Booty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery (21 page)

“Absolutely not. I’m just hoping I’ve found the man I need.” Tinkie stood up. She dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “Make sure the waitress knows I appreciate her service. I do like to reward the people who serve me well.”

Every pair of eyes in the place watched her as she walked out with a swing to her hips that practically screamed hot sex.

I finished my coffee and pie and chatted with the waitress for a few minutes about the approaching storm. Some of the locals might already know me and my connection to Angela, so I didn’t want to taint Tinkie. As hard as it was to sit still, I did.

Diner chitchat gave the local opinion that Margene would blow through with drenching rains, some wind, but no serious damage. I could only hope they were correct.

Ducking out of the café, I walked to Snill’s antique shop. Tinkie was already there, in the midst of a rapture over the library table I knew she’d have to have. Snill put a
SOLD
sticker on it just as I jangled the doorbell.

“And thank you for the reference to the shop, Sarah Booth,” he said. “Your friend has excellent taste.”

“And a well-funded checking account.” I noticed three other
SOLD
stickers on various items. Tinkie had been a busy, busy girl.

“Sarah Booth, Mr. Snill is fascinating. He knows the personal history of each of these pieces. It’s so beautiful to connect with the people who loved them before. He’s shipping these pieces to Zinnia tomorrow before the storm comes in.”

“As interesting as furniture might be, I wonder what our retired postal employee can tell us about Jameson Barr.”

Snill’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. “Oh, do sit down. I’ll put on the kettle for some cocoa. This will take a while.”

Exactly what I wanted to hear.

When we had our hot chocolate and Snill had pulled the old-fashioned shades down on the windows and doors and hung the
CLOSED
sign, we settled in for a good gossip fest.

“Jameson Barr was the fair-haired child of the state of Alabama, heir apparent to a conservative Senate seat. His father was a televangelist from New Orleans who retired to Gulf Shores. Jameson was a late-in-life child, an only child. He grew up with all the advantages.” Snill had told this story more than once if his delivery was a clue.

“Was he handsome?” Tinkie asked.

“He was a sun god,” Snill said. “Bronzed skin, blond hair, he was the perfect beach boy. And he could charm the pants off any woman he set his cap for. And let me just add right here that he had a fondness for the women.”

I laughed out loud at Snill’s delightful entertainment.

“His big mistake was his marriage,” Snill said. “He could have had his pick of any woman on the planet, but as sometimes happens in life, karma took a swing at him.”

“Who did he marry?” Tinkie was enthralled.

“Lorraine Copeland was the descendant of a famous outlaw in these parts. She was a beautiful woman, as dark as he was light. She had these cascading waves of black hair and pale skin with hazel eyes. When she walked in a room, she could truly silence a crowd. And best of all, she had no use for Jameson.”

“That drives a man wild,” Tinkie said, nodding sagely. “If you don’t want them, it makes them nuts.”

“Lorraine had her own reputation in the area of
amore
. She lured men in and then tossed them aside. She liked the hunt, but she had no use for the prey once she caught it. And Jameson had never had the tables turned on him. He didn’t even realize he was the prey until she had the ring on her finger and his … well, private parts in the palm of her hand.”

“Oh, my!” Tinkie put a hand over her mouth, feigning shock.

“It was a fiasco. The biggest wedding in the Southeast, and they couldn’t get through the after-ceremony photos without a fight. It was a scandal. And in this state, Jameson couldn’t divorce if he had any political aspirations. He was stuck.”

“In some very conservative states, even today a divorce is hard for a politician to overcome,” I agreed.

“Lorraine worked hard for his campaigns, and in her own way she was even more ambitious than Jameson.” Snill sipped his chocolate and sighed. “The two of them could have made it to the White House. If they’d pulled together, they could have had anything they wanted. The combination of brains, physical beauty, and charm … deadly.”

“How did he kill her?” I asked.

“It was a fall down the stairs at the governor’s mansion. Very dramatic. Very much designed to garner public sympathy. And it worked perfectly, until it was revealed she was pushed.”

It was a bold thing to do—to push his wife down the stairs in the state’s most famous home. Falls weren’t always fatal.

“How did they catch him?” Tinkie asked.

“Angela Trotter dogged that story. You would have thought she and Lorraine were best friends, but I know for a fact Angela hated her guts.”

Now this was interesting. “Why did they hate each other?”

“Angela is her own woman. She makes her mistakes and pays the consequences. Lorraine never took the blame for anything she did. She left wreckage behind her left and right and was shocked that anyone would try to hold her accountable.”

That kind of personality would grate on my last nerve, too. “So how did Angela figure it out?”

“Jameson had an airtight alibi. He was at the Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery at a performance. He took his parents and half a dozen of their friends. They had drinks at the Golden Chalice and then went to the play. He was in the public eye at the time his wife slipped and fell to her death down a winding flight of stairs.”

Jameson had hired someone to kill his wife, but how had Angela gotten the goods on him? “So he had an alibi. How did Angela put it together?”

“The man hired to kill Lorraine didn’t take into account Lorraine might have a lover. Jameson was so arrogant, it never crossed his mind Lorraine would step out on
him
. Had he simply paid attention, he could have divorced her for adultery and kept the public sympathy. Down here in Alabama, a cheating man can be forgiven, but never a cheating wife. The double standard is firmly in place. He could have legally dumped her and kept the governor’s mansion and his daddy’s money.”

“What an interesting world,” Tinkie said. “It’s sad to say, but you’re right, Mr. Snill. Men can be forgiven for cheating, but women often aren’t.”

“At any rate, Angela dug around until she found Lorraine’s lover. He was terrified, because he knew if Jameson became aware of him, he would run into an accident, too. Angela found him, but he refused to talk.”

“How did Angela convince him?”

“He was between a rock and a hard place. She made him see that putting Jameson behind bars was his safest alternative. He told a grand jury that on the night Lorraine fell, he was sneaking into the mansion at the same moment the killer pushed Lorraine.”

“Lorraine had an assignation, not a headache.” Tinkie nudged me in the ribs.

“That’s correct,” Snill said. “Lorraine refused to go to the play so she could stay home and play with her boyfriend. At any rate, the lover gave Angela a good description of the man coming out. Angela did the background check, found out this guy was a gun for hire. That’s all it took.”

“Did Angela testify against the governor?”

“She didn’t have to. Her stories burned up the pages of the paper. And burned down Jameson Barr’s career. Not even all his daddy’s money could buy an innocent vote by the jury.” Snill took great satisfaction in the turn of events. “And Angela earned herself some powerful enemies. The Barr family hates her and swore they’d sue her for libel. They tried, but there wasn’t a case, which only made them hate her more. I often wondered if they hired another hit man to kill her father. Just to show her she would suffer for messing with Jameson.”

A chill raced over my skin, and I looked behind me to see if Jitty had put in an appearance. No Jitty, but I knew the source of my discomfort. A premonition. The Barrs were dangerous people. They acted with impunity because they were insulated from consequences by money. Killing the father of a woman who annoyed them—to punish her—would be right up their alley. That kind of arrogance was very dangerous.

“You okay?” Tinkie asked.

“Someone just walked over my grave,” I said, repeating an old superstition Aunt Loulane used to say.

“Now we’ll have none of that,” Snill said. “Another round of cocoa?”

“If I stay, I’ll just buy more antiques,” Tinkie said.

“Exactly my plan.”

I couldn’t help but like Snill. He wasn’t devious, and he’d been a great help to me. “Do you remember the name of the hit man Jameson Barr hired?”

“You should love this. His last name is Chavis. Zeke Chavis, cousin to our island lawman.”

“Where is Zeke Chavis?”

“He’s in the same prison as Larry Wofford. Up at Atmore. He got life with no parole. Barr got twenty-five, but he managed to pull some strings and was transferred to another prison.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Tinkie said.

“Not fair, but that’s the way life unwinds.”

“When was Lorraine Barr killed?” I had to see if the time frame worked. And I remembered the big convict who’d given me a warning at the prison. I’d put the blame on Randy Chavis, and it well might remain there. But Zeke Chavis was an equally intriguing suspect.

“About four months before John Trotter was killed. Angela broke the story about a week before John’s death. And Zeke was out on bail at the time John was shot.”

“What does Zeke Chavis look like?”

“A great deal like his cousin. Broad shoulders, big man.” Snill all but rubbed his hands together. “Strangely enough, a lot like the man Larry said he saw leaving the marina when he arrived.”

*   *   *

When we went back outside, a gust of wind nearly snatched Tinkie’s perky little sailor blouse right off her.

“Sarah Booth, we need to get an update on the storm.” Tinkie grabbed her shirt and held on.

She was right. “Chavis said we aren’t allowed to leave the island.” I couldn’t help the worry. If Margene blew in, did Chavis have the authority to put me, Graf, and Tinkie at risk?

“Under what law?” Tinkie asked. “I’ll call Coleman. I think he was bluffing.”

I put my hand over her phone before she could speed-dial. “Don’t.”

“Because you’re afraid of what he’ll ask.”

I nodded. “Coleman is nobody’s fool. He knows something is wrong in my world, and he knows Marion Silber and Graf are at the root of it.”

She sighed and put her phone away. “As long as the storm hasn’t picked up speed, I’ll spend the night, but in the morning, we’re all leaving. Chavis can come to New Orleans and arrest us if he has probable cause, which he doesn’t because we didn’t take anything from the museum.”

“Let’s crank up the computer and see what we can find about the pirate Armand Couteau and his spyglass.”

When we arrived at the beach cottage, I was relieved to see Graf on the sand dunes with Sweetie and Pluto. He dodged and played, and the critters were eating it up.

“He’s looking better, Sarah Booth. Won’t be long before the whole incident is just a bump in the road.”

I couldn’t love her more for trying to put the best spin on a vacation shifted out of control. “Doc said exercise would bring him around.”

“And he was right.” She put an arm around my waist as we watched the antics of man and beasts.

“It won’t ever be the way it was before he was shot.”

“His leg?”

I hesitated, because I had been talking about his leg, but I realized my simple statement was more profound. “Nothing will. Not his leg, not our relationship.”

She squeezed me tight. “Everything changes. That’s a fact. Up and down, better and worse. We age. His leg will always bear a scar, but if he can run and play and pursue his career, what more can he ask?”

He saw us and waved. When he came trotting over, I thought my heart would break. The wind rumpled his dark hair, and his smile could have been featured on any Hollywood billboard. I had loved him so much in New York, and he’d broken my heart. I’d come home and healed and allowed myself to love him again. And I did love him. More than I’d ever thought possible.

“Where have you girls been?” It was the old Graf. The pre-gunshot Graf.

“I’ve been buying antiques,” Tinkie said. “And you?”

“Groceries are in the kitchen. I got some ice chests and ice in case the storm hits and the power goes out. That’s what all the locals told me to do. Water, ice, flashlights, and batteries.” There was a hint of excitement in his tone. “I want to get in one more jog through the sand.” He scooped Pluto up and handed him to me. “He can’t keep up, but he’s been giving it valiant effort.”

“You’re looking good,” Tinkie said after him as he sprinted toward the beach.

He waved a hand at us as he disappeared over the dune with Sweetie Pie hot on his heels. Pluto, exhausted from slogging through the deep sand, leaped from my arms and flopped on the bottom step.

We entered the cottage, and Tinkie began stowing away the groceries. Graf had stocked up on peanut butter, tuna, beans, and ice—the hurricane essentials for survival if the power went out for several days.

“Sarah Booth, you’re out of coffee. How about I run to the store and buy some?”

“Sure, coffee is good. Maybe some ice cream, too. Jamaican almond fudge or espresso with chocolate-almond nuggets. We can eat the whole thing before the power goes out.”

She gave me a hug. “I’ll be back with ice cream in a flash.”

The strains of a sweet violin drifted to me, almost as if the breeze had captured it from some conservatory and bore it straight to me. I remained at the window, listening, as the music teased my heart.

“Who now?” I asked, because I knew when I turned around, Jitty would be with me in the guise of my violinist.

“Someone who lost much to violence, too.”

I faced her. She was young and black and beautiful, gracefully sawing the bow across the strings of a violin. It was a piece I recognized but couldn’t name, hauntingly sad in a minor key. “A vision from the past,” I said.

“Not so many people remember that I was trained in music.”