Bone by Bone

"Millard? I'm not surprised." The housekeeper leaned back against the porch railing. "He hardly ever traveled farther than the verandah of his hotel. He was mean, but too old and too sick to lift a hand against Evelyn. He found other ways to be cruel."

"Why did she stay with him? Did he have something on her?"

"You mean something besides an affair with an underage boy? If he'd known about that-never mind what Addison thinks-Millard would've divorced Evelyn and kicked her to the curb without a pe

"You knew about the prenuptial agreement?"

"Evelyn and me, we talk from time to time. In any case, you're not to blame for your brother's death, and you know that, Oren." The housekeeper sat down in her rocking chair. Josh had always called it Ha

"Well, here comes my burglar alarm." She pointed toward a yellow dog of dubious pedigree, floppy ears and the big round eyes of a spaniel with a collie's long coat. The animal approached the porch, and then hesitated, one paw resting on the bottom step. He had a sad, wounded look about him as he stared at the housekeeper.

Oren noticed an empty bowl on the floorboards near the door. The dog was no longer eating his di

I fed him hours ago." She nodded to the dog, as if in answer to a question, and the yellow stray bounded up the stairs. With better ma

"Does the judge like that mutt as much as you do?"

"This afternoon, he was out here tossing sticks for the dog to fetch. It won't be long now."

Oren smiled. He approved of her plan to end old Horatio's days as a stuffed decoration of the parlor. He reached out to cover her hand with his. "You were going to tell me about the séances in the woods."

"Was I?"

"You and the judge go out to Evelyn's old cabin and-"

"No," said Ha

The tiny woman peered over the steering wheel, sometimes rising off the seat to get a better view of the hairpin turns on this mountain road. It was scary and dangerous and great fun. Oren sensed that a legal driver's license might take some of the joy out of Ha

They were the first to arrive at the old cabin. Though parking spaces out front were plentiful, she drove down and around to the back and stopped by the door to the crawl space. Ha

"How do you happen to have a key?"

"This one belongs to the judge." She fitted it into the lock and opened the door to the sound of an exhaust fan.

"Do people know they're being videotaped?"

"Of course. Evelyn sells copies to hotel guests, the ones who come for the séances."

"And what about the local people?"

Ha

"It's a little old-fashioned. Evelyn wants to change over to DVDs and computer monitors, but you know your father. He doesn't take well to change." Ha

"Never mind the tourists," said Oren. "Are you sure the locals know they're being filmed?"

"Once a cop, always a cop." She plucked a sheet of paper from a stack on the table. "This is the consent form. Everybody signs one. You can't say they don't get a sporting chance. It starts out by holding Evelyn harmless for heart attacks and hauntings, strokes and madness, hair turning white from fright. Lots of nonsense like that. And then, toward the bottom of the page, the consent for the taping is buried somewhere in all that legalese. But that comes long after people get tired of reading the damn thing. Usually, they just sign it." She fed another cassette into the second television. "There's two cameras. One shows the whole room, but this one's my favorite view."

Oren stared at the screen with the overhead camera angle. It looked down at the card table and the tops of the players' heads all leaning toward the Ouija board.

"That's a homemade witchboard," said Ha

"And you burned it."

On the videotape, the players' fingers were touching the small wooden heart as it moved in wide circles around the board, faster and faster. Then it stopped. Alice Friday led the chant as they all looked through the hole in the heart and called out the letter S. The planchette moved again to settle over another letter.

"They're always talking to your brother-the spirit guide, always asking him how he died. It was like that from the begi

Oren focused on one of the players. All he could see from this camera angle was the pale crown of blond hair. He turned to the second screen and identified her in this ground-level shot of the table. "Is Mrs. Winston a regular?"

Ha

The wall of shelves held a daunting array of cassettes. How long would it take to view all of them? "Just tell me the highlights. Give me the-"

"Maybe this was a mistake," she said. "My interference always comes to a bad end, and I should know that by now."

He could hear the muffled sound of engines and car doors closing outside. And now, overhead, feet were walking on the cabin floor. "We stayed too long."

"The hell you say. We're going to the séance tonight."

"I don't think Mrs. Straub would like that."

"No one's ever turned away-except Cable Babitt. Evelyn never minded when he'd send a deputy out here now and then-so long as it wasn't somebody in uniform. But then, Cable started driving his jeep up the fire road every damn night. Well, that road only leads to this cabin."

And, farther on, a hole full of bones.

"So Evelyn figured he was spying on her full-time. These days he can't legally come within two hundred yards of this place." Ha

He followed her outside and up the back stairs to the kitchen door. "I'll just watch."

"You should play," said Ha

They passed through the kitchen and walked into the small front room. The chairs around the card table were filled, and other people waited their turn in the dark. Ha

He did. And he also remembered Josh's bad dreams, the screaming in the night that had always followed visits from their good-deed lady, the old woman who once lived on Paulson Lane. The dead Mrs. Underwood had spelled out vile curses on a witchboard that two small boys had purchased at the dry-goods store.