That evening the doorbell rang just as I had eased off my shoes and rolled my panty hose down. I hastily yanked them off, pushed them under my chair, and stuck my bare feet into my shoes. I was a hot, wrinkled mess with a headache and a bad conscience.
Sergeant Jack Burns filled my doorway form side to side. His clothes were always heavy on polyester, and he had long Elvis sideburns, but nothing could detract from the air of menace that emanated from him in a steady stream. He was so used to projecting it that I think he might have been surprised if you had told him about it.
“May I come in?” he asked gently.
“Oh, of course,” I said, backing to one side.
“I come to ask you about the bones found today on Honor Street,” he said formally.
“Please come have a seat.”
“Thank you, I will, I been on my old feet all day,” he said in a courtly way. He let himself down on my couch, and I sat opposite him in my favorite chair.
“You just come in from work?”
“Yes, yes I did.”
“But you were at Jane Engle’s house on Honor Street today when the road crew found the skeleton.”
“Yes, I had come there on my lunch hour to feed the cat.”
He stared and waited. He was better at this than I was.
“Jane’s cat. Uh-she ran away from Parnell and Leah Engle and came back home, she had kittens in the closet. In Jane’s bedroom.”
“You know, you sure turn up a lot for a law-abiding citizen, Miss Teagarden. We hardly seem to have any homicides in Lawrenceton without you showing up. Seems mighty strange.”
“I would hardly call having inherited a house on the same street ‘mighty strange,’ Sergeant Burns,” I said bravely.
“Well, now you think about it,” he suggested in a reasonable voice. “Last year when we had those deaths, there you were. When we caught them that did it, there you were.”
About to get killed myself, I said, but only in my head, because you didn’t interrupt Sergeant Jack Burns.
“Then Miss Engle dies, and here you are on the street with a skeleton in the weeds, a street with a suspicious number of reported break-ins, including one in this house you just inherited.”
“A suspicious number of break-ins? Are you saying other people on Honor besides me have reported their house being entered?”
“Thaf s what I’m saying, Miss Teagarden.”
“And nothing taken?”
“Nothing the owner would admit to missing. Maybe the thief took some pornographic books or some other thing the homeowner would be embarrassed to report.”
“There certainly wasn’t anything like that in Jane’s house, I’m sure,” I said indignantly. Just an old skull with some holes in it. “It may be that something was missing, I wouldn’t know. I only saw the house after the burglary. Ah-who else reported their houses had been broken into?”
Jack Burns actually looked surprised before he looked suspicious.
“Everyone, now. Except that old couple in the end house on the other side of the street. Now, do you know anything about the bones found today?”
“Oh, no. I just happened along when they were discovered. You know, I’ve only been in the house a few times, and I’ve never stayed there. I only visited Jane, over the past couple of years. Before she went into the hospital.”
“I think,” Jack Burns said heavily and unfairly, “this is one mystery the police department can handle, Miss Teagarden. You keep your little bitty nose out of it.”
“Oh,” I said furiously, “I will, Sergeant.” And as I rose to show him out, my heel caught on the balled-up panty hose under my chair and dragged them out for Jack Burns’s viewing.
He gave them a look of scorn, as if they’d been sleazy sexual aids, and departed with his awful majesty intact. If he had laughed, he would’ve been human.
NINE
I’d only had half a cup of coffee the next morning when the phone rang. I’d gotten up late after an uneasy sleep. I’d dreamed the skull was under my bed and Jack Burns was sitting in a chair by the bed interrogating me while I was in my nightgown. I was sure somehow he would read my mind and bend over to look under the bed; and if he did that I was doomed. I woke up just as he was lifting the bedspread.
After I’d poured my coffee, made my toast, and retrieved my Lawrenceton
I picked up the phone, convinced the call was bad news, so I was pleasantly surprised to here Amina’s mom on the other end. As it turned out, my original premise was correct.
“Good morning, Aurora! It’s Joe Nell Day.”
“Hi, Miss Joe Nell. How you doing?” Amina bravely called my mother “Miss Aida.”
“Just fine, thanks, honey. Listen, Amina called me last night to tell me they’ve moved the wedding day up.”
I felt a chill of sheer dismay. Here we go again, I thought gloomily. But this was Amina’s mother. I stretched my mouth into a smile so my voice would match. “Well, Miss Joe Nell, they’re both old enough to know what they’re doing,” I said heartily.
“I sure hope so,” she said from the heart. “I’d sure hate Amina to go through another divorce.”
“No, not going to happen,” I said, offering reassurance I didn’t feel. “This is going to be the one.”
“We’ll pray about it,” Miss Joe Nell said earnestly. “Amina’s daddy is fit to be tied. We haven’t even met this young man yet.”
“You liked her first husband,” I said. Amina would always marry someone nice. It was staying that way that was the problem. What was this guy’s name? Hugh Price. “She had so many positive things to tell me about Hugh.” He was positively good-looking, he was positively rich, he was positively good in bed. I hoped he wasn’t positively shallow. I hoped Amina really loved him. I wasn’t too concerned about him loving Amina; I took that as an easy accomplishment since I loved her.
“Well, they’re both veterans of the divorce wars, so they should know what they want and don’t want. Anyway, why I called you, Aurora, moving up the wedding day means you need to come in and get fitted for your bridesmaid’s dress.”
“Am I the only one?” I hoped desperately I could wear something personally becoming rather than something that was supposed to look good on five or six different females of varying builds and complexions.
“Yes,” said Miss Joe Nell with open relief. “Amina wants you to come down and pick what you want as long as it will look good with her dress, which is mint green.”
Not white. I was kind of surprised. Since Amina had decided to send out invitations and have a larger wedding because her first one was so hole-in-the-wall, I’d felt she’d do the whole kit and caboodle. I was relieved to hear she was moderating her impulse.
“Sure, I can come in this morning,” I said obligingly. “I don’t have to work today.”
“Oh, that’s just great! I’ll see you then.”
This was when your mother owning a dress shop was really convenient. There was sure to be something at Great Day that would suit me. If not, Miss Joe Nell would find something.
When I went upstairs to get dressed, on impulse I turned into the back bedroom, the guest room. The only guest who’d ever slept in it had been my little half brother Phillip when he used to come spend an occasional weekend with me. Now he was all the way in California; our father and his mother had wanted to get him as far away from me and Lawrenceton as possible, so he wouldn’t have to remember what had happened to him here. While he was staying with me.
I fought off drearily familiar feelings of guilt and pain, and flung open the closet door. In this closet I kept the
