Buried Bones (35 page)

I ignored his insult because I recognized the seed of truth in it. "Who did the other set of prints belong to?"

Once again his mouth drew into a thin line. "You're going to like this even less."

"What do you mean?"

"The second prints belong to Rosalyn Bell."

Once, when I was about five, my parents took me to the beach at
Gulf Shores
,
Alabama
. Wading out into the water with my father, we were caught by an unexpectedly big wave. The water crashed over me in a dizzying whirl. My hand slipped from my father's grip, and for one horrifying instant, I felt the primal force of the water grab hold of me. I felt that same sensation as I stared into Coleman's eyes.

"Easy there," he said, and this time his hand on my arm was as sure and steady as my father's had been when he pulled me from the frothing water. "Take a breath."

I did and felt better--and a little ashamed of my weakness. A private investigator doesn't get lightheaded. "I'm okay." I looked down at my shoes, noting the toes needed a good polish. Jitty was right. I looked like a derelict.

"Sure," he said, but he didn't let me go. "When you hear from Tinkie, you call me," he said, his hand sliding down my arm until the contact was broken. "I want a promise."

"I'll call," I said, and meant it. "There's something I should tell you." Coleman had been more than forthcoming. I was, after all, a woman of honor. If he was going to share with me, I owed him. "If there's someone in the sheriff's office over at
Oxford
, you might want to check and see if a missing person report has been filed on Joseph Grace, the dean of Arts and Sciences at Ole Miss. His wife left me a message saying he'd disappeared. She sounded upset, and to be honest, I had him figured as a possible suspect in
Lawrence
's murder."

"Would you mind telling me why?"

There was no condescension in Coleman's tone, so I told him everything I'd learned on my trip to the senator's house and to
Moon
Lake
. And my suspicions of Grace's role in the academic politics of
Lawrence
's past. I told him everything except about Willem's unexpected visit.

"Would it do any good if I asked you to go home and stay there?" His fingers strayed to the handle of his gun.

"Rosalyn paid me--" I halted. "Damn, I've got to find that check. I can't remember where I put my coat."

Amusement touched his mouth. "Tinkie might make you a good business partner," he said. "I'll bet Oscar taught her how to account for every penny."

I needed his humor, and I knew that he was trying hard to ease me over the shock I'd suffered. He'd also put my mind on another issue. "So, you've heard about Tinkie?"

"It's all over town," he said. "Folks at Millie's Cafe were buzzing. It's not every day that two society women decide to become sleuths."

"I'm not a society woman," I protested.

"Ex," he amended. "Though you always were a little different than the others." He finally gave me a full grin. "That's a compliment, Sarah Booth."

"Thanks, I think." But my mind was on the case. "What are you going to do about Harold?" I was finally able to look that fact straight in the face. "And Madame?"

"I'm on my way to pick up Rosalyn and bring her in for questioning."

"Coleman ..." I stopped because I didn't know what I wanted to say. "Are you sure?"

"They matched the prints on the wineglasses you brought in. Unless you made a mistake . . ."

I'd
been careful,
snatching the glasses
and then marking the base with lipstick before I turned them over to Tinkie. I didn't say anything. I didn't have to, he read my face.

"Maybe there's a good explanation," he said slowly. "The only way to find out is to ask."

"Madame will have a good explanation." This was spoken more for myself than Coleman.

"I'm sure she will," he said, no longer meeting my gaze. "Tell me, Sarah Booth, what exactly is Harold's relationship with Brianna Rathbone?"

I couldn't tell if he wasn't looking at me because he'd heard of my interest in Harold and was trying to spare me, or if he was concealing his own thoughts. "I believe they're involved. Romantically." I said it as if it didn't bother me.

"So you wouldn't be concerned that she's disappeared at the same time that he's gone on vacation?"

I wanted to take his face in my hands and force him to look at me, but I restrained myself. "The only thing odd about it is the timing. Harold has to execute
Lawrence
's estate, and with all of this business about ..." I faded to a stop. "Are you saying I should be concerned about Harold? That maybe Brianna has done something to him?"

"I was thinking more along the lines that Harold may have taken Brianna. Possibly against her inclination to go."

"That's ridiculous!" The words jumped out of my mouth. "No one makes Brianna Rathbone do a damn thing she doesn't want."

He shook his head. "I'll tell you a secret. I don't care for Ms. Rathbone and all of her haughty ways worth a damn. But an old man is dead, and the evidence points to the fact that someone killed him. I intend to bring that someone to justice."

I sighed. "I never expected anything less of you." Coleman was a man who'd learned balance, in his handling of others and in his treatment of himself. It was a lesson I needed to absorb.

"I'll check on the dean. And I'll keep an open mind." He walked around his car, got in, and drove away.

23

The pale sunlight of a perfect winter day struck the white trunks of the bare sycamore trees that lined the drive to Dahlia House as I headed home at top speed. Nine o'clock--the day was getting away from me.

I left the Roadster in front of the steps and dashed upstairs, jumping a sleeping Sweetie on the way. She lifted her head and gave me a mournful look from bloodshot eyes and then collapsed back into her doggy stupor.

"Don't expect me to feel sorry for you," I called over my shoulder as I cleared the final step. "If you weren't out all night carousing, you wouldn't be tired." I realized suddenly that Sweetie Pie was leading the life Denise LaSalle, the dynamic blueswoman, advocated. Sweetie was loving the one she was with--again and again, and changing partners at fifteen-minute intervals.

Stepping over the clothes I'd left on my bedroom floor, I went to my closet. "Where is that darn jacket?" I slid all of my clothes to one end of the rail and began the laborious process of looking for the black wool coat I'd worn to what I'd anticipated as a charming brunch with Lawrence Ambrose. I remembered tucking Rosalyn's check into the coat pocket.

Since my former dance teacher was now being interrogated as a suspect in
Lawrence
's murder, I decided my role in the case had shifted. Now, instead of trying to prove Brianna guilty, I was going to focus on proving Madame innocent. And Harold to boot. Whatever he'd done in an attempt to protect her, it was under Brianna's influence. Harold was not the first dumb man to fall under her seductive spell. Somehow, I would save them both.

Madame needed her money for a lawyer. The little bungalow where she lived in a residential section of town pointed to the fact that money was not something she had to throw around. I still had enough cash from my first case to pay the bills for a few months. Madame was a fixture from my past, a woman whose rigid adherence to routine and practice had been a lifeline to a young girl who lost her parents. How amazing that I saw with such clarity that Madame's demands, her relentless harping on perfection, was her method of being kind to me. Though I had no real talent, she'd continued to work with me, pressing ever harder until that forced concentration became a place of safety.

I went through my clothes in one direction, sliding each hanger over the metal rod, then reversing the order. The coat had to be there.

"Lack of organization is a sign of sloth," came the dark voice from behind me.

I didn't slow down or turn around. Since Jitty's closets were in some ghostly beyond, I had no way to examine them and compare. "Help me hunt or get out," I said.

"My, my. Sounds to me like you need a Calgon bath."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her step over the suede suit I'd earlier discarded, shaking her head at my messiness.

"That's one thing I like about you, Sarah Booth. You put your own personal style on a room. I'd call this
boudoir pigsty.
Yes sir, any man would find this an enticin' little love nest, if he didn't break his neck tryin' to get to the bed."

"Jitty," I warned. "I'm not in the mood."

"What, exactly, are you lookin' for?" she asked.

I described the coat as I began my third pass through the closet. The coat wasn't there, but I wasn't giving up.

"Honey, wear that cute suede outfit if you're goin' back out. It does wonders for your eyes. 'Course you've already walked on it this mornin'."

"I need the coat." The last hanger slid over the metal pipe. The closet didn't contain the black wool, and it wasn't going to appear no matter how desperately I searched. "Damn it all to hell."

"Cussin' is the sign of a weak vocabulary," Jitty said archly.

It was exactly what Aunt LouLane would have said, and in exactly the same tone. Suddenly it struck me as funny. Jitty and LouLane weren't what I'd normally consider a team. But since Jitty's decision to join the conservative fifties, she was acting more and more like my dead aunt.

"I'll bet I could teach you some cuss words that would improve your vocabulary," I said, finding satisfaction in needling Jitty. There was a closet downstairs where I sometimes hung my coats. I signaled her to follow.

"It's not that I don't know those words. I choose not to use them. And so should you," Jitty said in her best prim tone as she followed on my heels.

Sorry that I'd started a lecture by teasing Jitty, I stepped over Sweetie and went to the closet under the stairs.

"What's so important about that coat anyway?" she asked.

"Ten grand." That would get her attention. "There's a check in the pocket."

"Let me help," she said, moving up to my elbow.

The closet yielded no secrets, and no black wool coat. The damn thing had disappeared. I remembered wearing it to
Lawrence
's house. I'd come home, changed clothes, and gone out to play with Sweetie. Then Willem had driven up. Unless the handsome artist had a fetish for women's coats, it had to be somewhere in the house.

"Exactly what kind of detective are you that you can't find your own coat?" Jitty asked.

"One who's sick of being gigged by an uppity ghost." I closed the closet door. The coat was gone, and I had no more time to search for it at this particular moment. Tilda Grace was the woman I needed to see, and since she wasn't answering the phone, that meant I had a drive ahead of me.

I went to give Sweetie a goodbye pat and discovered as her pillow one of my fabulous high heels that I'd bought at Steppin' Out. "Sweetie," I admonished. "You've got to stop stealing my shoes."

"Maybe if you picked your things up off the floor, the dog wouldn't have to play maid," Jitty said.

Car keys in hand, I ignored her. She was stuck in the groove of nag. "Think about what I should wear to the New Year's bash," I told her. "I want to make an impression."

"You gone do that, goin' without a date."

"Men have always gone to parties stag. They're considered playing the field. Women have the same right. Maybe I'll meet someone interesting."

"Like that Felix guy. The convicted felon who changed his name. He was real interestin', as I recall." Jitty had me there. I'd made a few dating faux pas.

"Just think about what I can wear." All the Daddy's Girls would already have rushed out for a new dress, but I had my entire
New York
wardrobe of secondhand fashions that no one in Zinnia had ever seen. Nothing like wearing the remnants of a past life to ring in a new one. "Think festive," I ordered as I opened the front door, determined to track down Tilda Grace.

The ringing of the telephone stopped me. My impulse was to go on, to ignore the ting-a-ling summons. On the chance that it might be Tilda Grace calling again, I answered.

"Sarah Booth, thank goodness." Harold's voice came over the wire, tired and desperate. "You've got to help me."

"Harold!" At my elbow Jitty made a victory sign.

"I'm in
Memphis
and I need your help."

"Where's Brianna?" I asked, suddenly wary.

"Listen to me, Sarah Booth. Several of
Lawrence
's paintings have been switched. The originals have been taken."

Art was nice, but I truly didn't give a damn. Harold was under suspicion for murder and kidnapping. Paintings could wait. "Coleman thinks you had a hand in killing
Lawrence
, and I'm sworn to tell him your whereabouts. You'd better get back to Zinnia and straighten this out."