A Bone to Pick

No, Jane had thought I'd find it sooner or later. Maybe not this soon. But sometime. Perhaps, if it hadn't been for the break-in, and the holes in the backyard (and here I reminded myself again to check them), I wouldn't have worried about a thing, no matter how mysterious some of Bubba Sewell's statements had been.

Suddenly I thought of the old saw "You don't look a gift horse in the mouth." I recalled the skull's grin all too clearly, and I began laughing. I had to laugh at something.

It didn't take quite as long as I expected to pack Jane's clothes. If something had struck my fancy, it wouldn't have bothered me to keep it; Jane had been a down-to-earth woman, and in some ways I supposed I was, too. But I saw nothing I wanted to keep except a cardigan or two, so anonymous that I wouldn't be constantly thinking, I am wearing Jane's clothes. So all the dresses and blouses, coats and shoes and skirts that had been in the closet were neatly boxed and ready to go to the Goodwill, with the vexing exception of a robe that slipped from its hanger to the floor. Every box was full to the brim, so I just left it where it fell. I loaded the boxes into my car trunk, then decided to take a break by strolling into the backyard and seeing what damage had been done there.

Jane's backyard was laid out neatly. There were two concrete benches, too hot to sit on in the June sun, placed on either side of a concrete birdbath surrounded by monkey grass. The monkey grass was getting out of hand, I noticed. Someone else had thought so, too; a big chunk of it had been uprooted. I'd dealt with monkey grass before and admired the unknown gardener's persistence. Then it came to me that this was one of the "dug up" spots that Torrance Rideout had filled in for me. Looking around me more carefully, I saw a few more; all were around bushes, or under the two benches. None were out in the middle of the grass, which was a relief. I had to just shake my head over this; someone had seriously thought Jane had dug a hole out in her yard and stuck the skull in it? A pretty futile search after all this time Jane had had the skull. That was a sobering thought. Desperate people are not gentle. As I mooched around the neat little yard, counting the holes around the bushes that had screened the unattractive school fence from Jane's view, I became aware of movement in the Rideouts' backyard. Minimal movement. A woman was sunbathing on the huge sun deck in a lounge chair, a woman with a long, slim body already deeply browned and semiclad in a fire engine red bikini. Her chin-length, dyed, pale blond hair was held back by a matching band, and even her fingernails seemed to be the same shade of red. She was awfully turned out for sunbathing on her own deck, presuming this was Marcia Rideout. "How are you, new neighbor?" she called languidly, a slim brown arm raising a glass of iced tea to her lips. This was the movement I'd glimpsed. "Fine," I lied automatically. "And you?"

"Getting along, getting by." She beckoned with a lazy wave. "Come talk for a minute."

When I was settled in a chair beside her, she extended a thin hand and said, "Marcia Rideout."

"Aurora Teagarden," I murmured as I shook her hand, and the amusement flitted across her face and vanished. She pulled off her opaque sunglasses and gave me a direct look. Her eyes were dark blue, and she was drunk, or at least on her way there. Maybe she saw something in my face, because she popped the sunglasses right back on. I tried not to peer at her drink; I suspected it was not tea at all, but bourbon.

"Would you like something to drink?" Marcia Rideout offered.

"No thanks," I said hastily.

"So you inherited the house. Think you'll like living there?" "I don't know if I will live there," I told her, watching her fingers run up and down the dripping glass. She took another sip.

"I drink sometimes," she told me frankly.

I really couldn't think of anything to say.

"But only when Torrance isn't coming home. He has to spend the night on the road sometimes, maybe once every two weeks or so. And those days he's not coming home to spend the night, I drink. Very slowly."

"I expect you get lonely," I offered uncertainly. She nodded. "I expect I do. Now, Carey Osland on the other side of you, and Macon Turner on the other side of me, they don't get lonely. Macon sneaks over there through the backyards, some nights."

"He must be an old-fashioned guy." There was nothing to prevent Macon and Carey from enjoying each other's company. Macon was divorced and Carey was, too, presumably, unless Mike Osland was dead... and that reminded me of the skull, which I had enjoyed forgetting for a moment.

My comment struck Marcia Rideout as fu

"I didn't used to have such a problem with being lonely," Marcia said slowly, her amusement over. "We used to have people renting this apartment." She waved in the direction of the garage with its little room on top. "One time it was a high school teacher, I liked her. Then she got another job and moved. Then it was Ben Greer, that jerk that works at the grocery chopping meat—you know him?" "Yeah. He is a jerk."

"So I was glad when he moved. Then we had a housepainter, Mark Kaplan..." She seemed to be drifting off, and I thought her eyes closed behind the dark glasses.

"What happened to him?" I asked politely.

"Oh. He was the only one who ever left in the night without paying the rent." "Gosh. Just skipped out? Bag and baggage?" Maybe another candidate for the skull?

"Yep. Well, he took some of his stuff. He never came back for the rest. You sure you don't want a drink? I have some real tea, you know." Unexpectedly, Marcia smiled, and I smiled back.

"No, thanks. You were saying about your tenant?" "He ran out. And we haven't had anyone since. Torrance just doesn't want to fool with it. The past couple of years, he's gotten like that. I tell him he must be middle-aged. He and Jane and their big fight over that tree!" I followed Marcia's pointing red-tipped finger. There was a tree just about midway between the houses. It had a curiously lopsided appearance, viewed from the Rideouts' deck.

"It's just about straddling the property line," Marcia said. She had a slow, deep voice, very attractive. "You won't believe, if you've got any sense, that people could fight about a tree."

"People can fight about anything. I've been managing some apartments, and the tizzy people get into if someone uses their parking space!" "Really, I can believe it. Well, as you can see, the tree is a little closer to Jane's house.. .your house." Marcia took another sip from her drink. "But Torrance didn't like those leaves, he got sick of raking them. So he talked to Jane about taking the tree down. It wasn't shading either house, really. Well, Jane had a fit. She really got hot. So Torrance just cut the branches that were over our property line. Ooo, Jane stomped over here the next day, and she said, ‘Now, Torrance Rideout, that was petty. I have a bone to pick with you.' I wonder what the origin of that saying is? You happen to know?" I shook my head, fascinated with the little story and Marcia's digression. "There wasn't any putting the branches back, they were cut to hell," said Marcia flatly, her southern accent roughening. "And somehow Torrance got Jane calmed down. But things never were the same after that, between Torrance and Jane. But Jane and I still spoke, and we were on the board of the orphans' home together. I liked her."

I had a hard time picturing Jane that angry. Jane had been a pleasant person, even sweet occasionally, always polite: but she was also extremely conscious of personal property, rather like my mother.

Jane didn't have or want much in the way of things, but what she had was hers absolutely, not to be touched by other hands without proper permission being asked and granted. I saw from Marcia's little story how far that sense of property went. I was learning a lot about Jane now that it was too late. I hadn't known she'd been on the board of the orphans' home, actually and less bluntly named Mortimer House.