All my bones, p.3
All My Bones, page 3
“Rose was a gossip,” she volunteered immediately.
“I know,” I agreed, “but I was a reader, and years of backstage bibliophilia produced in me a nearly insufferable degree of useless etymological knowledge.”
“Not to mention the ability to produce such dazzling sentences as that,” she said.
“Exactly.” I sat back. “But my point is that you say looney bin, I think, to preempt anyone else’s judgment or derision. Like a kid who’s funny first to keep other kids from making fun.”
“Hmm,” she fussed. “It would appear that you may have read a psychology book on one of your backstage literary expeditions. And anyway, Whispering Pines is more spa than bin, so maybe you’re right.”
We could have gone on like that for hours. Lively, odd conversation was the glue that bound us. But Jennifer appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Sorry,” she began, “but Miss Mae Etta has a question and I can’t quite give her the answer she wants.”
“Mae Etta?” Phil whispered. “From the diner?”
“I saw her on the porch,” I said, standing. “I wondered what she was doing here.”
I followed Jennifer out of the kitchen and into the shop. Rose had created the original organizational system, a haphazard blend of chaos and personal preferences. I’d tried to make things a little more coherent, but I hadn’t had much success.
Essentially each downstairs room in the house was supposed to be its own kingdom. For example, the dining room was supposed to be the mystery section, but there were also two cases of poetry, and an entire wall was dedicated to Rose’s extensive record collection. The parlor, where the cash box and desk sat, was mostly for contemporary books of fiction and nonfiction. In the study: history, biography, and older nonfiction.
But Mae Etta was standing in the tiny room—had it been a second pantry, or maybe a very large linen closet?—filled with rare books and first editions. Books that weren’t for sale; you could only look at them in the shop. Rose always called it “the private library.” I had often asked her why she wouldn’t put all those expensive volumes somewhere upstairs where they wouldn’t be disturbed, but no answer ever materialized.
Mae Etta saw me coming.
“I want one of these books,” she said. “And this little girl won’t sell it to me.”
Her voice always sounded a little like ice cracking. Her hair was in its usual bun. Her plain brown dress reached halfway down her shins. It was a warm day, but she was wearing a heavy gray cardigan. And her glasses hung around her neck thanks to a beaded necklace she always wore.
“I told her those books weren’t for sale,” Jennifer whispered to me.
“What is it you’re looking for?” I asked Mae Etta.
“I got a great-granddaughter in Omega who likes to read,” she said impatiently. “I say God bless that.”
“Amen,” I agreed.
“And for some reason she likes these Wizard of Oz books,” she went on. “You got a bunch of them in the back corner there. I want one.”
“Okay,” I said as I arrived at her side. “Those are all first editions. And it’s a complete set. So—”
“She wants Ozma of Oz,” she snapped. “You got it back there.”
That was the third in the series. While Dorothy is traveling to Australia, she’s washed overboard and lands in Ev, a country separated from Oz by a desert. In that desert they meet Tik-Tok, a mechanical man, and Princess Ozma. They all save the royal family and return triumphantly to Oz.
“Right,” I said. “That one runs anywhere from eight hundred to twenty-five hundred.”
Mae Etta clutched her cardigan. “Dollars?”
I nodded.
“For a book?”
“For a first edition,” Jennifer intervened. “But as I was trying to tell you, ma’am, I can order you a very nice replica of that same book for about thirty-five. Hardcover.”
Mae Etta looked back and forth between me and Jennifer a couple of times.
“Why do you have those books back there, then?” she asked me. “If you won’t sell them, and if they’re that valuable—I don’t understand this.”
“Rose,” I said as a complete explanation.
Jennifer nodded and shrugged.
Mae Etta pulled her cardigan around herself and charged toward the desk in the other room.
“Come on, then,” she called to Jennifer over her shoulder. “Order me that thirty-five-dollar thing. I’ll give it to her at Christmas, I guess.”
Jennifer bounded to Mae Etta’s side and turned on her best sorority-girl demeanor. “Is she your only great-granddaughter?”
Mae Etta offered a curt single nod. “There’s two boys but they’re both idiots. Felicia’s the only one worth a toot.”
“Felicia?” Jennifer cooed. “I like that name.”
And with that they were gone into the other room.
A moment later Phil wandered in, coffee in hand.
“What did Billy Sanders say?” she asked me.
“Say? You mean about the bones we found?”
She sipped. “I mean, did he have any ideas?”
“There was some talk,” I told her, “about the legality of burying a family member in your own yard.”
“But wouldn’t that have been in the backyard?” she asked me. “I sometimes told Rose that I’d like to be buried out there in the back by the azaleas.”
“I prefer cremation for myself,” I said.
I heard arguing voices on the front porch. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but it sounded like the argument was about to escalate.
“I want a large ceremony of some sort,” Phil mused. “Not anything especially religious. I’ve spoken with Gloria about it.”
“Could we change the subject,” I said, headed for the front porch. “I think we’ve got enough naturally occurring death and dying around here without projecting into the future about, you know…”
“Yes.” That’s all she said.
The voices on the porch were louder, so I picked up my pace a little. They sounded official. They weren’t student voices or even curiosity seekers. I had the impression that they were older men with a notion that they had authority. Like rich businessmen or upper-level law enforcement. And I heard just enough of what they were saying to be on my guard.
I opened my front door to discover two middle-aged men in dark JCPenney suits. One was on the porch peering down, the other was in the yard, standing in the hole where the bones had been buried.
So I turned on my irritated small-town homeowner voice.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” I snarled. “And would you mind keeping your voices down in my place of business?”
Both men turned my way.
The one on the porch said, “Are you Madeline Brimley?”
“I am,” I confirmed curtly.
The guy on the ground nodded and hauled out his wallet.
“Georgia Bureau of Investigation, ma’am,” he said softly, holding up his badge. “Is there someplace we could have a word that won’t disturb your customers?”
“That was quick,” Phil muttered, standing at my left elbow.
“Perhaps you’d care to join me in the backyard,” I said.
“The gazebo is very pleasant,” Phil volunteered.
The men looked at each other; the one on the ground sighed.
“Gazebo?” he said.
“We can sit out there away from the curiosity seekers and the impressionable students,” I said.
But I was thinking about how difficult it would be for these men to intimidate me, or Philomena, if we were all sitting outside in the middle of my garden.
“It’s around this way,” I suggested.
I came off the porch, nodded at the man with the badge in his hand, and headed around the house toward the backyard garden. The men followed, and Philomena brought up the rear.
It had turned into a very pleasant April morning, seventy degrees and a pleasant easterly wind. As we came closer to the gazebo, the scent of juniper, momentarily aloft on the breeze, filled the air.
One of the men behind me said, “Nice garden.”
I turned. He was gazing at the azaleas.
“I was going to put some azaleas like those in the front yard,” I said, veering into the gazebo and taking a seat. “But I decided on roses instead. That’s why we were digging there yesterday.”
The one who’d shown me his badge stepped into the gazebo and appeared to be about to speak, but Phil beat him to it.
“Could we see everyone’s badge, please?” she asked.
She only sounded curious, not irritated—almost like it would be fun to see another badge.
The other man produced their credentials; the one with me in the gazebo sat down.
The original gazebo had been built in the nineteenth century by the first owners of the house, railway magnates. Rebuilt, it was still seven-sided, for luck, and had been painted red for prosperity. Waist-high railings acted as backing for the wraparound benches inside. The roof was delicately curved outward seven times, one for each side, and decked with slate roof tiles. The ceiling inside was painted with clouds and blue sky, exactly the way it had been before Philomena burned it down.
“Ma’am—” the first GBI investigator began.
“This has got to be some kind of record,” I interrupted.
“Record?” he asked me.
“We found those bones less than twenty-four hours ago, and we already have the GBI on the case? Seems really fast, like Dr. Waldrop said.”
He stared at Phil. “You’re Dr. Waldrop?”
She smiled. “That’s me.”
“Okay. We were notified late last night by the coroner in Tifton,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, my voice still edged in annoyance.
“Well,” he began, “the local law enforcement officer who discovered the remains—”
“I discovered the remains,” I told him. “Along with an Episcopal priest.”
“That would be Gloria Coleman?”
“Uh-huh,” I answered. “Why did the coroner call the GBI?”
“As I was saying,” he told me calmly, “local law enforcement officially requested our help, through the office of the coroner in Tifton. Local agencies may seek GBI assistance in a case of limited resources or expertise, which Officer Sanders believes is the case, so he called our office in Sylvester.”
We all settled into the gazebo.
“I don’t understand why Billy would request your help with a case like this,” I continued.
“A case like what, ma’am?” he asked me.
“We were thinking,” Phil intervened, “that some family member was interred in the yard by the distant relatives of the current owner, to wit: Madeline.”
I threw her a look. “‘To wit’?”
“He was using such official-sounding language,” she whispered. “I thought I should too.”
“So you haven’t been notified,” the second man spoke up at last.
“Notified of what?” I asked him.
“The medical examiner does not believe this is a case of home burial,” the second man answered.
“What is it, then?” Phil asked before I could.
“Well, ma’am,” the first man said calmly, looking between Phil and me. “According to the medical examiner, this was most likely a murder.”
4
“THAT’S NOT REALLY such a shock,” I said right back to Mr. GBI. “Billy noticed that the person buried in my yard had a broken neck. We all saw it.”
“Which could have happened from a fall down the steps,” Phil interjected.
“But it didn’t,” Mr. GBI said plainly. “There was also a sizable dent in the back of the skull.”
“Somebody hit somebody in the head hard enough to break their neck?” I asked. “On my front porch?”
“Do you mind my asking your names, gentlemen?” Phil chimed in suddenly.
“Baxter,” said the man we’d been talking with.
“Baker,” the other one said, nearly at the same time.
“Well, Baxter-Baker,” I began, “what I’d like—”
“The tests have determined that the incident happened a little more than six months ago, before you moved in,” said Baxter.
“While your aunt Rose was in the hospital or after she was dead, and the house was unoccupied,” Baker added. “Officer Sanders informed us of that.”
I realized that they were telling me I wasn’t a suspect. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might think I was. So I really didn’t feel like telling them about Tandy Fletcher, who had been living in the house during the time Rose was in the hospital, and who had been murdered just inside the door. I did wonder—for about half a second—if Tandy had known anything about the broken-neck burial. But I dismissed it just as quickly. She would have told me.
“Do we know who the poor soul was?” Phil asked. “The victim, I mean.”
“We do,” said Baker. But that was all.
After a beat of silence that lasted a little too long, I asked, “Will you tell us who it was?”
They looked at each other for a second, then Baxter shook his head.
“We need to do a little more research before we get into that,” he said.
“Into what, exactly?” I wanted to know.
“This is an open investigation,” Baker said, sounding a little irritated. “We really don’t give out details at this point.”
“The person’s name isn’t really a detail,” Phil protested. “What if it’s someone we knew? What if it was one of Madeline’s family? Or someone Rose knew?”
“You used dental records,” I said. “That’s what they always do on television.”
“They do that in real life too,” Baxter acknowledged.
But again that was all he said.
I sat back. “Still curious about the speed of your investigation.”
“How do you mean, exactly?” Baker asked.
“We just found the remains yesterday. Is there something about this particular situation that merits such snappy service?”
Baker took in a deep breath. “For one thing, the Sylvester office of the GBI rarely gets involved with local crimes, even murder. So when we do, we do it pretty quick.”
“Because you ordinarily don’t have much to do?” Phil asked innocently.
“When that young woman was murdered here in your bookshop last year,” Baxter said patiently, “we weren’t even notified. So this situation here is already an unusual circumstance.”
“But frankly, the main reason for this,” Baker concluded, “is Officer Sanders.”
I didn’t understand the sentence. Most of the time I still pictured Billy Sanders as being eight years old, with his Kermit the Frog T-shirt and his bright-red flip-flops. My face must have betrayed that confusion because Baxter piped up.
“Millie Sanders is our office manager at the Sylvester office,” he said.
“She’s Billy’s aunt,” Baker added.
“She runs our office,” Baxter went on softly, “no matter what the director thinks.”
“Billy called Millie,” Baker concluded, “and Millie called us.”
“Billy and Millie.” Phil smiled. “Now there’s a television show. Crime-fighting nephew and aunt! I’d watch that.”
“The point is,” Baxter interjected, “that Billy alerted Millie to the situation after he got the coroner’s report and he found out the victim’s identity.”
“Which you don’t seem to want to tell us,” I pressed.
Before either of the detectives could answer, Jennifer called out to me from the back door of the house.
“Madeline? There’s a problem.”
I nodded and stood.
“Okay,” I answered, then lowered my voice. “Will you gentlemen excuse me? I have a shop to run.”
Phil jumped up. “I’ll go with you.”
And before either of the men from the GBI could completely get to their feet, Phil and I were off.
“Why are you being so harsh with those men?” Phil asked me, her voice lowered to a barely audible level. “They seem nice enough.”
I stopped, turned around, and called to the men in the gazebo.
“By the way,” I asked, “what were you two arguing about on my front porch?”
Baxter answered. “I wanted to shut this place down. It’s a crime scene.”
“I thought you should stay open,” Baker said, “because we don’t usually shut down a cold case scene.”
“And you won,” I said to Baker.
He shook his head. “We weren’t through arguing when you came out on the porch.”
I looked at Phil. “That’s why I was being harsh.”
“I see,” Phil whispered. “You think they might close us down.”
“Over my dead body,” I told her, heading for the back door once more.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she admonished, following me. “Don’t we have enough of those in this house as it is?”
* * *
THE problem in the shop was, as it turned out, unusual; it involved Cannonball. Cannonball was a cat the size of a badger whose agility defied his girth. He had managed to get himself on a top shelf in the “private library” room. Then, unable or unwilling to find a way down, he had begun to yowl like a prehistoric animal dropped in hot water. It was alarming the customers.
Once I hit the back door I could hear the racket.
I turned to Philomena. “Feline difficulties.”
She nodded.
I went through the kitchen, into the shop, and over to the source of the hideous brouhaha, to wit: Cannonball.
“What are you doing?” I said to him.
He stopped his noise and glared down at me, clearly expecting me to fetch him.
“You got yourself up there,” I told him. “Get yourself down. Come on.”
He extended his paw, steadied himself for some sort of jump, but abandoned the thought almost immediately and sat back, waiting for me to do something.
