Game of Bones Page 8

  * * *

  The next knock on the door was from the man of my dreams. Coleman came in and accepted the Jack on the rocks I had ready for him. He gave me a long hug and a searing kiss, and then sighed.

  “How about some leftover lasagna?” I asked.

  “How about we skip eating and head upstairs?”

  “How about we race?” I dashed out of the foyer and up the stairs, but Coleman’s longer legs gave him the advantage. He caught me at the top of the stairs and gathered me to him.

  “You cheated,” he said.

  “I tried. It wasn’t a very successful attempt.” I kissed him, and when his arms circled me, I felt the weight of the world lift. I slipped my arms around his waist and rested my face against the starched shirt. “You feel like home.”

  His hands rubbed my back, a gentle circling that brought great comfort. “That might be the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  He wasn’t teasing me. I could tell by his voice. “We all need such different things from life. What do you need, Coleman?”

  “Aside from you?” He kissed the top of my head. “I could go into a long list of emotional and physical and social needs, but how about we leave it at this.” He tilted my face up with a gentle finger and his lips pressed against mine. It was a kiss that started tender and quickly grew hungry.

  My desire for him burned hot, and I slowly backed toward my bedroom, never breaking the kiss. And Tinkie thought I wasn’t coordinated. Hah!

  We’d just made the bedroom door when Coleman’s cell phone went off.

  “Don’t answer it.” I knew he would, but I had to make the protest.

  He hit the button and said, “This is Coleman.”

  As he held the phone to his ear I started unbuttoning his shirt.

  “What?” His hand captured mine and stopped it mid-button. “I’ll be right there.” He sighed as he stepped back. “That was Budgie.”

  I’d forgotten about the cellar and Budgie’s explorations. “Did he find something?”

  “You could say that.” Coleman was rebuttoning his shirt. He started for the stairs.

  “What did he find? You can’t just do that and walk away. I shared my info with you.”

  “You’re going to find out anyway, so you might as well just come with me. Grab a jacket.”

  I skipped down the stairs after him. “What did Budgie find?”

  Coleman paused and faced me. The twist of his grin told me two things. Whatever Budgie had found was substantial. The second was that I wouldn’t get a straight answer. Coleman could be the very devil when he chose to be.

  “You want to talk or you want to find out what’s going on?”

  “I want you to tell me and not dangle this in front of me like a carrot for a mule.”

  “Grab your coat and let’s make tracks. Bring Sweetie Pie and Pluto. They might prove useful.”

  “Flashlights?” I asked.

  “Budgie has it covered. I’ll need you to take some photos.”

  “Want me to call Cece?” I still hadn’t heard from my journalist friend. Now I was getting worried but I didn’t have time to do anything about it since Coleman was hustling me into my coat like he was dressing a toddler. Any minute now he’d wipe my nose and then try to burp me. I liked a take-charge man, but this was making me want to smack him.

  “Let’s leave Cece out of this for the moment,” Coleman said. “I need to evaluate the situation. Then I’ll give her free rein.”

  My radar alert hit priority red. What had Budgie found in that cellar? And why had he waited so long to tell Coleman? I stood my ground on the front porch, glad that Coleman had bundled me so thoroughly against the night chill. The temp had dropped at least twenty degrees and was headed toward freezing. “Tell me or I’m not taking another step. I have to know whether to call Tinkie.”

  “No Tinkie. Now hurry. The pets are waiting at my truck.”

  I had to give in. We could drive to Mound Salla by the time I argued Coleman into submission. Which would probably never happen, if I was being honest with myself. I hurried to the passenger side and jumped in. “Let’s go. Time’s a wastin’.”

  I wouldn’t give Coleman the satisfaction of begging for details on the drive over. I calmed myself by watching the moon over the newly sprouted fields. Some people might see only dirt and tiny plants, but I saw a history of my family, of my connection to the planet. For all of my life, the fertile Delta and the moon would be there.

  My roots thrust deep into the land that passed the truck window, yielding an occasional light from a farm or estate far in the distance. There was little light pollution to interfere with the glamour of the moon and stars.

  “I’m eager to see the landscape from the top of Mound Salla,” Coleman said. “If we look east, toward the open fields, the stars will be magnificent.”

  “And to the west?” I was curious about his thoughts.

  “The river is that way.” He shrugged. “I figured there would be more lights. Maybe not. We can check it out. It’s a bit comforting and also depressing that life goes on. The stars and moon pay no heed to what happens here, who is missing, who is dead.”

  There was a hint of sadness in his voice. “Not even the rule of kings can last forever. Even Camelot will pass into the mist of time.” I’d been a huge King Arthur fan.

  “As I said, comforting and also depressing. No man, no matter how great, can stop the turning of the earth, the passing of the seasons.”

  Coleman was in a philosophical bent as we drove up to the mound. Far at the top I could see a light. Budgie was waiting for us. “It seems like yesterday that we were teenagers,” I said. The younger version of Coleman was woven through my past. I remembered him gawky and awkward. He had the same memory of me. Now we were in the prime of life, and we had many choices to make about our future. But that wasn’t a conversation to have as we got out of the truck and started up the side of the mound.

  At the first step, just when I asked my thighs and butt to push me upward, my body went into small convulsions. My hips locked, my buttocks started screaming, and I flopped to my side in the dew-covered grass.

  “What is it?” Coleman was at my side instantly. “Are you hurt?”

  “I-I can’t … I can’t use my legs.” I drew into a fetal position, trying to stretch the spasming muscles.

  “What’s wrong, Sarah Booth?” Coleman was genuinely worried. He tried to help me sit up but the large muscles took a firm grip on me and I thought my ankles would draw up to my butt. I knew what was wrong, but there was nothing I could do to stop the pain or even tell Coleman.

  “Are you wounded?”

  “Yes,” I gasped. “I’m suffering a fatal butt convulsion.”

  “What?” He reached under me and finally understood. He could feel the contractions. “What the hell?”

  “Too much climbing,” I managed to get out.

  “Oh…” That one syllable said it all. He grasped the backs of my thighs with strong fingers and set to work.

  I thought I might faint the pain was so intense.

  “What’s going on down there?” Budgie called from the top.

  “Sarah Booth is … having a moment,” Coleman said. “We’ll be up shortly.” He leaned down to whisper in my ear, and I realized then he was enjoying himself way too much. “We have to work the kinks out of those muscles. They’ve seized up.”

  His fingers were talons of iron, brutalizing my poor legs and butt. I wanted to cry, but I had too much pride. I tried not to whimper as he worked until the spasms slowed and then stopped. He leaned back on his heels. “Maybe you should develop a workout routine. Keep in shape instead of trying to do it all in one day.”

  “Maybe,” I said between gritted teeth. I wallowed around on the ground until I got on my knees. I wasn’t certain I could make it to standing.

  Coleman stood and lifted me with him. It was sweet relief to stand tall without feeling like my body was going to contort. “Thank you.”<
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  “My pleasure,” he said, stretching his fingers out. “Anytime you need a glute massage, I’m your man.”

  “Tread carefully,” I said. “I may be hobbled but I can still kick ass.”

  He only laughed and offered an assist as we made our way to the top of the mound. Budgie was waiting for us some twenty feet away from the edge, giving us our privacy. There was no telling what he thought we’d been doing. I’m sure it looked depraved.

  “It’s right over here,” Budgie said, heading toward the cellar.

  “What is right over there?” I’d had enough. I wanted some answers before I took another step.

  “A dead body,” Coleman said.

  “A what?” I couldn’t believe it. “You found a dead body this afternoon and waited until now to call Coleman and tell him? Are you kidding?”

  “There’s a hidden room in the cellar with a very tricky lock,” Budgie explained. “It took me a while to research how to open it without destroying the lock. Then there was a bunch of those students around, and I decided to wait until they left of their own accord.”

  “Who is it?” I couldn’t think of anyone who was missing, much less dead. Except Cece. The contracture of my chest was far more painful than my recent butt seizures.

  “I think it’s one of the archeology students, but it’s going to take someone to identify her. There was no billfold or anything with her name on it.” Budgie pulled open the cellar door and a foul odor smacked me in the face.

  “Did you call Doc?” Coleman asked Budgie.

  “He’s on the way. He’s complaining, but he’s coming.”

  “Good work, Budgie.” Coleman started down the steps. Budgie had set up lights. “You coming, Sarah Booth?”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  Coleman disappeared into the cellar and the awful smell of decomp.

  9

  The body was of a young woman, early to mid-twenties. Even the cool cellar couldn’t preserve the body forever. She’d begun to deteriorate, but I could see she’d probably once been quite beautiful. She’d been laid upon a wooden table, and her dark hair hung over the edge, almost sweeping the floor. To my knowledge, she wasn’t local. Coleman sighed. “Her throat has been cut. Just like Sandra Wells’.”

  “Is she one of the dig students?” She had to be, if she wasn’t local.

  “No one has been reported missing.” Coleman was still staring at the corpse, probably because he was processing a lot of information. I turned away. This death hit me far harder than that of Sandra Wells, and I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the way she was laid out, her hair hanging, her hands at her sides, her bare feet pointed to the sky. Bare feet in March in an underground cellar—the sight stirred my sympathy in a way that Wells hadn’t. I couldn’t explain it and didn’t want to try.

  “Surely they would report their fellow student missing.” But I wasn’t sure. The students at the dig were an odd bunch. Most were there strictly for extra credit. Only a few, like Delane, had any real interest in the outcome of the expedition. The rest were unpaid labor praying for a passing grade in the class.

  The cellar door opened and Doc came down the steps. “I’m getting too old for this. Climbing that mound is for the young and fit. Where’s Tinkie?”

  I hadn’t called my partner because I hadn’t known it was a dead body. Now I didn’t have reception. The cellar shut out all cell communication. Again, I was struck by the horror of a young woman held down here and butchered. “When we get up top, I’ll give her a call. I don’t know that she really needs to see this. I’ll make photos and share them with Coleman. How long has this woman been dead, Doc?”

  “It’s been cool down here in the cellar. Judging from the limited decomp, I’d say three days. No longer than that.”

  The dig crews had been in town longer than that. She could be one of them.

  Doc shifted the body to better examine her. “Wait a minute.” He reached beneath her blouse and pulled out a lanyard. We all leaned forward to read it. “Cissy Hartley, WQEX. She’s a TV reporter out of Birmingham.”

  “There hasn’t been anything on the news about a missing reporter.” Coleman hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “Wouldn’t a news station be a little more proactive about a missing reporter?”

  I had a terrible surge of panic for Cece. It wasn’t like her to miss a big story with a murdered professor in a ritualistic-style killing. And it had been hours since I’d called her. She hadn’t even requested the crime scene photos I always took for her. I started up the steps, where I had cell phone reception.

  “What’s wrong?” Coleman asked.

  “Cece is MIA. I need to track her down and make sure she’s okay.”

  He nodded. “Seeing something like this makes us all realize how fragile life is. While you’re up there would you call WQEX and ask them about a Cissy Hartley?”

  “Sure thing.” It was wonderful to step into the fresh air of a brisk March night. Coleman had been right. The night sky to the east was bright with stars that folks in big cities never saw. Light pollution. I dialed Cece first, and felt a rush of relief when she answered. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I know.” She sounded harried. “Look, I’ve been working on an angle about the dig. I was over in Marksville, Louisiana, on the Tunica-Biloxi reservation talking with some of the tribal elders and leaders.”

  “And you were there why?”

  “Peter told me there’s something fishy about this archeological dig. Something … hidden. And now there’s a dead woman. I met Sandra Wells and she was awful, but that’s not grounds to kill her. There’s something else going on. Looks like Peter’s instincts were correct.”

  “Two dead women.” I let the silence grow.

  “Two?”

  “Yeah, a young woman was found in the cellar of the old Bailey house. The house is gone, but the cellar survived. She’s been down there a few days. Looks like someone cut her throat.”

  “Just like Sandra Wells. That’s one way to get rid of a problem.”

  “Wells was a difficult woman, from what I hear, but how was she a problem?”

  “That grant she got—the seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for that high-end equipment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m following a lead that indicates she was blackmailing her benefactor to give her the money for all of that technology. She was determined that this was the dig that would give her a television show. She was obsessed with being a star. If she was blackmailing someone, he might have wanted her dead. Anyway, who’s the other dead woman?”

  Cece was mighty cool about two dead people being found in the space of twelve hours. “We think she’s a news reporter. Cissy Hartley. From WQEX in Birmingham.”

  “No!” Cece had finally processed that someone was dead and it sounded like someone she knew. “Cissy is a great reporter. What happened?”

  I could hear her walking around her house and the TV came on. Sounds of various television shows came through as she channel flipped until I heard a newscaster. “And we have Cissy Hartley live in Zinnia, Mississippi, at the scene of a gruesome murder at Mound Salla.”

  “She’s right there on the television,” Cece said. “It’s a live feed. She’s standing in front of the Prince Albert hotel.”

  I didn’t doubt her, so who was the dead woman in the cellar? One local sheriff was not going to be happy, plus now Coleman and I had another mystery. This latest murder would directly impact my client’s appearance of guilt or innocence, depending on the evidence. “Cece, are you coming to the Indian mound or what?”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  “Would you call Tinkie? And make it fast. Doc will be moving the body soon. If you want to see the crime scene before it’s destroyed, you’d better hie yourself over here.”

  “Chop, chop, Sarah Booth. I’m walking out the door now.”

  * * *

  Tinkie and Cece arrived in tandem. Cece had picked my partner up on the w
ay. It hurt me to admit it, but Tinkie climbed the side of the mound with no adverse effects. Was it possible she was in better shape than I was? It had to be running all over creation in those dang high heels. Tinkie didn’t work out. She didn’t do housework or farm work. How was it possible she wasn’t in gluteus maximus distress? She displayed no muscular contractions from our earlier efforts. She strode toward me without a pain in the world. Cece was legging it right beside her.

  “You called in the cavalry,” Coleman said, but he wasn’t upset. He was puzzled. Doc’s examination of the body in the cellar had left us with more questions than answers. The unknown woman with a TV reporter’s identification had been murdered—that was about the only fact they’d ascertained. Yet again, Doc was waiting on transport of the body back to the morgue so he could run some tests.

  “Did you identify her?” Tinkie asked when she stood at my side.

  “Not yet.” Coleman didn’t try to hide his worry. “It’s not Cissy Hartley, but the archeology students said the Memphis reporter has been hanging around Mound Salla. The dead woman isn’t a student or part of the dig. It doesn’t make sense to have a random dead woman in the basement of a destroyed house.”

  “Is there a serial killer on the loose in Sunflower County?” Cece asked.

  That lit Coleman’s fire. “Please don’t even say that as a joke. We don’t need the county panicking.”

  “But is it a serial killer?” Tinkie asked in all sincerity. “Maybe it has nothing to do with the dig but is all about the location. I mean there are stories that something is in the woods—”

  “Ghosts and spirits, not killers,” Coleman was quick to point out.

  “Two women, both with their throats slit.” Cece put it out there as a fact. “I would never print this with any hint of serial killer, but, Coleman, do you think there’s a possibility?”

  Coleman focused his attention on Doc and Budgie, who were signaling the EMTs to the top of the mound. “I won’t answer that. Be assured, though, that I am taking all possibilities under consideration.”