Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [1]
The voice comes from all around me. Jitty, the resident haint of Dahlia House, has arrived to badger me. I don’t have to be psychic to know she’s going to tell me I should have gone to Hollywood with Graf. I should have “stood by my man,” even though I would only distract him from his work. Jitty, who dates back to pre–War Between the States times, has been singing this particular song since I returned home two years ago—unwed and unbred, as she loves to point out.
“Follow the yellow brick road,” she says again.
“If you show up as a Munchkin, I’m going to kick you back to Oz,” I warn Jitty.
I’ve miscalculated her most recent incarnation. Instead of striped socks and holding a lollipop, she appears in a puff of vile orange smoke. A black taffeta dress swirls around her slender body. When she stops spinning, I realize her lovely mocha skin is now a shade of pea green and a wart mars her nose.
“Click your heels together three times, pick up that fancy cell phone, and charge yourself a plane ticket to your man,” Jitty orders.
“I’m already home.” While I love Graf, I don’t want to abandon Dahlia House or Mississippi. The last few weeks—spending time in my childhood home with Graf, riding horses, making love, making breakfast, laughing with my business partner, Tinkie Bellcase Richmond, and our friends and helpers in crime solving, Cece and Millie—have shown me that the pull of acting isn’t stronger than these things. I want to act. I want to be with Graf in Hollywood. But I also want to be here, in Zinnia, with my horses, my hound, my friends, and my private investigating.
“Dorothy didn’t necessarily want to go to The Emerald City,” Jitty says darkly. “It was her destiny.”
“It was a dream,” I remind her.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Jitty can aggravate the hairs off a mole.
I surveyed her with a moue of distaste. “Why the Wicked Witch of the West? I figured you’re more of a bubble kind of witch. Pink frothy gown, crystal wand—a better outfit to show off that twenty-four-inch waist.”
“Elphaba suits my message.”
“Message? You have a communication for me?” Jitty’s job was to devil me and highlight the error of my ways, but for one brief second I thought perhaps my departed mother had something to tell me. “From whom?”
“Benjamin Disraeli, actually.” Jitty was smug.
“You have got to be kidding. A nineteenth-century prime minister of England has a message for me?” Things were obviously getting out of hand in the Great Beyond.
“‘Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow,’” Jitty’s tone resonated, but her image began to fade before she finished.
“Hey, you can’t leave like that.” I hated it when she tossed out a pearl and made me feel like a trampling swine because I didn’t understand it. “Jitty! Jitty!” But she was gone.
Before I could try to track her down, the phone rang.
“Delaney Detective Agency,” I answered, despite the fact it was up in the air if we were still in business after Tinkie’s latest brush with death. Both her husband, Oscar, and Graf wanted us to shut down the agency. The men felt we put ourselves in the line of danger too often, a point that statistically couldn’t be argued.
“Ms. Sarah Booth Delaney?” a cultured woman asked. “This is Monica Levert, of Briarcliff in Natchez. I’d like to hire you.”
Instinctively I glanced around to make sure Graf wasn’t listening in. He’d have a hissy fit if he thought I was taking a case not three hours after he had driven away. Such is life.
“What type of case?” I asked.
“My sister, Eleanor, and I inherited a necklace. A very valuable necklace. For the past several weeks someone has tried to break into our home. Three nights ago, they succeeded. The necklace was stolen. Now the insurance company is stalling about paying the value of our policy.”
An insurance claim! No dead bodies. No murders. No guns. A simple insurance claim. “What’s the value of the necklace?”
“It’s been passed down in the Levert family for five generations. The jewels themselves are valuable, but it’s the reputation of the jeweler that makes it even more so. We’re afraid a thief