Sarah Booth Delaney 13.50 - Shorty Bones by Carolyn Haines Page A

is a paranoid. She sees this man that no one else sees, but Miss Jasmine has convinced her that her life is in danger.”
    “And you want me to do what?”
    “If you take the case, keep an eye on her for a while and prove that no one is stalking her, except maybe her guilty conscience. Curtis and Lovey prey on the ignorant and the poor. That man has built an empire on telling men they’re superior to women and pointing the finger of guilt at people. I heard he was getting pretty good bribery payments from men who wanted to keep their misdeeds out of the public eye. I would think if anyone were in danger, it might be Curtis.”
    Coleman wasn’t a man who judged others harshly, but the Jensens had obviously gotten under his skin. “You’re sure this isn’t real?”
    “Lovey calls up here all the time trying to get me to go out to their place. Before the stalker it was an alien aircraft landing behind their meeting hall, which turned out to be kids on four-wheelers making a mess. The time before that it was a rabid skunk, which was a black-and-white cat with a litter of kittens. Thank goodness I found homes for all of them. Lovey just didn’t want to be bothered.”
    I was beginning to see his point. “Okay. I’ll give her a call.”
    He gave me the number and I checked on Graf before I called my partner.
    “We’re going to work for Lovey Jensen?” Tinkie asked in a tone between glee and outrage. “What will people say?”
    Tinkie could pretend all she wanted that she was worried about her position as Sunflower County’s Number One Daddy’s Girl, but I knew differently. She was chomping at the bit to get after this case and poke into Lovey’s sordid history. “Why don’t we give her a call and see what’s what.”
    Forty minutes later, with my ear throbbing and my brain buzzing, I had no details of the stalker but a vast knowledge of the social slights paid to Lovey,
according to Lovey
. Tinkie rolled her eyes at me. “Talking to that woman is like having a woodpecker drill into your brain and peck it out bit by bit.”
    I couldn’t disagree, but Lovey was offering a substantial retainer for what would ultimately be a job of following her around to see if anyone else was following her around. “Easy money.”
    “And we get to hang out with the beautiful people,” Tinkie deadpanned. “Let’s talk to her in person. I heard they redecorated that hideous sprawl they call home. I’ve been dying to see it. If we can snap some photos, Cece will dance at your wedding.” Cece Dee Falcon was our journalist friend who ran the society pages of the
Zinnia Dispatch
. And she was so much more—the best investigative reporter in the Southeast and a woman who stood up for herself and her beliefs.
    I made the sign of the cross with my forefingers. “Enough! Let me leave Graf a note and the phone.”
    * * *
    The Jensen estate had once been a gracious old creole-style plantation home on several thousand acres. When Curtis was bitten by the jet-set bug, he sold his property and remodeled the house. While touches of grace and elegance remained, South Eden, as he had renamed it, was an unhappy blend of modern lighting, old brick, and Japanese gardens with fountains, wind chimes, and lots and lots of cacti. In the back was a beige-colored tin “meeting hall.”
    The house was set back from the road along a winding driveway. A small, exclusive neighborhood had developed around the Jensen house. There were neighbors, just not close ones.
    Curtis and Lovey were deep into some newfangled religion that advocated extreme wealth was a sign God loved them. The more God loved you, the more money he gave you. Manifest Spiritual Destiny.
    “I’m surprised the sidewalk isn’t cobbled out of gold brick,” I whispered to Tinkie as we stood on the porch.
    “Or gold lame.”
    I didn’t get a chance for a comeback because a butler opened the door. Coleman had paved the way for us, so we were swooped past a gallery of Jensen family