~ A Bone to Pick ~
woman who’d finally rented Bankston Waite’s town house was at work, as always. There was a strange car parked in the second space allotted to my apart- ment, but since I didn’t see anyone I assumed it was a guest of one of the other tenants who didn’t know how to read.
I opened my patio gate singing to myself and hop- ping around happily (I am not much of a dancer) and surprised a strange man in black sticking a note to my back door.
It was a toss-up as to which of us was the more startled.
It took me a moment of staring to figure out who the man was. I finally recognized him as the Episcopal priest who’d performed Mother’s wedding and Jane Engle’s funeral. I’d talked to him at the wedding re- ception, but not at this morning’s funeral. He was a couple of inches over six feet, probably in his late thir- ties, with dark hair beginning to gray to the color of his eyes, a neat mustache, and a clerical collar. “Miss Teagarden, I was just leaving you a note,” he said, recovering neatly from his surprise at my singing, dancing entrance.
“Father Scott,” I said firmly, his name popping into my head at the last second. “Good to see you.” “You seem happy today,” he said, showing excellent ~ 21 ~
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teeth in a cautious smile. Maybe he thought I was drunk.
“Well, you know I was at Jane’s funeral,” I began, but when his eyebrows flew up I realized I’d started at the wrong end.
“Please come in, Father, and I’ll tell you why I’m so cheerful when it might seem . . . inappropriate.” “Well, if you have a minute, I’ll come in. Maybe I caught you at a bad time? And please call me Aubrey.”
“No, this is fine. And call me Aurora. Or Roe, most people just call me Roe.” Actually, I’d wanted a little alone time to get used to the idea of being rich, but telling someone would be fun, too. I tried to re- member how messy the place was. “Please come in, I’ll make some coffee.” And I just laughed. He surely thought I was crazy as a loon, but he had to come in now.
“I haven’t seen you to talk to since my mother got married,” I babbled, as I twisted my key in the lock and flung open the door into the kitchen and living area. Good, it was quite neat.
“John’s a wonderful man and a staunch member of the congregation,” he said, having to look down at me quite sharply now that I was close. Why didn’t I ever meet short men? I was doomed to go through life ~ 22 ~
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with a crick in my neck. “John and your mother are still on their honeymoon?”
“Yes, they’re having such a good time I wouldn’t be surprised if they stayed longer. My mother hasn’t taken a vacation in at least six years. You know she owns a real estate business.”
“That’s what John told me,” Aubrey Scott said po- litely. He was still standing right inside the door. “Oh, I forgot my manners! Please come have a seat!” I tossed my purse on the counter and waved at the matching tan suede love seat and chair in the “liv- ing area,” which lay beyond the “kitchen area.” The chair was clearly my special chair, from the brass lamp behind it for reading light to the small table loaded with my current book, a stained coffee mug, and a few magazines. Aubrey Scott wisely chose one end of the love seat.
“Listen,” I said, perching opposite him on the edge of my chair, “I’ve got to tell you why I’m so giddy today. Normally I’m not like this at all.” Which was true, more’s the pity. “Jane Engle just left me a bunch of money, and, even though it may sound greedy, I’ve got to tell you I’m happy as a clam about it.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said sincerely. I have no- ticed that, if there is one thing ministers are good at ~ 23 ~
~ Charlaine Harris ~
projecting, it is sincerity. “If someone had left me a bunch of money, I’d be dancing, too. I had no idea Jane was a—that Jane had a lot to leave anyone.” “Me either. She never lived like she had money. Let me get you a drink. Coffee? Or maybe a real drink?” I figured I could ask that, him being Episcopal. If he’d been, say, Parnell and Leah Engle’s pastor, that ques- tion would have earned me a stiff lecture. “If by real drink you mean one with alcohol, I wouldn’t turn one down. It’s after five o’clock, and conducting a funeral always drains me. What do you have? Any Seagram’s, by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. What about a seven and seven?”
“Sounds great.”
As I mixed the Seagram’s 7 with the 7 Up, added ice, and even produced cocktail napkins and nuts, it finally struck me as odd that the Episcopal priest would come to call. I couldn’t exactly say, “What are you doing here?” but I was curious. Well, he’d get around to it. Most of the preachers in Lawrenceton had had a go at roping me in at one time or another. I am a fairly regular churchgoer, but I seldom go to the same church twice in a row.
It would have been nice to run upstairs to change from my hot black funeral dress to something less ~ 24 ~
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formal, but I figured he would run out the back door if I proposed to slip into something comfortable. I did take off my heels, caked with mud from the cemetery, after I sat down.
“So tell me about your inheritance,” he suggested after an awkward pause.
I couldn’t recapture my initial excitement, but I could feel a grin turning up my lips as I told him about my friendship with Jane Engle and Bubba Sewell’s ap- proach after the service was over.
“That’s amazing,” he murmured. “You’ve been blessed.”
“Yes, I have,” I agreed wholeheartedly. “And you say you weren’t a particular friend of Jane’s?”
“No. We were friends, but at times a month would go by without our seeing each other. And not think- ing anything about it, either.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve had enough time to plan anything to do with this unexpected legacy.” “No.” And if he suggested some worthy cause, I would really resent it. I just wanted to be in proud ownership of a little house and a big (to me, anyway) fortune, at least for a while.
“I’m glad for you,” he said, and there was another awkward pause.
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~ Charlaine Harris ~
“Was there anything I could do to help you, did your note say . . . ?” I trailed off. I tried to manage a look of intelligent expectancy.
“Well,” he said with an embarrassed laugh, “actu- ally, I . . . this is so stupid, I’m acting like I was in high school again. Actually . . . I just wanted to ask you out. On a date.”
“A date,” I repeated blankly.
I saw instantly that my astonishment was hurting him.
“No, it’s not that that’s peculiar,” I said hastily. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“Because I’m a minister.”
“Well—yes.”
He heaved a sigh and opened his mouth with a re- signed expression.
“No, no!” I said, throwing my hands up. “Don’t make an ‘I’m only human’ speech, if you were going to! I was gauche, I admit it! Of course I’ll go out with you!”
I felt like I owed it to him now.
“You’re not involved in another relationship at the moment?” he asked carefully.
I wondered if he had to wear the collar on dates. “No, not for a while. In fact, I went to the wed- ding of my last relationship a few months ago.” ~ 26 ~
~ A Bone to Pick ~
Suddenly Aubrey Scott smiled, and his big gray eyes crinkled up at the corners, and he looked good enough to eat.
“What would you like to do? The movies?” I hadn’t had a date since Arthur and I had split. Anything sounded good to me.
“Okay,” I said.
“Maybe we can go to the early show and go out to eat afterward.”
“Fine. When?”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Okay. The early show usually starts at five if we go to the triplex. Anything special you want to see?” “Let’s get there and decide.”
There could easily be three movies I did not want to see showing at one time, but the chances were at least one of them would be tolerable.
“Okay,” I said again. “But if you’re taking me out to supper, I want to treat you to the movie.” He looked doubtful. “I’m kind of a traditional guy,” he said. “But if you want to do it that way, that’ll be a new experience for me.” He sounded rather coura- geous about it.
After he left, I slowly finished my drink. I won- dered if the rules for dating clergymen were different from the rules for dating regular guys. I told myself ~ 27 ~
~ Charlaine Harris ~
sternly that clergymen
are
regular guys, just regular guys who professionally relate to God. I knew I was being naive in thinking I had to act differently with Aubrey Scott than I would with another date. If I was so malicious or off-color or just plain wrongheaded that I had to constantly censor my conversation with a minister, then I needed the experience anyway. Per- haps it would be like dating a psychiatrist; you would always worry about what he spotted about you that you didn’t know. Well, this date would be a “learning experience” for me.
What a day! I shook my head as I plodded up the stairs to my bedroom. From being a poor, worried, spurned librarian I’d become a wealthy, secure, dat- able heiress.
The impulse to share my new status was almost irre- sistible. But Amina was back in Houston and preoccu- pied by her upcoming marriage, my mother was on her honeymoon (boy, would I enjoy telling
her
), my co- worker Lillian Schmidt would find some way to make me feel guilty about it, and my sort-of-friend Sally Alli- son would want to put it in the paper. I’d really like to tell Robin Crusoe, my mystery writer friend, but he was in the big city of Atlanta, having decided the com- mute from Lawrenceton to his teaching position there was too much to handle—or at least that was the reason ~ 28 ~
~ A Bone to Pick ~
he’d given me. Unless I could tell him face-to-face, I wouldn’t enjoy it. His face was one of my favorites. Maybe some celebrations are just meant to be pri- vate. A big wahoo would have been out of line anyway, since Jane had had to die in order for this celebration to be held. I took off the black dress and put on a bathrobe and went downstairs to watch an old movie and eat half a bag of pretzels and then half a quart of chocolate fudge ripple ice cream.
Heiresses can do anything.
It was raining the next morning, a short summer shower that promised a steamy afternoon. The thunderclaps were sharp and scary, and I found my- self jumping at each one as I drank my coffee. After I retrieved the paper (only a little wet) from the other- wise unused front doorstep that faced Parson Road, it began to slow down. By the time I’d had my shower and was dressed and ready for my appointment with Bubba Sewell, the sun had come out and mist began to rise from the puddles in the parking lot beyond the patio. I watched CNN for a while—heiresses need to be well informed—fidgeted with my makeup, ate a banana, and scrubbed the kitchen sink, and then fi- nally it was time to go.
~ 29 ~
~ Charlaine Harris ~
I couldn’t figure out why I was so excited. The money wasn’t going to be piled in the middle of the floor. I’d have to wait roughly two months to actually be able to spend it, Sewell had said. I’d been in Jane’s little house before, and there was nothing so special about it.
Of course, now I owned it. I’d never owned some- thing that big before.
I was independent of my mother, too. I could’ve made it by myself on my librarian’s salary, though it would have been hard, but having the resident man- ager’s job and therefore a free place to live and a little extra salary had certainly made a big difference. I’d woken several times during the night and thought about living in Jane’s house. My house. Or after probate I could sell it and buy elsewhere. That morning, starting up my car to drive to Honor Street, the world was so full of possibilities it was just plain terrifying, in a happy roller-coaster way. Jane’s house was in one of the older residential neighborhoods. The streets were named for virtues. One reached Honor by way of Faith. Honor was a dead end, and Jane’s house was the second from the corner on the right side. The houses in this neighbor- hood tended to be small—two or three bedrooms— with meticulously kept little yards dominated by large ~ 30 ~
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trees circled with flower beds. Jane’s front yard was half filled by a live oak on the right side that shaded the bay window in the living room. The driveway ran in on the left, and there was a deep single-car carport attached to the house. A door in the rear of the car- port told me there was some kind of storage room there. The kitchen door opened onto the carport, or you could (as I’d done as a visitor) park in the drive- way and take the curving sidewalk to the front door. The house was white, like all the others on the street, and there were azalea bushes planted all around the foundation; it would be lovely in spring. The marigolds Jane had planted around her mail- box had died from lack of water, I saw as I got out of the car. Somehow that little detail sobered me up completely. The hands that had planted those with- ered yellow flowers were now six feet underground and idle forever.
I was a bit early, so I took the time to look around at my new neighborhood. The corner house, to the right of Jane’s as I faced it, had beautiful big climbing rosebushes around the front porch. The one to the left had had a lot added on, so that the original simple lines of the house were obscured. It had been bricked in, a garage with an apartment on top had been con- nected to the house by a roofed walk, a deck had been ~ 31 ~
~ Charlaine Harris ~
tacked on the back. The result was not happy. The last house on the street was next to that, and I re- membered that the newspaper editor, Macon Turner, who had once dated my mother, lived there. The house directly across the street from Jane’s, a pretty little house with canary yellow shutters, had a realtor’s sign up with a big red sold slapped across it. The cor- ner house on that side of the street was the one Melanie Clark, another member of the defunct Real Murders club, had rented for a while: now a Big Wheel parked in the driveway indicated children on the premises. One house took up the last two lots on that side, a rather dilapidated place with only one tree in a large yard. It sat blank-faced, the yellowing shades pulled down. A wheelchair ramp had been built on. At this hour on a summer morning, the quiet was peaceful. But, behind the houses on Jane’s side of the street, there was the large parking lot for the junior high school, with the school’s own high fence keeping trash from being pitched in Jane’s yard and students from using it as a shortcut. I was sure there would be more noise during the school year, but now that park- ing lot sat empty. By and by, a woman from the cor- ner house on the other side of the street started up a lawn mower and that wonderful summer sound made me feel relaxed.
~ 32 ~