The Secrets of Bones

by Kylie Logan

  “Then a couple days after you were born…” A single tear slipped down Bernadette’s cheek, and this time she didn’t bother to brush it away. It glimmered in the light from the ceiling fan that whirled above Jazz’s head. “I was young and labor was difficult for me. I wasn’t feeling well and they gave me something to help me sleep, and when I woke up…” She let go an animal howl. “The bassinet next to my bed was empty. You were gone. And that Odessa Harper, she came in to talk to me, as cold as a corpse. I told her my baby was missing, and she … and she…”

  Her chest heaving, Bernadette pulled in breath after breath. “That bitch had the nerve to smile at me and tell me I must have forgotten that I signed adoption papers. She even had the nerve to show those papers to me and offer to make copies for me. But I didn’t sign those papers. I never signed those papers!”

  When Bernadette took a step closer, Jazz squared her shoulders and stood firm.

  “I told her, Margaret Mary. But Odessa Harper, she wouldn’t listen. Not even when I insisted. And then later, I heard from a couple other girls there at the hospital that the same thing happened to them. Don’t you see?” For a moment, her gaze darted to Jazz, demanding that Jazz listen, that she understand. “Harper was running a baby-selling business. She was stealing children from young unwed mothers and selling them to the highest bidder.”

  Bernadette stamped her foot against the floor. “That Odessa Harper, she made money off parents who were desperate to have children. But the Parkers, they can’t have Margaret Mary. They can’t!” Her voice pinged against the oak cabinets. “Margaret Mary is mine!”

  “And Odessa Harper?” Somehow, Jazz managed to keep the panic out of her voice. “What happened to her?”

  Bernadette’s laugh was edged with sarcasm. “What happened to her was that she had the misfortune of leaving her job at that shady hospital and ending up here in Cleveland. I needed a lawyer, I went to consult her firm—”

  Jazz’s mouth went dry. “And there she was.”

  “Talk about miracles! I don’t think she remembered me. Why would she? To her, I was just another baby producer, just another young girl who was alone and frightened and desperate. She agreed to take my case and I invited her to the school. You know,”—Bernadette’s lips lifted into a grin—“so she could look around and get a sense of the place, so she could better understand my grievances against St. Catherine’s. Oh, I could practically see the dollar signs flash in her eyes. She’d done her homework. She knew the school had money. She knew if she could win my case, she’d get a nice chunk. Of course she came to the school.”

  “And the fourth floor?”

  “That was genius, pure and simple. It was easy to wait for Eileen to leave the keys lying around and have a copy made of the one I needed. I just slipped the key off the ring and—”

  “And didn’t put it back where it belonged,” Jazz told her.

  Bernadette shrugged. “It hardly matters now, does it? It served its purpose. Once I had everything ready upstairs and that Harper bitch was in my classroom, I told her a story about the fourth floor, about how I sometimes would hold classes up there. She didn’t know no one ever used the space. The stupid cow actually believed me.” A sly smile made Bernadette look like the predator she was.

  Jazz’s stomach soured. “The plastic sheeting, the extra clothes. Or did you put yours on Harper and change into hers?”

  A shiver cascaded over Bernadette’s shoulders. “No way I would ever put that evil woman’s clothes on my body. I had clothes stashed upstairs, and I put those on her and tossed hers in the trash on my way home. And you know, I have Cammie and Juliette and Taryn to thank for the whole thing. I never would have thought of any of it if not for them.”

  “The angels.”

  Bernadette winced as if she’d been slapped. “Angels!” She spit out the word. “They are wicked girls and they did a wicked thing. All those months, I thought I was the recipient of a miracle, and then that day—”

  “The day I found you crying in the chapel.”

  Bernadette nodded. “The little twits apparently don’t have much of an attention span. They got bored with their little game. That day, I was in the chapel praying and I heard the voices again. It started out just like usual.” A smile lit her face and Bernadette’s eyes were dreamy. “They told me I was special to the Lord, that I was looked at with favor by the Heavenly Host. And then…” Her mouth twisted. “Those damned angels reminded me how they’d told me Alanda Myers broke up with her boyfriend. They told me they’d overheard Alanda on the phone with Seth. That’s how they knew they broke up. They laughed at me. They mocked me. And after they did…” Her voice trailed off, her shoulders slumped.

  “After they did, you lost your faith, and once you did that, you knew you had nothing else to lose.” Another thought hit Jazz. “And you’re the one who tried to steal Pumpkin out of Sam Tillner’s yard.”

  “Whose yard?” Bernadette spit out the question. “It’s been eating at me all this time. That man with my cat. That man with my house!”

  “And you here, hiding out at Odessa’s.” Jazz couldn’t help herself; she felt what was nearly admiration. “And it’s all because you remembered Titus the cat, right? You thought about the switcheroo the girls had pulled on you. If you could manage the same thing…”

  Bernadette’s laugh was hard and sharp. “It was a gift! How wonderful that the Harper bitch and I were just about the same height, just about the same weight. It was easy to dress her in my clothes and leave my cross on her. I had no need for it any longer. It all worked out perfectly. It was lucky no one found her before her flesh rotted completely. It gave me time.”

  Behind her, Jazz could feel Maddie’s body tremble. She reached back a hand and touched the girl’s arm. “Time to keep an eye on Maddie.”

  “What mother wouldn’t? Only now those Parkers…” Bernadette’s top lip curled. “They’re going to steal her away.”

  “They’re not stealing me!” Maddie screamed. She gasped and gurgled and her knees buckled and Jazz knew if they had any hopes of making it out of there, she had to get Maddie to keep it together. She turned and lifted the girl to her feet and kept an arm around her to keep her from collapsing again.

  “I’m going with them!” Maddie screamed. “I’m going with them to Honduras because I want to. They’re my parents and I love them. You were my favorite teacher, Ms. Quinn. You were always my favorite. But you’re not my mother. Ms. Ramsey, Ms. Ramsey,” she cried. “I thought it was so wonderful when I heard from Ms. Quinn. I thought I could meet her and we could talk and I could tell her what I’ve been doing and how much I’ve missed her, but now—”

  “I know, Maddie. I know.” Jazz shushed her. “It’s all right now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “It is not going to be okay!” Bernadette whirled toward the nearest counter, and when she whipped around again she had a knife clutched in her right hand.

  Until that moment, Jazz hadn’t been afraid. Now ice cascaded through her insides and her breath caught.

  Bernadette’s voice was quiet now, calm. Her face was washed with a color like blood and her expression was stone hard. “It’s not going to be okay until I take my daughter away from here.”

  Jazz stood firmly in front of the girl. “I can’t let you do that, Bernadette.”

  She waved the blade and it caught the light and flashed at Jazz.

  “No!” Maddie screamed. “You can’t hurt Ms. Ramsey.”

  Jazz knew the moment Bernadette was going to attack. Her eyes glinted and her tongue flicked from between her teeth like a snake’s. Jazz only had a second, but she grabbed the closest thing at hand, a wooden cutting board. She held it in front of her like a shield, sure that it was no match for the knife.

  At the same time Bernadette lunged, Maddie pushed Jazz from behind to try to move her out of harm’s way. Jazz lurched forward and stumbled and the knife swished through the air near her ear and Bernadette screamed at the same time
footsteps pounded against the back porch.

  Then he was there like one of Bernadette’s saints, out of nowhere, bringing salvation.

  Nick had his weapon drawn and a look on his face that told Jazz he’d never back down, not an inch.

  “Drop the knife,” he told Bernadette. “You make one move toward Jazz or the girl, and I swear to God, I’ll blow you away.”

  Bernadette Quinn, who should have been used to being dead by now, dropped the knife.

  * * *

  Between the cops and the media who swarmed the school, there was no room to breathe. Jazz gave her statement to Detective Lindsey. She gave it again to a uniformed officer who had her write everything down and sign. She told Eileen everything, of course, but when she talked to the Parkers she left out the part about the knife. For one thing, they didn’t need to know their daughter had been in danger. For another …

  Jazz stood in the doorway between her office and Eileen’s and watched Maddie sip an iced tea, her mom on one side of her, her dad on the other.

  “She doesn’t look bad, considering,” Eileen leaned in close and told Jazz.

  “She was very brave.”

  Eileen patted her shoulder. “Look who’s talking.”

  “Nick’s the one who saved the day. Poor guy, all he wanted to do was go to dinner tonight. Instead, he got a call from Sarah telling him what I was up to. Good thing, huh?” She glanced around. “Where is he, anyway?”

  “Talking to some important-looking man in a uniform. Last I saw him, he said he’d be a while.”

  Jazz had thanked him, of course. Once Nick had Bernadette on the floor on her stomach and handcuffed, once his backup arrived and they calmed Maddie and stripped the tape from her wrists and ankles, Jazz had given him a short-and-to-the-point accounting of what had happened and had promised to explain everything in detail later.

  All about Titus.

  And the simple fact that Bernadette had taken a book on forensics out of the library and none of them had ever questioned why.

  “So, you think Odessa Harper really did trick Bernadette into giving the baby up for adoption?” Eileen’s question snapped Jazz out of her thoughts.

  She pushed off from the wall where she’d been leaning. It was the first she realized she was bone-tired. “I don’t doubt it. We’ll let the cops sort that out,” she said. “For now…” Lindsey had asked her not to leave the school, not until they were sure she’d told them all she could, but for now, Jazz needed quiet. She needed peace. She told Eileen where to find her and went upstairs.

  The chapel was dark except for the sacristy light and she slipped into a pew and focused on the red glow, letting the warmth of its light flow through her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and did her best to make the tension flow out of her and the silence wrap around her.

  At least until she heard a voice whisper in her ear.

  “Jazz Ramsey, you make me crazy!”

  Jazz sat up like a shot. There was no one next to her in the pew, no one behind her. She sucked in a breath and tensed, ready to jump up, ready to run.

  Until she remembered the angels.

  Her exhaustion suddenly forgotten, she turned in her seat and looked up at the choir loft.

  He would have been impossible to see in that charcoal suit if not for the glint of his hair in the dim light.

  “You should have called,” Nick whispered near the wall, and the words ruffled Jazz’s ear.

  She couldn’t help but laugh, and since she wasn’t sitting near a wall that could carry her whisper, she spoke up nice and loud. “Dropped my phone.”

  “Poor excuse.”

  “Happy ending, though.”

  “Except for the part about you almost getting killed. You can’t do that to me, okay? You make me nuts with poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and you make me nuts with your dogs and your training and your crazy family. And you know what else makes me nuts?”

  She was almost afraid to ask and it turned out she didn’t need to. His words wrapped around her, as warm as the light, as soft as the night air. “It makes me nuts knowing that I never want to live without you.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writers are lucky people. We get to create worlds and the people who inhabit them. We put words in their mouths, dreams in their heads, hopes in their hearts. And sometimes, we get them into plenty of trouble.

  But we never do it alone.

  When it comes to plotting and writing books, when it means getting those books out to the world, there is a team of people behind every writer. They are cheerleaders and sometimes, they are the ones who prod us and poke us … just when we need it.

  My thanks to all of them.

  My brainstorming group, Stephanie Cole, Serena Miller, and Emilie Richards, fabulous writers and great friends, always willing to bat around ideas and come up with new ones when the old ones peter out.

  The terrific people at St. Martin’s Minotaur, especially my editor, Hannah Braatan, and to Nettie Finn, Allison Ziegler, and Kaya Janas.

  My ever-supportive agent, Gail Fortune.

  And of course, my family. Thank you to Lucy and Eliot for (usually) leaving me alone while I work, and of course, thank you to David, who is my biggest cheerleader.

  ALSO BY KYLIE LOGAN

  The Scent of Murder

  League of Literary Ladies Mysteries

  Mayhem at the Orient Express

  A Tale of Two Biddies

  The Legend of Sleepy Harlow

  And Then There Were Nuns

  Gone with the Twins

  Chili Cook-Off Mysteries

  Chili con Carnage

  Death by Devil’s Breath

  Revenge of the Chili Queens

  Button Box Mysteries

  Button Holed

  Hot Button

  Panic Button

  Buttoned Up

  Ethnic Eats Mysteries

  Irish Stewed

  French Fried

  Italian Iced

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KYLIE LOGAN is the national bestselling author of the League of Literary Ladies Mysteries, the Button Box Mysteries, the Chili Cook-Off Mysteries, and the Ethnic Eats Mysteries. The Scent of Murder was the first in the Jazz Ramsey mystery series. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Kylie Logan

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

  THE SECRETS OF BONES. Copyright © 2020 by Connie Laux. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.

  www.minotaurbooks.com


  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photographs: woman © Monalyn Gracia/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images; dog © Proma1/Shutterstock.com; graveyard © Arterra Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo; leash © Vvvita/Shutterstock.com; dirt © Blazej Lyjak/Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-18059-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-18060-5 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250180605

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: May 2020