Charlaine Harris - A Bone To Pick

So, Miss Genius, he was looking for something large. Okay, “he” could be a woman, but I wasn’t going to the trouble of thinking “he or she.” “He” would do very well for now. What large thing could Jane Engle have concealed in her house that anyone could possibly want enough to break in for? Unanswerable until I knew more, and I definitely had the feeling I would know more.

I finished picking up the kitchen and returned to the guest bedroom. The only disturbance there, now I’d cleared up the glass, was to the two single closets, which had been opened and emptied. There again, no attempt had been made to destroy or mutilate the items that had been taken from the closets; they’d just been emptied swiftly and thoroughly. Jane had stored her luggage in one closet, and the larger suitcases had been opened. Out-of-season clothes, boxes of pictures and mementos, a portable sewing machine, two boxes of Christmas decorations…all things I had to check through and decide on, but for now it was enough to shovel them all back in. As I hung up a heavy coat, I noticed the walls in these closets had been treated the same way as the broom closet in the kitchen.

The attic stairs pulled down in the little hall that had a bedroom door at each end and the bathroom door in the middle. A broad archway led from this hall back into the living room. This house actually was smaller than my town house by quite a few square feet, I realized. If I moved I would have less room but more independence.

It was going to be hot up in the attic, but it would certainly be much hotter by the afternoon. I gripped the cord and pulled down. I unfolded the stairs and stared at them doubtfully. They didn’t look any too sturdy.

Jane hadn’t liked to use them either, I found, after I’d eased my way up the creaking wooden stairs. There was very little in the attic but dust and disturbed insulation; the searcher had been up here, too, and an itchy time he must have had of it. A leftover strip of the living room carpet had been unrolled, a chest had its drawers halfway pulled out. I closed up the attic with some relief and washed my dusty hands and face in the bathroom sink. The bathroom was a good size, with a large linen cabinet below which was a half door that opened onto a wide space suitable for a laundry basket to hold dirty clothes. This half closet had received the same attention as the ones in the kitchen and guest bedroom.

The searcher was trying to find a secret hiding place for something that could be put in a drawer but not bidden behind books… something that couldn’t be hidden between sheets and towels but could be hidden in a large pot. I tried to image Jane hiding-a suitcase full of money? What else? A box of-documents revealing a terrible secret? I opened the top half of the closet to look at Jane’s neatly folded sheets and towels without actually seeing them. I should be grateful those hadn’t been dumped out, too, I mused with half of my brain, since Jane had been a champion folder; the towels were neater than I’d ever get them, and the sheets appeared to have been ironed, something I hadn’t seen since I was a child.

Not money or documents; those could have been divided to fit into the spaces that the searcher had ignored.

The door bell rang, making me jump a foot.

It was only the glass repair people, a husband and wife team I’d called when window problems arose at my mother’s apartments. They accepted me being at this address without any questions, and the woman commented when she saw the back window that lots of houses were getting broken into these days, though it had been a rarity when she’d been “a kid.”

“Those people coming out from the city,” she told me seriously, raising her heavily penciled eyebrows.

“Reckon so?” I asked, to establish my goodwill.

“Oh sure, honey. They come out here to get away from the city, but they bring their city habits with ‘em.”

Lawrenceton loved the commuters’ money without actually trusting or loving the commuters.

While they tackled removing the broken glass and replacing it, I went into Jane’s front bedroom. Somehow entering it was easier with someone else in the house. I am not superstitious, at least not consciously, but it seemed to me that Jane’s presence was strongest in her bedroom, and having people busy in another room in the house made my entering her room less… personal.

It was a large bedroom, and Jane had a queen-sized four-poster with one bed table, a substantial chest of drawers, and a vanity table with a large mirror comfortably arranged. In the now-familiar way, the double closet vas open and the contents tossed out simply to get them out of the way. There were built-in shelves on either side of the closet, and the shoes and purses had been swept from these, too.

There’s not much as depressing as someone else’s old shoes, when you have the job of disposing of them. Jane had not cared to put her money into her clothes and personal accessories. I could not ever recall Jane wearing anything I noticed particularly, or even anything I could definitely say was brand new. Her shoes were not expensive and were all well-worn. It seemed to me Jane had not enjoyed her money at all; she’d lived in her little house with her Penney’s and Sears wardrobe, buying books as her only extravagance. And she’d always struck me as content; she’d worked until she’d had to retire, and then come back to substitute at the library. Somehow this all seemed melancholy, and I had to shake myself to pull out of the blues.

What I needed, I told myself briskly, was to return with some large cartons, pack all Jane’s clothing away, and haul the cartons over to the Goodwill. Jane had been a little taller than I, and thicker, too; nothing would fit or be suitable. I piled all the flung-down clothes and tossed the shoes on the bed; no point in loading them back into the closet when I knew I didn’t need or want them. When that was done, I spent a few minutes pressing and poking and tapping in the closet myself.

It just sounded and felt like a closet to me.

I gave up and perched on the end of the bed, thinking of all the pots and pans, towels and sheets, magazines and books, sewing kits and Christmas ornaments, bobby pins and hair nets, handkerchiefs, that were now mine and my responsibility to do something with. Just thinking of it was tiring. I listened idly to the voices of the couple working in the back bedroom. You would have thought that since they lived together twenty-four hours a day they would’ve said all they could think of to say, but I could hear one offer the other a comment every now and then. This calm, intermittent dialogue seemed companionable, and I went into kind of a trance sitting on the end of that bed.

I had to be at work that afternoon for three hours, from one to four. I’d have just time to get home and get ready for my date with Aubrey Scott… did I really need to shower and change before we went to the movies? After going up in the attic, it would be a good idea. Today was much hotter than yesterday. Cartons…where to get some sturdy ones? Maybe the Dumpster behind Wal-Mart? The liquor store had good cartons, but they were too small for clothes packing. Would Jane’s bookshelves look okay standing by my bookshelves? Should I move my books here? I could make the guest bedroom into a study. The only person I’d ever had as an overnight guest who didn’t actually sleep with me, my half brother Phillip, lived out in California now.

“We’re through, Miss Teagarden,” called the husband half of the team.

I shook myself out of my stupor.

“Send the bill to Bubba Sewell in the Jasper Building. Here’s the address,” and I ripped a piece of paper off a tablet Jane had left by the telephone. The telephone! Was it hooked up? No, I found after the repair team had left. Sewell had deemed it an unnecessary expense. Should I have it hooked back up? Under what name? Would I have two phone numbers, one here and one at the town house?