"I'm glad I could help." I meant every syllable of it. "Let's talk about the case." I couldn't keep the focus on my loss; I was still too raw.

"Have you found Bonnie Louise yet?" Tinkie asked.

She hid it well, but the glint of fury was there in the corner of her eye. Woe be unto Bonnie Louise if Tinkie got to her before Coleman could safely lock her up.

"She's disappeared from the face of the earth," I said. It wasn't the total truth, but I didn't want my friend going to prison for murder. "Coleman may know more when he finally gets back. He's at Goodman's Brake with the coroner."

"Before you leave the hospital, stop by and see Gordon," Tinkie suggested.

I wondered if that was a hint that Oscar was tiring. "Good idea."

"Sarah Booth, could I speak with you in the hall?" she asked.

"You two girls take a walk. Us boys will have a little gossip." Harold waved us into the hall.

I'd barely cleared the door when Tinkie jumped me. Her arms went around me and squeezed so hard that I gasped.

"Oh, dear, I forgot you were hurt," she said. "I mean, your face looks like something from a cartoon, but your clothes cover up the other bruises."

"Thanks." I hugged her again, even if it hurt.

"What you said to me, about getting Oscar into a room and making him want to stay, it was the perfect thing." Her blue eyes were clear and untroubled. "Even with the cure that Doc cooked up, Oscar was almost gone. It was what you suggested that made him come back."

I had to laugh. "I doubt that, Tink. He came back to spend the rest of his life with you. You just offered a bit of dessert before dinner."

She inhaled and sighed. "I'm so tired, I could drop, but now that he's out of danger, I'm ready to help with the case."

"I think we're done. Once Coleman finds Bonnie Louise, that'll be the end of it. Luther's in jail already. Janks, what ever role he played, is dead. It's just a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's."

"Maybe I'll just go home and work to unsnarl Janks's financial backing. As best I can tell, he has one investor. One very wealthy man with his funding offsh.o.r.e."

"Perfect idea."

"I'll stop by and get Chablis."

I shook my head. "I'll bring her home to you. Sweetie will want to ride with me. You go on and I'll drop her by a little later. We can have a drink together."

"You're on."

I was about to signal Harold to leave with me when my cell phone rang. Expecting Coleman, I was surprised to see a strange number show up on the caller I.D.

"Sarah Booth, it's Peyton."

"Where have you been? Coleman has been looking everywhere for you. Have you seen Bonnie Louise?" It seemed like Peyton had been absent for the resolution of the most important aspects of the case. "Oscar and Gordon are recovering. Luther's in jail." I tried to give him the most important updates.

"Ah, it's difficult to talk. I need your help."

There was something strained in his voice. "Is something wrong?"

"Very much so. I think I'm going to be killed."

No wonder Peyton had vanished--he'd been taken captive. "Is Bonnie there with you now?"

"Absolutely. Could you meet me?"

"Where are you?" I started to signal Harold, but I couldn't risk involving Tinkie. "Shall I bring Coleman?"

"That would not be smart. You and I can work this out better than anyone else. Delicate situation, you know. Balancing is difficult."

If I was correct in reading between the lines, Peyton was implying that Bonnie was unstable. Not exactly breaking news.

"Has Bonnie hurt you?" I asked.

"Not yet. Can you meet us? It's literally a matter of life and death."

"Where?"

"The old Henderson cotton gin."

That was way off the beaten path, long abandoned, and a creepy place at high noon. It was night outside, and the old gin afforded hundreds of places for Bonnie Louise to hide and ambush me in the dark.

"How about the strip mall where Janks's office is?" I wanted a more public place.

"I'm not in a position to bargain," Peyton said, his voice rising. "If you don't meet me . . ."

"I'll be there." What choice did I have? It was possible that somehow I could get the drop on Bonnie. I had to.

"Come alone, Sarah Booth. If you try to bring the sheriff or anyone else, my life will be forfeit."

Well that was as clear as it could be. "Got it."

Tinkie was staring at me when I closed my phone.

"You look like someone walked over your grave."

Her words brought back the image that Madame Tomeeka had planted in my brain--raw dirt in the Delaney family cemetery. Death and loss. To go involved risk, but I intended to take every precaution I could.

"That was Peyton Fidellas. He wants me to meet him," I explained.

"Where?" Tinkie was n.o.body's fool.

"He's found something interesting."

"Where?" She wasn't going to let it go, that much was clear.

"He's in trouble."

She lifted her chin in that way that let me know she was about to enter the dead zone of stubbornness. "Where are you meeting him? And don't try lying. I'll know."

"At the old Henderson cotton gin out on County Road Eight." While I might be foolhardy enough to go, I wasn't a complete moron. Someone had to know where I was.

"Have you lost your mind?" Hot spots of pink jumped into her cheeks. "That's a set up for you to be killed."

"I have to go, Tinkie. Bonnie Louise is holding Peyton hostage. If I don't show, she'll kill him." I spoke softly, trying to calm her as much as possible. "And I have to go now. I can't wait. Peyton implied that Bonnie is losing it."

"Why does she want to see you?" Tinkie asked. "Why not Coleman or Luther? Why you?"

"I thought about this earlier, and I think the viciousness of the attack on me is motivated by her misbegotten idea that people have stopped her from having happiness. I mean, look what she did to Oscar, because she thought he took her family farm away. She's disturbed, so she finds a person to blame for the events in her life. Then she decides to make them pay, and she's willing to do what ever is necessary to extract what she sees as justice. She sucked Janks into this with greed, and then when he became an enc.u.mbrance, she killed him."

"Do you hear what you're saying?" Tinkie's face had gone from angry to pale. "She's willing to do 'what ever is necessary.' Still, why has she fixated on you?"

I hated to say it aloud, but I did. "Coleman. She fell hard for Coleman, and I think she realized that . . ."

"He's still in love with you."

I looked beyond her, down the hall to a couple of nurses who pushed a pill cart. I wanted to deny her statement, but I couldn't. Coleman still loved me. Despite everything that had happened.

Tinkie's arm went around my waist and she pulled me close. "Do what you have to do, Sarah Booth. Just be careful. Bonnie Louise is unhinged."

"I know."

"Promise me you'll take a gun."

The problem was that I didn't have time to go home and get one. But Harold had one, which I suspected he'd left in his car. A car that I needed to get to the old cotton gin.

"Can you get Harold's keys?" I asked her.

"Not a problem."

Before I could even react, she went into the hospital room. "Sarah Booth left her purse in your car and she needs it." Her voice shifted to a whisper. "Feminine products, you know."

I was appalled and impressed. No Southern man in his right mind would question the euphemistic "feminine products." In this instance, it happened to be a gun. Just another example of what might be termed deadly PMS--percussive metal syndrome.

Tinkie returned to the hallway with the keys. She dangled them, then s.n.a.t.c.hed them back. "Promise me you won't get hurt."

"I promise." That was easy. I had no intention of deliberately getting injured. Been there, done that, had the bruises to prove it.

"Call me as soon as you have Bonnie under control."

I agreed to those terms, too. "I have to get moving."

"I hope I'm making the right decision. If something happens to you, I'll never forgive myself."

"This is my choice, Tinkie. Give me about half an hour, then call Coleman and tell him where I went. If I can't handle Bonnie by then, I'm going to need the cavalry."

"I've got you covered."

I hurried down the hallway. Harold would be p.i.s.sed when he discovered that I'd taken his car. And his gun. And driven off into danger without him. But Peyton's instructions had been clear--I was to come alone. And in the darkest, ugliest corner of my mind, I realized that I wanted a tete-a-tete with Bonnie Louise--without witnesses.

She'd done the unthinkable to me. And before Coleman or anyone else could stop me, I intended to hurt her. At least a little.

28.

Mega-gins, huge complexes that separate the cotton fibers from the seedpods and press them into bales with speed and efficiency, now dominate the industry. The old, smaller community cotton engines are relics. Once, the local gin had been the heart of an area, the place where farmers gathered as the machine removed the sticky seeds and readied the cotton for shipment. Ruins of rusted tin and silent machinery, the dilapidated gins still dot the rural landscape, a reminder of a way of life that's slipped behind the curtain of time.

The old Henderson gin was about twenty miles out of town on County Road Eight, a lonely two-lane bereft of a center line because two cars seldom pa.s.sed.

Even as far back as high school, the Henderson gin had been unused, at least for cotton. The building and grounds had become a favorite parking place for teens. I'd spent my share of crisp autumn nights there, intoxicated by the forbidden acts of sipping whiskey and kissing handsome boys. And giggling. My goodness, we'd giggled a lot in those days of fumbling kisses and dreams of a future we'd only seen in magazines or movies.

Someone would turn on a car radio, and we'd dance in the shadow of the old building under a clear night sky where the black velvet darkness wasn't interrupted by a single incandescent light. Couple by couple, kids would drift away, seeking solitude and those delicious private whispers and kisses.

Thinking of those nights, I keenly felt the loss of such innocence. Those had been the days when a kiss--or lack thereof--had meant jubilation or crushing defeat.

My aunt Loulane had been a straitlaced mentor in such situations. Proper young ladies didn't kiss pa.s.sionately at abandoned cotton gins. Such things could lead to over-stimulation of the Delaney womb, which would only yield a lifetime of woe and irrational conduct--or worse, a Fallopian malfunction or the uncorrectable horrors of the tilted womb.

Delaney foremothers p.r.o.ne to uncontrolled necking had suffered tragic consequences in the past.

To make her point, Aunt Loulane would whisper the name of Aunt Cilla, whose proclivities for s.e.xual conquests made her the scandal of the family. But she wasn't alone. There were other antecedents with l.u.s.tful ways and what Aunt Loulane considered "insatiable and inappropriate appet.i.tes." She counted them off like a strange rosary to warn me of falling off the straight and narrow. Aunt Loulane's admonitions--and scare tactics--had stood me in good stead through my teen years. I owed her a lot. But not even following the rules had kept pain and loss from my door.

By the time I pulled Harold's sporty red car into the parking area of the old gin, I'd let go of the past, at least a little. What pained me now was the loss of my future. My child. Given my druthers, I would be in Dahlia House with Graf. We would be together, so we could begin the process of grieving and healing.

Graf had been told about the baby. As I sat in the car, I dialed his cell phone. It went straight to voice mail, which was exactly what I'd hoped.

"Graf, I'm wrapping up this case. Please don't worry. I'm fine. Physically, I'm fine. I'll meet you at Dahlia House as soon as you can get here. I . . . need you."

I hung up before I was tempted to erase it. Admitting that I needed anyone was worse than torture. But I did need Graf. I couldn't wait to deck Bonnie Louise and deliver her to the Sunflower County jail so that I could return to my life and my fiance. We had to help each other through our loss.

Harold's gun was tucked beneath the front seat of the car, and I got it. It was small and sleek, the kind with a clip instead of a cylinder for bullets. A spy gun. The feel of it in my hand gave me a jolt of confidence.

Because it belonged to Harold, I trusted that it was clean, loaded, and in peak operating condition. That was Harold's M.O. He was always prepared, which accounted for the fully charged high-beam flashlight in the glove box.

Gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, I crossed the gravel-pocked ground to the slightly open door of the gin. Drinking and necking no longer seemed to be teenage occupations. At least not here. The place had an air of eerie abandonment, as if no living human had visited in years.

As I stepped inside the building, a roost of mourning doves blew out of the rafters, the cackling noise and fan of frantic feathers almost stopping my heart. Old Leatherface couldn't have given as near fatal a start.

Once my heart rate calmed, I moved forward. My footsteps sounded loud in the quiet, and I tried to conjure up memories of close dancing with a high school beau, but those carefree days were out of my reach. I was alert for a killer, a woman warped by a desire for revenge. My body was tensed for Bonnie Louise to pop out of a dark corner like some demented--and deadly--jack-in-the-box.

Yet the gin seemed strangely empty.

Even as I'd driven there, I'd had the sense that I was being played. How or why, I didn't know. Why had Peyton called me? Or a better way of phrasing it was why had Bonnie Louise allowed him to call anyone, and most especially me? It was possible that her ultimate goal was to abduct me and hold me hostage in an effort to work out some kind of deal with Coleman. Had she known him at all, she would have deduced he wasn't the bargaining type.

But where was Bonnie? The gin was empty, as far as I could tell. I shone the flashlight beam around the interior. Shadows stretched and jumped causing adrenaline to flood my body to the point I thought I might be able to lift a car.