Buried Bones Read online

“I was thinking more along the lines that Harold may have taken Brianna. Possibly against her inclination to go.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” The words jumped out of my mouth. “No one makes Brianna Rathbone do a damn thing she doesn’t want.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t care for Ms. Rathbone and all of her haughty ways worth a damn. But an old man is dead, and the evidence points to the fact that someone killed him. I intend to bring that someone to justice.”

  I sighed. “I never expected anything less of you.” Coleman was a man who’d learned balance, in his handling of others and in his treatment of himself. It was a lesson I needed to absorb.

  “I’ll check on the dean. And I’ll keep an open mind.”

  He walked around his car, got in, and drove away.

  23

  The pale sunlight of a perfect winter day struck the white trunks of the bare sycamore trees that lined the drive to Dahlia House as I headed home at top speed. Nine o’clock—the day was getting away from me.

  I left the Roadster in front of the steps and dashed upstairs, jumping a sleeping Sweetie on the way. She lifted her head and gave me a mournful look from bloodshot eyes and then collapsed back into her doggy stupor.

  “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you,” I called over my shoulder as I cleared the final step. “If you weren’t out all night carousing, you wouldn’t be tired.” I realized suddenly that Sweetie Pie was leading the life Denise LaSalle, the dynamic blueswoman, advocated. Sweetie was loving the one she was with—again and again, and changing partners at fifteen-minute intervals.

  Stepping over the clothes I’d left on my bedroom floor, I went to my closet. “Where is that darn jacket?” I slid all of my clothes to one end of the rail and began the laborious process of looking for the black wool coat I’d worn to what I’d anticipated as a charming brunch with Lawrence Ambrose. I remembered tucking Rosalyn’s check into the coat pocket.

  Since my former dance teacher was now being interrogated as a suspect in Lawrence’s murder, I decided my role in the case had shifted. Now, instead of trying to prove Brianna guilty, I was going to focus on proving Madame innocent. And Harold to boot. Whatever he’d done in an attempt to protect her, it was under Brianna’s influence. Harold was not the first dumb man to fall under her seductive spell. Somehow, I would save them both.

  Madame needed her money for a lawyer. The little bungalow where she lived in a residential section of town pointed to the fact that money was not something she had to throw around. I still had enough cash from my first case to pay the bills for a few months. Madame was a fixture from my past, a woman whose rigid adherence to routine and practice had been a lifeline to a young girl who lost her parents. How amazing that I saw with such clarity that Madame’s demands, her relentless harping on perfection, was her method of being kind to me. Though I had no real talent, she’d continued to work with me, pressing ever harder until that forced concentration became a place of safety.

  I went through my clothes in one direction, sliding each hanger over the metal rod, then reversing the order. The coat had to be there.

  “Lack of organization is a sign of sloth,” came the dark voice from behind me.

  I didn’t slow down or turn around. Since Jitty’s closets were in some ghostly beyond, I had no way to examine them and compare. “Help me hunt or get out,” I said.

  “My, my. Sounds to me like you need a Calgon bath.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her step over the suede suit I’d earlier discarded, shaking her head at my messiness.

  “That’s one thing I like about you, Sarah Booth. You put your own personal style on a room. I’d call this boudoir pigsty. Yes sir, any man would find this an enticin’ little love nest, if he didn’t break his neck tryin’ to get to the bed.”

  “Jitty,” I warned. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “What, exactly, are you lookin’ for?” she asked.

  I described the coat as I began my third pass through the closet. The coat wasn’t there, but I wasn’t giving up.

  “Honey, wear that cute suede outfit if you’re goin’ back out. It does wonders for your eyes. ’Course you’ve already walked on it this mornin’.”

  “I need the coat.” The last hanger slid over the metal pipe. The closet didn’t contain the black wool, and it wasn’t going to appear no matter how desperately I searched. “Damn it all to hell.”

  “Cussin’ is the sign of a weak vocabulary,” Jitty said archly.

  It was exactly what Aunt LouLane would have said, and in exactly the same tone. Suddenly it struck me as funny. Jitty and LouLane weren’t what I’d normally consider a team. But since Jitty’s decision to join the conservative fifties, she was acting more and more like my dead aunt.

  “I’ll bet I could teach you some cuss words that would improve your vocabulary,” I said, finding satisfaction in needling Jitty. There was a closet downstairs where I sometimes hung my coats. I signaled her to follow.

  “It’s not that I don’t know those words. I choose not to use them. And so should you,” Jitty said in her best prim tone as she followed on my heels.

  Sorry that I’d started a lecture by teasing Jitty, I stepped over Sweetie and went to the closet under the stairs.

  “What’s so important about that coat anyway?” she asked.

  “Ten grand.” That would get her attention. “There’s a check in the pocket.”

  “Let me help,” she said, moving up to my elbow.

  The closet yielded no secrets, and no black wool coat. The damn thing had disappeared. I remembered wearing it to Lawrence’s house. I’d come home, changed clothes, and gone out to play with Sweetie. Then Willem had driven up. Unless the handsome artist had a fetish for women’s coats, it had to be somewhere in the house.

  “Exactly what kind of detective are you that you can’t find your own coat?” Jitty asked.

  “One who’s sick of being gigged by an uppity ghost.” I closed the closet door. The coat was gone, and I had no more time to search for it at this particular moment. Tilda Grace was the woman I needed to see, and since she wasn’t answering the phone, that meant I had a drive ahead of me.

  I went to give Sweetie a goodbye pat and discovered as her pillow one of my fabulous high heels that I’d bought at Steppin’ Out. “Sweetie,” I admonished. “You’ve got to stop stealing my shoes.”

  “Maybe if you picked your things up off the floor, the dog wouldn’t have to play maid,” Jitty said.

  Car keys in hand, I ignored her. She was stuck in the groove of nag. “Think about what I should wear to the New Year’s bash,” I told her. “I want to make an impression.”

  “You gone do that, goin’ without a date.”

  “Men have always gone to parties stag. They’re considered playing the field. Women have the same right. Maybe I’ll meet someone interesting.”

  “Like that Felix guy. The convicted felon who changed his name. He was real interestin’, as I recall.” Jitty had me there. I’d made a few dating faux pas.

  “Just think about what I can wear.” All the Daddy’s Girls would already have rushed out for a new dress, but I had my entire New York wardrobe of secondhand fashions that no one in Zinnia had ever seen. Nothing like wearing the remnants of a past life to ring in a new one. “Think festive,” I ordered as I opened the front door, determined to track down Tilda Grace.

  The ringing of the telephone stopped me. My impulse was to go on, to ignore the ting-a-ling summons. On the chance that it might be Tilda Grace calling again, I answered.

  “Sarah Booth, thank goodness.” Harold’s voice came over the wire, tired and desperate. “You’ve got to help me.”

  “Harold!” At my elbow Jitty made a victory sign.

  “I’m in Memphis and I need your help.”

  “Where’s Brianna?” I asked, suddenly wary.

  “Listen to me, Sarah Booth. Several of Lawrence’s paintings have been switched. The originals have been take
n.”

  Art was nice, but I truly didn’t give a damn. Harold was under suspicion for murder and kidnapping. Paintings could wait. “Coleman thinks you had a hand in killing Lawrence, and I’m sworn to tell him your whereabouts. You’d better get back to Zinnia and straighten this out.”

  There was a pause. “You don’t believe I’m guilty of such a thing, do you?”

  “Guilty of stupidity in getting mixed up with Brianna Rathbone.” I was very angry with him. “Not guilty of murder,” I added grudgingly.

  “Thank you for that, Sarah Booth.”

  Something in his voice made my thumb give a weak throb. What did he care what I thought? He now belonged to the queen spider herself. By the time she finished with him, he’d be little more than a crusty husk. Whatever chance we might have had as a romantic couple was long over. “My opinion isn’t the one that counts. Coleman is looking for you, and he’s serious. He doesn’t want to believe you’re guilty. But the evidence …” I was on the horns of a dilemma. I wanted to tell Harold about the rat poison, but it would be the worst betrayal of Coleman. “Listen to me. Coleman has physical evidence. You’d better get home and talk to him. Now!”

  “Two of Lawrence’s Pleshettes are missing. They were original works, valued at somewhere around half a million dollars. The security team at the art storage vault found where someone had, unsuccessfully, tried to break into the place. That means the paintings were switched before Lawrence died. Someone very talented did this. The art appraiser just left. He’s positive the Pleshettes are excellent frauds.”

  The beauty and value of a painting by Rene Pleshette were not beyond my comprehension, but Harold’s complete ability to ignore the danger he was in baffled me. “Screw the paintings. Coleman has—”

  “I believe these stolen paintings are the key to who murdered Lawrence. I have one potential suspect.”

  He didn’t have to say Willem Arquillo’s name. I was already thinking it. Was it possible Willem had killed Lawrence over paintings? I thought back to his insistence on finding the manuscript. He could have been looking for the key to the vault the entire time. It was a sickening possibility, made more sickening by the fact that I’d aided and abetted him.

  Willem’s role in Lawrence’s death was something to worry about, but Harold had something more immediate to deal with. “Coleman’s taken Madame in for questioning. The evidence implicates her, too.” That much I could tell him.

  “Madame! That’s ridiculous. I have to get back to Zinnia.”

  I heard his anger, and it was very reassuring. “Harold, do you have any idea where Brianna and the manuscript might be?”

  His next question was my answer. “Sarah Booth, do you think you could get into Rathbone House?”

  Harold was asking me to breach the walls of the Rathbone estate. He was requesting that I enter the spider’s den and rifle through her personal things. He wanted me to violate Brianna’s sanctuary and plunder her private affairs. “I’m on my way,” I said quickly. “You’d better call Coleman and tell him you’re headed home.”

  “It isn’t Brianna. Sarah Booth, you don’t understand—”

  I didn’t want to hear how I didn’t understand his love for her, how it was different for them than it had ever been for any other lovers on the face of the earth, how she was misunderstood—the beauty who was never allowed to be human because of her physical perfection. Not a word of it. Zippo. “I’ll see what I can turn up at her house. Just remember, if she tries to press charges against me for breaking and entering, you have to get me out of it.” If he still had any pull left in town after being a suspect in a murder.

  “You don’t understand—”

  I hung up the phone and stared directly into a pensive Jitty’s dark eyes. She’d changed from her sort-of-cool polka dot pajamas into very tailored capris and a scoop-necked wool sweater in fuchsia. “Is that color allowed in the fifties? It’s sort of loud. Calls undue attention to you, and we all know a woman’s place is in the shadows.” I was trying to forestall the lecture I knew was coming.

  “Be careful, Sarah Booth,” she said slowly. “Remember, a spider is good at hidin’ and waitin’ until the unsuspectin’ fly lands in the web.”

  24

  Getting into Rathbone House was easier than I’d ever dreamed. In her haste, Brianna had failed to shut the gate or set the alarm system. Or check the downstairs windows. Big windows which were easy enough to lift and step inside without even stooping much.

  One thing I hadn’t expected was a general atmosphere of neglect. The paint on the porch was peeling, and the window latches were rusted. The house had been empty for too long, and like all abandoned things, time was taking a toll on it.

  As I slipped through the lacy sheers, I froze. There was a sound, as if the house sighed—or someone was softly shutting a door somewhere upstairs.

  I tucked my body to the left, hiding in the thick brocade of the draperies, and listened. The sound wasn’t repeated. There was the ticking of a clock, the whir of the heating system—the creaks and moans of an older home, like Dahlia House.

  I cased the house once, thoroughly, to be sure I was alone, then headed back to the room that passed as Brianna’s study-library. It was a beautiful room, walnut bookshelves gleaming with leather-bound volumes and a portrait of Layton Rathbone in his striking riding attire standing beside his big black Tennessee Walker. The horse’s name had been Satan. I remembered it as I stared at her father. No wonder Brianna was so beautiful. She’d had the genes handed to her on a silver platter and served with a silver spoon.

  Nothing of Mrs. Rathbone had surfaced in Brianna. She was petite, dark, and very quiet. It was Layton and Brianna that I remembered so vividly, riding wildly over the cotton fields together in what could have been a snippet of a movie about the beautiful people. Brianna was strictly her father’s daughter, and her destiny had been almost inescapable.

  My gaze happened to fall on the telephone. I considered calling Coleman and telling him that I’d moved my portion of the investigation into Rathbone House, but he was undoubtedly busy interrogating Madame. I wouldn’t trouble him. Aunt LouLane had taught me to be considerate of others. In the arduous study of transforming myself into a Daddy’s Girl, I’d learned the value of a considerate spirit.

  I started in the filing cabinet, hoping to discover some correspondence that might direct me to Brianna’s current whereabouts—and the manuscript.

  The files were mostly outdated and a mess. Although Rathbone House was not her permanent residence, it was obviously where she stored the data of her life. Several different handwritings indicated Brianna’s lack of ability to keep help. Out of curiosity I pulled her modeling contracts and then wished I hadn’t. For sitting in an air-conditioned room with a fan blowing her hair into tousled disarray about her perfect face, Brianna made ten thousand dollars an hour. An hour! The sum was staggering. The date on the contract was 1984, the year we’d graduated from high school. Ten grand an hour.

  I suddenly understood a little better how Brianna might have gotten a big head. In the Delta in 1984, many families didn’t make ten grand a year. She was oozing money, and all because of the good fortune of her genes.

  Nosiness made me scan some more current contracts. Time had definitely marched on, and in more current years her fee had dropped considerably, down to a full-day charge of five thousand dollars. For the past year there were only about a dozen contracts. It was still a lot of money for looking good, but at thirty-three, Brianna was a has-been. Not an easy fact to accept.

  The gift of beauty had a hidden price tag that was steeper than even I had anticipated. For years I’d been jealous of Brianna’s looks. Now I pitied her for them.

  I closed the file cabinet and moved on. The minutes were ticking away from me. The wheels of justice had begun to grind, and I was certain two innocent people were tied to the tracks in front of the oncoming locomotive.

  I could have spent two weeks going through Brianna’s private affai
rs, absorbing every delicious tidbit. She’d squandered millions of dollars, some her own but plenty of it belonging to the men she’d married. As I dug through the files and drawers, I compiled a stack of pertinent documents. Numbered bank accounts, names of lawyers, that kind of thing. I wasn’t an accountant, but the bottom line appeared to be Brianna’s rapidly approaching financial ruin. And then I found the real bonanza—foreclosure papers on Rathbone House. There was a second mortgage from the Bank of Zinnia. Harold had executed the loan himself.

  I sat back in my chair and tried to think it through. The sum of money was staggering. Nearly a million. More than Rathbone House was worth, in my opinion. Maybe the land holdings were more extensive than I knew, but Christ, what had Harold been thinking? Brianna had no current modeling contracts. She had no training to do anything except look beautiful.

  Lawrence’s book had been her only hope.

  The date on the loan was November 29 of the current year. Feeling slightly nauseated, I got up and moved into Brianna’s bedroom. The chaos there hid nothing of significance that I hadn’t already deduced—she wore designer underwear and had a fetish for ugly socks and big feet: size ten, double A.

  Brianna’s boudoir looked as if a cyclone had torn through the room. I wished for the newspaper’s camera to document the piles of expensive clothes trampled on the floor, the drawers half closed with saucy underwear hanging out, the shoes scattered hither and yon. I would make Jitty eat the photos, since she viewed Brianna as such an accomplished femme fatale. Hah! Brianna was a bigger pig than I ever dreamed of being.

  I didn’t know her wardrobe well enough to determine what clothes she’d taken, but I could tell by the scattered pieces of luggage in the hallways and under the mess on the bedroom floor that she’d been packing.

  Her bath held every luxury known to woman. Oils, unguents, masks, toners, tighteners, defoliants, the gamut of beauty aids, all designer names. She hadn’t missed a trick in a pitched battle to hang on to her beautiful skin.