give it a decent burial.
I was guiltily aware I was not taking any morally firm position. That evening the doorbell rang just as I had eased off my shoes and rolled my panty hose down. I hastily yanked them off, pushed them under my chair, and stuck my bare feet into my shoes. I was a hot, wrinkled mess with a headache and a bad conscience.
Sergeant Jack Burns filled my doorway form side to side. His clothes were always heavy on polyester, and he had long Elvis sideburns, but nothing could detract from the air of menace that emanated from him in a steady stream. He was so used to projecting it that I think he might have been surprised if you had told him about it.
"May I come in?" he asked gently.
"Oh, of course," I said, backing to one side.
"I come to ask you about the bones found today on Honor Street," he said formally.
"Please come have a seat."
"Thank you, I will, I been on my old feet all day," he said in a courtly way. He let himself down on my couch, and I sat opposite him in my favorite chair. "You just come in from work?"
"Yes, yes I did."
"But you were at Jane Engle's house on Honor Street today when the road crew found the skeleton."
"Yes, I had come there on my lunch hour to feed the cat."
He stared and waited. He was better at this than I was. "Jane's cat. Uh - she ran away from Parnell and Leah Engle and came back home, she had kittens in the closet. In Jane's bedroom."
"You know, you sure turn up a lot for a law-abiding citizen, Miss Teagarden. We hardly seem to have any homicides in Lawrenceton without you showing up. Seems mighty strange."
"I would hardly call having inherited a house on the same street 'mighty strange,' Sergeant Burns," I said bravely.
"Well, now you think about it," he suggested in a reasonable voice. "Last year when we had those deaths, there you were. When we caught them that did it, there you were."
About to get killed myself, I said, but only in my head, because you didn't interrupt Sergeant Jack Burns.
"Then Miss Engle dies, and here you are on the street with a skeleton in the weeds, a street with a suspicious number of reported break-ins, including one in this house you just inherited."
"A suspicious number of break-ins? Are you saying other people on Honor besides me have reported their house being entered?"
"Thaf s what I'm saying, Miss Teagarden."
"And nothing taken?"
"Nothing the owner would admit to missing. Maybe the thief took some pornographic books or some other thing the homeowner would be embarrassed to report."
"There certainly wasn't anything like that in Jane's house, I'm sure," I said indignantly. Just an old skull with some holes in it. "It may be that something was missing, I wouldn't know. I only saw the house after the burglary. Ah - who else reported their houses had been broken into?" Jack Burns actually looked surprised before he looked suspicious. "Everyone, now. Except that old couple in the end house on the other side of the street. Now, do you know anything about the bones found today?" "Oh, no. I just happened along when they were discovered. You know, I've only been in the house a few times, and I've never stayed there. I only visited Jane, over the past couple of years. Before she went into the hospital." "I think," Jack Burns said heavily and unfairly, "this is one mystery the police department can handle, Miss Teagarden. You keep your little bitty nose out of it."
"Oh," I said furiously, "I will, Sergeant." And as I rose to show him out, my heel caught on the balled-up panty hose under my chair and dragged them out for Jack Burns's viewing.
He gave them a look of scorn, as if they'd been sleazy sexual aids, and departed with his awful majesty intact. If he had laughed, he would've been human.
Chapter 9
NINE
I'd only had half a cup of coffee the next morning when the phone rang. I'd gotten up late after an uneasy sleep. I'd dreamed the skull was under my bed and Jack Burns was sitting in a chair by the bed interrogating me while I was in my nightgown. I was sure somehow he would read my mind and bend over to look under the bed; and if he did that I was doomed. I woke up just as he was lifting the