Game of Bones Read online

  Lolly’s smile was tinged with sadness. “Those were great days. How impossible it is when a child grows up.” She swallowed. “Let me get some tea.” She rang a little bell and when a maid appeared she ordered tea and scones.

  “I’m delighted to have company, but what brings you for a visit?”

  “It’s the dig,” Tinkie said. “I’m sure you’ve heard there’s been a murder there.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I heard. Elton tries to keep such things from me, but there’s no way. What a tragic event. Tell me about it.”

  Tinkie and I exchanged a look. She seemed genuinely curious about the details. “One of the professors was murdered.”

  “How?” She waved a hand. “I’m not some delicate flower who’ll wilt at the mention of murder. I’m curious. You might as well tell me. It’ll be in the Zinnia Dispatch in the morning. Elton will hide the paper and I’ll send one of the employees to buy me another.”

  “Dr. Sandra Wells was killed. She was hung upside down over a bowl they recovered from the dig. Her throat was cut and she bled out into the bowl.” I didn’t hide or embellish.

  “Was she dead before she was hung up?”

  “Doc is still doing the autopsy.” Tinkie looked far more distressed than Lolly.

  “And you want to know why Elton invested in the dig and if he had anything to gain from Dr. Wells’ death.”

  I nodded. “Pretty much.”

  The maid brought in the tea service and conversation waned until she left. Then Lolly picked up the conversation.

  “I know Elton invested with Frank Hafner. He felt Frank had the experience and technical expertise to excavate the mound properly.” She smiled at my surprised expression as she handed me a cup of tea. “Elton does try to keep the harshness of life away from my door, but we are partners in every sense of the word. We discuss things.”

  “What did Elton say about Dr. Wells?”

  She hesitated. “She was an attention whore. Those are his words, not mine. She desperately wanted to be a TV personality and to quit teaching. She hated her students, the whole academic gig. She was a pretty woman, and she photographed well. She might have been able to parlay this dig into a TV show on Planet Earth or Discovery or GEO.” She shrugged. “She didn’t have any friends on the dig site, though. No one there has a shred of regret that she’s dead. That’s kind of sad to me.”

  All of this was old news. What was interesting was Lolly’s opinion of Sandra. It was clear she’d heard negative things about the professor, but it seemed to have no bearing on her feelings for the woman her husband had been sleeping with. It could be an act, but I didn’t think so. Scratch her off the suspect list.

  Tinkie and Lolly chatted about the garden club and several other civic groups that Tinkie ran with an iron fist. As first lady of the Delta and Queen Bee of the Daddy’s Girls, Tinkie had a lot of power and she didn’t hesitate to wield it when necessary.

  “Where is Jimmy going to school?” I asked when there was a lull.

  “He’s … in a special program.” Lolly flushed. “He’s so advanced, and he’s determined to follow in Elton’s footsteps. He’s in a computer and mechanical engineering program. He’s already developed two toys that have proven very popular with college students.”

  “Wow. He’s only what, sixteen?”

  Lolly nodded. “It was a hard decision to take him out of the public schools, but he’s working on a graduate-student level now. Time is so precious, as you know.”

  “I remember how much the other children loved him,” Tinkie said. “He was kind to everyone.”

  “And he still is.” Lolly’s voice cracked. “I miss him. Elton says I can’t be a baby and hold him back. He has to fly.” She brushed away a tear. “It’s silly to be emotional.” She refilled our teacups and shifted the conversation to the good works being done in Sunflower County and finally to the Harrington sisters, who’d opened a Wiccan school. “Elton has donated computers to the boarding school. He’s very excited that those witches will get the young people outside and growing their own food.”

  “Last time I was by there, they’d put in several spring crops. If the weather treats them kindly, those kids will be eating the best organic food around.”

  “I heard they were going to get a couple of cows to milk and make butter and cheese.” Lolly liked the idea. “I wish Jimmy could have participated in that. He would have loved it. He’s always had an affinity for cows. All animals. We have quite a collection.” She laughed. “His heart is tender.”

  We’d finished our tea and the delicious cranberry scones. Our visit had netted us nothing, except forty minutes with a nice person I was glad to get to know. But I had one last question. “Lolly, Peter Deerstalker was staying here last night, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded. “Peter and Elton are going through a rough patch right now. They’ve always been close, and this dig has put them at odds. But they’re big enough to work around it. Peter is always a delight, and I’m equally fond of him.”

  “So he was here all night.”

  She looked at me and frowned. “We had a late dinner, then I went up to bed to read for a while. It relaxes me so I can sleep. Elton and Peter talked. As far as I know they stayed up late with cocktails and cigars. But I can check to be sure.” She called Annie into the room and asked her about Peter and Elton.

  The maid bit her lip before she spoke, “I can’t say anything for certain. I cleared away the glasses and dumped the ashtrays. Mr. Elton had gone to bed but Mr. Peter was still up. He could have left, I suppose.”

  “Thank you, Annie.” Lolly gave her a smile. “You always look out for us.” She looked from me to Tinkie. “Does that satisfy the requirement for an alibi?”

  “Yes, it does.” Peter and Elton had alibis. The focus returned to Frank again, whether I liked it or not.

  After Tinkie and I said our goodbyes and accepted containers of scones to take home with us, we drove toward town. The critters, full of treats that Lolly sent out to them, were still snoozing in the backseat. They’d tired themselves out running up and down the mound.

  As we drove back to Zinnia, Tinkie was contemplative. “Lolly really misses her son.”

  “She does.”

  “Eighteen years isn’t enough to have your child at home. Jimmy is only sixteen. How do people let their children go?”

  “How do we let anyone we love go?” I asked. “I want to have children, but…”

  Tinkie put her hand on my arm. “I understand. You’ve lost too much. I’m just glad you have Coleman now. Let your romance take its course. You have another few years to decide about children.”

  If only Jitty would be so solicitous of my feelings. “Thanks.”

  “You have to know Coleman is solid before you take it any further.”

  She was right. Coleman was slowly weaving himself into my life, my world. It was a process I’d long resisted and now it was inevitable. It was also dangerous. My aunt Loulane, who’d raised me after my parents died in an accident, had been a fount of wisdom, which she often doled out to me and my friends. “You can’t miss what you’ve never had” was one of her favorites. I never doubted the truth of it. As a very young woman I’d wanted only to find someone to love. And then I’d had that and lost it. I’d expected to remain alone for a long time. Now that was in the past and Coleman was becoming a big part of my life. The red-alert button in my brain periodically fired off Danger! Danger! Danger! Talk of children set it off all the time, something I couldn’t really explain to Jitty, my tormenter.

  “I left my car at the mound,” Tinkie said. “Would you drop me and Chablis there? I have plans for this evening. That okay?”

  “Sure.” I hadn’t talked to Coleman so I had no plans, but if I decided to work on the case, I could do that without Tinkie.

  “I wonder where Cece is?” Tinkie asked about our journalist friend. Working for the Zinnia Dispatch put Cece in a place where she had her finger on the pulse of everything in
Sunflower County and the surrounding area. Cece was one of the finest journalists working, and she’d carved out a place for herself in Sunflower County when it might have been easier for her to leave and start fresh somewhere else. It was odd she hadn’t shown up at the murder site. She was generally on top of all happenings in Sunflower County. Then again, she knew I’d take photos she could use if necessary.

  “I’ll give her a call on my way home,” I said. Tinkie got out of my car but leaned in the passenger window. Behind her, the sky was taking on the winter tones of an early dusk. The blue hour. In the 1800s, this would be the time when folks gathered on their porches to have a glass of tea—or something stronger—and relax a little before supper was served. The shorter winter days had a rhythm all their own.

  I dialed Cece as I drove to Dahlia House. Sweetie Pie jumped onto the front seat to act as copilot as I buzzed through the dying light. Cece had a Spidey sense about her phone—it was seldom far from her hand and she seemed capable of keeping it in a web attached to her body. I wasn’t worried about her lack of response, only curious. I left a voice mail for her to call me.

  I was pulling into the driveway when thoughts of Cece fled my mind. A beautiful young woman in a long dress with a high collar stood on the front porch of my home. She was clearly from another era. Sweetie Pie and Pluto ran to greet her and I knew it was Jitty, in another disguise. Normally I could figure out who she was pretending to be, but this woman rang no bells. She was beautiful, her curly hair pinned neatly back from her face, her dress beautifully made and presented. She had a satchel under her arm.

  “Sometimes having the law on your side isn’t enough,” she said. “Not for my people, and not for me as a woman.” She stared straight into my eyes.

  “Who are you?” I asked. Jitty loved to make me guess, but I didn’t even have an inkling.

  “Lyda Conley.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are.”

  Her smile was soft, but it didn’t counter the fire in her eyes. “I’m the first Native American lawyer to be admitted to the Kansas bar, and in 1909, I was the first Native American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.”

  I suddenly understood her significance on my front porch. “What case?”

  “The protection of the Huron Cemetery, where my ancestors are buried, and its designation as federally protected land. My tribe is the Wyandots. I am a descendant of Chief Tarhe.”

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to connect Lyda Conley to what was happening at Mound Salla. She was here to offer legal advice to Peter Deerstalker. Jitty had always indicated that those in the Great Beyond took interest in what happened on our plane, and sometimes interfered. Lyda was here to render aid. “Am I to deliver a message to Peter Deerstalker?”

  “Your services will be invaluable.” Her smile was tentative. “My father believed in educating women. It hasn’t been an easy life for me, though. My sisters and I never married, the conflicts of a truly independent and professional woman were too difficult for the men of my time.” She stepped toward me. “You’re luckier. You can have your career and a family, too.”

  I realized Lyda was channeling Jitty, who was on her favorite warpath for me to produce an heir. My heirloom ghost was determined that I should get pregnant and today wasn’t soon enough. “I’m lucky that I can choose to have neither.”

  Lyda frowned and I clearly saw Jitty lurking there. “A child is—”

  “Jitty, stop it. You can’t use dead historical people to try to bully me.”

  The features of Lyda morphed into another beautiful woman, my haint. “I can use whatever tools are at my disposal. You don’t know nothin’ about what goes on in the Great Beyond.”

  She was right about that. “Because you won’t tell me.” There were days I wanted to wring her neck. “Now quit messing me around. I want to get in the house, pour a nice Jack on the rocks, and see if there’s anything in the refrigerator I can pass off for supper to Coleman.”

  “Cookin’ for your man.” Jitty smirked. “How about breakfast for supper? Men love that. Hot grits, eggs, bacon, whip up some biscu—” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Forget the biscuits. Last time you tried to make ’em you created hockey pucks that could have been used to pave a road.”

  “The baking powder must have been bad.” The biscuits could have been labeled lethal weapons. She was right about that, but I didn’t intend to concede a single thing. “I can cook. I’m a good cook when the mood strikes me.”

  “Like maybe when hell freezes over,” Jitty said under her breath. She was still wearing the high-necked dress.

  “Change into something else, please,” I said. “You’re giving me a complex. I don’t know how women ever wore all that bull crap. Corsets, high collars, long sleeves and long skirts, pantaloons, stockings, button shoes. Why, if I’d lived back then, I would have set them all on their ears.”

  “You would have been hanged for a troublemaker, that’s for sure.” She was grinning wide.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You think on Lyda Conley and her work. She was a woman I admired, and she was right. You have a lot more ability to carve yourself out a future you design. Today’s women are steppin’ on the backs of people like Lyda Conley.”

  Jitty was right, and she gave me pause. “I am lucky.”

  “And in other ways, too. Now someone’s comin’ up on the porch. Jump to it, Sarah Booth. Make your dreams come true.”

  Before I could answer, she was gone to the beat of a few tom-toms and the cry of an eagle.

  8

  I’d anticipated Coleman, but it was Delane Goggans who came down my long driveway. I offered her a libation, and we settled in the den where I struck a fire. The days for using the fireplace would soon be gone, and I did love a fire.

  “What brings you here?” I asked.

  “I know everyone suspects Frank of killing Sandra, but he didn’t.”

  “Okay. Do you have any proof? And just let me add that making up alibis won’t help him. It only makes him—and you—look guilty.”

  Delane tilted her head back and I realized she had a lovely neck and throat. Very Angela Lansbury. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not normally a liar and I’m not very good at it. After all these years in school, you’d think I’d have mastered that technique.”

  I didn’t even want to ask. “Why not just tell me why you’re here?”

  “There are things going on at that dig. They don’t make sense. I know Kawania and Peter Deerstalker have something going on. They have a history or family connection. Kawania claims she can curse people, and she really hated Dr. Wells.”

  I knew that Kawania had Tunica blood but I saw no reason to share that. “Kawania isn’t any more capable of putting a curse on anyone than I am.”

  Delane’s gaze drilled into me. “You’re kidding yourself if you don’t believe that some people can call upon the darkness to help them. There is something going on up there. I’m not saying Kawania is behind it, but something is not right there. There is someone, or something, at that dig. A private investigator has been running around. And that TV reporter, Cissy Hartley, is there whenever a story breaks. It’s just too many people who seem to have an agenda.”

  Her words did evoke a chill, but I wasn’t about to let her see it. “Look, if you don’t have anything better than that, finish your drink and leave. I’ve had a long day.” My butt hurt from walking up and down that mound. I had a sense that Delane was at Dahlia House to pump me or find out something from me, not to give me any clues.

  “Look, you don’t have to believe in hoodoo. But you do have to believe that Deerstalker has a stake in this game. And Kawania is linked to him. I don’t know what they’re up to, but you should check into them and also keep an eye on them.”

  “Good advice. Can you back up your suspicions?”

  She thought for a minute. “Maybe.” She finished her drink. “Places have a lot of power, Ms. Del
aney. That mound is special. There’s something there that someone doesn’t want us to find. You can scoff all you want, but a lot of the students have seen something in the woods. Something unnatural. Cooley said he saw a woman in the trees, but when we went to look, we couldn’t find anything.”

  I was intrigued and offered her another drink but she shook her head. “I have to go. There are weird things happening at the dig. I’ve been on digs before, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “You’re going to have to be specific or else this is just a bunch of suspicions and that doesn’t carry much weight with me or the sheriff.”

  She sighed heavily and stood. “You’ll have your proof. I don’t know who is behind it, but someone wants that dig stopped. Deerstalker is the obvious person, and Kawania seems to be working with him.”

  I would believe it when I saw the proof. “I’ll be at Millie’s Café in the morning at seven. If you have evidence, bring it.”

  I walked her to the door, where she turned around. “You’re lucky to have a home like this. I grew up in a subdivision. Chemical green lawns that no one ever played on and a yard crew maintained, no fields or open spaces to have adventures. I had a safe and happy childhood that was completely bland.”

  It was funny how people always admired what they didn’t have. I’d always wanted straight black hair, like a Native American. It was just human nature. “You have a lot of years in front of you. Maybe you’ll have a cabin in the woods. Mountains would be nice.”

  “Not after climbing that mound day in and day out.” She laughed. “But I have buns of steel. I just need to find a reason to use them properly.”

  Her sharp humor caught me by surprise. We both laughed as she crossed the porch. Darkness had fallen, and I stood in the open doorway until she drove away. Given half a chance, I’d probably really like Delane.

  She was gone by the time I realized what she had said. She needed a reason to use her buns of steel. So maybe she wasn’t really sleeping with Frank Hafner. It was just one more thing to consider.