Them Bones (25 page)

"And you're welcome for saving your ass from the fire," I replied calmly, though her grip was amazingly tight for someone who was almost a skeleton. She'd lost another ten pounds.

"That fink Isaac backed out. He didn't get the check."

I felt the eyes of everyone on us. It looked as if Kincaid was giving me the hug of the century. I tried to escape, but she held on and we danced clumsily together for several steps. "Let me go," I ordered in a tone that made her loosen her hold. "Get a grip, Kincaid. This isn't the way a Daddy's Girl behaves."

I stepped out of her arms and looked at her. Her tawny eyes were wild, and her cheeks had that hollowed look of someone who is starving or drinking too much--or both. "Chas wants me to see a psychiatrist. You know he'll use that against me if we divorce." Her eyes brimmed with tears.

Disaster was imminent. When Lesley Gore sang, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to," it was obvious that she was not a Daddy's Girl. Kincaid simply could not cry in front of her guests. It wasn't done. I gripped her elbow and propelled her toward the house. "Kincaid, dahlin', I have to be sure Fel used the right bourbon in his sauce. Come show me," I said, waving with my other hand to the gathered daughters of the South. I felt needle pricks in my spine and I turned into the gaze of Bitty Sue Holcomb. She was not smiling.

I ignored them and hustled Kincaid into the house. Once I had her inside, I poured her some of the bourbon I found in the liquor cabinet and propped her on the arm of the sofa. "Isaac didn't get the check?" This was a problem.

"He was afraid he'd get caught. And he and Kitty are going to
Greece for the entire holiday season. He's leaving me holding the bag," she said bitterly. "If the law finds that check and he's gone, it's going to be all on me."

I hurried into the kitchen, snatched two paper towels, and handed them to her. "If you cry, you'll ruin your makeup."

She sniffed and straightened her spine. There wasn't time to reapply. "I'll give you another three thousand if you'll get the check," she said, then amended. "Five thousand. That's all I have in my secret account."

The environment of a working PI sometimes left a lot to be desired, but the hourly wage was more than adequate. I'd been to Delo's. It wouldn't be that hard to break into the house. But finding a check would be difficult.

"I'll pay you if you just look," Kincaid said.

"On one condition." I had my own Achilles' heel. "I want to know about you and Hamilton."

Kincaid's mouth opened and she drew a soft, whistling breath. "What?"

"You went to
Europe just before you married Chas. I want to know about
Hamilton ." I had hardened my heart, and now I wanted a Kevlar vest. If I knew every dirty, low-down thing about
Hamilton , at least my pride wouldn't allow me to mourn for him. He'd done something terrible to Kincaid, and I wanted to know what it was. I remembered the way she looked when she came back from
Europe . It was almost as bad as she looked now.

"Why?" The word came out on a gust of air, like she'd been punched.

"Another investigation." My own, perhaps, but it was none of her business.

"Bitty Sue hasn't hired you to look into this, has she?"

I saw terror in Kincaid's eyes. Bitty Sue was the most petite of the Daddy's Girls, and a force to be reckoned with.

"It isn't Bitty Sue," I reassured her.

Kincaid swallowed the glass of bourbon. She was developing a serious drinking problem, along with a potential murder charge.

When she met my gaze there was a steeliness to her that I'd never seen before. Not the hard, mean edge, but a firm resolve. "I went to
Europe to see a doctor. Not the medical kind. A brain doctor. I had an eating disorder, and I tried to kill my father."

I took the glass from her hand and sucked out the last drop, then went to pour us both a big one. If Kincaid's background came to light and the check wasn't recovered from Delo's, she would inhale the sweet promise of the afterlife in the gas chamber at Parchman State Penitentiary.

I composed my face before I took our drink back. "How did you try to kill him?" Not why, which didn't really matter now, but how. I prayed it wasn't a gun.

Her grimace told me my prayers were futile. "I shot him with his shotgun."

I sank down beside her on the sofa arm. "Why, for God's sake?" Now I needed to know.

"I was in love with someone. Someone he didn't approve of. He told me if I married this man that he'd disinherit me. He said he wouldn't allow Mother to speak my name. That I would be dead to the family and to the town of
Zinnia ." As she talked, her voice grew stronger. "I didn't know anything but the Delta. I didn't have the courage to go away, like you did."

Forrest Gump had it wrong. Life is not a box of chocolates; it's a kaleidoscope. In the flip of a wrist, realities are shredded and the world takes on a totally new shape. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought Kincaid would love anyone, much less a man outside her social circle. I would have bet Dahlia House that the only passion she was capable of feeling was acquisitive in nature--the purchase of a designer label or the perfect shade of nail polish.

"Did anyone know you shot your father?"

Kincaid stood up and began to pace. "Mother went into hysterics and called the sheriff.
Pasco came and called Doc McAdams. Daddy wasn't hurt bad. It was bird shot, and from a distance, so it was more messy than life-threatening."

"No report was filed?"

"Well,
Pasco said he was going to have to write it up, but he said he'd make it accidental, like Daddy said." She stopped her pacing. "You know, Daddy was madder at Mother for calling the sheriff than he was at me for shooting him."

After a week as a PI, I understood that perfectly. Written records, official reports--documentation of that ilk is dangerous. One small mistake could haunt a person for the rest of her life. In Kincaid's case, an incident from her teens could easily prove the foundation for the state to view her as a murderer. She'd shot a man--her father--once. She had a history of solving problems with violence. I could only hope that
Pasco had never gotten around to writing the report. Since he was dead, he couldn't mitigate the bald facts of a shooting.

"So what role did
Hamilton play?"

"When I was in
Europe , they kept me in this place, a hospital, sort of. I couldn't leave or have phone calls or friends. My parents didn't even send me a letter. I was completely alone, and one day I got in the trunk of one of the doctor's cars and escaped."

I schooled my face to hide my amazement. "Where did you go?"

"I didn't know anyone in
Switzerland . I'd heard my parents talking about
Hamilton and how he was supposedly amassing a fortune in
Paris . I went there."

"Without money or anything?"

"I found him in the phone book and called him and he came to get me. He helped me. And I threw myself at him, but he never touched me. He said," her voice broke, but she continued, "that it would be immoral to take advantage of me in the state I was in. And so he kept me in his house and protected me for several weeks, until I cut a deal with my father. I would marry Chas, and I could come home."

"But everyone thought you and Hamilton . . ."

"I made up the story about having a torrid affair with
Hamilton because I was so ashamed of where I'd been and what happened. The truth was,
Hamilton was very kind, but he frightened me. So intense. He kept turning every conversation back to Sylvia, his sister. Whatever happened in that crazy family of his, he was more messed up than I was."

There was the sound of tiny footsteps coming. Kincaid pointed to a photograph of an old cotton gin on the wall. "Chas says Emerson Glade will be famous one day. I love his use of light."

"I always preferred black-and-white," I stumbled, trying to fall into Kincaid's cover-up.

"Well, I never," Bitty Sue said as she came into the middle of the room and stopped. "Kincaid Maxwell, there are about a hundred people out there looking for you.
Your guests,"
she said with great emphasis, "in case you've forgotten that you're the hostess for the biggest charity event of the season."

She looked at me. "I know you," she said slowly. "You're . . ." She wrinkled her little rabbit nose.

"Sarah Booth Delaney," I said, ordering my body not to show my distress. "We went to school together for twelve years, Bitty Sue. You probably don't recognize me because I'm wearing a blond wig and my family is in financial ruin."

My sarcasm was wasted on her. She gave me a sour look. "If you lost your social skills along with your money, that's fine for you, Sarah Booth. But Kincaid has a position to uphold in this community. She is a Maxwell, and this is the charity event of the year. You need to quit dragging her off to look at stupid pictures of cotton." She reached out and grasped Kincaid's hand. "Your guests are looking for you."

Kincaid gave me a look, but I shrugged her on. I'd found out more than I ever anticipated.

23

I endured the rest of the party--including a lengthy speech by Kincaid, which was delivered with the cool, bitchy facade that I now admired. I suffered through the fashion show by the twenty-year-old mannequins, the fried catfish and hush puppies, the speculative glances of all the Daddy's Girls who were afraid my impoverishment would rub off on them, and the singing cowboy midgets who also square-danced.

I waited for my chance to corner Fel Harper. Kincaid's passing remark about
Hamilton 's fondness for his sister had shaken me. I was tired of playing nice. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now.

When Fel disappeared behind the house to put his portable kitchen back into the trailer, I followed him. He was bent over a vat of hot grease when I tapped him on the back.

"Holy shit," he said, whirling fast for a fat man. "I almost burned myself."

"Guilty conscience?" I accused.

He gave me a dirty look and started throwing tongs and scoops into the trailer.

"Who killed Hamilton Garrett the Fourth?" I demanded.

"You know Mr. Garrett's death was ruled accidental." He scooped a crusty hush puppy from the grease and pretended to examine it.

"He was murdered, and you know it. Delo knew it, and now he's dead." I didn't expect my words to have an effect, but I saw his eyes squinch and he looked past me, as if he expected someone to come up from behind.

His heavy hand on my arm was unexpected, and unpleasant. "Stirrin' up the past is a dangerous business. For you and a lot of other people. Mr. Garrett's dead and buried for twenty years. Digging in his moldy grave won't bring him back to life. Leave it alone, Sarah Booth, before someone else gets hurt."

His words might have scared me, except they weren't spoken as a threat. Tension radiated through him.

"Who are you afraid of, Fel?" I asked. "Is it Gordon Walters?"

He stepped back from me and looked around again. "You go diggin' up old bones, they're liable to stand up and walk," he said. "I'm afraid of ghosts, Sarah Booth. The kind that slip into your house at night and stand by your bed. The kind that press the pillow down over your face with a handsome smile."

My heart clutched. There's no other way to describe that sensation of racing blood and frozen muscle. Fel could not have known about
Hamilton 's visit to my home. I hung on to that as hard as I could.

Fel looked around again and leaned closer to me. "Delo is dead. He talked to you and then he was shot. I don't think it was coincidental that he was killed in the same spot as Mr. Garrett, and I don't want that to happen to me." He put a skimmer over the big vat of grease and hefted it up. It made a sizzling sound as he poured it back into a container. "Don't come near me again," he said.

I had never made the direct link that I was responsible for Delo's death.
That my visit had precipitated his murder.
I wasn't a threat to anyone. Not me, Sarah Booth Delaney, failed Daddy's Girl, actress, heir, female, and week-long private investigator, not to mention fool for love. The fried fish churned in my stomach at the memory of Delo, chopping his wood and tending to his own business. He was a Cagey Old Redneck who took money for gossiping about the past, but he didn't deserve to have his head blown off.

"What do you know about the knife that was used to cut Veronica's brake lines?" This was familiar ground, but I was hoping Fel would rethink his answer.

"Not a damn thing. If Delo had remembered to forget certain things, he'd still be alive today." He tossed his equipment in the trailer and was getting in his truck when I put a hand on his shoulder.

"Pasco Walters drowned in
Memphis . What's the story on that?"

Fel considered for several seconds. "If I tell you, will you stay the hell away from me?"

I nodded.

"
Pasco had him a girlfriend up in
Memphis . He would go up there on weekends and see her. I think they both liked to do a little drinking. Anyway, he'd been there, and the best we could figure was that he got a late start headed home on Sunday night. Chances were good that he'd been drinkin' hard. He was apparently goin' pretty fast when his truck missed the bridge and went into the river. It had been a spring with a lot of rain and the body didn't float up for about a week. My guess is it got hung on something." He stared at me. "Does that satisfy you?"

"Who was his girlfriend?"

"Who the hell knows?" Fel asked with irritation. "The ladies liked
Pasco . He tried to keep that business in
Memphis so it wouldn't make his wife and family suffer." He shrugged. "Seems like
Pasco had a new woman every few months."

"Was there any sign of foul play in his death?"

The look he gave me was suddenly interested. "With
Pasco ? Not to my knowledge. Check with the
Memphis police. They handled everything, and it all seemed cut and dried.
Pasco 's blood alcohol was real high, and folks kind of hushed that up to spare the family. That's all I know."

Before I could ask another question, he slammed the truck door and drove away.

The luncheon was still going on--the women writing down silent bids for the various outfits that had been modeled. If I left now, everyone would think it was because I didn't have the money to buy anything. I slipped around the side of the house and made my escape.

I couldn't risk breaking into Delo's until nightfall, so I went home, changed into jeans and my black leather jacket, and went to the courthouse. I checked the cars in the sheriff's parking lot and made sure that Gordon Walters's truck was not there. It was mid-afternoon, and I'd assumed, rightly, that he worked the eleven-to-seven shift. I needed to see some old files and talk with the sheriff.

At the courthouse, I discovered that Coleman had rushed home for an emergency. The deputy behind the counter noted, rather indiscreetly, that Carlene was always calling with fake emergencies so she could get Coleman home for another fight.

I looked first for a record of the shooting of Jameson O'Rourk, Kincaid's father. If
Pasco had followed up on his threat to write the report, I couldn't find it anywhere. I felt a measure of relief for Kincaid, and turned my attention to the records of Guy Garrett's murder. I went over the reports again and spent a while examining the photos of the body. The placement of the bodies of Guy Garrett and Delo were similar--deliberately so, I thought. There seemed to be a theme at work. And very possibly the same killer. No one else seemed to see this but me.

I saved the best for last--Veronica. With an ear tuned for Gordon's return, I went through the file thoroughly. There was no report of severed brake lines, but there was evidence of a missing page. The work was deft. It looked as if a razor had been used.

The missing page could have contained only meaningless doodles. Or it could have been
Pasco 's notations about a severed brake line and a knife. Or--one final scenario came to mind--Gordon could have cut out a meaningless page simply to stimulate the suspicions already whirling around Sylvia and Hamilton. I was fond of the latter explanation for a number of reasons, one being that Gordon was the one saying he'd cut out the page.

I mentally went over my list of murder suspects. The problem was that I had three separate murders, maybe four, if
Pasco hadn't died in an accident, and they all seemed connected. In the death of
Hamilton the Fourth, I suspected Veronica, her unnamed lover, Isaac Carter and his
Memphis associates, Pasco Walters, Fel Harper, Sylvia. And
Hamilton . At the thought of him I went hot and cold, but I forced myself to keep thinking.

In Veronica's death, I was looking at
Hamilton the Fifth, Sylvia,
Pasco , and, to some degree as an accomplice, Fel.

In Delo's death, the prime suspects were Isaac, Hamilton, Sylvia, and, once again, Fel, as an outside possibility. Gordon was a question here, too. Delo might have known something that would dishonor the Walters name, and Gordon might have killed him to keep him quiet.

The motive for
Pasco 's murder would be that he knew too much. But the more I thought about Fel's recounting of the drowning, the more likely it seemed that
Pasco 's lifestyle had finally caught up with him.

In all of the murders there were common suspects, and like it or not, they were Hamilton, his sister, and Isaac. They all had motive, means, and opportunity.

I slammed the dusty record book shut and left, heading three blocks across town to City Hall. My chosen career of acting had taught me many things, but it was the dinner conversations orchestrated by my father, the circuit court judge, that had laid my bedrock understanding of civics.

Meetings of the city aldermen and zoning boards are public records, and I asked for the minutes book from 1979. It was going to be a few long, boring hours of reading.

I took the heavy clothbound volume and found a seat in the boardroom. Page by page I began to scan the typewritten records of Zinnia's guiding fathers. I did note that they were all men.

It was March before I came across a reference to a request for a zoning change on land in the northeast part of town. That would roughly comprise the black section, I estimated. The request was filed by Aubrey Malone, real estate developer. He was asking for commercial zoning of residential property and a permit to construct a docking facility on the river. That was exactly as Isaac had told me.

At the thought of Isaac, I checked my watch. It was four-thirty. I had half an hour left to read, and soon after it would be dark. I could swing by Delo's and see about Kincaid's check. Once I had it, I was going to tear it into bits and make Isaac Carter eat them.

That train of thought hit a junction, and I took the left-hand fork. Of all of the suspects, Isaac had a double motive for killing Delo. The past and the present. And knowing how women like to bond after sex, I found it highly possible that Kincaid, in a moment of afterglow, had told Isaac all about her little trip to Psychoworld in Switzerland and how she'd shot her own father. It would make Isaac's planting of the check doubly despicable.

I turned back to the minutes book and read on. On March 14, 1979, a citizen's group appeared before the board to protest the zoning change. The group was led by James Levert and Bessie Mae Odom. The name stopped me dead in my tracks. Bessie Mae Odom was Tammy's old granny. This was a woman who was older than Methuselah when I was a teenager. And yet she read a statement to the board. I scanned the record and could almost hear her rusty old voice talking about her heritage and her home. She spoke my feelings for Dahlia House, for my land and my family. She vowed to cling to her small house on her bit of land until she was dead. No matter what it was zoned or who came by and offered her money to leave
Sunflower County .

There was a timid tap on the door and the city clerk peeked in at me. "Time to close," she said.

My eyes were burning and I needed to walk around and think, so I gave her the book and walked into the twilight of downtown Zinnia.

Up and down

Main Street

, shops were closing and men and women were bundled in coats and hurrying to their vehicles. The Wal-Mart chain had not found its way to Zinnia, but based on what Oscar Richmond and his ilk were saying, it wouldn't be long before this pattern of small-town life ended.

I drove by the Sweetheart drive-in and treated myself to a real chocolate malt before I headed back toward Delo's. I didn't want to do this. I didn't like the idea of breaking into a dead man's house. But I felt this overwhelming urge to protect Kincaid. I couldn't explain it and didn't want to try. Maybe I simply felt luckier than she was. My parents were dead, but they would never have bartered me into marriage with a weasel like Chas Maxwell.

I drove past the turnoff to Delo's, turned around, and came back, driving past again. I couldn't see the house, and Gordon Walters and an army of deputies might be waiting in ambush at the end of the road. There was no way to tell.

It was a three-quarter-mile hike back to his place, but I pulled the car down an old farm road, parked, and cut across the cornfields. The moon wasn't full, but it cast plenty of light and I had a good sense of direction. I had only a few acres to cross, and I knew I could hit pretty close to Delo's.

My breath plumed out before me and seemed to hang in the cold night air. In the pale moonlight, the cornfield was ragged, and I cautioned myself not to be startled if I flushed a covey of quail or doves from their winter sleep. Clear and cold, the night was also silent, except for the light crunching of frosted husks beneath my feet and the fast, regular sound of my breathing.

I'd been walking for ten minutes when I heard the dogs kick in. I'd forgotten about them, coursing the ground by Delo's body as the two black men tried to pull them back. They were hounds, normally a gregarious breed of dog. I whistled softly to them and was rewarded by lonesome whines. Delo had gone off and left them, and I could only hope someone had remembered to bring them food. I eased up by the pens and held out a hand, rewarded by the warm lapping of tongues.

In the moonlight I could make out their sad eyes. They were not Chablis, but then I wasn't Tinkie. Perhaps a hound or two would give Dahlia House a homier look. I slipped away from them and circled the house. It seemed abandoned. There was no sign of the yellow crime tape I'd seen so often on television, but then the actual murder had taken place outside. Trying not to have a panic attack, I walked to the front door and turned the knob. The door swung open on a hinge that gave only the faintest creak.

It was pitch black inside. Inching forward, I closed the door and held my breath, listening for the sound of someone else. Only silence came back to me.

I don't believe in ghosts, or at least not the amorphous kind that show themselves as wavering banshees out to terrorize little children and play practical jokes on mortals. I believe in Jitty, an extension of my family's past
and
my own personal warrior goddess. Still, I have to admit, I was scared. Jitty was benevolent; she was family. Delo was undoubtedly pissed. If he decided to make an ethereal appearance, it would not be to give me advice on my clothes or love life.

I'd been smart enough to bring a small flashlight, and I clicked it on and held it low to the floor. The odd lighting gave the room a theatrical appearance, and I found that it calmed me. I went for the drawers and the stack of unopened mail that someone had piled carefully on the kitchen table. Then I went into the kitchen shelves and canisters, hoping that there was a general "junk" collection that served as a temporary filing system.