Bones To Pick

by Carolyn Haines

  There is a distinctive scent that goes with being a proper older lady—floral sachet mixed with a light talc. It is a heady and, sometimes, frightening smell for younger women who fear they may never reach the pinnacle of propriety. I thought of my mother, who always smelled of sandalwood incense and something else dark and mysterious. And Aunt Loulane, who was proper but more of a vanilla extract kind of woman. Virgie was lavender.

  “Miss Carrington?” I stepped into the room and glanced around. A slip dangled over a chair, and two sensible shoes lay as if she’d walked out of them. Virgie must have left the room in a big hurry. If she knew I was looking at this disarray, she would be embarrassed. A proper lady never left undergarments lying around.

  To my amusement, there was also a pair of oversized muck boots. I couldn’t imagine Virgie, in her cashmere twin set and silk skirt, wearing muck boots, but she was, like Gertrude Stromm, an avid gardener.

  That was probably where she was. I backed out of the room and pulled the door shut and went to find her among the vivid mums. She was kneeling in khaki slacks and a harvest-hued sweater, a flush of exertion on her cheeks as she dug a well-established buck vine from the middle of a flower bed.

  She wiped her forehead with her arm. “Gertrude told me I could have some amaryllis, but this damn vine is making it difficult. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I’m not in a rush. Please, finish what you’re doing. Allison sent you some pictures.” She attacked the vine again, and in a moment she pulled out a huge tuberous root. She removed stout leather gloves and took the pictures, her face falling into sadness as she looked through them.

  “They seemed so happy.”

  I motioned to a bench beneath the oak, and we took a seat. “Miss. Carrington, I don’t want to upset you, but Tinkie and I have unearthed several deaths that may not have been accidental.”

  “What?” She put the photos beside her leg. “Who?”

  “Quentin, of course, was murdered. We also believe Genevieve Reynold’s mother was murdered.”

  “Who would do such a thing to Betty? I didn’t know her well at all, but she seemed perfectly delightful. She loved her daughter. Besides, this can’t be true. She died in an accidental fall.”

  “Maybe not.” I told her about the shelf in the library.

  “Who could mastermind such a terrible thing? And why target Mrs. Reynolds?”

  “I believe the murderer intended to kill Genevieve.” I told her briefly about my suspicions regarding Mrs. Jenkins and Belinda Loper. “We don’t have substantial proof, yet, but when we find it, we’re going to be able to clear Allison totally.”

  “That is such a relief.” She picked up the pictures and pointed to one. “Allison wanted roses and calla lilies. Quentin wanted poinsettias. I was able to forge a compromise.” A tear traced down her cheek. “You can’t begin to imagine how hard this is. I loved those girls like they were my own. Better than their own parents loved them. I saw such a future for Quentin.”

  Virgie suffered the loss of Quentin as if she were blood, and I felt for Virgie. She wasn’t a woman who enjoyed pats and hugs, so I stood up and offered my hand. “We’ll find the person who killed Quentin. You have my word on it.”

  “Where is your partner?” She dried the tears from her face with the back of her hand.

  “Tinkie is running down a lead.” I glanced around. I’d hoped Tinkie might be at The Gardens, but she was nowhere in sight. I needed to find her. She wasn’t the kind of person to do something rash, but she was carrying a heavy load—guilt, remorse, anger, fear, and now what had to feel like betrayal.

  “What kind of lead?” Virgie asked.

  “Oh, the biggest one.” I stepped away. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Let me know as soon as you find something.”

  “I’ll do that,” I promised as I turned and hurried to my car.

  I drove through town several times again, hoping to see Tinkie’s vehicle at Millie’s; or the Cut and Curl; or at her salon; or the coffee shop; or even the library. Tinkie had vanished.

  I drove past Jocko Hallett’s office on the off chance she’d gone there to kill him. The parking lot was empty. In a last ditch effort, I drove to the bank. I needed to talk to Harold, anyway.

  My heart dropped when I scanned the bank parking lot and didn’t see Tinkie’s car. I’d hoped she’d gone to Oscar and begged forgiveness. Now it was up to me.

  I parked and went inside, asking for Harold. I was ushered into his private office. While his secretary brought in a tray of coffee and Scottish shortbread, I watched him pace the room, his dark brow furrowed.

  “Oscar has lost his mind,” he said as soon as the door closed behind his secretary. “He’s divorcing Tinkie.”

  “I know. I was with her when Jocko dropped the bomb that Oscar had hired him.”

  “This is insane!”

  “I know.”

  He paced some more. “They love each other.”

  “I know.”

  “So Tinkie pitched a drunk. Who hasn’t? I’ve seen Oscar so tanked that Tinkie had to support him.”

  “I know.” I’d become very good at saying that phrase with sincerity, and for the moment, Harold didn’t want or need another response.

  “What in the hell is wrong with Oscar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Harold sat down across from me and poured the coffee. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” Tinkie’s lump was a heavy secret as I stared into Harold’s pale eyes. “I’m worried about her.”

  “I’m worried about them both.” He offered the shortbread, and I shook my head.

  “I’m going to talk to Oscar.”

  “Good.” He stood up. “You may be able to talk some sense into him.”

  It was my experience that sense could never be talked into anyone. Still, there was nothing else for it. I rose, too. Harold opened the door and stopped. “Good luck,” he said.

  As I walked across the marble lobby of the bank, I felt all eyes on me. Business stopped as everyone watched me tap lightly on the door to Oscar’s private office.

  “Come in.” It was a command, not an invitation.

  I opened the door and stepped in, closing it firmly behind me. The look he gave me almost boiled my blood.

  “What do you want?” He rose slowly, and I could smell the alcohol from where I stood. His suit was rumpled, his hair uncombed.

  “Oh, Oscar,” I said, walking to his desk.

  “Get out of here. This is your fault.”

  I had his number, though. “Tinkie is afraid.” I spoke softly. “She’s terrified, and if she’s going to get through this, she’s going to need both of us.”

  “She’s determined to kill herself, and I for one am not going to sit around and watch.”

  I walked around his desk and captured his hands in mine. Though he pulled them away, I held on. I was trading on the fact that he was too much of a gentleman to fight with me.

  “Tinkie’s not going to die.” I looked him right in the eye. “I’ve lost everyone I ever loved. But not Tinkie.”

  “She has a lump in her breast, and she won’t go to the doctor.”

  “I know.” I held his hands tightly. “I know all about it.”

  “She’s committing suicide, and I won’t be party to it.”

  I gripped tighter, until I lost the feeling in my own fingers. “She’s not going to die, Oscar. Tinkie believes the lump is healed.”

  “By some miracle.” His tone was scornful. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if we could just wish bad news away?”

  Only yesterday I’d been urging Tinkie to see a surgeon, but suddenly I understood. “Oscar, this isn’t about Tinkie’s lump. It’s about your fear.”

  He looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. Before he could react, I pushed him into his chair and sat on the edge of the desk, blocking him.

  “You have to love Tinkie enough to allow her to seek the type
of treatment she feels is best.”

  “But she’ll die.”

  I put my hands on his shoulders. “You don’t know that.”

  “Cancer is—”

  “Tinkie was never diagnosed with cancer.”

  “But it’s a lump.”

  “And it could be anything. Benign. Some kind of fatty tumor. A fibroid. It could as easily be nothing as something terrible. You and I, both of us, have jumped to the worst possible conclusion. We’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

  He stared into my eyes. “You’re saying Tinkie is right to ignore the lump?”

  “I’m saying she has a right to do what she wishes, and we should support her.”

  “You’re as crazy as she is.” He tried to stand, but I pushed him back down.

  “Maybe I am, but I know if we don’t stand by Tinkie, we’re both going to lose her.”

  “All I want is for her to get the damn thing biopsied. Is that so wrong?”

  I shook my head. “You want to protect her because you love her.”

  “Yes!”

  “But you have to love her enough to support her choice.”

  “Even when it’s wrong?”

  I smiled. I’d finally come to understand. “We don’t know that it’s wrong. Or right. Only Tinkie knows that. She’s the one who must bear the consequences of her choice, so it’s her right to choose.”

  Oscar slumped in his chair as if the air had been let out of him. “I want to fight this. I want to take action.”

  “I know.” I cleared my throat. “There’s something else.”

  He looked up at me. “What now?”

  “Tinkie says she can’t have a child. I think the whole breast lump–doctor business is tied together.”

  He looked out the window onto a bustling downtown Zinnia. “She blames me. Did she tell you that?”

  “Blame is easy to hand out but hard to get rid of.”

  “I wasn’t ready to be a father.”

  I stood up and walked around his office, taking in the photographs of Sunflower County from the 1920s. To my surprise, I saw Dahlia House, resplendent with fresh paint and pots of flowers. “You and Tinkie have to figure this out together.” It wasn’t the most original advice, but it was true.

  “There’s nothing I can do to make it up to her.”

  “So you’ve quit trying?” I looked at him. “I never figured you for a quitter, Oscar.”

  He looked down. “I would change it if I could. I would go back and change it.” He shaded his eyes with his hand.

  “Maybe that’s all Tinkie needs to hear.”

  “It won’t change anything.”

  “Except she’ll know you hurt as much as she does.”

  “And that’s going to fix everything?”

  “It’s a step in the right direction.” I walked back to him and rubbed his back. “Tinkie feels alone. She feels isolated with only her broken dreams and a future that looks pretty lonely.”

  “She’ll never be alone as long as I’m alive.”

  I hugged him. “Now you need to tell her that.”

  He stood up. “Do you know where she is?”

  “I was hoping she was here, but I didn’t see her.” My worry returned. “I’ve looked in all the usual places. We were supposed to go to West Memphis this afternoon.”

  Oscar frowned. “Did you check The Club?”

  “No. I have tried her cell phone, and she isn’t answering.”

  “I’ll drive out to The Club. I want to talk to her.”

  “Good. I’m going to head on to Memphis. I need to talk to Jolene Loper.”

  He held the door, and we left the bank together. I’d never doubted Oscar’s love for his wife. Now he had to convince her of it.

  I followed him out of the parking lot, and when he turned to go to The Club, I headed north. It would have been a better trip with Tinkie as a companion, but she needed to focus on her marriage. I could handle an interview with a beautician’s sister.

  The brown cotton fields stretched out on either side of the road as I headed north. Almost a year had passed since I’d come home and started to work as a private investigator. In that time I’d solved five cases and gained and lost sixty pounds in five-pound increments. I was still wearing the same black jeans and driving the same car. I’d been engaged and unengaged, involved and abandoned. One of the best things that had happened was my partnership with Tinkie.

  As the roadster covered the miles, I thought about the past. It was a dirty pleasure with me, and I indulged. Growing up, I’d never considered there was another world other than the Delta. The land was part of my subconscious. My parents discussed it as if it were a family member, and with their deaths, I had become custodian. It marked me and shaped me in small, indefinable ways. The longer I stayed in Sunflower County, the more I would belong to the land.

  My drive paralleled the river, and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew it. Brown and lazy looking, the Mississippi was strong. The man-made levees contained it, for the moment. But the river’s whim could change everything for miles around.

  The photographs in Oscar’s office had shown cotton being readied for shipment downriver to New Orleans. Down to the mills, where city labor had turned the fiber into thread. Now machines did the work.

  At last, I hit the outskirts of Memphis and headed west, toward Arkansas. West Memphis had been the boomtown for the blues. The greats, like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, had played in juke joints. Time had changed everything—for better and for worse.

  The beauty salon I sought was another half hour away, and I watched for my exit. From what I’d learned, Jolene had taken over the salon after Belinda’s death.

  The shop was called Shear Excellence, and once I was off the interstate, it wasn’t hard to find. In fact, it was the only salon I’d ever seen advertised on five billboards. The ads themselves were interesting. Sexy blondes, redheads, and brunettes posed in provocative positions, with the line “Let us ‘do’ you.” Subtlety was indeed a dying art.

  When I spotted the shop at last, I was agog. It was huge, more like a Wal-Mart of hair. Belinda Loper must have been raking in the dough. I got out and walked inside. A teased young girl looked at me with contempt. “We don’t take walk-ins,” she said, “and we’re booked through January.”

  “Is Jolene Loper in?” I forced a smile.

  “Ms. Loper is busy. Like I said, we don’t take walk-ins.”

  I smiled and walked past her.

  “Hey! Come back here!”

  I ignored her shouts and kept walking past chair after chair of stylists working on hair. There were bleach jobs, perms, cuts, blows, curls—everything that could be done to hair. I kept walking, with the young receptionist snipping at me like a rabid Chihuahua.

  I spied a door at the end of the salon and opened it without the least hesitation. I was met with a squeal.

  “Damn nation! That hurt!”

  I rounded the corner and came upon Jolene Loper holding a strip of wax and what had once been someone’s very personal hair. A woman reclined on a table covered by a sheet.

  I slammed the door in the Chihuahua’s face and leaned against it.

  “You said it wasn’t going to hurt. You’re a damn liar.” The woman shifted up on her elbows so she could see who’d entered the room. “Hey, if you’re here for a bikini wax, don’t! It hurts like hell.”

  “Fashion is supposed to hurt.” Jolene dropped the wax into a trash can and snapped off latex gloves. “Quit whining, Beth Anne. If you want to compete with the girls on Montgomery Street, you’re going to have to update your act.”

  “Update is fine. Having my skin torn off is not.” Beth Anne swung her legs down and sat up. She was a beautiful woman, if a little overly made-up. “Who are you?” she looked at me.

  “A private investigator.”

  Jolene turned slowly around. “I know you. You’re from Zinnia. What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you, Jolene. About your sister.�
�� There was no easy way to say what had to be said. “I’m working on a case—”

  “I paid Belinda’s back taxes and all of that.”

  I shook my head. “It’s about her death. About how she died.”

  Tears formed in Jolene’s eyes. “It was horrible. When she didn’t answer her cell phone, I came here looking for her. I found her. She’d convulsed on the floor. It was gruesome.”

  Beth Anne found her jeans and pulled them on. “We were all just plain horrified.”

  I gave up on trying to be delicate. “I think Belinda may have been murdered. Did she receive any kind of threatening note before she died?”

  Jolene’s eyes narrowed. “There was a note.”

  My heart beat faster. “What did it say?”

  She frowned. “She put it in her office somewhere. It might still be there.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  She opened a door that led to a small office. Sitting down at the desk, she began to pull out drawers and shuffle through the contents. I watched, praying she would find the note.

  “Here it is!” She drew out a plain white page, just like the notes Quentin had received. Typed in the same font were the words It’s a great day to dye!

  I looked over the note to Belinda. “Did she ever report this to the police?”

  She nodded. “She did, but no one took it seriously. I mean she’s a stylist. D-y-e.”

  “When did she receive the note?”

  “Last March. About a week before she inhaled the dry peroxide. She’d gotten another one before that. Something to the effect that her business was in poor taste.” She shook her head. “We’ve heard that all our lives. Poor taste. But that’s no reason to kill someone, is it?”

  I didn’t say anything, but I saw it on her face. She knew. Her sister’s death was not an accident.

  18

  As I drove home, I felt as if a year had passed since I went to the reading of Allison’s will. I tried repeatedly to call Tinkie on her cell phone, but there was no answer. She had it turned off. I could only hope that Oscar had found her and that they were together, ironing out the hurt and pain of their relationship.

  My fingers hovered on the cell phone pad, and at last, I dialed.

  “Sunflower County Sheriff’s Office,” Dewayne drawled.