Booty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery
Read Booty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery Online
Authors: Carolyn Haines
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For Aleta Boudreaux—for too many reasons to count
Acknowledgments
When I started writing
Booty Bones
, I knew only two things. The book would have something to do with pirates. And it would explore some of Jitty’s secrets. Many other things happen in this book, some for which I was totally unprepared. Sarah Booth and I both had to accept events we couldn’t foresee and I couldn’t predict.
This is the fourteenth Bones book. I’ve spent many hours each day for the past fifteen years with these characters. When people tell me (and how I love this!) that the characters are real to them—“just like friends”—I’m not shocked. I’ve spent a large part of my life with Sarah Booth, Jitty, Tinkie, Cece, Millie, Madame Tomeeka, and the men of Zinnia. There have been times when I tried my hardest to stop Sarah Booth from some headstrong measure (just as I would my flesh and blood friends). Often I fail, and Sarah Booth and I learn the lessons generated together.
I want to thank my readers, who approach these books with such enthusiasm and joy. For those who “talk me up” to their friends and relatives, I thank you. For those who post reviews, I thank you. For those who buy my books and check them out of libraries, I thank you. For those who attend book signings and visit with me, I thank you. There is a strange bond between writer/characters/readers that develops, especially with series characters. My only regret is that when I do travel to a signing or conference, I never have enough time to visit with people. It is often a whirlwind of meetings without the “have a cup of coffee and visit for a spell” that I would enjoy. My chosen life as owner/operator of Good Fortune Farm Rescue is demanding of my time, and I yield to the needs of the animals.
I also want to thank my agent, Marian Young. We’ve been well-matched for longer than either of us wants to count. Onward!
My editors at St. Martin’s, Kelley Ragland and Elizabeth Lacks, always make the book better. As do the copy editors. In my writing life I’ve been fortunate to work with editors who find a problem, offer suggestions, and yet never tamper with the concept of the book. That is a talent, and Kelley and Elizabeth have it in spades.
A big thank you to Suzann Ledbetter, who is always my first reader and the Darth Vader of wordiness. If we ever plotted a crime together we could become wealthy—if I didn’t talk too much.
I love this cover. Many thanks to artist Hiro Kimura and jacket designer David Rotstein.
Join me on Facebook to keep up with my foolishness. And please sign up for my newsletter at
www.carolynhaines.com
. I really have a lot of mischief planned for the future. Don’t miss out!
Contents
1
The setting sun casts gold upon the white beach, and the azure curl of surf takes on a lavender cast as it rushes the shore and spreads a mantle of foam. The waves crest inches from my bare feet, a rhythmic tidal pull that comforts me, promising that life continues. The end of an October day is nothing less than stunning on the small barrier island named for French royalty: Dauphin Island, Alabama.
Graf Milieu, my fiancé, is in the beach cottage I’ve rented for a week. My hope is that Graf will find walking in the sand good therapy for his gun-shot leg and the island’s beauty healing to his injured spirit. Graf’s wounds go much deeper than a shattered bone, and they are my fault. He was abducted, shot, and held prisoner without medical care because my private investigative work spilled over into his life.
But that is the past and cannot be changed, no matter how hard I wish it. What I’m planning with this Gulf Coast getaway is to protect the future.
Sweetie Pie, my loyal hound, roots her nose into the back of my armpit, letting me know she sympathizes with my worry. My dog and Pluto, the black cat who lives with us at Dahlia House, my ancestral Mississippi Delta home, are here with me at the beach to aid in Graf’s recuperation. I need all the help I can get.
The wind is chilly off the water, and my butt is damp from sitting in the sand. Pluto struggles toward me, his dainty little paws sinking with each step. With a kitty sigh, he plops into my lap. He has only contempt for the surf and for anyone who admires water—even the dazzling aqua waves of the Gulf of Mexico. Water is necessary for fish, and that’s as far as Pluto is willing to go.
“Where’s Graf?” I ask the critters, hoping he is not far behind them.
They both look back toward the beach cottage. Sweetie’s long, delicate ears droop more than usual. The critters are worried about Graf, too. He’s been in a terrible state since he was shot. The surgery to repair the bone was successful, but the recovery has been painful. The doctors saved his leg, but there is a chance he will always limp. Graf is an actor with a good chance of becoming a movie star. Physical disabilities don’t fit into that equation. He’s fighting hard against the anger, fear, and depression that are normal emotions accompanying such an injury.
And have I mentioned this is all my fault?
The wind whips off the water and sends a salty spray into my face, and for a moment I remember this same beach some twenty-five years earlier, when I vacationed here with my parents. The beach cottages were much plainer, less luxurious, and no oil-drilling rigs dotted the horizon. The sand was pristine then and hadn’t suffered the thousands of gallons of oil from BP’s Deep Water Horizon well that blew and polluted the Gulf. My parents were alive, and I was safe, expecting only the best of a bright future. Life has certainly taken me down a peg or six.
Sweetie’s cold nose against my armpit brings me back from those carefree childhood days. The sun has dropped below the horizon, and the skyline to the east is swiftly changing from peacock-blue to indigo. Time to gird my loins and do battle against Graf’s worries. I shall bring joy back to his life. I shall do it with my bare intention and will.
I stand up suddenly, just in time to catch the image of a woman clad in widow’s weeds on the other side of the sand dune. She is there one moment and gone the next. Sweetie sees her, too, as does Pluto, who puts on his Halloween arch. Like most felines, Pluto disdains unexpected company.
“Who was that?” I asked, even as I loped over the sand in pursuit of the strange figure.
When I rounded the dune, the light was fleeing the sky, but I could make out the feminine silhouette. Her antebellum dress grazed the sand and belled out behind her as the Gulf wind struck the skirt. A black veil floated like the banner of a dark empire. What the hell was going on?
Sweetie passed me and gave chase, but she wasn’t baying like she would if she was on a scent. Pluto, too, for all of his heft and waddling belly, outdistanced me. The phantom floated across the deep sand while I floundered.
“You! Wait up!” I called. No one—not dog, cat, or woman—slowed his pace. I notched it up to a full-fledged run. “Hey! Stop, dammit!”
The stranger slowed and confronted me. Her gown and veil popped in the gusting air, and I was reminded of Deborah Kerr in the
The Innocents,
the film adaptation of “The Turn of the Screw.” Brilliant and terrifying.
The figure seemed to wait for me, and I thought of death. I’d always expected the Grim Reaper to be male, but this black-clad raven of gloom persuaded me otherwise.
“What do you want?” I slowed to a stop in the deep sand two dozen yards from her. She was slender with perfect posture, but her features were obscured by the mourning attire.
She said nothing.
Sweetie and Pluto were frozen in place only a few feet in front of me. They made not a sound.
If this was death come to lurk around the shadows of my life, she would not find hospitality. “You’ve taken too much from me. Get away from here. You have no business with me or the people and animals I love. Be gone!”
“I’ve lost, too,” she said. “More than anyone should.”
In the softness of her voice and the plaintive tone, I realized this was no threat, but someone who knew suffering. “What are you?”
“A friend.”
“A widow from the distant past?” Judging from the dress style, I’d estimate the mid-1800s. It took me a moment, but then I knew. “Jitty?”
She lifted the veil, and I saw sorrow etched in her mocha skin.
“Funeral crepe? That’s the best you could do for a beach costume? No polka-dot bikini? No tawdry flip-flops and big hat? Miss Fashion Plate, where is your style?” I vacillated between relief and annoyance. “You scared the life out of me.”
“I’m a haint. That’s what haints do—we frighten people.”
“But you’re
my
haint, and upsetting me is not allowed. You live by the rules of the Great Beyond, but I live by Delaney rules, and I just wrote that one.”
Her chuckle seemed to hold the fading sunlight for a moment longer.
“Why are you here, Jitty, dressed like a mourner from the eighteen hundreds?” My momentary humor was gone, and worry returned.
“Life is a cycle, Sarah Booth. You know this.”
“I do. I don’t like it, but I know it. I’m in the summer of life, and so is Graf. There’s no cycle crap happening here that needs widow’s weeds.”
“Perhaps not.” She made no promises. It was against the rules of the Great Beyond for her to tell me anything about the future. “But remember the wheel of life turns again and again.”
“If you’re warning me Graf is in some new danger, just spit it out.”
“The French call orgasm ‘the little death.’” Her smile was luminous. And still sad. “At the peak of joy is always the descent into death.”
Too bad there was only sand around. Had there been rocks, I would have picked one up and thrown it at her. “Say it plain.”
She shook her head. “So much history has happened on this island beach. The French settled here and named it Massacre Island because their first discovery was a mound created from human bones. It was a Native American burial site.” She looked out toward the water, and the last lingering bits of peachy light played across her face. “Not a bad place to meet an end.”
“And not a good place either. Who are you mourning here? Coker died in the war, not on a barrier island.”
“Very true. My husband died on a blood-soaked battlefield with Alice’s husband, your great-great-great-grandfather. But there’s history here on Dauphin Island, Sarah Booth. Important history. I suspect you’ll find out soon enough.”
She flickered in and out, as was her wont when she was ready to take a powder.
“Jitty, will Graf be okay?”
But there was only the sound of the surf and the wind whipping my shirt like a tattered flag. Sweetie, Pluto, and I turned toward the three-story cottage. A light bloomed in an upstairs window, a smudge of cheer against the star-spangled night.
It was time to make dinner for Graf. I had a plan to enliven his spirits. A secret plan. And it would work, because I had no other alternative.
