The Bone Bride Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Bone Bride

  Copyright

  Praise for THE BONE BRIDE

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  A word from the author...

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  The Bone Bride

  by

  Tamrie Foxtail

  Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll Series

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The Bone Bride

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Tamrie Foxtail

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Tamra Westberry

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Crimson Miniature Rose Edition, 2012

  Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-533-1

  Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll Series

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for THE BONE BRIDE

  “Tamrie Foxtail’s THE BONE BRIDE is a captivating tale about rekindling an old flame, jealousy and greed so intense it pushes a woman over the edge, and a love that triumphs over all—with a spooky cursed doll thrown into the mix. This story is one you won’t want to miss!”

  ~Alicia Dean, author of Tears of the Wounded and A Knight to Remember, also available from

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Dedication

  To my heroes—my mother and my husband.

  Prologue

  That wasn’t her mother hanging from the ceiling fan, eyes bulging, skin turned the color of an overripe plum, tongue protruding from between her lips. It couldn’t be. Her mother was beautiful, if perpetually sad.

  Daira had spoken to her mother the day before. Sure, she’d been upset, crying over that worthless Hagan. Daira had reassured her mother she was better off without him. She had plenty of things to fill her life. She had her job managing a small restaurant, her scrimshaw collection, her cat, and two daughters who loved her. The last thing she needed was one more jerk two-timing her.

  Had her mother thought about that as she stood on the six-foot ladder to tie the rope around the ceiling fan and slip the noose over her neck? When she kicked the ladder away, causing it to strike the dining room window, cracking the glass in a spider web design, had she regretted her decision?

  The ceiling fan, mounted to a fourteen-foot beam that had once supported the weight of a heavy chandelier, had been strong enough to hold her mother’s slight weight.

  Daira forced her eyes away from her mother’s body. “They’re on their way,” she whispered, listening for sirens. Would they use the sirens? Her mother was dead. Speed hardly mattered now.

  She took two steps back and turned her head to the side, unable to bear the sight of her mother’s corpse.

  Her mother’s yellow cat, Lemon, hid under the china cabinet, just the tip of his tail visible.

  Daira faced the oak cabinet, the same china cabinet her mother faced in death. She had filled it, not with china but with pieces of scrimshaw. The centerpiece of the collection was the doll.

  The scrimshaw doll, not much larger than the Barbies Daira had played with as a child, was scarcely a thing of beauty. Locks of her mother’s sable hair, the same color as Daira’s, saved from a recent trip to the beauty salon, were fastened to the thing’s head by a glue gun. Her mother had dressed it in a wedding dress, perhaps in anticipation of her own upcoming wedding.

  Her mother should have known better. The women of their family were cursed when it came to their taste in men.

  The doll’s ugly little face was turned toward the body, as if it had watched her die. That repulsive face, carved from some long ago whalebone, was the last thing her mother saw.

  Chapter One

  Daira pulled open the door to the computer shop. Cool air caressed her as she waited for her sister to catch up. The door chimed, announcing a customer. A dark-haired man looked up from the computer he was working on.

  It couldn’t be. Not after all these years.

  “Daira?”

  Damn. It was him.

  “Rory.” She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “I didn’t know you were back.”

  “I’ve been back for a couple of months.”

  “I take it you two know each other,” Misti said.

  Rory took the laptop from Misti and placed it on the counter.

  “We went to school together,” Daira said. Talk about an awkward moment. Rory Trent was even better looking now than he had been at eighteen: tall, lean, and broad-shouldered. She couldn’t see a single strand of gray in his dark brown hair. The thin lines radiating from the corners of his brown eyes only enhanced his masculinity.

  She made a show of looking around the shop. There were a few things on the shelves, mouse pads and computer programs mostly, along with a display of used computers, now for sale. She saw no sign of anything personal, no family photos or souvenirs. Everything appeared neat, not even a layer of dust. She wondered if he paid someone to clean. She couldn’t see the Rory she had known dusting. Then again, perhaps he had a wife who helped around the shop.

  “Nice tattoo,” Misti said.

  Daira turned to look. Semper Fi was tattooed on his right bicep.

  “You were in the Marines?” Misti asked.

  “Twenty years.” Rory leaned against the counter. “You must be Misti.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You have the same green eyes as your sister. The last time I saw you, you couldn’t even walk.”

  Daira pushed away the memory of Misti’s tiny hand wrapped around Rory’s finger. She pointed to the laptop. “She needs it fixed. It keeps shutting off.”

  Misti pressed her hands together like a little girl in prayer, her blond hair curling against her shoulders. “Please, please, please.”

  Rory laughed, picked a sticky pad off the counter, and handed it to her. “Write down your name, number, and the problem.”

  Daira traced her finger over the pewter four-leaf clover that served as her key ring. Rory had given her a real four-leaf clover. She had pressed it between the pages of her high school yearbook.

  “Ted, that was Daira’s fiancé, used to work on my computer,” Misti said. “But he died last year.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rory said. “Mind if I ask what happened?”

  “He choked to death on a piece of steak,” Misti said. “Can you imagine that?”

  Yeah. Too bad the woman he was seeing on the side didn’t know the Heimlich.

  “How long before Misti can pick up her laptop?”

  “I have a few ahead of it.”

  Misti did the praying hands again. “Please? I’m a struggling colle
ge student. A broke, struggling student.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m at USAO right now. Later I’ll go to OSU. I’m going to be a vet.” She turned that sweet, little-girl smile on him. “You like cute little puppies and kitties, don’t you?” she said.

  Rory smiled back at Misti. Obviously the cute act worked on him. Too bad Daira hadn’t known that twenty years ago.

  “I’ll put a rush on it, just for you.”

  Daira grabbed her sister’s arm. “Thanks, Rory.” She pulled Misti out the door.

  “What’s with you?” Misti asked as the door closed behind them. “He seems nice. He’s not bad looking for an older guy, and that tattoo on his arm is kinda sexy. I think he liked you, even though you didn’t say two words to him. When we pick up my laptop, you definitely need to do a little flirting. You remember how, right?”

  Daira stopped in front of her car and beeped the locks open. “I am not interested in going out with Roark Trent.”

  “Roark, huh? No wonder he goes by Rory.”

  “It was his mother’s maiden name.”

  They settled in the car. Daira started the engine and turned on the air.

  “You seem to know a lot about him.”

  “I told you, we went to school together.”

  “I bet you had a crush on him,” her sister sing-songed.

  Daira sighed as she backed out of the parking space. “He was my high school boyfriend. The one who dumped me two days before the prom.”

  Chapter Two

  Daira stood on her toes, reaching for the wrapping paper.

  The doll tumbled from the closet shelf. She caught it one-handed.

  The ugly little scrimshaw face stared up at her. She really should get rid of the thing. It gave her the creeps.

  “Not my day,” she muttered. The trash truck had managed to run over her garbage can, mangling the lid so it no longer shut, she’d run into the one man she’d never been able to forget, and now she was being assaulted by that horrible little doll.

  Lemon wrapped around her ankles, motor revved on high. She stuck the doll back on the shelf and picked up the cat. Lemon nuzzled her chin. The cat was definitely a more attractive, not to mention a healthier, reminder of her mother.

  Daira pulled the birthday wrapping paper down and carried it to the dining room just as the phone rang. She grabbed it on the second ring, juggling cat, paper, and phone.

  “Catch you at a bad time?”

  Two decades and that voice still made her pulse jump. It had grown deeper and richer through the years, but it was still the voice she remembered from the back seat of his car. He’d talked her out of her clothes, and her virginity, with that voice.

  “How did you get my number?”

  “You’d be amazed what I can find with a computer.”

  “Great.”

  He chuckled. “Your sister called the shop and said to call you if I couldn’t get a hold of her.”

  Daira sighed. “She just has the cell, and she turns it off when she’s at the movies.”

  “I was wondering if she’d mind used parts. She did say money was a problem.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have her call you.”

  “There’s one more thing.” Rory’s voice wound around her. “Would you like to have dinner with me some night?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “As I recall, we were good together.”

  Yeah, right before he ripped out her heart and marched off to the Marines.

  Lemon nudged open the closet door. The white face of the doll stared out at her. “Hey, you know anything about selling stuff on eBay?”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “A scrimshaw doll.”

  “Scrimshaw? You mean like carved whalebone?”

  “My mother collected it. I have the doll, and Misti has the rest of the collection.”

  “Why don’t you give it to your sister if you don’t want it?”

  She couldn’t explain her loathing to pass the thing on to Misti. “President Kennedy collected scrimshaw,” she said, unable to think of anything more inspired.

  “Nice. I’ll give you my cell number. Send me a picture of it, and I’ll see what I can find out.”

  She hung up, took two pictures of the doll, and sent them.

  ****

  Daira had finished wrapping the gift for her coworker and was getting ready to watch the evening news when Rory called back.

  His voice came through the phone, rich and deep. “Give me your e-mail.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a website for your doll.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. I’ll send you the link.”

  “There are how many scrimshaw dolls out there, and you just happened to find a website for this one?”

  Lemon crunched the corner of her coworker’s gift. “Stop that!”

  “Stop what?”

  “Not you. I was talking to the cat.”

  Rory chuckled.

  Great, now he’d think she was a lonely spinster with only a cat for company.

  “I looked up scrimshaw dolls online,” he said. “Turns out there aren’t that many. Yours is the only one with its own website.”

  She gave him her e-mail address and turned on the computer. The link was waiting. She clicked on it.

  The site contained a brief history of the doll. She skipped the history, focusing on the pictures. There was that little ugly face. “My mother thought the doll was beautiful,” she muttered.

  “No accounting for taste,” Rory said. “The hair and clothes are different, but it’s the same doll.”

  “My mother loved to sew. She was getting married, so she made a wedding dress for the doll. She glued cuttings from her own hair onto it.” That made it even more difficult for her to get rid of the doll. It was like some kind of voodoo. Maybe someone had tied a string around the doll’s neck and let it dangle for a while.

  “Did you read the history?”

  “I’ve barely had a chance to look at the pictures.”

  “The doll’s over three hundred years old.” He chuckled. “It’s supposed to be cursed.”

  She remembered the way the doll seemed to be looking at her mother as she hung from the fan. Cursed. She could believe it.

  Daira said goodbye and sat in front of the computer, scrolling through a dozen pictures. In a few of the pictures someone held the doll, but the pictures taken of the doll by itself reminded her of the photos once taken of the dead.

  Lemon jumped on the desk, and she scratched him beneath the chin.

  She read over the history of the doll. It had traveled from Europe to Oklahoma, made a brief stop in 1940s Hollywood, then returned to Oklahoma.

  “Damn doll likes the Sooner State,” she muttered.

  The doll had remained in the same family for generations, the story of the curse handed down along with the doll.

  According to the curse, anyone who betrayed the owner of the doll was destined to suffer. She had a brief thought of Hagan and Ted, both faithless, both dead. The website claimed that the doll could not be given away or sold until the curse was broken by true love.

  “They must have watched Shrek,” she muttered.

  She retrieved the doll from the closet, propped it up against the back of the couch, and took several pictures. She picked the best one and posted it to the site.

  Strange. In some of the pictures, the doll looked almost beautiful. Its features were the same, but in some they appeared softened. It was as if the doll were about to smile.

  She added a caption to the picture.

  My mother purchased this doll from a place called Pawnderings. It came into my possession when she died last year.

  Daira G. Anadarko, OK

  Uneasy, she clicked out of the site.

  ****

  “Janet! You have got to be kidding me. What is this?”

  Janet Mabel bit down on a sarcastic reply. What the hell
did Jean think it was, the latest cell phone?

  “It’s just what it looks like. Thirty-eight Smith and Wesson. Light and lethal.”

  “And just why, pray tell, do you need to carry a gun in your purse?”

  Janet put her hands on her hips and glared at her sister. For heaven’s sake. She was thirty-five. She didn’t need to justify herself to anyone.

  “Why were you in my purse?”

  “Looking for gum or mints.”

  “Guess you should have skipped the onions on the chili dog and stayed out of my purse.”

  Jean shook her head. “Isn’t it illegal to carry a gun hidden like that?”

  “I have a carry-and-conceal permit.” She didn’t, but her sister, Miss Perfect, didn’t need to know that.

  “Why do you need a gun? You’re not secretly an accountant for the mob, are you?”

  “Nice to know you think so highly of me.”

  Jean let out a loud sigh. “I was joking. Honestly, Janet, sometimes you’re so paranoid.”

  Janet snatched her purse off the end table and snapped it shut. “A woman needs protection. Especially when she doesn’t have a man around.” She cut a snide glance in her sister’s direction. “Not that you would know about that.”

  Jean didn’t rise to the bait. “If you’re not happy being single, why don’t you join one of those online dating things? I know there are some right here in Oklahoma City.”

  “Don’t even go there.” Janet unhooked her keys from her purse. “I don’t need your pity,” she said, then slammed her sister’s door behind her.

  ****

  “What about this?” Daira held up the ornate silver frame.

  Misti pursed her lips then shook her head. “That’s kinda old-fashioned.”

  “That’s what I like about it. It almost looks like an heirloom.”

  Misti shook her head, setting her blond ponytail in motion. “Not Julie’s style. Besides, she’d have to polish it.” She picked up a picture frame made from blue glass.

  “What are you going to do after Julie gets married?”

  Misti let out a loud sigh. “I don’t know. I haven’t had much luck finding a new roommate. I’ve already started packing up things I don’t need.”

  “You could move in with me. I have room.”