Charlaine Harris - A Bone To Pick

I stood holding a dustpan full of glass. “So why isn’t anything missing?” I asked. “The TV is still in the living room. The clock-radio is still in here, and there’s a microwave in the kitchen.”

“Maybe you’re just plain lucky,” Sewell said, his eyes resting on me thoughtfully. He polished his glasses on a gleaming white handkerchief. “Or maybe the kids were so young that just breaking in was enough thrill. Maybe they got scared halfway through. Who knows.”

“Tell me a few things.” I sat on one of the white beds and he sat down opposite me. The broken window (the storm this morning had soaked the curtains) made the room anything but intimate. I propped the broom against my knee and put the dustpan on the floor. “What happened with this house after Jane died? Who came in here? Who has keys?”

“Jane died in the hospital, of course,” Sewell began. “When she first went in, she still thought she might come home, so she had me hire a maid to come in and clean… empty the garbage, clear the perishables out of the refrigerator, and so on. Jane’s neighbor to the side, Torrance Rideout-you know him?-he offered to keep her yard mowed for her, so he has a key to the tool and storage room, that’s the door at the back of the carport.”

I nodded.

“But that’s the only key he had,” the lawyer said, getting back on target. “Then a few days later, when Jane learned-she wasn’t coming home…”

“I visited her in the hospital, and she never said a word to me,” I murmured.

“She didn’t like to talk about it. What was there to say? she asked me. I think she was right. But anyway… I kept the electricity and gas-the heat is gas, everything else is electric-hooked up, but I came over here and unplugged everything but the freezer-it’s in the toolroom and it has food in it-and I stopped the papers and started having Jane’s mail kept at the post office, then I’d pick it up and take it to her, it wasn’t any trouble to me, my mail goes to the post office, too…”

Sewell had taken care of everything for Jane. Was this the care of a lawyer for a good client or the devotion of a friend?

“So,” he was saying briskly, “the little bitty operating expenses for this house will come out of the estate, but I trust you won’t mind, we kept it at a minimum. You know when you completely turn off the air or beat into a house, the house just seems to go downhill almost immediately, and there was always the slight chance Jane might make it and come home.”

“No, of course I don’t mind paying the electric bill. Do Parnell and Leah have a key?”

“No, Jane was firm about that. Parnell came to me and offered to go through and get Jane’s clothes and things packed away, but of course I told him no.”

“Oh?”

“They’re yours,” he said simply. “Everything”-and he gave that some emphasis, or was it only my imagination-“everything in this house is yours. Parnell and Leah know about their five thousand, and Jane herself handed him the keys to her car two days before she died and let him take it from this carport, but, other than that, whatever is in this house”-and suddenly I was alert and very nearly scared-“is yours to deal with however you see fit.”

My eyes narrowed with concentration. What was he saying that he wasn’t really saying?

Somewhere, somewhere in this house, lurked a problem. For some reason, Jane’s legacy wasn’t entirely benevolent. After calling the police about the break-in and calling the glass people to come to fix the window, Bubba Sewell took his departure.

“I don’t think the police will even show up here since I couldn’t tell them anything was missing. I’ll stop by the station on my way back to the office, though.” he said on his way out the door.

I was relieved to hear that. I’d met most of the local policemen when I dated Arthur; policemen really stick together. “There’s no point in turning on the air conditioner until that back bedroom window is fixed,” Sewell added, “but the thermostat is in the hall, when you need it.”

He was being mighty chary with my money. Now that I was so rich, I could fling open the windows and doors and set the thermostat on forty, if I wanted to do something so foolish and wasteful.

“If you have any problems, run into anything you can’t handle, you just call me,” Sewell said again. He’d expressed that sentiment several times, in several different ways. But just once he had said, “Miss Jane had a high opinion of you, that you could tackle any problem that came your way and make a success of it.”

I got the picture. By now I was so apprehensive, I heartily wanted Sewell to leave. Finally he was out the front door, and I knelt on the window seat in the bay window and partially opened the sectioned blinds surrounding it to watch his car pull away. When I was sure he was gone, I opened all the blinds and turned around to survey my new territory. The living room was carpeted, the only room in the house that was, and when Jane had had this done she’d run the carpet right up onto the window seat so that it was seamlessly covered, side, top, and all. There were some hand-embroidered pillows arranged on it, and the effect was very pretty. The carpet Jane had been so partial to was a muted rose with a tiny blue pattern, and her living room furniture (a sofa and two armchairs) picked up that shade of blue, while the lamp shades were white or rose. There was a small color television arranged for easy viewing from Jane’s favorite chair. The antique table beside that chair was still stacked with magazines, a strange assortment that summed up Jane-Southern Living, Mystery Scene, Lear’s, and a publication from the church.

The walls of this small room were lined with freestanding shelves overflowing with books. My mouth watered when I looked at them. One thing I knew Jane and I had shared: we loved books, we especially loved mysteries, and more than anything we loved books about real murders. Jane’s collection had always been my envy.

At the rear of the living room was a dining area, with a beautiful table and chairs I believed Jane had inherited from her mother. I knew nothing about antiques and cared less, but the table and chairs were gleaming under a light coating of dust, and, as I straightened the cushions and pushed the couch back to its place against the wall (why would anyone move a couch when he broke into a house?), I was already worried about caring for the set.

At least all the books hadn’t been thrown on the floor. Straightening this room actually took only a few moments.

I moved into the kitchen. I was avoiding Jane’s bedroom. It could wait.

The kitchen had a large double window that looked onto the backyard, and a tiny table with two chairs was set right in front of the window. Here was where Jane and I had had coffee when I’d visited her, if she hadn’t taken me into the living room.

The disorder in the kitchen was just as puzzling. The shallow upper cabinets were fine, had not been touched, but the deeper bottom cabinets had been emptied carelessly. Nothing had been poured out of its container or wantonly vandalized, but the contents had been moved as though the cabinet itself were the object of the search, not possible loot that could be taken away. And the broom closet, tall and thin, had received special attention. I flipped on the kitchen light and stared at the wall in the back of the closet. It was marred with “… knife gouges, sure as shooting,” I mumbled. While I stooped to reload the cabinet shelves with pots and pans, I thought about those gouges. The breaker-in had wanted to see if there was something fake about the back of the closet; that was the only interpretation I could put on the holes. And only the large bottom cabinets had been disturbed; only the large pieces of furniture in the living room.