A Bone to Pick Page 0,34

said, giving a sigh of repletion. "That was so good." "Macon really has been more agreeable at the office since he began dating Carey," Sally said abruptly. "He started seeing her after his son went away, and it just helped him deal with it a lot. Maybe Carey having somebody leave her, she was able to help Macon out."

"What son?" I didn't remember Mother mentioning any son during the time she'd dated Macon.

"He has a boy in his late teens or early twenties by now, I guess. Macon moved here after he got divorced, and the boy moved here with him, maybe seven years ago now. After a few months, the boy - his name was Edward, I think - anyway, he decided he was just going to take some savings his mother had given him and take off. He told Macon he was going to India or some such place, to contemplate or buy drugs or something. Some crazy thing. Of course, Macon was real depressed, but he couldn't stop him. The boy wrote for a while, or called, once a month... but then he stopped. And Macon hasn't seen hide nor hair of that child since then."

"That's terrible," I said, horrified. "Wonder what happened to the boy?" Sally shook her head pessimistically. "No telling what could happen to him wandering by himself in a country where he didn't even speak the language." Poor Macon. "Did he go over there?"

"He talked about it for a while, but when he wrote the State Department they advised him against it. He didn't even know where Edward had been when he disappeared...Edward could have wandered anywhere after he wrote the last letter Macon got. I remember someone from the embassy there went to the last place Edward wrote from and, according to what they told Macon, it was sort of a dive with lots of Europeans coming and going, and no one there remembered Edward, or at least that's what they were saying."

"That's awful, Sally."

"Sure is. I think Perry being in the mental hospital is better than that, I really do. At least I know where he is!"

Incontrovertible truth.

I stared into my beer bottle. Now I'd heard of one more missing person. Was a part of Edward Turner's last remains in my mother's pink blanket bag? Since Macon told everyone he'd heard from the boy since Edward had left, Macon would have to be the guilty one. That sounded like the end of a soap opera. "Tune in tomorrow for the next installment," I murmured. "It is like a soap," Sally agreed. "But tragic." I began my going-away noises. The food had been great, the company at least interesting and sometimes actually fun. Sally and I parted this time fairly pleased with each other.

After I left Sally's I remembered I had to check on Madeleine. I stopped at a grocery and got some cat food and another bag of cat litter. Then I realized this looked like permanency, rather than a two-week stay while the Engles vacationed in South Carolina.

I seemed to have a pet.

I was actually looking forward to seeing the animal. I unlocked the kitchen door at Jane's with my free hand, the other one being occupied in holding the bags from the grocery. "Madeleine?" I called. No golden purring dictator came to meet me. "Madeleine?" I said less certainly. Could she have gotten out? The backyard door was locked, the windows still shut. I looked in the guest bedroom, since the break-in bad occurred there, but the new window was still intact.

"Kitty?" I said forlornly. And then it seemed to me I heard a noise. Dreading I don't know what, I inched into Jane's bedroom. I heard the strange mew again. Had someone hurt the cat? I began shaking, I was so sure I would find a horror. I'd left the door to Jane's closet ajar, and I could tell the sound was coming from there. I pulled the door open wide, with my breath sucked in and my teeth clenched tight.

Madeleine, apparently intact, was curled up on Jane's old bathrobe, which had fallen to the bottom of the closet when I was packing clothes. She was lying on her side, her muscles rippling as she strained. Madeleine was having kittens.

"Oh hell," I said. "Oh-hell hell hell." I slumped on the bed despondently. Madeleine spared me a golden glare and went back to work. "Why me, Lord?" I asked self-pityingly. Though I had to concede it looked like Madeleine