Booty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery (31 page)

To my amazement, Tinkie leaped onto the deck of the
Miss Adventure
with the grace of a mountain goat. I lurched aboard like a drunk.

“Angela!” Tinkie cried, but the wind tore the word from her mouth. “Angela!”

“The master bedroom!” I signaled belowdecks. That’s where Chavis would be. Whoever had attacked him would surely use the chance to reenact John Trotter’s murder. The person or persons behind this were masters at manipulating events to paint a certain picture. This one would put Angela as the person who’d attacked and grievously injured—or killed—a lawman in the same place her father was killed.

Tinkie led the way down the narrow galley that was pitch-black. I couldn’t see her in front of me, but I kept a hand on her shoulder. It was the only way not to bulldoze over her in the dark.

“We forgot the damn flashlights in the car,” Tinkie whispered.

A sigh was my response.

At the door of the master bedroom, Tinkie slid it open as soundlessly as possible. Lightning flashed outside, and for one instant we could see the room as clearly as if the lights were on. Randy Chavis lay on the floor in the exact spot John Trotter had been killed, in an identical pose.

I only caught a glimpse of him, but his pasty skin color and stillness made me think he was dead. We were too late. The worst had been done. But why? And where in the hell was Angela? She’d called and said she was on the boat. So far, nada, and not even the sound of another living soul.

Tinkie, always the more compassionate, rushed forward. The lightning flash vanished, and so did my vision.

“He’s alive!” Tinkie said. “He’s unconscious. I can’t tell how badly he’s hurt.”

I recalled a hurricane lantern that hung from the wall, an ancient relic of days when oil lamps were used or when the ship’s generator failed. I felt along the paneled wood until I found it. Once the chimney was removed, I flicked my Bic and fired the wick. Smoking did have some benefits.

Warm light illuminated the room.

“Good work,” Tinkie said. “Now help me examine him.”

The light swung as the boat pitched, but we could see well enough to determine the lack of open wounds on Randy Chavis. He was out of uniform and wearing gym shorts and a sleeveless sweatshirt emblazoned with a tequila brand. There was a small cut in his forehead. It should have been stitched, but it didn’t appear life threatening. Head wounds had a tendency to bleed a lot, which might explain the blood in Angela’s kitchen. Except for his pasty color and the pose of a dead man, Chavis looked mostly unharmed.

At Tinkie’s behest, I helped her roll him over. No injuries to his back. At least no stab wounds or gunshots. Something was wrong with him, though. No man slept that soundly.

“Look!” Tinkie pointed to a tiny red mark on his neck. It was hard to see in the shifting lantern light, but it looked like a puncture wound of some kind. Just about where his artery might be.

“Angela was drugged. She said she felt a pinch at her neck.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Tinkie said.

“Randy!” I lightly slapped his face. “Randy! Wake up!”

He moaned and turned his head away.

“I think he’s okay.” Relief made my shoulders sag. I didn’t care for Randy Chavis, but I didn’t want him to die.

“Randy!” Tinkie shook him.

He came to bucking and thrashing, sending Tinkie sprawling into me. We both tumbled along the cabin floor.

“What? Where am … Where’s Angela?”

“Good question.” I gained my feet and pulled Tinkie to hers. “How did you get on this boat?”

He looked around. “I have no idea. Last I remember, I was at Angela’s cottage. I went to warn her.”

“About what?”

The boat lurched hard, and both Tinkie and I lost our footing. The lantern swung dangerously, and I heard a thump that sounded like flesh and bone meeting solid resistance.

When we’d righted ourselves again, we found Chavis in a corner of the cabin beneath several books and a large sailing trophy. Randy was again unconscious, and the trophy was etched with blood. This time, the lawman was bleeding from a knock on the side of his head.

“Dammit it all to hell.” I wanted to scream. “He was about to tell us something important.”

“Help! Please help me!” Angela’s voice was small and faraway sounding.

“She’s on deck,” I said.

The boat lurched again and sent me and Tinkie reeling out the door and toward the stairs leading to the deck. Despite her cultured upbringing, Tinkie went up the ladder like a monkey, and I was right behind her.

We emerged into driving rain, gale-force winds, and the sight of Angela clinging to one of the ropes that tied the
Miss Adventure
to the pier. The line was inching out of her hands as the sailboat began to swing broadside into the waves. If that happened, we would be swamped and sink.

“Holy shit,” I jumped forward to help her.

“How did the boat come untied?” I yelled at Angela. I’d been there when Arley tied it off. The knot had been solid.

The first wave washed over the side of the
Miss Adventure,
all but knocking me and Angela off our feet.

“Tinkie!” I dropped the rope and grabbed my partner’s arm just as the water tried to suck her over the side.

“If we can’t get the boat turned into the waves, she’s going to founder and sink.” Angela was eerily calm. “We have to bring Randy from below deck. We can’t leave him there. If the boat goes down, he’ll be trapped.”

“He came to, but then a trophy hit him in the head.” I had to fight to spit the words out loud enough for them to hear. “Tinkie, do you think you can revive him?”

“You need me up here.” We were all holding the rope. When the boat shifted a little into the wind, we tightened the rope and fought to hold the small ground we’d gained. Tinkie was right. It would take all three of us to merely hang on.

“We can’t hold her through the whole storm.” Angela looked around frantically. “How did this happen? The ropes were tight.”

The singing sound of rope against wood made us look at the second tie-line. It was slipping from the post on the dock.

“This can’t be.” Angela fought disbelief. “Those lines were properly tied. I knotted that one myself. And Arley knows how to secure a boat. Someone had to loosen them while I was below deck.”

She was right, but it didn’t stop the rope from slipping another few inches.

Tinkie hauled on the rope with all her weight. If we lost the center tie-line, we’d have only the one on the bow. We were holding the stern line, which had also been untied. The waves and wind would swing us around and smash us into the pier. While the boat would definitely be destroyed, it was also likely we would drown. Thrown into the water with the boat battering against the pilings, we’d probably be crushed.

The low and mournful cry of my hound made me look at the pier. Sweetie Pie and Pluto stood in the rain watching. I don’t know how they’d managed to open the car door and escape, but there they were. Neither made an effort to seek shelter. They knew we were in grave danger.

“Get Arley!” I tried to shout at Sweetie and urge her to get help, but the wind and rain drowned my efforts.

“Grab the rope, Sweetie!” Tinkie had a more practical plan, but her words were lost in the storm’s vortex.

“She can’t hear us.” My voice cracked as I yelled at Sweetie. “Get in the car!”

Debris was flying everywhere in the wind. Shingles from the marina roof ripped past my face, missing my nose by an inch. A plastic bag slammed into Tinkie, wrapping around her face as if it intended to suffocate her.

Sweetie gave a yelp as something struck her. “Go back to the car!” I wanted to tell her how much I loved her and that she would be fine. Harold Erkwell, a friend who’d taken the devilishly evil bearded dog Roscoe, would take her in. It had all been arranged. Another friend would take the three horses. And Pluto could go back to his owner, the eccentric Marjorie Littlefield, if Graf didn’t take him to Los Angeles.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the crack of the figurehead against one of the pilings. I didn’t see the chunk of wood that flew through the air and smacked my head. My knees folded, and I felt myself going down on the rolling deck, but I still couldn’t comprehend what had happened to me.

I was simply sucked into a whirling black hole, and I didn’t even fight against it.

*   *   *

I came to my senses with a burst of pain in my head, and a tunnel of bright, luminescent light. At the end of the tunnel, a trim woman in a black dress stood perfectly still. The skirt of her dress belled out around her ankles. When she realized I was awake, she approached. A great dread took hold of me. Her widow’s weeds rustled, the taffeta in her skirt an indication of the time period.

Another Civil War–era visitation.

But this wasn’t Jitty. This was a woman thinned by sorrow and loss. Was it my great-great-great-grandmother Alice?

Was I dead?

The series of Jitty’s warnings came to mind—widows all, both real and fictional. Had she been trying to prepare me for the ultimate good-bye? But I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. I had much to accomplish.

The image of Graf and Marion Silber, together on the beach, filled my mind’s eye in crisp detail. Had she been sent to help him after I was gone? The universe stepping up to the plate to be sure he wasn’t left alone and injured? Instead of the woman who broke up my relationship, was she going to be the woman who saved the man I loved from desperate depression?

I wanted to weep, but my body failed to respond to any emotion or command. I floated on a cloud of white as the past whipped by me.

I held my father’s hand as we walked down the driveway at Dahlia House. He sang an old western song about a horse, “Old Faithful.” And I sang with him at the chorus. “When your roundup days are over, there’ll be pastures white with clover, for you, old faithful pal of mine.”

Dusk settled over us and bathed Dahlia House in a golden glow that made me think of heaven. The bright-green spring leaves of the sycamore trees that lined the drive shimmied like naughty dancing girls. “Why did you leave me?” I asked. “I needed you. I was just a kid.”

“It’s okay,” Daddy told me. “We’re with you, Sarah Booth. You will never be alone.”

He was gone, replaced with another scene. I played in the dirt beneath a grove of old oaks behind Dahlia House. My mother sat on an oak branch that dipped low to the ground. It was the perfect seat, and she read a novel.

Wind ruffled the leaves, and the tall grass with golden tassels whispered to me, teasing me with promises of fairies. My mother had told me that the oaks were magical and that anything could happen in the shade of the trees if only I believed. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the fairies and elves as they played in the shade.

Mama lowered her book and motioned me to her. I abandoned my Meyers horse collection and ran into her arms. My face pressed to her shoulder, I inhaled the lemony scent of magnolias. “I love you.” I pressed the words into her skin.

“Love can never be broken or destroyed,” she said. “Remember that always, Sarah Booth. Love replenishes itself once given, so never hold back.”

She stood up.

“Don’t go!” She was leaving. I knew it. The light that had surrounded us both was dimming, and a cold mist pushed in from the horizon.

“You can’t stay here in memories. We’re a nice place to visit, but not to linger. You know this is true. Jitty will tell you.”

“I don’t want to leave. I want to stay. With you. I won’t go back.”

Her hand brushed the tears from my cheeks. “No, that’s not really what you want. You want to live and love.”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“You have much to accomplish.”

“I don’t want any of it. Please.” Her touch had grown cooler, and she was fading.

“You have to return, Sarah Booth. You’ve visited here too long as it is.”

“Please. Stay with me.” I couldn’t face the future without her and Daddy. It wasn’t a fair thing to ask. I’d been without them most of my life. Now that I had them back, I couldn’t let go. Not again. This place was childhood, safe, filled with love. I would not go back to the present, a place of loss and struggle.

“Your mother is right. Go on, shoo!” Lawrence Ambrose, a wonderful writer whose murder I’d helped solve, stepped out of the shadows. I’d always felt he was a magical man, a writer whose wit and humanity had left a hole in my life when he was murdered. “Now vamoose!” He flicked his fingers at me.

“I’m not a chicken. You can’t chase me away.”

He swept a bow so low his shock of white hair almost touched the ground. “Touché, Sarah Booth. You are not a chicken. So jump back into life. This is no place for the living. You’ve been granted a wonderful gift. A moment of time with the people who love you. Take it back to the land of the living.”

His clear gray eyes held another message. One of peace and contentment.

“I want to stay with y’all.”

“A trifle on the stubborn side, aren’t you?” He executed a spin and slide. “We’re always here. Your time will be up before you know it. But not today.”

He was simply gone. In his place the widow had returned. She came toward me, and I knew she meant to take me back. I tried to run, but my legs refused all of my orders.

Her hair was marcelled in waves, parted in the center and held in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were sad—and empty.

“They killed him, you know. One last train robbery. That’s what he said. Then he’d be with me and the children and lead an ordinary life. He wasn’t a bad man. Not in the way of some men. He didn’t beat me or the children. But he could be brutal. He could. They said he killed men when he robbed the trains.”

She wandered around me, talking to herself.

“He called me Zee. I share my name with his mother. Peculiar, isn’t it? Like we were destined to be together. But not so peculiar when you realize his mother was my aunt. We were first cousins, but we fell in love. Our engagement lasted nine years.”

“Who are you?” I couldn’t place her. I’d guessed her time period as post–Civil War. That was as definite as I could get.

“He rode with the James-Younger Gang for a while. For a man who robbed trains, he never had a lot of money for his family. I couldn’t figure that. Whatever he stole never made it in our front door.”