Crossed Bones (39 page)

"No, not really. He was very quiet, but I did read the report Deputy Dattilo made on the car theft."

Tinkie was worth her weight in gold. "Tell me."

"Bridge came into the sheriff's office around eleven o'clock and reported the car missing."

That was about half an hour after the bomb had been thrown at Scott's. Bridge would have had time to get back to town.

"After that, he said that he went to Cece's house." There was a long pause. "He spent the night and didn't go home, so he had no way of knowing the car was returned."

"Cece?" I was shocked.

"He met her at Playin' the Bones. You'd already gone home by the time he got there. From all accounts, he and Cece hit it off. It seems they're an item."

30

It was early afternoon as
I
drove away from
Wilbur's. Even though I hadn't eaten in what seemed like a week, I wanted only to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. Exhaustion, near-starvation, and anxiety about what I knew I had to do next, put me in a dark mood. Passing by the high school, I wondered if the architect and contractor had been publicly hung. The 1960s building, flat roof and institutional windows that didn't open, looked more like a chicken hatchery than a place of learning. No wonder I'd skipped school as often as possible to go wading with my friends down at Cottonmouth Creek. What might I have been if I'd ever mastered trigonometry? Why was it that in our society, education often came at the price of freedom? I was just too tired to come up with a decent answer to either burning question.

As I turned down the long drive toward home, I slowed to look at the beauty of the sycamores in the sun. Dahlia House was so much more than my home. It was there that I'd known the meaning of family.

To save it, I'd stolen my best friend's lovable little dog. I'd almost married Harold Erkwell to keep the wolves at bay. I stopped the car and simply stared at the old white plantation house. In that house my parents had loved each other and me. My mother had played her blues records and tried to teach me right and wrong. My father had told me a bedtime story each night until he died. My Aunt LouLane had given up her private life to move in with me and attempt to raise me.

I'd done a bad thing, dognapping Chablis, but my twinges of guilty conscience were minor compared to the pain that would have come from losing my home. In saving Dahlia House, I'd stumbled upon a career that I'd never once dreamed of choosing. But in such a short time, it had become how I viewed myself. I was a private investigator. And a good one. I hadn't been lying when I told Jitty that being a P.I. was my first priority. It was. Scott Hampton had hurt me, but all of my essential parts were still intact. I'd survive.

Now my job was to prove that Scott did not kill Ivory Keys. To do that, I had to catch the person who did. I pressed the gas pedal and drove up to my home.

Sweetie Pie stood up from her nap on the front porch and greeted me with a mournful howl and frantic tailwagging. After I brought the records in, I followed Sweetie to the kitchen and filled her food bowl and gave her fresh water. Reveler, too, had to be fed. When I was done with my chores, I dragged myself up the stairs to my bedroom, undressed, and crawled into bed. My eyes were closed, as were the shades, but I couldn't sleep and I knew Jitty had entered my bedroom.

"No lectures," I warned her.

"Tell me, Sarah Booth, is it your body that's hurt or your heart?"

"Whatever it is, it'll mend." My thought was simply to ignore all pain and let time work its miracle cure.

"You'll mend, but how much scar tissue will be left behind? How bad did he hurt you?"

I didn't need this conversation. Not now. My defenses were far too weak, and Jitty knew all my emotional bruises. I felt a tear leak out of my eye and slip down my temple. I tried to pretend I wasn't crying, but Jitty was on to me.

"I didn't think you really loved him, Sarah Booth," she said gently.

"I didn't either." Perhaps I didn't really love Scott. Only time would have told that story. "He was just so damn mean about it."

Jitty sat on the edge of the bed and I finally opened my eyes. The room was dim, but there was plenty of light to see her. She wore a paisley miniskirt and blue tank top. Her hair was in a short fro. "Where's Ike?" I couldn't resist.

"Cute," she said. "And here I thought you were hurtin'. You just want to mock me."

"No, that's not true. I really just want to sleep."

She gave me a sorrowful look. "That man turned his back on you, just like I warned. Cracking wise about it won't make it different."

She was right about that. Jitty couldn't resist an "I told you so," but she was also the only person I could be completely honest with. "I wasn't ready to lose him, and certainly not the way it happened. Scott and I would probably have gotten enough of each other after a few months. We didn't get a chance to let it burn out on its own. Or I didn't."

"At least you're acknowledging what you feel. That's a big step, even if you don't know it."

"And it doesn't change a thing," I pointed out. "So I've admitted I hurt. I still hurt. Big deal. I won't die. Now I need a few hours sleep before I initiate the plan that will bring Ivory's killer out into the open."

It was Thursday
when I opened my eyes to the white light of an August day in full swing. It was impossible. I'd slept almost eighteen hours. When I looked at the bedside table, I saw the phone knocked off the hook by a pillow. Still, it was a wonder that Tinkie hadn't sent a search party for me.

My body ached as I swung out of bed and stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen for coffee. It wasn't until I had a steaming cup in my hand and had slumped into a chair at the table that I saw the handwritten note.

"You were so sound asleep I didn't wake you. Call me when you wake up. It's nothing that won't keep for a few hours."

So, Tinkie
had
looked in on me. She was that kind of friend. There was no telling what might have happened since I'd clocked out of reality.

I checked my answering machine and found messages from Millie and Cece asking for some assurance that I was healing without damage. I intended to see them in person. It was more than telling that Bridge Ladnier hadn't called.

As I made some eggs and toast, I couldn't help dwelling on the fact that Scott hadn't called. Deep down, I'd hoped that he would.

Before I got cleaned up, I went up to the attic, a place of many treasures. I found Aunt LouLane's old phonograph packed in a suitcase. It was something out of the fifties, but it had three speeds--45, 78, and 33. And it worked. I got it and an old hand trolley that would prove useful.

My mood was grim as I took a bath, dressed, and prepared for my day. The thought I forced myself to hang on to was that Scott was innocent of murder. He might be a verbally abusive creep, but he wasn't a killer. That's what I'd been hired to prove, and I intended to do it. My pride was a cattle prod to action.

I loaded the records, put the top down on the roadster, and opened the passenger door for Sweetie. The sun was blazing down on us, and as we drove through the fields of cotton, I could almost see the plants growing.

We drove by the courthouse, but Coleman's car was there, so I kept driving. I had a plan that would prove Bridge Ladnier guilty or innocent.

The first place I stopped was Robert Pennington McBruce's rented estate. His car was gone and he didn't answer my knock. There was no sign of Nandy, so I drove on out to Holyrood. I hadn't seen her mother since high school, and I could see that Nandy's antics had taken a toll on her. Mrs. Shanahan's hair was snow-white and her mouth bracketed by deep wrinkles.

"Go away," she said before I could ask a single question.

"May I speak with Nandy?"

"You're no friend of my daughter's. She told me about you. Jealous! You always were. Even when you were a little girl, you were envious of Nandy."

"Mrs. Shanahan, I need to see Nandy."

"She's gone, thanks to you. She won't be coming back."

I didn't believe her. Not completely. Nandy would turn up again, like a bad penny. "Could you tell me where she is?" I asked.

"Go to hell." She slammed the door in my face and I was left with only the option of retreat.

I was running out of time, but luck was with me. When I went by the courthouse the second time, Coleman's car was gone. I pulled in and gave Sweetie strict orders to remain in the passenger seat. She was wearing her sunglasses and scarf, definitely incognito.

Using the hand trolley I'd found in the attic, I trundled the records into the courthouse. I wheeled my cargo into the sheriff's office and noted, with satisfaction, the absence of Bo-Peep. Dewayne was acting as dispatcher.

"Coleman asked me to leave these in his office," I said, wheeling by him. He was too green to think to challenge me. In my previous visits, I'd noticed that Coleman's office contained a closet. That was my destination. Just in case things got out of hand, I didn't want anything to happen to Emanuel's records. I left the trolley, too, and a little something extra I liked to think of as the cavalry.

Walking back out, I stopped by the desk. "Don't mention I was here. It's . . . best." I hurried out knowing that Dewayne would never dare broach the emotional waters of my visit to Coleman.

Swinging by Dahlia House, I made sure Sweetie was inside and Reveler in his stall. I wanted everything locked down. I'd learned the hard way that my most vulnerable point was the people and things I loved.

Dusk was falling on the Delta as I drove through the cotton fields. I pulled into the unpaved front parking lot of WBLK-FM radio station, a small white frame building that had been built in the middle of a huge cotton field. There was a solitary Mercury Sable parked in front of the door.

WBLK wasn't one of the top market stations. It wasn't powerful enough to extend much beyond the boundaries of
Sunflower
County
. But it was the local blues station that competed with
Memphis
--and actually did a superior job. The evening-shift DJ was Doctor Lucky, an award-winning musicologist who hid his college education behind a lot of shuck and jive. Doctor Lucky was very interested in a little illegal blues medicine.

I carried one record in my hand and my Aunt LouLane's suitcase phonograph in the other. When I walked in the front door, Doctor Lucky was sitting at a soundboard, talking into a microphone.

"There's a little lady here tonight says she's got some-thin' that's gonna make every single one of you loyal listeners want to get down on the floor and scream. If she has the real thing, you folks are just about to hear something you ain't never heard before. Now listen up to
Keb
Mo
while I use a few muscles other than those in my tongue."

He started the music and then got up to help me. It took him only a minute to set up the phonograph. When he was done, he looked at me. "If this is some kind of a joke--"

"I swear. It's Elvis Presley and Ivory Keys. The cut was pressed back before Elvis was Elvis."

Doctor Lucky flipped the switch for the mike. "Folks, Miss Sarah Booth Delaney, our homegrown P.I., has found a real treasure, though I'm afraid the quality of the sound won't be the best. Funky old turntable piece of crap. But it looks like it works. So sit back and test your blues I.Q. Call in and tell me who's playin' on this cut."

He started the record as he held the microphone down by the phonograph speakers. "Holy shit," he breathed, looking up at me with big eyes. "It's Elvis. And Ivory Keys."

Only the first verse of the song had played when the phones lit up--all three lines. Doctor Lucky didn't bother answering it. He sat mesmerized, watching that old black record spin on the slightly warped turntable.

When it was over, he slapped on another song without even announcing it. "What are you gonna do with that record?" he asked in a voice that might have been used to refer to a religious icon.

"Catch me a killer," I said, snapping the lid shut on the phonograph. I walked out and got in the car.

My car radio was tuned to WBLK as I drove away. Doctor Lucky was fielding questions and comments as fast as he could. And every few seconds he mentioned that the record had been brought to the radio station compliments of Sarah Booth Delaney.

It was the perfect setup.

31

I
was riding high satisfied with my day's work,
when the cell phone rang. I hated the dang thing, but I carried it, when I remembered, because I'd promised Tinkie.

"Sarah Booth!" Cece was breathless. "I just got a call from one of my sources. Where did you get that record?"

"It's a long story," I said. This was going to be another one of those cases where my conscience was going to bother me for years to come, yet I had no choice. "Did you like it?"

"I can't believe you didn't tell me, dahling. It makes one feel left out."

Her voice was laced with genuine hurt that I hadn't confided in her. "I just got my hands on the record this afternoon," I reassured her. "I haven't told anyone, except Doctor Lucky, who insisted that I bring it right over."