Greedy Bones (2 page)

He got out and slowly came up the steps. In the near darkness I couldn't see his face, and I was glad he couldn't see mine. In the long and complicated years of our relationship--from high school adversaries, to the initial contentiousness of my first P.I. case and, finally, to the blossoming and acknowledgment of unrequited love--we fought a strong and powerful attraction that bound us. Only recently had we accepted that love wasn't enough to overcome the obstacles in our path. Through it all, I had never dreaded seeing Coleman. Now, I couldn't breathe. My lungs constricted. Because I knew that nothing less than tragic news would bring Coleman to Dahlia House. He'd come in person to tell me that Oscar was dead. I made a small sound, seal-like, and staggered.

"Oscar is still alive, Sarah Booth." Coleman was at my side, his familiar arms easing me into one of the rocking chairs on the front porch. "I didn't come to tell you anything bad. I tried to call, but no one answered. I left messages."

I held on to one fact--Oscar was alive. At last I drew in sweet oxygen. The strength returned to my limbs. "Thank you," I managed.

"I didn't mean to scare you."

I nodded. "I shouldn't jump to conclusions." Inhaling deeply again, I asked the logical question. "What are you doing here?"

"The illness is spreading."

A swallow worked down his throat, and again my
brain seized. "Not Tinkie!" She'd been at the hospital since we got in from Los Angeles. But Oscar, Regina, and Luann were isolated. Tinkie hadn't been near them.

"No, not Tinkie." His voice was tired. "It's Gordon."

Gordon Walters was one of Coleman's two deputies. "But--how is he?"

"He's in the isolation ward with the others. Doc Sawyer is worried." He lifted his chin a fraction, a signal I'd learned to read as meaning he'd made a tough decision. "Sarah Booth, this could be serious. I'm going to call in the CDC and ask them for help."

The Centers for Disease Control was headquartered in Atlanta. If asked, they'd send in specially trained agents to try to find the source of the illness. "That's smart, I guess. Doc doesn't know what this is, but he isn't sure it's contagious. The isolation ward is a precaution."

"We have to determine what this is. The CDC is our best bet, I think."

Five months ago, the use of "we" would have made my heart sing. Now, though, I felt pain and sadness. My brief stint in Hollywood had changed me. Success had shown me my strengths as well as my limitations.

"Will you help?" Coleman asked.

"Don't ever doubt it. I'll do anything I can." In the gloaming of an April evening, I caught the hint of a sad smile on his face.

"I knew you would."

"I feel responsible for this. Tinkie was with me in Costa Rica and Hollywood because of my film career." When a killer destroyed all the footage of Federico Marquez's remake of
Body Heat
, my fledgling career was pretty much tanked. Tinkie would have been home in Mississippi taking care of Oscar if she hadn't been so worried about me.

"She made her own choice. It's the sixty-forty rule of life." He gazed out over the long stretch of cotton fields that were part of my land.

"Is this a Daddy's Girl rule?" Coleman was far removed from the pampered world of the DGs, but he'd grown up surrounded by them.

"Nowhere close." He was amused by my wary tone. "This is one that even you can use."

"So tell me."

"When you're a child, you make decisions that are totally, absolutely, irrevocably correct. The best an adult can hope for is sixty-forty. Sixty percent good and forty percent bad. In an adult world, it can never be one hundred percent right. Statistically impossible."

I considered this. My mind ran through my most recent actions--playing Maggie the Cat last January, going to Hollywood, sleeping with Graf. Damned if Coleman wasn't right. While my choices had been good ones, they'd all cost me something. Some had come at a high price.

"Okay, I give you the sixty-forty rule."

"Hollywood and a film career was what you needed to do. The right thing. Sure, it had a downside. But 'mostly good' is the best any of us can hope for. Sixty percent. You have that in spades, Sarah Booth."

"Thank you, Coleman." I wondered how he rated his decision not to dump his crazy, lying, conniving bitch of a wife. Oddly enough, he told me.

"Connie was a one percent moment. I chose pride and honor over love. That was one of the worst mistakes of my life. I've filed for divorce, but that's not what I came to tell you. Tinkie is still up at the hospital. She looks like she's going to drop. Doc Sawyer wants to sedate her, but she won't let him. Maybe you could talk to her. Take your buddy Cece along for muscle."

"I'll go now." But I didn't move out of the rocking chair. My body was paralyzed by the revelation that Coleman fully understood the depth of his choices. He knew. Too late, but he knew.

"I'll call you tomorrow and fill you in on everything I've discovered," he said. "I do need your help with this. The CDC should be at the court house tomorrow morning."

"You can count on me." Funny how only ten minutes before, I was hoping that my white knight would ride up and I would be able to rely on him.

Coleman got in the patrol car, the window down. The sweet spring breeze, tainted now in the darkness with jasmine, that saddest of all fragrances, filled the air.

"Good night, Sarah Booth," he said.

"Good night."

Tinkie stood in the hospital corridor watching her sick husband. A clear glass window separated her from Oscar's bed as effectively as an ocean. The impulse to rush forward and catch her before she keeled over was hard on me.

Before I could act on my gut feeling, Cece Dee Falcon, journalist and friend, blew by me and grabbed Tinkie's elbow.

"Tinkie, dahling, you look like caramelized shit. That would be shit dressed in an exquisite sauce, but shit nonetheless." Cece gave Tinkie her sternest look.

I hurried forward and pinched Cece as hard as I could on her taut, firm derriere. She had the unfair advantage of male molecular structure that gave her lean hips and sleek muscles. Cece, who had once been Cecil, was the society editor of the local
Zinnia Dispatch
. Against the opinion of her family, the town, and most of her friends, she had become the woman she was destined to be. I adored her.

"Don't fuss at me, Cece," Tinkie said. "I can't help it."

Never one to yield to badgering, Tinkie was at the end of her tether. She was about to collapse. I gently took her other arm. "Let's get some coffee."

She pressed her palms to the glass. "I can't leave him. I'm afraid if I do, he'll give up."

I glanced beyond her at Oscar, and my heart contracted. He lay in a bed, a ventilator pumping oxygen into his lungs. Tubes fed fluids and medication into his veins while other tubes drained things away. Sores covered his mouth and eyelids. No telling what horrors were hidden beneath the sheet.

At a slight angle were the beds of Regina Campbell and Luann Bigley. They looked equally awful. Members of their families were camped farther down the hallway.

Doc had created an isolation ward out of what had been the neonatal unit. A federal grant had built a new facility for Sunflower County babies, and this space, equipped to quarantine patients, had been empty. Until now.

As I stood there, shocked into silence by Oscar's appearance, several nurses, each wearing protective clothing, wheeled in another bed. Deputy Gordon Walters lay upon it looking already dead. His condition, if it could be judged by appearance, was more dire than Oscar's.

Tinkie stumbled, and Cece and I held her up as we battled our fears.

"You need something to eat." Cece attempted to draw Tinkie away from the window. "We'll go to the hospital waiting room. That's not three minutes away."

Tinkie shook her head. "Oscar knows I'm here. He'll know if I'm gone."

I found my cell phone. "I'll call Millie and get her to fix a plate." Millie ran the local cafe where we often met
to discuss cases or simply to gossip. She was a big part of our close-knit group. I placed an order for chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh green beans, and dewberry cobbler.

"Hold her up," Cece said, waving me to take Tinkie's arm. "I'll be right back." She disappeared down the hallway, her high heels efficiently smacking the linoleum tile.

"Is there any change?" I asked Tinkie.

"No. I saw Doc about four hours ago, before they found Gordon. Doc doesn't know what it is or how to treat it, but it seems that all of the victims have visited one place. An old plantation. Coleman is checking that out."

"What treatment is Doc using?"

"Oscar's on the most powerful antibiotic I.V. they have. They've tried steroids." Her fingers brushed across the glass window of the isolation ward. "Doc has consulted with specialists at Johns Hopkins. They considered transferring him, but until they can figure out what this is and how it's transmitted . . ."

I rubbed her arms. She felt cold to my touch. "Where's Chablis?" Chablis was her dustmop of a dog that long ago was the source of our friendship--and partnership in the detective agency.

"At home. Can you keep her for a few days?"

"Sure. I'll get her when I pick up your food."

"Make way, dahlings." Cece returned carrying a chair and deposited it so that Tinkie could sit and monitor the window.

"Does anyone know what happened?" I asked.

Tinkie's blue eyes were glassy with fatigue and near shock. We'd been home twelve hours, and she hadn't left the hospital hallway.

"Oscar and the bank manage the lease on the Carlisle
estate," Tinkie explained. "It's a thousand-acre plantation Erin Carlisle and her brother, Luther, own. Luther called Oscar yesterday morning and told him he had a buyer. He wanted Oscar to make sure the house and property were in good order, so Oscar rode out there and looked around."

For a long moment there were only the sounds of two nurses talking at a nearby desk. At last Tinkie spoke again. "He went back to the bank, ate lunch, and about two o'clock, Margene went in to give him some papers. That's when she found him on the floor, moaning, with those ghastly sores breaking out all over him. Doc said when Oscar got to the hospital, his temperature was . . . a hundred and five." She covered her mouth with her hand to hold back an anguished rasp.

"When did Regina and Luann get sick?" Cece asked.

"That same day. Later in the evening."

"And Gordon?"

Tinkie looked so lost. "He went out to the Carlisle place around six o'clock. From what I understand he checked the house, walked the area, then went home to change clothes. He called in for medical help from there. He was nearly unconscious by the time the paramedics got to him. The only strange thing he said was that the cotton at the Carlisle place was extremely high, like a late-August crop instead of newly planted. Oscar had told Margene the same thing."

"And Regina and Luann? Were they at the Carlisle plantation?"

"Coleman has confirmed that. They went out, hoping to list the property." Tinkie rubbed at her eyes.

"High cotton," I mused. "That would seem to be a good thing. A farmer might get two crops a year instead of one if there was a variety that developed this fast."

Tinkie fumbled in her pocket and brought out a tissue. "As far as we know, neither Oscar nor Gordon saw anything unusual except the cotton. Of course, they're not talking now."

I relayed the news about the CDC to both of them. Cece met it with a frown. "Are we positive that it's the Carlisle place that Oscar, Gordon, and the realtors have in common?"

That was an excellent question, and one that needed an immediate answer.

Cece picked up Tinkie's hand. "You're going to have to help us with this, Tink. We can't do it without you."

The blank look she gave Cece concerned me. "It doesn't matter where he got it, Cece. The only thing that matters is that he gets over it."

That wasn't my partner talking. That was exhaustion and desperation and fear. Tinkie loved Zinnia and the people of Sunflower County. She hadn't yet projected this illness to other residents. In her mind, it was contained within the walls of the hospital, within the room where her husband and three others lay dying.

"I'll get the food and Chablis," I told them.

"I'll stay here," Cece told me. "Just hurry."

Photographs of the movie shoot of
Body Heat
plastered the walls of Millie's Cafe and took me by surprise. There were pictures of me, Graf, the cast, and a number of stars who'd dropped by for a visit when Millie was on location in Costa Rica with us. One shot of Graf and me, obviously in lust and playing our roles to the hilt, made me blush.

I must have looked stunned, because everyone in the place stopped eating and turned to stare at me. When the applause started, I burned with embarrassment.

"Sarah Booth!" Millie came out from behind the counter and grasped my hands. "Our own movie star!"

"Of a movie that no one will ever see," I reminded her. All of the footage of the film I'd starred in had been destroyed by a crazed killer.