Smarty Bones (14 page)

“Rude,” she said. “Small towns are not sophisticated, no matter where they are. I require cultural stimulation. I’m a creature of refinement.”

“Creature, yes. As to the rest, I’ll withhold judgment.” I couldn’t help myself any more than she could. My reward was a hard stomp on my toes from Tinkie.

“We have to stop this one-upsmanship if we’re to accomplish anything.” Tinkie spoke with fervor. “Can you two stop needling each other?”

I looked at the ceiling.

“I’ll do my best,” Twist said.

“Me, too.” My fingers crossed behind my back.

“Good. Let’s track down those coffee beans.”

7

Three hours later I knew more about La Hacienda coffee than I ever wanted to know. The upshot was the coffee had been shipped to a gourmet shop in New York City. Olive ordered it from there, and it was mailed to her home. She’d opened and used the beans—without ill consequences—before she’d brought them down to Zinnia.

Logic led me to believe the poison had been introduced into the coffee
after
Twist and Boswell checked in at The Gardens.

I gave Doc Sawyer a call. Normally I’d stop at the hospital for a face-to-face, but my focus was on getting the info and getting rid of Twist. I’d visit with Doc another day when we had more pleasant topics to pursue.

“Coleman tells me you’re working for the professor,” Doc said, amusement in his tone. “I hear she’s something else.”

“Nobody ever said private eyeing would be easy work.”

Doc’s chuckle took me back to the past. He’d always been able to finagle a smile, even when I was in panic mode about shots. “You could retire and let your movie star take care of all your needs.”

“Not likely. I love Graf, but nobody takes care of a Delaney.”

“Or a Booth. You get a lot of your independence from Libby Booth, and don’t ever forget it.”

“Not possible.” Forgetting my parents was akin to forgetting to breathe.

“Some days, Sarah Booth, I see you and think for just a split second that Libby’s back.”

I had the same fantasy, but I wondered what had Doc waxing nostalgic. “If I had time for therapy, I’d ask if I’ll ever recover from missing my parents. But there’s a murder to solve, so what’s the story on the poison?”

“It was the coffee, as everyone thought. Someone mixed a form of rat poison in the coffee beans. It was the only thing in poor Jimmy Boswell’s stomach.”

The ingeniousness of the murder method stopped me in my tracks. “So when Boswell ground up the beans and made coffee, that was it.”

“Doesn’t take much.” Thanks to Tinkie and me, Doc had become expert in murder methods. Especially poisons.

So the issue I had to resolve was how did the d-CON, or whatever brand it was, get into the coffee beans in Olive’s room. And were they intended for Boswell or Olive? The latter seemed the logical answer. She was abrasive, superior, and determined to piss off the old-school grumblers who wanted to pretend the Civil War had been about nobility. War was always about money, and nothing else. Pretending otherwise didn’t change the facts.

I told Doc what I’d found out about the coffee beans. “So why didn’t Olive drink coffee? Her beans. Her fetish for this boutique coffeehouse bean. She’s not generous enough to stock such things for Boswell. It was her coffee. So why did she not die, too?”

“Questions you and Coleman will have to answer. By the by, best keep an eye out for our sheriff.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Twist showed up at the hospital for the autopsy results and she was all over Coleman. He wasn’t exactly fighting her off.”

My aggravation factor climbed to red-hot. “Coleman isn’t a fool. She’s a suspect in the murder of her assistant. Surely he has more sense than to involve himself with her.”

“He’s a lonely guy.”

I couldn’t tell if Doc was teasing me, baiting me, or warning me. “I’ll have Tinkie speak with him.”

“Music to my ears. Now I have a motorcycle accident victim to tend. At least he was wearing a helmet, but it probably won’t make his leg heal straight.”

I hung up and considered calling Coleman. Best to leave it to Tinkie, though. She could be no-nonsense with Coleman in a way I couldn’t. Poking my nose in Coleman’s romantic affairs, even for his own good, was forbidden to me.

I left a callback message on Tinkie’s phone and returned to my computer. While I couldn’t do anything to save the sheriff from a romantic debacle, I could research Dr. Olive Twist. If the Molotov cocktail and the poison were meant for her, she might have brought her enemies to town with her.

I had Dahlia House to myself. Graf had gone to town to buy new shirts. While shopping opportunities abounded in Los Angeles, Graf preferred the boutique men’s shop, Butterfield 8, where Oscar and Harold bought their clothes.

Sweetie Pie’s snores resounded in the house. Even Pluto was asleep on a pillow on my desk. He lolled, half off the brocade, and opened slanted green eyes. He watched my fingers move across the keyboard with sudden interest. Pluto wasn’t above attacking my digits. He made his demands known.

I’d been working on the computer too long, and I stood to stretch.

“Care for a bite of apple?”

It was no big shock when I turned to find Snow White standing behind me, a Red Delicious in her outstretched hand.

“Let’s see. Snow White succumbed to a poisoned apple. And Boswell died from poisoned coffee beans. Maybe it’s time to diet.”

“A pure heart is the only protection from evil,” Jitty said. Her voice was high and singsongy and I wondered if her black hair and pale, pale white skin were compliments of Disney.

“Where are those pesky dwarves when you need them?” I wasn’t really annoyed with Jitty—more amused than annoyed—but I certainly didn’t intend to let her know it.

“Why are you such a crank?” Jitty asked. “I’m here to help you out.”

“I don’t think so.” I stretched side to side and leaned forward to rest my hands on the floor. My hamstrings screamed. I needed to reclaim my stretching and exercise regime. Since Graf was home, I’d focused on horizontal action. My aerobic routine had fallen by the wayside.

“Lord, Sarah Booth, whatever you do, don’t bend over in front of Graf.” The cartoon voice was gone and Jitty’s familiar voice came through loud and clear.

“Why not?”

“He’s gone see that wide ass of yours and run for the hills.”

I slowly stood and glared at Jitty. “You are infuriating. My butt is not that big.”

“If you were goin’ down the street, you’d have to wear a sign that says ‘Wide Load.’ Girl, throw them ’taters out the back door and make you a green salad.”

I checked my backside in the front parlor mirror. I’d put on a few pounds since Graf had been cooking, but it wasn’t that bad. Jitty was going to give me a complex. “My butt looks fine.” I tightened and released the muscles, making it jump. “See. Nice and firm.”

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the jigglyist of them all?” Jitty smirked.

I wanted to throttle her, but she was already dead. “No point in you gazing in the mirror. You don’t have a reflection. Are you sure you’re a ghost and not a vampire?”

“Very funny.” Jitty put her hands on her hips. In the fitted blue bodice and long yellow skirt, she came across sweet as pie. I knew better. This was my heritage haint, and she meant to hold my feet to the fire. About love, life, honor, even weight. It was time to turn the tables on her.

“Okay, what gives? Betty Boop, Veronica, Snow White? I realize Twist bears an uncanny resemblance to Olive Oyl, but I don’t get the connection with these cartoon characters.”

Jitty shook a finger at me. “Your fantasy life is sadly lacking.” She was starting to fade. “What happened to your imagination, Sarah Booth? What happened to giving yourself to a fancy? You used to daydream and create scenarios. You were softer, more feminine then. What happened to the girl who sang ‘Moon River’ with her daddy and danced across the parlor?”

Her questions were wicked and sharp. It had been a long time since I’d allowed a daydream to fully capture me. I’d been living with both feet planted firmly in chores and necessities. I’d lost the magic of make-believe. But I was also in the middle of a case where my client seemed to live in a world of pretend. Her whole scenario of the Lady in Red was like a bad melodrama. I had to focus on the truth.

“I wish I could give myself to a dream.” I wasn’t just saying it to placate Jitty. A longing for the softer, gentler Sarah Booth took hold. It was hard to always be practical and on-target.

“Remember when you used to go down to the oak trees with your mama? You played with elves and fairies.”

The memory Jitty called forth made me long for those days. “I remember.”

“Your mama knew how important it was to imagine things. She knew, and she would be sad to think you’d lost that. She never did.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Don’t ever forget how to play, Sarah Booth. You and Graf got some good times ahead. And some hard times. But if you remember to play, you can get through anythin’ the world throws at you.”

“Did you and Alice play?” Alice was my Civil War–era ancestor who’d survived the brutal hardships of a defeated nation—with Jitty’s help. She’d kept Dahlia House and the land, even though she and Jitty lost their husbands in the war. They suffered poverty and near starvation by holding on to each other.

“We did.” Jitty picked up a basket filled with apples. The sunlight from the window shafted through her. She was almost ready to leave. “We played cards and we talked about the past and the future. Folks might say we built sandcastles, and that the war and the poverty and the sickness came in wave after wave and knocked our fancies down. Bending over, backs breaking in the fields as we struggled to grow potatoes and turnips, we made up our future. And we clung to those fancies even when we had nothin’ to eat. We lived on pretend.”

I walked toward Jitty as she faded in and out. “Thank you for reminding me.”

“You’re mighty welcome, Sarah Booth. Now find you some fancy lingerie to slip into and play a game with your man. I believe that’s him pulling up right now.”

*   *   *

The game I chose was Afternoon Delight. When Graf walked in the door, packages in his arms, I let him know I’d been fantasizing about him. I left him a happy man. Exhausted but happy.

I didn’t always give Jitty credit, but this once I had to hand it to her. Thanks to her nagging, I’d recaptured a bit of the girl in me, and Graf enjoyed the rewards of my femininity. He was smart enough not to ask what had inspired me.

He was sound asleep when I returned to the computer and finished my research on Twist. What I found wasn’t completely surprising, but it was interesting enough that I copied most of it and emailed it to Tinkie. And to Coleman. I was pretty sure he’d done his own research, but just in case.

The thought of Twist laying her snares for Coleman was like salt under my skin. I couldn’t stop him from making romantic mistakes—I had no right to interfere at all—but I wanted to be sure he knew the score. Knowledge was power, so I sent him her entire bio.

Twist’s parents were British. No big bombshell based on her name and the references to Charles Dickens’s fictional character. Olive grew up in London until school age, when the family moved to the United States. Her parents took jobs at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. Twist was sent to boarding school in Connecticut. About as far away as they could send her.

It got worse. When she was twelve, her parents returned to England
and left her in the States
.

I pondered that for a moment. The tiniest grain of sympathy for Twist began to grow inside me. What would I have become had my parents abandoned me and moved halfway around the world? And why would they have done so? Olive was an unpleasant, pretentious person, but was that a result of abandonment issues or the reason she was abandoned?

“Saint Peter jumping hurdles. I sound like some soft-sop talk show.” And on top of that, I was talking to myself. Sweetie looked up with red eyes and flopped back down with a sigh.

Time for action—I’d had enough sitting. I checked my backside in the glass doors of the bookshelves. My butt wasn’t that big. Maybe it was an inch or two wider than in college, but I was older. I couldn’t expect to keep a freshman figure forever.

Beneath the bookshelf, I rummaged around in the cabinets until I found my leg weights and a DVD of exercise routines. Time to wage war against the inches.

Wearing gym shorts and sneakers, I launched into step aerobics with weights. Thirty heart-pounding minutes later, I collapsed on the floor for sit-ups. My thighs screamed against the abuse I’d heaped on them.

“A hundred sit-ups.” I spoke aloud to seal the commitment.

I crunched up and down. Pluto sauntered over and pawed at my hair as it splayed on the floor. Bored with hair, he climbed on my stomach. His little kitty pile-driver paws went straight through the layer of fat into my internal organs. It was unbelievable a cat so fat could have such dainty paws.

“Get off, Pluto.” I continued to lever myself up and down. “Fifty-two!” I huffed. “Get off me!”

Pluto was unimpressed with my self-improvement routine or my sweaty midriff. I figured fifty-two sit-ups with the cat’s weight added to my own would count for a hundred normal crunches. I rolled onto my hands and knees and paused to catch my breath—and convince my trembling legs they could, indeed, support me.

I’d begun to think I would spend eternity on all fours when the phone rang. That propelled me upward into a chair, where I snatched the device out of the cradle and answered.

“Dah-link, were you in the middle of hot, sweaty sex?” Cece asked. “If so, I want details.”

“Dream on,” I managed. “I was exercising.”

“Trying to trim your caboose down to a manageable size?”

“You are a bitch.” And she was. Cece was a woman, but she’d retained rights to the slender hips and tight butt of her years spent as Cecil. It was graphically unfair, and she loved to rub my nose in it.

“Calm down, dah-link! I’m only teasing you.”

“What’s the haps?” I asked, stealing a line from one of my fictional heroes, Dave Robicheaux.