A Bone to Pick (Teagarden Mysteries,2)

by Charlaine Harris

  I hated getting so close to Torrance. Did he respect the gun enough? Had he picked up on the strain in Lynn’s voice? I wished, for a moment, that she had gone on and shot him.

  My only ideas about patting a suspect down came from television. I had a shrinking distaste for touching Torrance’s body, but I pursed my lips and ran my hands over him.

  “Just change in his pocket,” I said hoarsely. My screaming had hurt more than Torrance’s ears. “Okay,” said Lynn slowly. “Here are the cuffs.” When I looked right in her face, I was shocked. ~ 241 ~

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  Her eyes were wide and frightened, she was biting her lower lip. The gun was steady in her hand, but it was taking all her will to keep it so. The carpet looked dark around her feet, which were wearing slippers that were dark and light pink. I looked more closely. The darkness on her slippers was wetness. She had fluid trickling down her legs. There was a funny smell in the air. Lynn’s water had broken.

  Where was Arthur?

  I closed my eyes for a second in sheer consterna- tion. When I opened them, Lynn and I were staring at each other in panic. Then Lynn hardened her glare and said, “Take the cuffs, Roe.”

  I reached through the narrow doorway and took them. Arthur had shown me how to use his one day, so I did know how to close them on Torrance’s wrists. “Hold out your hands behind you,” I said as vi- ciously as I could. Lynn and I were going to lose con- trol any minute. I’d gotten one cuff on when Torrance erupted. He swung the arm with the cuff on it around, and the flying loose cuff caught me on the side of the head. But he mustn’t get the gun! I gripped whatever of him I could grab, blinded by pain, and hobbled him enough to land us both on the floor, rolling around in the limited space, me hanging on for my own dear life, him desperately trying to be rid of me. ~ 242 ~

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  “Torrance, stop!” shrieked yet another voice, and we were still, him on top of me panting and me un- derneath barely breathing at all. Past his shoulder I could see Marcia, her hair still smooth, her blue shorts and shirt obviously hastily pulled on.

  “Honey, it doesn’t make any difference anymore, we have to stop,” she said gently. He got off me to swing around and look at her heavily. Then Lynn moaned, a terrible sound.

  Torrance seemed mesmerized by his wife. I crawled past him and past her, actually brushing her leg as I went by. They both ignored me in the eeriest way. Lynn had slid down the wall. She was making a valiant attempt to hold the gun up but couldn’t man- age anymore. When she saw me, her eyes made an appeal and her hand fell to the floor and released the gun. I took it and swung around, fully intending to somehow shoot both the Rideouts, our recent hosts. But they were still wrapped up in each other, and I could have riddled them both for all they paid atten- tion to me. With the affronted feeling of being a child whose anger adults won’t take seriously, I turned back to Lynn.

  Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was funny. Then I realized she was breathing in a pattern. “You’re having the baby,” I said sadly. ~ 243 ~

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  She nodded, still with her eyes closed, and kept her breathing going.

  “You called some backup, right?”

  She nodded again.

  “Arthur must have been out on a call; that was you on the phone,” I observed, and I went into the bath- room right at my back to wash my hands and get some towels.

  “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies,” I told my reflection, pushed my glasses up on my nose, had the fleeting thought that it was nothing short of amazing they hadn’t been cracked, and went to squat by Lynn’s side. I gingerly pulled up her nightgown and lay towels on the floor beneath her drawn-up knees.

  “Where is the skull?” Torrance asked me. His voice sounded defeated.

  “At my mom’s house in a closet,” I said briefly, my attention absorbed by Lynn.

  “So Jane had it all the time,” he said, in a wooden voice from which all the wonder was leached. “That old woman had it all the time. She was furious after the tree thing, you know. I couldn’t believe it, all those years we were good neighbors, then there was this trouble about the damn tree. Next thing I know, there was a hole in the yard and the head was ~ 244 ~

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  gone. But I never connected the two things. I even left Jane’s house for last because I thought she was least likely to have it.”

  “Oh, Torrance,” Marcia said pitifully. “I wish you had told me. Was it you who broke into all the houses?”

  “Looking for the head,” he said. “I knew someone around here had to have it, but it never occurred to me it could be Jane. It had to be someone who could have seen me burying him, but not Jane, not that sweet little old lady. I just knew that if she’d seen me burying him, she’d have called the police. And I had to wait,” Torrance meandered on, “so long between each house, because after each break-in, people would be so cautious for a long time . . .”

  “You even pretended to break into our house,” marveled his wife.

  Gingerly I stole a peek under the nightgown. I was instantly sorry.

  “Lynn,” I told her hesitantly, “I see what I think is the baby’s head, I guess.”

  Lynn nodded emphatically. Her eyes flew open, and she focused on a point on the wall opposite. Her breathing became ragged for a few moments. “Get yourself together!” I said earnestly. Lynn was the only person who knew what was happening. Lynn seemed ~ 245 ~

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  to take that as advice offered from compassion, and squeezed my hand till I thought of screaming again. Suddenly she caught her breath, and her whole body tensed.

  I peeked again.

  “Oh dear,” I breathed. This was really quite a lot worse than watching Madeleine the cat. I followed my own advice and pulled myself together, despite my desire to run screaming out of this house and never come back. I let go of Lynn’s hand and moved be- tween her legs. There was barely room. It was lucky I was a small person.

  Lynn strained again.

  “Okay, Lynn,” I said bracingly. “It’s coming. I’ll catch it.”

  Lynn seemed to rest for a moment.

  “Whose skull?” I asked Torrance. Marcia had sunk to the floor, and they were sitting knee to knee holding hands.

  “Oh,” he said as if he’d lost interest. “The skull is Mark. Mark Kaplan. The boy who rented our apart- ment.”

  Lynn gathered herself and pushed again. Her eyes were glazed, and I was scared to death. I hesitantly put my hands where they might do some good. “Lynn, I see more of the head,” I told her. ~ 246 ~

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  Amazingly, Lynn smiled. And she gathered herself. And pushed.

  “I’ve got the head, Lynn,” I told her in a shaky voice. I was trying to sound confident, but I failed. Would the baby’s neck break if I let its head flop? Oh dear Jesus, I needed help, I was so inadequate. Lynn did it again.

  “That’s the shoulders,” I whispered, holding this tiny, bloody, vulnerable thing. “One more push should do it,” I said bracingly, having no idea at all what I was talking about. But it seemed to hearten Lynn, and she started pulling herself together again. I wished that she could take a break, so I could, but I had told her the truth out of sheer ignorance. Lynn pushed like she was in the Olympics of baby extru- sion, and the slippery thing shot out of her like a hurtling football, or so it seemed to me. And I caught it.

  “What?” asked Lynn weakly.

  It took me a second of sheer stupidity to under- stand her. I should be doing something! I should make it cry! Wasn’t that important?

  “Hold it upside down and whack it on its back,” Marcia said. “That’s what they do on TV.” Full of terror, I did so. The baby let out a wail. So it was breathing, it was alive! So far so good. Though ~ 247 ~

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  still hooked up to Lynn, this child was okay for now. Should I do something to the umbilical cord? What? And I
heard sirens coming, thank the Lord. “What?” Lynn asked more urgently.

  “Girl!” I said jerkily. “A girl!” I held the little thing as I had seen babies held in pictures and made plans to burn the rose pink nightgown.

  “Well,” said Lynn with a tiny smile, as pounding began on the front door, “damn if I’m going to name it after you.”

  It took some time to sort out the situation in Jane’s little house, which seemed more crowded than ever with all the policemen in Lawrenceton.

  Some of the policemen, seeing Arthur’s former flame kneeling before his new wife, both bloody, as- sumed I was the person to arrest. They could hardly put cuffs on me or search me though, since I was holding the baby, who was still attached to Lynn. And when they all realized I was holding a newborn baby and not some piece I’d ripped from Lynn’s insides, they went nuts. No one seemed to remember that there’d been a break-in, that consequently the burglar might be on the scene.

  Arthur had been out on a robbery call, but when ~ 248 ~

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  he arrived he was so scared he was ready to kill some- one. He waved his gun around vaguely, and when he spotted Lynn and the blood, he began bellowing, “Am- bulance! Ambulance!” Jack Burns himself pushed right by the Rideouts to use the phone in the bed- room.

  Arthur was by me in a flash, babbling. “The baby!” he said. He didn’t know what to do with his gun.

  “Put the gun away and take this baby,” I said rather sharply. “It’s still attached to Lynn, and I don’t know what to do about that.”

  “Lynn, how are you?” Arthur said in a daze. “Honey, put a towel over your suit and take your daughter,” Lynn said weakly.

  “My—oh.” He holstered his gun and reached down and took a towel off the stack I’d brought out. I wondered if Jane could ever have imagined her mono- grammed white cotton towels being used for such a purpose. I handed the baby over with alacrity, and stood up, trembling from a cocktail of fear, pain, and shock. I was more than glad to vacate my position be- tween Lynn’s legs.

  One of the ambulance attendants ran up to me then and said, “You the maternity? Or have you been injured?”

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  I pointed a shaky finger at Lynn. I didn’t blame him for thinking I’d been seriously hurt; I was cov- ered with smears of blood, some of it Lynn’s, some of it Torrance’s, a little of it mine.

  “Are you all right?”

  I looked to the source of the voice and found I was standing next to Torrance. This was so strange. “I’ll be okay,” I said wearily.

  “I’m sorry. I was never cut out to be a criminal.” I thought of the inept break-ins, Torrance not even taking anything to make them look like legitimate burglaries. I nodded.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked him.

  Suddenly his face hardened and tightened all over. “I just did,” he said.

  “So when Jane dug up the skull, you dug up the rest of the body and put the bones by the dead end sign?”

  “I knew no one would clean up that brush for years,” he said. “And I was right. I was too scared to carry the bones in my trunk, even for a little while. I waited till the next night when Macon went over to Carey’s, and I carried the bones in a plastic bag through his backyard and up the far side of his house; then it was just a few feet to the brush . . . no one saw me that time. I was so sure whoever had taken the skull would ~ 250 ~

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  call the police. I waited. Then I realized whoever had the skull just wanted . . . to have it. For me to squirm. I had almost forgotten that trouble about the tree. Jane was so ladylike. I never believed . . .” “And he never told me about it,” said Marcia, to his left. “He never let me worry, too.” She looked at him fondly.

  “So, what did you do it for?” I asked Torrance. “Did he make a pass at Marcia?”

  “Well . . .” said Torrance hesitantly.

  “Oh, honey,” Marcia said, reproving. She leaned over to me, smiling a little at a man’s silly gesture. “He didn’t do it,” she told me. “I did it.” “You killed Mark Kaplan and buried him out in the yard?”

  “Oh, Torrance buried him when I told him what I’d done.”

  “Oh,” I said inadequately, swallowed by her wide blue eyes. “You killed him because—?”

  “He came over while Torrance was gone.” She shook her head sadly as she told me. “And I had thought he was such a nice person. But he wasn’t. He was very dirty.”

  I nodded, just to be responding somehow. “Mike Osland, too,” Marcia ran on, still shaking her head at the perfidy of men.

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  I felt suddenly very, very cold. Torrance closed his eyes in profound weariness.

  “Mike,” I murmured interrogatively.

  “He’s under the sun deck, that’s why Torrance built it, I think,” Marcia said earnestly. “Jane didn’t know about him.”

  “She’s confessing,” said an incredulous, hoarse voice.

  I turned from Marcia’s mesmerizing eyes to see that Jack Burns was sitting on his haunches in front of me.

  “Did she just confess to a murder?” he asked me. “Two,” I said.

  “Two murders,” he repeated. He took his turn at head shaking. I would have to find someone at whom I could shake my head incredulously. “She just con- fessed two murders to you. How do you do it?” Faced by his round, hot eyes, I became aware that I was in a torn and disheveled and rather skimpy-at- the-top nightgown that had become quite soiled in the course of the night. I was definitely reminded that I was not Jack Burns’s favorite person. I wondered how much Lynn would remember of what she’d overheard while she was having the baby—was it possible she would remember my telling Torrance that I knew the whereabouts of the skull?

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  Lynn was being carried out on a stretcher now. I presumed that the afterbirth had been delivered and disposed of. I hoped I wouldn’t find it on the bath- room floor or something.

  “This man,” I told Jack Burns, as I pointed to Tor- rance, “broke into my house tonight.”

  “Are you hurt?” asked Sergeant Burns, with reluc- tant professional solicitude.

  I turned to look in Torrance Rideout’s eyes. “No,” I said clearly. “Not at all. And I have no idea why he broke in here or what he was looking for.” Torrance’s eyes showed a slow recognition. And, to my amazement, he winked at me when Jack Burns turned away to call his cohorts over.

  After an eternity, every single person was gone from Jane’s house but me, its owner. What do you do after a night you’ve had a burglary, been battered, de- livered a baby, and nearly been mown down by the entire detective force of Lawrenceton, Georgia? Also, I continued enumerating as I hauled the remains of the nightgown over my head, heard a confession of double murder and had your scarcely covered bosom ogled by the same detectives who had been about to mow you down minutes earlier?

  Well. I was going to take a hot, hot bath to soak my bruises and strains. I was going to calm a nearly ~ 253 ~

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  berserk Madeleine, who was crouching in a corner of the bedroom closet hoping she was concealed under- neath a blanket I’d thrown in there. Madeleine, as it happened, did not react well to home invasion. Then, possibly, I could put my tired carcass back between the cool sheets and sleep a little.

  There’d be hell to pay in the morning.

  My mother would call.

  But I only slept four hours. When I woke it was eight o’clock, and I lay in bed and thought for a moment.

  Then I was up and brushing my teeth, pulling back on my shorts set from the night before. I managed to get a brush through my hair, which had been damp from the tub when I’d fallen asleep the night before. I let Madeleine out and back in—she seemed calm again—and then it was time to get to Wal-Mart. I walked in as the doors were unlocked and found what I was looking for after a talk
with a salesperson. I stopped in at the town house and got out my box of gift wrap.

  At Mother’s house both cars were gone. I’d finally gotten a break. I used my key one last time; I never would again now that John lived here, too. I sped up ~ 254 ~

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  the stairs and got the old blanket bag out of the closet and left the gift-wrapped blanket bag on the kitchen table on my way out. I left my key by it. Quickly out to my car then, and speeding back to the house on Honor.

  Another stroke of luck; no police cars at the Ride- outs’ yet.

  I went out the back kitchen door and looked around as carefully as Torrance Rideout must have the night he buried Mark Kaplan, the night he buried Mike Osland. But this was daylight, far more dangerous. I’d counted cars as I pulled into my own driveway: Lynn’s car was at the house across the street, Arthur’s was gone. That figured; he was at the hospital with his wife and his baby.

  I did falter then. But I reached up and slapped my- self on the cheek. This was no time to get weepy. The elderly Inces were not a consideration. I peered over to Carey Osland’s house. Her car was home. She must have been told of the confession by Marcia Ride- out that Mike Osland was in the Rideouts’ backyard. I could only hope that Carey didn’t decide to come look personally.

  As I started across my backyard, I had to smother an impulse to crouch and run, or slither on my belly. The pink blanket bag seemed so conspicuous. But I ~ 255 ~

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  just couldn’t bring myself to open it and carry the bare skull in my hands. Besides, I’d already rubbed my prints off. I got to the sun deck with no one shout- ing, “Hey! What are you doing?” and took a few deep breaths. Now hurry, I told myself, and unzipped the bag, grabbed the thing inside by hooking a finger through the jaw, and, trying not to look at it, I rolled it as far as I could under the deck. I was tempted to climb the steps to the deck, look between the boards, and see if the skull showed from on top. But instead I turned and walked quickly back to my own yard, praying that no one had noticed my strange behavior. I was still clutching the zip bag. Once inside, I glanced in the bag to check that no traces were left of the skull’s presence, and folded one of Jane’s blankets, zipped it inside, and shoved the bag to the back of the shelf in one of the guest bedroom closets. Then I sat at the little table in the kitchen, and out the window to- ward the Rideouts’ I saw men starting to take apart the sun deck.