Ham Bones (18 page)

I got up to make more coffee, afraid everyone would
see my fear. The noose was tightening.

"There's more" Tinkie grasped my wrist as I walked
by and pulled me back to the table.

"Do tell?" Cece was devouring every word, along with
the last slice of fruitcake.

"I did a bit of checking on Graf Milieu. His finances
are fascinating. For a man who makes a lot of money,
he's so far in the red he won't ever see daylight, unless
this movie deal comes off."

"Graf never could manage money." At the time I was
with him in New York, I didn't let it worry me. I didn't
have any money to mismanage. We were both poor and in
love. But Graf had become a star in the last year. He was
making six, maybe seven, figures. How could he still be
so far behind the eight ball?

"It would seem Graf Milieu developed a fondness
for Bolivian marching powder." Tinkie watched me
closely.

"Drugs?" I couldn't believe it. Graf was too vain to
mess with something that might negatively affect his
looks. It would be more likely that he'd invested poorly.

"Serious drugs"

Tinkie's words stopped me. "That's nuts"

"I'm not saying he was using them. He was transporting them across the Mexican border and got caught"

"Graf?" He was an idiot about things. He thought he
could bluff his way out of serious trouble, and he couldn't.
He was just foolhardy enough to do something like try to
smuggle drugs. "How in the hell did he get out of prison?"

Tinkie had been waiting for that question. "Renata.
She paid off the Federales, got Graf back across the border, and she's been lording it over him ever since."

"No wonder he hated her" I remembered hearing
about their backstage fights. It wasn't ego, it was Graf
feeling the pinch of Renata's talons. "How much?"

"She paid $300,000 to get him out of jail. There's no telling how many palms she greased on his way back to
North America." Tinkie was trying not to grin. "I can't
wait to tell Coleman. This is such a better motive than
wanting to be on stage"

I was aggravated beyond belief that Graf hadn't told
me about this, but I could clearly see why. He was trying
to talk me into moving to Hollywood with him. He wasn't
going to own up to the fact that he owed Renata a wheelbarrow full of money. Besides, now that she was dead,
how would anyone know that he owed it to her? "Was
there a record of this debt? Some documentation?"

Tinkie lowered her coffee cup. "There is a record of
the debt and also of his payments so far into Renata's account. The reason he owes her the money isn't documented anywhere we could find."

"How did you find it?" I asked.

Tinkie considered whether she should tell me or not.
"Harold called someone in New York. Someone who
knew the story. He told Harold and Harold told me"

"Then hold off on telling Coleman until we get solid
proof."

"You're not trying to protect Graf, are you?" Cece
asked.

I shook my head. "Not at the cost of my own skin.
Don't worry. If we have to bring this up, we certainly will.
But this sounds conveniently like a Renata fabrication to
me. Let me talk to Graf. I suspect there's some truth to
this, but this may not be the whole truth" It wasn't that I
had any illusions about Graf, I just knew Renata's potential to malign people.

I found the three women watching me like cats
crouching over a crippled bird. "I'm not defending Graf."

No one said anything.

I have two more nights to perform. Let's just finish
the-"

The doorbell chimed and saved me from some dumbfooted pronouncement of my intentions. "I'll be right
back"

Crazy, but my heart lifted at the thought that it might
be Coleman. I knew it wasn't. He was at the hospital with
his tumor-producing wife, at her bedside where he'd been
for the past year, and apparently where he belonged. The
door swung open to reveal Tammy Odom shivering in the
afternoon wind.

"Tammy!" I pulled her inside and hustled her toward
the kitchen. "You're about to freeze to death. Where's
your coat?"

"I was reading the cards for a lady, and I got such a
powerful image, I just stood up and walked out the door
to come over here"

Tammy was known around town as Madame Tomeeka,
Zinnia's resident psychic. Except she was no joke. She
had dreams and visions that frequently helped me with
my cases.

She stopped dead still in the parlor and turned to me.
"We're not alone."

The skin of my lower back rippled. "Of course we
aren't. The girls are in the kitchen."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it!"

The one thing I didn't want was Tammy holding a
seance and calling Jitty forth so that all four women
could harangue me about my life's choices. "It's okay,
Tammy. I swear it. The past at Dahlia House is fine. My
problems are in the present"

"You can say that again."
"

When we got to the kitchen, Tammy was greeted with a hail of welcomes. Tinkie got up and hugged her neck. I
got her coffee, and she took a seat at the table.

"I was reading the Tarot for someone else, and I got
the strongest sense that I needed to get over here fast. I
saw something."

Her words stilled all conversation. Even Cece, the
skeptic of the crowd, was listening attentively.

I'd come to have great respect for Tammy and her visions or dreams or telepathic messages from the other
side. Normally, though, her dreams and visions were a
sign of danger. "What happened?" I asked with some reluctance.

"It wasn't a dream, except that it felt like one, but I
was wide awake and looking at my client."

Everyone leaned a little closer.

"I saw you in a dark, dark cave. You were all alone and
frightened. You kept feeling along the wall of the cave,
trying to find your way out"

"That sounds like Sarah Booth," Tinkie said stoutly.
"She's not just going to sit around and be afraid."

I wanted to hug her, but I didn't want to interrupt
Tammy. "What happened?"

"You came to this small spring of water. The surface
was perfectly smooth, and there seemed to be a light
under the water. You were thirsty, so thirsty you couldn't
stop yourself from kneeling down and drinking the water.
It was the most refreshing water you'd ever tasted"
Tammy's eyes closed as she recounted the vision.

I could almost taste the water, so sweet and quenching.
I sighed.

"You were drinking from your cupped hand. You looked
down into the water and this body began to float up from
the depths of the water. Dark hair streamed out from behind it. It floated toward you, faceup."

Now I was scared. It was only a vision that Tammy had
had, but in the past, all of her visions had some tremendous significance.

"The body hovered just beneath the surface, and it was
clear this woman was dead"

"Who was it?" Millie asked in a breathless whisper.

"It was Renata Trovaioli."

For a moment there was only the sound of the old
kitchen clock that hung over the space heater tick-tocking
the seconds away.

"She was dead?" I asked.

"Yes. She was dead" Tammy reached over and gripped
my wrist. "You leaned down to touch her, to make sure
she was dead. Suddenly-"

Cece shrieked and nearly fell out of her chair. I
glared at her and turned my attention back to Tammy.
"Go on"

"Suddenly she grabbed your wrist. She gave a sharp
tug and pulled you under the water with her. You struggled, Sarah Booth. You fought to get away from her, but
she didn't have to breathe and you needed air."

Tears touched Tammy's cheeks, and when I looked at
Tinkie, I saw that she was crying, too.

"Sarah Booth got away, didn't she?" Millie asked.

Tammy sat up and wiped her face. "That was the end
of the vision."

'ammy's vision put a darker edge to my performance
of Maggie the Cat. While the audience seemed to
love it, I was troubled by all the things I'd learned about
my costar. We finished the show, and when Graf asked me
for a drink afterward, I agreed. There were things I needed
to confront him about.

Because I wanted privacy without the temptation of
being in my home, we drove to Cleveland and a small
restaurant/bar that specialized in steaks, dry martinis, and
quiet. Though I wasn't in a drinking mood, I ordered a
vodka martini, dirty and on the rocks. I ate my olives
while I watched Graf. He was abnormally quiet, his eyes
holding questions and what might be worry.

"Penny for your thoughts," I said, suddenly scalded by
another memory when I'd asked him the same thing,
wanting badly to hear that he was thinking of me. That, of
course, had not been his answer, because at that time Graf
had thought only of himself.

"I haven't been straight up with you, Sarah Booth"

Surprise, surprise. "You haven't?" I decided to play it
all green-eyed innocence to see where he'd take me.
Funny that he was ready to confess-after Tinkie got the
goods on him.

"I got in some trouble in Mexico. Stupidity was my
biggest sin, but the laws I broke were much more serious"'

I sipped my drink, my gaze never faltering. "Go on ""

"I was in financial trouble. I had to have some money,
quick, or else some of my friends had a big desire to rearrange the features of my face"

"You got into loan sharks?" I sat forward, startled despite myself. Graf really was a few brain cells short of a
whole package.

"It was before I dated you. I rented a place on Fifth
Avenue and bought furniture. I thought if I could live the
lifestyle of a successful actor, then folks would view me
as successful, and .. ." He finished his drink.

"Perception is everything."

"You've got it." He shrugged and signaled the waiter
for another drink. "Anyway, I got in pretty deep before I
realized it wasn't going to work. All the furniture was repossessed, and I lost the lease on the apartment still
owing a considerable amount in back rent"

"Who owned the apartment?"

He grimaced. "That was the part I didn't get at first.
After a guy showed up backstage with a baseball bat, I
got the message pretty quick. Then I moved and you
came along, and for a while I sort of avoided them"

"And they caught up with you?"

He nodded. "They asked me to bring some stuff back
from Mexico. It was either that or they were going to
mess me up"

How was it possible that a man with Graf's talent and looks could make such a muddle of his life? "And you got
caught?"

He nodded. "I wouldn't tell who the drugs belonged
to, so I was held in a Mexican prison. You have to believe
me, Sarah Booth, if I'd talked, they would have killed me.
Anyway, Renata got a lawyer, paid the fees, paid the court
costs, got them to understand I was stupid." He lifted one
shoulder. "I was in the process of paying her back. It was
a lot of money, though. Half a million."

"Oh, Graf." My tone said it all-disappointment, disapproval, and disbelief that he could be such a fool.

"There's nothing you can say that I haven't said to myself. Now, if the law finds out about this, I'll be the prime
suspect in Renata's death"

Everyone I knew feared being where I was-in the hot
seat of accusation for murder. "Did you sign anything, a
legal document showing the loan from Renata?"

He shook his head slowly. "No. The movie people
were sniffing around my heels, and Renata took a gamble.
We made a deal. If I got in at the movies, I'd bring her
along. She wanted to be a star. Not just a stage star, but a
bona fide movie star"

"I have to say I admire her gambling spirit."

"She really saved my ass. But she always made people
pay. If she did the smallest kindness for them, they paid
and paid and paid. Renata could never let it go. She was
always sniping at me about the drug charges and what
would happen if the tabloids got wind of it."

"Why would Renata even take a chance on ruining
your Hollywood prospects? If she shot you down, she
shot herself in the foot"

He cleared his throat. "Sometimes it seemed that Renata didn't care. Especially the last few months. It was al most as if she was determined to self-destruct and take all
of us with her."

I thought about his words. It sounded as if he was
telling me the truth. The whole truth, this time. Graf had
earned my skepticism, though, and I wasn't about to
jump for his story hook, line, and sinker. Like I once had.

"Several people have mentioned a big change in Renata in the past year. You among them," I pointed out.
"What would you attribute that to?"

Graf sipped his fresh drink and ordered our steaks. He
remembered how I liked mine cooked. There were things
that Graf did so well. Out of the corner of my eye, I
caught several pretty women simply staring at him, their
own dates forgotten as they gazed upon his handsome
features. How they must be envying me-and how little
they knew of my circumstances.