Crossed Bones Page 21

  “Ivory was a great man and a great musician,” Scott agreed. “Did you know he played with Elvis?”

  Tammy shook her head. “I never heard that.”

  Scott smiled at the skepticism in her tone. “He really did. Back at the first. He put the left-hand boogie in some of Elvis's first appearances. A few of the sessions were recorded, but, to my knowledge, none of them were ever released to the public.”

  “That's too bad,” Tammy said. “I would have liked to hear that.”

  “Ivory told me once that he and Elvis shared the same views on music and race. Both of them thought music was the key to bringing whites and blacks together.”

  I laughed. “All Elvis managed to do was alienate the old folks.” I swiveled my hips.

  “That's not completely true,” Scott said. “Elvis managed to bring black elements of music into the mainstream. He actually made that first step that's always the hardest, and I believe Ivory was part of that. Some folks said Elvis was part black, and they weren't talking about a past life.”

  “Mahalia Jackson played a role in Elvis's life, as did Ivory,” Tammy pointed out.

  Scott gave her an appreciative look. “You know your stuff,” he said. “Lots of folks forget about Mahalia.”

  “Mahalia and the Lord,” Tammy said.

  “Lunch is served,” I said. They'd found common ground, and now I wanted to move the meal along. Tammy would help Scott. She was that kind of person.

  23

  Tammy did not linger after the meal. She declined coffee but agreed to speak up on Scott's behalf. When she turned at the door, Scott took her hand and squeezed it.

  “I did my best to run Sarah Booth off,” he told her. “I didn't want help from her or anyone else. It seems like everyone who ever cared about me ends up hurt, or else hurting me. I'd decided never to let anyone close enough to hurt me again. In the days in jail, I think I came to some conclusions about the kind of man I'd become. Ivory was part of that. Despite all my vows, I grew close to him. Then he was killed, and the community thinks I did it. Accepting help isn't easy for me, but I need it, and I thank you for taking my part.”

  Tammy let him hold her hand. “You're very different than I thought,” she said. “Why did you write those first songs? Those racist, ugly songs?”

  My breath caught right below the hollow of my throat, and I made a wheezing sound, but neither of them heard me.

  “I was raised with a lot of opportunities for an education, but tolerance wasn't in the curriculum. I'm not blaming my family. They're elitist, but they aren't racists. At least not like I became.” A frown touched his forehead. “When it became obvious that nothing I cared about was important to them, and nothing I accomplished would ever satisfy them, I lashed out. Like most children of privilege, I couldn't rebel against the hand that fed me, it had to be something outside my world. So I targeted race. It was an area unimportant to my family. I could posture without striking too close to home.”

  “You never believed what you wrote?” Tammy was puzzled. I knew exactly what she was thinking. Then why? Why stir up such dark emotions? Tammy watched him intently as he talked.

  “This is the worst condemnation of myself that I can confess. It was convenient to believe those lyrics. I found a certain acceptance that I'd never known in my own family.”

  “That's very sad.”

  “And inexcusable. If I could retract them, I would. Once something like that gets out of the box, though, there's no getting it back.” He shook his head. “It would be fantastic to hear how Ivory influenced Elvis, yet those recording sessions are lost. My early songs linger.”

  It was his sincerity that finally softened the tightness of Tammy's mouth. “You were young, Scott. You were in your teens.”

  “And so are millions of other young people who don't do what I did.” He put his free hand on my shoulder. “There's no excuse for it. After I met Ivory, I suffered so much shame. The only way I could accept his kindness was to make certain he knew the truth about me. I sat with Ivory while he listened to all of those . . . songs. I made him hear them before I came to Sunflower County.”

  “And Ida Mae?” Tammy asked.

  “I don't know for certain. Ivory may have played them for her, but I doubt it. Not because he wanted to protect me, but because he wouldn't want that stain to touch his wife.”

  Tammy finally withdrew her hand. “Who did kill Ivory?” she asked. “My gift hasn't given me any answers to this question. It's my heart that tells me you're innocent.”

  “I don't know who killed Ivory,” Scott said. “I've thought and thought about it, and I just don't know.”

  There was a long pause as Tammy looked at the two of us standing side by side in the doorway of my home.

  “Thanks for lunch, Sarah Booth,” Tammy said before she turned and walked across the porch and down the steps. “I'll let you know how it goes.”

  Scott's arm shifted around my shoulders as we watched Tammy depart. For a split second I allowed myself the luxury of believing the moment—Scott and I together seeing our friend off after lunch. But it was only an illusion. Scott was not the host at Dahlia House. He was my guest.

  “Thank you, Sarah Booth,” he said. “I've heard a lot of rumors. Folks are angry and upset, and a lot of it is directed at me. I know that meeting tonight is important. I think Tammy can inject a note of reason into some of the hot emotion.”

  “Maybe you should go up to the courthouse and stay in the sheriff's office.” I didn't want to exaggerate the danger, but I didn't want to minimize my concerns.

  “No, I won't run. Once they smell fear on me, they'll never stop. If I'm going to stay in Sunflower County, I can't afford to let them think I'm afraid.”

  I motioned him back inside. “Coffee?”

  He shook his head, stepping closer and putting his hands on my shoulders. “I'd like a kiss.”

  It was my pleasure to oblige. I stepped into his arms and lifted my face for the kiss. At the first touch of his lips, I felt the tingle. As his hands slid over my shoulder blades and down my back, the tingle grew into heat. I wanted him. And in the cool protection of Dahlia House, there was no reason not to have him.

  Leaving a trail of clothes behind us, we started up the stairs to my bedroom. My dress slid to the polished oak floor outside my bedroom door, and I was glad I'd spent the ten dollars extra to get the lacy body suit rather than the plain beige spandex.

  Scott held me back from him. A lazy smile crossed his face while he looked at me. “Very sexy, Sarah Booth. I thought you Delta girls were demure.”

  “You know better than that. You've had Nandy after you. I wouldn't call her demure.”

  “Demented is more the word. By the way, she's been calling and hanging up. About a hundred times.”

  I felt a pang of guilt. Scott hadn't gone to the sheriff because I'd dissuaded him. “Maybe you should call Coleman.”

  He shook his head. “If it's only the phone, I can deal with that. And she hasn't shown up again.”

  I told him about my encounter with her husband.

  “I still don't get that one,” he said. “It's bad enough being obligated to your beau for my freedom. I'd hate to owe Nandy Shanahan's husband.”

  We were standing naked, hips pressed together, at the side of my bed, and suddenly the moment was derailed. I'd brought Nandy into the bedroom, and Scott had dragged Bridge in right behind her. I looked down at the floor, suddenly embarrassed.

  “It's okay, Sarah Booth,” Scott said, lifting my chin. “I know he's the caliber of man you'll eventually marry. Someone who's made something of himself in business. Someone without a prison record. Hell, I can't even vote.”

  Words often inflict pain on the listener, but I hurt for Scott. “There is no 'kind of man' for me, Scott. I see who I want to.”

  He bent and kissed my temple and then led me to the window. “Look out there,” he said, pointing across the acres of green cotton. “You were born and bred to this. It's a world
that's never going to be within my reach.”

  I was stunned. “Your family is wealthy, Scott. I'm barely hanging on to this place. Don't be silly.”

  “It's not a matter of money.” He shrugged. “I'll make plenty. Maybe millions. It's not money; it's all of the other things. The way you think, the way you treat people, the way you fit into a place, and how you care about others and they care about you.”

  “That's who I am, not where I was born.”

  He put his arm around me. “The first day you walked into the jail, I knew you were something special. I wanted you right then. You were something worth having in my life. I knew how far out of my reach you really were. And I tried my hardest to run you off so I wouldn't have to constantly be reminded of reality.”

  Such pretty words that cut so deep. I didn't understand his inability to see that he could have whatever he wanted—be whatever he chose. I understood so much about Scott then. My limited psychology was only a degree from Ole Miss, but even I could see how he'd spent his entire life setting himself up to fail.

  Daddy's Girl rule number three—never, never tell a man he needs therapy, no matter how true.

  Instead, I turned back into his arms, locking his gaze with mine. “I'm not out of your reach right now, Scott. I'm here. Standing right beside you.” My hand lightly touched his chest, and I let my Red Alarm fingernails scratch gently down his sternum, the ridges of his torso, his abdomen, and lower. Whatever insecurities he had socially, he had none sexually. His arm braced my lower back as he bent me backward with a hungry kiss.

  There was no more talking. There was no need for it.

  It was dusk when Scott kissed me at the front door and slipped out. The roar of his motorcycle was muffled by the full greenness of the sycamore trees that lined the drive. I'd slipped into some shorts and a T-shirt and walked outside to feed Reveler. I'd planned on riding him this evening, but Scott had intervened. Even as I walked, I felt a quiver in my thighs. I was undone by that man.

  Sweetie emerged from her nap under a huge camellia and joined me as I went to the barn and scooped up a half-quart of feed for my boy. With the good grass in the pasture, he needed no grain, but I couldn't resist giving him a little.

  As he greedily ate the sweet feed, I groomed his coat and talked to him. I needed to sort through my feelings for Scott before I had to face Jitty. Reveler and Sweetie Pie were my sounding boards as I came to the conclusion that I was falling in love with Scott. He was such a puzzle—so tough on the outside and yet so tender and vulnerable. And so willing to let me see that soft side. Of course he was an artist, a man who painted pictures with his words and then set them on fire with his guitar and his body. He was not a man who would be easy to live with. He would never belong completely to me—there was always his public to lay claim to him.

  I'd known a few stars in New York, men and women who were more alive onstage than anywhere else in the world, and I'd wondered how their mates handled knowing that no touch or whisper or intimacy could compare to the electric charge of applause. But perhaps I misjudged Scott. He'd certainly given me his total attention all afternoon, and I'd never felt more sated.

  When Reveler was finished with his feed, he was also done with me. Nudging me with his head, he left an imprint of dirty lips on my T-shirt and galloped off into the pasture to eat the tender grass.

  Unwilling to go back inside to Jitty, I walked to the cemetery to have a talk with my mama.

  I was walking through the gate when Sweetie Pie stopped in front of me, her body rigid and a growl issuing from her throat that sounded like the precursor to a visit from Linda Blair in her younger days.

  “Sweetie?” I knew enough to stop and listen. Sweetie might look flop-eared and slow, but she was nobody's fool.

  She walked slowly into the cemetery and around the stones until she came to the twin angels that marked my parents' grave. I circled to the front of the marker and couldn't manage to stop the small cry that came from me. Someone had defaced my parents' stone. Someone had spray-painted a skull and crossbones in vivid red paint.

  At the sound of a twig snapping, I whirled around. It was only Reveler. He'd followed me to the cemetery. I looked in all directions, but there was no sign of anyone nearby. Whoever had done this awful thing had sneaked in and out; a coward.

  I knelt down by the stone and touched the paint. It was dry. In the thick grass of the cemetery, there were no footprints.

  My impulse was to get a wire brush and cleaner and set to work on the stone, but I walked back to the house and immediately called the sheriff's office. When Bo-Peep answered, I was ready for her.

  “Put Coleman on the line and do it now, or you'll be drawing unemployment tomorrow morning.”

  My tone must have been enough to let her know I wasn't willing to put up with her games. Coleman picked up in less than sixty seconds. When I told him what had happened, he said he was on his way. I sat down on the front porch and waited for him.

  In the ten minutes it took for him to arrive, gravel spraying from his tires and siren wailing, I had a few moments to attempt to figure out what I felt. The main ingredient was anxiety, a good three cups, unsifted. There was a measure of guilt, a dollop of hope. Even a pinch of joy at the prospect. That was spiced with a bit of malice and a whisper of revenge. The ingredient yet to be added was the sense of safety that came as soon as he stepped out of the car. Of all the men in my life, I knew Coleman could protect me. I'd never before realized the potency of that particular emotion.

  I stood up slowly, and Coleman caught me in a bear hug. “Are you okay, Sarah Booth?” I didn't answer. I melted into the haven of his arms.

  He was hot, a body temperature created by the sun, the interior of a car, and his anger. I could feel his rage humming beneath his skin. “This has been a real day for trouble. Someone set fire to Goody's Grocery in The Grove. Luckily, the clerk got out and no one else was in the store, but it went up like a torch. It's totally destroyed.”

  “Who did it?”

  Coleman shook his head, finally looking at me as his hands moved over my back, comforting and checking. “They snuck up to the back, doused the old wood with gasoline, and lit it. We found a gas container and we're checking it for prints.”

  “Ray-Ban and Spider,” I said.

  “They would be my first suspects, but I don't have any proof. Yet.”

  “Can you bring them in and keep them for questioning tonight?” I wanted them out of the way. They were the fuse that could blow Sunflower County sky-high.

  “We'll see. Now show me what they did to your mama's gravestone. I've got Dewayne and Gordon on the way with a fingerprint kit and some other things.”

  We walked around the house to the cemetery without talking. Coleman's gaze shifted here, there, to the camellia bushes that clustered so thick, to the huge mass of wisteria that I'd allowed to get away from me and was climbing a pecan tree.

  When he saw the tombstone, a curse escaped. “Who would do this?” he asked.

  “Someone trying to make me believe it was Scott.” The words came out without any forethought. “Stuart Ann Shanahan.”

  “Nandy?” Coleman was genuinely puzzled. “She's Scott's biggest supporter.”

  “Right.” I wasn't ready to tell him that Nandy now hated her idol because of me. “Her husband told me yesterday that she was capable of murdering Ivory because he diverted Scott's attention from her.”

  “Why would she do this? You're helping . . .” His words faded and he put two and two together and came up with sex. “I see.” He looked past me. “We need to get some samples. We can check the paint, see where it was sold, track it down for sure.”

  I couldn't look at him. “How long will this take? I want to clean it.”

  “Dewayne and Gordon will be here soon.”

  I heard them coming around the house then. They walked toward us, and I saw Gordon's gaze shift from Coleman to me, then back to Coleman, then abruptly to the ground. If he didn't know something
was between us, he surely suspected. He was wise enough to want to avoid it.

  Coleman gave a few suggestions to the deputies. When he finally looked at me, forcing me by his silence to look back, there was distance in his gaze.

  “As soon as the reports come in, I'll give you a call.” He nodded, that crisp professional kiss-off, and he started walking away.

  I felt a pure clean rage begin to burn away all other emotions. How dare he? He was treating me like a stranger because I'd involved myself with Scott. Yet he was sharing bed and board with his wife, “trying to make it work.” A direct quote.

  “Coleman.” I spoke sharply enough that everyone froze. “You can act like a jackass if you choose, but I won't take it off that high school dropout secretary of yours. Bo-Peep is incompetent.”

  I caught Gordon's look of sheer bewilderment. He was obviously untrained in the strategy of Daddy's Girl warfare—when you couldn't risk a shot at the general, take out a foot soldier. It was a low method of fighting, but I couldn't take Coleman head-on. Not in front of the deputies.

  “Maybe if you got off your high horse and quit calling her Bo-Peep. Her name is Cricket.”

  “Locust would be more applicable. As in plague of.”

  “That's the kind of comment that makes people upset with you, Sarah Booth.”

  “What kind of name is Cricket?” I had suddenly become expert in diversionary tactics.

  “She can't help her name. Not everyone is born into families so proud of their lineage they convert last names to given.”

  Coleman was not so adept, but he had more bludgeoning power. My sternum was crushed, my heart exposed. I glanced at Dewayne and Gordon, who'd given up any pretense of working. They were following the action of the argument like a Wimbledon match. Coleman had scored match point.

  “When I call you, she won't put me through. She says you're too busy to talk to me. She says you're too busy making plans with your wife.”