Carbon Dating

by Jerusha Jones

  “Slow. How’s it going for you?”

  “Slower,” he grunted.

  I groaned. “The volunteers aren’t making any headway?”

  “They are. It’s just that Chloe’s earlier estimate of ten seems to have been conservative.”

  “How do you know?” I mumbled, already dreading the answer.

  “Bodies tend to come with a consistent number of parts. For example, one skull and two femurs per person. Zales isn’t wasting time trying to tag whole skeletons at this point because they’re so jumbled. Detonating that bomb really wreaked havoc on any orderliness there might’ve been before. It’ll take lab analysis to determine which bones belong to the same body. Instead, he’s separating them by parts so we can get a handle on the scope of this thing. We have seventeen skulls and thirty-six femurs so far.”

  There was a muffled, sloshy ripple of noise in the background, and a young voice talking excitedly. Then Vaughn came back on the line. “Actually, Willow says there are thirty-seven femurs now.”

  My stomach dropped—for two reasons. First—but too late—I really did not need the image Vaughn’s words had conjured flashing on my mind’s screen.

  Second—“What’s Willow doing there?” I blurted. “She’s supposed to be sorting potatoes.”

  Vaughn actually laughed, loudly and entirely inappropriately. When he finally spoke, his words sounded muted, as though he was cupping his hand around his mouth to speak. “We needed all hands on deck. Denby volunteered the farm employees to the service. I must say both Willow and Tim are taking it remarkably well. Tim’s a little green around the gills, but Willow dug in with enthusiasm.”

  Of course she would. In her little world, the macabre is far superior to potatoes. I might have made the same decision, if I were in her rubber boots. But what an education.

  “Zales is okay with this?” I gulped. “I thought the volunteers had to be trained?”

  “Tolerating the intrusion. Barely. But he doesn’t have a choice. I pulled rank on him, and it got a little ugly. But he knows I’m right. In these conditions, training doesn’t amount to much. Anybody who can wade through the muck is being conscripted.”

  “Me?” I squeaked, rapidly rethinking my earlier sympathy with Willow.

  “No, baby. I’m going to need a sane adult to talk to when this is over, and that’s you. Keep your shine on for the cameras.”

  I so badly wanted a snappy retort to that comment, but my creative wordsmithing well had run dry. “Huh,” I said instead.

  “But you could bring us a late lunch. I ordered a bunch of taquitos from your favorite hole-in-the-wall joint. Manny’s going to deliver them to the farmhouse around three p.m.”

  “Huh,” I said again, but much more cheerfully. I supposed the spicy rice and beans concoction, shredded beef, and cilantro-heavy pico de gallo inside those deliciously crispy tortillas would be worth another mud-splashed drive in the Jeep and thorough drenching. Vaughn really knew which buttons to push when it came to me and my stomach.

  Putty in his hands, but I would never tell him so.

  CHAPTER 8

  Manny was early. He probably wanted to get a jump on the preparation for the evening rush at his restaurant. Someday I was going to ask if I could sit quietly in a corner, taking notes, while his staff, which consisted of his wife, her sister, a few cousins, and a nephew, bustled through lunch service. I’d even offer to chop veggies or man the grill if they needed my less-than-perfect help. Because there was magic happening in that cramped kitchen—spices, herbs, hissing steam, bubbling lard, tortilla presses, lime rinds, charred peppers—and I wanted in on it.

  But for now I settled for helping him transfer large foil trays wrapped securely in even more layers of aluminum foil from the back of his white Sprinter van to my Jeep. And yet there was no holding back the amazing scents that somehow wafted through the protective barriers. My mouth was already watering.

  “Don’t forget the salsa. Verde and a traditional red. Vaughn said not to make anything too spicy because he didn’t know what everyone’s preferences were,” Manny reported with some disappointment as he handed me two plastic buckets with snap-on lids.

  I smiled in commiseration at other people’s lack of culinary adventurousness. “Let me get my credit card.”

  “No, no, Eva.” Manny waved his hands. “It’s covered. The police department runs a tab with my restaurant.” A brilliant white smile split his face in half under the straw cowboy hat. “It’s all good.” He hefted a crate full of water bottles into the Jeep’s front passenger seat and slammed the door. “That’s it. I charge extra for Alka-Seltzer, though.”

  I laughed. “No need. You’ve just made a couple dozen people very, very happy.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” Another smile that could’ve graced a Colgate ad, and the lithe restaurateur swung up into the Sprinter’s driver’s seat. He tapped the horn as a final good-bye and bon appétit on his way back down the farm’s rutted driveway.

  oOo

  I’d been admirably prescient in my assessment of the scientists’ and volunteers’ (and one detective’s) reactions to the hot meal. They devoured it like wolves.

  Could have been the cold weather-hot food combination. Could have been the backbreaking and emotionally draining work they’d been doing in miserable conditions. Could have been because it was mid-afternoon and far too long since breakfast. Could have been the sheer deliciousness of the food. Whatever the reason, there was very little chitchat as the muddied and muddled group stood among the cluster of vehicles at the edge of the field and peeled foil back from piping hot overstuffed taquitos.

  I’d been hoping for loose lips since my press releases still lacked a little something—a little zip, panache, spice—the tantalizing tidbit that would cause the journalists to latch onto the information I wanted them to report and not onto any of the less savory information that I’d rather have them gloss over, for the Frasers’ sake. Spin is really hard to define, but I know it when I see it, and I wasn’t there yet.

  Leave it to Manny’s incredibly creamy flan napolitano to do the trick. I hadn’t even realized Vaughn had ordered dessert on top of all the other goodness until I started hearing low moans of pleasure from a group of female volunteers who’d huddled under the open rear liftgate of one of the SUVs. I sidled closer and realized they all held individual-serving-size cups of flan and were slowly rationing it into their mouths with little plastic spoons. There is nothing like the delicious combination of sugar and fat to inspire confidential revelations.

  I sidled closer and slowly eased myself into their group, realizing that the separated cloisters of people were somewhat arbitrarily determined by how many could fit under the liftgates or inside the opened doors of the vehicles. We were all taking what scant shelter we could find, and no one complained about having their personal space invaded.

  “Glad to see you haven’t socked him yet, Vera,” a woman built like a leg of mutton said. Her bright-yellow raincoat was having some difficulty covering her lower assets.

  Another woman, with silvery tufts of hair that insisted on escaping from under her hat, snorted, identifying herself as the Vera in question. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Now you girls know why I jumped at the chance to work the muckiest end of the sorting line, just so I could have some separation from the incessant harping. I’ve learned the hard way.”

  “Is he always like this?” asked another woman in a meek voice. “He lectured me for five minutes about not dropping jewelry into the grave, and I don’t even have any on. That was one of the first things we were taught in the training classes—never wear anything extraneous to a site.”

  Vera nodded knowingly. “Selective sight, I call it. He sees what he wants to and doesn’t bother with anything that isn’t either dead or buried. It’s no wonder he isn’t married.”

  “Except he was once. Did you know that?” said the leg-of-mutton woman. Everyone else, myself included, leaned in, tightening our
huddle and securing the periphery in anticipation of the juicy stuff as she continued, “Denise Puttnam.” She nodded her head righteously.

  “No!” gasped the woman standing beside me as several others murmured in disbelief.

  I felt seriously out of the loop. Who was Denise Puttnam? And why was this such shocking information? I was on the verge of raising my hand in order to ask permission to ask the remedial question when I realized the action would be unnecessary. Mostly because leg-of-mutton woman caught my eye and noticed the confusion my face.

  “Straight off the New York City aggressive philanthropy circuit, even though the woman has probably never set foot outside our three-state radius, if you get my meaning—trying real hard to pull off the cosmopolitan charade.” She squinted at me.

  I clearly didn’t get her meaning, and she was happy to elaborate. “Ditched Lincoln here as soon as a bloke with more money came along, which didn’t take long, of course. Now she’s busy spending old Phelps Puttnam’s money on do-gooderism projects. Not that he minds, apparently. Peas in a pod, those two. Lincoln seems to have been an accident on the way to better things for her.”

  All the ladies nodded in agreement—I thought more with equating an attachment to Dr. Lincoln Zales as an accident than necessarily with the part about the better things currently in Mrs. Puttnam’s life. Although, from a marriage perspective, I suspected it would be difficult to go anywhere but up after an experience being Zales’ wife. And spending money didn’t sound like a particularly burdensome job description.

  “If you ask me,” said leg-of-mutton woman, even though no one had—yet, “that’s why Dr. Zales has accomplished so much professionally. No wife or kids to tend to, nothing to distract him. Hasn’t been good for his health though. You girls notice how he’s put on a lot of weight since the last time we worked on a dig with him?”

  More murmuring and nodding. In that moment, I felt a slight tinge of sympathy for Dr. Zales. His mind might be firmly fixed on the archaeological problem at hand, but his personal life was being snidely nitpicked to death not thirty feet from where he stood unwrapping another taquito.

  I hadn’t been watching him as closely this time. Was it his third or fourth taquito? Not really my business, but his compulsive eating had the aura of a stress response. Was Dr. Zales’ personal life really as dull as the ladies assumed? Maybe being cynical and strident all the time was taking its toll.

  Someone tugged on my elbow, and I looked over my shoulder into a dancing pair of pale gray eyes. “Best day ever,” Willow hissed.

  “You might be a little sick,” I replied.

  “I think we both already knew that about me.”

  I chuckled. “Background for your next steampunk dystopian romance? Or will these details go into the near-future space opera tale you’re currently working on?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Hard to say.” She also rolled the words around in her mouth, imbuing them with a mysterious vibe.

  “You doing okay with the nutty professor?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips, effectively scrunching her scrunchy little face a bit more. “I guess. He keeps talking at me, but it’s pretty interesting.” She shrugged. “He’s nicer than that Heath guy for sure. What a snot.”

  I reserved comment, even though I’d thought pretty much the same thing about Heath Rooney. No point in perpetuating the rudeness, no matter how accurate.

  “Looks like I’ll be here all day,” I said, “so I can give you a ride home when the team wraps up for the night.”

  “Okey dokey.” Willow tipped a two-finger salute against her hat brim and traipsed off after a string of volunteers who were returning to their work.

  Vaughn also seemed intent on the task before him, and had time for only a brief wave to me before striding across the muddy furrows to the gravesite. But I’d enjoyed seeing just how in-charge he was when in his element. Even if that element was a desolate pit on a rural farm. He was good at this detective business. I’d known that before, of course, but it was a sort of guilty pleasure to watch him in action. Even soaking wet and coated in mud, the man looked good.

  I admired the view for a few more minutes while around me the previously airborne spectators flapped to the ground and began strutting, cleaning up the stray lunch droppings, my presence merely tolerated. The crows eyed me with unblinking, glossy stares while squabbling with the lone bedraggled seagull who nevertheless persisted in infringing on their scavenging territory.

  oOo

  Less than an hour later, the tedium of keeping the deliriously purr-ful Cricket company was interrupted by Denby, who crashed through the door into the kitchen, her blue eyes swollen and red-rimmed as though she’d been crying.

  “Oh, Eva,” she panted, then bent in half to prop her hands on her knees. Just breathing seemed to require every shred of energy she had left.

  “What?” I shot out of the chair and placed my hands on her shoulders so she wouldn’t topple over. “What’s wrong?”

  She could only groan.

  I helped her over to my pre-warmed chair and gently pushed her into it. Then I knelt down beside her and held her hands. “How bad?” I murmured.

  “The worst,” she whimpered.

  That could have meant any number of things—after all, hadn’t I written all those borderline fictional press releases?—but I still got a granite knot in my stomach even though I’d tried to psych myself up for a catastrophic revelation.

  Denby had recovered her breath sufficiently to string a few sentences together. “No wasting disease, because the skeletons all appear strong and fully calcified—but you already knew that. Whatever killed them was something fast-acting, if it was some kind of rampant illness. Dr. Zales says it’s more likely criminal—and he has to consider the deaths as such, unless he can prove otherwise—because there are no other obvious conclusions from the current evidence. He said the next step is an archive search to see if there are any documents or records—public or private—that might describe what happened here on the farm during that time.”

  I was nodding slowly, trying to project the appearance of calm unflappability—for Denby’s sake as well as my own. Given the way she was frantically clutching my hands while her eyes flitted all over the room, not stopping on any one item long enough to truly see it, I wasn’t entirely succeeding.

  But she was reporting in a perfectly logical, linear manner, in spite of the monotone, which meant her brain was already categorizing information, hunting for a solution. “Based on what little remains of the clothing and shoes, belt buckles, that sort of thing, he’s dating the grave at 1910 to 1930,” she whispered. “He was so flushed and irritated, streaming sweat in spite of all the rain, I’m afraid he’s going to go ballistic tearing the house apart. I know it’s personal, Eva—at least it is for me, but why does he have to make it that much more personal? I want the truth as much as he does.”

  Dr. Zales estranging the hearts and minds of those around him, as usual. Nary an empathetic bone in that man’s body. I gritted my teeth while a pinging sensation wriggled its way up from my subconscious depths. “Your great-grandmother’s diaries,” I murmured.

  “Yes,” Denby hissed. “The missing years. I have to find them.”

  CHAPTER 9

  There was no time like the present. Particularly if the alternative was allowing Dr. Zales to ransack the farmhouse.

  “Any other place they might be?” I asked Denby as we tromped up the pull-down, extendable stairs to the attic from the second floor hallway, thinking at the exact same moment that those stairs certainly couldn’t be original to the house.

  Not only had she fully recovered all her faculties, if she’d ever lost them in the first place—her sensory blackout might just have been a momentary form of crisis management—but she seemed to be on exactly my wavelength, because she answered all my questions, spoken and unspoken. “Nope. I found the others in a trunk up here, but it was clear they’d been consolidated and stored by someone else since th
e trunk is too new to have been my great-grandmother’s. These stairs replaced a rickety ladder that was bolted to the hallway wall. At least some of my forebears thought to make improvements on the place. But now the improvements are needing improvements—or repairs.” She sounded both desolate and weary. “This is the only house my great-grandmother ever lived in. Imagine that—born and died here. Didn’t even go to a hospital for either of those two events. Had all her children at home too.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said brightly. “Four eyes, four hands. We got this.”

  “Two flashlights,” Denby added, pushing one into my hand. “Electric wiring was added to the house one floor at a time, and either funding or inclination ran out before that dazzling technology reached the attic.”

  She started at one end, and I started at the other. The dust encrusted window at my end overlooked the western half of the farm, which included the research activity ongoing out near the foothills. The blue-tarp canopy was but a jeweled speck in an otherwise bleak landscape that consisted of shades of brown and gray with abstract doses of greens mixed in. Dusk would be falling like a sledgehammer, and soon.

  Denby had shown me what to look for. Apparently her great-grandmother had enjoyed binding her own journals, and they had very similar characteristics from year to year—rough newsprint-type paper stitched between covers that were made of stock just thicker than the type of paper bags trendy health foods stores now offered to customers who’d forgotten to bring their own, proving that human beings are curious creatures who cycle through fashion constructs at a rather predictable rate. She’d blocked the years out in ink on the front and filled the covers with doodles. There was no reason to think the missing diaries looked any different.

  But the attic was a jumble. Not just decades of stuff. I was staring at centuries of stuff in the narrow beam of my flashlight. Amazing, really, and would have been terribly distracting and fascinating if not for the time pressure. I found a space between a crate of what appeared to be garnet-colored glass dishware and a small bookcase with one leg shorter than the other to shove the flashlight so the beam shone directly into the corner.