Ham Bones (14 page)

"I haven't made any plans," I confessed, "but we'll
work it out together."

"I'm coming home. Coleman is staying for the ambulance to take Connie in the morning."

"Wouldn't it be better to get a hotel room and wait
until daylight to drive?" I asked. Tinkie sounded tired and
upset.

"I don't want to wait."

Well, that was a Daddy's Girl's prerogative. "Be careful." I replaced the phone and finished my sandwich.
Licking the grape jam from my fingers, I headed up to
bed.

I awoke Tuesday morning when the sun was high in
the sky. It had to be nearly noon, and for a moment panic
touched my heart. Sweetie never let me sleep late. Nor
Jitty. Then I remembered that Sweetie was tired from our
midnight ride, but I had no idea why Jitty was being so
considerate.

My thoughts were on Coleman and Connie as I
bathed, dressed, and prepared for my day. I was absolutely
numb-and I wanted to keep it that way. My future was at
stake, and I intended to clear my name.

First on the agenda was a trip to the feed store. Neil
Sheffield would tell me what he knew, and soon Nancy
would be in to work. As a work study student, she got out
of high school early.

The day was cold and bright, and I bundled up in an
old sweatshirt and a heavy jacket. Knit hats had a ridiculous habit of shooting off my head, so I opted for a beautiful magenta scarf that my Aunt LouLane had knitted for
me when I was in college. Like my parents, she now slept
in the family cemetery. As I wrapped the warm knit
around my ears and throat, I gave her a silent thanks.

Sheffield's was a hopping place. Farmers from fifty
miles around came to buy seed and fertilizer, feed and
supplies. Neil was a handsome man with an easy grin and
a quick humor. His knowledge of blues music was legendary, and he kept a state-of-the-art sound system in the
feed store, playing the Mississippi greats like Muddy Waters and B.B. King.

I picked up some vitamins and hoof treatment for Reveler as I waited for my turn at the counter. I hoped for a
moment alone.

When old man Barnaby had paid for his two bags of
chicken scratch and left, I stepped forward.

"Sorry to hear about your troubles, Sarah Booth" Neil
shook his head. "I know Coleman knows better. What's
wrong with that man?"

"I don't know, but I need to talk to you about Nancy."

"I heard she said you came in to buy poison. I wish I'd
known what she intended to say, because I would've
stopped her."

His kindness made me feel better, even if we both
knew he couldn't have stopped anything. "I never asked
for poison, and I wasn't here that day."

"Neither was I. I'd gone up to Clarksdale. Nancy admitted she didn't get a good look at you. She assumed it
was you because you talked about Reveler and the
hound"

"Did she express any doubt to you?"

He sighed. "Just the opposite. I think I questioned her
so closely it made her stubborn. Now she's determined to
say it was you. I'm sorry. I was trying to help."

This wasn't good news. "Would you care if I spoke
with her?"

"Not at all." He checked his watch. "She'll be here in
five minutes or so. She's a punctual girl."

True to his word, the buzzer sounded when the front
door opened and Nancy stepped into the store. She took
one look at me and headed for the restroom in the back.

"Nancy, I'm not angry!" I went after her. I had to catch
a break in this case and fast. "I just want to ask some
questions."

She turned around. "And I want to ask you one. Why
are you trying to make me out as a liar?"

Now it was my turn to start. "I'm only trying to find
out the truth"

"Then tell it! You came in and asked for poison. We didn't
have it, and you left."

I took a deep breath. Getting angry or frustrated wouldn't
do any good. Nancy wasn't lying; she'd been played and
now her reputation was on the line. I had to win her over
in an effort to counter the damage she'd dealt me.

"I believe someone came in here and pretended to be
me. I know you saw me-or at least someone who looked
a lot like me. That person meant for you to believe it was
me"'

My reasoned words at least had her thinking. She was
a pretty girl. I'd made it a point to know she was the oldest of five kids and an absentee father. She wasn't a person who liked her word questioned because responsibility
defined her.

"You were wearing a big old gardening hat" Her tone
was stubborn.

I nodded. "I don't own such a hat. In all the times
you've seen me here in the store, have I ever worn such a
hat?"

"Usually you look like you've been cleaning the stallsT-shirts and paddock boots. Never anything as nice as
that hat" She was nodding.

"The voice sounded like mine?"

She dragged her bottom teeth across her upper lip.
"Enough so I didn't think any more about it."

"And I asked for some poison to kill raccoons?"

"That 'bout made me fall off the ladder. I've heard you
talk about animals before, and you'd never hurt one. Not
even a raccoon"

Thank God, she was thinking now. She'd inched back
off her story and begun to look for another interpretation.
I pressed my point home. "If you can say that maybe that person wasn't me, do you think you would know her if
you saw her again?"

Her eyes closed. "I'm not sure. I just caught a glimpse
of her cheek."

I pulled the photographs of Kristine Rolofson and
Bobbe Renshaw from my purse. I'd found them on the Internet, and though the quality wasn't professional, the
prints were good likenesses of the women.

"Neither of them," she said with teenage certainty.

"How can you be so sure?" I forced myself to be calm.

"Well, if it was one of them, they wore a wig 'cause
the woman who came in here had hair the same color as
yours. I saw it curling out from beneath the hat"

Great. I put the pictures away. Both women could easily have access to a wig. And most likely, they'd destroyed
the hairpiece. "Thanks, Nancy." I picked up my purchases and headed for the roadster, no closer to finding
the truth than I had been.

The Sunflower County Courthouse contains the sheriff's department as well as the chancery and circuit clerks
and their courtrooms. The serious business of felons is
carried on upstairs, while divorce court proceeds on the
lower levels in a smaller addition that had been tacked
onto the building in 1974.

I'd hoped that Coleman's divorce proceedings would
take place in that courtroom. Not likely now. I went to the
sheriff's office, praying that he was still at the hospital
with Connie. I needed to ask Gordon some questions
about forensics in the case. I could have waited for Tinkie, but I was tired of waiting, tired of hoping someone
else could unknot the tangle of my life. I'd played the shocked and innocent victim for too long; it was time for
me to be an investigator.

"What about the lipstick tube?" I asked as I walked in
the door.

Gordon looked up from a report he was typing. "I'm
not sure I'm supposed to give forensic evidence to the accused" He reached for the phone, but I was quicker.
"Don't call Coleman. It'll only make it harder on him. If
you don't tell me, Tinkie will just come in and get the
info, and she'll tell me"

He looked doubtful.

"You know I didn't do this, Gordon. All I'm asking for
is the stuff my lawyer will get anyway."

Shuffling through the papers on his desk, Gordon
pulled out a sheet. He scanned it. "The lipstick contained
enough poison to kill a person if it was licked off the
lips."

"How in the hell would I get the cyanide into the lipstick in the first place. It would have had to have been
mixed into the ingredients while it was being shaped"

Gordon nodded. "That's a problem. La Burnisco denies that this lipstick even came from their salon. They
have no record of your purchase, Sarah Booth"

"I gave the receipt to Graf to give to Renata so I could
be reimbursed. It has to be among her things." What a
complete fool I'd been. The killer had probably picked it
up off her dressing table, destroying the only physical
thing that might back up my story.

"The DA can make a good case that you produced this
lipstick all on your own."

"Right, me and my little chemistry lab at home. What
about fingerprints?"

"On the tube itself there are Renata's and Bobbe Ren-
shaw's. No one else's."

"Have you spoken with Bobbe?"

"I'm going to see her after lunch."

"The cast and crew will be leaving in three days." The
noose of time was tightening around my neck.

Gordon finally looked me in the eye. "I don't think so,
Sarah Booth"

"What do you mean?" There would be no holding
Keith Watley in Zinnia. He had bigger fish to fry and in
his opinion, the only frying pan was in New York City.

"Coleman put me in charge of the case. With Connie
so sick and all .. "He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'm in
charge, and I'm not about to let my most prime suspects
leave town."

My heart thudded. "You really believe one of the cast
or crew did it?"

"Makes a lot more sense to my way of thinking, Sarah
Booth. Let me line it out for you the way I see it." He was
grinning big now, and I was, too.

"You didn't like Renata, and you wanted to play the part
of Maggie. But in seven nights, those folks would be gone,
and you'd be back in your life. If you still had the itch to
be a Broadway star, I think you'd be in New York still trying."

Gordon's assessment of me made me proud. It's always interesting to see the picture someone else paints.
"Thank you, Gordon"

He held up a hand. "On top of that, Renata might have
pissed you off, but not enough to kill her. There are others
in the cast and crew that she's done terrible things to.
Like Renshaw and Milieu they truly had reason to kill
her."

I wasn't about to concur or disagree. I didn't want to
shift the finger of blame from me to some other inno cent person, and I didn't have the facts to begin to speculate.

"Go on, please."

"The most damning evidence is the lipstick and the
poison in your car. You don't have any way to explain the
lipstick with physical evidence, but the truth is, Renata
asked for that particular lipstick and directed you to the
store to get it. Nancy from the feed store called up and
said she was having second thoughts about that being you
who came in and asked for poison."

God bless Nancy!

"So the case is weakening?"

He nodded. "You're still charged, and I don't have
enough to drop the charges, but let's just say I'm continuing to investigate."

"Thank you, Gordon" I wanted to kiss his cheek but
knew better. I looked around the office and felt a serious
bolt of pain in my heart. Why couldn't it be Coleman who
was standing here, telling me the reasons why I couldn't
be guilty of murder?

Gordon picked up his hat. "Got to go, Sarah Booth. In
the future, it would be more professional if Tinkie was the
one who stopped by to chat"

"You got it," I said as I walked to the door.

I 'inkie waited until the show was over to drop the Conniebomb on me. She'd insisted we drive to Clarksdale to
eat at Madidi, a lovely upscale restaurant. I thought it was
a long ride for a celebratory dinner and drink, but she
wanted to get me alone in a very public place where I
couldn't howl at the moon.

We'd finished our meals, and she had her cosmopolitan and I had a vodka martini. Around us, groups were
dining and laughing. I recognized several sorority girls
from Ole Miss. They'd aged with grace. Most were mothers, but their trim figures didn't give it away. They looked
as sleek and hungry as New York models-the diamonds
glittering on their ring fingers the symbolic designer label
of an excellent marriage. I had to give it to the DGs on elegance. They had it in spades, and Madidi was the perfect
place to show it off.