Murder Bone by Bone

by Lora Roberts

  “People change.”

  “That they do,” Claudia agreed with good humor. “That’s what makes them so interesting.”

  We were silent for a moment. “So you think this drug dealer overreached himself in some way and was killed and buried beneath the sidewalk.”

  “Melanie couldn’t remember if the sidewalk was torn up just then or not,” Claudia said, sounding disgruntled.

  “Who could? It must be fifteen years or more since then.”

  “At least fifteen years. But it narrows it down a good deal.”

  “This is total speculation.” I glanced at Claudia, who was working on her second bagel. “You have no basis for any of this.”

  “I have a feeling,” Claudia said darkly. “And at least I’m looking around. Your Drake is so involved with digging up the here and now he can’t be bothered to dig up the past.”

  “He’ll get there.” I had another thought. “Did you tell him any of this?”

  “He’d be even less inclined than you to believe it.”

  I had to agree that was true. “Nevertheless, he should know. And I don’t think you should go asking around anymore, Claudia. You might provoke someone.”

  “You think Melanie is the killer?” Claudia chuckled. “I don’t think so. She doesn’t have the guts.”

  “She might spread it around that you’re interested, though. The killer might hear—” I caught myself.

  “If it’s all a crock, as you just said, there’s no danger, is there?” Claudia stared at me with bright, amused eyes. “And if it’s not, then any interest in me is proof I’m on the right track.”

  “Would that be any satisfaction if the killer comes after you?” I shivered. “That is not a pleasant experience.”

  Claudia patted my arm. “Just be thankful you aren’t mixed up in it this time, Liz. I’m not in any danger just from poking around. Heavens, I don’t even know any of their names, except Melanie’s. I didn’t remember Richard’s name until I met him again. Most of them went by nicknames anyway. That flaky baby-sitter called herself Primrose. I think her real name is Jane Holfinger. There was another one they called Mondo Man, and a girl named Wendy, I think. Don’t know any of the rest of them, and believe me, they came and went. That house must have seen upwards of twenty young people in the space of a year.”

  “Drake ought to know, anyway.”

  “You’re so loyal.” Claudia made me sound a bit like Barker. I wondered if he was giving Drake a hard time. I wished that Bridget’s mom hadn’t broken her ankle. I wished that Emery hadn’t chosen this week to have a conference in Hawaii. I wished I were holed up in my cottage, peacefully writing about winter aconites for Ornamental Horticulture.

  “Anyway,” Claudia said, “Melanie agreed to tell Drake whatever she knew.”

  “Maybe she’s in danger, too.”

  Claudia sounded impatient. “No one’s in danger now, Liz. This all happened so long ago. If it turns out to be this drug dealer under the sidewalk, he might even have died of an overdose and panicked someone into planting him there. Whoever did it is probably long gone now.”

  “Maybe not.” I slowed for a turn onto Brotherhood Way that would take us the back way into Golden Gate Park, avoiding the traffic on 19th. “You just pointed out that all those people turn up again, and some of them never left.” I shook it off. “This is all stupid, anyway. No way could you come up with the identity of those bones just from gossiping with Melanie.”

  “You’re probably right.” Claudia sounded disappointed. “So Drake shouldn’t know. He’s so competitive about his cases.”

  “He is?” I smothered a laugh.

  We managed to find a place to park not too far from the museum and marched our troops inside, where there were bones enough to please everyone. However, when I had my turn at a bathroom break, I found a pay phone and left a message for Drake about Claudia’s revelations. I didn’t go into detail—didn’t have that much change. But I felt he should know.

  Chapter 9

  We had meant to have our picnic on Ocean Beach, but the wind blew a cloud of fine sand over the beach right at sandwich level if you were sitting on a blanket. So we spent a few minutes looking at the few hardy souls sailboarding in that cold water, located a sea lion or two, and then took our lunch to Queen Wilhelmina’s Tulip Garden by the north windmill. The tulips were long gone, of course, but a vivid display of zinnias and petunias took their place, and the windmill proved interesting to the boys.

  On the way home, everyone slept, even Claudia, whose soft snores began soon after we wheeled onto 280. I felt a little guilty for dragging her all over the Academy of Sciences. Standing in the middle of the Fish Surround, a circular room with walls made from a continuous fish tank, watching the leopard sharks and salmon and rockfish and groupers swimming by had made all of us dizzy, but Claudia had had to sit down.

  I didn’t mind that my passengers were snoozing, especially when the “Riders in the Sky” tape ended and no little fingers pushed the rewind button. There’s only so much yodeling a person can take. In the quiet, with just engine noise to distract me, I started thinking about what Claudia had said earlier.

  I found Melanie Dixon irritating, but she was in a bad position if Claudia were right. Anyone who came within the boundaries of a criminal investigation had my sympathy. I was just glad Bridget was well out of it. She would have been aghast at the trouble her house had gotten into—still would be, when she returned. If only Drake could clean up the investigation by then.

  I turned it over in my mind, wondering how you could ever learn the details about something that had happened so long ago. Even if the bones could be firmly identified, reconstructing the last few hours or days of that person’s life would be nearly impossible. Anyone whose movements were noticed enough to be recollected would also have been missed at the time.

  Drake didn’t talk about his job to me, and I didn’t want to know about police work, but I wondered how they searched for old information. This is a subject I know something about, having written a couple of articles on Palo Alto history for Smithsonian. I decided to do some checking of my own the next day, Monday. The boys would be in school, leaving only Moira to tend. Surely she and I could do some library work without too much hassle.

  Claudia started yawning and blinking when I turned off 280 at Sand Hill. The kids slept until we pulled into the driveway.

  Or rather, tried to pull into the drive. It was occupied at the time—not by a car or truck, but by Drake and Richard Grolen. They stood in the middle of the drive, heads thrust toward each other, fists clenched, like male-aggression poster boys. The students watched incredulously, as if unable to believe that people so old could still put up their dukes. Even Stewart had left his crew and was standing nearby, his expression bemused.

  Claudia leaned forward. “Now, what’s this? The menfolk are squaring off.”

  “But why?” I wondered if I should park on the street.

  “Melanie, probably,” Claudia said. Melanie was there, fluttering around, pulling at Richard’s arm, pushing at Drake. Dinah Blakely, too, stood on the front steps, her hands to her mouth as she watched the men. Richard had a good four inches on Drake, who’s not that tall for a man, although he towers over me. Drake was younger, but he didn’t have those shovel-lifting muscles that us girls had been admiring in Richard the day before.

  Appalled to find myself measuring them as opponents, I honked the horn. For a long moment, neither man moved. Then, reluctantly, they stepped apart.

  Melanie came running over to the passenger door before I even got the car parked. “Where have you been?” She was beside herself. “How could you just go away and leave that—that savage in charge?”

  “I didn’t think he was so combative when I met him yesterday.” I set the Suburban’s parking brake. The middle-seat kids slumbered on, but Corky and Sam watched the drama, wide-eyed. They were more used to their own brand of fighting.

  “Melanie means Detective Dra
ke, don’t you?” Claudia fished around on the front seat and assembled her purse, the bag of bagels, and the various pamphlets she’d collected during our excursion. “What’s the fight about?”

  “Oh, it’s terrible.” Melanie’s distress was evident; her mascara was streaked, her lipstick gnawed away. “Richard and his crew had found a lot of the bones and put them on the lawn in some kind of order. Then they went to lunch. After all, a policeman was here, even if he was too busy to come out and help them.” She darted a glare over her shoulder at Drake. “When the crew came back from lunch, the bones were gone.”

  “That is terrible.”

  “And the oh-so-alert policeman didn’t even notice.”

  “Be fair.” Dinah Blakely entered the conversation, coming down the steps. “Nobody thought to tell Paul we were leaving. It was kind of careless.”

  “Kind of careless?” Drake shook his head. His hair was wild, a sure sign of excessive perturbation. “Evidence in a possible homicide! And after you’d agreed to follow procedure!”

  He glared at Richard. “I ought to arrest you for obstructing an investigation.” His gaze swept Kathy, Nelson, and Hobart, who huddled together on the sidewalk, Dinah Blakely, and Richard.

  To his credit, Richard backed away from the confrontation. “Look, Drake—” His hands unclenched. “It’s true. I blew it. I should have taken better care—”

  “It’s not Dr. Grolen’s fault.” Nelson stepped forward, pushed perhaps by the other two. He was wearing sunglasses with thick prescription lenses. “I brought my lunch today, and I said I’d stay with the bones. But—” he swallowed. “I—I started thinking about ice cream, and figured I could get downtown and back in no time. I just didn’t think to let Detective Drake know. It seemed so busy here with the road crew and all. I never thought anyone would just come up and walk off with the bones. Guess I didn’t think at all.”

  “As usual,” Kathy said brutally under her breath. Nelson’s ears turned red.

  “We would have been glad to keep an eye out, if you’d let us know,” Stewart put in. “Sorry to say we didn’t see anything unusual. But we were concentrating on our trench.”

  “At least the bone-nappers didn’t get this.” Richard Grolen pulled a tissue-wrapped object out of his pocket. Tenderly he folded back the paper, showing a curved piece of bone with three discolored teeth attached to it.

  We all moved a little closer. Drake asked, “What’s that?”

  “Jawbone.” Richard gazed down at it fondly. “With molars! Look at those roots. And a filling! Makes it easier to identify the body, if that’s a concern of yours.” He grinned at Dinah Blakely. “Also good from the anthropological point of view.”

  “Now, Richard!” Dinah Blakely laughed, sounding coy. Melanie’s eyes narrowed, going from Dinah to Richard. “Given that the bones are modern, I doubt this person ate enough stone-ground corn to wear down his enamel, or carried a burden sling in his teeth.”

  “You’ve already figured out a few things, though. Right?” Richard made room for Dinah at his side.

  “Well, I thought whoever it was might have been a nervous, uptight kind of person,” she said, diffidently. “See, looks like he did grind his teeth. Pretty noticeably, since he was under twenty-five.”

  “How do you know that?” Drake had his untidy little notebook out, scrawling things down. He hovered over the jaw fragment in Richard’s hand, as if he didn’t trust the archaeologist not to whisk it away.

  “It’s a guess, really.” Dinah Blakely was apologetic. “You can’t really be totally sure about things in forensic anthropology. We know the approximate age because the growth plates had fused in the long bones, but there was little sign of stress and wear and tear.”

  “Of course, we can’t substantiate that anymore, because the long bones were stolen.” Drake kept his voice level.

  I ran up the front steps. “Not all of them.” The cardboard box rattled when I pushed it along the porch. “There are these ones, that the boys found.”

  Corky and Sam tumbled out of the car. “Yeah, we found some,” Corky assured Richard.

  Sam turned big blue eyes on Dinah Blakely. “Please, can we dig now? We’ll find you some more bones.”

  An unmarked car pulled up in front of the house, and Drake welcomed his partner, Bruno Morales. Bruno waved cheerfully at me and at Claudia before going into a huddle with Drake. Claudia simply stood by the car, enjoying the scene and listening idly while Melanie poured a constant stream of what sounded like complaint into her ear. Stewart lingered, his interested gaze going from the box of bones to the sidewalk excavation.

  Drake took Bruno over to the box of bones, and they listed them together, Drake in his notebook and Bruno on a small computer. Richard joined them, followed by Dinah. Sensing that tension had lessened, Kathy and Hobart starting talking, pointedly excluding Nelson. He kicked idly at the tarp that covered the dig site, then took some chewing gum out of his pocket and offered it to the other students.

  “Okay,” Drake said finally. “Have we got it straight, Grolen? I don’t have the manpower to put a uniform on the job here. You’ll have to keep track of the bones, and when you’re done tonight I’ll take charge of them. We’ve inventoried, so we know what we have.”

  “It’s starting to make a picture,” Dinah Blakely chirped. “Male, six feet or thereabouts, probably slender build, nervous, had broken his femur a couple of years previously—probably a skiing accident. Oh, he also got into fights.”

  Melanie and Richard exchanged a long look.

  Bruno Morales focused on Dinah. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well,” she said, flushing a little at his interest, “I guess now that the bones are stolen it’s not really evidence. But we found the bones of his right hand all together, almost articulated. And there was some damage to the knuckles, not as pronounced as it would be in a professional pugilist, you understand, but pretty unmistakable. He’d slugged a few people in his time. It had to have hurt.”

  Drake had the bright idea of asking her to sketch what she’d seen, before the memory of it disappeared. He and Morales bustled her into the house, and the boys trailed along, totally enthralled with all this talk of skeletons and bones. Claudia followed them, mumbling about coffee. Stewart wandered back to his crew.

  I climbed into the Suburban to liberate my youngest passengers from their restraints, not that they cared. Moira was still deeply asleep, and Mick was just starting to open his eyes. I fumbled with the unfamiliar buckles and straps, not wanting him to get vocal and wake up his sister. Then I heard Melanie talking, and realized that Richard must have joined her in leaning against the Suburban’s rear fender. Either they didn’t see me between the seats, or they didn’t realize that the window behind them was open, broadcasting their low-voiced conversation into the car.

  “Sounded familiar, didn’t it?” Richard spoke first.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Melanie’s lighter voice was easy to hear. Crouched in front of Mick, I could see her profile. She held her shoulders rigid.

  “Sure you do, Mel.” Richard’s low rumble was harder to distinguish. “I could tell, when Dinah said that about the fistfights. Looks like he finally got into trouble he couldn’t get out of. Remember that time he cut the LSD with something that caused that guy to go catatonic?”

  “Look, it’s all conjecture.” Melanie’s voice was taut. “Nobody really knows any of those things, and with the bones gone—”

  “Ah, yes, the bones. That was a little drastic, wasn’t it? And futile, as it turns out. You should have remembered the box on the porch.”

  “I should have—” Melanie swung around and stared at him. “What do you mean? I didn’t steal those bones. I don’t care if they find out who it was. It has nothing to do with me.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Richard sounded almost caressing. “Well, maybe not. Funny, though, isn’t it. The past coming home to roost.”

  This interesting conversation held me motionless, but
Mick brought it to an end by loudly demanding his freedom. Struggling once more with the buckles, I heard Richard striding toward the steps. Then Melanie pushed in beside me.

  “Do you know how to do this?” I turned to her, keeping my face as bland as possible. “It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Like this.” She unsnapped and unstrapped with her usual brisk efficiency. “Did you hear what Richard and I were talking about?”

  Where Melanie is involved, all my instincts for self-preservation—and they are many—come directly to the surface.

  “Were you talking?” I helped Mick out of the car seat and he gathered up his blanket in his arms. “Would you mind taking him into the house while I get Moira? She might sleep a little more if I put her right in her crib.”

  Melanie sniffed. “You wish.” She smiled down at Mick. “Let’s go find some juice.”

  Mick was agreeable. I draped Moira over my shoulder, reflecting on Melanie’s odd combination of excellent mothering skills and her more annoying ways around grownups. I tried to memorize the conversation I’d heard, for later retelling to Drake. Of course, it would have been more dignified to admit I’d eavesdropped and challenge her to do something about it. However, the path of least resistance was mine.

  Chapter 10

  The kitchen bulged with people when I came in after putting Moira down. Claudia plopped the teakettle on the burner and rummaged through the tins that lined the stove’s warming shelf, questing for coffee. The boys guzzled juice at one side of the big round table, while Drake and Morales conferred across from them. Dinah and Richard stood together, facing Melanie.

  “Must you go?” Melanie, still holding the juice pitcher, fixed her gaze on Richard, and her words were less a question than a command. “I thought we could talk about it some more.”

  “No more to say.” Richard smiled charmingly at her. “Ready, Dinah?”

  I saw them to the door, wresting my hostess duties from Melanie. She had to hurry back to the kitchen to quiet the boys’ demands for more juice.