Charlaine Harris - A Bone To Pick

“It’s so hot outside, I feel like I need another shower,” she said by way of greeting. Her forehead was beaded with perspiration. She pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table and dabbed at her face.

“I hear you had a windfall,” she continued, tossing the tissue into the trash and missing. With a deep sigh, Lillian laboriously bent over to retrieve it. But her eyes flicked up to take in my reaction.

“Yes,” I said with a bright smile.

Lillian waited for me to elaborate. She eyed me wryly when I didn’t say anything. “I didn’t know you and Jane Engle were such good friends.”

I considered several possible responses, smiling all the while. “We were friends.”

Lillian shook her head slowly. “I was a friend of Jane’s, too, but she didn’t leave me any house.”

What could I say to that? I shrugged. If Jane and Lillian had had any special personal relationship, I certainly couldn’t recall it.

“Did you know,” Lillian continued, switching to another track, “that Bubba Sewell is going to run for state representative in the fall?”

“Is he really.” It wasn’t a question.

Lillian saw that she’d made an impression. “Yes, his secretary is my sister-in-law, so she told me even before the announcement, which is tomorrow. I knew you’d be interested since I saw you talking to him at Jane’s funeral. He’s trying to get his house in order, so to speak, so he doesn’t want even a whiff of anything funny that might be dug up during the campaign. He’s going to be running against Carl Underwood, and Carl’s had that seat for three terms.”

Lillian had gotten to give me information I hadn’t possessed, and that had made her happy. After a couple more complaints about the school system’s insensitivity to her daughter’s allergies, she stumped off to actually do some work.

I remained seated on the hard chair in the tiny coffee-break room, thinking hard about Bubba Sewell. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to know what was fishy in Jane’s house! No wonder he had catered to her so extensively. It was good word of mouth for him, that he would go to such lengths for his elderly client, especially since he wasn’t gaining anything from her will-except a fat fee for handling it.

If I told Bubba Sewell about the skull he’d hate me for the rest of his life. And he was Carey Os-land’s first husband; maybe somehow he was involved in the disappearance of Carey’s second husband?

As I washed my mug in the little sink and set it in the drainer, I dismissed any urge I’d ever felt to confide in the lawyer. He was running for office; he was ambitious; he couldn’t be trusted. A pretty grim summation for someone who might be my elected representative in the statehouse. I sighed, and started for the check-in desk to shelve the returned books.

On my lunch hour, I ran over to the house on Honor to let the cat out and check on the kittens. I picked up a hamburger and drink at a drive-through.

When I turned off Faith I saw a city work crew cleaning the honeysuckle and poison ivy from around the dead end sign at the end of the street. It would take them hours. Vines and weeds had taken over the little area and had obviously been thriving for years, twining around the sign itself and then attaching to the rear fence of the house backing onto the end of our street. The city truck was parked right in the middle of the road down by Macon Turner’s house.

For the first time since I’d inherited Jane’s house, I saw the newspaper editor himself, perhaps also returning to his home for lunch. Macon’s thinning, brownish-gray hair was long and combed across the top of his head to give his scalp some coverage. He had an intelligent face, thin lipped and sharp, and wore suits that always seemed to need to go to the cleaners; in fact, Macon always gave the impression that he did not know how to take care of himself. His hair always needed trimming, his clothes needed ironing, he usually seemed tired, and he was always one step behind his schedule. He called to me now as he pulled letters out of his mailbox, giving me a smile that held a heavy dose of charm. Macon was the only man my mother had ever dated that I personally found attractive.

I waited, standing in the driveway with my little paper bag of lunch in one hand and my house keys in the other, while Macon walked over. His tie was crooked, and he was carrying his suit coat, a lightweight khaki, almost dragging the ground. I wondered if Carey Osland, whose house was not exactly a model of neatness, realized what she was taking on.

“Good to see you, Roe! How’s your mother and her new husband?” Macon called before he was quite close enough. The cleanup crew, two young black men being watched by an older one, turned their heads to cast us a glance.

It was one of those moments that you always remember for no apparent reason. It was dreadfully hot, the sun brilliant in a cloudless sky. The three workmen had huge, dark stains on their shirts, and one of the younger men had a red bandanna over his head. The ancient city dump truck was painted dark orange. Condensation from the cup containing my soft drink was making a wet blotch on the paper bag; I worried that the bag would break. I was feeling glad to see Macon, but also impatient to get inside the cool house and eat lunch and check on Madeleine’s brood. I felt a trickle of sweat start up under my green-and-white-striped dress, felt it roll its ticklish way down under my belt to my hips. I looped my purse strap over my shoulder so I could have a free hand to hold up my hair in the vain hope of catching a breeze across my neck; I hadn’t had time to braid my hair that morning. I looked down at a crack in the driveway and wondered how to get it repaired. Weeds were growing through in unattractive abundance.

I was just thinking that I was glad Mother had married John Queensland, whom I found worthy but often boring, rather than Macon, whose face was made disturbingly attractive by his intelligence, when one of the workmen let out a yell. It hung in the thick, hot air; all three men froze. Macon’s head turned in midstride, and he paused as his foot hit the ground. All movement seemed to become deliberate. I was acutely aware of turning my head slightly, the better to see what the man with the red bandanna was lifting off the ground. The contrast of his black hand against the white bone was riveting.

“God almighty! It’s a dead man!” bellowed the other worker, and the slow motion speeded up into a sequence too swift for me to replay afterward.

I decided that day that the dead person could not be Macon Turner’s son; or, at least if it was, Edward had not been killed by Macon. Macon’s face never showed the slightest hint that this find might have a personal slant. He was excited and interested and almost broke his door down to get in to call the police.

Lynn came out of her house when the police car appeared. She looked pale and miserable. Her belly preceded her like a tugboat pulling her along.

“What’s the fuss?” she asked, nodding toward the workmen, who were reliving their find complete with quotes and gestures while the patrolman peered down into the thick weeds and vines choking the base of the sign.

“A skeleton, I think,” I said cautiously. Though I was sure it was not a complete skeleton.

Lynn looked unmoved. “I bet it turns out to be a Great Dane or some other big dog. Maybe even some cow bones or deer bones left over from some home butchering.”

“Could be,” I said. I looked up at Lynn, whose hand was absently massaging her bulging belly. “How are you doing?”

“I feel like…” She paused to think. “I feel like if I bent over, the baby’s so low I could shake hands with it.”

“Oo,” I said. I squinched up my face trying to imagine it.