Buried Bones Read online

  Willem’s posture loosened, and he sat heavily on the front porch. “I know you might not believe this, but I meant to get them back before he died. I needed the money. My mother’s care, the doctors … I was careless with my own success. Lawrence never looked at his collection, never showed them to anyone. So I painted the frauds and made the switch. I’ve got money now. I can buy them back and replace them as I always meant to do.”

  “You followed me to Moon Lake because you thought I had the key to the art storage vault.”

  He didn’t deny it. “I’m sorry, Sarah Booth. Give me credit that I left you, untouched. I could not deceive you to that extent.”

  What should I say, thanks? I swallowed the bitter taste of disappointment.

  “Have a seat, Willem,” Madame said, holding out the page to him. “You might as well give it up. Lawrence obviously finished his book and spared no one. He’s known for years about the switched paintings. He told me. But he always knew you meant to make it right, and he wanted to give you the chance. That’s why he invited you to Zinnia for the holidays. He was hoping you’d recover the real paintings and make the switch. That was his intention, before he was killed.”

  Willem held the page but didn’t read it. He looked over it at Madame. “He knew?”

  She nodded. “He just never let on. He understood, I think. And until this morning, I always believed that he forgave you. Forgave all of us our sins.”

  I’d hardly known Lawrence, but I was finding it difficult to imagine how he’d sat down and written things that would destroy everyone he’d seemed to care about. Willem read the page and then slowly lowered it to his side.

  “What did he write about me and my family?”

  Silence stretched before I answered. “I found only that one page. The rest of the book is still missing.”

  Willem leaned back against the pillar that supported Madame’s porch roof. He tapped his beautiful head against it several times before he spoke. “There is a saying about writers. When you sleep with one you put your most intimate life on the page. I never would have believed it of Lawrence.”

  “Maybe the book is truly lost,” Madame said.

  “Brianna has it. I’m sure of it. She called to rub it in.” If possible, Willem’s shoulders slumped a little more. “It’s pointless now. I’ll be revealed for a thief and the worst kind of betrayer. Lawrence trusted me to buy the paintings for him, to spend his money on quality work. And I cheated him. I cheated my friend.”

  I faced Willem. “Did you kill him?” I asked.

  Willem’s dark brows slammed together. “How can you ask that? I’m a thief, not a killer.”

  I stood up and looked at Madame. “Did you? The bag of rat poison had your prints on it.”

  She made a sound in her throat, a soft yielding. “No,” she said. “I didn’t kill Lawrence. I did buy the rat poison. There were mice in the cottage, and Lawrence didn’t approve of poisoning things. It was a health issue, but who will believe me? Coleman confirmed that Harold and I are the prime suspects.” She gathered herself and her lips turned up in a crooked smile. “Ironic, isn’t it? The woman I tried so hard to stop now has the book and the best possible method of publicizing it. Not only is Lawrence dead. He was murdered. And the woman who loved him for the past five decades will go to prison for it.”

  The injustice was almost more than I could bear. “We have to find Brianna,” I said, rising to my feet. “Willem, you said she called. Where was she?”

  “She didn’t say.” Willem was morose.

  “I’ll be back,” I promised as I stepped around Willem’s long legs.

  “Where are you going?” Madame asked.

  “I know just the person to help me with Brianna’s phone call. Keep thinking and I’ll be in touch.”

  Johnny Albritton was watching a ball game in his den when I knocked on his front door. If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. Based on the way he pushed the screen door open and invited me in, it would seem that I stopped by all the time.

  “What’s shakin’, Sarah Booth?” He sipped a beer and gave me his attention.

  “I need a favor. A big one. Can you trace a call?”

  “Local or long distance?”

  “I don’t know.” I forged ahead. “The call was made to Willem Arquillo. He’s staying at Ruth Anne’s bed-and-breakfast.”

  He nodded as if he were considering and I felt my hopes begin to rise. “Have you asked Ruth Anne?” he asked.

  “Do I have to have her permission? It wasn’t a call to her.”

  “No. But she’s got caller ID. Maybe if she hasn’t erased it you could just check her box. Might tell you right off where the call came from. Of course that won’t work if it’s a cell phone or out of an area that doesn’t have caller ID.”

  I didn’t have time to waste, but I went to him and took his hand. “Thanks, Johnny.”

  “You’ll get the hang of this PI business. Don’t give up. And don’t watch those television shows. They get it all wrong.” He walked me to the door, his gaze already straying back to the television.

  Ruth Anne Welsh had gone to Zinnia High but we’d traveled in different circles, not to mention different grades. She was a bit younger.

  She was in the kitchen cooking something that smelled heavenly, a gumbo of some sort. She eyed me skeptically while I told her what I wanted. I thought I’d won her over until she put one hand on her hip and balked.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah Booth, but this sounds too much like an invasion of privacy. How do I know that Mr. Arquillo said you could do this? How do I know it’s even his calls you’re really interested in.”

  “Because I said so?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s exactly the sort of thing Tinkie Bellcase would say.”

  “You know Tinkie?” I felt a pulse of hope.

  “She talked to her husband and helped me get the loan for this bed-and-breakfast. After Howard left me with two kids and no means of support, nobody in this damn town would give me a job or a chance. I’d done some catering for Mrs. Bellcase, and she went right down to the bank and stood at her husband’s desk and told him exactly how he was going to give me the loan.”

  “God bless Tinkie,” I said, already moving toward the door. “I’ll have Tinkie come over and explain this to you,” I promised.

  “Now I’d believe Mrs. Bellcase. You just send her on. I’d like to send some of this duck gumbo home with her anyway. It was always one of her favorites.”

  I started to ask to borrow her phone and give Tinkie a call right on the spot, but then I remembered something. I checked the wall clock in Ruth Anne’s kitchen and saw it was nearly two o’clock. Lunch was over. Tinkie had sacrificed herself on the altar of her marriage in an attempt to discover where Harold Erkwell had gone—and he was sitting at Coleman’s office. I’d neglected to call my partner and save her.

  “You got indigestion?” Ruth Anne asked. “You can’t see my phone, but I will give you an Alka-Seltzer.”

  “Not yet, but I’m going to have a terrible earache,” I said as I headed back to my car.

  I felt like a worm. Most of the rules and regulations of a Daddy’s Girl I’d been able to put behind me, but there was one supreme rule that I’d always revered—one Daddy’s Girl never left another in a bad situation out of carelessness. It didn’t matter that I was used to working alone; or that Tinkie was married to Oscar and a little nooner probably would work to Tinkie’s advantage in the long run; or that I had no way of knowing Harold would call me from Memphis.

  Rationalizing would not make this right. I had done a bad thing.

  So I decided to go home and call Tinkie from there and do what I could to repair the damage—and see if I could get her to go to Ruth Anne’s. I had to get that phone number.

  My home was like a beacon of safety as I left the main road and cruised onto the drive. I’d been home almost a year and still the sense of perfect wonder that came over me as I turned down the drive was as fr
esh and magical as it had been when I was a child. Home. It was a word that filled me with good and solid emotions.

  I coasted by the front of the house, going slow to avoid the milling crowd of dogs. Sweetie Pie had her own fan club going. I wondered if it was her gentle baying that won such devotion from her boys. My genial thoughts skidded to a halt as I saw a flash of black, russet, and tan streak down the front porch steps. She hesitated just long enough for me to recognize the fabulous square-heeled, strappy, extra-sexy shoes I was planning on wearing to the ball.

  I jammed the car in park and dove over the side as I went in hot pursuit of dog and shoe.

  “This is it, Sweetie Pie. You’re going to the gas chamber,” I yelled after her as I crawled on all fours under the house. She had the height advantage on me and disappeared in the darkness. She’d gone to that nest she was building. For a dog without ovaries or a uterus, Sweetie had a real thing about preparing for puppies.

  Rocks bruising my knees and cobwebs clinging to my head, I scrabbled after my dog. When I finally got to her, I reached into the darkness for my shoe. I found it—and a host of other things. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but I pulled out two more shoes, not mine, a plastic shovel, a roller skate, a wool coat, three towels, and a tin pie pan.

  “This has got to end,” I told her as I clutched her stash to my chest and hobbled toward the light.

  It wasn’t until I was outside that I recognized my black wool coat. Now I remembered hanging it on a tree limb when I was playing fetch with Sweetie. No wonder I couldn’t find it. Now I wasn’t certain that I wanted to. It looked pretty disreputable. Not even the cleaners were going to be able to save it. But the pockets were intact. Reaching into the left one I found Madame’s check and another scrap of paper.

  Walking up the steps I unfolded it, wondering where it had come from. It was a bad habit of mine to stuff things in my pockets. Usually I found them in the washing machine. Lipstick, gum, things that weren’t meant to be washed.

  The handwriting stopped me, a beautiful, flowing copperplate. An old school kind of writing. The first word, which was Harold’s name, stopped me in my tracks. “Harold, I hate to be mysterious (actually, I love it) but this manuscript is the best I’ve ever written. Take care of Brianna, and be wary. Should anything happen to me, you’ll be able to find the book where tears of stone fall on Brianna’s past. Be sure that it’s published. Many thanks, Lawrence.”

  “Boll weevil!” I whispered, using the curse Aunt LouLane had taught me as the vilest thing a lady could possibly say. “Boll weevil and a plague of locusts.” I threw the biblical image in for emphasis.

  “Is that the black coat you been lookin’ for?” Jitty asked, fading in beside the front door.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’d better give it back to Sweetie. No help for that thing now.”

  “No, you’re right.” I let the coat slide from my grip and fall on the porch.

  “Girl, what’s wrong with you?” Jitty put a ghostly hand on my forehead, just the slightest whisper of something cool touching my skin. “You got a fever? This is the first time you ever agreed with anything I had to say.”

  “How did Brianna find the manuscript?” I asked, looking at Jitty with eyes that didn’t actually see her. “How did she get her mitts on it?”

  “Maybe she called the psychic hotline.”

  I ignored Jitty and went to the phone. “Can I have some privacy. I’m about to eat crow.”

  “And just when you were beginning to lose some weight,” she countered before she walked out of the room.

  I dialed Tinkie’s number. The voice that answered was throaty, a little confused. There was a loud, rhythmic noise in the background.

  “Tinkie! Are you okay?”

  “Oh, it’s you, Sarah Booth. I was just taking a little nap.” She came more awake. “Just a minute. Oscar’s snoring hard enough to suck the wallpaper down. Let me get in the bathroom.” There was a pause, and she came back on the line, alert and energized. “I found out where Harold is. He’s gone to Memphis. Not much of a vacation, if you ask me.”

  “Did you have any … trouble getting the information?”

  “Sarah Booth, can I tell you the truth?”

  How much of this did I want to hear? I was already bogged down in guilt. “Sure.” The least I could do was commiserate with her sacrifice.

  “Oscar and I really had a good talk. I mean, not like you’d think. I sent all the help home and I made us a bite of lunch. Nothing fancy, just some BLTs and iced tea. Oscar was a little suspicious at first, but once we started talking, it was like back when we were in high school. He told me things— Never mind about that. I felt kind of bad. He didn’t have a clue I was working him to find out about Harold. It never entered his brain. And I guess that made me feel a little guilty, so I was nicer to him than I planned. And he was nice back to me. And then we got to laughing and carrying on. We just wore ourselves out having a good time. He even said he’d heard the gossip that you and I were working together, and he said he didn’t care. He thought it would be good for me to have an interest.”

  “Happy New Year, Tinkie.” I felt as if I’d just dodged a bullet. “I’ve got another assignment for you.”

  “Great!”

  “You sure you want to leave Oscar in there snoring?” I couldn’t help but tease her a little bit.

  “He needs his rest.” Her giggle was young and happy. “You know how men are, Sarah Booth.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a vague memory.”

  She laughed again. “I think you’re going to get a big surprise tonight. Once Oscar got to talking, he just didn’t want to stop. He told me a big, big secret.”

  “About the case?”

  “No, silly. Something else. Something that’s going to knock you right out of your shoes.”

  “Sounds divine, but right now we’d better focus on the case.”

  “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  So I did. And with Tinkie on her way to Ruth Anne’s with a request to call me back as soon as she saw the caller ID, I went upstairs to select my dress for the New Year’s Eve dance at The Club.

  Without Jitty’s nagging and interference, I made my selections in a matter of minutes. By some stroke of fate, Sweetie Pie hadn’t damaged my shoes. Everything was neatly stowed in my carryall when the phone began to ring. Tinkie didn’t even wait for a hello.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Sarah Booth, but that call was made from Lawrence Ambrose’s house. Do you—”

  I didn’t wait to hear the last of it. I dropped the phone, vaulted over my sleeping dog, and rushed out into crimson sunset of the last day of the year.

  26

  Driving to the courthouse, I had one thing on my mind—to find Harold. He was the only one who might possibly be able to interpret Lawrence’s note.

  Coleman was at his desk, and when I asked about Harold, he rose slowly to his feet. “He’s in the jail,” he said.

  My opinion of Coleman rose in equal measure with my concern. Putting a man like Harold in jail was not a politically savvy move and one for which Coleman might pay a high price. The idea of Harold behind bars was bitingly painful. “I have to see him,” I said, taking tough over pleading.

  “He’s had his phone call.” Coleman sat back down and picked up some paperwork. He, too, was playing hardball.

  “Brianna’s still in town.” I had bait and I knew how to cast.

  He lowered the paperwork. “How do you know?”

  “I’ll tell you, if you let me see Harold.” Bartering with Coleman was a dangerous game. He could easily pop me into a cell and I knew it. “You know Harold isn’t capable of murder.”

  “Maybe not, but he’s capable of being stubborn as a mule. I’ll let you see him if you can make him talk.”

  It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. “I have my ways.”

  Instead of taking me back, Coleman opened the door to the jail and motioned me through. Impeccable, as al
ways, Harold rose from his cot as I approached the bars.

  “Sarah Booth,” he said in that deep, modulated voice. “I’d hoped to ask you for a dance tonight. I suppose that’s out of the question now.” He reached toward me but stopped. “Thank goodness you’re okay. Did you find anything at—”

  I leaned forward, pressing my face between the bars. I didn’t want him to let on where I’d been. “You’ve got to make Coleman let you out of here.”

  Coleman had come up behind me. “All he has to do is answer a few questions. But my patience is wearing thin. With both of you.”

  I zeroed in on Harold. “Tell him what he wants to know.”

  Harold’s ice-blue eyes held a spark of amusement. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the party at The Club?”

  “Stop it, Harold.” I could take a little teasing, but this simply wasn’t the time. “I’ve got something to show you, something meant for you. When you read it, you have to tell the truth. You can’t protect her any longer.”

  It was as if ice had formed in his irises. “I don’t have to do a solitary thing. Let’s make that perfectly clear.”

  “He’s one stubborn son of a bitch,” Coleman said with disgust. “He must like his cell, because with an attitude like that he’s not getting out any time soon.”

  I pulled Lawrence’s note from my pocket, waving it slowly.

  Harold recognized the handwriting instantly, and despite himself there was eagerness in his voice. “Where did you get that?”

  Whatever religious nutcase said confession was good for the soul had obviously never done anything wrong. I knew I was going to be in trouble with both men. “I picked it up off the floor at Lawrence’s. When I found the body. I didn’t read it until today because I tucked it in my coat pocket and Sweetie Pie stole my coat and dragged it under the house.” I said it all really fast in the hopes that some of the details would slip past them.

  Harold’s hands grasped the bars, and Coleman’s hands grasped my shoulders.