Bone Appétit (7 page)

Two big men with scowls headed our way.

“Tammy, what is it?” I asked.

“I have to get out of here. Stay away from those girls, Sarah Booth. You and Tinkie both.” She pointed up at the stage. All of the contestants—except Brook Oniada—were staring at Madame Tomeeka as if she’d cursed in church.

Something else was going on with Brook. She faltered, slowly spinning in a circle as if she’d lost her vision. She staggered, almost dropping to her knees, but she caught herself. The fire batons sputtered as her arms jerked. There was nothing I could do to help Brook. I had my hands full with Tammy.

“Sit back down,” I whispered harshly to her.

“Get me outside. Stay away from them.” Tammy was terrified, and her fingers dug into my arm.

“Other than Tinkie taking photographs, we don’t have anything to do with them.” I stepped in front of her and the approaching bouncers, effectively blocking the bum’s rush she was about to get. “What did you see?”

“I saw flames—”

Screams erupted from the stage. Brook Oniada was on fire. The flame from her batons had ignited her clothes and hair, and she was a human torch. Instead of screaming and running, though, she stood perfectly still. She raised one hand and pointed at Hedy. “Help me.”

Pageant contestants fled the stage, pushing, shoving, and stumbling over one another. Only Hedy remained. She held her violin in one hand and the bow in the other, and she
didn’t move, mesmerized by the sight of her burning competitor.

At last she dropped the bow and reached out her hand. So help me, it was like a moment from a nightmare. Hedy said something, but in the pandemonium I couldn’t hear.

Clive Gladstone leaped onto the stage and wrapped his coat around Brook, effectively smothering the flames that had danced along her arms and head. Several men joined him, doing their best to help Brook and drag Hedy off the stage. The audience beat a hasty retreat. Cece and Tinkie were all over it, a journalistic double-team.

Paramedics and police officers arrived and loaded Brook onto a stretcher. They whisked her away, leaving Mrs. Phelps to urge what remained of the audience to leave the auditorium in an orderly manner. Tammy and I filed out with the noisy crowd that hummed with whispers and sobs. Tammy was shaken, but no more than I.

We arrived at the Cadillac, and Tammy leaned against it.

“Tell me exactly what you saw,” I said softly. “You saw the flames before it happened.”

She didn’t face me, but stared into the dark night. “I saw someone burning. And I heard screaming. I didn’t know who it was, but I knew it involved those girls.” Her breath was ragged as she inhaled. “If I were you, I’d find me another hotel to stay in. There’s someone truly evil around those girls, someone who will stop at nothing to attain the goal.”

I mulled over the warning as Tinkie and Cece approached. They both looked shell-shocked, and I felt a rush of anger that we hadn’t been able to escape suffering and cruelty for even a week at a damn cooking school. Private investigators are often forced to confront hard things. And Cece, even though she was technically the society editor, was always in the thick of the news. But enough was enough. I’d
come to Greenwood to heal, not watch a lovely young girl become a human torch. And Tammy had made it clear she thought the incident was no accident.

“Are you okay?” Tinkie asked us. She was ashen.

“What happened?”

“No one knows for certain. The speculation is that the flames from the fire baton jumped and caught in her hair.” Cece tucked her notebook into her purse. “I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.”

“What are the police doing?” Tammy asked. “This didn’t just happen. Someone made that girl burn.”

Cece, Tinkie, and I exchanged looks at Tammy’s tone. “His name is Franz Jansen, and he’s investigating,” Cece said. “Let’s hope this was just an awful accident.”

Tammy snorted and opened the car door and sat down.

“Tammy, this may be bad form, coming on the heels of that . . . event. But I promoed your pageant prediction in tomorrow’s paper. It’s too late to pull the story. Would you hazard a guess who’s going to win?” Cece asked.

“I can’t be certain.” Tammy swung her legs into the car so she faced straight ahead.

“Not even a guess?” Cece obviously didn’t relish pressing her friend, but she had readers who hung on her society column. She’d promised them something, and she had to deliver.

“It won’t be the hula dancer,” Tammy said. “Would you mind taking me home? I’ve got a splitting headache.” She closed the door, shutting us out.

“She saw something bad,” I told Cece and Tinkie. “She saw the fire and was about to tell me her vision when Brook ignited. She’s upset, and she thinks someone evil is behind all of this.”

“And she may well be right,” Cece said. “Would you take us to my car at the hotel lot? I need to get Tammy home. Tinkie, e-mail me your photos, if you don’t mind.”

__________

As we washed the makeup off our faces and prepared for bed, Tinkie was unnaturally quiet. Cece telephoned and told us Brook died en route to the hospital. Police Chief Jansen wasn’t labeling it a homicide, Cece said, nor was he calling it an accident. In the quiet luxury of the hotel room, Tinkie and I prepared for bed in a state of shock. The horror of Brook Oniada’s death made it impossible to relax.

“How did such an awful thing happen?” Tinkie plopped on her bed, her posture slumped. “Did you see her? She just stood there—all covered in flames. Like she couldn’t move or didn’t know enough to drop and roll.” She put a hand over her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything so awful.”

“Maybe it was an accident.” I didn’t believe it for a minute. Tammy had sensed malevolence and doom, and she’d been right.

“Let’s try to get some sleep.” Tinkie peeled back the covers and slid into the bed.

“Good idea.” I was reaching up to turn off the bedside light when the hotel phone rang. Tempted to ignore it, I finally grabbed it when Tinkie started to climb out of the covers to answer. She was so short she had to use steps to get in her bed, so it was easier for me. “Hello.”

“Miss Delaney, this is Hedy Blackledge.” Her voice shook, and I could tell she’d been crying.

The image of her standing on the stage while Brook burned would stay with me for a long time. “What can I do for you, Hedy?”

“I need your help.”

Now this was a strange turn of events.

“How?”

“I want to hire you and your partner.”

“For what?” I asked automatically.

“To prove I didn’t kill Brook. The police just finished questioning me, and they let me go, but I overheard the police chief say he was going to keep an eye on me. He’s acting like Brook was murdered.”

“But you haven’t been charged, right?” Hedy didn’t understand that everyone connected to the pageant would be questioned, even if the death was determined to be an accident. Hedy’s strange behavior, the way she’d stood reaching out to a burning woman, had likely put her at the top of the list.

“Not yet. But I can’t be charged. I can’t have the cops poking into my past.”

Hedy was the candidate without a Facebook page or an Internet presence. She’d listed no performance credits, not even where she’d learned to play the violin. What was she cloaking? “My advice is to calm down and see what happens. There were hundreds of witnesses who saw Brook set herself on fire. As awful as that is, I don’t think anyone is to blame.”

“I can’t calm down. I can’t afford to wait. Will you help me or not?”

“Hold on a minute.” I covered the phone and met Tinkie’s curious gaze. I filled her in on Hedy’s request.

“Let’s take the case,” she said. “We can write off this whole vacation as a business expense.” She caught a glimpse of my face, though I’d tried to control my expression. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not certain I want to continue as a private investigator.” I sure hadn’t meant to tell her this way. I hadn’t even thought it through myself.

If I’d slapped her, I couldn’t have stunned her more. She bit her bottom lip. It popped free of her teeth in a way that weakened the most well-armored men. “What are you saying?” she finally asked. “You’re quitting the agency?”

“Now isn’t the time for this discussion.” My hand still covered the phone. I’d greatly upset my friend. Tears glittered in her eyes.

“This can’t wait.” She got up and took the phone from my hand. “Hedy, we’re going to discuss this and call you back tomorrow.” She took down the phone number. When she finished, she replaced the receiver and climbed on the bed across from me. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

The truth was, I
hadn’t
thought. At all. I’d simply spoken, a habit that had gotten me into hot water more than once. Now, I didn’t know what I felt but I’d pried the lid off a can of worms and they were out and crawling. “I don’t know what I want to do,” I said.

“But you’ve thought about quitting and you never mentioned it to me?”

“Tinkie, I don’t know.” Frustration—at myself, not her—laced my voice. These two days in Greenwood were the first time I’d felt alive in weeks. It was like my body was awakening, little by little. Along with the tinglings of joy came jolts of pain.

“I’m not angry,” Tinkie said softly. “But I need to know where you are, Sarah Booth. I know you’ll be spending a lot of time in Hollywood and on location with Graf and with your career, but I always thought we’d continue with the P.I. agency when you were home. I don’t want to let it go.”

“If I hadn’t been working on a case, my baby would be alive.” There it was. The guilt gnawing at me in the darkness of my subconscious had finally strode into the light of day.

I thought Tinkie would deny it, but she didn’t. Her hand gently rubbed my back. “What can I say to make it better?”

How like her to do the perfect thing. Rationalization of guilt never works. Nor did she try to coddle me out of my
feelings. My wise friend simply wanted to help and she was asking how.

“Maybe this feeling will fade,” I said, helpless to control the depression that so easily slipped around me.

“It probably will,” she said, kneading the tight spot between my shoulder blades. “Until it does, though, I’m here for you. No one judges you as harshly as you judge yourself, Sarah Booth. I could play psychologist and ask you, ‘If Coleman were injured in the line of duty, would you blame him?’ But that won’t help you now, will it?”

“No, because I probably would blame him.” Coleman Peters, Sunflower County Sheriff and a man who held a special place in my heart, was often in the path of danger.

Tinkie gave me a hug. “You’re a tough nut, but you’re my nut.”

“What about Hedy?” I asked.

Tinkie shrugged. “She probably won’t be charged with anything, but it makes me wonder why she’s jumping the gun like that. Hiring us would make her look guilty whether she is or not. Maybe it’s best if we don’t take the case, and as time passes, you’ll want to investigate again.”

“Then you’ll tell her no?” Not only was I confused, but I’d also developed a huge yellow streak. I didn’t even want to turn down a potential client face-to-face.

“In the morning,” Tinkie said. She assisted me under the covers. “Now get some sleep. Tomorrow our class is in main courses.”

I feigned interest. “I’ve always wanted to learn to make cheeseburgers and fries. Or, better yet, chips and salsa.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny. One day, when you’ve got a couple of little rug rats clutching your ankles and you’re trying to cook dinner for Graf, you’ll appreciate all of this.”

Her words were like an old wound. The pain of my loss flashed. “Right.”

“It will happen, Sarah Booth. Nothing will replace what you lost, but you will have children and be happy. I have to believe that, and so do you.”

She did her best to hide her worry, but I could see it. “I’ll be okay, Tinkie. It’s just going to take more time than I thought. Funny that my arm is almost healed and Doc says I won’t even know it was broken after a bit of therapy. But my heart . . .”

“They say the heart is just a muscle, Sarah Booth, and everyone knows that muscle heals more slowly than bone.”

“You’re the best friend ever.” I snuggled into the bed, suddenly exhausted, as if I’d run uphill for a long, long time. Whatever Tinkie replied, I never heard it. I was asleep before she finished talking.

I’d been asleep no more than six seconds when a loud pounding at the door startled me awake. Tinkie and I sat bolt upright like some 1940s choreographed comedy. The pounding came again, followed by a muffled plea.

“Miss Delaney! Miss Richmond! Let me in, please.”

“Hedy Lamarr Blackledge,” we said in unison. Startled awake and angry, I jettisoned myself from the bed.

“It’s three in the morning,” Tinkie said, indignation growing in her voice. She flung back the covers and padded after me.

“This had better be an emergency,” I said as I swung the door open. Hedy stood there in sweats and tennis shoes. Her hair was wild and her makeup was smeared. She looked like hell.

“Janet Menton is dead.”

“What?” Tinkie and I were perfectly synchronized. If we gave up P.I. work, maybe we could take up swimming.

“I found her. She’s dead in our room.”

I glanced at my partner. She gave a tiny frown that told me she didn’t completely believe Hedy. “Come inside.” Tinkie drew the young woman into the room and closed the door.

“After everything that happened . . . so horrible . . . Brook catching on fire, I mean.” She actually flinched. “You’ve got to help me. There’s more at stake here than just a title or money or what happens to me.” Despite my doubts about my P.I. future, I felt sorry for her.

“Tell us what happened. Slowly.” I steered her into a chair.

She nodded, composing herself. “I left the auditorium and I was in a state. I didn’t trust myself to drive to Panther Holler, so I decided to stay in the hotel instead of going to my . . . relatives’. Janet is . . . was . . . my roommate.” Her voice got shakier, and she seemed to study the plush carpet. “We were both upset, but we went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I knew that once the cops started investigating Brook . . . I called you, and then I went to the auditorium to play my violin. I do that sometimes when I’m having an anxiety attack. Janet couldn’t sleep, either. She said she was hungry.” Hedy took a deep breath. “Finally I calmed down, and I thought I could rest, so I went back to the room.” Her voice broke, but she drew a deep breath. “I found Janet on the floor.” She couldn’t hold it together any longer and started crying.