Digging Up Bones (Birdwell, Texas Mysteries Book 1)

by Aimee Gilchrist

  "Were you looking for something in particular?" Aodhagan asked from somewhere to my left, his voice dripping with ice.

  I screamed, before dropping the CD in my hand. I scooped it up and held it tightly. "Uh, you. I mean… I didn't know where to go."

  He had shaved recently, because I could smell the shaving cream, and might have even taken a shower. That was one way to shut me out. A lot of trust, though, to place in a stranger.

  "The third bedroom on the right upstairs is empty. I'd prefer it if you stayed out of the other rooms. This is not a bed-and-breakfast." As if to punctuate his point, he snapped the CD out of my hand and slid it back in its alphabetized slot.

  "Look, I'm sorry about what I said in the car. You're right. I don't know anything about your life. I was really out of line. And uh…" I gestured toward the CD shelf. "Sorry about the CD."

  He regarded me seriously for much too long. His eyes were an unreal blue, intense and vivid. His lashes could have been featured in a makeup ad. "You seem to spend a lot of time apologizing. If you spent more time thinking before acting, you could spend a little less time saying sorry."

  This guy was such a douche. Even spending the weekend here was going to make me cross the line from neurotic to psychotic. It was on the tip of my tongue to spit out a thanks for his trite platitude, but I managed to check myself. Instead, I strived for some level of fake politeness. "I was just trying to find a place to take my stuff. So I'll just go get it."

  I headed for the door, but he called after me. "I have a city council meeting to go to, so you can get some food at the Home Cooking Café. Although if I were you, I wouldn't have the biscuits and gravy. I'll be back at eight, and maybe you should be too. Just for safety's sake." He didn't need to tell me what he meant by that, because I felt the full import of his words. There was a murderer loose in Birdwell. And, somehow, my aunt had paid the ultimate price for whatever game they were playing.

  I followed Aodhagan outside and stood on the porch, watching him open the door to his gray SUV that someone had clearly returned to him. Closer up, I could see it was a Land Rover, one of the fancied-up editions. He reached in and picked up his keys from the driver's seat before getting in. Even if he felt I should fear an invisible murderer, he clearly didn't fear grand theft auto of his absurdly expensive car. He didn't look back to see what I was doing, so probably he really didn't suspect me. Either that, or he was the worst volunteer cop in the history of mankind.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I went to my car and pulled my bags from the trunk. This was one hundred times not what I wanted to be doing. I wanted to be somewhere alone to lick my wounds. Sorrow for Penny was momentarily overwhelming, but I brutally tamped it down. I was in a strange town, in a strange house. This was no place for grieving.

  At the top of the stairs, I made note of Aodhagan's instructions and turned the large crystal door handle to the third room on the right. I thought I was walking into a guest room, but apparently I'd made a wrong turn and walked into Laura Ashley. The large four-poster bed was a mess of mint-green stripes and floral ruffles. All the furniture was painted off-white with faint green stripes that matched the sheets and curtains. The vanity had a fantastically large mirror edged in white wooden replicas of vines and flowers.

  What was up with this house? Who said it wasn't a bed-and-breakfast? That's exactly what it looked like to me. Actually, a bed-and-breakfast would probably have felt more lived-in than this creepy museum of bad taste.

  It didn't take long for me to remove the things I absolutely needed from my bags. I left the rest to prevent even the idea of getting too comfortable. For a moment, I considered searching Aodhagan's museum for the alcohol stash, but knowing that guy, there was nothing to drink here. More's the pity.

  When I left the house again, I took special care to ensure that all the doors were locked behind me, including the bottom lock on the front door that didn't require a key. Not that it would matter if Aodhagan kept leaving his keys around for all and sundry. My GPS led me back to the main road but still provided no information beyond that. The Home Cooking Café wasn't too hard to find, however.

  I parked just in front of the diner. Noting the slogan painted on the window, "Home Cooking Café: Just like your mama made," I opened the glass door, a bell tinkling. In my house, it would have had to say something like, "Home Cooking Café: Just like your mama ordered from the caterer."

  I stood still for a moment under the jangling bell, while every eye in the place turned my way. Most of the faces were devoid of any expression. The rest were a mix of sympathy and curiosity. Of course. Most of these people had probably already heard about Penny. The rest had no clue who I was, or why I would ever spoil the sanctity of their local gathering spot.

  I was considering the possibility of starving, just for the enjoyment of not being here, when a pretty, plump waitress shoved into a scanty pink uniform approached and held out a menu. "My name's Cindy Lou, and I'll be your waitress. Come on to a table." She waived me into a tired red booth and eyed me speculatively. "If you need anything, anything at all, you just ask me for it, you hear?"

  It was clear she wanted to stay and talk to me, but I was unresponsive, and some guy on the other side of the place was calling her in a singsong-y voice. I made a show of perusing the menu, but I couldn't concentrate on anything except the heat of so many pairs of eyes focused on me. Didn't they have anything else to look at?

  Two women approached my booth, which made them impossible to ignore. One was nearly as tall as me and had a tremendous beehive dyed red and a pair of skintight pink capri pants, matched with a red knit tank top. The other was wearing a pair of brown polyester slacks, the kind much favored by the elderly set, and a green-and-white polka-dotted sleeveless blouse in light linen. I was pretty sure the woman wasn't even thirty yet, but her outfit screamed grandma. Her skin was unreal, smooth and white, and her eyes wide and staring. She looked like nothing quite so much as a porcelain doll, somehow animated by magic or accident.

  "Well, hello." The red-haired behemoth drawled, and I recognized that voice right away. Thelma Sue. "You must be Helen Harding. We all heard about what happened to Penny, you poor darlin'. You must be in a state of shock." She eyed me suspiciously, while I eyed the menu. "I know you must be grievin'."

  I looked up, hoping that if I acted rude they would go away, and I wouldn't be forced to think about Penny. "Actually, I barely knew her." A lie and yet the truth. "I just came to do her a favor."

  Granny looked slightly chagrined, biting her lower lip, but Thelma Sue was undaunted. "Well, I know she thought of you. She talked about you all the time." She caught on to my disbelieving stare. "Okay, well, maybe not all the time. But she mentioned you the other day at the bar."

  "What did she say?" I demanded. I think my sudden interest scared her. She stepped back slightly.

  "Well, only that you were comin' to visit her soon. She didn't say anything else. She wasn't much of a talker."

  "I just saw her a couple days ago at the library." The other woman finally spoke. "I can't believe she's gone."

  "What was she doing at the library?"

  I sat forward in my chair, my curiosity piqued despite my objections to becoming involved. What she'd been doing at the library could mean a lot, in the context of her murder.

  "Well, I imagine that she was checkin' out a book," Thelma Sue put in with a touch of patronization. "What else would she be doin' at the library?"

  The young-old woman shook her head. "No, actually, she was looking at microfiche."

  I turned my attention to the woman. "Who are you?"

  "I'm the librarian, you know. Marian Depew. Marian the librarian." She gave a little giggle at the end.

  She didn't glance away from my intense stare, which made me like her immediately. My brain kicked on, engaging research mode. Interviewing people was one thing I was always good at. "Excellent, Marian the librarian. Microfiche of what?"

  "Of the Tallatahola County Star. S
he wanted issues so old I had to order them all the way from the county. Took nearly a month to get here."

  Aodhagan would have been so pleased. Now I was in it. My curiosity was my enemy. "Newspapers how old? Twenty years ago? Forty?"

  She chewed her bottom lip for a moment or two. "I think that they were from 1969. I can't imagine what she could have been looking for. She was looking for something, though. She made a copy of pretty much everything in those papers. Lordy, that was forty-seven years ago. I don't know what she wanted."

  Neither did I, but tomorrow I was going to find out. "Do you still have those rolls? Could I see them tomorrow?"

  A flash of concern marred Marian the librarian's porcelain-doll face. "I still got them, but we're closed tomorrow."

  I groped for a solution. "If I bring Aodhagan MacFarley with me, can I see them tomorrow?"

  Her doubt was still apparent, wrinkling up her nose, but she said, "I guess so, if it's Aodhagan."

  Maybe there was an advantage to getting in good with Aodhagan after all. In a town like this, his mere name could open doors. "We'll meet you at the library at eleven. Will that be okay?" I wasn't interested in whether Aodhagan wanted to go or not. He'd said he would devote some time to it. Now it was time to make good on that. Marian agreed that it would, and with a few more parting words, they started to walk away.

  Thelma Sue turned around and looked back at me. "By the way, honey, if I was you, I'd be careful. You never know when whoever killed your Auntie Penny will come back and take care of you too." She tried to look sly, but I think it was impossible for anyone in such tight clothing to be mysterious about anything.

  Was she threatening me? Eventually, my stare apparently made her uncomfortable, and she turned away. Marian was slower to leave, her vacant doll eyes looking just the smallest hint of concerned. Finally, she turned away too.

  After I was alone, the waitress returned, and I ordered a BLT and potato salad after dodging several questions. When the plate came, I couldn't tell how it could be any better than the biscuits and gravy, and I wasn't sure why Aodhagan had bothered to issue the warning. Maybe the biscuits and gravy were beyond my comprehension. Or maybe he just wasn't a biscuit and gravy fan, and my burnt bacon, limp lettuce, and thin half-rotten tomato on soggy white bread really was an improvement.

  I took one bite and decided I had a moral obligation to myself not to consume it further. I couldn't go back to the house yet. I didn't have a key, and no meeting could be over so quickly. I spent the next hour or so nursing a Diet Coke and making patterns in my potato salad with my fork. No one else approached me.

  At ten to eight, I paid my meager tab, grabbed a new box of cigarettes from a machine in the hall, and went out to my car. I pulled out onto the street toward Aodhagan's house. 1969. Where had I heard that date just today? I knew it was significant, but I couldn't remember how. In Aodhagan's driveway, he was getting out of the car with a frightening lamp made of a tree stump with a shade of treated cowhide, cow shapes punched out of the rim.

  "Good lord. What is that?"

  His eyebrows pulled together, while he regarded it as though it had appeared in his hands without warning. "A neighbor gave it to me. I…I think it's a lamp."

  I shook my head, disgusted with how easy I was to distract. No wonder people thought I was stupid. "1969. That was the last murder, right?"

  Another vaguely disapproving expression flashed across his features, though I could only imagine what his problem was this time. It didn't seem to take much. "That's what I remember from when I was a kid. All the other kids were sure her ghost haunted the old high school."

  My memory wasn't completely faulty. Now, on to the questions. "Who? What happened?"

  Aodhagan shrugged, heading for his door. "I have no idea. I'm sure whatever the other children swore was the truth had been made up during overnighters to scare the other kids." He stopped and glanced back at me. I was following so closely I nearly collided with his back. "Why? You don't think that…"

  "I ran into the librarian at the Café. She said Penny'd been hanging around a lot lately reading newspapers…from 1969. What else could she have been looking for from 1969?"

  He opened the door to the house and ushered me in with his hideous lamp. "So now you're interested in what your aunt was investigating. Well, I've decided you must be right. It's nothing. A wild goose chase."

  My disbelief was silent and probably lost on him as he struggled to lock his front door from the inside. I got the definite impression that he'd never done it before. This place. I really did not belong here.

  "How can you not be interested now? What happened to all that force of conviction before you went to the meeting? What happened to all that castigation because I'm from New York? It wouldn't hurt us to ask a couple of questions. Penny deserves at least this much."

  He put the terrible lamp on the table by the door and turned to look at me. "It's interesting to me how you can be so irritating and so persuasive at the same time."

  It wasn't an unfamiliar theme. I'd long ago come to the understanding that I was an unlikable person, too twitchy, and a little bit selfish. It was what it was. But, in a poor sort of defense, Aodhagan was really unlikable too. Just in a different kind of way.

  "That's me, irritatingly persuasive. Now if you just tell me what you do know, even if you suspect it's not true, I'll go to bed and leave you in peace."

  Aodhagan headed for his sterile kitchen, and I followed behind. Maybe if I just bugged him enough, he'd give me the information I wanted. He didn't know me yet. He didn't know how my brain got when it finally engaged in something. I was all in now. I wasn't leaving Birdwell until I had some answers.

  He didn't turn on the kitchen light, even though the sun was setting, and the room was dark. Moving to the fridge, he grabbed a brown glass bottle from the refrigerator and then offered me one. For a single thrilling second, I thought maybe it was a beer. Honestly, I'm not a beer fan, but I am a fan of being a little bit drunk. Especially on a day like today. Only, it turned out to be an IBC Root Beer bottle. Sighing, I took it anyway and followed him into the private haven I'd discovered earlier.

  He switched on a light and his iPod, plugged into a set of massive speakers, before flopping into a brown leather easy chair in the corner. Momentarily, Miles Davis blared out, soulfully mourning with his horn. It seemed oddly appropriate for tonight. I sat down on another, less comfy-looking, chair and stared at him expectantly. Sitting still wasn't really my forte, and I had no clue why he wasn't speaking.

  He sighed again and leaned all the way back in his chair. "The kids said her name was Norma Jean, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of them had stolen it from Marilyn Monroe. Supposedly she was a teenager at the old Birdwell high school in 1969. She was killed at a Halloween dance. I can't say I believe it though, it sounds too much like Martha Moxley, and I think the whole story is probably another rip-off.

  "I do know that a murder actually occurred in October of 1969 through police gossip, but for all I know, it was a drifter who drank a little too much and got in a fatal barroom brawl. The case must be closed. No one ever talks about it now. I expect most people don't even remember it now. Except the old-timers, I suppose."

  I leaned forward, planting both feet on the floor. "You mean, like my aunt?"

  He lifted one shoulder negligently, and I could tell he was tired despite the early hour. I was tired too. The day had been very long, tragic, and confusing, and Miles Davis was lulling me to sleep. "I suppose she would have remembered, but after forty-seven years, why would she care?"

  "Okay, stay with me here. Imagine she was in school with this Norma Jean girl. Penny would have been what, sixteen at the time? Same as the Norma Jean girl. What if that's the way it really happened, and Penny never could let it go?"

  He was clearly disbelieving. "Why wait so long to make your search though? That doesn't make sense."

  I sat back in the chair, trying to get as comfortable as he looked. I really needed
to find a way to wind down. "Well, there's really no point in trying to guess since tomorrow morning we're going to the library to look at the microfiche for whatever she was researching."

  He shook his head, looking like if he relaxed anymore, he'd slide right off his chair. "Library's closed tomorrow."

  "Not to you it isn't. Marian the librarian, who is no doubt sweet on you, said I could come by and look at the articles if you come too."

  He had his eyes closed. "Marion's not sweet on me. She and Junior Hudley are the Birdwell hot item."

  I could feel my nose wrinkling. "Junior Hudley and Marion the librarian? But they seem to be so… I mean he's…and she's… Don't you think they're sort of a strange couple?"

  "They're both very strange, if that's what you mean."

  "No, that's not what I mean. Marion the librarian is so young. And kind of odd. Like…a doll. Junior is much more…ruggedly handsome."

  I didn't really mean he was handsome. I merely meant they were different. Too different to match. Suddenly, Aodhagan flashed me a full, hundred-watt smile, none of that lazy lopsided business from earlier. He was inappropriately hot, with deep dimples that could easily be used to charm the pants off of some unsuspecting woman. He had no business being that attractive.

  He waggled his eyebrows at me. "You think Junior is ruggedly handsome? I could put in a good word for you."

  "I am not interested in Junior Hudley." I tried to sound cool and collected, but any relaxation I'd been finding was seeping away.

  "Don't give up so easily, Helen Harding. You never know. He could be looking for a change."

  My scowl didn't impress him. Instead, he laughed. I wasn't sure what I would have expected from a guy like him, so anal-retentive. It was low and rumbly, without inhibition. Genuine. Lovely his amusement could be at my expense.

  "If you have no more information about 'Norma Jean,' I'm going to go up. If you'll excuse me?" I got up and headed for the dining room door. He saluted me with his bottle as I headed out but made no attempt to stop me.