Booty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery (17 page)

“She sure seems devoted to the turtles.”

He rolled his eyes. “A little too devoted, if you get my drift. This is her life, and she expects us to feel the same way. Hell, I haven’t had a date in two months. We’re here every night and all day. This late clutch of turtles is like a mission for her. She’s more protective than a mother eagle, and she’s just as likely to attack anyone who threatens them.”

“If you weren’t here, would the turtles survive?”

“It’s a losing battle.” He squatted down in the sand. “We can save these, but then what? Pollution, fishing nets, oil spills—look at the rigs out there. We can’t stop that. People are stupid. They want cheap oil and gas, and they don’t care that the backend payment will be the souls of their grandkids.”

I heard what he was saying loud and clear, but I had no solutions. My next car would be electric. Maybe too little too late, but at least it was an effort. And maybe some solar panels on Dahlia House. That would be nice. Graf would like—but Graf wouldn’t be there.

I jerked my thoughts back to the present. “Did you happen to know John Trotter?”

“The treasure hunter? Heck, everyone on the island knew him. He was a great guy. Always had these crazy stories.” His smile erased another five years from his features. He could easily be a high schooler. “Phyllis—Dr. Norris—spent a lot of time with him. She wasn’t all that keen on the treasure hunting, but I think she really liked him. He’d come along to help us with the turtles. I think they would have married if he hadn’t…”

“Been murdered,” I finished for him.

“Yeah, that. Phyllis said she really regretted the last time they were together they got into an argument about the treasure stuff.”

I hid my keen interest. “Folks argue. It’s part of a relationship.”

“Yeah, not the good part.” He stood up again. “I have to get back to it. If she pulls up and I’m jawboning and not working, she’ll jump my case. She can be tough. Really tough.”

“People on a mission often are. Hard on themselves and others.”

He picked up his pails of water and set off. Before he got out of earshot, I called after him. “Any idea where Phyllis went?”

He turned but kept walking backward. “She was with that deputy. The asshole. I don’t know where they went, though.”

Still chewing on that tidbit, I rounded up the critters and headed back to the cottage. While I had no appetite, Sweetie and Pluto bounded down the beach, knowing breakfast was just around the corner.

The critters disappeared in the dunes, but I heard Sweetie barking. She made enough racket to wake the dead. Hurrying after her, I caught sight of a woman in a full-skirted black dress that swept the sand but left her creamy white shoulders bare. She stood among the dunes, hair parted in the center and pulled back to reveal an oval face. I knew it was Jitty, but in what guise?

“You’ve suffered,” I said, taking in her solemn countenance.

“There is no substitute for a mother’s love,” she said in a perfectly modulated tone. Very Victorian and proper.

“Who are we today, Jitty?”

“‘Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.’ How true that is,” she said. “We have both suffered a change.”

“Give me another hint, please.” I’d pinpointed the historical era, but I couldn’t identify the young beauty.

“If I cannot inspire love, then I shall inspire fear.” She waited.

I knew her then. Creator of
Frankenstein
. I had read the book as a young girl and had wept in sympathy for the monster who wanted only to be loved.

“I don’t want to inspire fear,” I told her. “And what is this great change?” I didn’t like the sound of that. Losing Graf would be a great change, a terrible one. “Is that what I should expect? To be alone again?”

Already, I could feel the emptiness of Dahlia House without Graf. If he was truly in love with Marion Silber, he would leave me and Mississippi and live in Los Angeles, where his work was. “Is Graf leaving me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps it’s best that way. If Mary Shelley had known what her future held, would she have remained with her father and spurned the advances of a poet?”

“Shelley was a bastard to her.” Sort of the understatement of the century. “She denied her talent and gave up so much, and it didn’t do a lick of good.”

Jitty faced the water, still in the guise of the long-dead writer. “I wanted him dead, you know. There are times I prayed he would die. I was nineteen when I eloped with him. I lost everything familiar to me. My father disowned me. I gave up everything for Percy, and it never mattered to him.”

If tragic love was the lesson Jitty meant to teach, she’d made her point. I’d been depressed before she showed up. Now I was scraping the bottom of the bucket. “You aren’t helping me, Jitty.”

“
Frankenstein
came out of my personal grief and betrayal. I created a monster who sought love. A reflection of how I saw myself.”

“You created a masterpiece and launched a genre of work. Science fiction grew out of your novel.” I found myself arguing her case. “Besides, there are those who would debate who was the monster. Both Dr. Frankenstein and his creature were flawed and sad.”

“Much like me.”

“Not to mention Shelley. If you want to talk about flawed, let’s tweak the wart on the witch’s nose.” I’d read enough to know Percy Bysshe Shelley followed his pleasures and desires far more often than a code of honor.

“I thought I could build a home, a family, and love would follow. It isn’t true. Like my creation, I was cursed from the beginning. But you, Sarah Booth, you have known the love of both parents. Of a community.”

“Knock it off, Jitty. You’re about to send me into a spiraling depression that has no bottom.”

Her creamy skin began to take on the mocha tones of the haint I loved. “Why is it that the need to bond with another takes precedence over everything else?” she asked. The hint of a Southern drawl had crept back into her voice.

“I don’t know.” The truth was, Graf’s sudden actions had left me with no solid ground under my feet. I could psychoanalyze his actions and put them into cause and effect. The bigger question, though, was, Could I forgive him? Or perhaps the better question would be whether there was anything to forgive aside from his not telling me that an old flame, Marion Silber, had rented a cottage on the same island that we vacationed on. Much would depend on whether this was design or happenstance.

“Don’t you have any questions for me about the Great Beyond?” Jitty asked.

“No.” I didn’t want answers. Not yet. I was afraid of what they might be. “I need to work through this myself.”

“You have Tinkie and the rest of your friends.”

“Yes.” I hesitated to think what Cece would do to Graf if he cheated on me. Or Millie. The idea of it made me dread the Black and Orange Ball.

“What you got planned?” Jitty asked. Though she still wore the Victorian dress, she was her regular self.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Don’t let it get to the point you wish him dead.”

And I saw the wisdom of her widowhood as Mary Shelley. Love and hate were sides of the same blade. I couldn’t imagine that, but betrayal and grief had the potential to warp a person’s spirit. Jitty’s words were wise.

“I won’t.”

“I wish I could help you.”

“Me too.” For once, I accepted that she couldn’t. Jitty could prod and push to manipulate me along a certain path, but I stood at a crossroads now. The choice was clear—life with Graf or life without him. And I had no clue which path my foot would take. And for once, I didn’t want to know the future. I feared it.

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” Jitty had begun to fade.

I wondered if this last line was a plea to forgive Graf, or perhaps to forgive myself.

“What should I do?” I asked. Jitty was little more than a shimmer against the beauty of the isolated beach. “Answer me as Jitty, the haint of Dahlia House, as the spirit of my departed relatives, as the embodiment of those who loved me.”

“Give it some time, baby girl,” Jitty said in the rich drawl of the Mississippi Delta. “Seek out the facts, Sarah Booth. That’s the ticket. Find out what Graf is up to before you accuse him of messin’ around. Remember, he has a past just like you do. Coleman Peters could be a constant source of jealousy, but Graf don’t let that happen to him. Maybe this Silber woman is his past, too.”

Jitty was dead-on right. Though she’d come to me in the guise of a woman married to a terrible philanderer, she’d suggested logic and a rational approach to my romantic problem.

I crested the last dune and saw Tinkie on the steps drinking coffee. Graf’s SUV was gone.

“He went to buy groceries,” she said. “Anything to get away from me.”

“Did he say anything about … the woman?”

“He said, ‘Good morning. I’m headed to buy groceries,’ and he was out the door before I could even respond.”

I hated it that Graf was acting like such a coward. Instead of commenting, I filled Tinkie in on my conversation with Dr. Norris’s student worker.

“It must be hard for someone who loves nature to see those oil rigs out there. Especially after the BP Horizon blowout.” Tinkie stood and we walked inside, the pets at our heels. I would make some breakfast and something for Sweetie and Pluto, too.

“I think we should report the attempted hit-and-run to the sheriff,” Tinkie said. “I know you don’t want to because of Graf and all, but someone tried to kill us.”

I shook my head. “We can’t prove a thing. It’s pointless. I didn’t get a tag number, and neither did you. All we can say is a dark car almost ran us down. The deputies will say it was probably a drunk driver.”

“Not like working with Coleman, is it?” Tinkie said. “By the way, he called.”

I plunked myself glumly at the counter in the kitchen. “Did you tell him?”

“No. That’s up to you. He just wanted to be sure you were okay. He’s worried.”

“Funny how that seems to be the refrain of my life.”

“Just be glad you have those who love you enough to worry.” She slapped me on the back none too gently. “Now what’s the game plan for today?”

“We talked to everyone involved in Larry Wofford’s conviction except the marina owner, Arley McCain. Let’s go there.”

15

The
Miss Adventure
bobbed on a choppy sea, straining her tie-lines. The marina was in great shape, rebuilt after the 2005 hurricane. New planking, fresh paint. An abundance of booger lights would discourage vandalism of or theft off the unattended boats. Three video cameras, if they were working, would record the comings and goings of those with business, legitimate or otherwise, at the marina.

A burley man with a captain’s hat stood on one of the piers arguing with Dr. Phyllis Norris. I motioned for Tinkie to be quiet as we eased closer. The lapping of the water against the pilings disguised the sound of our approach.

“Angela pays the docking fee every month, and though it’s none of your business, I give her a break.” The burly man, who I pegged as Arley McCain, marina owner, was in Dr. Norris’s face. “Why should she sell the boat?”

“She isn’t healing, Arley. She’s had the deck and interior of the boat repainted. She’s spending money she doesn’t have to maintain the
Miss Adventure,
all as some sad homage to her dead father. That boat is a tragic reminder of her father’s brutal murder. She needs to put all of that behind her.”

“And why is that your business?” Arley demanded.

“Because I care about her. You know I was close with John. He loved his daughter. I’m just trying to help. If you force her to move the boat, she’ll begin to let go of it and everything associated with it. She hasn’t taken the damn thing out a single time since her father was killed.”

“That’s not your business, Phyllis. You’re meddling in things you shouldn’t.”

I had to agree with Arley, though I was touched Phyllis cared enough about Angela to try to manipulate her affairs. And I feared she was right. The
Miss Adventure
was a symbol of everything Angela had lost. Her father, Larry Wofford, a treasure, her childhood. But it wasn’t up to Phyllis to try to force Angela to let go of the boat.

Phyllis wasn’t about to relent, though. “Angela Trotter views that boat as representative of her father. As long as she keeps it spic-and-span, she’s honoring his memory. That’s expensive and sick. Can’t you see that?”

Arley put his hands on his hips. His shoulders were so broad, he blocked the entire walkway. “I
see
you’re nosing into things that don’t concern you.”

Phyllis matched his stance, though she was a mere shadow of his bulk. “
I
see you don’t want to lose a permanent boat-slip fee.”

“That’s a nasty accusation.” He almost growled in her face.

Beside me, Tinkie tensed. She was ready to spring into action to defend Phyllis from what appeared to be an imminent attack. I remembered what Larry Wofford had said—that he’d seen a man with large shoulders rushing away from the marina as he headed onto the dock. A man Arley McCain hadn’t noticed. A man who might have a reason to give false testimony.

A new and very viable suspect had lumbered onto the scene. Tinkie’s thoughts reflected mine, if I was any judge of her alert expression.

“That monthly berth rental is more important to you than a young woman’s emotional health.” Phyllis had pulled out all the stops. “Can’t you see how detrimental this is for Angela?”

“I see a busybody woman manipulating another person’s life. That’s what I see. I wouldn’t like it, and I’ll bet Angela Trotter will be angry when I tell her.”

That pulled Phyllis Norris up short. “Don’t do that, Arley. She will be angry. I’m only trying to help her.”

He took his hat off and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “I don’t doubt that, but you’re going about it the wrong way. If the boat is a part of her dad, you can’t rip it away from her. She’ll grow tired of the responsibility, especially if that hurricane comes in here. Let her grow out of it naturally. Boats are too expensive and time-consuming to keep as a monument, unless you’re loaded, which she ain’t. But the timing of letting the boat go, that’s Angela’s to figure out.”