Tinkie finally fell into a light sleep. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised, and I thought about all of the things she’d confronted in the last few weeks, from her arguments with Oscar to her breast lump, and now this. We weren’t in imminent danger, but we’d been through a rough night. Worst of all was the loss of hope in Coleman and Oscar’s rescue.
I had no reason to believe anything Humphrey the Humper said, except for the bald fact that Coleman hadn’t burst through the door. It was possible he’d come to the school and Humphrey had convinced him we’d gone to New Orleans. Still, Coleman wasn’t stupid.
So where was he?
As the shadows outside our glass prison began to shorten toward noon, I thought about a lot of things. My romantic life had been a mess of impulses. I’d never balanced my heart and my head. Maybe Jitty, with all of her court pretensions, was right. Maybe I should’ve had a plan. But how did one plan for true love?
The DGs approached marriage like a battle strategy. All the small skirmishes of sex and seduction led to the ultimate goal of marriage to a man who could provide. My mother had taught me that financial security wasn’t the pinnacle of existence, but for some of my friends, it had become the bedrock of their marriage. With my attitude that true love would come strolling, complication free, into my life, I’d accomplished only pain.
Coleman suffered because of me. He had obligations and commitments, and I hovered out of his reach. He’d said he wanted to talk to me, and I felt the numbness of what he might say—that he was leaving Sunflower County forever. Because of me.
Now maybe he wouldn’t have to.
That thought was so depressing, I rose from the sofa and went to the window to look out at the tree-shaded back lawn, which gave way to an open field and then the cotton fields beyond. Sunlight glinted on something metal near the oak where I’d first seen Humphrey.
I stared, trying to figure out what I was seeing. Vanity be damned, I needed glasses. I made a vow that if Tinkie and I escaped, the first thing I’d do was make an appointment with an ophthalmologist while she made one with a surgeon. There would be no arguing or procrastination. Like the captain of the starship Enterprise, I would simply “make it so.”
Movement at the oak tree stopped my internal tirade. I caught a blurry glimpse of what looked like a man in brown. I moved to the sofa for a better look, brushing aside Humphrey’s odious panty set. The silky undies fell to the tile floor with a tiny clink.
I paused. There was nothing in a panty set that should make a metallic sound. Nothing. I scooped up the lacy web of material and felt it. My fingers instantly found the hard lump in the crotch of the panties. Oh, Humphrey, you sicko! Using more care, I untangled the undies and found a key. A key!
“Tinkie! Wake up!” I kept my voice down as the entire scenario with Humphrey replayed through my mind. He’d stood in the doorway, assaying his normal posturing around the room. Then there’d been the bizarre twitching of his face. The room number—945—was a clue to the time of the rescue. His theft of my hound had been a hint that Sweetie Pie was safe. Humphrey had no use for a dog or anything else that required time and attention. He’d been trying to tell us that he was really on our side. He was our deliverer, not our executioner.
“Tinkie!” I shook her shoulder. For someone who slept lightly, she wasn’t eager to wake up.
“What is it? Has Virgie come to kill us?” She rubbed her eyes, and when she took her hands down, she saw the key I held in front of her.
I dangled it like a hypnotist. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”
“If you’re waiting on me, you’re late.” She was on her feet with her shoes on.
I fitted the key in the back door and turned it. The lock clicked free with a minimum of pressure. Fearing an alarm system, I eased open the back door and heard the trill of a winter songbird, the first external sound we’d heard since our imprisonment.
We looked at each other and then flew out the door and began to run toward the oak tree where I’d seen movement. Halfway there, I realized who I was running to, and I put on my last burst of speed as Coleman opened his arms for me.
I hit him with enough force to fell a block wall, but he caught me against him and reached out to drag Tinkie behind the tree with us.
“I was beginning to think she’d killed both of you and Humphrey, too.” He squeezed me so hard I thought my ribs would collapse.
“We didn’t find the key at first,” I gasped. “Humphrey had cleverly disguised it in a pair of panties.”
He released me slowly and stepped back so he could examine both of us. “You’re okay?”
We nodded.
“Is Humphrey still in the house?”
“I don’t know, but Sweetie is.”
“Don’t worry, Oscar’s at the front door right this minute. When you two didn’t come out after two hours, we decided to force the play.”
“Oscar’s going in?” Tinkie gripped Coleman’s arm. “We should tell him I’m okay.”
“Too late for that.” Coleman picked up a rifle from beside the tree. “Now if you ladies will step back out of the line of fire, I need to give Oscar backup.”
“He needs more than backup! He’s not trained for this.” Tinkie was frantic, and I have to admit, it did my heart good to see her so worried about her husband.
“Tinkie, the plan is in effect. There’s no changing it now, and we did the best with what we had. There are several Coahoma County deputies waiting just down the driveway.”
“Oscar is a banker, not a law officer. We have to stop him.” She clutched Coleman’s arm.
“It’s too late to stop him.” Coleman lifted the rifle.
“We’ll see about that!” Tinkie wheeled around and started off at a sprint. I didn’t wait for a signal from Coleman. I had the longer legs and the more sensible shoes. I tackled her before she’d gotten twenty feet and brought her down with an angry whuff of wind.
“You’re my partner!” She thrashed and tried to bite me.
“I’m your best friend.” I let my full weight drape across her.
“You’re suffocating me.”
“That’s the idea. Unless you promise to get back behind the tree and let Coleman do his job.”
“After all of this big talk about me seeing a surgeon because Oscar loves me, you won’t let me protect my husband.”
I sighed. “Don’t you see, Tinkie? I’m in exactly the same position with both of you. You want the freedom to avoid the doctor, and Oscar wants the freedom to try and save you. Whose freedom do you want me to respect?”
She fell silent, and I rolled off her. Once I was on my feet, I helped her up, and we went to stand behind the tree.
“It’s terrible waiting to see what happens.” She glared at me.
“Exactly my point. So now you know how Oscar feels.” My attention shifted from Tinkie to the back door, which opened. Virgie stood in the doorway with a gun pointed at Humphrey’s head. There was no sign of Oscar or Sweetie.
“I want a car and safe passage to Venezuela,” Virgie yelled.
“This has become hostage du jour.” I looked to see what showed on Coleman’s face.
“Where’s Oscar? I don’t see him anywhere. If she’s hurt him ...” Tinkie craned around me for a better view. She had a one-track mind, and it was focused on her husband.
“What are you going to do?” I asked Coleman.
“Whatever is necessary.”
The fact that he wouldn’t look at me told me too much. He feared Oscar was dead. “Sweetie Pie is in there.” I saw in his firm focus on the house that he held little hope for her, either.
Tinkie stood beside me, tears gathering in her eyes. “This is my punishment,” she whispered.
My impulse was to shake her, but instead I folded her into my arms and held her tight. “You’ve done nothing wrong.” Over the top of her head, I watched Virgie holding the gun on Humphrey.
“Deputies are covering the front of the house,” Coleman said
. “I’m going to try and talk her out.”
I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t. “Be careful.”
Coleman stepped out from behind the tree and lowered his gun. “Virgie, we can all walk away from this.”
“Not me. Everything I worked for is gone. I put my life into those girls. I put everything, and they betrayed all of my teachings.”
“You have to let Humphrey go.”
“He tricked me. He lied to me. He deserves to die.”
Coleman walked closer. There was nothing for him to hide behind. He was in the open, moving toward a crazy woman with a gun.
“Where’s Oscar?” he asked her.
“He chose the wrong woman.”
“That’s not his fault.” Coleman spoke in a calm, reasoned tone. “Look, I understand how you feel. I know what its like to be disappointed by people. I see it every day in my work.” He stepped closer. “Let’s talk about this. If I put my gun down, will you do the same?”
“You’re trying to trick me.” She shifted the barrel of her gun from Humphrey to point at Coleman’s chest.
I felt my heart squeeze painfully. Tinkie and I clung to each other, unable to do a single thing that would make a difference.
“I’m not trying to trick you, Virgie. I’m trying to help you.” Coleman moved closer. He was only thirty feet away. If she was any kind of shot at all, she could hit him right in the heart.
“No one can help me. I’ve made my decisions. I’m prepared to do whatever I have to, to get away.”
“None of this is necessary.” Coleman stepped closer. “We can talk this out. Just put the gun down and give it a chance. What do you have to lose?”
“I’m not going to prison. I won’t spend the rest of my life among women with no refinement, with no breeding. I’d rather die.”
“I thought you were a woman who enjoyed a challenge.” Coleman shook his head. “I thought you were a woman with a spine, but you’re like all those disappointments. You just take the easy way out. Things don’t go your way and you just curl up and whine.”
“How dare you?” She leveled the gun at his chest. “I’m going to die anyway, and I’m going to take you straight to hell with me!”
“No!” I broke free of Tinkie and started running toward Coleman. Tinkie was right behind me, screaming my name.
The barrel of Virgie’s gun swung away from Coleman and aimed right at me. I saw Humphrey’s face freeze in panic. I put everything I had into running. Coleman was the prize, and I kept my eyes upon him. To my horror, he rushed Virgie. The gun moved off me and sighted on him.
There is no sound as final as that of a gunshot. I heard the shot at the same time I saw Coleman twist, red blooming on his chest.
“Coleman!” I screamed his name. My feet were suddenly bound in concrete. I tried to run, but I was locked in place. “Coleman!”
“Sweet Jesus!” Tinkie cried behind me as she ran toward Coleman, who’d fallen and was stretched on the ground, unmoving.
On the back steps my hound accosted Virgie, knocking her sideways and away from Humphrey. They both tottered on the top step and then fell in opposite directions.
Sweetie Pie cleared both of them as she bounded down the steps. She snapped up the gun that had fallen from Virgie’s hand and held it in her mouth.
“Sweetie!” I called, patting my leg in the “let’s play” signal. She shook the gun like some captured prey and then brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. When I looked up, Oscar was standing in the back doorway, a pistol trained on Virgie.
“Oscar!” Tinkie cried. Her heart was in that single word. “Thank goodness. Help Coleman.” Tinkie snatched my hand and dragged me behind her as she ran to Coleman. He’d fallen on his face, and I could clearly see the bullet’s exit hole in his back, where blood seeped out.
“Sarah Booth, get some towels.” Tinkie rolled him over, and I heard myself gasp. Coleman was either unconscious or dead. His eyes were closed, and his face was pallid. I felt Tinkie’s hand on my leg. “Go inside and call an ambulance. Get some towels. Do it now!”
25
Humphrey took the towels to Tinkie as I gave directions over the phone to the ambulance. I kept my voice calm and rational, until I hung up. My knees buckled, and I dropped into a chair. I felt as if I were still in my glass prison. No sound penetrated the thrumming of my heart and the terrible litany of my brain. Coleman is shot. He’s lying on the ground bleeding. Coleman is shot. He’s lying on the ground bleeding.
I walked back outside and went to him. Kneeling beside him, I held his cool hand as Tinkie and Oscar fought to staunch the bleeding while Humphrey tied Virgie into one of her lawn chairs.
“Big, dumb fool!” she spat. “I hope he dies.”
We were too busy to respond to her.
“Press hard,” Tinkie told Oscar as the blood seeped through the towel and between his fingers. “Press really hard.” She put her hands over his, and I added mine, all three pressing on Coleman’s chest, pressing the blood back into his body.
I heard the ambulance, but it didn’t register. It was only when the paramedics physically pulled me back that I let go. Tinkie and Oscar stepped away and let the professionals work. We were all covered in blood.
The paramedics loaded Coleman in the ambulance and careened away to the hospital. We were left with the deputies. And Virgie. I looked at her and felt nothing. Tinkie walked over and put her hands on her hips as she glared down at Virgie.
“You’d better hope he doesn’t die.”
“Why should I care?” Virgie asked.
“Because if Coleman dies, you have my word that you won’t be executed. You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison if I have to spend my last penny filing petitions to stay your execution.” She stepped back as two deputies untied Virgie and put the cuffs on her.
The Coahoma County deputies were not as personable as Dewayne and Gordon, but they did their jobs. In quick order, two took Virgie to jail, and two others took our statements. Humphrey carried the burden of the story, and he agreed to go to headquarters with them to fill in any gaps.
My first impulse was to head to the hospital as fast I could go, but Oscar detained me. “Give them some time,” he said, and I’d only heard him speak so gently to Tinkie. “Stay here for a while, in the sunshine. There’ll be plenty of hours to spend in the hospital.”
Tinkie, Oscar, Sweetie, and I stood on the blood-soaked lawn of the premier ladies school in the Southeast, listening to what seemed an unnatural silence and waiting for the phone to ring with news of Coleman.
Oscar and Tinkie couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and while it saddened me when I thought of the future without Coleman, it also gave me hope.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Oscar,” I said. “I was worried sick, but Tinkie threw a hissy fit. Don’t let her try to pretend she wasn’t worried about you. She almost had a cow.”
“Quite a feat for a well-bred lady,” Oscar said, and even though I thought my heart was breaking, I smiled.
“Coleman’s going to be okay.” Tinkie put her arm around me on one side, and Oscar on the other. “He is, Sarah Booth. He’s a tough man, too ornery to die.”
I wanted to believe her, but I was afraid to. So much blood! How could someone live after losing all that blood? It didn’t seem possible.
“How did you find Sweetie Pie?” I asked Oscar. We moved to the striped canvas chairs, which made a picturesque setting on the lawn of Virgie’s home. Sweetie settled at my feet.
“How about a drink, Sarah Booth?” Tinkie moved to the back steps. “I don’t think Virgie’s going to object if we sample her liquor.”
I nodded. “I don’t care what it is, just make it strong.”
“I’ll get something for all of us,” Tinkie said. “Even Sweetie deserves something to calm her nerves.”
I didn’t know what might calm a hound’s nerves, and I didn’t ask. Tinkie was in charge.
“I want to tell you about Sweetie.” Oscar
sat across from me and took my hands in his. “She saved me. You know I adore Chablis, but Sweetie Pie is nobody’s fool. She saved me.”
“How?” I was merely curious. I’d learned long ago that Sweetie was miraculous, and I would gladly talk about the weather in Timbuktu if I didn’t have to think about Coleman.
“I went to the front door as Coleman told me to do. I knocked; Virgie answered and invited me in. She was cool as a cucumber. Coleman had warned me not to be taken in, but she was so cordial and so ... refined. I was thinking that surely there’d been some kind of mistake. I mean Virgie is in her sixties, and her hair is so perfectly silver and old lady–like, and she wears those pastel dresses and sensible shoes.” He shook his head.
“We were all taken in,” I said. “So what happened?”
“I went in the parlor, and she brought me some coffee with a slice of fruitcake. I meant to eat only one bite, but it was delicious. I have to say, it rivals those fruitcakes you make, Sarah Booth.”
“Don’t feel badly about the fruitcake, Oscar. The drug was in the coffee, too.”
Tinkie came out with a tray of tall, dark drinks and a portion of roast, carved into bite-sized nuggets, for Sweetie. I took a drink and sipped. A Cuba libre, with expensive rum and a slice of lime. Perfect.
“Oscar, how long did it take for the drug to hit you?” Tinkie perched on the arm of his chair.
“About ten minutes. I hit the floor.” Oscar rubbed his jaw where a discoloration was forming. “She may have been trying to kill me on the spot.”
It was possible. Killing Oscar would accomplish nothing, but Virgie wigged out. “At first, Virgie used some restraint in her actions, but she completely lost it toward the end.” I tried to blink away the image of Coleman lying in the grass. “So when did you find Sweetie Pie?”
“I didn’t find her. She found me. Virgie must have dragged me into a bathroom. She didn’t bother to lock the door, and I managed to open it and fall halfway out into the hall. I was semiconscious when Sweetie came up.” He reached down to pat my hound’s head. “Let’s just say she forced me to wake up.”
Bones To Pick Page 24