Sarah Booth Delaney

by Sarah Booth Delaney 01-06 (lit)

  "That hound of yours is howlin' to wake the dead."

  Jitty was sitting on the end of the sofa, giving me the evil eye.

  I rubbed at my face, a little unsure of my surroundings. I was half tempted to return to sleep and the rambling of my imagination. "Wake me in an hour," I requested, already envisioning the mirror-clear surface of the lake and the small rowboat coasting along beneath the overhanging cypress limbs.

  Jitty demanded my full return to the present. "I saw you drive off with that artist man. What happened?"

  Sleep was. not going to be an option with Jitty in the room. I shifted to a sitting position and gave her a brief rundown of Willem's and my search for the manuscript.

  "Breakin' and enterin', huh? That's what your boyfriends get you to do? What happened to the good ol' days when it was makin' out in the backseat of a car?"

  I yawned, stretching one arm out from beneath the comforter. There was an annoying rasp, rasp, rasp and I realized the record player was still turning.

  "No harm was done," I said. "Where were you last night?"

  "Takin' care of nocturnal events. I tol' you I had a business meetin'."

  I remembered my dream and sat up a little taller, giving Jitty the once-over. Business meeting, my ass. She was infiltrating my sleep and trying to send subliminal messages. I inspected her, hoping for a clue to her game plan from her attire. She was wearing a sweater set and wool skirt. Classy, professional, a change from the housewife attire of June Cleaver. Rather Hepburnish, Katharine, that is. Perhaps there was hope for Jitty. "Stay out of my dreams," I warned her.

  "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have any dreams." She stood up and began pacing. "Sarah Booth, you go around actin' like a hoodlum, that's the kind of man you'll attract. I was thinkin', maybe you should join that big Baptist church over in Greenwood. They got a bowlin' alley and a theater. It's a regular Disneyland. And they got classes for single people. It's sort of like a Datin' Game thing where they help people like you find a mate."

  The suggestion was so out of left field that I almost choked. "I need coffee." I crawled off the sofa, turned off the record player, went to the front door and admitted Sweetie, who did not smell sweet, and headed to the kitchen. I put the coffeepot on and slumped into a chair to wait. Only the aroma of the brewing coffee kept me upright.

  Jitty had the decency to wait until I had swallowed half a cup before she sat down beside me. The silver bangles she'd worn only a few weeks before had given way to a delicate, ornate wristwatch clasped to her arm with two black silken bands. I remembered a similar watch that my Aunt LouLane had worn each day, marking off the hours and the chores in her daily routine. My aunt had loved me greatly and had done her best to teach me the ways of a female. Responsibility and a constant awareness of time were hallmarks of "a great woman." That and a delicate womb. I was a failure in all regards.

  "It's quarter after nine," Jitty said with a hint of disapproval. "Half the mornin' is gone already."

  "I read all night," I said. "I was doing some research." As the coffee began to encourage my brain cells to move a bit, I was beginning to formulate a plan of action. "I think I need to go and talk with Millie's Aunt Bev."

  "What's Millie got to do with this?"

  "Her aunt was up at Moon Lake when Lawrence and Madame and one of Harold's relatives were there, along with Tennessee Williams. Lawrence's book Weevil Dance was based on that time. I know it's fiction, but I think the answer to all of this is buried up at Lula. The book has a story about a murder, a sheriff's brother who was involved in land scams. He used his brother's power to drive poor people off their land when they couldn't pay taxes. Then the sheriff killed his own brother. Maybe there's something there."

  Jitty ignored the entire book idea.

  "Speakin' of Harold, your time would be better spent with him than a book. I've done some hard thinkin' on this. Sarah Booth, a man isn't interested in a woman who reads. That's where a lot of your troubles come in. You think too much. Men find that unattractive."

  The audacity of that remark so stunned me that I didn't reply.

  Jitty must have mistaken my silence for compliance, because she continued. "I know your Aunt LouLane was doing the best by you she could, but I see now that sendin' you off to that college was a big mistake. You were already a handful, and all you did there was date weirdos and fill your head with ideas that kept you from focusin' on learnin' to please your man."

  I carefully put the coffee cup on the table. The words threatened to spew out of my mouth, but I had to control them. Jitty was not trying to devil me. She was terrifyingly sincere. "I have no desire to please a man," I said stiffly, thinking that Jitty was a polar opposite of Kate Hepburn.

  "Honey, you aren't tellin' me a secret. You broadcast that fact loud and clear. The problem is, all the men know it, too."

  "Why should I want to please a man? Why shouldn't he want to please me?"

  Jitty's eyes widened and she pointed a finger at me. "See there! That's exactly what I'm talkin' about. You somehow got the whole system turned upside down. It had to of happened in college, 'cause your Aunt LouLane surely knew better."

  "Mother never felt she had to please Daddy." I dared her to deny this. Double-dared her.

  Jitty's head rocked up and down, her lips pinching at the corners with satisfaction. "You're seein' it, girl. You're finally seein' it. They were aberrations. Your mama and daddy were a different case. They came of age in the sixties. That whole time was a fluke." She swept her arm in a wide circle. "The normal way of doin' things was thrown right out the window, and for that one generation, the upside down worked fine. Honey, this is a new century, and the pendulum has swung back. You can't keep pretendin' this is the sixties."

  "I don't pretend anything," I said. "I'm a private investigator. I have a career and a home. If I decide to share my time with a man, it'll be because he pleases me."

  "That's why you sleepin' with a book." Jitty pushed back her chair and stood up. She paced the kitchen, ignoring Sweetie Pie, who'd eaten her dog food and fallen asleep by the stove. Looking at the dog, I envied her. She went out and took her men as she found them, then came home for me to feed and love her. And best of all, she didn't have Jitty gnawing on her.

  I decided on a different tack. "You think Harold is so wonderful, you should know that he spent the night before last with Brianna. And before you can get started, Brianna went to college. She's educated." I couldn't bring myself to say she was smart.

  "She may have gone to college, but she didn't let it ruin her. How many husbands did she catch? Four? Five? I rest my case—Harold spent the night with her, not you."

  "He may sleep with her, but he won't marry her." There wouldn't be enough of him left to slither down the aisle to the altar. She'd suck him dry in two weeks. But I wasn't going to say that to Jitty. Somehow she'd find that a virtue in Brianna.

  "Well, she's one up on you. You get an engagement ring out of Harold, but you never consummated the deal."

  "Jitty! I thought you'd gone over to the right-wingers and the hue and cry for family values."

  "That's where I'm trying to take you. Nothin' wrong with sealin' an agreement, though. Harold gave you the ring. You shoulda pleased him, Sarah Booth. With just a little bit of effort, you coulda had him eatin' out of your hand."

  "I should have deceived him and slept with him, right?"

  "You should have taken him up to that big ol' bed and made him think he'd died and gone to heaven."

  "And the next morning I could have polished his shoes, cooked his breakfast, and sent him off to work. While he's at his desk at the bank making money, I could get dressed, do my makeup and hair, and then spend the whole day preparing his favorite dinner and wondering what dress he'd like for me to wear."

  "Sounds to me like all that might take an hour. That leaves seven to do whatever you want."

  "What if what I want is to please myself?" I'd finally circled the wagons on her. She was trapped.

>   "Then you got the life you want. Alone." She stopped her pacing and leaned on the table with both hands. "Nobody gets it all, Sarah Booth. Nobody gets to be Wonder Woman and Mama while playin' out Gypsy Rose Lee in the bedroom. There's not enough of a woman to fill all those roles. Not even you. All I'm sayin' is to make a choice. At thirty-three, if you want a child, maybe you'd better start thinkin' about a man who wants the comfort of a wife who pleases him—a home where he wants to be at night."

  I swept the coffee cup off the table, shattering it against the cabinets. "That's stupid." I stood up so fast my chair spilled backward. "I put up with your seventies lectures and your attempts to get me pregnant, but I won't listen to this crap. I won't give up myself just to have a man. That's asking too much."

  Jitty sighed. "Maybe in givin' up a little bit of yourself, you might find the rest."

  "Damn you." I wanted to choke her, but she was already dead, and besides, she'd begun to fade. In a matter of seconds, I was sitting alone in the kitchen with a broken coffee cup and a bitter taste in my mouth.

  A long soak in the tub improved my frame of mind but not by much. I put on some gray wool slacks and a black turtleneck and was ready for the drive to Greenwood when the phone rang. I was still suffering from the aftereffects of nearly losing Dahlia House, so I hadn't spent the money yet on caller ID. It was a choice I regretted as soon as I picked up the receiver and heard Harold's voice.

  "Sarah Booth, I need to speak with you for a moment. Do you have time?"

  I couldn't believe he still had the strength to speak in a normal voice. I thought for sure Brianna's legendary ministrations would have left him with a weak, whispery rasp.

  "Sure, what's up?" Never in a million years would he know that I was aware of, or upset by, his defection.

  "Mr. Harkey is in my office. He claims that you and that artist, Willem Arquillo, were in Lawrence's house yesterday. He says you were working for me. For some reason, he believes that as executor of the estate, I gave you permission to enter the house and encouraged you to steal Lawrence's manuscript."

  "He's nuts." It was a broad, general statement that covered the situation without a direct lie.

  "That's not an exact answer, Sarah Booth." Harold's tone conveyed strained patience.

  Drat him, he was expert at slicing through verbal vagaries. Boyd Harkey obviously had the goods on me—it was pointless to lie. My tactic was to hold admissions to a minimum. If Harold wanted to get picky, he could turn me over to Coleman for violating a crime scene. Sure, Coleman had a crush on me, but then he'd been good friends with some of the boys he'd crushed on the football squad when he'd been the number one linebacker for the Zinnia Panthers. In other words, his affections didn't get in the way of his job.

  "I went in the cottage, with Willem," I confessed in an innocent voice.

  "May I ask why?" There was a harshness in Harold's voice that spoke of his disapproval.

  "We were looking for something."

  "Obviously. What?"

  "The manuscript."

  There was a long silence. "I think you need to have a talk with me, Sarah Booth."

  "I have an appointment right now."

  There was another pause. "When?" he asked tersely.

  "This evening? Say seven?" I'd have to catch him before Brianna latched on. I didn't want to spend time with a husk.

  "I'll stop by Dahlia House. I want to say hello to Sweetie Pie."

  "I'll be here." I hung up fast, and a little rudely.

  I was eager to get on the road, but I couldn't find my wool jacket. I hunted through the hall closet to no avail. Madame's check was in the pocket—not a big issue since I didn't intend to cash it. The coat was somewhere in the house. But if I was going to talk with Beverly McGrath before noon, I had to get going. I settled for my leather jacket, picked up my keys, and went outside.

  In the strange shift of weather that is accepted as winter in the Mississippi Delta, the day was balmy. The rise in mercury had melted the snow. It was nine o'clock and warm. On the spur of the moment, I let the top down on the Roadster and invited Sweetie Pie along for the ride. She wasn't exactly the type of dog that might be expected in a Chinese red Mercedes Roadster, but I found an old pair of sunglasses and a scarf, and Sweetie Pie was transformed into Connie Francis in Where the Boys Are, one of the beach movies Jitty had lately been brainwashed by.

  We made a stop by the hospital first, and I was relieved to see Doc Sawyer standing out on the emergency ramp smoking a cigarette. His white hair caught the sun behind him, giving him the impression of a large dandelion that was about to combust.

  "Hey, who's your friend. She's cute," he said, pointing to Sweetie Pie as I walked up to him.

  "She's a movie star who's traveling incognito."

  "Came to Zinnia for a little cosmetic surgery, did she. Nose job and ear trim?"

  "Maybe a tummy tuck." For all of his humor, I saw there was something wrong. "What is it?"

  He looked back at the hospital as if he expected someone to be watching him. "Let's take a walk." He put his arm around my shoulders and we walked down the ramp and across the gravel parking lot toward the incinerator where the hospital disposed of all types of surgical leftovers and other horrors.

  "The initial tests are back on Lawrence," he said.

  "And?"

  "And he had some unusual things in his system."

  I forced myself to wait. Doc wasn't a reticent man, but he was a cautious one. He was weighing what he wanted to say with great care.

  "Lawrence had a thyroid condition, something he'd lived with for a long time, Sarah Booth. I wasn't surprised when the report came back showing Synthroid in his bloodstream." He looked for a long time at the yellow-brick building that housed the incinerator. "There was another drug. A derivative of Coumadin."

  "Which is?" I prompted.

  "An anticoagulant. Warfarin is a common enough prescription drug for patients with arteriosclerosis. The drug thins the blood so that it can pass more easily through the narrowed arteries."

  "Did Lawrence have a heart blockage?"

  Doc reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out another Salem. "None that I found. His heart was as strong as an ox and his arteries were amazingly clean for a man his age. There was some liver damage. Actually, his liver was a mess."

  I was confused. "So he died of natural causes?"

  He looked at me. "No, Sarah Booth. He bled to death. The combination of the warfarin and the thyroid medication was deadly once he was cut. He must have known what was happening and tried to call for help. The blood rush was too fast. He died before he could make the call."

  "So it was an accident?"

  Doc signaled me to walk a little farther with him. We made it to a stand of willows beside the river where the hospital had put up a picnic table, for the families of patients, I supposed.

  "I've called Lawrence's family physician and ordered his medical records. I should have them this afternoon, but"—he looked down at the slow swirl of yellow river—"he wasn't taking warfarin. At least not on doctor's orders."

  "Then why?"

  "Someone was poisoning him. Coumadin is often used in rat poison. It's easy to get, easy to hide in food. Judging from the condition of his internal organs, I'd say he'd been taking it in small doses for something like a couple of weeks."

  It was my turn to stare into the muddy water. "Have you told Coleman yet?" I asked.

  Doc shook his head. "I just got the lab reports about ten minutes before you drove up. I'm going in to call him now." He turned and started to walk back.

  "Doc? How sophisticated would a person have to be to know about Coumadin?"

  He stopped and turned back. "Anybody who's ever talked with an exterminator could know. It's one of the selling points in rodent eradication. A large dose of Coumadin will weaken the blood vessels until there's massive leakage. The rat craves water. In the quest for water, the rat leaves the house. End result is no decaying rats in the house." He shrugged
. "The interaction with the thyroid medication would take a little more knowledge. Then again, maybe they didn't have to know that."

  I watched him walk back to the hospital, a man carrying the burden of ugly knowledge. I was weighted down with a strange form of grief. I'd just finished one of Lawrence's novels. His brilliance was undeniable, and yet unacclaimed in his latter years. He'd shone brightly and then faded, and finally been extinguished in a deliberate act. And now the only person who cared was an old woman.

  And me.

  And dammit, it wasn't enough.

  I heard Sweetie Pie's gentle baying, and I felt a rush of kinship with the dog. She somehow sensed my sadness and was commiserating with me. It was good to have a dog, even if she was dressed as Connie Francis.

  I walked back to the car only to discover that Sweetie's sweet and sad singing wasn't meant for my ears. Standing with his front paws on my expensive car was a strange black dog with one thing on his mind.

  "Sweetie," I said softly as I got in the car. "You've got to stop this. I can't get a date, and you have every dog in the county hot after you."

  "Ooo-ooo-ahh," she cried softly as we drove away and left her latest conquest in the ambulance bay, a victim of unrequited love.

  12

  Silt-loaded Delta rivers surround and sweep through the old town of Greenwood, Mississippi. Near the heart of the city, the Yalobusha is joined by the Tallahatchie to form the Yazoo.

  The rivers bear the names of Indian tribes long removed from their native soil, a reminder that a particular culture is imposed on the land for only a brief time. Of course the damage done by chemicals, fertilizer, and removal of natural foliage may well be permanent.