A Bone to Pick

"And he never told me about it," said Marcia, to his left. "He never let me worry, too." She looked at him fondly.

"So, what did you do it for?" I asked Torrance. "Did he make a pass at Marcia?"

"Well...," said Torrance hesitantly.

"Oh, honey," Marcia said reproving. She leaned over to me, smiling a little at a man's silly gesture. "He didn't do it," she told me. "I did it." "You killed Mark Kaplan and buried him out in the yard?"

"Oh, Torrance buried him when I told him what I'd done." "Oh," I said inadequately, swallowed by her wide blue eyes. "You killed him because—?"

"He came over while Torrance was gone." She shook her head sadly as she told me.

"And I had thought he was such a nice person. But he wasn't. He was very dirty."

I nodded, just to be responding somehow.

"Mike Osland, too," Marcia ran on, still shaking her head at the perfidy of men.

I felt suddenly very, very cold. Torrance closed his eyes in profound weariness.

"Mike," I murmured interrogatively.

"He's under the sun deck, that's why Torrance built it, I think," Marcia said earnestly. "Jane didn't know about him."

"She's confessing," said an incredulous hoarse voice. I turned from Marcia's mesmerizing eyes to see that Jack Burns was sitting on his haunches in front of me.

"Did she just confess to a murder?" he asked me.

"Two," I said.

"Two murders," he repeated. He took his turn at head shaking. I would have to find someone at whom I could shake my head incredulously. "She just confessed two murders to you. How do you do if?"

Faced by his round, hot eyes, I became aware that I was in a torn and disheveled and rather skimpy-at-the-top nightgown that had become quite soiled in the course of the night. I was definitely reminded that I was not Jack Burns's favorite person. I wondered how much Ly

"This man," I told Jack Burns, as I pointed to Torrance, "broke into my house tonight."

"Are you hurt?" asked Sergeant Burns, with reluctant professional solicitude.

I turned to look in Torrance Rideout's eyes. "No," I said clearly. "Not at all.

And I have no idea why he broke in here or what he was looking for." Torrance's eyes showed a slow recognition. And, to my amazement, he winked at me when Jack Burns turned away to call his cohorts over. After an eternity, every single person was gone from Jane's house but me, its owner. What do you do after a night you've had a burglary, been battered, delivered a baby, and nearly been mown down by the entire detective force of Lawrenceton, Georgia? Also, I continued enumerating as I hauled the remains of the nightgown over my head, heard a confession of double murder and had your scarcely covered bosom ogled by the same detectives who had been about to mow you down minutes earlier?

Well. I was going to take a hot, hot bath to soak my bruises and strains. I was going to calm a nearly berserk Madeleine, who was crouching in a corner of the bedroom closet hoping she was concealed underneath a blanket I'd thrown in there. Madeleine, as it happened, did not react well to home invasion. Then, possibly, I could put my tired carcass back between the cool sheets and sleep a little.

There'd be hell to pay in the morning.

My mother would call.

But I only slept four hours. When I woke it was eight o'clock, and I lay in bed and thought for a moment.

Then I was up and brushing my teeth, pulling back on my shorts set from the night before. I managed to get a brush through my hair, which had been damp from the tub when I'd fallen asleep the night before. I let Madeleine out and back in—she seemed calm again—and then it was time to get to Wal-Mart. I walked in as the doors were unlocked and found what I was looking for after a talk with a salesperson.

I stopped in at the town house and got out my box of gift wrap. At Mother's house both cars were gone. I'd finally gotten a break. I used my key one last time; I never would again now that John lived here, too. I sped up the stairs and got the old blanket bag out of the closet and left the gift-wrapped blanket bag on the kitchen table on my way out. I left my key by it. Quickly out to my car then, and speeding back to the house on Honor.

Another stroke of luck; no police cars at the Rideouts' yet. I went out the back kitchen door and looked around as carefully as Torrance Rideout must have the night he buried Mark Kaplan, the night he buried Mike Osland. But this was daylight, far more dangerous. I'd counted cars as I pulled into my own driveway: Ly

The elderly Inces were not a consideration. I peered over to Carey Osland's house. Her car was home. She must have been told of the confession by Marcia Rideout that Mike Osland was in the Rideouts' backyard. I could only hope that Carey didn't decide to come look personally.

As I started across my backyard, I had to smother an impulse to crouch and run, or slither on my belly. The pink blanket bag seemed so conspicuous. But I just couldn't bring myself to open it and carry the bare skull in my hands. Besides, I'd already rubbed my prints off. I got to the sun deck with no one shouting, "Hey! What are you doing?" and took a few deep breaths. Now hurry, I told myself, and unzipped the bag, grabbed the thing inside by hooking a finger through the jaw, and, trying not to look at it, I rolled it as far as I could under the deck. I was tempted to climb the steps to the deck, look between the boards, and see if the skull showed from on top. But instead I turned and walked quickly back to my own yard, praying that no one had noticed my strange behavior. I was still clutching the zip bag. Once inside, I glanced in the bag to check that no traces were left of the skull's presence, and folded one of Jane's blankets, zipped it inside, and shoved the bag to the back of the shelf in one of the guest bedroom closets. Then I sat at the little table in the kitchen, and out the window toward the Rideouts' I saw men starting to take apart the sun deck.

I had just made it.

I shook all over. I put my head in my hands and cried. After a while, that seemed to dry up, and I felt limp and tired. I made a pot of coffee and sat at the table and drank it while I watched the men demolish the deck and find the skull. After the hubbub that caused was over and after the skull had been placed carefully in a special bag of some kind (which actually made me smile a little), the men began digging. It was hot, and they all sweated, and I saw Sergeant Burns glance over to my house as though he'd like to come ask me a few questions, but I'd answered them all the night before. All I was ever going to answer.

Then one of the men gave a shout, and the others gathered round, and I decided maybe I wouldn't watch anymore. At noon the phone rang, and it was my mother, thanking me crisply for the lovely new blanket storage bag and reminding me that we were going to eat di