Ham Bones (29 page)

The sheriff's office was quiet, and Coleman was nowhere to be found. Gordon met us. "Coleman can't make
it," he said. "Connie went into some kind of seizure. He's
at the hospital."

I didn't believe a word of it, but I also didn't feel the
need to comment. Tinkie had plenty to say, though.

"Gordon, I have a sworn statement here from Carlotta
La Burnisco saying that Robert Morgan was in her shop
the day Sarah Booth bought the lipstick. Carlotta turned
the shop over to Morgan" She produced a paper with a
flourish and slammed it onto the counter.

Gordon and I both peered at the paper, which was
typewritten and signed by Carlotta La Burnisco. It was
exactly as Tinkie said-a sworn statement attesting to the
fact that Morgan had taken over the shop that day, that
he'd torn a page from her ledger and that he'd paid Carlotta five grand to be absent and to lie to anyone who
asked.

"Well, looks like Ms. Carlotta La Burnisco has some
serious questions to answer." Gordon keyed the radio and
called Dewayne. "Sarah Booth and Tinkie are up here at
the sheriff's office. We're going to need some help from the
Memphis PD to pick up Carlotta La Burnisco. Then you're
going to Memphis to pick up that cosmetic woman and
bring her here to answer some questions."

"The bitchy one?" Dewayne asked, his voice loud on
the radio.

"That would be her" Gordon turned back to us. "Good
work, Tinkie. How'd you break her? We couldn't get her
to admit to anything."

"Oscar helped me," Tinkie said, giving me a hug. "It
was a financial thing. It took some digging around, but
Oscar discovered some irregularities in the mortgage
payments on the cosmetic shop. La Burnisco was about
to go into default, and suddenly, the balloon note on the
mortgage was paid in full." Tinkie had our full attention
as she talked.

"Money was coming in from somewhere, but Oscar
couldn't get a clear picture. The bank was reluctant. It took
him several days, but he finally traced the money back to
Renata. A week before she died, Renata wrote Carlotta a
check for nearly fifty thousand dollars, essentially buying
in as a stockholder in the company."

"Damn" I was ready to spit nails.

"Why?" Gordon asked.

Tinkie was triumphant. "Sarah Booth is innocent. She
was framed, and she was framed by Renata herself. Renata is behind every move in this game"

"It still doesn't make sense" Tinkie was slugging back
a strong cup of coffee though I'd begged her to go home
and get some rest. "The facts don't lie. But why? Gordon
asked the right question. Why did Renata do this? Why, if
she knew someone was going to kill her, did she spend
her time pinning it on you instead of trying to stay alive?"

We sat at my kitchen table, and I pulled out the stack
of tabloids Millie had brought. I'd noticed something in
one of the stories from the past summer. I found the place
again and scanned the story more closely.

Photos of Renata, barefoot and wearing a sarong, showed her on a beach in Tahiti. She was walking alone
down the beach, her smile resplendent. The reporter
quoted her as saying, "My dream is to simply slip from
the public eye and live out the rest of my days in an island
paradise like this." There were other pictures of her in a
villa with a distinctive Mediterranean look, the surf
pounding in the distance.

I pushed the paper to Tinkie. "Read this. I think Renata was going to disappear. But not before she fixed it so
that Graf and I would suffer."

Tinkie quickly read the article. She looked up at me.
"Remember the letter she sent her brother? It said something about how she was going to vanish." Her voice was
threaded with caffeine-induced excitement. "Sarah Booth,
that finally makes perfect sense. Renata intended to set up
an elaborate frame to snare you and Graf, and then she
was going to disappear. She didn't intend to be killed, but
she fully intended to make it appear that she was dead.
So you and Graf would pay the ultimate price."

She pulled out her cell phone. "Gordon, have you
heard from the Memphis PD?" She arched both eyebrows
at me and whispered, "Carlotta's in custody, and she's
agreed to tell everything she knows. Her lawyer is on the
way so she can give a statement" She turned back to Gordon.

"That's excellent, Gordon. Now I have something else.
Was there anything left of Robert Morgan's belongings in
the car?" She paused. "Uh-huh. Can you check the Memphis airport and see if he had a ticket booked anywhere?
Some far-flung getaway." Her smile told me Gordon was
willing to comply. "Thanks, Gordon, you're the best"

She was about to hang up when I heard Gordon call
out to her. She listened again, a furrow drawing between
her eyebrows. "Okay, I'll tell her."

She hung up and didn't look at me.

"Tell me what?"

"Never mind. It'll only piss you off."

"So tell me "

"Connie has stabilized. They're transferring her back
to Jackson, and Coleman is headed down there, too.
Graf's been taken into custody."

fter Tinkie left, promising to go home and sleep, I
.found that I couldn't unwind. Maybe it was the coffee, which I'd made mega-strong. Or maybe it was the
idea of Coleman rushing off to Jackson. Or maybe it was
the pure vindictiveness of Renata and her efforts to destroy my life. Her actions were shocking, and no matter
how I examined them, I couldn't really grasp what might
have motivated her.

I was completely out of her world. I'd left New York
and acting. Yet she'd finagled the theatre troupe to come
to Zinnia. She'd spent weeks and thousands of dollars to
set me up as a murderess. She'd put equal energy into
punishing Graf. But at least she and Graf had a relationship. I had nothing with Renata. Why had she settled on
me as the scapegoat? And what had gone wrong with her
plan to disappear?

I could see the grand design. The poisoned lipstick
had been left at the shop for me to buy with all records
destroyed by Robert Morgan. Then Renata left the lip stick message smeared on the mirror of her dressing
room, alluding to the fact that someone wanted her dead.
Renata had carefully maligned me to her brother and all
who would listen, saying I wanted her dead. But she'd
meant to disappear. What had happened? How had she
actually applied lipstick that she knew to be poisoned?

My footsteps echoed emptily in the house as I walked
from room to room, seeking some place of comfort. Of
safety. I wandered the office of Delaney Detective Agency,
straightening my desk so that it looked like Tinkie's, imposing order out of chaos because I'd lost control of my
life.

The music room held Alice's portrait, and I went there
to study my great-great-grandmother's likeness. She'd
been such a child, but she held herself with the composure of an adult. No one lingered in childhood in those
days. At fifteen, she was a woman of marriageable age.
Soon she would be married, and soon after that delivering
her first child, a son. I touched the canvas, feeling the texture of the paint.

"You look like her at times, Sarah Booth" Jitty's voice
was dark and rich. "The two of you, side by side, I see it
more clearly. 'Course Alice was a lady, which is a label
no one can put on you"

"The label I'll be wearing is `convicted murderer' if I
don't shake some evidence loose." As I sat at the grand
piano, I found Jitty sitting in a chaise lounge near the
wall. Her huge skirts took up half the room, and the vivid
pink reminded me of the frilliness of azaleas. Why Jitty
had chosen a time period when women had fewer rights
than cattle, and blacks had no rights at all, I couldn't
begin to comprehend. Jitty was a law unto herself, and
when she was ready to reveal the master plan behind her
clothing, she would.

I pressed middle C on the keyboard. Long ago, I'd
taken lessons. The memory of my mother, sitting beside
me on the piano bench as we played that beginner duet,
"Heart and Soul," almost made me cry out with pain.
"I'm glad Mom and Dad aren't around to see me charged
with Renata's death"

"Shoot. You think they'd bat an eye? Your mother
would be picketing the sheriff's office and threatening to
shoot Coleman." She laughed. "Your pa would be digging
through the evidence, looking for the one thing that
everyone else has overlooked."

She walked to the cabinets where so many of the family
albums were kept. "Might want to look over some things
from the past, Sarah Booth. Seems to me that whatever
grudge Renata held against you, it would have to come from
that year you were in New York. You've already figured
out you didn't have anything in common in the present"

"But-" It was pointless. Jitty had taken herself off to
the past or the future or wherever the ghostly cocktail
hour was being held.

I found myself reluctant to pull out the photo albums,
but I did it anyway. What else was I going to do? I couldn't
book a flight to Tahiti to find Renata's hideaway, because
I was still under my bond. I hoped that a search of Robert
Morgan's New York apartment or his credit card charges
would give us Renata's ultimate destination, but someone
else would have to do the legwork to prove that. What I
could do was examine the past.

I found the New York album, which I'd begun with
such great expectations. I'd gone to the Big Apple fresh
from three years of success in regional theatre. Reviews
of my work were terrific from San Diego to Boston. I'd
played vixens, killers, beguiled daughters, comic harri dans, angry mothers-the widest variety of work I could
get. I was ready to take New York.

The first picture shows me standing outside a sixthfloor walk-up apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan. The boxes containing all I'd need for my new life
are on the pavement around me and a moving crew hustles them up the stairs.

My fingers traced the features of my face as I tried to
connect with the young woman I saw in the photograph.
The picture was taken only a couple of years earlier, yet I
found it difficult to believe I had once been that woman.
She was touched by sadness, but there was also an optimism that I'd lost somewhere along the way.

I went through the preliminary photos quickly, stopping only when I got to the snapshots I'd requested at
'Night, Mother. There I'd been Renata's understudy, and I
had met Graf backstage after the show.

I'd given all the members of the crew disposable cameras and asked them to document the backstage moments. It was a goofy, naive thing to do, but the photos
had given me great pleasure as I'd dreamed of my coming
success. Renata had been a perfect bitch to me, but that
hadn't dampened my enthusiasm. I'd thought I could
learn something from her, and I'd endured her petty cruelties with that in mind.

I came to the photographs with Graf and studied them.
We made goo-goo eyes at each other right from the start.
Looking at the photos, I could see that I was helpless before his charm.

Within a week, we were inseparable. He was the male
lead in Same Time, Next Year, and we were backstage at
one or the other of the theatres. Even though I didn't have
a part, I was living the theatre life, just like I'd dreamed it. Hearing the applause for Graf was almost as good as
hearing it for myself. Or so I'd thought at the time.

I flipped the album pages, sinking deeper into the past.
One photo stopped me. Graf and I are kissing in the foreground. Renata is on stage, but she's looking at us. The
pure hatred aimed in our direction almost made me drop
the album. Funny, I'd looked at the photo numerous
times, but I'd never noticed her. I'd only seen Graf.

Was it possible that jealousy from so long ago could
motivate her to concoct such a plan for revenge? It just
rang hollow. The bottom line was that Renata had no reason to vent her jealous rage on me.

I picked up the phone to call Tinkie and stopped. With
any luck at all, Tinkie was asleep. My questions and concerns could wait until morning.

But other things couldn't. I got my jacket and my
hound and headed to the motel where Kristine Rolofson
was staying. I could only hope that I could catch her before she left town. I needed to talk to her.

The manager told me that she was still checked in, and
I went to her room, praying she'd forgotten about my last
visit. My luck wasn't that good. She opened the door to
my sharp knock, but as soon as she saw me, she tried to
slam it shut.

"I need your help. Please."

She eased back off the door. "Gabriel thinks you're insane. He's gone to get his things and then we're leaving.
Together."

"Please, Kristine. I need to ask a few questions."

"The sheriff said Gabriel and I could leave Zinnia."

"I know, but I need some answers before you go.
Please."