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

by Michelle Knowlden

  “Take your time,” she said. “The detective enjoys his croissant and coffee. With this dress, you will make his eyes pop.”

  The dress fit snugly and felt even more comfortable than my worn shorts. Donovan hated this kind of dress, considered it more provocative than stylish. But he wasn’t here to object.

  Sebastian was already in the living room and choked on his coffee when I entered. I don’t think he recognized the dress as his sister-in-law’s—probably surprised that my desert wardrobe contained more than tanks, shorts and one sparkly, pink top.

  Seemingly more relaxed without his older partner, Detective Salinger responded with more panache. Setting down his croissant, he rose. “Miss Greene. I appreciate you seeing me. Mister Crowder tells me that Abishag wives sleep in the morning, so please excuse the intrusion two days running.” My hand disappeared in his large one. He loomed over me, his twinkling eyes not quite popping but making me breathless.

  I extricated my hand gently and retreated to the wing chair. Owing to the shortness of the dress, I carefully crossed my legs, the Jimmy Choo embroidered sandals suddenly arresting the two men’s attention. I’d purchased them between the Thomas and Jordan marriages when I had more dollars than sense. I brought them to the desert thinking that spiked heels made a good weapon.

  Even though I couldn’t walk more than three paces without twisting an ankle or breaking my neck, the sandals added about six inches to my height. They also drew attention to my ankles, which were quite nice, thank you very much.

  “You had more questions about the day of the shooting?” I asked. It could be the only reason he needed to see both Sebastian and me.

  His eyes lost their twinkle, and I steeled myself for bad news. “We’ve received some threats against you, Miss Greene. It could be a hoax: less than ten percent prove to be of real danger. Still we take such threats seriously.”

  I took in little after his first sentence. “Threats against me? Why?”

  His battered face was unreadable. “We’re treating it as related to the reason for the shooting or someone prejudiced against Abishag wives.”

  I suddenly noticed Sebastian staring out the window, his face grim. Salinger caught the same thing and asked, “Have you received similar calls, Mister Crowder?”

  “A couple.” He glanced at me, jaw muscles twitching. “I thought it was some nutcase. The woman had a foul mouth.”

  “Woman?” Salinger pounced on the word. “The recordings we have were too distorted to distinguish gender.”

  “Definitely a woman, practically shrieking that Doctor Telemann’s death didn’t deserve to be “sweetened by a bed-warmer,” and someone should make sure it wasn’t.”

  “What does she have against poor Henry?” I said indignantly. “Everyone loves him.”

  Ignoring me, Salinger studied Sebastian thoughtfully. “About the same as the messages left at the station. You know any woman who had a grudge against the professor?”

  Sebastian shook his head wearily. “You already asked me that. Leslie’s right: men and women loved him. Love him. Except for that one altercation with Mayfield, which was more the professor yelling than Chris, I’ve never heard anyone even raise their voice around Henry.”

  “Mayfield’s been cleared,” Salinger said. I tried not to look too interested—his disclosures surprised me. Maybe it was my dress. “He has an alibi.”

  “Did you figure out who the other man was?” I asked casually. “The one not Doctor DiToro?”

  He smiled enigmatically, the open door shutting in his eyes, but the friendly gleam remained.

  Sebastian persisted. “About Doctor DiToro. I hear he’s in town. Is he a suspect?”

  “Suspect? That may be too strong a word. Thank you, I would love more coffee.”

  Dèsirèe appeared in the room, holding a coffeepot. While she refilled his cup, Sebastian and I exchanged a meaningful look, in complete accord, which comforted me.

  “Sir,” I said, going for sweetly worried. “If I’m in danger, is there someone I should look out for? It could still be a man, right? A man could have hired a woman to make those threatening calls.”

  I thought about crying a little but couldn’t quite manufacture the tears. I settled for batting my eyelashes a couple of times.

  Sebastian rolled his eyes, but Salinger seemed to appreciate my effort. “I recommend you keep watch for anything, Miss Greene. I suspect the calls were, as Mister Crowder said, made by a random crackpot. Besides alerting you, we’ve also asked the Villa Dorado security to watch for anything suspicious.”

  “I notified the security office after the first call,” Sebastian said as Dèsirèe returned to the kitchen.

  Salinger’s eyebrows rose. “Yet you didn’t call me. Interesting.”

  Sebastian shifted in his chair. “That seemed escalating my concern too far.”

  “Concern, eh?” Salinger seemed to muse on that for a minute, but I lost interest. As the policeman said, some fanatic wanted in on the news story. I’d been milking it for information about suspects. None seemed forthcoming, so I would rather work on my own investigation.

  I rose, smoothing down the dress, balancing precariously on the six-inch heels. Both men’s attention shifted interestedly on my maneuvers. “If there’s nothing else, Detective Salinger…”

  He rose also. “You will contact me if there’s another call or if you see anything suspicious?” His gaze shifted between Sebastian and me. We both nodded.

  “Thank you for the coffee.” His large hand engulfed mine again, and I felt my balance tilt. With a grin, he steadied me. A moment later, he departed. I gratefully removed the shoes.

  “Is he your type?” Sebastian’s expression was unreadable.

  I thought for a second. “I don’t think I have a type. Why?”

  Dèsirèe, who appeared as soon as the detective left to clear dishes, paused. “With those broad shoulders, he is any woman’s type.”

  “He has nice eyes too,” I said.

  “Eyes,” she scoffed. “With the suit and that delicious voice, who is looking at eyes?”

  Sebastian huffed. “If you’re not taking the question seriously…”

  I looked at Sebastian with interest. “Of course, we’re not. You think Jeff’s interested in dating me? He’s not.”

  “Jeff?” A surly note crept into Sebastian’s voice.

  “He flirts ‘cause he thinks it’ll cause me to tell him everything.” I exchanged a speculative glance with Dèsirèe. “Besides he’s GU for me but not for you. If you’re serious about those shoulders, he’s all yours.”

  “GU?” Sebastian suddenly seemed less grouchy and more intrigued.

  “Geographically Undesirable,” Dèsirèe said.

  I added, “No guy will travel 100 plus miles for a date. I don’t know much about dating, but I know that much. It’s a non-starter.”

  Dèsirèe said thoughtfully, “I may slip him my number next time he is here. Perhaps you will call him, yes? A suspicious sound as the detective says. Any reason will do.”

  “I shouldn’t be listening to this,” Sebastian growled.

  I looked at him with concern and shot a glance at Dèsirèe. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have started it. I know you two have feelings for each other. Forget I…” Both stared at me so astonished, that I dried up.

  Dèsirèe hooted. “For me, Sebastian is GU.” Her expression turned secretive. “Besides his interests lie elsewhere.”

  Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “Dez…”

  She shrugged. “If you wish to be an idiot, then let it be so.”

  Since they were suddenly speaking in code, my thoughts drifted. “Dèsirèe, we’ve invited Chris Mayfield to lunch. Would you mind making extra for him?”

  Sebastian overrode Dèsirèe’s assent with a suspicious, “Why’d you invite Mayfield to lunch? And who are we?”

  “Nothing and no one that’d interested you,” I said airily. “And Dèsirèe, we’re expecting another guest this afternoon. I can
let you know the exact time later. Would it be possible to have some wine and appetizers?”

  Again Sebastian interrupted with, “Why are you inviting men over? You think this is appropriate considering Henry’s condition?”

  He had a point. Florence Harcourt included a dozen rules in the Abishag Wife’s Handbook that frowned on a wife given to socializing. But I had already set a precedent with my first two husbands: solving a criminal case was necessary to bring peace and safety to one’s husband’s household. Which reminded me…

  “Quite appropriate,” I said primly. “If you two will excuse me, I need to check on Henry.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I carefully returned Sebastian’s sister-in-law’s dress to the closet and switched to a periwinkle tee and white shorts for a visit to Henry and lunch with Mayfield. If DiToro stopped by for drinks this evening, I would change into the Nordstrom’s dress. I’d acquired a new skill: choosing appropriate clothing for unmasking killers.

  Which reminded me that I would be mediating with Kat, Sebastian, and Donovan too. I should consult with Dèsirèe about whether Duarte’s wife had something appropriate in her wardrobe for peace talks.

  I tapped lightly on the middle room door and heard Kat grunt. I peeked inside and found her hunched over her computer.

  “You get hold of Donovan?” I asked.

  Her face went blank for a second and then not so much. “Oh, right. I’ll call him when I finish with this.”

  “How about Doctor DiToro?” I asked.

  Her attention returning to the screen, she said, “I did, but he refused. We’ll pay him a visit this afternoon.”

  I stepped inside the room and shut the door.

  “Why? Isn’t his refusing to meet with us a sign of guilt? Why don’t we just tell the police he did it?”

  She skated me an amused look. “You can’t arrest people for refusing a social invitation, Les.”

  That seemed a bad premise to me, but I let it go. “Sebastian’s getting suspicious about our socializing. We can get around it today since he’s spelling Dog by sitting with Henry, and he won’t see everyone who comes and goes. We may have to figure out something for tomorrow when the hospice service provides someone else. ‘Course Sebastian may be supervising the project at the Institute…”

  Kat shut her laptop. “No worries. We’ll probably have it solved by then.”

  “You found something?” I pushed books off the room’s lone chair and sat.

  “It’s Mayfield,” she said with certainty. “I hacked into the professor’s personal email account and found some threatening notes. I had Stanley run the text against Mayfield’s test answers and the style shows an 82 percent correlation.”

  I shook my head. “No logic in it being Mayfield. What’s his motive?”

  Sprawling on the bed, she stared at the ceiling and fiddled with her pocketknife. “It’s a conundrum. He’s from some dairy farm near Fresno and still dates his high school girlfriend. But, in his test answer about the saint’s heel bone, he practically accuses Doctor Telemann of adultery.”

  “When did he accuse Doc T of adultery?”

  “When he said in his test answer that the bones of the saint would get that SIR99 imprint if possessed by an adulterer. Since the professor possessed the heel bone, he must have been with a married woman.”

  I frowned. Before I opened my mouth, she wagged her finger. “I know what you’re going to say—some adulterer could have passed on the heel bone already imprinted.

  “I was going to say,” I said drily. “That the whole heel bone thing was a hoax but whatever. I get your point about Mayfield using the test to accuse Doc T of adultery, but Mayfield wouldn’t have known about Doc T’s Guinevere. Outside of Idaho, no one knew. Besides Jennifer Eaton, have you heard any rumors about him and another married woman?”

  She shook her head. “Not a peep. His record in Claremont has been spotless. Did he seem the philandering sort when you worked with him?”

  “I’m not as good at spotting slime as you are.” I thought about it, not liking to think about the Doc T from before the shooting. I remembered his innocence, him calling himself an old bachelor who gave up on marriage a long time ago, his look of yearning when he talked of his Guinevere, and how he’d never found anyone else who suited him as she had.

  “No,” I finally said. “He didn’t seem the cheating sort of man.”

  “There you go then.” Still she looked troubled.

  Or maybe something else troubled her. Maybe she was worried about Henry living into the fall semester. “Did Dog tell you what the doctor said yesterday?”

  She blinked, as if coming from a foggy place. “What?”

  “About how Henry’s doing better than they expected. That he might last longer than they predicted.”

  She looked at me closely. “I don’t know what comatose people do in their last days, but maybe it’s a good thing if they last longer. Maybe it’s like a vacation before they die.”

  I had already thought too much about last days and the afterlife with Thomas and Jordan, but she missed my point. “If Henry’s still around when school starts, you and Dog are returning to LA. Sebastian too.”

  She looked relieved, as if she thought I’d be worried about something else. I’m not sure what. Nothing could be worse than Dog expelled from medical school.

  Then she turned the tables on me. “We’re not leaving you. I know Sebastian won’t either.”

  “I’m serious, Kat,” I said. “Maybe it’s not so bad for us three, but Dog’s in medical school. He could lose his spot.”

  Kat rolled off the bed and landed at my feet. Grabbing my shoulders, she fixed me with a mock serious look. “My grandmother always said, There’s trouble enough in this world without borrowing what ain’t happened yet. There’s weeks left before we need to decide.”

  She winked. A nervous tremor cut through me as a speculative look crossed her face. “I’m working on some ideas just in case. I bet Stanley could modify a few records to make it look like Dog is attending classes. I know classmates of his who would sign class rosters till he gets back.”

  Seeing the horrified look on my face, she roared with laughter. “Don’t be borrowing trouble that’s not happened yet,” she reminded me. “Now go away. I’m still mining the professor’s emails.”

  Hearing the doorbell chime, I ducked in the hallway shadows to watch Sebastian follow Elaine Didderly and Chris Mayfield to the living room, talking about hipbones and mule shoes. I studied Mayfield as he passed through the entryway. He didn’t look like someone with a grudge, someone who would shoot his professor.

  In a pensive mood, I settled in the wooden chair next to Henry’s bed while Dog took a break. I leaned close to Henry, letting the lemon verbena scent waft over him, kneading his hand with my left, while I flipped idly through The Legend of King Arthur. I’d stopped with Guinevere’s entrance yesterday, but the child’s book spent the next chapter on Merlin while I wanted to finish the Queen’s bit. Still one must do these things in an orderly manner so I read about Merlin to Henry: how he had engineered Arthur’s birth through shape-shifting and magic. During his childhood, soldiering years, and kingship, Merlin lurked both in the background and at Arthur’s right hand. Then the wizard fell for the Lady of the Lake, Niviane, a huntress and daughter of a king.

  I remembered this. Whether Merlin’s power lay in his magic or wisdom, his ruin came as easily as any man’s—he lost everything for a woman. Niviane didn’t love him. Whether from fear of his spells or knowing that she could vanquish a besotted man, she imprisoned the wizard in a tree.

  Arthur’s Camelot fell apart after that. Guinevere vacillated between king and knight till Arthur, broken-hearted, without a counselor and full of vengeance, returned to warring. On a foreign battlefield…I paused, eyeing the large bronze wall clock. Lunch hour was nigh.

  A light from the patio shone through the window, illuminating a potted calla lily on the floor. Friends, colleagues, and stud
ents had overwhelmed us with flowers, cacti, and plants since Henry’s shooting. Yesterday Dog had moved the cacti to the patio and half the plants to the other bedrooms so he could move more easily in Henry’s room. Sebastian had taken the flowers to a nursing home near the Institute.

  Calla lily seemed the most popular of the plants, and one I knew well. My grandmother and I had often worked in her flower garden. I had been partial to begonias and bromeliads, but Grandma had been crazy for calla lilies. In patio pots, in a planter near the front door, along the back fence, surrounding the liquidambar tree near the sidewalk, and nearly engulfing the fish pond—they had overtaken the yard. Grandpa had to intercede for the roses, agapanthus, and gardenias.

  I think Grandma liked calla lilies because people often mistook them for Easter lilies. Easter lilies symbolized resurrection while calla in Afrikaans meant 'pig's ear.' The irony always made her smile. Doc T would have laughed out loud, seeing the university shower him with pig ears.

  I lightly brushed Henry’s cheek. I wished Doc T had had the commonsense of a romantic rationalist. He’d pined after a college president’s wife with no hope of winning her or keeping her. He may have seen himself as a knight, but he had only been a young, feckless instructor, doomed for exile and bachelorhood.

  At least he had me now. I might not be a Guinevere, but I was an Abishag wife who would stay till death took him.

  While washing my hands in Henry’s bathroom, Sebastian entered the bedroom, ready to spell me for lunch. He grinned at me through the open bathroom door.

  “Now you look more like yourself. What was with that tight wrinkled dress and shoes on stilts?”

  I should have been outraged. I had been gloriously in the height of fashion during the interview. Though Donovan preferred fitted rather than tight clothing on women, he at least understood the difference between Nordstrom and thrift store.

  Instead, I laughed. Although powerful tools, I had felt ridiculous in those togs. Coming from a wealthy family, Sebastian’s matter-of-fact attitude towards fashion somehow jived with my middle class one.