Ham Bones (15 page)

"I spoke with Coleman this afternoon," Tinkie said as
she studied the pink perfection of her drink.

"I wondered what you were up to" I hadn't heard from
Tinkie all afternoon. I'd assumed she was working on the
case against me.

"Connie has no memory of any of her actions from the
past year."

Anger bubbled in volcanic measure. "How freaking
convenient!"

All around us the laughter stopped as people turned to
look at me. While Tinkie could pass in this crowd, I was a
definite outsider, and I was acting like one.

Tinkie put her hand on my wrist. "When they took out
the tumor, they had to remove some healthy tissue. Or it
could be that the tumor destroyed-"

"Tell me Coleman isn't buying this?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing, or the expression on Tinkie's
face. She believed that Conniving Connie was actually
telling the truth. This was the woman who'd faked mental
illness, faked pregnancy-all to keep Coleman from
leaving her. If he believed her now, he deserved to be saddled with her for the rest of his life.

"He doesn't believe Connie, but he does believe the
doctor."

There it was. After the months of waiting, I was still
standing alone as Coleman struggled in the web of Connie's deceit. I took a deep breath. "Fine"

"Sarah Booth, if Connie doesn't remember, can he
hold her accountable? The doctor said the tumor might've
made her behave so erratically."

"Tumor, malice, jealousy, vindictiveness, desperation." I ticked them off on my fingers. "What difference
does it make? She did terrible things to him and to me"

"I think Coleman would rather be burned at the stake
than lose you"

"He has a really funny way of showing it. Hey, I've got
the perfect solution. Coleman can turn me over to the
grand jury for a true bill on a murder charge. Then I can
be tried and sent to prison, and he and Connie can live
happily ever after. How's that?"

She patted my arm, and when I tried to withdraw it,
she held on with grim determination. "I'm not the enemy
here"

"You're just the messenger, I know. Next time let
Coleman do his own dirty work"

Tears filled her eyes but didn't fall. "I'm sorry, Sarah
Booth. I am. For you and for him."

"Save it, Tinkie. I made a bad decision. I made several
of them. But I'm only thirty-four. If I don't go to prison
for the rest of my life, I can make different choices."

She squeezed my arm. "I didn't want to tell you this,
but I wanted you to have the facts. So when you make
your choice about Hollywood, you can make it fully informed." She blinked the tears back and took a big swallow of her drink.

This wasn't Tinkie's fault, and I was treating her
awful. She'd come to tell me the truth so I could make my
plans to leave town-even though she didn't want me to
go. She didn't want me clinging to the hope of Coleman
as my reason to stay.

"Thanks for telling me, Tinkie. You're the best friend a
gal could have"

She looked down at the table. "You should've left with
Hamilton V Then none of this would have happened. You
wouldn't be charged with murder."

I finished my martini and signaled the waiter for another. Tinkie was driving, after all. "I should've done a lot
of things differently."

She waited until I had my fresh drink before she spoke
again. "I do have a tiny bit of good news"

"I could stand some of that" Now all the laughter
around me sounded wrong, harsh. I wanted to belt down
my drink and head home, but Tinkie was still sipping
hers.

"I spoke with Cece today. She's been spending a lot of
time with Gabriel Trovaioli, and she's pulled some interesting stuff from him."

"Like what?" I bit my olive in half.

"Renata started acting really strange about nine
months ago. Gabriel said she'd never been all that close to
him, but she began to call him almost every weekend"

"Did he say why?" I felt my interest perk up.

She shook her head. "Like she was trying to build
some kind of connection is what he told Cece"

In the time I knew Renata in New York, she'd never
mentioned a brother or any other family, for that matter. It
was as if she'd sprung fully formed from the head of a
God at least in her opinion.

"He told Cece she'd become ... almost tender toward
him."

"Now that is creepy." Renata might be able to play tender on the stage, but I doubted she'd ever felt it. "And
when, exactly, did she call and tell him I was trying to kill
her?"

"The night before she died. It was after dress rehearsal. She told him you'd stopped her backstage and
told her you were going to play Maggie no matter what
you had to do to get there"

That was absurd. I wasn't even at The Club for the
dress rehearsal. I told Tinkie so. "I don't think I spoke to
Renata at all after I ran her errand. I put some flowers in
her dressing room, but I didn't see her."

"Renata singled you out, Sarah Booth. She made sure
you were the prime suspect in her death. It's like she's
reaching out from the grave-"

I leaned forward, suddenly clear on something that I
had overlooked. "The person who went into Sheffield
Feed Store asking for poison was Renata. She was pretending to be me. She could pull it off, too, with a young
girl who was stocking shelves on a ladder."

Tinkie nodded. "I see that. But why?"

That, indeed, was the sixty-four-million-dollar question.

Sweetie's wet tongue licked me awake Wednesday
morning, and I sat up and pulled the quilts around me.
The temperature had dropped during the night. Dahlia
House was cool in the summer, and it could be downright
cold in the winter. I looked out the window to see frost
glistening across the fields and icing the tree leaves. Sunlight glittered in blinding diamonds, and I jumped out of
bed and rushed to the bathroom. In no time at all, I was
showered, dressed, and ready for the day. Somewhere in
the arms of Morpheus I'd found new hope. For proving
my innocence, if not my future with Coleman. Emulating
Jitty's latest role model, I would worry about Coleman tomorrow.

While the coffee brewed, I phoned Millie, Cece, and
Tinkie. I needed a meeting of the three smartest women I
knew. Breakfast at Millie's was just a bonus.

We gathered in the back of the cafe and waited until
Millie had a break in the flow of customers so she could
join us. When we were all seated with coffee and our various menu selections, I cleared my throat.

"I don't know who killed Renata, but I do know that
she-Renata deliberately framed me for her death"

"That doesn't make sense," Cece drawled. "If she
knew someone was going to kill her, wouldn't she have
called the police instead of building a frame?"

During the night my active subconscious had done its
work. "In a normal person, yes. But Renata was far from
normal. She hated me for reasons I'll never understand. It
is hard to swallow that she'd let herself be killed just to
frame me, so there has to be more to this. This is where
y'all come in."

"What can we do?" Millie asked. She was always first
on the line to help a friend.

"I think the question that must be answered is why Renata allowed herself to be poisoned. Was someone blackmailing her? There has to be more to this."

"Right" They all spoke in unison, and I saw from their
expressions that they were actually buying into what I was
saying.

"Tell us your plan," Tinkie requested.

"Cece, can you pump Gabriel for any signs of fear or
depression in Renata in the past few months?"

"You got it, dahling. But the order of pumping is
somewhat reversed, don't you think?"

I rolled my eyes. "Millie, if you have all those back
tabloids, can you go through them to see any gossip that
might hint at trouble somewhere in her life?"

"Absolutely. And you're in luck. I have issues that go
back two years, at least."

"Tinkie, we need the toxicology report from the sheriff's department, and see if you can weasel any useful information out of Gordon"

"I'm on it." She studied me carefully. "What are you
going to do?"

"I'm going to talk to Bobbe Renshaw and Kristine Rolofson. They were both at the theatre the night Renata
died. They've been with Renata, in a manner of speaking,
for the past year or so. Maybe they saw something."

"And Graf?" Tinkie asked the question that everyone
else was thinking. Aside from me, Graf was the most obvious suspect.

"Can you poke around in Graf's financial business?
We might find something useful there, and you're the
woman for figures"

"Good" We stood up all together, like the four musketeers.

"Let's meet this afternoon at Dahlia House," I suggested. "Millie, can you get off?"

She untied her apron and put it on the table. "Even
better. I'm going home right now to start looking through
those tabloids. I'll call Annie to come in and take over. I
haven't had a day off since last summer, and I'm due
one"

My friends were giving up their time to help me.
Whatever I might find in Hollywood, it would be no substitute for this.

"Thank you"

Kristine had taken a room at a local motel that allowed
pets. Gertrude Strom at The Gardens had a no-pet policy,
and the old bat wouldn't make any exceptions, so it was
the Crossroads Motel where I found Kristine, ready to
take Giblet for a walk.

The little reddish gold pooch was glad to see me and
gave me a warm welcome when Kristine opened the door
to my knock. "I'm surprised you're still in town," I said.

"I'm surprised you're not in jail." She opened the door wide. "But any person who might have killed Renata is a
friend of mine. Come in."

The room was neat and her clothes were packed, as if
she did plan on leaving. "The sheriff asked me to stay in
town," she said. "I'm hoping as soon as the show closes
he gives us the okay to leave. Now that Renata is dead, I
have to get on with my new mission in life. I've spent the
last year trying to make her accountable for the hit-andrun." She sighed. "I'm going after the New York state legislature next. Try to get some laws enacted to protect
animals."

It was a noble chore she'd assumed. Her attitude told
me one thing-she wasn't anticipating that she'd be held
here in Zinnia for murder.

"Kristine, I know the sheriff has questioned you, but
would you mind talking with me?"

"Not at all. Could we walk while we talk?"

"Sure" My paddock boots were comfortable for walking, and the day, though cold, was sunny and dry. She put
Giblet on a lead and we headed out the door at a brisk
pace.

"You've followed Renata for the past year," I said. "In
the last few months, have you noticed anything different
in her conduct?"

Kristine didn't answer immediately. "You know, she
did seem to change a little."

"How so?"

"When I threw water on her to see if she'd melt, she
did something very strange"

My heart rate increased, and not from the pace Kristine set. "What?"

"She turned to me, and her face was almost expressionless. Normally she had the visage of a Harpy, but she just looked cold. And she said, `When I'm gone, your life
won't have any meaning.' And then she drove away."

I pondered those words, reminiscent of the Richard M.
Nixon speech to the press before he resigned as president. So was Renata thinking of retiring, or was it something more sinister?

"What did you make of it?"

"To be honest, I was so delighted at the thought that
I'd helped to drive her out of work that I didn't really
think about what she said. But now, with her death and all
... She turned to me. "Do you think someone had
threatened her even then?"

I could only hope that was the case, and that I could
prove it. "When was this?"

"In Atlantic City. That's why I've had time to come up
with my new plan of action to help protect innocent animals from reckless drivers. Once Renata hinted she was
leaving, I set about finding another venue"

"That was smart" I wasn't really thinking about Kristine's venues. I was wondering what might have prompted
Renata to say such a revealing thing to a woman she no
doubt hated. "Tell me more about your relationship with
Renata," I requested.

"After Giblet was released to travel, we loaded up and
drove to Atlantic City where the show was being staged.
My husband left me very well off financially, so I didn't
have to work, and I certainly could afford to pay the
$5,000 in veterinarian bills for Giblet. It wasn't the
money, it was the principle."

I knew about principles. They made life difficult but
also put the spine in people.

"The first night I slipped Giblet backstage, and at the
most inopportune time, I let her free on the stage. She went right to Renata and peed on her leg. It brought the house
down"

I couldn't help but laugh out loud, though I barely had
wind to do it. The pace Kristine and Giblet set was working my butt off.

"I had a stuffed dog made to look just like Giblet, and
I recorded Giblet growling and barking. On another
night, as the first act closed, I slipped the stuffed dog and
the tape recorder into her dressing room. She was terrified to go inside. It delayed the opening of the second
act"

I admired Kristine. She was an animal activist of the
number one order.

"Did you ever actually talk to Renata about what happened?"

"I did. I asked for an apology. That's all I really
wanted. I wanted her to admit that what she did was
wrong"

"And she wouldn't?"

She slowed to allow Giblet to water a clump of weeds.
"She laughed in my face and told me if my `ugly mop of
fur' got in front of her car again, she'd finish the job"