Them Bones (10 page)

But when I picked up the velvet jewel case, he didn't magically spring out at me.

I flipped open the lid and even in the pale wash of moonlight, the diamond glittered with a promise of ease and security and beauty. The sheer size of it symbolized hearth fires and the relaxing strains of Mozart, the smell of hot food prepared by another's hands. That diamond burned with the expectation of shared conversation over dinner, the safety of someone solid and warm beside me in bed.

Then the Delaney womb kicked in. I was stunned by the remembered feel of little Dahlia in my arms and the simultaneous clamp of pressure in my nether regions. Reproduce! Reproduce! The Delaney womb pulsed the order.

And I resisted, remembering that all of those wonderful things I'd just imagined came attached to Harold Erkwell, a man I did not love. I grasped the rail beside the steps and steadied myself. My legs trembled as raw animal instinct warred with hard-won intelligence. I snapped the lid shut on the box with such force that it sounded like a gunshot. The best thing would be to hurl the thing into the bushes, and I swung my arm back--

"Don't be the jackass I think you're about to become." Jitty put a feathery ghost touch on my arm, and it was enough to halt me. "That ring is worth a lot of dough. All you have to do is accept it. You don't have to marry him. Just accept the ring, say you're engaged, then break it off. Legally, the ring belongs to you. Push comes to shove, we can cash that sucker in and have enough money to keep Dahlia House afloat for a little longer."

1 began to drop my arm, and Jitty's gold tooth sparkled in the moonlight as her smile widened. "That's it, girl, use your brain."

Easy for her to say; her womb wasn't sending out mating calls. "Thanks for the plan," I said sarcastically, because I was frightened by my own reactions. I'd been tempted. Tempted! It showed how weak I was becoming. "I've already rolled over Tinkie by stealing her dog, now I should lead Harold on so I can pawn his engagement ring."

Jitty's eyes narrowed. "Don't be getting' all high-and-mighty on me. You could have vetoed the plan with Cha-blis."

It was true. I could have and I hadn't. I still had the five thousand cash tucked under my mattress.

"Let me see that ring again," Jitty said.

I went inside, turning on the kitchen light. The house was cold as a tomb. I turned on the oven, opened the door, and backed up to it while I snapped open the jewel case and gave Jitty a good look at the ring.

"That's a hunk o'diamond," she agreed. "I thought Harold only wanted a playmate for the sheets."

"So did I. Obviously, he's aiming for a more enduring relationship."

"Sort of complicates things, doesn't it?"

There was a hint of sympathy in Jitty's voice, and it was nearly my undoing. My life would become so much easier if I accepted Harold. Maybe I could grow to love him. Or hell, what did that matter? Most all of the Daddy's Girls had married for a list of reasons, and love wasn't even close to the top. They had all secured their lives, while I floated around in the ocean of financial woes like a pathetic single plank. Would I have turned out differently had my mother not died, had I not been influenced by an aunt who taught me to dance the Virginia reel when I felt blue and that math for girls was satanic?

"Don't go there, girl," Jitty said softly. "One thing about being a spook, aside from the cool thing about passing through walls, is that we see the past a lot differently from you mortals. Dancing and math didn't ruin you, and they won't save you. You were who you were before LouLane put her stamp on you. You came out of the womb a Delaney. No help for it, not in the past and not in the future."

"If you mean to comfort me, you're doing a terrible job." But she had pulled me out of the ditch of the past. "What am I going to do about Harold?"

"Keep the ring. Delay. You have to admit, he's sort of growing on you."

"Like a fungus," I answered. "He looks better than he did, because my options look so much worse. That's hardly a recommendation for matrimony."

The backs of my legs were hot. Really hot. My jeans had gotten superheated and now whenever they touched my skin, they burned me. I danced away from the stove. Jitty rolled her eyes.

"Harold won't push you too hard. Not at first. Later, it'll be fish or cut bait. Right now, you holdin' all the cards. Keep the ring. Don't wear it. Don't even mention it. That'll drive him wild."

It was good advice, but in my heart of hearts, I was feeling low-down about my conduct. Twisting fate was the motto of a Daddy's Girl, but it had always been hard for me. Even now, when I had no other option, I didn't like it.

"I'm going to soak in a hot tub," I said, flexing the shoulder that bore the shadowy pain of
Hamilton the Fifth's grip.

"Put some of those salts in the water. Aromatherapy. Hell, your great-great-grandmother
Alice knew about all of that back before the War Between the States. Nothing is new; it's all recycles." Her eyebrows lifted.

"If you're desperate, there's that hooch down in the cellar."

I'd forgotten about the moonshine. The trouble with hooch was that it could be really good, or it could contain lead and other poisons that could cause blindness or insanity. Lots of bootleggers ran the stuff through old car radiators or fermented it with cow manure. Of course,
Sunflower County boasted some of the finest 'shine makers in the world, the producers of pure, clean, sippin' whiskey. If the bottle was in the Dahlia House cellar, it followed that it was good stuff.

I picked up the flashlight and trotted down the steps. This was one of those days when a little drink was necessary. In the kitchen, I poured a glass. It was clear as spring water and when I took a sip, I felt it running down my throat like liquid fire. It hit bottom with a satisfying roar. Take that, you womb, I said to myself as I topped off the glass and headed up the stairs to the big old bathtub that I intended to fill with enough hot water to swim.

I woke from a troubled sleep to find the sun bright in my bedroom window. It was Friday, November 28. Twenty-six shopping days till Christmas, I thought inanely.

I wanted to burrow back under the pillows, but the fragments of my dreams were like pinpricks. I didn't have full recollection, but the overall atmosphere of the dream had been darker than a bat's butt in hell. It had taken place in the fields beside Knob Hill, the big old creepy house just a black silhouette. I was on the porch, and then
Hamilton the Fifth appeared. In the dream he was dressed in a black suit, formal, and his angry green eyes blazed in a mostly monochromatic dreamscape.

Out in the night sky, the red, burning tip of a cigarette wrote the name Veronica in smoke. And then I was in the cotton field, hiding, afraid. A clutch of doves fluttered out of the husk-dry cotton with that terrible whir of wings that sounded like a whispered plea for mercy. And suddenly I was with the doves, one of them. Some of us would die. We knew it and we hung low to the ground for safety.

My tiny bird heart pumped, too full of blood. The huge effort of flying and hugging the brown earth, the panting terror of the boom of the shotgun and the spray of pellets that seemed impossible to avoid made me feel as if my chest would burst. Beside me a dove faltered and fell, mortally wounded. I flew harder, faster, toward consciousness and away from the horror of the dream.

I woke up with my hand on my heart, my forehead sweaty, and the sheets tangled around my legs. It took me a few moments to understand that I was safe in Dahlia House and that the only damage I'd suffered was the dark purple imprint of
Hamilton the Fifth's fingers in my shoulder.

Carl Jung considered each person in the dream to be an aspect of the dreamer. According to Jung, I was me, Hamilton the Fifth,
and
the birds. But I hadn't really bought into that theory of dream analysis. I also knew someone who would have her own opinion of what my night terrors meant. After I'd visited the sheriff, the coroner, and Billie Roberts's auto shop, I'd make one more stop, to see Madame Tomeeka. Oh, yeah, and a side trip to Cece to make sure she covered my lie to
Hamilton the Fifth, if he bothered to call and check out my story of being a reporter for the
Dispatch.

10

The house was strangely empty as I pulled on thick socks and long johns under my gown. Dahlia House was bitterly cold. I stopped in the parlor on my way to the kitchen and pushed back the heavy drapes. The land rolled away from the house in a blanket of white frost. Ice crystals in the sycamore branches and in the tall stubble of the cotton fields glittered as if they'd been coated with fairy dust during the night. My love for Dahlia House lodged in my throat, a physical pain. I could not lose this land. I could not.

Harold's engagement ring came to mind, and I felt a lessening of the dreadful anxiety that swamped me. I could marry him, and I would, if I had to. A great bitterness against my ancestors rose up in me. I'd been bred and trained to live in Dahlia House, to manage the land. After my parents and Aunt LouLane died, I'd been told that Dahlia House was in a precarious financial position, but I hadn't grasped the situation. I'd gone on to college as if Prince Charming would ride over the next hill and sweep me into his multiportfolioed arms. I had expected that love and marriage would rescue me--after a successful stage career.

I had
not
learned to yield those parts of me that had made marriage an agreeable deal for my peers. Marriage, I'd learned by watching my friends, was just another job, and one that often cut deeply into a woman's independence and self-esteem. In the world of Daddy's Girls, woman made life comfortable for man by subjugating herself to his every whim, and man brought home the woolly mammoth of blue-chip stocks. Though I didn't like the system, I could not deny that in more cases than not, it worked. Bliss, or even ordinary happiness, was not guaranteed in any marriage. The Daddy's Girls were not blissful, but nor were they hollow-eyed with anxiety over finances. They had fulfilled their expectations.

Catching the male was an entire course of study for Delta girls, and Ole Miss was the preferred hunting ground. My four years there had been wasted. I should have bagged a man, or at the very least a business or engineering or medical degree. Had I really understood that I, Sarah Booth Delaney, could be parted from my home, I would have learned a profession or trade. I would have learned how to make money so that I didn't have to try and take someone else's, whether by theft or marriage.

What I had done was take my drama minor and my independence to
New York , where'd I'd spent an interesting decade of failure and frustration, for Broadway took no notice of the last of the Delaneys, no matter how hard I tried.

But that was the past, and I had to work with what I had. Even though Tinkie's assignment was giving me some major anxiety and bad-ass dreams, it was something I had a flair for. I could make this work for me, and for my clients. If I discovered the truth of the Garrett family, I could redeem myself for stealing Tinkie's dog. I could return Harold's ring with a tender rejection. In other words, I could afford to be a lady.

I shuffled into the kitchen and put on coffee. The old percolator spurted and sizzled, and in a moment the robust aroma made the kitchen seem warmer. The view out the window was of the cemetery. There were over a hundred graves there. All Delaneys, their spouses, and their children. My parents were there, and Aunt Lou-Lane. And all fifty-seven of her cats.

There was a place for me. And enough room for my husband and children. The Delaneys had been great planners, and when the cemetery had been laid out, people still had large families so they'd allocated plenty of space.

The coffeepot gave its last gurgle. I poured a cup and raced back upstairs to find some clothes. I pulled on jeans, a sweater, and some hiking boots, and then glanced in the mirror. My dark hair was standing on end. When I brushed it, sparks crackled in the cold air, so I settled for a ponytail. I looked like a young girl, and I thought that might work in my favor. On the way out, I stuffed some hundred-dollar bills from Tinkie's ransom into my pocket.

My first stop was the bakery, where I snagged a cheese Danish and more hot coffee. My second call was Cece. She was submerged in an avalanche of paper, and she accepted the treats with a tight smile. I extracted her promise not to blow my cover, before I told her about the small lie to the heir of Knob Hill.

As soon as the words
Hamilton the Fifth were out of my mouth, I realized my own plight was not of the least interest to her. She pushed the papers onto the floor and began patting down her desk in an attempt to locate the telephone. She found it under another stack of papers and waved me out of her office, signaling that I was to close the door.

Well, I thought, walking out of the newspaper building, it served
Hamilton the Fifth right that I'd tattled on him. If he hadn't been such a rude bastard, I would have kept my mouth shut. Now, between Millie and Cece, he would be too busy to worry about me.

I decided that Delo Wiley, discoverer of
Hamilton the Fourth's corpse, would be my next stop. The way I figured it, the men involved in covering up the murder of Guy Garrett, if there was a murder, all knew each other. The man who appeared to have the least power was Delo, a hardscrabble farmer who leased his cornfields to the dove hunters once he'd harvested his crop. Delo wasn't one of the dove-hunting set. Neither was he an elected official, which was another of the male cliques in Zinnia. He was sort of an outsider, and the most likely to talk, in my evaluation.

He lived to the east of town, and I cruised along the blacktop watching the sun burn away the frost. It was a beautiful day with a deep blue sky and golden light. Delo's house was not far from town. His driveway cut through fields of corn stubble, and when I parked and got out, I heard the sound of an ax. He was in his backyard in a stand of cedars, splitting oak logs.

"Morning, Mr. Wiley," I said as I approached, dodging three holes that looked freshly dug.

He swung the ax into the tree stump he was using as a block, and wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve.