Riddle in Bones: An Abishag’s Third Mystery (The Abishag Mysteries)

by Michelle Knowlden

  “It took me awhile to find the box.” She handed it to Sebastian. “Your bedroom, Les, looks like a tsunami hit it.”

  I’d left my beach towel draped over the bureau, probably hiding the bone box, and the last two days’ clothing strewn about the room. I shrugged and shot an evil look at Dèsirèe making something in the kitchen that smelled of nutmeg. “We’ve a housekeeper that takes care of that.” I stared meaningfully at Sebastian.

  “Ah. I’d better prepare for the students coming in an hour,” Sebastian said, rolling his eyes at me. Fortunately, Kat had gone back to picking at her salad.

  I nodded vigorously till what he said registered. “What? Why are students coming here?”

  “I’m spelling Dog till Monday. The relief aide starts then. The students will only be here for a couple of hours. They’ve worked with Doctor T so I just have to brief them about the mule bone project. Dez is making some apricot crullers and brewing coffee, if you want to join us.”

  I snorted. I think I had enough of mule bones to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. Kat said nothing.

  “Okay, then,” he said, standing behind Kat and winking. “I’ll see you later.” He squeezed Kat’s shoulder and left.

  With Kat, you didn’t need to waste time with Jen’s tact protocols. She was logical like me and also disliked quibbling.

  “Dog says you and I have PTSD,” I said. “After I swam some laps this morning, I figured we can’t be afraid of loud stuff when the world is filled with loud stuff. And what happened at Thomas’s with the gun and the psycho that bashed you over the head at Jordan’s and even Doc T getting shot? So what. Good stuff’s happened too since we started solving mysteries about my husbands. I’m going to focus on that instead. That got me over my PTSD, so you should be over it too.”

  I fixed her with a narrow look. Never having given advice this long before, I checked to see how she took it.

  Her lips twitched. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

  “I’ll buy you one. What else do you need to get over PTSD?”

  “Apparently that’s it.” This time she snickered. Since she didn’t seem as haunted, I nodded with satisfaction.

  “Good. Tell Dog. He was worried.” I took another bite of the baguette, intrigued by the tantalizing flavors. Did I detect smoked paprika?

  She slid me a side-long look. “This husband came with a mystery, too.”

  “Not for us to solve,” I said. Not smoked paprika, but something tasted smoky. “A detective named Salinger is on the case. He’s got it handled.”

  “What about Sebastian’s car? Someone broke into it. Probably going for that bone box when they shot the professor. If we figure out why, we’ll have the guy.”

  Her eyes lit with a familiar gleam. Maybe hunting down killers would cure her PTSD better than laps in the pool. Hair of the dog, people say. Cure what caused the problem with a tiny amount of the problem itself.

  What could it hurt? The box couldn’t logically be related to shooting Doc T, but if it kept Kat’s mind occupied and cured the PTSD, then it was all good.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Where do we start?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “We start with those students,” Kat said. “All worked with the professor, right? So they’ll know about the shoebox bones.”

  The smell of apricot crullers wafted sweetly over the dining room table. Interrogating students with coffee and crullers had side benefits. The French girl left the kitchen with pastries cooling on racks on the counter and everything immaculate. She had even cleared the table without me noticing. Maybe she was amazing with cooking and cleaning, but did she have our record for closing criminal cases? Good thing she could fall back on pastries and dusting.

  “Sebastian is, or was, Doc T’s assistant last year. We should interview him.”

  Kat jumped to her feet. “Let’s talk to him now.”

  “Okay, but I’ll check with Dog first. He may need a break.”

  Passing Sebastian’s room, we saw Dèsirèe chatting brightly to him as she made his bed, a gardenia fragrance drifting lightly from her furniture polish. Kat made a face and followed me to Henry’s room. We went by the closet with the washer and dryer, both going full tilt. Maybe later I’d have clean underwear.

  When I reached his bed, I took Henry’s hand, not as desiccated as my previous husbands’ but as unresponsive. “How’s he doing?”

  “Fine.” Dog’s gaze rested on Kat, not Henry. “You look great.”

  Kat nodded modestly. “Les told me to tell you that I don’t have PTSD anymore.”

  “She can’t tell you that.” Dog’s lack of belief in me wasn’t flattering. “Even professionals can’t instantly cure a PTSD patient.”

  “That’s because I didn’t treat them,” I said. “You need a break? I’ll sit with Henry.”

  “Dèsirèe baked apricot crullers,” Kat told him. “You should grab one.”

  “I thought I smelled…” Dog stalled staring at Kat intently. “I can’t believe…” Perplexed he looked at me, and then at Kat. He shrugged. “Yeah, I could use a break. Give me five minutes?”

  I made shooing motions and he left, shooting one more puzzled look at Kat before quietly shutting the door.

  “Always good to keep the mystery alive.” Kat grinned and threw herself on the corduroy fainting couch near the sliding glass doors to the patio.

  I didn’t know what that meant, another weird relationship thing that I would never understand. Probably had to do with what you kept secret from your man and what you revealed. My mother said you should share little with your spouse and that worked out best for everyone.

  One of the positive aspects to a comatose husband was that you could share anything with him. He would never judge you for it or break up with you over it. Or even hear and remember it. During long nights with both Thomas and Jordan, I had shared all sorts of things. I would undoubtedly share much with Henry, too.

  Dating Donovan had been a minefield. I carefully watched everything I said or did, and he still broke up with me over the teeny issue of me marrying Jordan behind his back.

  Marrying Henry Telemann would have the opposite effect: Donovan would take me back.

  I would never figure out men.

  While I held Henry’s hand, I hummed I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight and thought about the box of bones. I knew it’d been part of a Doc T seminar test, one not entirely solved by scores of students. That didn’t bode well for us.

  Lost in her own thoughts, Kat scribbled in the ratty notepad she kept stashed in the field vest she wore even when it was 120 degrees.

  Dog returned smelling of apple-scented hand soap from their bathroom and of apricot crullers. Smiling happily, he had a mug of coffee and a plate with two crullers, a massive bite missing from one. “These are fantastic. Dèsirèe insisted on making me coffee, too. Did you know she puts cardamom in her coffee? Reminds me of the Arabic coffee Basem makes, but miles better.” Our housemate on a student visa from Jordan, Basem majored in industrial engineering but dreamed of working for Audobon one day.

  “Don’t forget your nap,” Dog reminded me as Kat and I headed for the door.

  I saluted. “I’ll spell you again just before that, and I’ll have my dinner with Henry tonight.”

  I almost didn’t need to say that. Henry was my third husband, and we knew the routine.

  Dèsirèe had moved into Kat and Dog’s room, the vacuum roaring as we passed. We scooted into Sebastian’s room.

  The shoebox discarded on the floor, three bone pieces lay on the bedspread. Kat and I joined him, sitting cross-legged on the bed, encircling the bones. “So tell us about them,” I said.

  He frowned. “Aren’t you two supposed to be doing something else?”

  “No,” Kat said. “Tell us about ‘em.”

  He played morosely with the bones. Suspecting people bones, I shivered. As if he sensed my reaction, he looked up but his glance barely skated over me. Was he angry with me agai
n?

  “Doctor Telemann taught the same fall graduate seminar for over twenty years. Frauds, Fakes, and Forgeries. He would show these bones at the beginning of the semester, talk about them through the semester like they were the real deal. For our final paper, we had to guess which were real and which weren’t. He called it “solving the riddle in the bones.” No one’s figured out all three, and he never told us the truth. The best you could hope for was a “well argued.””

  He exhaled. “I guess we’ll never know the truth now.”

  “Did you take the seminar?” I asked.

  He nodded and pointed to the largest bone, a blackened stick about five inches long. “This one is a scorched femur of a Viking child circa Stone Age found in the Inner Hebrides in the 1960s.”

  Kat’s eyes lit up. “Really?” She reached for it.

  Sebastian held it out of reach. “Fraud, Fake, or Forgery?”

  Her face fell. “Not real then?”

  He laid it next to the other two bones. “Could be. We don’t know.”

  He picked up the middle bone, a small, fragile thing. “A proximal phalange—a finger bone. See the joint there? Boutonniere deformity. Usually caused by an impact injury—see it a lot in athletes.”

  “So a fraud, right?” Kat asked. “Bone is from someone modern? Someone who played ball?”

  Sebastian cocked his head. “Doc Telemann said the phalange was found at an Aztec site, Central Mexico, late 14th century. Could have been an injury of a stonemason—they built pyramids, you know. Aztecs had artisans and athletes, too.”

  “So not a fraud?” Kat said.

  Without answering, Sebastian dropped the finger bone into place again and touched the last bone that looked like a tiny, white, ossified carburetor. “Calcaneus, a heel bone purported to be that of a 13th century Estonian saint. Around the time of the Teutonic knights. There are some problems with this one…”

  He passed it to Kat. “It doesn’t feel like bone?” she said tentatively.

  “It’s not. It’s petrified, a fossil. According to ancient lore, Doc Telemann said the body of this “saint” vaporized instantly after his death, leaving a stone heel bone. And it gets more interesting.”

  He turned the heel bone over, and we saw markings stamped into its surface. Kat and I bumped heads trying to get closer to the symbols less than a half-inch high.

  SIR99

  “What’s that mean?” Kat asked.

  “I can only guess.”

  Kat hazarded. “Looks fake. Is it fake?”

  I interposed. “Sebastian said Doc T never told what was a fake and what wasn’t.”

  “But he was the professor’s assistant, so he’s got to know.” Kat looked hard at Sebastian. “You know, right?”

  Sebastian hesitated. “I think someone from my class, last fall’s seminar, guessed right about one of these bones. A week after the final, I overheard him yelling in Doc Telemann’s office. I could be wrong. Students shout a lot when they argue about their grades.”

  He chewed a thumbnail. “After finals, I happened to be working in Doc T’s office. I heard him gasp and turn white as a sheet. I thought he was having a heart attack. Looking at one of the tests, he said, “How did he know?””

  “You ever see the test?” Kat asked.

  He shook his head.

  “You remember which student was yelling in Doc T’s office,” I asked.

  This time he nodded. “Christopher Mayfield. He worked for Henry last year. He quit after the seminar. I saw him at the hospital after the shooting. He offered to help finish Doc T’s mule bone project.”

  “You think he shot him?” I didn’t quite succeed keeping the fear out of my voice.

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about who shot him.” Sebastian sounded frustrated.

  “We should look into this.” Kat spoke carefully, gauging Sebastian’s mood.

  He reacted immediately. “Not on your life. No one’s getting shot again, you hear me? Stay out of it.”

  “Okay, okay.” Kat patted his hand and smiled. “We’ve learned our lesson. No more PTSD for us. You don’t mind if we join your meeting, do you?”

  Backing Kat up, I said in my most innocent voice, “Mainly because we want coffee and crullers.”

  “Apricot crullers,” Kat said. “My favorite. Leslie won’t admit it, but she wants to be there, because, you know, she worked on this project and loved it.”

  “Mules bones,” I said. “I miss them.”

  He stared at us suspiciously. “You two are up to something.”

  I shook my head. “Seriously, Sebastian, we’re all about the mule bones.”

  Good thing the doorbell rang then. One more comment about mule bones, and Sebastian would have added two fake mule bone enthusiasts to the pile of artifact frauds on the bedspread.

  “They’re early. Look…” He hurriedly put the bones into the shoebox. “Don’t say anything about having these. Anyone got a good place to hide the box?”

  “I do!” My hand shot up like I was in class.

  “Good.” He thrust them into my hands and hurried to the door.

  Quietly Kat and I high-fived—our investigation was making headway.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sebastian introduced us to the two students who had just arrived: Elaine Didderly, a stout, Asian girl with the grip and attitude of a longshoreman and Avery Soto, a swarthy, rectangular guy who grunted in response to everything.

  “Christopher drove separately,” Elaine said. “Said he’ll be a little late.”

  Kat shot me a significant look. Avery grunted.

  Both students leapt on the crullers and coffee with Kat and me foraging through the remains. If Mayfield didn’t hurry, nothing would be left for him. With that thought in mind, I set aside a cruller for Sebastian. He sat on the couch next to me but divided his attention between sorting through a stack of papers and his coffee.

  “So you’re the Abishag wife,” Elaine said. She had a leisurely way of looking one up and down that made me think of the cop Jeff Salinger. Not a creepy inspection, but mathematical in its objectivity and scope.

  So the word was out that the professor had an Abishag wife. I wondered if we could use her interest. Kat had the same idea. She skated a glance at Sebastian still immersed in his paperwork. He probably thought we were socializing.

  Taking a dainty bite of the cruller, mostly to keep her mouth free for talking as Kat never ate daintily, she said, “Leslie’s interested in meeting everyone who knew the professor.”

  Which wasn’t true. I already knew more about Doc T than I should. I was still trying to separate that man from the Henry I married.

  Still I followed her lead while keeping strictly to the Handbook’s rules on discretion. I felt like Mata Hari with the subterfuge. It didn’t help that Sebastian, even oblivious, sat next to me on the couch. “Although I worked briefly with Doc T, his personal life is a mystery. I can make his final days more peaceful if I knew about his family and friends. Let’s start with the woman he called his Guinevere.”

  Kat’s eyebrows rose, but I ignored her. Love, long lost or otherwise, caused most shootings. I don’t actually know that for a fact, but it felt true.

  Avery grunted. Not helpful. Roused from his collating, Sebastian stared at me with astonishment but happily said nothing. Fortunately, Elaine offered, “You mean Jennifer Eaton?”

  “Uh huh,” Kat said guardedly. Not having the rational view of love I did, she didn’t like this line of questioning. Knowing her, she had decided that fake artifacts were a more likely motive than lost love. My last husband had been a victim of forgers, so I calculated the probability of me marrying another man assaulted by forgers to be zero.

  “What do you know about Jennifer Eaton?” I asked quickly as Sebastian appeared to be emerging from his speechlessness.

  “I found a picture of her in his office. In his desk. He left me there unsupervised once, and I’m a researcher to the marrow. When he caught me looking at it, h
e said she was his Guinevere. I saw her actual name on the back of the photo.”

  “Okay then,” Sebastian said a little overloud. “About these mule bones…”

  I glanced down at the photos on the coffee table, picked one at random, and handed it to Sebastian. “Maybe this explains the hipbone thing.” He frowned at the photo and then his eyebrows rose. He fumbled for a tattered journal.

  Turning back to the students, I asked, “So that’s all you know about her?” We made good progress finding her name, but Henry had little time left. The only thing I knew about his Guinevere was that she’d belonged to another, and that he had never found anyone else who suited him like she had. “Nothing about how and where they met, what happened to her, what kind of scent she wore?”

  Sebastian nudged me. “The displacement could have been caused by the hame, the mule’s collar when harnessed, but…”

  At the same time, Avery finally managed something other than a grunt. “Scent?”

  “I tried checking her out, of course.” Being that Elaine was a researcher to the marrow. “Doc T met her at that private college in Idaho where he taught before moving to California. I think she was married to…I guess it would have been the King Arthur in his story. He—Doc T—being Lancelot. They had a torrid affair, I’m sure, but in the end she must have chosen Arthur. And Doc T was exiled to California.”

  I nodded approvingly. I liked this female. She had the makings of a solid romantic rationalist.

  “Back to the mule bones,” Sebastian said firmly. “I have Professor Telemann’s notes about the project, and he never said anything about the hame…”

  “Good,” Kat said. “Just make sure everyone has a copy so we can get to this meeting’s real agenda.” With an intimidating stare at the students, she said, “Who here knows the riddle in the bones?”

  * * *

  Later, Kat and I would agree that we’d discovered Sebastian’s melting point and had to beat a hasty retreat. Unfortunate, as Christopher Mayfield had not yet arrived. I left Kat to figure out how to contact him while I googled Jennifer Eaton.