Bones to Pick Read Online Free PDF

about."
    I swallowed, thinking of
Hamilton
. He'd offered me the chance of a lifetime, to live in an exotic city with a man who stopped women in their tracks, a man who loved me. For another woman, it would have been the perfect match. Somehow, though,
Mississippi
had gotten into my blood, and I couldn't abandon her. My roots had grown too deeply in the rich Delta soil. I understood what Harold was saying. "I just played out this scene, I'm afraid."
    "I know that
Hamilton
offered you
Paris
. I'm sorry. It's hard to tear your heart in half." He picked up my hand, and I felt the weakest pulse in my thumb. It made me smile.
    "We're a lot more alike than you once believed," he said.
    "We are." It was an easy admission. "That's how I know you couldn't hurt Quentin. But tell me the rest of the story."
    Harold released my hand and looked down at his coffee cup. "As I said, Rachel and I had had an argument. She'd given me back a ring. Not an engagement ring, but a gift I'd bought her. She left, and I went into the bar and proceeded to polish off my image as an ass."
    I grinned. "So you got drunk."
    "Drunker." He signaled the waiter for the check. "I don't remember everything I said or did, but Marcus Kline came up to me in the bar and started picking at me about the things Quentin had written in the book."
    "I haven't read it."
    "She detailed my aunt's unhappy love affair, her suicide." He shrugged. "I swung at him, but Bobby Deneff pulled me off. I was spoiling for a fight."
    "That's when Quentin arrived."
    "Right. She came in the bar with an attitude. She plopped a hundred down, and when Bernard Jacks couldn't change it, she acted like a little bitch. I told him to put her drink on my tab. That's when she got really nasty."
    "How so?"
    "She told me that I couldn't bribe her to leave my family out of her second book. She said she was going to dig up every bone I had buried and pick it to death. That's when she stood up and stumbled. Her drink flew all over me. I was furious."
    "Charming," I said, hoping to take the edge off. Harold was frowning as he twirled his coffee cup in the saucer.
    "She downed the remains of her drink and stalked off, and I followed her outside. I intended to tell her off. In my drunken stupor, I thought it would be better to do it outside rather than in public."
    This wasn't good news. After a public argument, Harold followed a lone woman into the night--right before someone murdered her. On a positive side, no one heard what must have been a heated exchange between them.
    "So the only person who heard you was Quentin, and she won't be talking," I said, hoping to make light of the situation.
    "If only that were true."
    "Who heard?"
    "Marcus."
    "Good grief." Marcus and Harold were bitter enemies. Long ago, Harold had foreclosed on the Kline plantation. The bank can carry a debt for only so long; it was an economic fact even I understood. Rather than accept that the bank had acted in a prescribed way, Marcus found it easier to blame Harold for his personal failure.
    "It gets worse. I threatened Quentin." He refused to look up at me. "She said some nasty things, and I responded by telling her if she didn't leave my family out of her books, I'd"--he finally looked up--"kill her."
    "How long did it take Marcus to beat a trail to the sheriffs office?"
    "He was there as soon as he heard that Quentin's body was found. Gordon came by to talk to me. I admitted the whole thing."
    My exasperation with Harold made my voice sharp. "Don't you watch any television? The airwaves are filled with cop shows with the mantra 'don't talk to the police.'"
    "I didn't touch Quentin."
    "Neither did Allison, and look where she is."
    "My point exactly. I need you and Tinkie to help me out."
    I sighed. After the things Harold had done for me, I could hardly say no to him, yet I was obligated to work for Allison. When I hit on the solution, I smiled. "You're both innocent, so when Tinkie and I find the real killer, it'll clear you