Ham Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  “Damn!” Tinkie had the pedal to the floor, but the Porsche was created for speed. The Caddy was a luxury vehicle.

  “What is Graf trying to do?” I had no idea what he hoped to accomplish by chasing Morgan.

  In the early morning light, the little silver car had blended into the gray highway. It was like he disappeared. The Tahoe was still visible, and far in the distance a truck pulling a tractor waited on the side of the road. When I saw it, I had a bad feeling.

  Tinkie’s grip on the wheel tightened, and she eased off the gas. We both saw the farm truck edge forward onto the highway in the path of the Tahoe. It was almost like a movie. The truck and trailer pulled onto the Interstate, the Tahoe swerved into the left lane to avoid it, the Tahoe wobbled slightly, ran off the road, swerved back on and slammed into the side of the trailer, then bounced away, veering off the road and into the ditch.

  Morgan didn’t have a chance. The Tahoe flipped three times, all sorts of things flying out the openings as the doors were wrenched free. Finally the vehicle settled on its roof, dust roiling all around it. The explosion that followed felt like I’d been kicked by Reveler, and we were still a quarter mile away.

  I saw the Porsche then. Graf passed the wreck without even slowing. He disappeared in the distance, swallowed by the highway that faded into nothing.

  In the carnage of Morgan’s wreck, it didn’t matter to me that I was outside Sunflower County. Tinkie and I waited, unable to do anything except watch the Tahoe burn. The farmer, shaken but uninjured, sat with us as we listened for the sirens that marked the arrival of the deputies and an unnecessary ambulance. There was no way Robert Morgan could have survived the wreck and then the fire.

  Tinkie didn’t say anything. We both sat mute, watching the flames. The one person who could have proven my innocence was dead. Perhaps he had killed Renata for his own reasons. Most likely, we’d never know. Morgan had died and taken his secrets with him.

  Coleman gave me a look when he arrived, but his primary focus was on the safety of other drivers who were beginning to fill the highway now. He took a statement from the farmer, and then Tinkie, and finally me.

  “You’re out of Sunflower County,” he said.

  “I realize that.” I couldn’t read his expression.

  “Why don’t you and Tinkie head home? Get a couple hours sleep. Then I want to talk to you. At the sheriff’s office at eleven.”

  I couldn’t tell if he wanted to talk or if this was a plot to get me close enough to the jail so he could throw me in and lock the door. I honestly didn’t care. I was beaten down. My last hope at exoneration had been cremated in the Tahoe.

  I got in the car and slumped against the seat.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah Booth.” Tinkie touched my arm. “We were so close.”

  “When I feel better, I’m going to kick Graf’s ass all the way back to New York.” Why had he done that? Why had he given such hot pursuit to Robert Morgan?

  My head spun with fears and rationalizations, and none of them changed the fact that I was in serious trouble.

  Chapter 20

  I felt at least a hundred years old as I tossed beneath the hand-sewn quilts on my bed. Winter sunshine danced in the windows, and if I looked out, I’d see Reveler and Miss Scrapiron playing in the paddock. They’d become the fastest of friends, and though I should have called Lee to come and fetch her mare, I didn’t. As long as I was free, I wanted Reveler to have his lady friend. If I went to prison, Lee would take Reveler and care for him. She was that kind of friend. Tinkie would take Sweetie Pie.

  But what of Jitty? Would she wait for me here? Tinkie and Harold would stop the bank from foreclosing on my mortgage as long as they could. But in reality, they couldn’t pay off the debt if I were sentenced to life. Dahlia House would fade and decline without love. And though my friends had true-blue hearts and money, the bank had rules and stockholders to account to. It wasn’t a personal charity fund that those three could dip into whenever they felt the need to rescue a friend from financial ruin. And if this happened, what would become of Jitty?

  As if I’d called her, she shimmered into being at the foot of the bed. She wore a floor-length cotton gown, with pale pink ribbons woven through the bib, and her hair was braided and hung on her shoulder. If she’d had a candle in one hand, I might have thought she’d stepped right out of time and into my bedroom.

  “Mr. Sandman must have an appointment with you,” I told her. “I’m glad one of us looks like she’s going to get some sleep.”

  “I don’t need it. You do.” She sat so lightly on the foot of the bed that I couldn’t feel her body weight. Then again, she was a ghost. How much did she weigh? I’d heard the weight of a soul was twenty-one grams. Jitty, I was sure, would be only a fashionable nineteen. “Why aren’t you snoozin’?” she asked.

  “I can’t sleep. I’m worried.”

  Her smile was sad. “Me, too.”

  That scared me. Jitty hadn’t been her normal sassy self since this whole thing had started. She’d been melancholy, and that was my modus operandi. “Am I going to prison?”

  “You know I don’t tell the future. That’s the province of your friend, Madame Tomeeka.”

  “The last vision Tammy had wasn’t a good one. Renata reached from the world beyond and grabbed me.” I thought again of Graf and how he’d said almost the same words—that Renata had reached from the grave to punish him.

  “This woman has a long reach for a corpse.”

  That was a statement I couldn’t argue with. No matter that I’d bested her on the stage—my talent was at last acknowledged. Renata was still the superior ... enemy. The word surprised me. I’d considered Renata an adversary, a bitch, a dangerous acquaintance. Never an enemy. Until now.

  “There is reason in all things, Sarah Booth. You may not see it right this minute, but one thing will shift into focus, and you’ll see the truth.”

  “What makes a person an enemy?” I couldn’t let go of the idea.

  “Jealousy, competitiveness, revenge, covetousness.” Jitty said each word with care. “Back when Alice was alive, she had a young friend by the name of Bethelyn Carlisle James. Her cousin was someone you might have heard of, Jesse James.”

  I remembered this old story, but I fluffed my pillows to listen again. It had been years since anyone had told me a bedtime story, and I was ready to listen. “The legendary outlaw, Jesse James.”

  “That was him, but it’s not a simple story, and what I’m goin’ to talk about really has nothin’ to do with outlaws. Only in-laws.” Jitty crooked a leg up on the bed, and the thin winter light struck her skin, rendering it the most perfect shade of golden mocha I’d ever seen.

  “Bethelyn had a younger sister, didn’t she?” I knew the story, but Jitty always added a detail that I’d forgotten.

  “Her name was Karalyn. She was a year younger, a child born too soon, before her mother had fully recovered from the birth of Bethelyn.” Jitty’s eyes had gone unfocused as she walked the dirt roads of the past.

  “Celestine James died a month after giving birth to Karalyn, and Luther was destroyed. He loved his wife more than anything else in his life. More than his children. But it was his good fortune that Bethelyn grew into the spittin’ image of her mother. It was truly uncanny. Some said that the spirit of Celestine James had lingered in the old plantation and slipped into the body of her eldest daughter while the girl slept.”

  I didn’t bother to point out the irony of a ghost telling me a ghost story. I listened with rapt attention.

  “Luther loved Bethelyn beyond reason. She had the finest ball gowns for the parties of the day, and two maids to attend to her grooming and toilette. Alice, who was the same age, told me later that Bethelyn never let the attention spoil her. She tried to be a mother to Karalyn, who would have no part of it. Abandoned and neglected by her father, Karalyn grew to hate her older sister and view her as the source of all of her unhappiness.”

  “Couldn’t Luther see wha
t he was doing?”

  “He was blinded by love for a woman long gone. By trying to recreate the past and have his beloved Celestine, he never really knew Bethelyn, and worse, he drove Karalyn away.”

  “Do you ever tell stories that aren’t sad?” I suddenly didn’t want to hear any more. I’d asked the question about enemies. The answer Jitty was giving me was making me very uncomfortable, because I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between Luther James and Graf Milieu. Both men found themselves caught between two women, and Luther had paid a terrible price.

  “Stories aren’t interestin’ if they don’t have drama.” Jitty’s smile was fleeting. “This all happened back in 1855, six years before the war. Alice and Bethelyn were just teenagers in a world doomed to die a brutal death. Those were days of grand parties and weekend-long barbecues. I’d been born on the Caldwell Plantation, Mossy Oak. The Caldwells had a son, Jacob, they hoped to match up with Bethelyn for marriage. Talk was that it was a true love match—that the couple had fallen deeply in love. Alice was excited for her friend, and she was thrilled to be goin’ to one of her first grown-up parties, a barbecue to be followed that evening by a ball with musicians from New Orleans. It was quite a do.

  “As I said, Alice and Bethelyn were good friends, and they’d traveled down to Mossy Oak together, gigglin’ and carryin’ on the whole way.”

  There was a portrait of Alice in the music room wearing a magnificent midnight-blue gown. She was fifteen, little more than a child, but considered a woman in her own right at that time. The dress had been made especially for her to wear to the Caldwell Plantation ball, and somewhere in the attic, the dress was wrapped and stored in a cedar trunk.

  “Bethelyn and Alice got to the party. I remember when Alice stepped out of the carriage, I knew I had to be in her life. She was something special, Sarah Booth. She had a light about her that came from within. And Bethelyn looked as if she’d been released from prison. She was free of her father and her sister. Karalyn was arriving later, with Luther. Karalyn was fourteen, too young to attend the party, but she’d wrangled Luther into letting her go to the barbecue, if not the ball.”

  The way Jitty told the story, I could see it all unfolding. The girls arriving with trunks and maids. It had been March, as I recalled the story, when spring touches the South with such kindness and grace. The dogwoods would have bloomed white against green lawns and towering masses of bright purple and pink azaleas mingled with the long branches of bridal wreath creating private alcoves where an ingenious couple could meet for a kiss.

  Jitty’s voice spun the spell. “The barbecue was almost over when Karalyn and Luther arrived. No one took much notice of the younger girl. It wasn’t until the women headed into the house to take a nap in the afternoon that Luther noticed Karalyn was missing. Also missing was Jacob Caldwell.”

  “No one took the absences seriously. At first.” I picked up the thread of the story. “Luther searched the yard, moving on to the stables, then the cow barns. By then he was worried. If not in physical danger, Karalyn risked her reputation if she was off with Jacob, her sister’s intended.”

  “Those times, a girl’s virtue was her most prized possession.” Jitty threw me a look that said a lot about my tarnished virtue. “Luther went back to the house and got all the men to help, and the servants. Because I loved to fish and spent a lot of time along the creek, they sent me to hunt there.”

  Jitty’s hands were folded in her lap, but as she recalled the details of the story, I could see how it still unsettled her, even after all these years. Her fingers laced and held, as if she could grip the past and change it.

  “I found him first. Jacob. He was facedown in the creek. He’d been struck in the back of the head with a tree limb, and I remember how his hair waved so gently in the water and a stream of blood flowed out behind him like a kite tail. Lord, I started screamin’ and draggin’ at his body, tryin’ to pull him up the bank and make him breathe. Mr. Luther came up and helped. There was nothin’ to be done, Sarah Booth. He was gone.”

  I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t stop the images.

  “Mr. Caldwell found Karalyn. She’d hanged herself in one of the beautiful oak trees beside the creek. She had a note pinned to her dress. It said, ‘You can’t have everything, Bethelyn. You don’t get to have it all.’”

  “And that’s the story of how two sisters became mortal enemies.” It was a bitter tale, and I saw Jitty’s point—there is a seed of unreason in the bond of enemies.

  “Jealousy can twist a person’s mind, Sarah Booth.” Jitty rose to her feet.

  “What happened to Bethelyn?” I knew the short answer—she’d never married but had tended her father until his early death from a heart attack only five years later. She sold the Jameses’ land in Mississippi and moved to Missouri to join up with the rest of the James family. “Did she ever recover?”

  “She wrote Alice, a lot before the war, then a few letters after the South was defeated. That’s when her cousin came home from soldierin’ and got caught up in his life as an outlaw. When she died of typhus, she was writing the story of Jesse James’s life. Alice believed that Bethelyn rode with the James gang on some of their raids.”

  “Did anyone have an easy life during those times?” Jitty walked to the doorway and turned back. “Not then. Not now. Close your eyes and try to nap. Life’s gone come knockin’ on the front door before you know it.”

  This time when she left, she walked out the open door like a regular person would do.

  I had two hours before I had to be at the courthouse. I shut my eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

  Getting to the courthouse on time proved a bit more difficult than I’d anticipated. The entire block around the courthouse was a circus. Media lined the street. Some enterprising fool had set up a funnel cake booth, and I could smell the sugary confection cooking.

  Word had spread about Robert Morgan’s fiery death—another twist in the tabloid special of “the diva murder.” I ignored all the questions and was immensely glad when Cece appeared at my side. One look from her and the other reporters crept back. I was clearly her story, and they’d better not dare to try to get a piece of me.

  “Coleman has run that pack of wolves out of the courthouse several times. He’s put two photographers in jail, but it hasn’t dimmed their bloodlust.” Cece looked at them admiringly.

  Right. And the blood they lusted for was mine. Suspect numero uno. “Why don’t you become my press agent?” I asked her.

  “That’s the most insulting thing you’ve ever said to me!” she huffed. “I’m a journalist.”

  “When did journalists move from omnivores to pure carnivores?”

  “Very funny.” She slammed the courthouse door in the faces of a herd of her fellow reporters. I watched in amusement as she slid the lock home. “Hurry up, Sarah Booth. It’ll take them a couple of minutes to run around to the other doors. We can be in Coleman’s office by then.”

  Glad of the reprieve from the flashguns popping in my face, I followed her into the main sheriff’s office and straight past Dewayne to Coleman’s inner office. He was on the telephone and didn’t look up.

  “Brenda, I can’t come and sit with Connie. Either you’ll have to do it or get another family member.”

  There was a long silence. Coleman looked down at his desk and rubbed the deep furrows in his forehead with his left hand.

  “I’m sorry. My number one suspect in a murder case was killed this morning. I’m a little busy. If Connie’s able to use the telephone, she’s able to stay by herself. She can call one of you to help her.” He replaced the receiver on the hook even as I could hear Connie’s sister, Brenda, talking angrily.

  Coleman looked at Cece and a strange message seemed to pass between them. At last he turned to me. “I should put you in jail.”

  If Connie had a tumor, Coleman was a freaking schizophrenic. Dr. Jekyll-slash-Mr. Hyde. He was all kissy and loving one minute, and the next he was the Iceman. I wasn’t abo
ut to apologize or explain. I gave him look for look.

  “Where’s Tinkie?” he asked.

  There was a sharp knock at the door, and Tinkie came in. She looked refreshed and glamorous. I felt like an old gym suit. “Looks like a happy crowd,” she drawled as she closed the door.

  “Tinkie, you and Sarah Booth have some explaining to do.” Coleman looked only at her.

  “I guess I’m here to play secretary and record the minutes?” Cece asked.

  “You’re here as a journalist,” Coleman said. “The story about Robert Morgan is going to get out, and I’d just as soon that it comes out correctly.”

  “I think that’s a compliment,” I said to Cece.

  “What the hell were the two of you doing in Memphis?” Coleman asked Tinkie.

  “Memphis?” Cece gave me a disapproving look. “Your bond—”

  “Hush,” I snapped.

  “It was my idea,” Tinkie said. “And I needed Sarah Booth’s help. We got a call from Graf that he was meeting Robert Morgan in the Peabody. I wanted Sarah Booth to positively identify Morgan as the man who’d sold her lipstick at La Burnisco. She did. We were tailing him home and he took off doing about 200 miles per hour. A farm truck pulled back on the road. Morgan lost control and flipped. End of story.”

  Cece was scribbling madly as Tinkie talked. I thought Tinkie had done a brilliant job. Just the facts, ma’am.

  “Why was Graf meeting Morgan?” Coleman, who was nobody’s fool, asked.

  “You’ll have to ask Graf. The important issue is that Sarah Booth identified Morgan. He’d dressed in a disguise and sold her the lipstick. He’s a pharmacist with access to all kinds of drugs and poisons. Now Sarah Booth isn’t the main suspect.” Tinkie took a deep breath.

  “No, Sarah Booth isn’t the main suspect any longer,” Coleman answered slowly. “She’s the only living suspect. I’m cutting the theatre company loose today. I can’t hold them any longer. Watley left yesterday, all excited about an offer he had to get to New York to investigate. Bobbe Renshaw is packing, and Kristine Rolofson is heading out to Los Angeles with her dog and Gabriel Trovaioli.”