Bone Appétit (36 page)

I tried to wrench free of Coleman, but he enfolded me in his arms and held me against his chest, which I pounded with bitter fury. “I have to see her.”

“She’s Oscar’s wife. Let him be with her.”

“No!” I struck him repeatedly. “No! No!”

Gentle hands took my shoulders and I turned to find Hedy beside me. Those huge blue eyes, so much like Tinkie’s, were filled with tears.

“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I never should have involved you.”

“Let’s get her out of here.” Coleman edged me away from the door. “There’s nothing you can do, Sarah Booth. A specialist is on the way from Boston, but Doc says there was permanent damage to Tinkie’s nervous system.”

There was no point arguing, but I would not accept that diagnosis. I’d seen Tinkie. She’d been zombie-like, but no more so than the three of us. “What’s wrong with all of you? You’re quitting. You’ve given up. That’s Tinkie in there we’re talking about. Without her, what’s the point of Zinnia or Sunflower County or any of this?” I waved my arm wildly, encompassing the world, the universe.

“Sarah Booth, there’s nothing we can do. Doc—”

I shook off their hands. “I have lost too much. Do you hear me? I have lost too much. I will not let Tinkie go.”

I brushed past him and stomped out of the hospital. Hedy was right on my heels. When I tried to get in the SUV, she blocked the door. “You shouldn’t drive. You’re too upset.”

That she was right only made me more furious. “Stop telling me what I can’t do. Why don’t you tell me what I can?” I glared at her. “I wish you did know the secrets of Marie Laveau. I wish you were a conjure woman who could whip up a spell and save my friend.”

Hedy took a deep breath. “I can’t, Sarah Booth. But I know someone who can. No promises, but she might be able to help.”

“Who?”

“My mother.” She reached out her hand, and I put my cell phone in it.

An hour passed while I paced back and forth outside the hospital as night fell around me. Jansen was trying to sweat some answers out of Voncil. The beauty pageant dessert event had been cancelled. Graf had landed in Memphis and was on his way. I welcomed the news, but it brought me no comfort. My focus was Tinkie. Totally.

An old truck careened into the hospital parking lot on two wheels. It halted at the curb near where I stood and Hedy and Samuel scrambled out.

She handed me a small vial. “Mother can’t make any promises. I told her about the scopolamine, part of the deadly nightshade family. She knew the properties and effects. She said to try this and she would pray for your friend.”

“What is it?” I examined the vial in my hand.

“A lot of things. Samuel helped me find all the ingredients I needed.”

“What do I do?”

“Blow it into her mouth and nostrils. She has to inhale it. That’s the way Tinkie was originally poisoned, right? The same way as us?”

I didn’t know. No one knew except Voncil, and she wasn’t talking. Not even when Amanda begged her to help Tinkie. Not even when Cece questioned her. I hadn’t heard the details, but I had no reason to believe Cece had been as restrained as law officers.

I looked at the vial. Did I believe this could help Tinkie? I had no other choice. I had to believe, and I had to believe it with every ounce of my heart. Tinkie had taught me that
lesson—I couldn’t go into something like this half-assed. I had to be in it 100 percent.

Every time I’d checked in the last hour, the medical team was expecting death at any moment.

“How will you get in?” Hedy asked.

“That’s where you come in.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Samuel said.

“I need a diversion. Start a fight, pretend you were raped, say that the high school or church or something is on fire. Do whatever it takes to get Coleman and the rest of them away from the door.”

Hedy nodded. “We can do that.” She took Samuel’s hand and they huddled together, plotting, as they approached the ER entrance.

I followed, the vial unnoticeable in my hand. At the door, Hedy and Samuel paused. They nodded to each other, and then burst inside. Hedy was screaming rape and Samuel was grabbing and fake punching her.

All hell broke loose. In the melee, I slipped past Coleman and everyone else and into the room where Tinkie remained unchanged. Oscar faced me, the sorrow and sadness falling away to reveal fury. “Get out!” he demanded.

So this was what Coleman had hoped to spare me from.

“You dragged her into this dangerous job. You made her love it. This rests at your feet, Sarah Booth.”

Each word was like the slice of a knife blade. I forced myself into the onslaught. Nothing mattered except that I get to Tinkie.

“Stay away from my wife.” Oscar’s eyes were crazed with grief and anger. “I’ll hurt you if you so much as touch her.”

I ignored him. I was only three feet from Tinkie. I felt his hand grip my shoulder, but I shrugged him off. I flipped the
top off the vial and dumped the white powder into my palm. With my free hand I opened Tinkie’s mouth. I blew the contents of the vial into her face.

Oscar struck me sideways in a tackle, and I went flying across the room. We tumbled in a heap against the wall as the door burst open and Coleman and Graf rushed in. Coleman restrained Oscar while Graf pulled me into his arms.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” If my legs had snapped in six places, it wouldn’t have stopped me from struggling to my feet. I had to get to Tinkie. It was time for her to wake up.

I pushed Graf aside and hobbled to the stretcher. “Tinkie! Tinkie!” I shook her shoulder.

“Don’t touch her!” Oscar thrashed about in Coleman’s grip.

“Tinkie.” She lay there, pale, barely breathing, unmoving. “Tinkie.” Her skin was cool, too cool. There was no response whatsoever. I kissed her cold cheek.

The monitors that registered her fading life force beeped and then screamed as a flat line scored across the screen.

“Damn you, Sarah Booth,” Oscar cried out. “Damn you. She’s gone, and I wasn’t even holding her hand.”

The vial lay crushed and empty on the floor where I’d dropped it in the struggle with Oscar. I touched Tinkie’s cheek. Surely someone could help. Someone had to help. I wasn’t strong enough to do this alone.

Doc Sawyer stopped at the door. A doctor and nurse pushed their way through.

“No.” It was the only thing I could say.

The doctor checked the machines. “She’s gone,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Time of death, nine twenty-eight.” He reached for the sheet.

“No!” I struck his hand hard. “Oscar!” I spun, looking for him. “Oscar!”

Oscar’s anger was gone, drained. There was nothing left but grief.

“Oscar.” I dragged him toward the stretcher. “Kiss her.”

Oscar put a hand on my arm, the touch of a dead man. “She’s gone, Sarah Booth.”

“Kiss her,” I commanded.

The room was frozen. No one moved to help me or stop me. The horror of my actions held everyone in place.

I had to believe. To rely on what I knew to do. “Kiss her,” I told him. I waved the doctor and nurse out of the way.

There was no fight left in Oscar, and he leaned down and gently kissed her lips.

Without urging, he kissed her again. “Tinkie!” he whispered her name.

The beep of the machine was like an explosion in the room. A tiny green spike blipped across a black screen. Tinkie!

I went to the other side of the stretcher and picked up her hand. “Tinkie. Come back to us.”

The numbers on the screen began to climb as the faintest tinge of pink touched her features. When I pressed my lips to her cheek, it was warm with the flush of life. “Tinkie!”

She opened her blue eyes and stared at Oscar and then me. “Hey,” she said softly. “I had the weirdest dream.”

Sweetie Pie and Chablis cavorted in the front yard of Dahlia House, wiggling and wallowing in the sun-warmed grass. Graf and I had slept in. Though it was near noon, we were on the front porch sipping our first cup of coffee. We’d discussed none of the events of the previous night, and they lay between us like quicksand. For now, we could skirt the edges and take comfort in the joy of each other’s company. Tinkie was safe. Voncil was behind bars. Chief Jansen had obtained an order from the judge for Hedy to see Vivian once the Wellingtons brought her back from Memphis.

Karrie Kompton and Hedy had been disqualified from the competition, and Amanda had withdrawn.

“Do you want to go back to Greenwood to see Crystal Belle Wadell crowned as Miss Viking?” Graf asked.

I shook my head. Tinkie had been transferred to the Sunflower County Hospital, though she was insisting she was well enough to go home. I had no reason to go back to Greenwood.

“Who’s that coming up the drive?” Graf asked, rising to his feet.

Coleman’s brown patrol unit led several others. It wasn’t until the entourage stopped and the passengers climbed out that I recognized Hedy, holding the hand of her beautiful daughter, Vivian. Cece and Oscar joined them.

“I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee,” Graf said.

“Let’s help him,” Coleman said, nudging Cece along clearly against her will.

“We’ll all help,” Hedy said, following them inside.

Oscar and I were left alone on the porch. “I didn’t mean what I said, Sarah Booth. It wasn’t your fault.”

I could have told him I hadn’t wanted to take the case. I’d argued against it. I could have told him Tinkie pressed me into it. None of it was important. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“It does to me, and to Tinkie. In the hospital, when she couldn’t move or communicate, she heard everything I said. My wife is highly agitato with me.” The tiniest smile flitted across his face. “I love the fact she’s pissed off. She can stay mad at me every day for the rest of her life, and it’ll be okay. Anything is preferable to her being so . . . sick.”

“I know what you mean.” I sat down on the steps and patted a place for him beside me. “You don’t have to apologize. You were scared.”

“I knew Tinkie wanted to keep the agency alive. It wasn’t you, but I lashed out, anyway. I owe you my life, Sarah Booth, and the way I treated you shames me.”

I put my arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “Forget it, Oscar. I have.”

“You won’t close the agency? Tinkie made me promise to ask.”

I weighed the truth against what Tinkie needed to hear. “I won’t make any decisions until my partner can make them with me.”

“Thank you, Sarah Booth. If you quit now, Tinkie will never forgive me.”

“Go grab a cup of coffee, Oscar. Ask Hedy to come out here.”

In a moment Hedy and Vivian slipped out the heavy front door. Abandoning the adults, Vivian skipped into the yard to play with the dogs. Hedy sat beside me. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Are you okay?”

“The best I’ve been in years. I have my daughter and, thanks to you, I’ve breached the wall between my mother and myself.”

The wind kicked up, ruffling the bright green leaves of the sycamore tree. Aunt Loulane used to say that when the wind rattled the tree branches, a spirit was passing by. “What was in the potion you made for Tinkie?”

Doc Sawyer had analyzed the powder and found nothing except finely ground salt, baking soda, and trace amounts of cocaine.

Hedy put a hand on my back. “What does it matter? It worked.”

“But Doc said—”

“Don’t question it, Sarah Booth. You believed it would work. You took the risk and administered it. And it worked.
Accept the miracle with grace and stop trying to find a reason to disbelieve. The true art of conjure has as much to do with believing as with any medicinal herbs.”

She stood up. “Vivian wants to get some of her things at the Wellingtons’ and see her grandparents before we leave. Marcus won’t be there.” A slow smile spread across her face. “He’s recuperating in the tender care of Karrie Kompton.”

“Good luck with that,” I said. “And Anna?”

“Returned to Massachusetts. I don’t believe she’ll ever be able to forgive Mother for what happened to my father. She’s so bitter. Now she’s going to lose Vivian, too. But after some time passes, I’m going to try to talk with her. One thing I’ve learned is that time passes too quickly to hold anger and hard feelings. And Vivian and I have a lot to look forward to.”

“Where are you going?” Dynamics had shifted on all fronts in a matter of hours.

“Hollywood, for a short time. Belinda Buck has a guest spot for me and Vivian on a television show she’s producing. Your wonderful boyfriend found us a place to stay. Things are working out, thanks to you and Mrs. Richmond.”

“For heaven’s sake, call her Tinkie.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “I’ll do that. And as soon as I get my first check, I’ll pay you what I owe you.”

The front door opened and the three most important men in my life came out together, along with one of my very best friends.

“That was some Sleeping Beauty number you conjured up, dahling,” Cece said. “The fairy princess deep in the throes of a deathlike sleep. Then the magical kiss. I want an exclusive interview this afternoon.”

“You’ll have to get it from Tinkie,” I told her. “She’s the journalist in the detective agency.”

Coleman avoided direct eye contact, but he kissed my
cheek. “You had me worried, Sarah Booth. But that’s nothing new. When I get used to it, I’ll know we’re both in trouble.”

We settled on the porch to finish our coffee and watch Vivian play with the dogs. She was a fiercely beautiful child, and she had no reserves about expressing her joy with Sweetie and Chablis. I was unprepared for the pounding bolt of loss that shot through me.

“I want a fresh cup.” I needed a moment alone. The last week had overwhelmed me emotionally and physically.

In the kitchen I wiped the tears from my eyes. One day Graf and I would have a child to gambol on the front lawn. A child as beautiful as Vivian.

“Tick tock, Sarah Booth.” Jitty’s soft voice, as rich and black as the Delta soil, came from a spot near the sink.

“For heaven’s sake, have a shred of compassion, Jitty. I’m wrung out. Don’t start that Delaney womb shit right now.”

“Shoo your company off the porch and you and that good-lookin’ man get upstairs and set to work on makin’ us an heir.”