Sarah Booth Delaney 13.50 - Shorty Bones by Carolyn Haines Read Free Book Online

Shorty Bones
    “Sarah Booth Delaney, leave that man alone and let him sleep. That’s the most healin’ thing for him.”
    I dared not turn around and confront Jitty, the dead woman who haunts my ancestral home and my life. Jitty is many things to me, most of them loving. But she is also a major pain in the butt.
    “I like to watch him breathe,” I told her. It’s pointless to argue with a haint, but I do it out of habit. Jitty claims the wisdom of the Great Beyond, which makes her a real know-it-all. Except she didn’t warn me that my last case would result in my fiancé, Graf Milieu, nearly getting his leg shot off. At last he’s been released from the hospital and is resting peacefully at Dahlia House. Let the healing begin.
    Jitty spoke directly into my ear. “Doc says to let him rest, so let him rest. Need I point out that
you
can’t sleep when I hover over you?”
    “Because you’re dead, Jitty. Few people enjoy a dead person hovering.”
    “Below the belt, Sarah Booth. Speaking of belt, what do you think of my get-up?”
    I steeled my nerve to confront my fashionista haint. She hopped decades, went from designer diva to bag lady, and all in a perfect size 2. Two things about being dead—she never aged and never gained weight.
    “Oh, dear, God.” I couldn’t believe it. Jitty wore a silver swimsuit outfit with a huge black belt and the biggest, gaudiest buckle I’d ever seen. I leaned in closer. “International Female Wrestler, 2025,” I read. “2025?”
    “I can have the title in the future if I want it.” Jitty spun to show off her ripped abs and rock-hard glutes. “Just think, Sarah Booth. In ten years I won’t be a day older and all of your eggs will be withered and black.”
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake, give it a rest.” She was always on me to reproduce so she could have a Delaney heir to haunt. I was the last of the line, and she was getting on my last nerve. “Go torment some other poor soul.”
    “Not a chance. You’re my mortal, and you just have to put up with me.”
    My cell phone vibrated against my hip and I took the opportunity to leave the bedroom where Graf slept. When I was in the hall, I answered the call of Coleman Peters, the sheriff of Sunflower County, Mississippi.
    “How’s Graf?” Coleman asked.
    “He’s resting. The doctor says he has a good chance of recovering use of his leg. Only time will tell.” I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice. Graf’s injury was serious. If his leg didn’t heal properly, his career as a movie star would be over.
    “And how’s Sarah Booth doing?”
    “I’m okay.”
    “Feel up to taking on a small local case?” he asked. “Little effort, big paycheck.”
    “Did Tinkie put you up to this?” Tinkie Bellcase Richmond was my partner in Delaney Detective Agency. When Graf was shot, I’d considered abandoning my career as a private eye. The work could be dangerous, and when it affected the people I loved, I had to think about quitting.
    “Nope, this just came in the door, and I thought of you.”
    I knew I should say no, but curiosity was one of my greatest flaws. “What kind of case?”
    “Remember Curtis Jensen and his wife, Lovey?”
    “How could I forget?” Jensen was the spokesperson for the Return Our Values Entirely (ROVE) group, which advocated spankings for children and wives, public stocks for moral offenders, and a host of other regressive punishments for those deemed “without moral rectitude or with bad attitudes.” Jensen had built up a power base in the Mississippi Delta, and then created a scandal that titillated the county for weeks when he up and married a porn star. “What’s going on with the Jensens?”
    “Lovey Jensen claims she has a stalker.”
    “Isn’t that a job for the sheriff?” I asked.
    “Not when the information comes from Miss Jasmine, a Memphis psychic—and don’t think I don’t respect the abilities of our mutual friend, Tammy Odom. Miss Jasmine is a fraud, though, and Lovey