Them Bones Read online

  “All of these years I’ve ached to tell, and now I can’t,” she said. “I can’t say his name.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Are you afraid he’ll hurt you?”

  “He can’t. Not any more than he already has,” she answered softly. “He’s dead. But his blood lives on. It’s the son I’m afraid of.”

  She didn’t have to say the man’s name. There were plenty of dead folks in Sunflower County, but I knew who it was. Pasco Walters. I suppose I’d known for a long time that he’d figure into this. And Gordon Walters was certainly a man who could wield the power of the law in his favor.

  “I know who he is,” I said. “You don’t have to say.”

  She looked at me. “He comes to me in dreams, and I know that means I’m going to die. That’s why I sent Claire to my cousin’s in Mound Bayou. I didn’t want her here, in danger. I didn’t want her killed by her half-brother.”

  I had been standing, the sugar bowl in my hand. I carefully put it on the table and pulled out a chair for her and one for me. When we were both sitting, I reached across the table and took her hand.

  “Pasco Walters was Claire’s father?”

  She nodded slowly. “He must have seen me in the pool. I slipped out and ran into the house. I thought for a long time that I’d gotten away. But it was after Mrs. Garrett died that he was waiting for me after school. He ordered me into the patrol car when I was walking home. And he drove me out to Knob Hill. Nobody was there. They’d all scattered. It was just him and me, and he asked me if I could swim. I knew that he knew. I knew he was going to kill me, too. But he made me take off my clothes and get in the pool and show him all the strokes that Hamilton had taught me. And then he raped me. And he told me that he would do it again and again if I ever opened my mouth. And I never told anybody. Nobody ever asked, except Granny’s friend, Mr. Levert.”

  “I’m sorry, Tammy,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Mr. Levert knew something was wrong, but he didn’t press. He knew I wasn’t the kind of girl who’d throw away her future like that. He knew I was afraid. He and Granny were up at City Hall all the time, fighting against the development, and I was so afraid for them, too.”

  Her body was trembling, and I held her hand like it was a lifeline. When the first tears rolled down her cheeks, I got up and went to her and held her in my arms while she cried.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, smoothing her hair as I held her. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was bound to come out. Mr. Levert was over here this evening, asking questions about the past. His friend was killed out in that cornfield, too.”

  “Delo Wiley?”

  She sniffed and nodded. “Delo sold him that land when nobody else would. They were neighbors.”

  “James Levert?” I finally made the connection. “The old man who fought the land development with your granny?”

  “Do you know Mr. James?”

  “I do,” I said, remembering the Town Hall minutes.

  “He’s a good man. A troubled man.”

  “Tammy, I need to go,” I said, rising. “Are you going to be okay?”

  She nodded. “I needed to tell someone. I’m glad it was you.”

  “I wish I’d asked earlier. And I’m sorry for digging all of this up. I really thought it would be a few rumors and Tinkie would be satisfied.”

  “It was bound to come up. Bones don’t rest easy when the truth is buried with them.”

  She seemed to be getting a grip on her emotions, and I felt a pressing need to act. I wasn’t sure how, but I needed to do something. I gave Tammy a hug and started toward the door when I remembered the big Town Car.

  “Tammy, did someone leave here just before I arrived?”

  That slightly stubborn look came over her face. “I don’t talk about my clients.”

  I wanted to shake her. “This is important.”

  She must have sensed my desperation.

  “It was Millie,” she said. “She comes by late, after she closes the café.”

  I started to ask Tammy something else, but the door had already closed behind me. I heard the lock shoot into place. I didn’t need Tammy’s confirmation, though. I knew where I had to go. I was suddenly certain that Millie had been the person who helped Sylvia get out of Glen Oaks. It made a crazy kind of sense. The nurse had mentioned a big car, as had James and Cooley. A Lincoln, specifically. And Millie had been deeply in love with Hamilton the Fourth. Sylvia would be her last connection with him, possibly her last chance to avenge his death.

  It was time for a serious talk with Millie.

  26

  The low rumbling of thunder could be heard in the distance as I parked in front of Millie’s house. The big Lincoln wasn’t there, so I figured she probably wasn’t home. The night was damp and cold and I knocked until my knuckles felt battered and abused.

  The question I kept asking myself was, why would Millie leave Sylvia, in her nightgown, in Delo Wiley’s field? The next logical question was, what, exactly, was Millie’s connection to Sylvia? Was she a friend, or a coconspirator in murder? Or worse?

  It occurred to me again that Millie could have slashed Veronica’s brake lines at the garage and then planted the knife on the Garrett siblings. Her motivation in helping Sylvia escape might have been to set Sylvia up, once again, as the scapegoat. This time for Delo’s murder.

  I left Millie’s house with reluctance and headed to the only person in town who might be able to help me.

  Cece Dee Falcon lived in a charming Victorian on Longpull Street. It was named after a type of cotton, not an incline. I turned into her drive, glad to see lights on in the living room. As I climbed the brick steps, I could hear the droning sound of a television. Cece answered my first knock with an expectant smile on her face. It vanished as soon as she saw me.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, not opening the door any wider.

  “I need to see you. Actually, I need to see some back issues of the newspaper. I know Mrs. Kepler won’t open the library for me. I’m hoping you’ll let me in the paper.”

  “I’d love to, dahling, but one has to consider other plans.” She looked out into the night.

  “Cece, this is serious.” I took notice of her dress, a slinky number that did justice to her slim hips and exquisite throat. She was expecting someone, very probably a romantic interest.

  “Any other day, I’d be glad to help you with your book research, Sarah Booth, but not tonight.”

  “It isn’t book research,” I said, finally and at long last tired of the lie. “It’s a murder investigation.”

  She smiled. “I always thought you were good at spinning a yarn. That’s why you’ll be such a good writer. So what murder are you bird-dogging?”

  “Veronica Garrett’s.”

  She raised one feathered eyebrow. “There was plenty of talk that Veronica Garrett had been murdered, but there was no evidence. Of course, in a book—let’s discuss this tomorrow.”

  “I need to see the newspapers.” I could be very stubborn. “I’ll stay here until you let me.”

  “You can’t do this,” she whispered urgently. “You can’t camp out on my doorstep.”

  “I can and I will. Or give me the key to the newspaper office. I only want to look at some back issues.”

  She hesitated. “You’ll go away?”

  “I’ll leave the key in your mailbox when I’m finished.”

  “Just a minute.” She closed the door and returned in a moment with a key on a ribbon. “Don’t you dare turn on a computer or try to get in my office.”

  “Scout’s honor,” I said, wondering if Cece would remember that I’d been thrown out of the Girl Scouts because of my predilection for cherry bombs and bonfires.

  She handed the key through the door, and then watched as I hurried out into the night that had just begun to drizzle with a cold, miserable rain.

  The beauty of a small town is that nothing is more than five minutes away. I was at the Dispatch
in a flash. To avoid prying eyes, I parked in the back, only to discover that the key worked the front door. Pressed against the damp wall, I sneaked to the front and entered. Skirting desks and chairs and stacks of books and printed matter, I navigated the dark office by the flashes of lightning that popped outside the window. The bound volumes were in the very back of the building, in a room with no windows. I could afford to turn on the lights.

  The records from 1978 back had been put on microfiche, but the ones I needed were still in print. The pages felt thin and flimsy, an old smell of dust and ink rising from them as I scanned again the story of Hamilton the Fourth’s death. It was as I remembered—presented as a tragic hunting accident.

  I moved on to February 10, 1980, and Veronica’s car wreck. I read the story carefully, three times. There was no mention or even hint of foul play. Car meets tree—end of story. All very tidy.

  I examined Pasco Walters’s statements, knowing that he’d been Veronica’s lover and that he’d helped plan her husband’s death—if he hadn’t been the triggerman.

  Pasco’s quotes were carefully drawn. He called the wreck a tragedy, and pointed out how much the community would miss the good works of Mrs. Garrett. There had been nothing personal, no hint of grief or sorrow.

  It was possible that the relationship had not survived the murder of Guy Garrett. Once Veronica had what she wanted—freedom and money—she might have found the handsome sheriff an encumbrance.

  I read the funeral arrangements, a tasteful affair of a memorial service held in the Garrett family cemetery. Veronica was laid to rest beside her husband. The reporter gave a little too much detail about the flowers, but the choice of hymns was startling. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” seemed a bad choice for a wreck victim.

  I started to flip over to see if an additional reference had been made in the days after the wreck, but a photo on the bottom of the page caught my eye. Millie Roberts stood with her arm around a striking blonde. They were both smiling happily. The story was a brief report on a nineteen-year-old girl, Janice Wells, who’d vanished without a trace. It was only three paragraphs long and gave the basic facts. Janice had disappeared from Billie’s Garage around lunchtime. No one had seen her leave and she’d taken only her purse. Since she had no car, it was assumed she was on foot.

  Millie had offered a three-thousand-dollar reward—probably her life’s savings—for information leading to her sister’s whereabouts. The sheriff’s office had basically labeled her a runaway.

  In the photograph, I studied the features that marked the women as sisters. Janice was obviously the younger by a few years, but she had the same easy smile and curious look in her eyes as her older sister.

  I looked at the way Janice had slung her arm so casually over her sister’s shoulder, and I knew that Janice had not run away with a man. I was no Madame Tomeeka. I didn’t have a vision, or read the past or future in a deck of cards or a palm. I simply looked at the love between the two sisters and I knew that Janice had met a tragic fate. If she were alive, she’d have put her sister’s mind at rest.

  I shuffled through the rest of the month, but there was no follow-up on Veronica’s wreck or Janice’s disappearance. Both stories evaporated; one deliberately buried, and the other simply ignored because Janice was a girl who didn’t matter in the social structure of the town.

  No wonder Millie had been snappy at me. If a Daddy’s Girl had disappeared, every man and dog in the county would have been put on the trail and would probably still be looking.

  I closed the files, restacked them neatly, and headed back through the dark office. I had found no new facts, only a bitter taste of sadness. When I passed the plate glass windows, I caught a glimpse of a sheriff’s patrol car gliding like a shark through the turbulent night. I thought I recognized Gordon Walters’s profile, his roguishly dented nose undoubtedly the result of a fight. Without the broken bridge, he would look remarkably like Claire. The answer had been there all along.

  The car moved slowly down the street. Gordon played a role in this, an important one. The sharks were out and feeding. I would have to be very careful.

  • • •

  Dahlia House held tremendous appeal for me at that moment, but where I needed to go was Friars Point. It was probably true what Hamilton had said, that his sister was indeed insane. The glass bottle she’d given me for her brother obviously meant something to him, though he’d left it at Dahlia House. I wanted to know what. I made a squealing U-turn in the newspaper parking lot.

  I was traveling fast when a dark figure stepped out from behind a garbage Dumpster. I registered that it was a large male as I slammed on the brakes. The drizzling rain had dampened the asphalt just enough to loosen the grease and grit. I felt the car begin to spin and I forgot everything except controlling the slide. It took fifty yards of fierce struggle, but I fought the car back under control. When I finally had it stopped, my hands refused to let go of the steering wheel so I sat there, shaking, too tired and, at the same time, too pumped with adrenaline to move.

  At the tap on the passenger window, I looked up to find Hamilton staring in at me. He opened the door before I thought to lock it, and climbed in.

  “You almost made me kill myself,” I said, furious at him for pulling such a stunt. “Is that how you sent your mother into a tree?”

  His face darkened, but when he spoke his voice had a tightly controlled formality. “You’ve pried into my business, and now you’re in over your head. Gordon Walters is looking for you, and he has a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Delo Wiley. My suggestion is that you go to Memphis, check into a nice hotel, and stay there for a few days until this is over.” The dim glow from the dash cast a strange light on his face, making his eyes seem to glitter.

  I wondered if there was a hint of satisfaction in his tone. “I suppose you would think that running away is the best answer.” For all of the many things I dislike about the training of a Daddy’s Girl, the emphasis on pride and dignity is unbeatable. Hamilton had used me. He had slept with me and won me over, and then run out without an explanation or even a good-bye. He had gutted me, and I was angry. And hurt. And wanting to hurt him back.

  “Sarah Booth, you’ve been a thorn and a nuisance since you agreed to investigate my past for Tinkie. Gordon isn’t in the mood to put up with you.”

  A strange calm settled over me. “How long have you known I was working for Tinkie?”

  “I made it a point to find out what you were really up to after your visit to Knob Hill.”

  So he had known when he slept with me. I nodded, accepting the fact that he was the dark master—of manipulation, gratification, and expectation—all of the -tions that lead a woman to vulnerability and pain. I stiffened my spine and gave him a cool smile.

  “Well, we both expended a lot of energy, but I don’t think either of us got much information.” I would never let him know that for one night I believed in him, in his innocence and his place in my world.

  Even in the dim illumination from the car’s panel, I could see the flush on his face. “What, exactly, did Sylvia say when she gave you the glass bottle?”

  “First, you tell me what significance the bottle has.”

  He considered a moment, as if he might not answer. “My mother collected glass and jewelry by a particular artist. René Lalique. That bottle and several other pieces disappeared the day of the wreck. Sylvia has been advertising in art magazines, looking for my mother’s things. Once that bottle came on the market, she knew that the murderer finally felt safe enough to begin selling off the pieces. Sylvia got a response to one of her ads and she called me to come home, to help her set the trap.”

  I finally understood the magazine article in his coat pocket, his sudden return to Sunflower County. “Sylvia isn’t crazy, then. She’s just—”

  “Obsessed by revenge. Some people would call it insane to focus your life on revenge, to cloister yourself from any pleasure so that you’d never be tempted to forget the unforg
ivable. Maybe she’s crazy; I can’t say. I do know she’s smart and patient and determined. Sylvia knew, eventually, those valuable pieces would be sold. And so she’s waited, all of these years.” He looked at me, and I felt a rush of sorrow. What a waste. Hamilton in exile, his sister in Glen Oaks.

  “What did Sylvia say?” he insisted.

  “She said that time had run out, for both of you.”

  Hamilton pushed open the door and and began to lever himself out of the car. I grabbed his arm and restrained him. I could feel his forearm beneath the layers of his jacket. He halted his exit and turned to look at me. The memory of his mouth moving over my skin was as intense as if it were happening that second. And yet I felt a great distance between us. As if Hamilton had stepped backward into a void.

  “If you don’t let the past go, it’ll destroy you,” I said, repeating the things that Tammy and Jitty and Tinkie had tried to make me understand. “Please, Hamilton …” Memories of the night we’d shared seemed to fill the car. “Come back to Dahlia House with me.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll get up in the middle of the night and murder you?” he asked in that arrogant tone that implied he was capable of anything.

  “You wouldn’t kill me. There’s no profit in it.”

  My cynicism made him laugh, and once again I felt the surge of raw desire. There was something wounded and fierce in him that I could not help but respond to. I had found in Hamilton an opponent worthy of my own passions, and I did not want to let him go.

  His hands moved from my shoulders to my collarbones, inching slowly lower. I made no effort to touch him; I waited. His hands slipped inside my coat, finally sliding over my breasts. His breathing had become short and fast, like mine. And yet we could not look away from each other.

  “Sarah Booth—” His fingers brushed back up and stopped on my shoulders, “I’ve tried not to care for you or about what happens to you. I’ve tried to frighten you away, but none of it has worked. Now I’m asking you. Will you go someplace safe and stay there? Go to the Peabody in Memphis. I have a room. Wait for me there.”