Bone by Bone

by Carol O'Connell

  ‘Everyone’s a critic.’ Swahn, unfazed, ate the last slice from the pizza box and chased it down with beer. ‘So, tell me, Mr Hobbs, how did you know about Mrs Winston’s bird-watching forays? Did you ever meet her in the woods? Did her husband know?’

  Isabelle screamed at him. Yet Addison Winston still had no regrets about formally adopting his wife’s only child, though he sometimes wished the girl had come with a volume control.

  ‘Do something!’ Isabelle yelled.

  His wife flew about the room, hands waving, tears running down her face, and Sarah’s daughter followed after her as the self-appointed handmaiden to a drunk with delirium tremens.

  ‘There’s a doctor coming from Saulburg,’ said Addison.

  ‘She needs help now! She ’s terrified!’

  ‘Of course she is. Your mother’s seeing things that aren’t there.’

  The empty bottle of Scotch was odd. He knew that his wife ’s secret stash had been restocked. Contrary to what his daughter believed, he did pay attention to Sarah’s drinking. By doubling the large tips that the maid received from her mistress, he kept track of the daily consumption of alcohol. However, there was no liquor on Sarah’s breath to account for the empty bottle. ‘You cut off your mother’s booze again, didn’t you, Belle? That was naughty.’

  She glared at him with hate, but he had grown accustomed to that. It killed him to see it, and he laughed each time she did it.

  ‘Weaning your mother is a gradual process.’ He set the bottle down. Hands in his pockets, smiling broadly, he sauntered up to Sarah, who had found the only corner in a circular room, that place where the deep armoire met the wall. She swatted the sleeves of her robe and then raked her fingers through her hair, looking there for bugs that only she could see.

  Addison studied his wife as he spoke to her daughter. ‘I usually start tapering off the liquor supply a few days before the birthday ball. That way she can get through an entire evening cold sober – and no hallucinated creepy crawlies.’ The lawyer looked down at his watch. ‘Doctors. They like to make you wait, even when you’re paying cash – no taxes.’ He winked, and Isabelle seemed to find that obscene. So he did it again.

  On the deck outside, hungry rats with wings were feeding at the many seed holders fastened to the railing. In her early schoolgirl days, Isabelle had created a pet name for this avian sanctuary at the top of the house, and the child had always regarded him as an intruder here, the bogeyman of Birdland. He caught his reflection in one wall of glass and smoothed back his hair, finding himself rather handsome for a monster.

  ‘She needs help now! Get an ambulance!’

  ‘You wouldn’t like that, Isabelle.’ He knew his wide smile was wholly inappropriate, a display of entirely too many teeth. ‘They’ll put your mother in restraints, and then she won’t be able to brush the spiders away. Think of her terror when she’s tied down – and the bugs are crawling into her eyes. Is that what you want?’ In the ensuing silence, he watched her face turn pale. ‘No? I didn’t think so. Now the good doctor just gives her a shot and knocks her out cold. No fear, no pain.’

  His expression sobered as he looked in on his wife ’s invisible world, watching as Sarah brushed small bugs from her nightgown. Ah, and now she batted her hands at a particularly large one. He could always gauge the size of the imagined spiders by the wideness of her eyes. She lapsed into one of her brief intermissions from the horror show in her head. Exhausted, she sank to the floor and covered her face with both hands.

  Smiling again, Addison turned to the younger woman, so like Sarah at the same age, though not a stunning beauty – merely pretty. ‘After the doctor gives her a shot, your mother will sleep for the rest of the day. Tonight, when she wakes up for dinner, she ’ll drink as much as she likes. You won’t even count her shots. Is that clear?’

  Isabelle seemed a bit less ruthless now, and he knew that the reason was guilt. She was beginning to understand her own folly, her fault in this – damage. He strolled through the open doors to the outside deck, and she trailed after him.

  Addison bent down to look through the eyepiece of a telescope. ‘Dangerous toy.’ There was no need to focus the lens. ‘And powerful. Do you know where this thing is pointing, Belle?’ She was Belle to him again, now that she was contrite and more manageable. ‘This morning, your mother had a perfect view of that jawbone sitting on the judge’s porch.’ Smile in place, he looked up at his daughter. ‘On a typical day, the most startling thing in Sarah’s world is a confused bird migrating in the wrong direction.’

  All along the curving deck, wings flapped, and pointy beaks sprayed seed in all directions – greedy feeders. He had learned to hate birds.

  ‘Mom didn’t even know about the bones until I—’

  ‘No matter. Any change in her routine would stress her out. Even the sight of Oren Hobbs would ’ve been a shock after all these years. But you know that didn’t cause your mother’s hallucinations.’ And now, to drive the point home, he said, ‘In fact, a drink might have helped. Too bad you poured out her bottle. And then you gave her those sleeping pills on the nightstand. Where did those pills come from, Belle? Is that your prescription? You wanted your mother to rest, to sleep – while you went into town . . . so you drugged her. What a good girl.’

  He walked back into the room and looked at more damning evidence, the carafe of coffee, the second one today, so said the maid, his spy in Birdland. ‘Cold turkey withdrawal – always a mistake – then sedatives and caffeine. What were you thinking, Belle? Your doctorate is in ornithology – not medicine, not chemistry.’

  Sarah screamed and ran across the room, as if she could outrun her small tormentors, hands fluttering in a panic, eyes full of fear. Left to her own devices, his wife would have gotten through this day with a pleasant buzz. As usual, she would’ve passed out after dinner. That was why Sarah was such an early riser. She awoke with the light and the songs of filthy, winged vermin come to feed outside her glass walls – and a good-morning drink to kill the pain.

  Addison Winston dropped his smile. ‘Leave your mother’s care to me.’

  ‘You’re not helping her.’

  ‘I’m not the one who did this to her.’ Well, that shut her up. And now, verbal spanking done, he left Isabelle alone with her handiwork, her weeping, frightened mother.

  Only three people remained on the Coventry street outside the library. The rest of the reporters and their news crews had departed after failing to construct a jailbreak from Deputy Faulks’s offhand comment.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ said the young segment producer, and she was not referring to the useless phone as she folded it into the back pocket of her jeans. There was no cell-phone tower within twenty miles of this backward town. She stared at the foothills, perhaps looking there for dinosaurs – something, anything, to film. She turned back to face the middle-aged reporter and attempted to reason with him one last time. ‘The sheriff told you Oren Hobbs was never under arrest.’

  ‘And that’s what we lead with,’ said Reggie Mason. ‘A hot denial.’ He closed the door of what might be the last telephone booth in America. It even had a rotary dial – a charming artifact from his youth.

  The producer banged on the booth’s glass wall.

  What the hell was the girl’s name?

  All of his segment producers were interchangeable, and none of them looked a day over thirteen years of age. This one – deluded child – truly believed that she was in charge of production.

  ‘We ’re leaving!’ she yelled. ‘Right now!’ Turning her back on the phone booth, she climbed into the van and closed the sliding door behind her.

  The cameraman would have followed the girl, but Reggie grabbed his arm. ‘Hold on. The operator’s back.’ He had been placed on hold by a 9-1-1 operator, and now the woman resumed their telephone conversation. ‘Yes, ma’am . . . That’s right . . . Yes, it smells.’

  Reggie cupped the phone’s receiver with one hand when the cameraman leaned into the
booth and asked, ‘Is she laughing?’

  From the window of the van, the sullen child producer yelled, ‘Hey, it ’s time to pack it in!’

  The cameraman stared at the small brick building. ‘Did you read the hours posted on the door? There ’s nobody in there.’

  ‘But the smell.’ Inspired now, Reggie reopened his dialogue with the laughing 9-1-1 operator. ‘I think there ’s a dead body in the library . . . Well, it smells like death . . . So you’ll send the sheriff?’ After a few seconds, he placed the receiver back on its cradle. ‘She hung up on me.’

  The cameraman unstrapped his equipment and laid it down, final notice that his workday was done. ‘Do you know what a dead body smells like? I don’t. You can’t make something out of nothing.’

  Oh, contraire.

  Reggie pointed at the library. ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something moved in that window.’

  ‘Reggie, are you making this up?’

  ‘Where ’s that lame producer when I need her?’ He banged his fist on the side of the van. ‘Hey, sweetheart. The wind ’s blowing our way again. I want you to smell something.’

  ‘I know Ad Winston was your lawyer,’ said Oren. ‘All that settlement money. You must’ve been a grateful client. Is that why you never interviewed him or his wife?’

  After calmly wiping his hands on a napkin, Swahn finished his beer. ‘He was your lawyer, too, Mr Hobbs.’

  What?

  ‘You didn’t know?’ Swahn wore a satisfied smile. ‘Judge Hobbs retained him for you right after Josh disappeared. Wise move. You wouldn’t give a reason for leaving your little brother alone in the woods. And you wouldn’t tell anyone where you were all day and half that night. Your father was probably holding his breath, waiting for the sheriff to turn up at the door every second of every day. He wanted to be ready if it came to a trial. So he hired the best lawyer in the state. That’s why I didn’t interview either of the Winstons. They couldn’t talk to me.’

  One old mystery was solved for Oren. This explained why he had been left alone after one brief and fruitless interrogation by the sheriff – after time had been allowed for the scratches on his face to heal.

  Swahn picked up a sheet of paper attached to a photograph of Evelyn Straub. ‘You probably noticed – this interview’s very short. I’m sure you wondered why. When did this woman ever censor a thought in her head? Absolutely fearless. It took me an hour to find her soft spots and break her.’

  Evelyn? Oren suppressed a smile. He wanted to laugh at this man, this amateur. Interrogation was not a criminologist’s game, and he would pit Evelyn Straub against the best of the best in his own trade. The lady was made of unbreakable stuff. He waved off the proffered piece of paper. ‘I read it. Seems light.’

  ‘Most of her conversation was never typed up for my files.’ Swahn pulled out a small notebook. ‘However, I do have a more complete version. It concerns your lack of an alibi for the day your brother disappeared.’ He fanned the pages to show the handwritten lines – so many.

  Oren was backing up in his mind, bracing.

  Swahn glanced at the first page of his notes. ‘I had the feeling that Mrs Straub knew all your secrets.’ He looked up and paused for a beat. ‘And she probably knew about the other women you were sleeping with.’

  Oren sipped his beer, appearing only mildly curious and keeping to a boyhood habit of never confirming or denying those rumors.

  Leaning back against the side of a chair, Swahn dragged out this lull. ‘Mrs Straub was very attractive in those days. These past twenty years, she hasn’t aged well. And that’s odd. You know she has the money to stay young forever.’

  Absently turning a page in his notebook, the man never took his eyes off Oren. ‘Your housekeeper asked me to find you an alibi witness. That was my job. She had no inside information about your affairs, but she had eyes. Miss Rice knew the effect you had on females. When she first came to me, her focus was on your refusal to say anything in your own defense. It was her theory that you might keep silent to protect a married woman. So I didn’t just single out Mrs Straub. I talked to all the women posed with you in Josh’s photographs. Unfortunately, my efforts backfired. Two women came forward. The two alibis should’ve cancelled each other out. But the sheriff believed one of those stories. Hers.’ Swahn tapped the photograph of Evelyn Straub.

  ‘You had good taste, Mr Hobbs. She was a pretty woman in those days. I liked her. Very jaded – very hip. I figured she was only in it for the sex. A teenage boy never runs out of juice. No real emotion in play. That’s why I thought the sheriff believed her when she told him you spent the whole day in her bed. But I was wrong. Later, I discovered she had a prenuptial agreement. If she was caught cheating on her husband, she’d get nothing in a divorce settlement. Mr Straub was an old man – good as dead. His wife only had to bide her time for another year. But she put everything on the line for you.’

  Swahn flipped another page, though he never looked down at the lines written there. ‘I never told Mrs Straub how I found out about her affair with you. I suppose she assumed that you betrayed her. For all I know, she still believes that. But after I talked to her, she went to the sheriff anyway. You were only seventeen – probably younger the first time she took you to bed – the underage son of a judge. That woman risked a lot more than money.’ He leaned forward, the better to study the younger man’s face when he asked, ‘Did she tell the truth? Or did she risk everything to lie for you? . . . Did she love you, Mr Hobbs?’

  Oren looked at his watch. ‘Time to go.’ He brushed pizza crumbs from his jeans as he stood up. Extending a hand down to his host, he helped the man to rise from the floor.

  Swahn seemed deeply disappointed. He had dug his hole, his trap of words, and covered it over with twigs and branches, but Oren had not fallen in.

  ‘That wasn’t an idle question.’ Swahn’s limp worsened as he followed his guest into the foyer. ‘It doesn’t matter if Mrs Straub lied or not. Just consider what she stood to lose.’

  Oren opened the front door.

  ‘Mr Hobbs, either this woman loved you – or she needed an alibi as much as you did.’

  ‘Thanks for the beer and pizza.’ Oren stepped outside, escaping. He was walking down the driveway when he glanced back.

  Swahn had followed to the edge of the portico and now called out to him, ‘When you report back to the sheriff, ask him about Mrs Straub’s séances in the woods. The judge and Miss Rice go out there to commune with your dead brother.’

  Oren stumbled and then moved on.

  TEN

  The phantom spiders had been vanquished by the doctor from Saulburg.

  While Sarah Winston slept off a sedative in the tower room, her husband and daughter stood outside on the deck. Isabelle focused a telescope on the winding fire road. In the twilight hour, the running lights of vehicles made them visible through the scrub pines of the foothills. These were the witchboard people.

  ‘Yes, it still goes on.’ Addison Winston swirled the whiskey in his glass. ‘Since when do you care what happens in Coventry? When was the last time you paid us a visit, Belle? I can’t seem to remember the decade.’

  This failed to make her angry, but he liked a challenge.

  She looked up from the telescope. ‘Those people didn’t used to meet in the woods.’

  ‘Well, they have for the past fifteen years. And you’d know that if you’d bothered to come home more often. However, your mother so enjoyed the crummy little postcards you sent her from Europe.’ Addison held the binoculars up to his eyes and wondered why the spookfest in the woods should interest Isabelle. ‘They’re heading up to Evelyn Straub’s old cabin. You were just a little girl when she built that place.’

  As he recalled, Evelyn’s last name had been Kominsky back in those days. Well into her thirties then, she had aged out of her showgirl career and snagged an elderly millionaire for a husband. And these days? Well, the woman had gone to hell from t
he hips up, and her long legs were not on display anymore, but they tended to linger in a man’s memory. Evelyn’s best quality was the heart of a pirate, and this alone was enough to make her worthy of his admiration.

  ‘Did you ever go to one of the séances?’

  ‘Yes, I took your mother once. Everyone in Coventry went to at least one of them. Some people go back again and again.’ The witchboard group was an old one, but hardly exclusive. He drained his glass and rattled the ice cubes. ‘Any other town in America would’ve formed a bowling league.’

  The parade of vehicles had almost cleared the pygmy forest of scrub pines. He lifted his wife ’s binoculars and trained the lenses on one straggler. ‘You see that jeep following them from a distance? That’s the sheriff. Evelyn’s place is the only cabin on that fire road. If she catches Cable, he’s toast. Legally, he shouldn’t be within a half-mile of that séance.’ Addison’s grin spread wide. ‘I smell a lawsuit.’

  The jeep disappeared under a canopy of tall trees as it climbed the mountain into denser foliage. The show was over, and Isabelle abandoned the telescope to lean back against the railing. ‘How did Mrs Straub get involved with séances? She doesn’t seem the type.’

  ‘She ’s not. However, the lady does have an eye for opportunity, and her pet psychic is worth a fortune.’

  ‘How much does she charge?’

  ‘Not one dime,’ said Addison. ‘The séances have always been free.’

  The Coventry Pub was a quiet place. A television set was bolted to the wall over the bar and always tuned to a local news station. By custom of long standing, the bartender never turned on the volume until the sports coverage was nearing airtime. So five steady patrons, sports fans all, were watching an anchorman moving his mouth in silence. They liked their news delivered this way – so restful.