Bones to Pick (31 page)

"Fine." I hoped once I hit Virgie, she'd go down all the way. But there weren't any guarantees when dealing with a homicidal septuagenarian. I just had one more thing to add. "Where in the hell are Coleman and Oscar?"

"Maybe they won't come. Oscar was pretty angry with me."

Now was my chance to return so many of the good deeds Tinkie had done me. "We should have called him when you were going to spend the night. He worried all night long."

Even across a dark room I could see her stiffen. "Tinkie, if you had a child, think how worried you'd be if he or she stayed out all night."

"The difference, Sarah Booth, is that I'm not a child."

"But you also aren't in the habit of staying out all night. Oscar thought something tragic had happened to you. We should have called."

"I'm
not going to apologize."

I chuckled. "At this point, I don't think it matters. He'll be so glad to see you alive that he'd agree if you wanted to do burlesque."

She sank into one of the wicker chairs. "That's the problem. I don't want Oscar's permission, tacit or explicit. I'm going to make my own choices in life from now on."

"Even if it means worrying the people who love you?"

She thought about it. "Maybe."

"Tinkie, the whole time you've been gone, Oscar has been afraid you were in trouble, and look, you are. There are factors that make it reasonable for him to worry. The work we do for one. And he's worried about your breast lump." I figured I might as well dig up the whole potato patch.

"He has no right to say a word. It's my breast. My lump. My choice."

"And his heart." Tinkie was kind and considerate. Why was she being such a hardhead? "If something happened to you, it would kill Oscar."

"We risk that every day. Everyone who loves risks losing their heart every minute of every day."

She was right, but there were degrees. "What would it hurt to go to a doctor? What would it hurt?"

"If he tells me the lump has grown, I might lose my faith that it will go away. I just need some time."

That was it in a nutshell. She needed time to feel her way through the situation, and Oscar and I wanted immediate action. We were all wrong. "Will you consider something for me?"

"Maybe."

"If we get out of this, take it as a sign that we're both intended to live long, full lives. Make an appointment for February with a surgeon to have the lump biopsied. If it's gone by February, you won't have a worry in the world."

A long silence stretched across the dark room. All around us the world was quiet.

"Okay, I'll do that. I'll make the appointment for February fourteenth, Valentine's Day."

"I think Oscar will take that as a true gift of love."

There was the sound of footsteps approaching our door, the steady clatter of Virgie's sensible but feminine shoes. I took my position behind the door, and Tinkie turned in her chair so that she was silhouetted by the light in the yard.

We held our breath as we waited for the door to open.

23

The door opened slowly, and no one stepped through. "Sarah Booth, get out from behind that door, or I'll have to hurt you."

Virgie was one sharp cookie. There was no point pretending. I edged out, away from her reach, and went to stand beside Tinkie. If I couldn't catch her by surprise, Tinkie and I would try to overpower her.

"What are you going to do with us?" Tinkie asked.

"Even more important, what did you do with my dog?"

"You shouldn't try sneak attacks when you have a dog with your name and phone number on the tag," Virgie said. "It gives away the endgame."

She had played me like a fiddle. I'd underestimated her, and now I was as much a hostage as Sweetie and Tinkie.

"What are you going to do with us?" Tinkie repeated.

"I don't know," she said. "It depends. I can't let you go. I have no faith that you'd keep your mouths shut. And don't pretend you don't know all about it. You both ended up talking to me, which tells me you figured it out. Now whom did you tell?"

"No one." We said it too quickly.

"The truth," she said, stepping into the room a foot or two. She had the Taser in her hand. "You might as well tell me, or I'll get it out of you the hard way."

I squeezed Tinkie's shoulder to give her strength.

"You want to know who we told? We told all the authorities between
Memphis
and
Jackson
," Tinkie said matter-of-factly. "Your goose is cooked. You might as well let us go."

It was a bold stance, but one without proper backing.

"If that's the truth, I might as well kill you both. I can only be executed once, you know."

Spoken in true serial-killer style. She was right, though; she had nothing to lose by killing us. We would be victims five and six, or maybe fifteen and sixteen. There was no telling how long Virgie had been conducting her own Darwinian efforts to stamp out the socially inept gene pool.

"We might be of use to you." I stepped in front of Tinkie. If she was going to attack us, Tinkie might have a chance to get away.

"But not as much use as I would be." Tinkie stepped in front of me.

I rolled my eyes and leaned down to whisper, "I get one chance to save you."

'You had your chance." She held her ground. "And you blew it."

Tinkie's one flaw as a partner was that she liked to rub things in.

"Stop it. And stay back, or I will Taser you into a jerking puddle."

"That's not a very ladylike threat." I stepped in front of Tinkie. "Where's my dog?"

"She won't be chasing any more coons," Virgie said.

I made a grab for her, but she was quicker. She slammed the door on me, and I heard the dead bolt turn.

But I'd also heard the doorbell chime. Coleman had arrived at last.

Tinkie and I took turns listening at the door, in the hopes of hearing some sign that help was on the way. There was only silence, though.

We sat in the wicker chairs and waited, helpless to act to save ourselves or the Pie. I was seriously worried about my hound.

After a half hour had passed, I stood up to pace. "What's taking them so long?"

"Are you sure they understood?"

I thought back through my conversations with Oscar. "I'm positive. He didn't want me to come by myself, because of the danger. I ignored him because I wanted to get to you. Then I told Gordon, and I'm sure he had a clear picture of what was going on."

Tinkie slapped her forehead. "Sarah Booth, we are dense! Coleman doesn't have any jurisdiction in
Coahoma
County
. He's the sheriff of
Sunflower
County
!"

The truth of her words was like a bone in my throat. "Surely that won't slow him down. Doesn't he have probable cause or something to that effect? Can't he just break in and worry about the consequences later?"

"Not if he wants a good case against Virgie."

Tinkie leaned back in her chair. "We may be here a while, so you might as well get some sleep. What time is it, anyway?"

I checked my watch to discover it was after ten. My life was slipping away, minute by minute, and I needed to check on Sweetie. I didn't believe Virgie had killed her-- drugged her, yes. But not killed her. Sweetie loved food, so she would have eaten fruitcake laced with tranquilizer without batting an eye. The dose Virgie gave me had knocked me flat, and I outweighed Sweetie by at least sixty pounds. She could be out for hours.

"I know you're worried about Sweetie," Tinkie said. "I wish there was some way we could get out of here and check on her."

"Me, too." But I'd been all over the room. The windows didn't open. They were huge slabs of glass fitted into the walls. The outside door had been locked by someone standing on the steps. The room was, for all practical purposes, sealed like a tomb.

"Maybe that wasn't Coleman at the door." Tinkie tucked her feet up under her. "It was probably some school business or something. No one has come to help us, and we're going to die here. Even if Coleman has to go through another sheriff's department, it shouldn't have taken him this long."

Her doom and gloom were interrupted by a sound outside the door. Footsteps approached down the hallway.

"Listen." I held up a hand. "Let's pretend to be asleep."

We draped ourselves appropriately over our chairs and played possum as the door unlocked and Virgie stepped into the room.

'Your rescue team has come and gone," she said. "Coleman Peters and John Adams, the
Coahoma
County
sheriff, just left. They never even mentioned your name, Sarah Booth. Only Tinkie's. I threw them a false lead, and they're off to
New Orleans
, baying like green hounds."

"Virgie, they saw my car."

"Really? Where did they see it?"

"Parked near the road, in your driveway."

"Funny, they didn't say anything at all about your car, Sarah Booth."

My worry ratio tripled. "They had to see it."

"Unless someone moved it."

"But I have the key." I reached into my pocket only to find emptiness.

"While you were taking your little snooze, I borrowed your key and moved the car. Or should I say hid the car."

I hadn't realized how much I was counting on Coleman seeing my car until she took that hope away from me. For all Coleman knew, I'd fallen off the edge of the world. And if they concentrated their efforts on finding Tinkie in
New Orleans
, Virgie would have time to kill us and chop us into flushable bits.

"You look a little defeated, Sarah Booth."

"Not at all," I lied.

"I never intended to hurt either of you." She stood in the doorway as she talked, the Taser in her hand. "I want you to know that. Since you weren't my girls, I had no obligation to make you toe the line. I only meant to stop you."

"And it was the notes to us that finally made us see what was happening. Had you not threatened us, we wouldn't have figured it out," Tinkie said.

"Ironic, isn't it?"

Virgie could afford to be intellectual about it all since she was on the non-shocking end of the Taser.

"I'm not going to ask you for understanding--"

"But I do understand." Tinkie rose slowly to her feet. "I see it clearly. You've devoted your entire life to shaping these young women into remarkable creations. You gave them an education, social graces, strategies, introductions, and a sense of social propriety. You gave them all the best of you."

I almost applauded. Tinkie deserved an Oscar--a real one and a gold one. I held my breath to see if Virgie had bought the performance.

'You do understand."

In the moonlight coming in through the many glass windows, I could see that Virgie had relaxed her stance a tiny bit. Tinkie's understanding was soothing her.

"We both do, Virgie. Maybe me a little more than Sarah Booth, who has always traveled her own path. But as a wife, the partner of a man whose business depends on propriety, I do understand. There are values that are reflected in conduct and grace. There is also the fact that good manners improve life for everyone."

Virgie held out her empty hand, palm up. "Imagine a world without manners. What you'd have is rudeness and chaos. I've seen it all falling apart. With the breakdown of our communities has come the total disruption of our families. We're a society of anonymous commuters."

Even I had to agree with some of what she was saying, but I wasn't going to open my mouth. Tinkie was doing a brilliant job and needed no help from me.

"Well put," Tinkie said.

"I worked so hard on these girls. I put everything into helping them. And when they graduated, they went out into the world as representations for my school. Their bright lights reflected back on me. They were the validation of all my hard work."

Tinkie stepped a little closer. "And when their conduct was reprehensible, what reflected back on you was unacceptable."

Virgie nodded. "I tried with the notes to warn them back into line."

"You started with the notes even when they were at the school, didn't you?" Tinkie asked.

"Yes. For the most part, it was effective. Every few years I'd have to take it a step further, but usually it required only the destruction of some personal property or a note on a blackboard embarrassing the offender. That's the job of society, to hold a person to standards."

"But who sets those standards?" I asked.

"When I first opened the school, it was easier because there were community standards. For the past twenty years, I've been spitting into the wind. Young women won't abide by standards when they receive no credit for them, and no censure for breaking them. Unless there's a consequence."