Them Bones (24 page)

"You don't have to pay me the rest of the money," I said, knowing that I would suffer greatly for that stand on principle. After all, she was backing out of the deal, not me. She really should pay all she promised.

"It isn't the money," she answered. Her nails, changed from Red Passion to Tangerine, dug into my forearm. "It's the fact that you're creating a lot of problems for some people."

"Who?" I asked, suddenly very interested.

"I can't say," she sniffed, and I thought she was going to cry. "Your eggs are burning," she said instead.

I got up and flipped the omelet. Even in grammar school Tinkie could be mulish. I'd never get the information out of her if I tried to force it.

"Okay, Tinkie, if that's the way you want it. I have another client, anyway."

"Who?" she asked, frowning.

"I can't reveal that. But as far as you're concerned, I've retired. If my other case happens to bleed over into this area, I'll stay on the lookout for people I'm pissing off."

"Sarah Booth, you think this is a game. Well, it isn't." She stood up. "Oscar said there was--" She stopped.

"The eggs are ready," I said, pretending I hadn't heard her slip. So it was Oscar, rumbling about me and my business. No surprise. I put a plate in front of her. "My special recipe," I said.

Tinkie caught my hand again. "Sarah Booth, there's talk that
Hamilton killed Pasco Walters, too. You know
Pasco 's car ran off the road in
Memphis . He went in the
Mississippi River and drowned. They didn't find the body for a week."

"
Hamilton was in
Europe when Sheriff Walters drowned. Eat while it's hot." Maybe Oscar was afraid of losing Tinkie. He had plenty of money, but most of it, and his position at the bank, had come through his marriage to her. If he'd discovered that she had a yen for
Hamilton , he might be trying a flanking maneuver.

Tinkie toyed with her food. "You have to stop asking questions, Sarah Booth." She looked up into my eyes and I saw real fear. "It was wrong of me to start this, and now it has to stop. Delo Wiley is dead.
Hamilton is here, right here in Zinnia, and he's a man capable of any deception, any crime."

I knew another side of
Hamilton . He was a capable man, on many levels and in many positions. There was a primal force in him that made sex more compelling than chocolate. That didn't make him a triple murderer. Necessarily.

"Tinkie, Oscar has figured out that you gave me ten thousand dollars, and he's trying to spook you into behaving." That was the logical explanation. He was also the biggest gossip in Zinnia--quite an accomplishment, and a fact I delicately didn't point out.

"Oscar wasn't telling me this. He was talking on the phone with someone else."

"He has a videotaped confession, no doubt," I scoffed.

Tinkie scooped Chablis into her arms. Though Tinkie had lost interest in her food, Chablis remembered my Delta-famous sausage omelet and tucked in as well as she could with her underbite. "I've fantasized about
Hamilton for so long, dreaming of how he'd come home and realize that he loved me. That we would leave the Delta together and make a new life somewhere, a place where I didn't have to conform to what everyone thought I should be." She closed her eyes. "I'd like to style hair," she said. "Isn't that silly? Me, Tinkie Bellcase
Richmond . Four years of college, a banker husband, an estate, and security to last an eternity. But what I'd really like to do is go to cosmetology school and build those incredible hair sculptures that black women wear. I want a hair show in
Chicago !"

I was struck dumb. I had a vision of Tinkie in a pink smock erecting a towering mass of gleaming black hair into a pattern like I'd seen on the lamp in Sylvia's nuthouse room. Art deco. That was what it was called.

I went to Tinkie and awkwardly patted her shoulder. I couldn't give her any words of solace. There was no way her husband or her father would ever allow her to pursue her dream. "Maybe you could buy some wigs and practice while Oscar is at work." It was the best I could do.

"It's stupid. Go ahead and say it," she said, finally collecting herself. "It's a stupid fantasy, but
Hamilton was part of it. And now I find out that as stupid as my hair design dream is, my crush on
Hamilton is even stupider. All of these years, I've pinned my hopes on a freaking murderer!"

"Tinkie," I said gently. "You can't be calling Hamilton a murderer." It wasn't my job to resurrect
Hamilton 's reputation, but if he was going to hang around Dahlia House, I didn't want folks thinking he was coldblooded. "There's no proof."

"But there is. Physical evidence."

"What?" I asked, willing to humor her if she'd leave sooner.

"That's what I overheard Oscar talking about. Veronica Garrett's brake lines were cut, and it was
Hamilton 's knife that cut them."

I stopped her before she could get cranked up. "That's just gossip." I'd heard that cut-brake-line theory from a number of people, but no one had verified it. Technically, Fel hadn't denied it. He'd said he wasn't a mechanic.

She shook her head. "I wish it were. The lines were cut. Oscar was talking with Gordon Walters. He's the one who told Oscar about the brake lines. And about the knife.
Hamilton 's knife. It was found in the house."

I felt a surge of anger. "Gordon's just stirring trouble." And he was doing a damn good job of it. For whatever reason, he had it in for
Hamilton .

"He's not, Sarah Booth. That's what I had to tell you. Gordon confessed that he took part of his father's report out of the records--the part about the cut brake lines. He'd heard you were poking into things and that you were going to write a book. He knew his father had acted improperly by not pursuing the wreck, so he went into the records and pulled that report. Fel wouldn't talk about it because it would incriminate him, too, for covering up a crime. Gordon thought if he could purge the records, you wouldn't be able to find anything. He was protecting his father's name. See,
Pasco chose not to pursue Veronica's murder, because he knew who did it."

I swallowed, only partially successful at blocking a few graphic memories of the night before. "As sheriff, he was obligated to file a charge and bring
Hamilton to trial. It's ridiculous that he would
choose
to ignore a murder." I fought her facts with everything I had.

She nodded, stroking Chablis's little head. The dog had gone into a cholesterol coma. "Think what you're saying. The Garretts were one of the most respected families in the state. Mr. Garrett was dead; Veronica was dead. Sylvia claimed the knife was hers. Sheriff Walters took the easy way out and did nothing. Sylvia went to Glen Oaks, and
Hamilton was exiled to
Europe ."

My heart was racing, and a cold sweat had begun to trickle down my spine. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I had all the symptoms of betrayal.

"Do you really expect me to believe a sheriff would allow a murderer to go free?"

Before she could answer, Chablis leaped from the table and squeezed her six-ounce self through the kitchen door. There was wild and excited yipping from the stairs.

Hamilton ! He was still in the house. Probably listening at the kitchen door.

"Chablis!" Tinkie called, getting up.

"Eat your breakfast," I said, ignoring the fact that her plate was empty. "I'll get Chablis, the little darling." I rushed out of the kitchen, closing the door behind me, and hurried through the house.

As I darted through the parlor, there was the soft sound of the front door clicking into place. A ray of morning light caught the exquisite glass bottle that Sylvia had given me for
Hamilton . It had been on the sideboard, and now it was sitting in the middle of the dining table. The sunlight seemed to set the glass on fire. I didn't have to look. I knew that
Hamilton was gone.

Jitty gave me some warning as she jangled her bracelets behind me. I had taken a seat on the top step, and I was huddled down in my shirt, trying not to cry. Tinkie was finally gone, saved from costume hell by my suggestion of some Daisy Dukes and a bandana crop top that tied under her breasts.

"Honey chile, where did you learn to pick your men? I tried to warn you." She took a seat beside me. "Twenty generations of Delaney women are turnin' in their graves. I mean rollin' and cuttin' flips. I'll bet if we looked out the kitchen window, the cemetery would be quakin' and shakin', headstones about to tumble down."

"Don't go there, Jitty," I said. "I'm a fool."

"Yeah, and you're hardheaded, too. That's the worst kind."

I was too heartsick to defend myself.
Hamilton had sneaked up on me and I'd invited him into my bed. A man, a suspect in the death of his own mother--and a growing list of others--had broken into my home, and I had spent twelve hours with him making the most passionate, intimate love I'd ever experienced.

Jitty was staring at me with a cool regard. "Chances are he won't be back this way again, but he certainly did bring a nice gene pool with him. Were you using protection?" she asked.

If I hadn't been so mortified by my own behavior, I would have tried to hurt her. But as it was, Jitty was my only friend. I couldn't afford to run her off, too.

She took my silence as permission to continue. "I personally favor Harold as the father of your children. Harold strikes me as the kind of man who'd stay around and watch them get big, the kind of man who'd invest wisely and grow portfolios so that the future of Dahlia House would always be safe."

"
Hamilton is wealthy," I countered in a monotone. "And you sound like you're reading a Smith-Barney advertisement."

"
Hamilton
says
he's wealthy. The man just blew back into town from
Europe . Nobody's seen or heard from him in eighteen years. He could be Count Dracula for all we know," Jitty pointed out reasonably. "Harold is a known quantity."

"They're not coffee beans," I said wearily. 1 was physically sick. My stomach was giving me signs that revenge would soon follow.

"Back when your many-g's-grandma
Alice was a single woman, it was up to the relatives and neighbors to find her a man. They did all the investigatin' before they ever introduced her. That's the way it worked back then. Relatives took it on themselves to check out a man, look into his past. Things were simpler then. If somebody of low character came along, they didn't let the young girls near 'em."

"Sort of like Rhett Butler meeting Scarlett at the Wilkes ball, right?" I wasn't buying into Jitty's love affair with the past. It was the past that had me in the mess I was in.

"That was a book, Sarah Booth. Surely you know the difference between books and life."

I stood up. "Yeah, and look what happened to Scarlett." I looked at Jitty for the first time. She was still in the silver skin dress, but her eye makeup was smeared and her pageboy had begun to kink. "You look like you had one helluva night."

"It's a reciprocal thing. You were busy so I grabbed a little fun for myself. You know, Sarah Booth, you need to do the wild thing more often. I really needed that."

I turned and walked down the stairs to the kitchen to put on some more coffee. "If your sexual health is based on what I do, I pity you," I called out. "I'm no good at this, and I think a convent is the only solution."

"Honey, you just rode the one horse. My favorite is just comin' to the post."

When the coffee had perked I took a seat at the table, not caring that the kitchen was freezing. I leaned my head on my hand and tried not to think back to the night before. How had something so wonderful turned into such a nightmare? It was the question of my life.

Jitty drifted through the wall, completely redone in purple hip-hugger jeans and a paisley body shirt of pink and purple. 1 knew I was in bad shape, because her outfits were beginning to grow on me.

"You don't have time to sit around here mopin'," she said, pacing back and forth in front of the stove.

"The last time I looked, my agenda wasn't exactly full." I sank deeper into self-pity.

"Snap out of it, Sarah Booth. Remember Kincaid's charity do."

I sat up. I had forgotten. My Dolly costume was lying in a heap in my room. There was no time for anything except to get dressed and get there.

"You'll be a knockout," Jitty pronounced with a surety that made me feel marginally better.

"I could simply stay home," I said.

"Yeah, just go on and crawl up under the porch like a kicked dog." Jitty looked at me in disgust. "All your Delaney blood must be in the womb, 'cause you don't seem to have a drop in your spine."

She had thrown down the challenge. I rose from the table. "Okay, I'm going."

"Do me a favor, Sarah Booth," she said.

"Maybe." I was leery of Jitty's requests.

"You left the barn door open and one horse has run out. Don't close the door yet. Another one might run in."

"If that's your euphemistic way of promoting Harold, give it a rest. I'm over men. All of them." My thumb gave a pathetic little gasp of a pulse. I rushed to the table and stuck it in the cup of hot coffee. "Take that!" I cried.

"Girl, you ever heard of that drug called Halcion? Maybe you ought to get you a few tablets."

I chose to ignore Jitty as I took my coffee and headed up the stairs.

Wisteria Hall was not as big as Knob Hill or as old as Dahlia House, but it was a lovely setting for a luncheon. Kincaid had gone the extra mile. Gingham bows had been tied around the huge oaks that lined the drive, and she'd hired a troupe of singing midgets dressed as cowboys to escort us from the driveway around the rose arbors to the old patio. One short cowpoke gave me a wolf whistle as I got out of the car.

True to Fel Harper's gossip, hay bales were scattered about, highlighted with vibrant mums. In the center of the half-acre patio was a swimming pool shaped like a cut emerald. The water sparkled aqua, and promised that summer would indeed return.

"Sarah Booth," Kincaid said, rushing forward in a hand-tailored, leather-and-suede Dale Evans outfit. She air-kissed my cheeks. "Where did you get that costume?" she said loudly, then threw her arms around me and grabbed me in a bear hug. She whispered, "You've got to do something."