Charlaine Harris - A Bone To Pick

The doorbell rang, announcing Aubrey’s arrival. I answered it feeling a little self-conscious because of the scoop neckline. Sure enough, Aubrey’s eyes went instantly to my cleavage. “You should have seen the one I didn’t wear,” I said defensively.

“Was I that obvious?” he said, a little embarrassed.

“Carey Osland says God made bosoms, too,” I told him, and then closed my eyes and wished the ground would swallow me up.

“Carey Osland says truly,” he said fervently. “You look great.”

Aubrey had a knack for taking the embarrassment out of situations.

“You look nice yourself,” I told him. He was wearing what would be a safe outfit at ninety percent of Lawrenceton’s social occasions; a navy knit shirt and khaki slacks, with loafers.

“Well, now that we’ve admired each other, isn’t it time to go?”

I glanced at my watch. “Right on the dot.”

He offered his arm like the usher at a wedding, and I laughed and took it. “I’m going to be a bridesmaid again,” I told him. “And you know what they say about women who are bridesmaids so often.” Then I felt furious with myself all over again, for even introducing the subject of weddings.

“They say, ‘What a beautiful bridesmaid,’” Aubrey offered tactfully.

“That’s right,” I said, relieved. If I couldn’t do better than this, I’d have to keep my mouth shut all evening.

Prom my first glimpse of Marcia it was apparent to me that she lived to entertain. The food even had little mesh tents over it to keep flies off, a practical touch in Lawrenceton in the summer. The cloths covering the tables erected on the sun deck for the occasion were starched and bright. Marcia was her usual well-turned-out self, as starched and bright as the tablecloths in blue cotton shorts and blouse. She had dangly earrings and painted nails, top and bottom. She exclaimed over the wine and asked if we wanted a glass now. We refused politely and she went in to put it in the refrigerator, while Torrance, looking exceptionally tan in his white shorts and striped shirt, took our drink orders. We both took gin and tonics with lots of ice, and went to sit on the built-in bench that ran all the way around the huge deck. My feet could barely touch the deck. Aubrey sat very close when he sat next to me.

Carey and Macon came in right on our heels, and I introduced them to Aubrey. Macon had met him before at a ministerial council meeting Macon had covered for the paper, and they immediately plunged into an earnest conversation about what the council hoped to accomplish in the next few months. Carey eyed my outfit and winked at me, and we talked over the men about how good Marcia and the party food looked. Then the couple who lived in the house across from Carey, the McMans, came up to be introduced, and they assumed that Aubrey and I owned Jane’s house together; that we were cohabiting. As we were straightening that out, Lynn and Arthur came in. Lynn was elephantine and obviously very uncomfortable in a maternity shorts outfit. Arthur was looking a little worried and doubtful. When I saw him I felt-nothing.

When Arthur and Lynn worked their way around to us, he seemed to have shaken off whatever had been troubling him. Lynn looked a little more cheerful, too. “I wasn’t feeling too well earlier,” she confided as Arthur and Aubrey tried to find something to talk about. “But it seems to have stopped for the moment.”

“Not good-how?”

“Like gas pains,” she said, her mouth a wry twist at this confession. “Honestly, I’ve never been so miserable in my life. Everything I eat gives me heartburn, and my back is killing me.”

“And you’re due very soon?”

“Not for a couple more weeks.”

“When’s your next doctor’s appointment?”

“In your last month, you go every week,” Lynn said knowledgeably. “I’m due to go back in tomorrow. Maybe he’ll tell me something.”

I decided I might as well admit wholesale ignorance. Lynn certainly needed something to feel superior about. She had looked sourly on my red and white shorts outfit. “So what could he tell you?” I asked.

“Oh. Well, for example, he could tell me I’ve started dilating-you know, getting bigger to have the baby. Or he could tell me I’m effacing.”

I nodded hastily, so Lynn wouldn’t explain what that meant.

“Or how much the baby has dropped, if its head is really far down.”

I was sorry I’d asked. But Lynn was looking in better spirits, and she went on to tell Aubrey how they’d decorated the nursery, segueing neatly from that domestic subject to a discussion of the break-ins on the street, which were being generally discussed. The McMans complained about the police inaction on the crimes, unaware that they were about to become very embarrassed.

“You’re going to have to understand,” Arthur said, his pale blue eyes open wide, which meant he was very irritated, “that if nothing is stolen and no fingerprints are found, and no one sees anything, the burglar is going to be almost impossible to find unless an informant turns in something.”

The McMans, small and mousy and shy, turned identical shades of mortification when they realized that the new couple next door were both police detectives. After an embarrassing bumble of apologies and retractions, Carey talked about her break-in-which had occurred when she and her daughter were at Carey’s folks’ house for Thanksgiving two years ago-and Marcia related her experience, which had “scared her to death.”

“I came back from shopping, and of course it was when Torrance was out of town; nothing happens but when Torrance is out of town”-and she gave him a knife of a glance-“and I saw the back window of the kitchen was broken out, oh you should have seen me make tracks over to Jane’s house.”

“When was that?” I asked. “Around the time Carey’s house was broken into?”

“You know, it was. It was maybe a month later. I remember it was cold and we had to get the glass fixed in a hurry.”

“When was your house broken into?” I asked Macon, who was holding Carey’s hand and enjoying it.

“After the Laverys,” he said, after a moment’s thought “They’re the people who owned the house you bought,” he said to Arthur. “They got transferred five months ago, so I know they’re relieved not to have to make two house payments. My break-in, and the Laverys‘, was like the others…back window, house searched and messed up, but nothing apparently taken.”

“When was that?” I persisted. Arthur shot me a sharp look, but Lynn seemed more interested in her stomach, which she was massaging slowly.

“Oh, sometime about a year and a half ago, maybe longer.”

“So Jane’s house was the only one that hadn’t been broken into until very recently?”

Carey, Macon, the McMans, and Marcia and Torrance exchanged glances.

“I think that’s right,” Macon said. “Come to think of it. And it’s been quite awhile since the last one, I know I hadn’t thought about it in ages until Carey told me about Jane’s house.”

“So everyone’s been broken into-everyone on the street?” Was that what Jack Burns had told me?

“Well,” Marcia said, as she poured dressing on the salad and tossed it, “everyone but the Inces, whose house is on the two lots across from Macon and us. They’re very, very old and they never go out anymore. Their daughter-in-law does everything for them, shopping and takes them to doctor appointments and so on. They haven’t been bothered, or I’m sure Margie-that’s the daughter-in-law- would’ve come over and told me about it. Every now and then she comes over and has a cup of coffee after she’s been to see them.”

“I wonder what it means?” I asked no one in particular.