Buried Bones (6 page)

No amount of sweet talk was going to work now.

"You are going to die," I answered, all tender thoughts knocked slam out of me. What type of creature had Harold unleashed in my house?

A chair crashed over and more glass broke.

"I'll get her," Harold said, leaping over me as he ran across the kitchen and through the swinging door.

I remained on the floor, wondering if he'd remember his impeccable manners and rush back to help me to my feet. There was the sound of another crash and I leapt up, convinced that if I didn't get into the dining room, there would be nothing left.

"Sweetie, come here," Harold called pleadingly.

I was going to sweetie him! I pushed through the door and stopped dead still. A huge, raw-boned hound dog was standing in the center of the dining room table licking the hand-varnished oak. There wasn't a piece of china or crystal left on the table.

"What is
that}"
I asked, pointing at the creature that sat down on the fine oak table and scratched a floppy ear.

"It's Delo Wiley's hound. You said you wanted one. So I picked out the youngest, took her up to the vet, got all her shots, had her spayed, and here she is." His smile was amused, apologetic, and quite charming. "Merry Christmas, Sarah Booth!"

As usual, the purr of the Roadster boosted my spirits. The heavy gray sky met the dark brown gumbo of the Delta soil in the far distance. I sniffed the air and thought I detected the probability of snow. At least it would relieve the pressure, though it would do nothing for my blood pressure. I'd left Dahlia House entrusted to a ghost and
a four-legged food disposal.
After Harold fled the scene of his crime, Sweetie Pie managed to open the refrigerator and eat a pound of cheese, half a dozen deviled eggs, the remains of a baked ham, and two California-raised tomatoes. Not exactly a balanced meal. Then she'd fallen into a food coma at my feet.

I cruised along the highway toward
Magnolia Place
and pulled down the lane to
Lawrence
's cottage. I loved that driveway. In the gray morning light, the huge oaks seemed tinted with melancholy.

The big yellow tabby sat on the front porch and meowed as I got out of the car. He held his ground when I knocked at the red front door.

When
Lawrence
didn't answer, I knocked again, a bit louder. I checked my watch; I was on time. The cat pawed at the door, demanding entrance. Inside, several other cats called out, strange eerie yowls that sounded like babies in distress. The yellow tabby answered them, a deep, guttural cry that made the skin along my spine tighten.

"
Lawrence
! Mr. Ambrose!" I knocked harder.

Yellow cat threw himself against the door.

I tried the knob and hesitated when it turned easily in my hand. All I had to do was push it open and walk inside. Lawrence Ambrose was the most gracious man I'd ever met. Still, he wouldn't appreciate an invasion of his privacy. I'd never actually met another SIGOOS (Southern Intellectual Gentleman of the Old School), but I understood instinctively that privacy would be a number one priority.

I cracked the door and called out again. As my eyes adjusted to the dimly lighted room I saw the cats sitting on the back of the sofa. They were motionless, silent, watching me. I had a sudden, vivid recollection of a photograph I'd seen once in some travel magazine, probably in the dentist's office. It had been taken in
Egypt
. Great cat lovers, the Egyptians. The photograph was of a dead person--the corpse guarded by his cats.

The exact Tightness of that image froze me at the front door. Three cats sat on the back of the sofa. Feline soul guards. The yellow cat bolted into the house and ran to the sofa. He disappeared for a moment, then reappeared on the armrest. With great aplomb he took his seat in the gloom of the still shuttered room. They all faced the interior of the house.

Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, and I recalled that Willem had been the only smoker. But often after a few drinks, inhibitions loosened and good intentions fled. Almost everyone in the world was a partially reformed smoker.

"
Lawrence
!" I forced myself forward, walking past the living room and deeper into the darkened house. The dining table had been cleared and the party food put away, but there was no sign that
Lawrence
had begun to prepare our brunch.

"
Lawrence
!" No answer. "Mr. Ambrose!" I called. Perhaps he'd heard about Cece and gone to her house to visit her. But surely he would have called to cancel our date.

Beyond the dining room was the kitchen, and I went there. Wineglasses were drying in a rack, the only indication that there had been a party the night before. On the sideboard were two highball glasses, both dirty. I sniffed them. Bourbon. Not too difficult to deduce when a Jim Beam bottle was nearby. Glancing in the sink I saw a broken glass. Beside it was a pool of blood. Splashes of red spattered the yellow tile backwash and countertops.

It was an old-style house and a kitchen door gave on to a small, dark hallway which undoubtedly led to his bedroom and bath.

"
Lawrence
," I called, moving into the darkness. Something brushed against my leg, and I almost screamed before I recognized the yellow tabby.

"Meow," he cried. "Meow."

He darted forward. My eyes had adjusted to the light and I saw the foot and leg, sprawled at an odd angle. Feeling along the wall I found the light switch and flipped it up.

Lawrence
was propped against the wall. His left hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel, his pale eyes staring straight ahead but unseeing. Beside him was the telephone, the receiver lying in a pool of blood that seemed to have spread over a large portion of the hallway. I'd never seen so much blood in my life.

The cat nuzzled at his foot as if begging him to get up.

I didn't know what to do. For a long moment I stood there and tried to force my brain to work. It looked to me as if
Lawrence
had been cleaning up the last of his party when he cut his hand on a glass. He'd obviously been trying to call someone when the blood loss became too great and he died.

As I tried to think what I should do next, I wanted to slide down to the floor beside him and simply sit. I held back the urge to panic. There was no hurry now. Death had robbed time of all importance. My only task was to act sensibly.

The night before,
Lawrence
had been fine. But death was like that--striking suddenly and without warning. I knew from personal experience. My parents had been driving through the long flat stretches of the Delta where oncoming traffic could be seen for miles. They'd been laughing and talking when a drunk plowed into them. In an instant they were dead.

I knelt down and tried to console the crying cat. He kept batting at
Lawrence
's leg. I noticed there was a froth of blood on
Lawrence
's lips. Staring at his pale profile, the high aristocratic nose and the thick white hair, I felt tears threaten. It was ridiculous. I'd met him twice. But the sense of loss was real and not something I could deny. It was hard to explain, but I felt I'd been robbed.

Perhaps it was that motivation that made me linger in the semidarkness of the room with a corpse guarded by four cats. I didn't want to call 911. It came to me suddenly. I knew what I needed to do. Before strangers touched him, I wanted a friend at his side. I unplugged the line to his phone and found another one in the kitchen.

"Madame," I said when she answered. "It's Sarah Booth. There's no gentle way to say this. Lawrence Ambrose is dead."

I expected the genteel sound of sniffling. I was completely unprepared for the shriek of rage that echoed from the phone and made the cats on the sofa stand up, arch, and spit.

"That bitch murdered him," Madame cried. "I told him she was treacherous. Don't touch anything. I'm on my way."

The phone went dead in my hand.

I took a seat on the porch in one of the rockers and waited for Madame's arrival. Whatever official action needed taking, it would be best to let Madame do it.

I heard the crunch of wheels in the lane and looked out to see her oyster-colored Chrysler. She jumped out of the car, brushed past me with a tiny bleat of grief, and rushed into the house. I softly closed the door on her sobs.

The sky had dropped lower, it seemed, a pervading grayness that made my bones pop and crackle as I paced the front porch and tried not to hear the wrenching sounds of Madame's grief. The spike of truth that came to me was sharp and painful. Narrow, narrow is the view of a self-absorbed person.

Perhaps I had known her too long as the dance instructor who tolerated no foolishness or excess in her students. Dance was a discipline that required exactness.
Lawrence
, in his enthusiasms and generosity of spirit, was the antithesis of that.

I had seen only the contrast between the two, and not the emotion. It had never crossed my mind until that moment, her grief audible in the still morning, that Madame was in love with
Lawrence
. I'd seen it at his party and failed to call it by name. The way they'd communicated with looks, the regard they held for one another. His hand on her elbow, guiding and protecting; her concern for him. She had loved him for a long, long time.

It hadn't occurred to me that people of their generation still participated in romantic love. Had my parents not died when I was a child, perhaps I might have had a pattern for love through the ages. Now I found myself alone and too aware of the consequences of love as I sat out on the porch of the cottage staring down the moss-draped drive of old oaks and into the gray Delta that was both my home and my heritage. The first flakes of snow began to fall.

It seemed a long time before Madame came out. When she did, the cats followed.

"I called the police," she said. "That bitch won't get away with it."

I nodded as if I agreed. Loss is often followed by fury. It is part of the process.

"She murdered him. I don't know how, but she did."

I wasn't certain he was murdered, but I was positive who Madame was pointing the finger at. "Is it possible he had an accident? Maybe when he cut his hand his heart gave out."

Madame's eyes were black chips of flint. The Indians used the hardest stones and deer horn to make tiny arrowheads for bird hunting. They might have used her eyes.

"
Lawrence
's heart was perfectly healthy. The old fool guarded it like
Fort
Knox
. No fatty buildup and no romantic damage, at least none recent. It wasn't his heart that killed him. And no one dies from a cut hand."

I didn't want to argue with her. We stood side by side watching the snow fall. The flakes were big, piling down on top of each other. Beautiful. In a short time the Delta would be transformed.

"Last night
Lawrence
had a sudden change of heart. After the party had broken up, I stayed to talk. I finally made him see the truth and he told me he was canceling the book deal with Brianna." Madame's slender hands gripped the porch railing. The flesh was red from the cold but the knuckles were white with tension. "She didn't want to write about his life. She wanted to write a scandalous tell-all and reap the financial rewards of smearing
Lawrence
's name. She wanted to pick scabs and poke at scars. She's a greedy bitch. She'll try to go ahead with this book, but I won't let her."

Her assessment of Brianna was right on, but there was an edge of something else in her voice. "If
Lawrence
is dead, can she still write his life story?"

"She'll try," Madame said. Pushing off the rail she began to pace back and forth on the icy porch. "She'll try. You can count on that. She has the legal right to try. And she claims she has signed papers, a few tape recordings, ridiculous things like that. But she doesn't have any of the real facts--unless she stole them.
Lawrence
was smart enough not to trust her at all. And she'll never get anything else. I'm certain
Lawrence
named me executrix of the estate, and she hasn't counted on that."

I wasn't sure how effective that role would be in stopping Brianna, but I didn't say anything. Madame needed to vent her rage and sorrow. I could listen.

"She honestly thinks she can murder him and go back to
New York
to write her book. Well, she's wrong about that. Very, very wrong. She'll go to prison if I have anything to do with it."

"This will all work itself out," I said in an attempt to soothe Madame. She was chugging up and down the porch like a locomotive. All I needed was for her to stroke out on me.