A Bone To Pick Part 11

I pointed a shaky finger at Lynn. I didn't blame him for thinking I'd been seriously hurt; I was covered with smears of blood, some of it Lynn's, some of it Torrance's, a little of it mine.

"Are you all right?"

I looked to the source of the voice and found I was standing next to Torrance.

This was so strange.

"I'll be okay," I said wearily.

"I'm sorry. I was never cut out to be a criminal." I thought of the inept break-ins, Torrance not even taking anything to make them look like legitimate burglaries. I nodded.

"Why did you do it?" I asked him.

Suddenly his face hardened and tightened all over. "I just did," he said."So when Jane dug up the skull, you dug up the rest of the body and put the bones by the dead end sign?"

"I knew no one would clean up that brush for years," he said. "And I was right.I was too scared to carry the bones in my trunk, even for a little while. I wailed till the next night when Macon went over to Carey's, and I carried the bones in a plastic bag through his backyard and up the far side of his house; then it was just a few feet to the brush.. .no one saw me that time. I was so sure whoever had taken the skull would call the police. I waited. Then I realized whoever had the skull just wanted... to have it. For me to squirm. I had almost forgotten that trouble about the tree. Jane was so ladylike. I never believed..."

"And he never told me about it," said Marcia, to his left. "He never let me worry, too." She looked at him fondly.

"So, what did you do it for?" I asked Torrance. "Did he make a pa.s.s at Marcia?"

"Well...," said Torrance hesitantly.

"Oh, honey," Marcia said reproving. She leaned over to me, smiling a little at a man's silly gesture. "He didn't do it," she told me. "I did it." "You killed Mark Kaplan and buried him out in the yard?"

"Oh, Torrance buried him when I told him what I'd done." "Oh," I said inadequately, swallowed by her wide blue eyes. "You killed him because-?"

"He came over while Torrance was gone." She shook her head sadly as she told me.

"And I had thought he was such a nice person. But he wasn't. He was very dirty."

I nodded, just to be responding somehow.

"Mike Osland, too," Marcia ran on, still shaking her head at the perfidy of men.

I felt suddenly very, very cold. Torrance closed his eyes in profound weariness.

"Mike," I murmured interrogatively.

"He's under the sun deck, that's why Torrance built it, I think," Marcia said earnestly. "Jane didn't know about him."

"She's confessing," said an incredulous hoa.r.s.e voice.I turned from Marcia's mesmerizing eyes to see that Jack Burns was sitting on his haunches in front of me.

"Did she just confess to a murder?" he asked me.

"Two," I said.

"Two murders," he repeated. He took his turn at head shaking. I would have to find someone at whom I could shake my head incredulously. "She just confessed two murders to you. How do you do if?"

Faced by his round, hot eyes, I became aware that I was in a torn and disheveled and rather skimpy-at-the-top nightgown that had become quite soiled in the course of the night. I was definitely reminded that I was not Jack Burns's favorite person. I wondered how much Lynn would remember of what she'd overheard while she was having the baby-was it possible she would remember my telling Torrance that I knew the whereabouts of the skull?Lynn was being carried out on a stretcher now. I presumed that the afterbirth had been delivered and disposed of. I hoped I wouldn't find it on the bathroom floor or something.

"This man," I told Jack Burns, as I pointed to Torrance, "broke into my house tonight."

"Are you hurt?" asked Sergeant Burns, with reluctant professional solicitude.

I turned to look in Torrance Rideout's eyes. "No," I said clearly. "Not at all.

And I have no idea why he broke in here or what he was looking for." Torrance's eyes showed a slow recognition. And, to my amazement, he winked at me when Jack Burns turned away to call his cohorts over.After an eternity, every single person was gone from Jane's house but me, its owner. What do you do after a night you've had a burglary, been battered, delivered a baby, and nearly been mown down by the entire detective force of Lawrenceton, Georgia? Also, I continued enumerating as I hauled the remains of the nightgown over my head, heard a confession of double murder and had your scarcely covered bosom ogled by the same detectives who had been about to mow you down minutes earlier?

Well. I was going to take a hot, hot bath to soak my bruises and strains. I was going to calm a nearly berserk Madeleine, who was crouching in a corner of the bedroom closet hoping she was concealed underneath a blanket I'd thrown in there. Madeleine, as it happened, did not react well to home invasion. Then, possibly, I could put my tired carca.s.s back between the cool sheets and sleep a little.

There'd be h.e.l.l to pay in the morning.

My mother would call.

But I only slept four hours. When I woke it was eight o'clock, and I lay in bed and thought for a moment.

Then I was up and brus.h.i.+ng my teeth, pulling back on my shorts set from the night before. I managed to get a brush through my hair, which had been damp from the tub when I'd fallen asleep the night before. I let Madeleine out and back in-she seemed calm again-and then it was time to get to Wal-Mart.I walked in as the doors were unlocked and found what I was looking for after a talk with a salesperson.

I stopped in at the town house and got out my box of gift wrap.At Mother's house both cars were gone. I'd finally gotten a break. I used my key one last time; I never would again now that John lived here, too. I sped up the stairs and got the old blanket bag out of the closet and left the gift-wrapped blanket bag on the kitchen table on my way out. I left my key by it.Quickly out to my car then, and speeding back to the house on Honor.

Another stroke of luck; no police cars at the Rideouts' yet.I went out the back kitchen door and looked around as carefully as Torrance Rideout must have the night he buried Mark Kaplan, the night he buried Mike Osland. But this was daylight, far more dangerous. I'd counted cars as I pulled into my own driveway: Lynn's car was at the house across the street, Arthur's was gone. That figured; he was at the hospital with his wife and his baby.I did falter then. But I reached up and slapped myself on the cheek. This was no time to get weepy.

The elderly Inces were not a consideration. I peered over to Carey Osland's house. Her car was home. She must have been told of the confession by Marcia Rideout that Mike Osland was in the Rideouts' backyard. I could only hope that Carey didn't decide to come look personally.

As I started across my backyard, I had to smother an impulse to crouch and run, or slither on my belly. The pink blanket bag seemed so conspicuous. But I just couldn't bring myself to open it and carry the bare skull in my hands. Besides, I'd already rubbed my prints off. I got to the sun deck with no one shouting, "Hey! What are you doing?" and took a few deep breaths. Now hurry, I told myself, and unzipped the bag, grabbed the thing inside by hooking a finger through the jaw, and, trying not to look at it, I rolled it as far as I could under the deck. I was tempted to climb the steps to the deck, look between the boards, and see if the skull showed from on top. But instead I turned and walked quickly back to my own yard, praying that no one had noticed my strange behavior. I was still clutching the zip bag. Once inside, I glanced in the bag to check that no traces were left of the skull's presence, and folded one of Jane's blankets, zipped it inside, and shoved the bag to the back of the shelf in one of the guest bedroom closets. Then I sat at the little table in the kitchen, and out the window toward the Rideouts' I saw men starting to take apart the sun deck.

I had just made it.

I shook all over. I put my head in my hands and cried.After a while, that seemed to dry up, and I felt limp and tired. I made a pot of coffee and sat at the table and drank it while I watched the men demolish the deck and find the skull. After the hubbub that caused was over and after the skull had been placed carefully in a special bag of some kind (which actually made me smile a little), the men began digging. It was hot, and they all sweated, and I saw Sergeant Burns glance over to my house as though he'd like to come ask me a few questions, but I'd answered them all the night before. All I was ever going to answer.

Then one of the men gave a shout, and the others gathered round, and I decided maybe I wouldn't watch anymore. At noon the phone rang, and it was my mother, thanking me crisply for the lovely new blanket storage bag and reminding me that we were going to eat dinner together and have a long talk."Sure, Mom," I said, and sighed. I was sore and stiff; maybe she would cut it short. "Mom, tomorrow I'm going to come in and list this house." Well, that was business. That was different. Or maybe not. "I'll list it myself," she promised meaningfully, and hung up.The phone was on the wall by the letter rack and the calendar, a sensible and convenient arrangement. I stood staring blankly at the letter rack for a few seconds, finally taking down a charity appeal, pulling out the begging letter, looking it over, throwing it away. I took out another letter, which should have been a bill from the bug-spray people by the envelope.. .why didn't Bubba Sewell have it? He should have all the bills. But the stamp had been canceled months before.

Suddenly I knew what this was, knew even as I shook the paper out of the slit that it was not going to be a bill from Orkin.

Of course: "The Purloined Letter." Jane liked cla.s.sics.

"On a Wednesday night in the summer, four years ago," the letter began abruptly, .

I, Jane Engle, was sitting in my backyard. It was very late because I had insomnia, and I often sit in the garden in the dark when I have insomnia. It was about midnight, when I saw Mark Kaplan, the Rideouts' boarder, go to Marcia's back door and knock. I could see him clearly in the floodlight the Rideouts have at their back door. Marcia always leaves it on all night when Torrance is out of town. Marcia came to the door, and Mark Kaplan, right away, attacked her. I believe he had been drinking, that he had a bottle in his hand, but I am not sure. Before I could go to her help, she somehow knocked him down, and I saw her grab something from her kitchen counter and hit Mark Kaplan on the back of the head with it. I am not sure what she picked up, but I think it was a hammer.Then I became aware another car had pulled up into the Rideouts' carport, and realized that Torrance had come home.

I went inside, thinking that soon I would hear police cars and I would have to talk to the police about what I'd seen. So I changed into my regular clothes-I'd had my nightgown on-and sat in the kitchen and waited in the dark for something to happen.

Instead of police cars, sirens, and whatnot, I saw Torrance come out in a few minutes with a tablecloth. Clearly something body size was wrapped in it, and I was sure it was Mark Kaplan. Torrance proceeded over to their old garden plot, and began to dig. I stayed awake the rest of the night, watching him. I didn't call the police, though I gave it some thought. I knew what testifying in court could do to Marcia Rideout, who has never been any too stable. Also, Mark Kaplan did attack her, and I knew it.

So I said nothing.

But a little over a year and a half later, I got into a dispute with Torrance over my tree, from which he arrogantly trimmed some branches. Every time I looked out my kitchen window, the tree looked worse. So I did something I'm not proud of. I waited till the Rideouts were both out of town, and I went over in the night and dug where I'd seen Torrance dig many months before. It took me three nights, since I am an old woman, but I reached the skull. I removed it and brought it home with me. And I left the hole open, to be sure Torrance knew someone had the head, someone knew.

I am truly not proud of this. Now I am too sick to put the skull back, and I am too afraid of Torrance to just give it to him. And I have been thinking of Mike Osland; he disappeared before Mark Kaplan was killed, and I remember seeing him look at Marcia at parties. I think now that Marcia, just a little eccentric on the surface, is actually quite disturbed, and I think Torrance knows this; and yet he goes on with his life as though by denying she needs special care, she will get better.

I am too close to my own death to worry about this anymore. If my lawyer finds this, he must do as he thinks best: I don't care what people say about me when I am gone. If Roe finds this, she must do as pleases her. The skull is in the window seat.

Jane Engle .

I looked down at the paper in my hands, then refolded it. Without really considering it, I began shredding the letter, first in halves, then quarters, then thirds, until finally I had a little pile of confetti on the counter. I gathered it all up and dropped it down the sink, running the water and starting the disposal. After it had rumbled for a moment, I turned off the water and carefully checked all the other letters in the rack. They were exactly what they seemed.

I looked at Jane's calendar, still turned to two months before. I took it down and flipped it to the right page and hung it back up. It was perfectly blank.The strangest thing about not having a job was that it made the whole week so shapeless. I wasn't even taking a day off from anything. Suddenly emptiness spread out in front of me like a slippery ramp. Surely there was something I had to do?

Sure there was. I shook my head in horror. I'd almost forgotten that today was the day I was supposed to pick up my altered bridesmaid's dress.Miss Joe Nell would have had a fit if I'd forgotten.

And then I knew what I'd do tomorrow.

I'd start looking for my own house.

I detoured by the cemetery on my way to Great Day. I walked up the little hill to Jane's headstone, already in place. If Bubba Sewell could get things done that fast, perhaps he was worth voting for. Feeling stupid and sentimental, I stared at the headstone for a few seconds. This had been a dumb idea. Finally, I said, "Okay, I'm going to enjoy it."

I hadn't come out to the cemetery to do this. I could've talked to Jane from anywhere. A trickle of sweat tickled my spine. "Thanks a lot," I said, hoping I didn't sound sarcastic. "But don't do me any more favors," I told the stone, and began laughing.

I got back in my car and went to pick up the bridesmaid's dress.

Also by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare's Christmas

Shakespeare's Champion

Dead Over Heels

Shakespeare's Landlord

The Julius House

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

A Bone to Pick

Real Murders

A Secret Rage

Sweet and Deadly