Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [109]
“I don’t know.”
“We have to find her.”
Lighting flared across the sky revealing Barclay’s stomach, rippling with muscle. “Someone meant to kill you out in the river. The whole plan was for the money to disappear, and you to die. Monica is dead. Millicent is dead. If I’m discounted as a true Levert, that leaves one person to inherit everything. We have to call your friend, the lawman, and tell him all of this.”
“Eleanor is behind it all.” My pulse accelerated. “She killed her own sister and she has Tinkie. Jerome must be helping her.”
Barclay’s features were grim in the next flash of lightning. “She means to kill you and Tinkie and me. She has the insurance money, the necklace, and she can’t afford loose ends.” He bound the strips of T-shirt around the wound, which almost made me scream, but I bit it back. We had to move. He pushed a cell phone into my hand. “Call your friend in Sunflower County.”
“Tinkie first.” I pushed it away. Coleman couldn’t help me. There wasn’t enough time for him to get here. “We have to find Tinkie.”
“We need backup. Call him. Tell him Monica has been killed. Nothing more. We need him to be on his way here.”
I used the phone he offered. When Coleman answered, I almost lost my composure. “I’m in Natchez. Tinkie may be dead,” I said. “Monica Levert was kidnapped and murdered. She’s floating down the Mississippi. I need your help.”
“I’m on the way, Sarah Booth.”
Barclay took the phone, snapped it shut, and hauled me to my feet. “We have to hurry. We’ll ride the horse back through the tunnels.”
“Screw the tunnels. I’m going to look for Tinkie.” I had a perfectly good car not forty feet away.
Barclay’s sardonic grin was as intimate as a touch. “I suggest you find some clothes first, Sarah Booth. I appreciate the view, but Natchez is still a bit … provincial.”
“You are lower than a snake’s belly,” I ranted, and then realized he’d provoked me with cause. Getting my fighting Irish up energized me to battle for my partner’s life.
“Let’s ride,” he said.
“I’ll take the car.” But then I realized I couldn’t. The car keys were at the bottom of the Mississippi River in my jeans pocket.
Barclay mounted the big stallion, who danced, eager to run. The dinner-plate-sized hooves moved up and down like pistons keeping a beat. When Barclay reached for my hand, I let him pull me up behind him. Lady Godiva might have been a sex symbol riding nude, but sitting astride the rump of a big horse in mud-caked panties was not my idea of erotic.
My arm throbbed with every beat of my heart. A visit to the emergency room was in order, but first Tinkie. And then Eleanor. She’d murdered the last vestige of her family for money. And she’d tried to kill me.
Eleanor and her conspirator were about to confront the wrath of Sarah Booth Delaney. It was going to get bloody.
* * *
The ride up the darkened tunnel on Lucifer took at least five years off my life. I clung to blind trust in the horse’s superior sight and Barclay’s balance. My good arm wrapped tightly around Barclay’s lean and muscled torso, I put all of my concentration into not sliding off. Lucifer surged up the steep incline into blackness so dense I shut my eyes to keep from getting a headache.
Amazingly, we arrived at the manse within minutes. Barclay dropped me at the front door, then he cantered to the stables to tend to Lucifer.
I took three minutes to wash the mud off so I could examine the bullet wound.
A groove sliced through the muscle of my right arm. I’d been grazed, not hit directly. I applied a tube of antibiotic salve I found in the medicine cabinet and clumsily wrapped gauze around my arm. The injury was painful, but not anywhere near life threatening. Then I got dressed and picked up the phone. The desk clerk at the Eola knew Tinkie by sight, and he hadn’t seen her or Eleanor Levert.
My fingers hovered over the touch pad, but I didn’t dial Gunny. Something held me back. The police chief would