Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"Some things in life just have to play out," she said. "If Josh hadn't died that day, it would've happened some other time. You know why he died.

Oren was not ready to have this conversation yet. He pretended interest in his empty glass. "And your next trick?"

"You'll see. It won't be long now." She held up her half-finished beer. "My capacity isn't what it used to be." Hannah happened to be facing the door when it opened, and so it appeared that Mrs. Winston had walked into the Endless Bar on cue.

Sometimes the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. This was the thought of the barmaid in the lounge of a hotel on the coast highway.

Twenty-two men were gathered in front of the television set, and she counted them all as one creature. Her hope was that this angry buzzing thing would take itself out the door before it turned ugly. The barmaid looked up at the TV screen above the shelves of bottles and glassware. The news story of Sally Polk and her suspect had run over and over in short clips of commercial teases. Now it played out in full length for the late evening news.

The drunks were enthralled. Polk was their leader, their queen, though the CBI agent hardly said three words in this updated news story. Celebrity experts and an anchorman now put the words in the woman's mouth.

One studio guest, a man with a book to sell, said to the camera, "This is how Agent Polk will profile the killer. If he's handicapped in some way, his only outlet for sex is prostitutes-and children." The screen image changed to a photograph of a tender boy with a comical smile. And the next shot focused on a man with a rollicking limp and a cane.

The drunks hated the crippled man. They jeered and yelled at the television set.

The barmaid sensed that the thing of many parts was about to swarm as twenty-two faces turned in unison.

So creepy.

They moved toward the door as one giddy insect with many feet. The barmaid reached for the phone, planning to give the driving public a sporting chance to live through the night. But then she recognized a regular at the bar, a man with bleached highlights. This was the sheriff's deputy, the one who took his beer in a coffee cup when he was in uniform. To-night, dressed in blue jeans, he drank from a glass, drained it and walked to the door.

She could hear the sound of many engines starting up outside, the whooping and hollering, the spin of wheels and the spit of gravel. The barmaid walked to the window and watched the deputy climb into a pickup truck. He followed the thing out of the parking lot.

No need to call 9-1-1.

Though the dim light of the Endless Bar was kind to the champagne blonde, that beautiful face was showing damage, and it was more than the ruin that came with age. Mrs. Winston was no longer the calm center of grace in every crowd. She had a startled look about her, eyes turning everywhere.

On the lookout for enemies?

That was Oren's thought, as he racked up the balls for a new game-as if Hannah's next game had not already begun. "You knew Mrs. Winston would be here tonight. I guessed that much."

"Keep your eye on the man tending bar."

The bartender never acknowledged Mrs. Winston, who sat down three stools away from him. He lifted the first hinged mahogany plank to leave the service station, a wheel within the wheel, and then he lifted the second plank to step off the revolving bar.

"That towel over his hand," said Hannah. "It's covering a brown paper bag."

Oren watched the man walk out the front door. A moment later, the bartender returned with his towel draped over one shoulder. Back at his station, he served Mrs. Winston, who must be a regular, for he never bothered to ask for the lady's order. He set her glass on a cocktail napkin and walked away without a word.

"Sarah will only stay for one drink," said Hannah. "She'll leave a hundred-dollar tip under her glass. Then she'll go outside and find a bottle in a brown paper bag sitting on the front seat of her car."

"Okay," said Oren, "that's illegal as hell. Maybe this is a stupid question, but-"

"Why break the law? You wonder why Sarah doesn't just go to a liquor store-much cheaper, no risk. Well, no store in this county will sell her a bottle. Addison saw to that. He likes to control her liquor supply."

Hannah looked down at her wristwatch. She always wore a watch these days. When had time become so important to her?

"Right about now," she said, "Ad and Isabelle think she's passed out upstairs in her room." Hannah looked up at him and smiled. "You can learn a lot from a séance. Evelyn tells me that the Winstons' maid shows up at the cabin once a week, and that girl really appreciates a sympathetic ear. She hates Addison, bad-mouths him all the time."

Mrs. Winston slowly circled in and out of his sight as the bar revolved. When Oren saw her face in a shadowed profile, there was Josh's patron and friend, the most beautiful woman ever to set foot in Coventry. Revolving into better light, she became an aging barfly.

Hannah lined up another shot with her pool cue. "Sarah lost her license years ago, drinking and driving. Keep one eye on her glass so you'll know when she's leaving. That bottle waiting in her car? She'll try to empty most of it on her way back home. That means jail if she gets stopped by the law tonight. Or worse-she'll wrap her car around a tree."

"So we're going to offer her a ride home, is that the plan?"

"Well, not quite-but close. On your way to the Winston lodge, you'll stop at the turnout on Bear Creek Road. That'll be Sarah's idea, not yours. A lady shouldn't have to drink alone, so mind your manners. Don't forget to wipe the bottle after you take a swig. With any luck, Isabelle will never hear about the nice long talk you're going to have with her mother."

Wouldn't it be easier if you just told me what Mrs. Winston was going to say?"

"You haven't heard a word I said tonight."

You bet I have. You don't miss a thing, Hannah, and that's a gift I could use right now. So just spell it out for me."

"I tried that once with the judge. It didn't work so well." "When you told him to send Josh away?"

"If I'd never warned him, he would've grieved for a while and then moved on. And he would've had one boy left to raise. You never should've left town, Oren."

"He sent me away."

"And now that old man lives with guilt. He thinks he could've saved Josh… if he'd only listened to me. He would've been better off if I'd just kept my mouth shut."

"How did you know Josh was in danger?"

"Same way you did. That boy had a dangerous hobby, catching secrets in a camera." Hannah laid down her pool cue. "I heard you yell at him one day out in the yard. You tried to make him stop, but that was never going to happen. If the judge had sent him away, Josh would've died in some other town, and the old man would still blame himself. I should never have interfered, but I was more arrogant then."

"You were right to try, Hannah."

"No, I should've let life play out the way it was meant to." She lightly squeezed his arm. "If you'd stayed with Josh that day, it would've happened some other time. Your brother was fated to die when no one was around to save him. Cold logic, Oren. A murder can't happen any other way." She stared at the revolving bar. "Sarah's almost done with her drink. Almost time."

"Do you know who killed Josh?"

"What do you take me for? A damn psychic?" Hannah plucked the car keys from her pocket. "I'm going home. Now you can tell Sarah Winston that you're stranded without a ride. She'll let you drive her car, and she won't die-not tonight."

The BMW was a beautiful machine, bright red with a black ragtop-the stuff of dreams in his teenage car-crazy days. Oren watched from the distance of two parking spaces, confident that the lady would never be able to thread her key into the car's ignition.