A Bone To Pick

The air was dead and hot inside Mother’s big home on Plantation Drive. I dashed up the stairs to my old room without thinking, then stood panting in the doorway trying to think of a good hiding place. I kept almost nothing here anymore, and this was really another guest bedroom now, but there might be something up in the closet.

There was: a zippered, pink plastic blanket bag in which Mother always stored the blue blankets for the twin beds in this room. No one would need to get blankets down in this weather. I pulled over the stool from the vanity table, climbed up on it, and unzipped the plastic bag. I took my Kroger bag, with its gruesome contents, and inserted it between the blankets. The bag would no longer zip with the extra bulk.

This was getting grotesque. Well, more grotesque.

I took out one of the blankets and doubled up the other one in half the blanket bag, leaving the other half for the skull. The bag zipped, and it didn’t look too lumpy, I decided. I pushed it to the back of the shelf.

Now all I had to dispose of was a blanket. The chest of drawers was only partially full of odds and ends; Mother kept two drawers empty for guests. I stuffed the blanket in one, slammed it shut, then pulled it right back open. She might need the drawer. John was moving all his stuff in when they got back from their honeymoon. I felt like sitting on the floor and bursting into tears. I stood holding the damn blanket indecisively, thinking wildly of burning it or taking it home with me. I’d rather have the blanket than the skull.

The bed, of course. The best place to hide a blanket is on a bed.

I stripped the bedspread off, pitched the pillow on the floor, and fitted the blanket smoothly on the mattress. In a few more minutes, the bed looked exactly like it had before.

I dragged myself out of Mother’s house and drove over to my own place. It seemed as though I’d gone two days without sleep, when in fact it was only now getting close to lunchtime. At least I didn’t have to go to work this afternoon.

I poured myself a glass of iced tea and for once loaded it with sugar. I sat in my favorite chair and sipped it slowly. It was time to think.

Fact One. Jane Engle had left a skull concealed in her house. She might not have told Bubba Sewell what she’d done, but she’d hinted to him that all was not well-but that I would handle it.

Question: How had the skull gotten in Jane’s house? had she murdered its-owner? occupant?

Question: Where was the rest of the skeleton?

Question: How long ago had the head been placed in the window seat?

Fact Two. Someone else knew or suspected that the skull was in Jane’s house. I could infer that this someone else was basically law-abiding since the searcher hadn’t taken the chance to steal anything or vandalize the house to any degree. The broken window was small potatoes compared with what could have been wreaked on Jane’s unoccupied house. So the skull was almost certainly the sole object of the search. Unless Jane had-horrible thought-something else hidden in her house?

Question: Would the searcher try again, or was he perhaps persuaded that the skull was no longer there? The yard had been searched, too, according to Torrance Rideout. I reminded myself to go in the backyard the next time I went to the house and see what had been done there.

Fact Three. I was in a jam. I could keep silent forever, throw the skull in a river, and try to forget I ever saw it; that approach had lots of appeal right now. Or I could take it to the police and tell them what I’d done. I could already feel myself shiver at the thought of Jack Burns’s face, to say nothing of the incredulity on Arthur’s. I heard myself stammer, “Well, I hid it at my mother’s house.” What kind of excuse could I offer for my strange actions? Even I could not understand exactly why I’d done what I’d done, except that I’d acted out of some kind of loyalty to Jane, influenced to some extent by all the money she’d left me.

Then and there, I pretty much ruled out going to the police unless something else turned up. I had no idea what my legal position was, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d done so far was so very bad legally. Morally was another question.

But I definitely had a problem on my hands.

At this inopportune moment the doorbell rang. It was a day of unwelcome interruptions. I sighed and went to answer it, hoping it was someone I wanted to see. Aubrey?

But the day continued its apparently inexorable downhill slide. Parnell Engle and his wife, Leah, were at my front door, the door no one ever uses because they’d have to park in the back-ten feet from my back door-and then walk all the way around the whole row of town houses to the front to ring the bell. Of course, that was what Parnell and Leah had done.

“Mr. Engle, Mrs. Engle,” I said. “Please come in.”

Parnell opened fire immediately. “What did we do to Jane, Miss Teagarden? Did she tell you what we did to her that offended her so much she left everything to you?”

I didn’t need this.

“Don’t you start, Mr. Engle,” I said sharply. “Just don’t you start. This is not a good day. You got a car, you got some money, you got Madeleine the cat. Just be glad of it and leave me alone.”

“We were Jane’s own blood kin-”

“Don’t start with me,” I snapped. I was simply beyond trying to be polite. “I don’t know why she left everything to me, but it doesn’t make me feel very lucky right now, believe me.”

“We realize,” he said with less whine and more dignity, “that Jane did express her true wishes in her will. We know that she was in her good senses up until the end and that she made her choice knowing what she was doing. We’re not going to contest the will. We just don’t understand it.”

“Well, Mr. Engle, neither do I.” Parnell would have had that skull at the police station in less time than it takes to talk about it. But it was good news that they weren’t small-minded enough to contest the will and thereby cause me endless trouble and heartache. I knew Lawrenceton. Pretty soon people would start saying, Well, why did Jane Engle leave everything to a young woman she didn’t even know very well? And speculation would run rampant; I couldn’t even imagine the things people would make up to explain Jane’s inexplicable legacy. People were going to talk anyway, but any dispute about the will would put a nasty twist on that speculation.

Looking at Parnell Engle and his silent wife, with their dowdy clothes and grievances, I suddenly wondered if I’d gotten the money to pay me for the inconvenience of the skull. What Jane had told Bubba Sewell might have been just a smoke screen. She may have read my character thoroughly, almost supernaturally thoroughly, and known I would keep her secret.

“Good-bye,” I said to them gently, and closed my front door slowly, so they couldn’t say I’d slammed it on them. I locked it carefully, and marched to my telephone. I looked up Bubba Sewell’s number and dialed. He was in and available, to my surprise.

“How’s things going, Miss Teagarden?” he drawled.

“Kind of bumpy, Mr. Sewell.”

“Sorry to hear that. How can I be of assistance?”

“Did Jane leave me a letter?”

“What?”

“A letter, Mr. Sewell. Did she leave me a letter, something I’m supposed to get after I’ve had the house a month, or something?”

“No, Miss Teagarden.”

“Not a cassette? No tape of any kind?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Did you see anything like that in the safe deposit box?”

“No, no, can’t say as I did. Actually, I just rented that box after Jane became so ill, to put her good jewelry in.”

“And she didn’t tell you what was in the house?” I asked carefully.

“Miss Teagarden, I have no idea what’s in Miss Engle’s house,” he said definitely. Very definitely.

I stopped, baffled. Bubba Sewell didn’t want to know. If I told him, he might have to do something about it, and I hadn’t yet decided what should be done.

“Thanks,” I said hopelessly. “Oh, by the way…” And I told him about Parnell and Leah’s visit.

“He said for sure they weren’t going to contest?”

“He said they knew that Jane was in her right mind when she made her will, that they just wanted to know why