A Bone to Pick Read Online Free PDF Page B

the refrigerator, and so on. Jane’s neighbor to the side, Torrance Rideout—you know him?—he offered to keep her yard mowed for her, so he has a key to the tool and storage room, that’s the door at the back of the carport.”
I nodded.
“But that’s the only key he had,” the lawyer said, getting back on target. “Then a few days later, when Jane learned—she wasn’t coming home . . .” “I visited her in the hospital, and she never said a word to me,” I murmured.
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    ~ Charlaine Harris ~
“She didn’t like to talk about it. What was there to say? she asked me. I think she was right. But anyway . . . I kept the electricity and gas—the heat is gas, everything else is electric—hooked up, but I came over here and unplugged everything but the freezer— it’s in the toolroom and it has food in it—and I stopped the papers and started having Jane’s mail kept at the post office, then I’d pick it up and take it to her, it wasn’t any trouble to me, my mail goes to the post office, too . . .”
Sewell had taken care of everything for Jane. Was this the care of a lawyer for a good client or the devo- tion of a friend?
“So,” he was saying briskly, “the little bitty operat- ing expenses for this house will come out of the estate, but I trust you won’t mind, we kept it at a minimum. You know when you completely turn off the air or heat into a house, the house just seems to go downhill almost immediately, and there was always the slight chance Jane might make it and come home.” “No, of course I don’t mind paying the electric bill. Do Parnell and Leah have a key?”
“No, Jane was firm about that. Parnell came to me and offered to go through and get Jane’s clothes and things packed away, but of course I told him no.” “Oh?”
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    ~ A Bone to Pick ~
“They’re yours,” he said simply. “Everything”— and he gave that some emphasis, or was it only my imagination—“everything in this house is yours. Par- nell and Leah know about their five thousand, and Jane herself handed him the keys to her car two days before she died and let him take it from this carport, but, other than that, whatever is in this house”—and suddenly I was alert and very nearly scared—“is yours to deal with however you see fit.”
My eyes narrowed with concentration. What was he saying that he wasn’t really saying? Somewhere, somewhere in this house, lurked a problem. For some reason, Jane’s legacy wasn’t en- tirely benevolent.
After calling the police about the break-in and calling the glass people to come to fix the win- dow, Bubba Sewell took his departure.
“I don’t think the police will even show up here since I couldn’t tell them anything was missing. I’ll stop by the station on my way back to the office, though,” he said on his way out the door. I was relieved to hear that. I’d met most of the lo- cal policemen when I dated Arthur; policemen really stick together. “There’s no point in turning on the air ~ 37 ~
    ~ Charlaine Harris ~
conditioner until that back bedroom window is fixed,” Sewell added, “but the thermostat is in the hall, when you need it.”
He was being mighty chary with my money. Now that I was so rich, I could fling open the windows and doors and set the thermostat on forty, if I wanted to do something so foolish and wasteful.
“If you have any problems, run into anything you can’t handle, you just call me,” Sewell said again. He’d expressed that sentiment several times, in several different ways. But just once he had said, “Miss Jane had a high opinion of you, that you could tackle any problem that came your way and make a success of it.”
I got the picture. By now I was so apprehensive, I heartily wanted Sewell to leave. Finally he was out the front door, and I knelt on the window seat in the bay window and partially opened the sectioned blinds sur- rounding it to watch his car pull away. When I was sure he was gone, I opened all the blinds