Smarty Bones (2 page)

The Daughters of the Supreme Confederacy was a low-key group of ladies who enjoyed brunches of chicken salad, mimosas, and programs highlighting the efforts of Confederate womenfolk to support the men they loved. I knew many of the stories because my ancestor Alice Delaney, with the help of a smart young slave, Jitty, had worked tirelessly to support the Confederate troops and to save Dahlia House from the destruction of war, and later from the carpetbaggers.

“Okay, the woman is rude,” I conceded. “But what harm can she really do? Oscar and Cece will sue her for slander if she keeps this up, but you need to chill, Frances. Remember, sticks and stones can break—”

“You sound exactly like your aunt Loulane, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Dr. Twist means to drag the Richmond and Falcon names through the mud and enjoy doing it. Cece is your friend. And Tinkie Bellcase Richmond is Oscar’s wife and
your
business partner. You have a vested interest in this. Friendship demands that you take action.”

“We’re talking about events that happened nearly two hundred years ago, Frances.” One of the worst—and the best—things about Southerners is their total devotion to the reverence of the past. “This is over and done.”

Frances started to rise. “I thought you valued your friends. Yet you’ll sit back and allow the character of their families to be assassinated by this … this … Yankee pseudo-intellectual.”

I thought of those long-ago mornings when Frances and my mother plotted and laughed. They were women as different as night and day. My mother didn’t give a fig about society or ladies’ luncheons. She didn’t belong to a single social organization and refused to join The Club because it was elitist. Yet she and Frances had shared a love of land and a deep appreciation for heritage and good friends. “Let me look into it. At least I can talk with her and see what she’s up to.”

“Oh, Sarah Booth. I knew you were the person to come to. Since you’re totally outside society, you can put that woman in her place with whatever means necessary.”

Now, that was a nice way for Frances to say I could put a dog-cussing on Olive Twist without behaving in an unladylike fashion, since I wasn’t a lady to begin with. I had no honor to lose by getting down in the mud with the hogs.

I walked Frances to her car. “I’ll pay a call on Dr. Twist.”

“She’s staying at The Gardens B and B.” She slammed her door and drove away before I could protest.

I had a history with Gertrude Strom, the owner of the B and B in question. She hated me and had since I’d come home to Zinnia from New York. I already rued my offer to intervene. Chances were, if Dr. Twist were left alone, she’d tire of poking at the old, tired Delta society and take herself back home to her teaching duties.

The single good thing: I’d only agreed to speak with Dr. Twist. This wasn’t a new case. I could still devote my time completely to my fiancé.

Graf would be with Oscar at The Club until after lunch. As much as I disliked the idea of going to The Gardens, it would be best if I got the chore behind me.

Propping the broom by the front door, I went inside with my hound at my heels and a plump black feline capering along the hardwood floors. A quick cleanup and fresh clothes and I’d be on my way to meet the caustic Dr. Twist.

I turned on the upstairs shower, disrobed, and lathered up. I was towel drying my long chestnut hair when I heard a noise in my bedroom. If Graf was already back from golf, Oscar had skunked him. Still, the prospect of seeing Graf made me rush out of the bathroom and come to a screeching halt.

A woman with a huge head of black curls and wearing a red dress, red shoes, and a garter pointed a cane at me. Perched on the side of her head was a top hat. “Boo-boop-de-doop,” she said in a high-pitched baby voice.

Jitty had incarnated as Betty Boop. The resident haint at Dahlia House had gone vintage cartoon on me.

“Boo to you!” I wrapped the towel around me. “I swear, Jitty. Betty Boop? Why don’t you just get a whip and flog me. It would be kinder.” My decade-hopping haint had shown up in garb from the eighteenth century to
Star Trek,
but a cartoon character was taking it just a little too far.

“You ought to get you a little red dress and a garter,” Jitty said, leaning on the cane and poking out her butt in a provocative calendar-girl pose. “Graf’s shoes would smoke he’d be in such a hurry to jump out of them. Just think of the possibilities.”

“Maybe I could suck on a helium balloon while I’m at it. If your voice gets any more babyish I’ll have to drink formula to converse with you.” I had no time for Jitty’s antics.

“Jealous, some?” Jitty asked. “Betty Boop was the sex symbol for generations of men.”

“That is too sad to even contemplate.” I took a long look at her. “Your head is huge.”

“And so are my boobs,” she countered. “And my waist is tiny. Men love me.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re talking about men suffering from retarded adolescence.” I went to the closet and dragged out ironed jeans and a purple shirt.

I heard the tapping of the cane and her high heels as she came closer to me.

“What do you want, Jitty? It has to be something spectacular if you’re wearing that getup.”

“Just giving you a preview of what’s coming your way like a freight train. Better eat your spinach.”

“Spinach?” I turned to confront her, but in typical Jitty fashion, she was gone. In her wake, though, a burst of tiny red hearts floated around the spot where she’d stood. In an instant, they vanished.

*   *   *

The long, tree-lined drive to The Gardens brought back memories. Bad ones. I didn’t relish asking Gertrude Strom where to find Dr. Twist, but I had no choice. Gertrude ran the front desk like a barracuda guarding a sushi buffet. She would make life as tough as possible for me. The only person Gertrude was consistently nice to was my partner, Tinkie. Zinnia National Bank held the mortgage on The Gardens, and Tinkie’s husband, Oscar, was president of the bank. Her father owned it. Money might not buy happiness, but it sure as heck could purchase obsequiousness.

Whatever my personal feelings for Gertrude, I had to hand it to her. The grounds were incredible. Mums in every shade from purple to russet to gold brightened the flowerbeds, where fuchsia-veined caladiums offered pinks and lime greens. Closer to the building, I was smitten by the riot of spider lilies, their coral petals dancing on a gentle breeze.

“What are you doing on my property?” Gertrude popped up from behind a hedge like one of those horrible jack-in-the-boxes. Even as a child I’d hated those things.

I’d hoped to at least get in the door before she launched an assault, but fate was against me. She wasn’t a tall woman, but she was cantankerous as a snake with its tail in a mousetrap. “Gertrude, fancy seeing you here. Where can I find Dr. Olive Twist?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. In fact, I can call the sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing. Now that you’re no longer sleeping with Sheriff Peters, maybe he’ll cuff you and haul you off to jail.”

Gertrude’s red hair, dyed to a shade between fire engine and Bozo the clown, caught the sunlight like copper wires. Bride of Frankenstein might be a phrase used to describe her.

“Gertrude, I’m well within my rights to visit a guest.”

“We’ll see about that. Maybe Dr. Twist doesn’t want to see you.”

“If she doesn’t, I’ll leave. But I intend to ask her.” I started past Gertrude, only to be stopped by a garden rake thrown like a spear. She missed my foot by about an inch.

“Don’t take another step. You’re not so special you can make yourself at home here.” Gertrude came out of the flowerbed, dusted her gloves, and maneuvered her body between me and the front door. “Wait here. I’ll ring Dr. Twist and see if she’ll speak with you. Of course I’ll warn her what a busybody little snooper you are and how ineffectual your detective agency is.”

I sighed and took a seat on a bench. It was still ninety-two in the shade, but it was better than standing in the sun. Also better than arguing with Gertrude. She could waste endless amounts of my time, and I wanted to talk to the professor and then get home to stir up some fried chicken, field peas with okra, and cracklin’ cornbread for Graf. Fattening up a man was one of life’s little joys. Soon enough he’d be in Hollywood with his trainer, but for the moment we were tossing dietary concerns to the wind.

Speaking of trainers, I made a discreet grab at the flab accumulating around my middle. Since finishing my last case, during which a vile butler had tried to starve me, I’d shoved my face in the trough and lived life large. Graf was an excellent cook. And Dahlia House’s kitchen was made for two to share. We worked well together, and we enjoyed trying new recipes, all of them saturated with calories. Soon, though, the excess would stop and the suffering would begin. Graf would be gone and I’d have to address the wages of gluttony.

“Ms. Delaney?”

Startled from my food fantasy, I swung around to face the skinniest woman I’d ever seen. She wore a long blue pencil skirt and a white blouse ruffled around the neck and sleeves. She was a vision of a 1980s secretary or bank teller. Except for her feet, which were encased in the ugliest brogans ever cobbled. They were boats. A small village could have floated on them. A size fifteen, at the very least.

“Are you Ms. Delaney?” Her voice had an irritating twang whose origins I couldn’t place. She wasn’t British or Canadian or even Northeastern, and she sure as heck wasn’t from my neck of the woods. Jitty’s warning came back to haunt me—indeed, I should have eaten some spinach because I was staring at Olive Oyl. The stick-thin, shapeless body, the blue-black hair clasped at her neck with a scrunchie, the huge feet. Popeye’s girlfriend, in the flesh. Except this Olive had the visage of an angel.

“Can you hear me?” She leaned down into my face and spoke slowly. “I know you people are slow.”

“You people?” I bristled. “What do you mean,
you people
?”

Her answer was a strange movement of her lips that could have been a smile, or possibly a gas bubble.

“Gertrude said you wanted to speak to me. She also told me you’re a Nosy Parker.” Dr. Twist sprawled beside me on the bench. “She failed to tell me you were mentally challenged.”

I ignored the jab and forced my gaze away from her clodhoppers. She could water-ski with those feet. She could use her feet for Ping-Pong paddles, and something about the way she flounced on the bench told me she was probably limber enough to actually do it.

“I’d like to ask a few questions about your research.” It was the least offensive opening I could come up with.

“My, how gossip flies around a small Southern town. Do you people communicate by telephone?” She looked around as if searching for physical evidence of communication devices. “Do you actually have phone service here? I was surprised to find flush toilets.”

Gertrude had undoubtedly given Dr. Twist a negative impression of me, but the professor had arrived in Zinnia with a stereotype of the area already embedded in her brainpan. I was tempted to yuk it up with some hambone slang, maybe a few one-liners about how all the DNA in town was similar, but I didn’t. Feeding the prejudice would only make matters worse.

“Let me treat you to a drink,” I offered as I stood up. While we were the same height, I had her by forty pounds. If she took those ass-ugly shoes off, maybe fifty. I’d really never seen anything quite like them. They were stacks on a platform of glittery black plastic. Open-toed lace-ups, they appeared to be leather painted in a camouflage pattern. With a cuff of gray faux fur. Why would any sane person want to call attention to a foot that size?

“A drink would be lovely,” she said.

A serving or two of free booze might oil the hinges of Olive’s jaws. Patience was a virtue, and one I didn’t come by naturally. Still, I played it cool and got us settled at a small table in a corner of the bar.

Even though I didn’t care for Gertrude, I loved The Gardens’ bar. It was all dark paneling, but there were plenty of windows. The parquet floor was polished to a shine, and plants hung in baskets and sprouted from planters. The ambience was wealth mingled with a green thumb. Gertrude knew her clientele. And one of her guests, a distinguished-looking fellow with salt-and-pepper hair and a small, Clark Gable mustache, seemed very interested in either me or Dr. Twist. He pretended to read a newspaper, but he watched us.

With a Long Island iccd tea in front of her and a Bloody Mary at my fingertips, I started out casually. “I’m fascinated by history, and I heard you were here to do local research.”

She nodded. “If my theories are correct, I’ll publish a monograph that’ll impact American history from the Civil War period. And that’s just the beginning. I have a rip-roaring tale that will translate into bestsellerdom.” She stood up abruptly. “Would you mind changing places with me?”

“What?”

“The light is better where you’re sitting. So my assistant can film.” She pushed me out of my chair and scooched into it with a provocative wiggle. “We’re documenting every step of this journey. This could be as significant as the first walk on the moon, or Admiral Peary’s trip to the North Pole.”

“Wasn’t that claim challenged?”

Olive grinned, and I swear I saw wicked canines. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

“I’m not the one who thinks every move I make is noteworthy.” I glimpsed a young cameraman behind a potted plant. He held an expensive piece of equipment trained on the preening historian.

“I’ll put this hick town on the map.” Olive leaned back in the chair. “Whether you people like it or not.”

If she said “you people” one more time I might deck her. “Most folks don’t find Mississippi’s history all that fascinating, unless you’re writing about the Civil War or civil rights. You’ve come a long way to work on a tired, overdone project.”

“I have,” she agreed. “No one told me it was so hot here.” She wiped perspiration droplets from her forehead. “I’ve never been anywhere so intolerably hot. Is it the heat that makes you Southerners so slow? Honestly, I think if I stayed here six months my brain would turn to goop, too.”