the will was a little closer to probate now, I'd be able to actually spend some without consulting Bubba Sewell beforehand.
And to tell you the truth, I still felt excellent about that money. I had read so many mysteries in which the private detective had sent back his retainer check because the payer was immoral or the job he was hired to do turned out to be against his code of honor. Jane wanted me to have that money to have fun with, and she wanted me to remember her. Well, here I was remembering every single day, by golly, and I certainly intended to have fun. In the meantime, I had a problem to solve.
It seemed to me that Bubba knew something about this. Could I retain him as my lawyer and ask him what to do? Wouldn't attorney-client privilege cover my admission I'd located and rehidden the skull? Or would Bubba, as an officer of the court, be obliged to disclose my little lapse? I'd read a lot of mysteries that had probably contained this information, but now they all ran together in my head. The laws probably varied from state to state, too. I could tell Aubrey, surely? Would he be obligated to tell the police? Would he have any practical advice to offer? I was pretty confident I knew what his moral advice would be; the skull should go into the police station now, today, pronto. I was concealing the death of someone who had been dead and missing for over three years, at a minimum. Someone, somewhere, needed to know this person had died. What if this was Macon Turner's son? Macon had been wanting to know the whereabouts of his son for a long time, had been searching for him; if there was even a faint chance his son's letters to him had been forged, it was inhumane to keep this knowledge from Macon.
Unless Macon had caused the hole in the skull.
Carey Osland had believed all these years her husband had walked out on her. She should know he had been prevented from returning home with those diapers. Unless Carey herself had prevented him.
Marcia and Torrance Rideout needed to know their tenant had not voluntarily skipped out on his rent.
Unless they themselves had canceled his lease.
I jumped to my feet and went into the kitchen to fix myself - something. Anything. Of course, all that was there was canned stuff and unopened packages. I ended up with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. I stuck the spoon in the jar and stood at the counter licking the peanut butter off.
Murderers needed to be exposed, truth needed to see the light of day. Et cetera. Then I had another thought: whoever had broken into this house, searching for the skull, had been the murderer.
I shivered. Not nice to think.
And even now, that little thought trickled onward, that murderer was wondering if I'd found the skull yet, what I'd do with it. "This is bad," I muttered. "Really, really bad."
That was constructive thinking.
Start at ground zero.
Okay. Jane had seen a murder, or maybe someone burying a body. For her to get the skull, she had to know the body was there, right? Jane literally knew where the bodies were buried. I actually caught myself smiling at my little joke. Why would she not tell the police immediately?
No answer.
Why would she take the skull?
No answer.
Why would anyone pick Jane's demise as the time to look for the skull, when she'd obviously had it for years?
Possible answer: the murderer did not know for sure that Jane was the person who had the skull.
I imagined someone who had committed a terrible crime in the throes of who knew what passion or pressure. After hiding the body somewhere, suddenly this murderer finds that the skull is gone, the skull with its telltale hole, the skull with its identifiable teeth. Someone has taken the trouble to dig it up and take it away and the killer doesn't know who. How horrible. I could almost pity the murderer. What fear, what terror, what dreadful uncertainty.
I shook myself. I should be feeling sorry for The Skull, as I thought of it.
Where could Jane have seen a murder?
Her own backyard. She had had to know where the body was buried exactly; she had had to have leisure to dig without interruption or discovery, presumably; she could not have carted a skull any distance. My reasoning of a few days before was still