Closer than the Bones (25 page)

“You do have something up your sleeve,” he said, grinning with satisfaction. “I knew it! Come on, you can tell me. What have you found out?” He gave me his best winsome-little-boy look of appeal.

“You really are incorrigible,” I said. I was almost tempted to confide in him, but as convinced as I was that he was innocent of the murders, I held my counsel. I had to talk to Jack Preston first.

He stuck out his lower lip in mock pout. “Well, if you won’t talk, you won’t talk. Though we haff ways, you know!”

I groaned at the execrable accent he had affected. He laughed as he marched into the dining room without me.

Grasping the bag firmly to my side, I strode down the hallway toward the little television room. There was a phone I could use in there. With some relief, I gained the relative privacy of the room and shut the door firmly behind me. I set the bag down in a chair and reached for the telephone. Picking up the handset and holding it to my ear, I listened to hear whether the line was clear. It was.

I punched in the number for Jack’s cell phone. I have an excellent memory for phone numbers, and I had memorized this one as soon as he had given it to me. But of course he wasn’t answering it. Where the dickens was he?

Instead of talking directly to Jack, I left a message on his voice mail, namely, “Get back to Idlewild as fast as you can. I’ve got something I have to tell you.”

As a precaution, I also called the sheriff’s department in Tullahoma and asked for Jack. When I gave the dispatcher my name, she told me she’d been one of my students a few years ago, and then said, “Oh, Miss Carpenter, I’m sorry, but Jack’s involved in something right now and can’t be reached.”

“What on earth is going on?”

She hedged for a moment. “I can’t really say, but there’s a situation going on in a Stop-and-Rob out on the highway, and all our available personnel are involved in it.”

“So there’s no telling when it might be over.” I nearly moaned in frustration.

“No’m,” she said, “I’m afraid not.” She assured me she would see that Jack got my message as soon as possible, but she couldn’t promise me he’d be able to respond anytime soon.

With that I had to be content. I just had to remain calm until Jack came back to Idlewild, and I had to do my best to resist peeking at the manuscript. I knew that if I let myself, I’d go upstairs right this minute, lock myself in my bedroom, and start reading. I didn’t want to mess up any fingerprints on the paper, but of course I was dying to read it and see whether it really did contain any of the answers to the murders here.

Before I could yield to temptation, I snatched up the bag and marched back down the hall to the dining room. Inside I found Brett seated at the table with Lurleen Landry and the Bertrams. Morwell Phillips must still be upstairs with Miss McElroy.

Despite the horrors of the day, Selma Greer had provided a delicious dinner for us tonight. The woman truly was a marvel, but I figured she took some solace in being able to cook through all the madness earlier.

I stuck the bag underneath my chair, hoping the others wouldn’t pay it much attention, but of course Alice saw it immediately. Her eyes lit up with a question. In response, I lifted my shoulders in what I hoped was a negative, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Even if she didn’t believe me, she wasn’t going to make a scene in front of the others.

Despite looking like she hadn’t slept for two days, Lurleen made an attempt at conversation. Russell refused all gambits, although he glowered at me throughout the meal. For once, even his wife had nothing to say. It was up to Brett to respond to Lurleen, and he did his best. I offered an occasional remark, but I was too preoccupied with the potential bombshell underneath my chair to do much.

As we were finishing dessert, heavenly pecan pie topped with cinnamon-flavored ice cream, Phillips came into the room and slumped down in a chair across from me.

“How is Mary Tucker doing?” Lurleen asked him as he filled a plate for a belated dinner.

“She’s been resting most of the afternoon,” he said, “and I think her color is good. I’m sure she’ll be fine. She just needs a bit of rest.” He took a bite of Selma’s excellent roast and chewed slowly. “But you know how she is. She’s already talking about getting up and coming downstairs this evening. She just won’t listen to sense sometimes.”

“Is someone with her?” Brett asked. “Surely you didn’t leave her by herself.”

“Of course not! Mrs. Greer is upstairs with her,” he responded testily. “I’ve looked after her for nearly fifty years, young man, and I know better than you do what’s good for her.”

“Sorry,” Brett said, chagrined. “Didn’t mean anything by that.”

Phillips dropped his fork on his plate in disgust. “Don’t mind me,” he said, his voice bitter. “I’m just the errand boy. She wants to see you, by the way.” He glared at me.

“Right now?” I said.

He nodded.

“Is that a good idea?” Lurleen asked. “I thought she needed rest.”

“I thought so too,” Phillips said, “but Mary Tucker is determined to talk to Miss Carpenter here. Why, I haven’t the foggiest notion. But what Mary Tucker wants, Mary Tucker usually gets.” He stabbed at a piece of roast on his plate and stuffed it in his mouth.

I dropped my linen napkin on the table and pushed my chair back. “Guess I'd better go on up to her. If y’all will excuse me.” I bent to retrieve my bag.

“Just don’t stay long,” Phillips warned me. “No matter how much she wants to talk, she needs her rest. So don’t wear her out.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. Holding the bag in front of me with both hands, I walked out of the room.

All the way up the stairs I felt eyes boring into my back, though I dismissed that notion for the foolishness it was. My nerves were getting on edge because of the dratted manuscript in the bag. I wished Jack Preston would get here and relieve me of the burden of it. But if he didn’t get here soon, I was going to read the thing, despite the consequences.

I tapped lightly on Miss McElroy’s door, and in a few moments Selma came to open it. “Come on in, Ernie,” she said, her voice low. “She’s been a bit fretful, wanting to talk to you. I think she’s better, but she’s got something weighing powerful heavy on her mind, that’s for sure.”

I looked past her to see Miss McElroy frowning in my direction. I came into the room, and Selma shut the door behind me. Sitting in the chair drawn up close to Miss McElroy’s bed, I set my knitting bag on the floor beside me.

“We never did finish our conversation earlier,” Miss McElroy said, her tone accusing me.

“No, ma’am, we didn’t,” I said, keeping my voice bland. “It looked like you needed to rest right then more than you needed to talk, so I left.”

She harrumphed at me, but she didn’t waste time arguing the point further. Without being too obvious about it, I examined her. Her color was indeed back to normal, and she seemed a bit stronger than she had been, though I wasn’t too certain that she needed to be up and about just yet.

“Selma, you go on downstairs for now,” Miss McElroy said. She held up a hand to forestall any protests. “I’ll be just fine, and if I should need anything, Miss Carpenter will see to it.”

“All right, Miss Mary Tucker,” Selma said. “But you don’t wear yourself out any more than you already done, you hear?”

“I promise,” Miss McElroy said. “And please don’t forget to pass along that message, like I asked you. Okay?”

Selma stared at her for a moment, then nodded.

Miss McElroy waited until the door had closed behind Selma, then told me, “Go lock the door. I don’t want us to be disturbed.”

Surprised, I did as she asked, then came back to my seat.

“I have a confession to make,” Miss McElroy said. “But judging by that bag you’re carrying, maybe I’m a bit late.” Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “I guess you found it, didn’t you?”

“How do you know it’s not just my knitting?”

“You don’t much look like the knitting type to me,” she said tartly. “Now, are you going to get it out of the bag or not?”

“Why? Don’t you think we should wait for Jack Preston?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped at me. “I want to read it before they get their hands on it. Now get it out of that bag and start reading!”

Chapter Eighteen

At this stage of the game, I had decided I wasn’t going to let her intimidate me any longer. She owed me a few things—at the very least, a few explanations. I kept my tone even as I replied, “Before I read anything, you’re going to answer a few questions.”

That took her aback, but she had better sense than to argue. “Very well,” she said grudgingly, “I suppose I owe you that much.”

“Did you murder Hamilton Packer before you removed the manuscript from his room?”

Her eyes widened. “No kid gloves with you, eh, Miss Carpenter?” She surprised me by grinning. “I knew you were the right one for this job. Tough-minded, when it matters. Yes, I made a good choice.”

“Thanks,” I said wryly. “I appreciate the compliment, but I’d appreciate an answer to my question even more.”

“Hamilton was alive and well and splashing about in the bathtub like a beached whale when I walked out of the room with the manuscript,” Miss McElroy said, looking straight at me.

“And just when was that?” I asked. “We need to work out a timetable.” Not to mention check it against what Alice Bertram had told me.

Miss McElroy waved a hand in the air. “I doubt it’s going to matter that much, but I went upstairs just a few minutes after Hamilton. I gave him time to get in the tub, then I went into the room and extracted the manuscript.”

“Did he have the door locked?” I asked.

She snorted in a most unladylike fashion. “Yes, but who do you suppose has keys to all the doors in this house?”

I felt chastened by such an obvious answer. Nevertheless I forged on. “Where was the manuscript?”

“The great booby had left it in his briefcase, lying right there on the bed. He was just begging someone to come in and take it.”

“Maybe he thought a locked door would be a sufficient deterrent,” I observed.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Though I’ll admit it did pain me to violate the privacy of a guest in my house in such a manner. In this case, I felt I had no choice. I had to know what that manuscript contained.”

“Why haven’t you read it already?”

“Lack of time, and lack of privacy,” she said. ‘There are too many people about, and with the sheriff’s department searching for it, I thought I’d just sit tight on it for a while.” She smiled like a schoolgirl at her unintentional pun. “How did you find it? I thought I had hidden it rather well.”

“Alice Bertram saw you with it,” I explained, though I neglected to tell her the circumstances under which Alice had told me about what she had seen. “Once I knew where it probably was, I went through your sitting room carefully, looking everywhere I could think of. It took me over an hour, but I finally found it.”

“I’m surprised Alice didn’t find it herself,” Miss McElroy said.

“She tried,” I said, “but she didn’t have much opportunity to look for it, for the same reasons you cited for not having read it yet. Not enough time, not enough privacy.”

“How much did she offer you for it?” Miss McElroy asked shrewdly.

“She never mentioned a figure,” I said, well upon my dignity, “but it was a moot point, anyway.”

“That goes without saying,” she said. “You were going to turn it over to Jack Preston, weren’t you?”

I nodded. “That seemed the right thing to do.”

“So you haven’t read it either,” Miss McElroy observed with satisfaction.

“No, though I desperately wanted to,” I admitted.

She laughed at that. “Then let’s do that, right now.”

“I’ve put in a couple of calls to Jack Preston,” I said. “I didn’t say precisely what I had, but I left messages to the effect that he needed to get back here immediately.” At the moment, I saw no point in telling her I had no idea how long it would be before Jack could get back to Idlewild.

“Good,” she said. “No doubt he’ll be here as soon as he can. Time’s a-wasting, then. Start reading.”

“One more question,” I said, stalling her a little longer. There was one more thing I had to ask her.

“What?”

“I overheard Lurleen Landiy threatening you, the first day everyone arrived. What was that about?”

She looked away. “Have you asked Lurleen about this?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I want to know what you have to say.” She stared at me now, but I kept my face blank. I wouldn’t reveal how little Lurleen had actually told me.

Miss McElroy sighed deeply. “Lurleen has another one of her little pets that she wants me to do favors for. In this case, she wants me to see that this girl gets a scholarship. I don’t think the girl deserves it. Besides, I have a candidate of my own. I told her that, and she was trying to, well, coerce me into changing my mind.”

I decided to push her a little further. “What was she threatening to do?”

Miss McElroy’s hands clenched on the bedspread. “She said she was going to drag out some old business to do with my husband, back when he was a law professor at Ole Miss. I managed to keep it quiet at the time, but Lurleen found out about it and she was going to use it against me, to make me change my mind.”

A scandal involving Morwell Phillips? That one rocked me. I sat there and thought about it for a moment, and as I did, I recalled bits of information from all the batch of stuff that my librarian friend had compiled for me. Sukey Lytton had worked in the law library while she was at Ole Miss, and I did some rapid calculations. She probably would have been there when Morwell Phillips was teaching at the school. Sukey had had a taste for older men. Could the scandal surrounding Phillips have had anything to do with Sukey Lytton?

And if so, how had Miss McElroy hushed it up? I had a feeling I knew the answer to that one.

Miss McElroy had been watching me closely, and I doubt that I was able to hide my thoughts. I stared at her, and she sighed. “Just go ahead and read. Please,” she said, her voice low.

There was no point in delaying any further. I wanted to know what the manuscript contained just as much as she did, but by now I think we both realized what we might find. And I figured that, somehow or another, she had the right to know, even before the sheriff’s department. But I did make one attempt at assuaging my conscience.