Sarah Booth Delaney

by Sarah Booth Delaney 01-06 (lit)

  "Lawrence would never do anything to hurt Brianna. Or anyone else." Lawrence slowed the car to the point that he could really look at me. "This is important, Sarah Booth. Lawrence's last promise to Lenore was that he'd keep an eye on Brianna. He meant to take this secret to the grave. That's one of the last things he said to me."

  "I'm afraid you're wrong about that."

  "The biography only concerns his years in Paris. Nothing else is mentioned. It was because Brianna kept pressing him to include his earlier years that he began to have second thoughts about his deal with her. Rosalyn made him see that Brianna's idea of a good book involved scandal and titillation. That was never what Lawrence intended. When he caught Brianna repeatedly going through his private papers, he knew he had to withdraw from the book deal. He truly had too many secrets to hide, too many damaging things."

  Harold was right about that, but he was wrong about Lawrence's decision not to include them. I'd seen it with my own eyes.

  "The night Lawrence died, he and Brianna got into a terrific argument. She had a legally binding contract, but Lawrence didn't give a damn. She couldn't finish the book without him, and he had nothing to lose. Nothing except his art collection, which is why he told all of this to me. He wanted to donate everything to a museum, and he wanted it done immediately—before Brianna filed suit against him for breach of contract. She'd already contacted her father. Once Layton got the gist of the book and what was happening, he came back to Zinnia. I think Lawrence had hoped to find an ally in him."

  "Layton wanted the past revealed?" What man would want his sexual sins spread out on the pages of a book, especially a book written by his daughter?

  Harold shrugged. "Layton had never been able to deny Brianna anything. Not even when he should have. I doubt, too, that he had any idea how much of the past Brianna had been able to ferret out. Lawrence knew she'd uncovered some things, but not her lineage. And there was the matter of finances. Even a Buddy Clubber gets tired of pouring money down his daughter. Brianna had some serious financial woes."

  "No kidding," I said. I didn't mention the little loan he'd engineered for her. It could wait until she was behind bars. And I still wasn't buying that Lawrence was a complete innocent in the biography, but now wasn't the time to bicker. We were both wounded enough, and the ultimate proof would be the manuscript itself.

  "There's the cemetery." Harold pointed toward a sloping meadow shaded by beautiful live oaks and marked by elaborate gravestones. Cemeteries weren't exactly my favorite place. I had one in the backyard where I often imagined my dead relatives spinning in their graves at my behavior. It wasn't large, but some of the graves were very old, and as I gazed at it, I was touched with a sense of serenity.

  "It's lovely," I said.

  "My family is buried here. Unlike the landed gentry, we didn't have family plots."

  "And you get perpetual maintenance. But if you miss the lawn care, you can come to Dahlia House and pull weeds."

  "I might take you up on that." Harold parked the car and we got out. The sun's last grip on the sky was a vivid swirl of pink and purple and mauve, mingled with a dash of gold and blue. Against the sky the gravestones took on a solemn trust. There were angels and lambs and cherubs, all looking out with stony eyes. Suddenly I was awash in sadness. This is where love took Lenore Erkwell.

  "Sarah Booth," Harold said gently as he took my elbow and turned me to face him, "she's been dead a long, long time."

  "I know. That makes it even sadder."

  The tears were cold on my cheeks and Harold gently wiped them away. "I should have known where the manuscript was hidden by the line of poetry he quoted me. It was Poe. 'The Raven.' The poem for a lost love, Lenore."

  A Daddy's Girl would have dissolved in tears and allowed Harold the masculine privilege of comforting her. That was the only thought that saved me. I was no DG, and Harold had no obligation to shore up my womanly emotions. Straightening my back, I gave him a smile. "Let's find that book. I'm freezing."

  To my surprise his lips brushed my cheek, a whisper of warmth on my cool skin. "It's your independence that really makes me admire you."

  With that he began to move through the graves until we came to a strange figure, a woman's torso, head, and arms with a swan's wings and lower body. Granite tears seemed to slip down the woman's lovely cheeks. "How remarkable," I said. The stone was a work of art, a masterpiece. "You know it looks like those statues that were in the Sunflower Hotel. They were from Greek mythology, my father said."

  "Yes, and this one, too. Leda and the Swan. Do you remember?"

  "Zeus came to her as a lover in the guise of a swan. Leda was hideously punished by Hera, Zeus's wife." I did remember. "And the sculptor?"

  "Lawrence. He made it for her himself."

  The earth felt as if it had turned slightly, tilting to the right. I knew it was only the emotional power of what I'd just discovered. "Lawrence was in love with Lenore, wasn't he?" Bitter, bitter the twists and turns of life.

  "He loved my aunt all of his life." Harold put his hand on the face of the statue. "Once she met Layton, I don't think she ever had a clue about Lawrence. He was too much of a man to tell her." His palm rested on the angel's face, as if he might bring warmth to the coldness for just a few brief seconds. "That's why he decided to champion Brianna. He followed her career, helping out whenever he could with phone calls to his friends. When he wouldn't pull a string to help himself, he called in favors for her. And when it was clear her modeling was over, he decided to help her. She was about to lose everything. He came up with the plan to let her take credit for the book and launch a new career."

  "She can't write," I pointed out.

  Harold shook his head. "Lawrence had nothing else to offer her. He wanted so badly for her to contain something of Lenore, some glimmer of her personality. As did I."

  The last warm colors of day were fading from the horizon. There was a finality to the sky that was as potent as the conclusion of the lives of these people I'd come to care about. It gave me no pleasure at all to say what had to be said.

  "She killed him, Harold. You know that."

  "I fear she did."

  He bent to the statue, to the granite foundation that looked as solid as the rest of it. It took a bit of effort, but he removed a slab and pulled out a plastic-wrapped bundle.

  He handed it to me and in the last rays of the December day, I peeled back the plastic to the title page. The Romantic: The Life of a Writer, Artist, and Spy by Lawrence Ambrose and Brianna Rathbone.

  Harold's voice held pride. "Lawrence's work will be revived. His novels will be reprinted."

  His hand reached out and touched the manuscript that I held, the fingers moving across the title as if he were feeling the words, connecting somehow with the man who wrote it.

  I shivered in the darkness and clutched the manuscript to my chest. "We should have gone after her with Coleman. She's probably skipped the country by now."

  Harold put his arm around me and led me back to the car. "In a way, I hope she is gone. Nothing we do to Brianna will bring Lawrence back."

  All along Harold had underestimated Brianna's capacity for self-preservation. She still had Lawrence's notes and journals. Instead of anger I felt only regret— and a terrible thought. Brianna couldn't write, but someone could. Whoever had written that last manuscript page had been adept with language. More than adept, very skilled.

  And Dean Joseph Grace was very dead. Drowned in Moon Lake.

  For Harold, there was no good ending. But there was justice, and Brianna Rathbone had a judgment coming her way.

  27

  Driving up to the courthouse where I'd left my car, Harold and I both saw Coleman standing outside, a big, solid man framed in an overhead light. To the west, a full moon hung behind the courthouse rotunda. It was huge and pale, a winter moon to mark the ending of a year.

  Brianna had escaped. I could read it in Coleman's posture, and I knew that Harold, by stonewalling in the jail f
or so long, had deliberately given her the time to flee. He was determined not to believe the worst of her, no matter what the evidence showed.

  "Go home, Harold," I told him as I opened the door of his Lexus. "Don't tempt fate by getting in Coleman's face."

  "Can you understand that Lawrence wouldn't want her put in prison?"

  It didn't matter if he was protecting her because he thought that was what Lawrence would want him to do, or because she was blood. Coleman wasn't going to be happy with either reason. It would take a while for me to sort through my feelings on the subject.

  "Go home," I said gently, putting a hand on his arm.

  He caught my fingers and held them. "Lawrence loved Lenore his entire life. I'm sure there were other loves, but none like her."

  "And Madame loved Lawrence." I sighed at the bitterness that came of drinking from the cup of love. "Good night, Harold." I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  His hand caught my wrist and stayed me. "Do you think we're always destined to make the wrong choices with our hearts?"

  I couldn't tell if he was talking about the past or the present. We were both guilty of bad choices. "I don't know," I answered honestly.

  "You've been a better friend to me than I deserve, Sarah Booth."

  "That's where you're wrong, Harold. Very wrong."

  "You thought me guilty and yet you kept trying to protect me. Why?"

  "I thought you were guilty of caring about Brianna. I feared you might have done something to help her cover her tracks. Protecting the person you love isn't a sin in my eyes."

  His hands slipped along my wrist to my hand. He brought the palm up to his face and held it against his cheek. "Thank you, Sarah Booth. When we've recovered from all of this, I want to have a serious talk with you."

  I got out of the car and stepped back. Coleman didn't change positions as Harold drove away, and I walked up the cement steps as he watched me.

  "How much of a lead has she got?"

  "I wasn't even within sniffing distance."

  "I really didn't know."

  He opened the door and held it as I walked inside the courthouse. The hallway was still warm, a welcome respite from the freezing night outside.

  "Where do you think she is?" I asked.

  "The house was ransacked. It depends on whether she got what she was hunting for or not. Any guesses as to what she was after?"

  "Scrapbooks, documents, photographs, anything that might give her material for her book. We found Lawrence's autobiography, and it was confined to 1940 to 1979, his years in Paris. Harold will keep it safe," I assured him. "The page I found, that must be something of Brianna's concoction. I'm pretty sure she was looking for more secret stuff in Lawrence's cottage. At any rate, Harold thinks he can stop publication."

  Coleman snorted, which about summed up my opinion. "We'll get her. Eventually. I put on a fresh pot of coffee, come on in and have a cup." He held open the door to the sheriff's office and I followed him inside.

  "I have to photograph the dance at The Club, but I have time for one cup." It seemed that a cup of coffee with Coleman was becoming a tradition at the conclusion of my cases.

  "I found the system of delivery for the poison. Or I should say Doc Sawyer did."

  I almost didn't want to know. "Tell me."

  "A bottle of Jim Beam. I guess she figured it was the surest way to dose him, especially since he must have given his cat some food that she'd tried the poison in. I suppose everybody in town knew he had his five o'clock bourbon and branch."

  "And if someone else had a drink of it?"

  "One or two drinks wouldn't hurt. It was the cumulative effect."

  I braced against the counter and closed my eyes for one brief second. It was all too sad.

  Coleman's hand was warm on the back of my neck. His strong fingers kneaded the tight muscles for just a moment. "This is no time to quit. Better get yourself home, get into a dress, and go do your job. Cece gives you too many opportunities to meddle for you to let her down."

  "Thanks for the pep talk, you silver-tongued devil." I accepted the cup of coffee.

  Coleman laughed out loud, a resonating laugh that made me smile. The telephone shrilled loudly, and he answered it.

  "You've got a phone call," he said. "It's your partner, Tinkie. She says it's urgent."

  I picked up the black receiver. "Tinkie, what's going on?"

  There was a sob at the other end. "Oh, Sarah Booth, I'm so sorry."

  There are moments when time is telescoped. Those words mean only one thing—tragedy. I instantly knew that I'd lost someone dear to me, even if I didn't know who.

  "I went by Dahlia House to see if you were back, and I found her in the drive. There was blood, so much blood."

  "Who?"

  "Sweetie Pie. She's at Dr. Matthews's. He's had to perform surgery. He said he'd wait at his office for you to get home."

  Coleman's face registered concern as I hung up the phone, still unable to draw a deep breath.

  "It's my dog. She's been hurt. Dr. Matthews has her."

  "Want me to take you?" Coleman offered.

  I shook my head, the tears threatening with relentless pressure. "I'll be fine," I assured him as I hurried out.

  The lights were on in the vet's office, and Dr. Matthews was at the front desk filling out blood work forms when I went in. His smile was one of the best things I'd ever seen.

  "Well, what you've got is a hound who's a medical miracle," he said, rising slowly to his feet.

  "She's alive?" I hadn't dared to believe she might be okay.

  "Alive and recovering. With remarkable alacrity."

  "What happened?" I followed behind him as he led the way to the sick bay. Even as he opened the door I heard the familiar beat of her metronome tail.

  "I can't be certain." He hesitated as he examined me. "It was a puncture wound in the abdomen, Sarah Booth. She must have fallen on something sharp, though how she managed that I can't figure out. It was a deep wound."

  The caution of his tone registered. "You don't think she was hurt deliberately, do you?"

  "It's impossible to tell but I wouldn't let her roam."

  "She'll stay in the house," I promised before I was caught in the moment of seeing my dog, a thick white bandage around her middle. She slowly got to her feet and gave me the softest, sweetest, yodeling bark.

  "Sweetie!" I rushed to the kennel and opened the door. She was a little unsteady on her feet, but her tongue was as warm and effusive as ever. "Oh, Sweetie." I hadn't realized how much I'd grown to care about that dog.

  "She's going to be okay, Sarah Booth. In fact, you can take her home. Just keep an eye on her and make sure she drinks plenty of water and goes to the bathroom."

  "No permanent damage?"

  "It was pure luck, but nothing vital was severed. And while I was making the repairs, I also took a look around. I have to say that Sweetie is a remarkable creature."

  "How so?" I fondled her silky ears and urged her to come out of the kennel.

  "I spayed her myself, and as I said, I removed a uterus and two ovaries. But when I opened her up, there they were. Two ovaries, just as pink and healthy as I've ever seen. Lucky for you the uterus didn't regenerate or you'd be a grandma a dozen times over."

  "They grew back?" I looked up at his face to make sure he wasn't pulling my leg. "My tonsils did that once."

  "The only thing I can figure is that they somehow regenerated. It's a case that deserves major study. I've already sent the tissue off to a lab for evaluation."

  "It's a sign." If there had ever been any doubt, there was none now. "Delaney womb," I said.

  "What?"

  "Nothing." It would be impossible to explain. But Sweetie Pie was a Delaney. And it was time to take her home.

  "Thanks, Dr. Matthews. Whatever I owe you, I'll get straight."

  "No charge, Sarah Booth. But I am writing that dog up for a medical journal. I hope you don't mind."

  "Feel free." When
I stood, Sweetie Pie came out of the kennel. She was still a little woozy, but otherwise just fine.

  "Bring her back in ten days to get the stitches out."

  "Sure thing."

  "And Happy New Year, Sarah Booth. I think we can both make it home in time for a glass of champagne and a kiss."

  I drove home slowly so Sweetie Pie could take a little air. The brisk cold seemed to revitalize her, and when we arrived at Dahlia House, she greeted her male admirers with a gentle woof.

  "Not tonight," I told her, taking care to snap on a leash and make sure we got safely inside. I still had to photograph the dance for Cece, but I was certain I could do my journalistic duties and be home in less than two hours.

  Once we were inside I took her into the kitchen and made her a cozy nest. She was restless, pacing the kitchen and whining at first the back door and then the dining room door. If I hadn't given my word to Cece, I'd move my pillows downstairs, collapse into them, and call it a year.

  I made sure the doggy door was shut, and I latched the swinging door to the kitchen. Sweetie was feeling better, but she didn't need to be running around the house. As I made it up the stairs, her whining increased sharply. Then came the scratching. And finally barking at the top of her lungs. She wasn't happy about being detained, but it was for her own good.

  Thank goodness I'd picked out my wardrobe. I hurried up to my room, wondering why Jitty wasn't around. She probably had a haint party to celebrate the new year. Her social life was far more active than mine.

  I dialed Tinkie, to thank her and also to reassure her that Sweetie was fine. Thank goodness she'd stopped by the house. Otherwise my pooch might have bled to death. I got the answering machine and left my message, reminding her that I'd see her at The Club at eleven.

  The bathtub looked inviting, but I opted for a quick shower. Even as I stepped beneath the spray I heard Sweetie barking. She was sincerely unhappy.

  The hot water, followed by a splash of cold, gave me the energy to finish up the night. I didn't have the heart to think about my case. I'd found the murderer, but she was still on the loose. And if Harold was right, she was probably somewhere in Europe. She had money, looks, and Lawrence's journals and notes. And there didn't seem to be a thing I could do about any of it.