~ A Bone to Pick ~
Suddenly I thought of the old saw “You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” I recalled the skull’s grin all too clearly, and I began laughing.
I had to laugh at something.
It didn’t take quite as long as I expected to pack Jane’s clothes. If something had struck my fancy, it wouldn’t have bothered me to keep it; Jane had been a down-to-earth woman, and in some ways I sup- posed I was, too. But I saw nothing I wanted to keep except a cardigan or two, so anonymous that I wouldn’t be constantly thinking, I am wearing Jane’s clothes. So all the dresses and blouses, coats and shoes and skirts that had been in the closet were neatly boxed and ready to go to the Goodwill, with the vex- ing exception of a robe that slipped from its hanger to the floor. Every box was full to the brim, so I just left it where it fell. I loaded the boxes into my car trunk, then decided to take a break by strolling into the backyard and seeing what damage had been done there.
Jane’s backyard was laid out neatly. There were two concrete benches, too hot to sit on in the June sun, placed on either side of a concrete birdbath sur- rounded by monkey grass. The monkey grass was get- ting out of hand, I noticed. Someone else had thought so, too; a big chunk of it had been uprooted. I’d dealt ~ 83 ~
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with monkey grass before and admired the unknown gardener’s persistence. Then it came to me that this was one of the “dug up” spots that Torrance Rideout had filled in for me. Looking around me more care- fully, I saw a few more; all were around bushes, or under the two benches. None were out in the middle of the grass, which was a relief. I had to just shake my head over this; someone had seriously thought Jane had dug a hole out in her yard and stuck the skull in it? A pretty futile search after all this time Jane had had the skull.
That was a sobering thought. Desperate people are not gentle.
As I mooched around the neat little yard, counting the holes around the bushes that had screened the un- attractive school fence from Jane’s view, I became aware of movement in the Rideouts’ backyard. Mini- mal movement. A woman was sunbathing on the huge sun deck in a lounge chair, a woman with a long, slim body already deeply browned and semiclad in a fire engine red bikini. Her chin-length, dyed, pale blond hair was held back by a matching band, and even her fingernails seemed to be the same shade of red. She was awfully turned out for sunbathing on her own deck, presuming this was Marcia Rideout. “How are you, new neighbor?” she called languidly, ~ 84 ~
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a slim brown arm raising a glass of iced tea to her lips. This was the movement I’d glimpsed. “Fine,” I lied automatically. “And you?” “Getting along, getting by.” She beckoned with a lazy wave. “Come talk for a minute.”
When I was settled in a chair beside her, she ex- tended a thin hand and said, “Marcia Rideout.” “Aurora Teagarden,” I murmured as I shook her hand, and the amusement flitted across her face and vanished. She pulled off her opaque sunglasses and gave me a direct look. Her eyes were dark blue, and she was drunk, or at least on her way there. Maybe she saw something in my face, because she popped the sun- glasses right back on. I tried not to peer at her drink; I suspected it was not tea at all, but bourbon. “Would you like something to drink?” Marcia Rideout offered.
“No thanks,” I said hastily.
“So you inherited the house. Think you’ll like liv- ing there?”
“I don’t know if I will live there,” I told her, watching her fingers run up and down the dripping glass. She took another sip.
“I drink sometimes,” she told me frankly. I really couldn’t think of anything to say. “But only when Torrance isn’t coming home. He ~ 85 ~
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has to spend the night on the road sometimes, maybe once every two weeks or so. And those days he’s not coming home to spend the night, I drink. Very slowly.” “I expect you get lonely,” I offered uncertainly. She nodded. “I expect I do. Now, Carey Osland on the other side of you, and Macon Turner on the other side of me,
they
don’t get lonely. Macon sneaks over there through the backyards, some nights.” “He must be an old-fashioned guy.” There was nothing to prevent Macon and Carey from enjoying each other’s company. Macon was divorced and Carey was, too, presumably, unless Mike Osland was dead . . . and that reminded me of the skull, which I had enjoyed forgetting for a moment.
My comment struck Marcia Rideout as funny. As I watched her laugh, I saw she had more wrinkles than I’d figured, and I upped her age by maybe seven years. But from her body you sure couldn’t tell it. “I didn’t used to have such a problem with being lonely,” Marcia said slowly, her amusement over. “We used to have people renting this apartment.” She waved in the direction of the garage with its little room on top. “One time it was a high school teacher, I liked her. Then she got another job and moved. Then it was Ben Greer, that jerk that works at the gro- cery chopping meat—you know him?”
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“Yeah. He is a jerk.”
“So I was glad when he moved. Then we had a housepainter, Mark Kaplan . . .” She seemed to be drifting off, and I thought her eyes closed behind the dark glasses.
“What happened to him?” I asked politely. “Oh. He was the only one who ever left in the night without paying the rent.”
“Gosh. Just skipped out? Bag and baggage?” Maybe another candidate for the skull?
“Yep. Well, he took some of his stuff. He never came back for the rest. You sure you don’t want a drink? I have some real tea, you know.” Unexpectedly, Marcia smiled, and I smiled back. “No, thanks. You were saying about your tenant?” “He ran out. And we haven’t had anyone since. Torrance just doesn’t want to fool with it. The past couple of years, he’s gotten like that. I tell him he must be middle-aged. He and Jane and their big fight over that tree!”
I followed Marcia’s pointing red-tipped finger. There was a tree just about midway between the houses. It had a curiously lopsided appearance, viewed from the Rideouts’ deck.
“It’s just about straddling the property line,” Mar- cia said. She had a slow, deep voice, very attractive. ~ 87 ~
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“You won’t believe, if you’ve got any sense, that peo- ple could fight about a tree.”
“People can fight about anything. I’ve been manag- ing some apartments, and the tizzy people get into if someone uses their parking space!”
“Really, I can believe it. Well, as you can see, the tree is a little closer to Jane’s house . . . your house.” Marcia took another sip from her drink. “But Tor- rance didn’t like those leaves, he got sick of raking them. So he talked to Jane about taking the tree down. It wasn’t shading either house, really. Well, Jane had a fit. She really got hot. So Torrance just cut the branches that were over our property line. Ooo, Jane stomped over here the next day, and she said, ‘Now, Torrance Rideout, that was petty. I have a bone to pick with you.’ I wonder what the origin of that saying is? You happen to know?”
I shook my head, fascinated with the little story and Marcia’s digression.
“There wasn’t any putting the branches back, they were cut to hell,” said Marcia flatly, her southern ac- cent roughening. “And somehow Torrance got Jane calmed down. But things never were the same after that, between Torrance and Jane. But Jane and I still spoke, and we were on the board of the orphans’ home together. I liked her.”
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I had a hard time picturing Jane that angry. Jane had been a pleasant person, even sweet occasionally, always polite; but she was also extremely conscious of per- sonal property, rather like my mother. Jane didn’t have or want much in the way of things, but what she had was hers absolutely, not to be touched by other hands without proper permission being asked and granted. I saw from Marcia’s little story how far that sense of property went. I was learning a lot about Jane now that it was too late. I hadn’t known she’d been on the board of the orphans’ home, actually and less bluntly named Mortimer House.
“Well,” Marcia continued slowly, “at least the past couple of years they’d been getting along fine, Jane and Torrance . . . she forgave him, I guess. I’m sleepy now.” “I’m sorry you had the trouble with Jane,” I said, feeling that somehow I should apologize for my bene- factress. “She was always such an intelligent, interest- ing person.” I stood to leave; Marcia’s eyes were closed behind her sunglasses, I thought.
“Shoot, the fight she had with Torrance was nothin’, you should have heard her and Carey go to it.” “When was that?” I asked, trying to sound indif- ferent.
But Marcia Rideout was asleep, her hand still wrapped around her drink.
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I trudged back to my task, sweating in the sun, worried about Marcia burning since she’d fallen asleep on the lounge. But she’d been slathered with oil. I made a mental note to look out the back from time to time to see if she was still there. It was hard for me to picture Jane being furious with anyone and marching over to tell him about it. Of course, I’d never owned property. Maybe I would be the same way now. Neighbors could get very upset over things uninvolved people would laugh about. I remembered my mother, a cool and elegant Lauren Bacall type, telling me she was going to buy a rifle and shoot her neighbor’s dog if it woke her up with its barking again. She had gone to the police instead and gotten a court order against the dog’s owner af- ter the police chief, an old friend, had come to her house and sat in the dark listening to the dog yapping one night. The dog’s owner hadn’t spoken to Mother since, and in fact had been transferred to another city, without the slightest sign of their mutual disgust slackening.
I wondered what Jane had fought with Carey about. It was hard to see how this could relate to my immediate problem, the skull; it sure wasn’t the skull of Carey Osland or Torrance Rideout. I couldn’t imagine Jane killing the Rideouts’ tenant, Mark ~ 90 ~
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whatever-his-name-was, but at least I had the name of another person who might be The Skull. Back in my house once again—I was practicing saying “my house”—I began to search for Jane’s pa- pers. Everyone has some cache of canceled checks, old receipts, car papers, and tax stuff. I found Jane’s in the guest bedroom, sorted into floral-patterned cardboard boxes by year. Jane kept everything, and she kept all those papers for seven years, I discovered. I sighed, swore, and opened the first box. ~ 91 ~
Chapter Five
A
Iplugged in Jane’s television and listened to the news with one ear while I went through Jane’s papers. Apparently all the papers to do with the car had already been handed over to Parnell Engle, for there were no old inspection receipts or anything like that. It would have helped if Jane had kept all these papers in some kind of category, I told myself grumpily, try- ing not to think of my own jumble of papers in shoe boxes in my closet.
I’d started with the earliest box, dated seven years ago. Jane had kept receipts that surely could be thrown away now: dresses she’d bought, visits by the bug-spray man, the purchase of a telephone. I began sorting as I looked, the pile of definite discards getting higher and higher.
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There’s a certain pleasure in throwing things away. I was concentrating contentedly, so it took me awhile to realize I was hearing some kind of sound from out- side. Someone seemed to be doing something to the screen door in the kitchen. I sat hunched on the living room floor, listening with every molecule. I reached over and switched off the television. Gradually I re- laxed. Whatever was being done, it wasn’t being done surreptitiously. Whatever the sound was, it escalated. I stiffened my spine and went to investigate. I opened the wooden door cautiously, just as the noise repeated. Hanging spread-eagled on the screen door was a very large, very fat orange cat. This seemed to explain the funny snags I’d noticed on the screen when I went in the backyard earlier.
“Madeleine?” I said in amazement.
The cat gave a dismal yowl and dropped from the screen to the top step. Unthinkingly, I opened the door, and Madeleine was in in a flash.
“You wouldn’t think a cat so fat could move so fast,” I said.
Madeleine was busy stalking through her house, sniffing and rubbing her side against the door frames. To say I was in a snit would be putting it mildly. This cat was now Parnell and Leah’s. Jane knew I was not partial to pets, not at all. My mother had never let ~ 93 ~
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me have one, and gradually her convictions about pet hygiene and inconvenience had influenced me. Now I would have to call Parnell, talk with him again, either take the cat to him or get him to come get the cat . . . she would probably scratch me if I tried to put her in my car . . . another complication in my life. I sank into one of the kitchen chairs and rested my head on my hands dismally.
Madeleine completed her house tour and came and sat in front of me, her front paws neatly covered by her plumy tail. She looked up at me expectantly. Her eyes were round and gold and had a kind of stare that reminded me of Arthur Smith’s. That stare said, “I am the toughest and the baddest, don’t mess with me.” I found myself giving a halfhearted chuckle at Madeleine’s machisma. Suddenly she crouched, and in one fluid movement shifted her bulk from the floor to the table—where Jane
ate
! I thought, horrified. She could stare at me more effectively there. Grow- ing impatient at my stupidity, Madeleine butted her golden head against my hand. I patted her uncer- tainly. She still seemed to be waiting for something. I tried to picture Jane with the cat, and I seemed to re- call she’d scratched the animal behind the ears. I tried that. A deep rumble percolated somewhere in Madeleine’s insides. The cat’s eyes half-closed with ~ 94 ~
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pleasure. Encouraged by this response, I kept scratch- ing her gently behind the ears, then switched to the area under her chin. This, too, was popular. I grew tired of this after a while and stopped. Madeleine stretched, yawned, and jumped heavily down from the table. She walked over to one of the cabinets and sat in front of it, casting a significant look over her shoulder at me. Fool that I am, it took me a few minutes to get the message. Madeleine gave a soprano yowl. I opened the bottom cabinet, and saw only the pots and pans I’d reloaded the day before. Madeleine kept her stare steady. She seemed to feel I was a slow learner. I looked in the cabinets above the counter and found some canned cat food. I looked down at Madeleine and said brightly, “This what you wanted?” She yowled again and began to pace back and forth, her eyes never leaving the black and green can. I hunted down the electric can opener, plugged it in, and used it. With a flourish, I set the can down on the floor. After a moment’s dubious pause—she clearly wasn’t used to eating from a can—Madeleine dived in. After a little more searching, I filled a plastic bowl with water and put it down by the can. This, too, met with the cat’s approval.
I went to the phone to call Parnell, my feet drag- ging reluctantly. But of course I hadn’t had the phone ~ 95 ~