Them Bones (17 page)

I sipped the hot black coffee and let the horror of the past wash over and through me. I was not immune. In some way I felt as if I, too, had been a part of it. It would be impossible to live in Dahlia House, filled with relics of the past, and not understand the undeniable link to history.

"Grandma Alice remarried," I pointed out.

"She needed a man to organize the labor in the fields. The free Negroes and white trash wouldn't work for her." Jitty spoke without bitterness. "They wouldn't work for me, either. We were women and not worth listening to."

"But the two of you brought Dahlia House back. You saved it."

"And your grandmother had to marry to see that it was safe," she pointed out, and the sadness in her eyes was replaced by fire. "Which isn't a point I intended to make, but it's a dang good one now that I'm here at it."

"I'm well aware of the Delaney ability to sacrifice life, limb, and womb in the name of heritage." And I was, but I wasn't going to follow that particular martyr's path.

"So when are you seeing Harold?" Jitty asked.

"I don't know." I finished the coffee, brushed the crumbs into the box, and flipped back the covers. "But I'm seeing
Hamilton this afternoon." I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to pay another visit to Knob Hill. "Cece has offered me a job if I can get an interview. It's a good excuse to talk with
Hamilton . He can't deny me, because he knows I'm destitute without the newspaper job. Code of the South."

"How'd you get an appointment with him?" she asked.

"I don't have one, which isn't the issue. The important thing is, what am I going to wear?"

"Just go naked. It'll save a lot of time," Jitty mumbled.

"Too cold to go naked," I answered, popping out of the bed. I felt young and impulsive. "And I don't have the right coat. Naked requires some magnificent fake fur." I reached into the closet. "What about this red sweater dress?" I asked, lifting it from the rack. Even though Jitty wasn't going to be any real help, I wanted to discuss wardrobe with someone.

"Why not just wear a sign that says, 'I'm a sexually frustrated slut'?"

Perhaps the red sweater dress was a little clingy. "The green wool suit? I'm working on a holiday theme."

"You've been so fond of that muumuu, why not show him the real Sarah Booth Delaney?"

"I don't want to scare him off. At least not yet." Jitty's barbed remarks couldn't dampen my spirit. I pulled out a beige suit and pushed it back.

"Try your jeans and a sweater," Jitty said, shaking her head. "You go all dolled up like the Queen of Sheba, he's going to know you're trying to impress him. Go the other way, real casual. That'll keep him guessing."

I looked at her and realized the wisdom in her words. "Sometimes, Jitty, I'm almost glad you're my own personal haint."

"I don't belong to you, and I wouldn't give you advice if I didn't have a stake in the outcome here. I want a baby, and I guess it doesn't matter to me how you get one. Just get one."

"I'll do my best," I said as I headed for the bathroom with my jeans and a dark blue sweater with gold piping tucked under my arm.

I hadn't made it to the door before 1 heard the second disruption of the morning. Instead of the chime of the bell, someone was trying to beat the front door down.

"Just a dang minute," I called as I dropped my clothes and ran barefoot down the stairs. Jitty was right. We needed a butler. I looked out the peephole and stepped back from the door. Of all the people I expected to see, it wasn't Gordon Walters all dressed up in his deputy's uniform. He had that lean and hungry look that made me think he could beat up a suspect in a jail cell. I cracked the door slightly.

"Yes," I said. "Can I help you?"

"Sarah Booth Delaney, I have some questions to ask you." He didn't sound friendly at all.

"I'm getting dressed, and I have appointments all day. How about tomorrow?" I didn't want to answer any of his stupid questions at any time. I didn't want him in my house. He'd tried to intimidate me in the sheriff's office, and he'd succeeded. But he was on my turf now.

"I'm afraid you'll have to postpone the activities you planned for today."

Now that stopped me short. "And why would that be?" I asked haughtily.

"Delo "Wiley was killed yesterday."

16

I sat in the straight-backed chair beside Gordon Walters's desk and resisted the impulse to scratch my head. My hair wasn't dirty, but Gordon had hustled me out of the house without a chance to shower, much less soak in a hot tub. At the moment, I was more concerned about my personal hygiene than about the fact that the moron with the badge considered me a suspect in a killing. Or at least that was the implication, though he hadn't come out and said as much.

"What business did you conduct with Mr. Wiley at ten-hundred hours on the morning of November twenty-eight?" Gordon asked, his eyes foxy and mean.

"We had a lengthy discussion about the weather." I knew I was only prolonging my agony, but I couldn't help myself. I hadn't been offered a phone call, and though I had no intention of calling a lawyer, it did cross my mind to call Harold. The Bank of Zinnia no doubt held the mortgage on everything Gordon Walters owned or ever hoped to own. Gordon was messing with me--and one act of terrorism deserved another.

"Strange that you'd visit an old man you hardly knew to discuss the weather," Gordon said, showing his willingness to play my game.

I checked the time. It was ten o'clock. I'd give Gordon an hour for his fun. I settled back into the chair, crossed my legs man-style, and lifted my chin. "I've been thinking about growing corn at Dahlia House. The fields have been fallow for the last eight years. I think I could get a pretty good crop. Delo grew corn, so I stopped by for a chat."

Gordon picked up a pack of Marlboros and shook out a cigarette. He offered it to me with a grin that some women would have found intriguing. "Are you going to have time to farm while you're writing your book?" Gordon asked.

I considered the cigarette but shook my head. It had been three years since I'd smoked. "Working both activities simultaneously will produce synergy."

"No wonder your eyes are brown," he answered, but there was something new in his expression. Open curiosity. "You're not the average little Delta belle, are you?" he asked.

I chose to ignore the condescending personal question and directed my answer to the real reason I was downtown in the sheriff's office. "Look, I don't know what happened to Mr. Wiley," I said. "I talked to him, but not about anything that would get him killed." I suddenly remembered his warning to me about stepping outside the boundaries of my "class." He had said I was drifting onto dangerous ground. But it had proven more dangerous for him.

"Something wrong?" Gordon asked.

He was rather astute. I suddenly wished the sheriff would walk through the door. "Where's Coleman?" I asked.

"Gone to
Jackson to pick up some state funds. He won't be back until tomorrow." Gordon grinned. "I'm in charge."

"Look, Deputy Walters, I'm not involved in this. But I have some ideas. Tell me about the body. How was he killed?"

Gordon stared at me. "You want to see?"

I most certainly did not, but there was a challenge in his question, and I wasn't about to show that I'd never viewed a murder scene. In fact, Gordon hadn't said whether it was murder or not. "Killing" was a rather generic term that meant death but not necessarily murder.

"Sure," I said, "let's go."

He let me ride in the front seat of the patrol car, but he didn't look at me or talk to me as we drove out of town toward the flat, open fields. It gave me a chance to study his profile, and I duly noted the roguish nose that had been broken, the rugged looks that might be considered handsome.

"Was Delo shot?" I asked.

"Very effectively."

"Could it have been suicide?"

"Not unless he pulled the trigger with his toe and then got his boot back on with only a bloody stump for a head."

Now that was an image I didn't want rattling around in my brain, but it bore a shocking resemblance to the death of Hamilton Garrett the Fourth. The graphic details were meant to deter me from asking other questions. "So it was a shotgun?"

"A twelve-gauge." Gordon turned right. "It must have happened about eleven hundred hours yesterday."

Just before Sunday dinner.

"Where were you about that time?" he asked.

"Painting my fingernails." I held out my hands for him to see the Little Red Russet shade. I had indeed been getting ready for Harold's soiree. I started to ask where the shooting had taken place, but we'd turned down Delo's drive, passed the house, and headed out across the cornfield. The patrol car bumped gamely over the rows of brown cornstalks. A clutch of doves flew up to the right, and I watched them line out on the horizon and fly hard and straight.

I remembered the dream I'd had. The one that Tammy had also had. Though it was morning, and bright and cold, the day had taken on the muted tones of the dream.

We bumped over Delo's fields until I spotted an ambulance and several other vehicles up ahead. It had not occurred to me that the body would still be at the scene. The parallel to
Hamilton the Fourth's death was unmistakable. No wonder Gordon was smiling that secret little smile. So this was going to be another of those warnings about consequence--as in each action has one. But I couldn't help but wonder why both Gordon and Hamilton the younger seemed so determined to make that point with me. The obvious answer was that
Hamilton had killed his mother, and Pasco Walters had covered it up. Gordon's involvement came in protecting his dead father's name. Honor has always been a tyrant of the South. A man's good name is, often, all he owns.

The car stopped, and I got out without being told and walked toward the cluster of men. Fel Harper nodded at me, and I recognized Isaac Carter, who looked out of place in his double-breasted suit and gleaming loafers. He stared at me before he turned a hateful look at Gordon. There was no love lost between the two of them.

There was also another deputy, and two black men who were trying to put leashes on several hounds that lunged and whimpered at the overgrowth.

"Sarah Booth," Fel said. "I didn't realize you were interested in current murders." He shot Gordon a curious look.

"I'm a woman with a lot of interests," I said, determined not to be upset by whatever they showed me. My great delivery of the line was somewhat offset by the fact that I stumbled in a deep hole and almost fell down. Gordon's hand steadied me. His eyes narrowed at the hole as he helped me to level ground.

The men had gathered at the edge of a twelve-by-twelve-foot patch of thick growth, mostly young trees and weeds that were out of place in the otherwise open field. As I stepped closer, I saw the old stump in the center of the growth. Swinging around, I caught a glint of sunlight on the river in the distance. We were in the Mule Bog field--the same spot where Guy Garrett had been shot and killed.

"Good thing Cooley and James followed the dogs over here," Fel said. "No tellin' how long Delo woulda laid here."

I looked at the black men. Their faces revealed no emotion, but the older one shook his head slowly. "It's an awful thing," he said. "Delo never harmed a soul."

"Delo got any folks?" Fel asked.

The older black man shook his head again. "His sister died last year. There's no one left."

"You ready for me to load him up?" Fel asked Gordon.

"Let the writer have a look," Gordon said.

I was afraid I'd get sick, but I stepped through the men to the edge of the bushes and caught sight of Delo's feet. I kept my focus there for a long time, taking in the laced-up work boots that looked almost new. He was on his stomach, indicating, I supposed, that he'd been shot from behind. The shotgun was beside the body.

I finally let my gaze travel up to the place where his head should have been. Gordon had not exaggerated. I was strangely calm in the face of such harsh destruction.

"That's the murder weapon?" I asked. Why would the killer leave the gun? I bent down to examine it more closely. It was a Remington 870 pump. Something had been removed from the stock.

"We'll test it out for fingerprints," Gordon said. "Ballistics can't do much with a shotgun except confirm it was number eight pellets."

I was more than ready to leave, but I knew that I was not in charge. Whatever purpose was behind Gordon's decision to bring me here, he wasn't finished.

"Did Mr. Wiley say anything to you that might indicate he was worried about someone being after him?" Gordon asked.

"Not to me, but I wasn't friends with Mr. Wiley. I wasn't someone he would confide in."

"Don't you find it odd that you pay a visit to a man and soon after he ends up dead?" Gordon asked.

They were all staring at me, all except for Cooley and James, who had gathered the dogs and headed, wordlessly, back across the field. I started to call out to them to wait for me, but I knew they'd keep walking. They wouldn't even turn around and look, and I didn't blame them.

"I find it odd that you connect my visit with his death." I flipped my limp hair off my shoulder. "I find it odd that you connect talk of corn crops with murder." I turned to address Isaac Carter. "And I find it odd that you're out here, Mr. Carter, but since you are, I've been meaning to stop by and talk with you. When would be a good time?"

Carter didn't say a word.

"I called Mr. Carter here because I was reminded of the death of Mr. Garrett the Fourth," Fel said quickly. "I wanted someone who'd seen the prior accident to take a look at this one. To back up my memory."

"And it's identical, isn't it? Except there's no reason to pretend this one was an accident." I was surprised by the anger I felt. An old man was dead, and no one standing around his corpse really seemed to give a damn. "I'll tell you something Delo told me that should be of interest. He didn't hunt. And neither did Mr. Garrett. Yet both of them are dead in a dove field. That tells me that dove fields in
Sunflower County are a mighty dangerous place to be."

I turned to Gordon. "You can take me back or not. I'll walk. But I'm not staying here." I wasn't sick from seeing the body, but I was cold. It was an arctic freeze that went straight through the bone. "I'll call for an appointment," I said to Carter as I started walking across the field, dodging two more holes, one freshly dug and quite deep. Gordon hadn't charged me with anything. He couldn't hold me. I was going home.

"Miss Delaney," Gordon said, catching my elbow. "Get in the car. I'll take you home."

I was too cold to argue. As I started back his way, another clutch of doves flushed out from just at my feet. The flutter of their wings was loud and crisp, and for one terrifying second, I thought I could feel the drumming beat of their hearts.

The sky above me began to spin and I felt my knees buckle as the memory of the dream seemed to drown me. A strong hand gripped me and steadied me, and in another second I had regained my equilibrium.

"Are you okay?" Gordon asked.

"Yes," I said, surprised that I could talk so calmly. "I'm perfectly fine. Just take me home."

We made the drive in silence while I pondered the message Gordon was so clearly giving me: Mind my own business. Delo had talked, and look what happened to him.

It had not escaped me that Delo's murder coincided with
Hamilton 's unexpected return. But
Hamilton was accused of his mother's death, not his father's. How would Delo's death benefit
Hamilton ? Or, for that matter, Gordon Walters?

Was it realistic to think a man would go to such lengths to protect his family name? There were numerous case studies of aberrant behavior of men and women who did terrible things for just that reason. Gordon had a manic glint in his feral eyes. And he had followed his father's footsteps into law enforcement, a classic sign of the underdeveloped personality.

"Very interesting."

Gordon's tone of voice snapped me out of my reverie, and I looked up to find we were at Dahlia House and Hamilton the Fifth was sitting on my front porch.
Hamilton flicked a cigarette butt over the porch rail and rose to his feet as we pulled to a stop.

"Boll weevil!" I said with emotion, feeling a rush of warmth to my face. Of all the times for
Hamilton to pay a surprise visit, it would be when I'd just been to a murder scene in a dove field.

"I didn't realize you and Mr. Garrett were friends," Gordon said as he stopped the cruiser at the front door. He opened his door as if he was going to get out.

"Thanks for the lift. Now go away." I got out quickly and walked away from him. I had no idea what
Hamilton was doing at my house, but I didn't want Gordon hanging around eavesdropping.

I started across the lawn.
Hamilton , with his long hair gathered back at the nape of his neck, looked very Continental. As I walked up the steps, I suddenly wondered if he'd figured out I'd gone through his coat pockets at Harold's party. Perhaps I'd been too rash in sending Gordon away.

"I need to talk with you," he said.

The skin beneath my right eye began to twitch. I could feel it flutter every time he looked at me. "Delo Wiley was killed yesterday," I said, and remembering the awful scene in the dove field effectively squelched my twitches.

If I had expected a reaction,
Hamilton disappointed me. I couldn't tell if he'd already heard the news, or if he simply didn't care. His lack of response provoked me further.

"He was shot on the exact spot your father was killed."

Ah, I saw a narrowing of his eyes, but nothing more. He came toward me across the porch.

"My father's death was ruled accidental."

Perhaps he had spent so many years accepting the facts that he'd drained them of emotion. It still surprised me that he spoke so calmly, especially when I so clearly believed that Guy Garrett had been deliberately shot. And I had assumed that he believed that, too. Believed it and may have acted on it.

"Your father was murdered," I said. "You and I both know this. I suspect a lot of people know it, but no one wants to acknowledge it. Why is that?"

Hamilton 's eyes had grown cold. "Sheriff Walters didn't see it that way. He felt it was a hunting accident," he said carefully. "This doesn't really concern you."

"What do
you
believe?" I asked.

"I believe this is a subject best left where it is," he said, coming down the steps so that he stood beside me. "But your interest in it makes me wonder. Why do you care what happened to my father twenty years ago?"

It was a good question. I wished I had a good answer. "I'm writing a book," I said.

"So I've been told,"
Hamilton replied, and there was something hot in his eyes now. "Did it ever occur to you that I might object to being the vehicle you ride to save your home? Did you ever stop to think of the repercussions your book might have on my family?"

He had me there. I had not thought of those things, because I had no intention of writing a book. But I couldn't very well tell him I was prying into his business because of Tinkie.

"It's a work of fiction," I fumbled.

"Fiction based on my family tragedies," he answered. He leaned closer. "Do you have any idea what it might have been like for me? My family destroyed, me forced to leave my home and everyone I knew. I don't think you can possibly imagine, because if you could, writing a book would be the last thing on your mind."

One look into his eyes and I knew that though he presented himself as a controlled man, there were hot passions boiling beneath the surface. Unfortunately, they were not the kind of passions that ended up with sweaty bodies tangled in sheets.

"I don't want to hurt anyone," I said.

"Then you'll drop this and quit prying into my business?"

I couldn't go that far. "Don't you want to know what really happened to your father?" I countered.

Hamilton 's eyes narrowed. "I came to appeal to your conscience. I had hoped to make you understand that my family has suffered enough." He stepped closer to me, so close I could feel his breath as he said softly, "Find another host to bleed."

He'd ambushed me on my own porch. I wasn't responsible for what had happened to his family, or to Delo. I grabbed his hand and halted him. "Did you kill your mother?"

I had hoped to shock him, perhaps even to wound him. I was disappointed. His lips thinned but held the shape of a smile. "I may have misjudged you. Perhaps a tabloid would be a more suitable employer than
The Zinnia Dispatch.'"
He shook free of me and got in his car.

17

Jitty sat on the closed toilet lid as I slowly sank beneath the hot water in the tub. Instead of being irritated at her for invading my privacy, I was glad she was there. I didn't want to be alone.

"Sarah Booth, get out of that tub."

Neither was I inclined to be bossed. "I'm never getting out," I answered as I surfaced long enough to turn the hot water on with my toe. "I'm staying here for the rest of my life. He thinks I'm slime. He thinks I'm a parasite, a tick, a leech, a maggot feeding on the corpse of his family."

"The best relationships start off with an honest awareness of each other," Jitty said. "He knows the worst about you. It can only go up from here."

I wiped the soapy water out of one eye and looked at her. "Thanks."

"It's true. All isn't lost. Now you just have to figure out a way to make him see the other aspects of your character."

I didn't like it that Jitty had accepted, without a qualm, that I was a bloodsucking insect. But I was surprised at her willingness to help me where
Hamilton was concerned. She had begun to mellow toward him.

"What do you suggest?" I asked, sitting up and turning off the water. "Give me one good plan."

"Hummm. Too bad he doesn't have a dog," she said.

I caught the hint of her smile. I chuckled for the first time since
Hamilton 's departure, and reached for a towel.

"Seems to me
Hamilton would be grateful to you if you discovered who killed his daddy," Jitty pointed out.

"Unless it was his mother, which then provoked him to kill her," I explained as I dried off.

"Climb on out," Jitty ordered.

I shook off a leg and put it on the floor, following with the other. It was noon and I was hungry again.

"You got to come up with a plan," she said. "You're in too deep to back off now. And
Hamilton will come 'round once he realizes you're on his side."

"I didn't realize you'd made a study of Pollyannaism," I said sarcastically.

"Seems to me the obvious step is a visit to that fancy sanitarium up at Friars Point," she said as she vanished through the wall, her nose straight up in the air and her Afro shaking with indignity.

I hung up the thick towel and considered my accomplishments for the morning. I'd eaten two thousand empty pastry calories, viewed a bloody corpse, given Gordon Walters food for thought by allowing him to see
Hamilton at my home, pissed off the aforementioned
Hamilton , and gotten Jitty in a snit. The day was proving to be exceptional.

Jitty did have a point, however. Since
Hamilton was never going to speak with me again, it seemed Sylvia was the next best possibility. But could I put any trust in what a crazy woman said? Hah! That was the pot calling the kettle black. I'd just had a fight with a ghost.

I went to my room and pulled on jeans and a red sweater. Something bright. But not even my reflection in the mirror cheered me as I applied some makeup and trudged down to the kitchen. I ate cold chunks of turkey and pumpkin pie and headed out into thin sunshine that was more glare than heat.

I'd get to Friars Point, eventually. But first I was going to Billie's Garage. I knew about as much about mechanicking as I did about sleuthing, but I wasn't going to let that hold me back. I opened the hood of my beloved Roadster and wiggled one of the spark plug wires.

When I turned the ignition, the car sputtered and coughed. The smooth purr of the engine was gone. And though it hurt me to drive it into town in that condition, I headed straight to Billie's Garage, lurching and backfiring.

I couldn't remember if Billie was older or younger than Millie, or if they were actually twins, as their names implied. I pulled into the apron of the garage and got out. A slender man in his mid-fifties came toward me. He didn't look exactly like Millie, but pretty damn close.

"Mornin', Sarah Booth." He eyed the Roadster with great pleasure, even letting his fingers brush the Chinese-red paint of the fender. "Nice car, but it's running a little rough."

"Can you fix it? I've got to take a trip, and it was running fine yesterday." Not a lie. I'd begun to wonder if the weight of all my falsehoods would crush me.

"Pull 'er into the garage," he said, waving me into an empty slot.

I did as he instructed and then went inside to wait while he examined the car. The waiting room was dirty, with a coffeepot smudged with greasy black fingerprints and a stack of Styrofoam cups that also looked as if one hundred and one dalmatians had shaken their spots all over it. Behind the waiting room was the office. It was a small, airless place, which offered not a single excuse for my presence if Billie caught me. So, of course, I went right in.

In the movies or on television, spies and detectives go exactly to the place where the important documents are kept. Though I'd watched millions of those scenes, I still had no idea how they did that. I took the desk first, pulling open drawers only to discover heaps of screws, tape, paper clips, pens, wadded-up bits of paper, magnets, wires, screwdrivers, and assorted other tools, including a crowbar. There was an old check ledger, but all of the stubs were unused. Billie's accounting system was eerily like mine.

I banged open the old metal filing cabinet and came across a grimy series of manila folders. To my delight, they were organized by name, and all of the names were folks I recognized. The tabs were handwritten, some in a neat, feminine cursive hand and others in a crablike scrawl. Had Millie been here?

The Garrett file was in its proper alphabetical place, and I felt a real thrill of excitement that I'd found it. Pulling it out, I sat down in the creaky, greasy chair and spread it open on the desk.

The stack of yellow paid receipts was impressive. The fact that they ended in 1980 was a blessing, and more to the point, the receipt right on the top of the stack was for Veronica Garrett's little convertible. I inhaled sharply at the date. Feb. 10, 1980. It was the day she died!

The car had been in Billie's shop. I closed my eyes as I thought of what Millie had said. I'd never really considered her a suspect. Until now.

The bill was for a general checkup on the car, and I saw that Billie had replaced the oil filter, changed the oil, checked the timing belt and found it okay, rotated the tires, and lubed the chassis. He'd replaced a fuse for the horn and given the car a clean bill of health. He'd even noted that it had twenty-four thousand and five miles on it, a 1979 Jaguar XKE. Hunter green with tan leather interior. Veronica had done some serious road-running in the year she'd owned the car. But the Delta was so vast, and with shopping trips to
Memphis , parties hither and yon, and two children in boarding school, the miles would add up, I supposed. Or she could have burned all that rubber meeting her lover.