rifle.”

  Reveler blew a little at J. B., then accepted him as we all walked back to the barn. I slipped a halter over Reveler's head and J. B. held him while I searched every inch of his body. There were no wounds or injuries. If someone had been trying to hurt him, they'd missed.

  “Best I can tell, the horse jumped the fence and took off,” J. B. said. “The gate was still closed when I got here. The man was over there.” He pointed to the side of the pasture. “I caught him in the headlights just long enough to see he had a gun. Either he was black or he was wearing a ski mask. He started running and I went after him.”

  “Thank you.” Reveler had stopped trembling and was happy with the scoop of grain I gave him. I, on the other hand, felt like a lump of Antarctica had moved into my chest.

  “Hey, he's okay, Sarah Booth.” J. B. put an arm around me and hugged me close. Though I tried hard not to, I started crying.

  “Ah, girl,” he said, rubbing my back lightly. “No need to cry. The horse is fine.”

  “Someone tried to hurt him,” I said between sobs. “The low-life bastard went after an innocent animal.”

  “I can't deny that's a coward's work. We'd better go report this to the sheriff.”

  We walked to the house, and J. B. made the call to the sheriff's office while I put on coffee. As soon as he was finished with the phone, I called Lee McBride. She'd given me the horse as payment for a case. As soon as I told her what had happened, she offered to let Reveler stay at Swift Level for a while. I declined, but kept the offer open. If someone wanted to hurt my horse, they could do it at Swift Level, and possibly injure Lee's horses as well.

  It didn't surprise me when Gordon Walters showed up and did the investigation into the shooting. The fact that the intended victim was a horse would greatly lessen the potential charges, Gordon warned us, but J. B. insisted that my life and his had been endangered, which notched things back up again. I didn't ask Gordon to call Coleman, and he didn't offer.

  Gordon dug a bullet from the barn wall and said it would go a long way toward solving the crime if we could find the rifle. Probably a 30.06, he said.

  When we'd finished the preliminary search, I gave Gordon the biggest searchlight I had, and he went back to examine the area around the barn again. He didn't say so, but it was easy to see that he wanted to do his work without an audience. I stood at the kitchen door and watched the light working here and there in neat patterns.

  J. B. drew me to the front porch, where we could sit in the rockers. It wasn't until I saw two cars careening down the drive that I realized what he'd done. While I'd been busy talking to Gordon, J. B. had sneakily called both Tinkie and Cece.

  “You don't need to be alone,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said grudgingly, because I was glad that he'd called them. I didn't want to be a nuisance to my friends, but I sure didn't want to be alone.

  “Dahling!” Cece cried as she leaped up the steps two at a time. She air-kissed me on each cheek, then did it again. “One shouldn't frighten one's friends.” She was huffing hard, and I realized she was still dressed to the nines. “You had a date,” I said, eyes narrowing. She'd left Playin' the Bones alone. Where had she found a man between Kudzu and downtown Zinnia at one o'clock in the morning?

  “Men are a dime a dozen, dahling, but friends are priceless.” She smiled.

  Tinkie finally made it up the steps, and we all went inside and took a seat at the kitchen table. J. B. served us coffee and foraged around in the cupboard until he found a box of brownies, which he promptly mixed up.

  I told all of them about the spray paint on my folks' tombstone and about Reveler, with J. B. throwing in his side of the story as he baked.

  “Dahling, this is going to be front page,” Cece said. “That Deputy W
alters, acting like it isn't important because it was a horse. We'll see about that. This is Zinnia, Mississippi, not the O.K. Corral. I'd be willing to bet it's those two thugs who hang out with Scott.”

  I hadn't thought of Spider and Ray-Ban, but they did seem to be the most likely suspects, based on general attitude and character type. But why would they want to hurt me? I was helping Scott.

  “I second that,” Tinkie said, “though we need some hard evidence before we accuse them publicly.” I couldn't help but grin. Tinkie had come a long, long way in a few months.

  “I don't know,” I said.

  “It was just one man,” J. B. threw in from the counter, where he was beating the brownie batter. “Do you have some pecans or walnuts?” he asked.

  “Second cabinet, blue Tupperware.” J. B. was implying that Spider and Ray-Ban were too cowardly to act alone, and I agreed with him. “Who would really want to hurt me?” I asked. “Even better, who would know that he could hurt me by hurting Reveler?”

  “That's a good question,” Tinkie said. “I don't think Ray-Ban and Spider are smart enough to figure that out. They would never love an animal enough to think to hurt someone else's.”

  “She has a point,” Cece conceded. “But who?”

  The door opened and Gordon Walters stepped into the bright kitchen lights. “Could you come outside with me for a moment?” he asked. His radio crackled and he spoke into it. “Yessir, Sheriff, I think you should come out to Dahlia House right now.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He didn't answer but led the way across the lawn and to the barn. He went around the south side and we followed single file, Cece cursing once as her high heel slid in a pile of fresh manure.

  When we rounded the corner of the barn, I stopped so suddenly that J. B. collided into me and Tinkie into him.

  “Shit,” J. B. whispered as he looked past me at the object framed in Gordon Walters' bright flashlight. Two large bones were wired together in the shape of a pirate's crossed bones. They leaned against the side of the barn, where the crude drawing of a human skull had been spray-painted above them. The bottom portion of both bones were manacled together by what looked like old leg irons.