Charlaine Harris - A Bone To Pick

“What you doing?” asked a voice behind me curiously.

I gasped and jumped.

A little girl stood behind me. She was maybe seven or eight or even a little older, and she was wearing shorts and a pink T-shirt. She had chin-length, wavy, dark hair and big dark eyes and glasses.

“I’m sitting,” I said tensely. “What are you doing?”

“My mom sent me over to ask you if you could come drink some coffee with her.”

“Who’s your mom?”

Now that was funny, someone not knowing who her mom was.

“Carey Osland.” She giggled. “In that house right there,” she pointed, obviously believing she was dealing with a mentally deficient person.

The Osland backyard was almost bare of bushes or any concealment at all. There was a swing set and a sandbox; I could see the street to the other side of the house easily.

This was the child who had needed diapers the night her father left the house and never returned.

“Yes, I’ll come,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Linda. Well, come on.”

So I followed Linda Osland over to her mother’s house, wondering what Carey had to say.

Carey, I decided after a while, had just been being hospitable.

She’d gone the afternoon before to pick up Linda from camp, had spent Sunday morning washing Linda’s shorts and shirts, which had been indescribably filthy, had listened to all Linda’s camp stories, and now was ready for some adult companionship. Macon, she told me, was out playing golf at the country club. She said it like she had a right to know his whereabouts at all times and like other people should realize that. So, if their relationship had had its clandestine moments, it was moving out into the open. I noticed that she didn’t say anything about their getting married, and didn’t hint that was in the future.

Maybe they were happy just like they were.

It would be a great thing, not to want to get married. I sighed, I hoped imperceptibly, and asked Carey about Jane.

“I feel myself wanting to get to know her better now,” I said, with a what-can-you-do? shrug.

“Well, Jane was a different kettle of fish,” Carey said, with a lift of her dark brows.

“She was an old meanie,” Linda said suddenly. She’d been sitting at the table cutting out paper doll clothes.

“Linda,” her mother admonished, without any real scolding in her voice.

“Well, remember, Mama, how mad she got at Burger King!”

I tried to look politely baffled.

Carey’s pretty, round face looked a little peeved for just a second. “More coffee?” she asked.

“Yes, thanks,” I said, to gain more time before I had to go.

Carey poured and showed no sign of explaining Linda’s little remark.

“Jane was a difficult neighbor?” I asked tentatively.

“Oh.” Carey sighed with pursed lips. “I wish Linda hadn’t brought that up. Honey, you got to learn to forget unpleasant things and old fights, it doesn’t pay to remember stuff like that.”

Linda nodded obediently and went back to her scissors.

“Burger King was our dog; Linda named him of course,” Carey explained reluctantly. “We didn’t keep him on a leash, I know we should have, and of course our backyard isn’t fenced in…”

I nodded encouragingly.

“Naturally, he eventually got run over, I’m ashamed of us even having an outside dog without having a fence,” Carey confessed, shaking her head at her own negligence. “But Linda did want a pet, and she’s allergic to cats.”

“I sneeze and my eyes get red,” Linda explained.

“Yes, honey. Of course, we had the dog when Jane had just gotten her cat, and of course Burger King chased Madeleine every time Jane let her out, which wasn’t too often, but every now and then…” Carey lost her thread.

“The dog treed the cat?” I suggested helpfully.

“Oh yes, and barked and barked,” Carey said ruefully. “It was a mess. And Jane got so mad about it.”

“She said she would call the pound,” Linda chimed in. “Because there’s a leash law and we were breaking it.”

“Well, honey, she was right,” Carey said. “We were.”

“She didn’t have to be so mean about it,” Linda insisted.

“She was a little shirty,” Carey said confidentially to me. “I mean, I know I was at fault, but she really went off the deep end.”

“Oh dear,” I murmured.

“I’m surprised Linda remembers any of this because it was a long time ago. Years, I guess.”

“So did Jane end up calling the animal control people?”

“No, no. Poor Burger got hit by a car over on Faith, right here to the side of the house, very soon after that. So now we have Waldo here”-and the tip of her slipper poked the dachshund affectionately-“and we walk him three or four times a day. It’s not much of a life for him, but it’s the best we can do.”

Waldo snored contentedly.

“Speaking of Madeleine, she came home,” I told Carey.

“She did! I thought Parnell and Leah picked her up from the vet’s where she’d been boarded while Jane was sick?”

“Well, they did, but Madeleine wanted to be at her own house. As it turns out, she was expecting.”

Linda and Carey both exclaimed over that, and I regretted telling them after a moment, because of course Linda wanted to see the little kitties and her mother did not want the child to cough and weep all afternoon.

“I’m sorry, Carey,” I said as I took my leave.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carey insisted, though I am sure she wished I had kept my mouth shut. “It’s just one of those things Linda has to learn to live with. I sure hope someday I can afford to fence the backyard, I’ll get her a Scottie puppie, I swear I will. A friend of mine raises them, and those are the cutest puppies in the world. Like little walking shoe brushes.”

I considered the cute factor of walking shoe brushes as I went through Carey’s backyard to my own. Carey’s yard was so open to view it was hard to imagine where a body could have been buried on her property, but I couldn’t exclude Carey either; her yard might not have been so bare a few years before.

I could be rid of all this by getting in my car and driving to the police station, I reminded myself. And for a moment I was powerfully tempted.

And I’ll tell you what stopped me: not loyalty to Jane, not keeping faith with the dead; nothing so noble. It was my fear of Sergeant Jack Burns, the terrifying head of the detectives. The sergeant, I had observed in my previous contacts with him, burned for truth the way other men burn for a promotion or a night with Michelle Pfeiffer.

He wouldn’t be happy with me.

He would want to nail me to the wall.

I would keep the skull a secret a little longer.

Maybe somehow I could wriggle out of this with a clear conscience. That didn’t seem possible at this moment, but then it hadn’t seemed possible someone would die and leave me a fortune, either.

I went in to check on Madeleine. She was nursing her kittens and looking smug and tired at the same time. I refilled her water bowl. I started to move her litter box into the room with her, but then I reconsidered. Best to leave it in the place she was used to going.

“Just think,” I told the cat, “a week ago, I had no idea that soon I’d have a cat, four kittens, a house, five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and a skull. I didn’t know what I was missing.”

The doorbell rang.

I jumped maybe a mile. Thanks to Jane’s cryptic note, I now knew I had something to fear.

“Be back in a minute, Madeleine,” I said, to reassure myself rather than the cat.

This time, instead of opening the door, I looked through Jane’s spyhole. When I saw lots of black, I knew my caller was Aubrey. I was smiling as I opened the door.