(2T) A Bone to Pick Page 9

  “Well, since you ask, I am.”

  “Do tell.”

  “This is gonna sound funny, but I’m dating Paul Allison.”

  “Your husband’s brother?”

  “Yes, that Paul Allison,” she said, shaking her head in amazement at her own folly.

  “You take my breath away.” Paul Allison was a ~ 117 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  policeman, a detective about ten years older than Arthur—not much liked by Arthur or Lynn, if I re- membered correctly. Paul was a loner, a man never married who did not join in the police force cama- raderie with much gusto. He had thinning brown hair, broad shoulders, sharp blue eyes, and a sugges- tion of a gut. I had seen him at many parties I’d at- tended while I dated Arthur, but I’d never seen him with Sally.

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked. “About five months. We were at Arthur and Lynn’s wedding, I tried to catch you then, but you left the church before I could. I didn’t see you at the recep- tion?”

  “I had the worst headache, I thought I was starting the flu. I just went on home.”

  “Oh, it was just another wedding reception. Jack Burns had too much to drink and wanted to arrest one of the waiters he remembered having brought in before on drug charges.”

  I was even more glad I’d missed it now. “How’s Perry?” I asked reluctantly, after a pause. I was sorry to bring poor, sick Perry up, but courtesy demanded it.

  “Thanks for asking,” she said. “So many people don’t even want to, because he’s mentally sick instead ~ 118 ~

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  of having cancer or something. But I do want people to ask, and I go see him every week. I don’t want peo- ple to forget he’s alive. Really, Roe, people act like Perry’s dead because he’s mentally ill.” “I’m sorry, Sally.”

  “Well, I do appreciate your asking. He’s better, but he’s not ready to get out yet. Maybe in two more months. Paul’s been going with me to see Perry the past three or four times.”

  “He must really love you, Sally,” I said from my heart.

  “You know,” she said, and her face brightened, “I really think he does! Bring your plate over, I think everything’s ready.”

  We served ourselves from the stove, which was fine with me. Back at the table, we buttered our biscuits and said our little prayer, and dug in like we were starving.

  “I guess,” I began after I had told Sally how good everything was, “that you want to hear about Jane’s house.”

  “Am I as transparent as all that? Well, I did hear something, you know how gossip gets around, and I thought you would rather me ask you and get it straight than let all this talk around town get out of hand.”

  ~ 119 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  “You know, you’re right. I would rather you get it right and get it out on the gossip circuits. I wonder who’s started the talk?”

  “Uh, well. . . .”

  “Parnell and Leah Engle,” I guessed suddenly. “Right the first time.”

  “Okay, Sally. I am going to give you a gossip ex- clusive. There’s no way this could be a story in the pa- per, but you see everyone in town, and you can give them the straight scoop from the horse’s mouth.” “I am all ears,” Sally said with a perfectly straight face.

  So I told her an amended and edited account. Leav- ing out the cash amount, of course.

  “Her savings, too?” Sally said enviously. “Oh, you lucky duck. And it’s a lot?”

  Glee rolled over me suddenly as it did every now and then when I forgot the skull and remembered the money. I nodded with a canary-full grin. Sally closed her eyes in contemplation of the joy of having a lot of money all of a sudden.

  “That’s great,” she said dreamily. “I feel good just knowing someone that’s happened to. Like winning the lottery.”

  “Yeah, except Jane had to die for me to get it.” “My God, girl, she was old as the hills anyway.” ~ 120 ~

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  “Oh, Sally, Jane wasn’t so old as people go nowa- days. She was in her seventies.”

  “That is plenty old. I won’t last so long.” “I hope you do,” I said mildly. “I want you to make me some more biscuits sometimes.”

  We talked some more about Paul Allison, which seemed to make Sally quite happy. Then I asked her about Macon Turner, her boss.

  “I understand he’s seeing my new maybe-neighbor, Carey Osland,” I said casually.

  “They are hot and heavy and have been,” Sally said, with a wise nod. “That Carey is really appealing to the opposite sex. She has had quite a dating—and marriage—history.”

  I understood Sally exactly. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. First she was married to Bubba Sewell, back when he was nothing, just a little lawyer right out of school. Then that fell through, and she married Mike Osland, and by golly one night he goes out to get diapers and never comes home. Everyone felt so sorry for her when her husband left, and, having been in something of the same position, I did feel for her. But at the same time, I think he might have had some reason to take off.”

  My attention sharpened. A number of instant sce- narios ran through my head. Carey’s husband kills ~ 121 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  Carey’s lover, then flees. The lover could have been Mark Kaplan, the Rideouts’ vanished tenant, or some unknown. Or maybe Mike Osland could be the skull, reduced to that state by Carey’s lover or Carey. “But she has a little girl at home,” I said in the in- terest of fairness.

  “Wonder what she tells that little girl when she has overnight company?” Sally helped herself to more roast.

  I disliked this turn of the conversation. “Well, she was very nice to me when she came over to welcome me to the neighborhood,” I stated, flatly enough to end that line of conversation. Sally shot me a look and asked if I wanted more roast.

  “No thanks,” I said, giving a sigh of repletion. “That was so good.”

  “Macon really has been more agreeable at the office since he began dating Carey,” Sally said abruptly. “He started seeing her after his son went away, and it just helped him deal with it a lot. Maybe Carey having somebody leave her, she was able to help Macon out.” “What son?” I didn’t remember Mother mention- ing any son during the time she’d dated Macon. “He has a boy in his late teens or early twenties by now, I guess. Macon moved here after he got divorced, and the boy moved here with him, maybe seven years ~ 122 ~

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  ago now. After a few months, the boy—his name was Edward, I think—anyway, he decided he was just going to take some savings his mother had given him and take off. He told Macon he was going to India or some such place, to contemplate or buy drugs or something. Some crazy thing. Of course, Macon was real de- pressed, but he couldn’t stop him. The boy wrote for a while, or called, once a month . . . but then he stopped. And Macon hasn’t seen hide nor hair of that child since then.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said, horrified. “Wonder what happened to the boy?”

  Sally shook her head pessimistically. “No telling what could happen to him wandering by himself in a country where he didn’t even speak the language.” Poor Macon. “Did he go over there?”

  “He talked about it for a while, but when he wrote the State Department they advised him against it. He didn’t even know where Edward had been when he disappeared . . . Edward could have wandered any- where after he wrote the last letter Macon got. I re- member someone from the embassy there went to the last place Edward wrote from and, according to what they told Macon, it was sort of a dive with lots of Euro- peans coming and going, and no one there remembered Edward, or at least that’s what they were saying.” ~ 123 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  “That’s awful, Sally.”

  “Sure is. I think Perry being in the mental hospital is better than that, I really do. At least I know where he is!”

  Incontrovertible truth.

  I stare
d into my beer bottle. Now I’d heard of one more missing person. Was a part of Edward Turner’s last remains in my mother’s pink blanket bag? Since Macon told everyone he’d heard from the boy since Edward had left, Macon would have to be the guilty one. That sounded like the end of a soap opera. “Tune in tomorrow for the next installment,” I murmured. “It is like a soap,” Sally agreed. “But tragic.” I began my going-away noises. The food had been great, the company at least interesting and sometimes actually fun. Sally and I parted this time fairly pleased with each other.

  After I left Sally’s I remembered I had to check on Madeleine. I stopped at a grocery and got some cat food and another bag of cat litter. Then I realized this looked like permanency, rather than a two-week stay while the Engles vacationed in South Carolina. I seemed to have a pet.

  I was actually looking forward to seeing the animal. ~ 124 ~

  ~ A Bone to Pick ~

  I unlocked the kitchen door at Jane’s with my free hand, the other one being occupied in holding the bags from the grocery. “Madeleine?” I called. No golden purring dictator came to meet me. “Madeleine?” I said less certainly.

  Could she have gotten out? The backyard door was locked, the windows still shut. I looked in the guest bedroom, since the break-in had occurred there, but the new window was still intact.

  “Kitty?” I said forlornly. And then it seemed to me I heard a noise. Dreading I don’t know what, I inched into Jane’s bedroom. I heard the strange mew again. Had someone hurt the cat? I began shaking, I was so sure I would find a horror. I’d left the door to Jane’s closet ajar, and I could tell the sound was coming from there. I pulled the door open wide, with my breath sucked in and my teeth clenched tight.

  Madeleine, apparently intact, was curled up on Jane’s old bathrobe, which had fallen to the bottom of the closet when I was packing clothes. She was ly- ing on her side, her muscles rippling as she strained. Madeleine was having kittens.

  ìOh hell,” I said. “Oh—hell hell hell.” I slumped on the bed despondently. Madeleine spared ~ 125 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  me a golden glare and went back to work. “Why me, Lord?” I asked self-pityingly. Though I had to con- cede it looked like Madeleine would be saying the same thing if she could. Actually, this was rather in- teresting. Would Madeleine mind if I watched? Ap- parently not, because she didn’t hiss or claw at me when I sat on the floor just outside the closet and kept her company.

  Of course Parnell Engle had been fully aware of Madeleine’s impending motherhood, hence his merri- ment when I’d told him Madeleine could stay with me. I pondered that for a few seconds, trying to decide if Parnell and I were even now. Maybe so, for Madeleine had had three kittens already, and there seemed to be more on the way.

  I kept telling myself this was the miracle of birth. It sure was messy. Madeleine had my complete sympathy. She gave a final heave, and out popped another tiny, slimy kitten. I hoped two things: that this was the last kitten and that Madeleine didn’t run into any difficul- ties, because I was the last person in the world who could offer her any help. After a few minutes, I began to think both my hopes had been fulfilled. Madeleine cleaned the little things, and all four lay there, occa- sionally making tiny movements, eyes shut, about as defenseless as anything could be.

  ~ 126 ~

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  Madeleine looked at me with the weary superiority of someone who has bravely undergone a major mile- stone. I wondered if she were thirsty; I got her water bowl and put it near her, and her food bowl, too. She got up after a moment and took a drink but didn’t seem too interested in her food. She settled back down with her babies and looked perfectly all right, so I left her and went to sit in the living room. I stared at the bookshelves and wondered what in hell I would do with four kittens. On a shelf separate from those holding all the fictional and nonfictional murders, I saw several books about cats. Maybe that was what I should dip into next.

  Right above the cat shelf was Jane’s collection of books about Madeleine Smith, the Scottish poisoner, Jane’s favorite. All of us former members of Real Mur- ders had a favorite or two. My mother’s new husband was a Lizzie Borden expert. I tended to favor Jack the Ripper, though I had by no means attained the status of Ripperologist.

  But Jane Engle had always been a Madeleine Smith buff. Madeleine had been released after her trial after receiving the Scottish verdict “Not Proven,” wonder- fully accurate. She had almost certainly poisoned her perfidious former lover, a clerk, so she could marry into her own respectable upper-middle-class milieu ~ 127 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  without the clerk’s revealing their physical intimacy. Poison was a curiously secret kind of revenge; the hapless L’Angelier had deceived himself that he was dealing with an average girl of the time, though the ardency of her physical expressions of love should have proved to him that Madeleine had a deep vein of passion. That passion extended to keeping her name clean and her reputation intact. L’Angelier threatened to send Madeleine’s explicit love letters to her father. Madeleine pretended to effect a reconciliation, then slipped arsenic into L’Angelier’s cup of chocolate. For lack of anything better to do, I pulled out one of the Smith books and began to flip through it. It fell open right away. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the top of the page.

  It said, in Jane’s handwriting, I didn’t do it. ~ 128 ~

  Chapter Seven

  A

  Ididn’t do it.

  The first thing I felt was overwhelming relief. Jane, who had left me so much, had not left me hold- ing the bag, so to speak, on a murder she herself had committed.

  She had left me in the position of concealing the murder someone else had committed, a murder Jane also had concealed, for reasons I could not fathom. I had believed the only question I had to answer was Whose skull? Now I had also to find out who put the hole in that skull.

  Was my situation really any better? No, I decided after some consideration. My conscience weighed perhaps an ounce less. The question of going to the police took on a different slant now that I would not ~ 129 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  be accusing Jane of murder by taking in the skull. But she’d had something to do with it. Oh, what a mess! Not for the first (or the last) time, I wished I could have five minutes’ conversation with Jane Engle, my benefactress and my burden. I tried to think of the money, to cheer myself up; I reminded myself that the will was a little closer to probate now, I’d be able to actually spend some without consulting Bubba Sewell beforehand.

  And, to tell you the truth, I still felt excellent about that money. I had read so many mysteries in which the private detective had sent back his retainer check because the payer was immoral or the job he was hired to do turned out to be against his code of honor. Jane wanted me to have that money to have fun with, and she wanted me to remember her. Well, here I was remembering her every single day, by golly, and I cer- tainly intended to have fun. In the meantime, I had a problem to solve.

  It seemed to me that Bubba knew something about this. Could I retain him as my lawyer and ask him what to do? Wouldn’t attorney-client privilege cover my admission I’d located and rehidden the skull? Or would Bubba, as an officer of the court, be obliged to disclose my little lapse? I’d read a lot of mysteries that had probably contained this information, but now ~ 130 ~

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  they all ran together in my head. The laws probably varied from state to state, too.

  I could tell Aubrey, surely? Would he be obligated to tell the police? Would he have any practical advice to offer? I was pretty confident I knew what his moral ad- vice would be; the skull should go into the police sta- tion now, today, pronto. I was concealing the death of someone who had been dead and missing for over three years, at a minimum. Someone, somewhere, needed to know this person had died. What if this was Macon Turner’s son? Macon had been wanting to know the whereabouts of his son for a long time, had been search
ing for him; if there was even a faint chance his son’s letters to him had been forged, it was inhumane to keep this knowledge from Macon.

  Unless Macon had caused the hole in the skull. Carey Osland had believed all these years her hus- band had walked out on her. She should know he had been prevented from returning home with those diapers. Unless Carey herself had prevented him. Marcia and Torrance Rideout needed to know their tenant had not voluntarily skipped out on his rent. Unless they themselves had canceled his lease. I jumped to my feet and went into the kitchen to fix myself—something. Anything. Of course, all that was there was canned stuff and unopened packages. I ~ 131 ~

  ~ Charlaine Harris ~

  ended up with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. I stuck the spoon in the jar and stood at the counter licking the peanut butter off.

  Murderers needed to be exposed, truth needed to see the light of day. Et cetera. Then I had another thought: whoever had broken into this house, search- ing for the skull, had been the murderer. I shivered. Not nice to think.

  And even now, that little thought trickled onward, that murderer was wondering if I’d found the skull yet, what I’d do with it.

  “This is bad,” I muttered. “Really, really bad.” That was constructive thinking.

  Start at ground zero.

  Okay. Jane had seen a murder, or maybe someone burying a body. For her to get the skull, she had to know the body was there, right? Jane literally knew where the bodies were buried. I actually caught my- self smiling at my little joke.

  Why would she not tell the police immediately? No answer.

  Why would she take the skull?

  No answer.

  Why would anyone pick Jane’s demise as the time to look for the skull, when she’d obviously had it for years?

  ~ 132 ~

  ~ A Bone to Pick ~

  Possible answer: the murderer did not know for

  sure that Jane was the person who had the skull. I imagined someone who had committed a terrible crime in the throes of who knew what passion or pressure. After hiding the body somewhere, suddenly this murderer finds that the skull is gone, the skull with its telltale hole, the skull with its identifiable teeth. Someone has taken the trouble to dig it up and take it away and the killer doesn’t know who. How horrible. I could almost pity the murderer. What fear, what terror, what dreadful uncertainty. I shook myself. I should be feeling sorry for The Skull, as I thought of it.