Murder Bone by Bone

by Lora Roberts

  “Oh.” Claudia patted me on the shoulder. “Technologically challenged again.”

  “I’m not challenged by it.” I handed Drake the last plate. “I just ignore it.”

  “Speaking of the latest technology, I didn’t see Babe in the drive when I went home,” Drake said.

  “I parked down the street from here—no time to go home. But I should move it now.”

  “I’ll stay with the kids while you do.” Claudia brought the high chair tray over to the sink. “Would Moira have a bath here in the kitchen? I would love to bathe her, but my knees aren’t up to kneeling by the tub.”

  “She probably wouldn’t mind. This is a big sink.” I wondered about the attraction of bathing a year-old child. During my recent experience of baths I had learned that such children were slippery, making it hard to get a grip on them when they were obstreperous, which was often. And water went everywhere. And they either hated the bath, crying the whole time, or loved it too much to get out, and screamed while you put on the sleeper. The whole experience was overrated, in my opinion.

  Drake walked down the block with me—for protection, he said. I didn’t argue when he took my hand. We sauntered toward Babe in the tender dusk, our feet whispering and crunching through the magnolia leaves. I almost hated to get into the bus. We didn’t say much as I headed around a couple of corners toward my driveway.

  I pulled in, and immediately stood on the brakes, causing Drake to brace himself against the dashboard. Illuminated in the headlights were Old Mackie, who’d probably come to retrieve his cart, and an unlikely companion for him.

  Nelson, the archaeologist.

  Chapter 23

  “Stay in the car,” Drake hissed at me. He leaped down from the bus, his right hand headed for his left armpit. He doesn’t always wear a gun, but I knew he usually did during an active investigation.

  I hate guns. I know how using one can make you feel that you’re in control of things for the moment. But it can’t keep you in control. And when, eventually, you have to put the gun down, you generally have a much bigger mess to deal with than you did before you picked it up.

  I turned off the engine, and the headlights went off, too. “Damn it—” came Drake’s voice. I turned the key back on to get the illumination back. Nothing had changed in that brief second. Old Mackie still gaped toward me, his every wrinkle and bit of stubble vividly shadowed. Nelson’s expression mirrored his, but for a moment the young man had seemed vested with an odd kind of authority over his elderly companion.

  Then they straightened, turning away from each other, facing toward the bus. Old Mackie had his hands in the air already. Nelson’s slowly inched up.

  Drake spoke. “Please step away from the cart. I’m a police officer. Please stand very still. Liz, do you have a flashlight?”

  There was one in the glove box. I pulled it out and got down from the bus myself, aiming the flashlight’s beam at the two men. I could just glimpse Drake from the corner of my eye, on the other side of the bus. He spoke into his cell phone, and kept his other hand close to his armpit, ready to draw his gun. I was glad he wasn’t waving it around. The situation, although interesting, seemed relatively innocuous.

  “Okay, Bruno’s on his way,” he said, stuffing the cell phone back in his jacket pocket. “We’ll wait for the backup.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Nelson tried some bluster. “We’re just having a friendly conversation. I wasn’t hurting the old dude or anything.”

  “Is that true, Mr. Mack?” Drake knew Old Mackie, not just because he dropped by to visit me occasionally, but because all the chronic street people are well known to the police. The cops know the difference between the real down-and-outers and the professional panhandlers who make decent money cashing in on yuppie guilt.

  “It’s true!” Nelson insisted. Tell him!”

  Old Mackie looked bewildered. “Dunno nuttin.”

  “Look, he was getting into her garage!” Nelson’s glasses flashed as he looked from one to the other of us. It would be a clash of lenses when he and Drake made eye contact. Drake would get the better of it. He always did.

  “If you insist on talking now, Mr. Drabble, I must warn you of your rights.”

  “I don’t need my rights.” Nelson looked pale in the flashlight beam, but resolute. “This is nothing more or less than an innocent chat. I was passing by, I saw this old man in Mrs. Sullivan’s drive—”

  “Not Mrs. Just Liz is fine.”

  “Whatever.” Nelson went on doggedly. “Anyway, I knew it was her driveway, and I wondered why he was getting into her garage, that’s all. I was being a good citizen. I’m not the one you should be arresting.”

  “I’m not arresting anyone right now.” Drake’s voice was mild. “Is what he says true, Mr. Mack?”

  The bewilderment was replaced by cunning on Old Mackie’s face. “Getta my schoppun cahrt,” he said, and spat politely to one side.

  A cruiser pulled up across the end of the driveway. Living so close to downtown, where the police have their headquarters, gives you quite an advantage in response time.

  The uniform, a buffed young woman, gave me a glance, then obeyed Drake’s instructions and frisked Nelson and Old Mackie. Bruno arrived. I turned off my flashlight and got the keys out of the bus—the uniformed cop had her flashlight on our malefactors, and I saw no sense in wearing down Babe’s battery. I turned on the outside lights and worried that Claudia would get restive.

  Finally the uniform went away, and the rest of us went into Drake’s kitchen, after a discussion between Drake and Bruno over whether we should all go downtown or not. Bruno pushed for clearing it up right then and there, arguing that it didn’t look serious. Drake wasn’t too pleased to welcome Old Mackie into his house, but he did. Nelson was invited to tell his story again.

  “That’s all I was doing,” he insisted stubbornly. “I just happened to see a possible burglary in progress and tried to do my duty.”

  “Why didn’t you find a phone and call us?” Drake leaned back in his chair, his eyes straying longingly toward his espresso machine.

  “It might have been over by the time you got there.” Nelson wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He turned to me. “I didn’t know he was a friend of yours.”

  “Did he tell you so?”

  “Yeah, he said you told him he could store something in the garage.”

  “Is that true, Ms. Sullivan?” Drake turned to me. Bruno was writing away on his laptop. We were being formal for the record.

  “It’s okay with me if he stores his cart in the garage.” I couldn’t figure out exactly what stand to take here. On one hand, no point in getting poor Old Mackie into trouble he couldn’t get himself out of. No matter how bad it was for him to sleep under a bush at the creek, I was sure that being locked up would be worse. Freedom is more important to some people than three squares a day and a lumpy iron bed. “But maybe next time he could tell me ahead of time so I know to open the door for him.”

  Drake looked at Old Mackie. “Do you understand?”

  He nodded, clutching the topmost of his scarves in his hands. “Yesshir.”

  I was still impressed with Nelson’s ability to understand what Old Mackie was saying, which had always been a problem for me. “What else did you talk about?”

  “What?” Nelson swiveled around and stared at me. Drake stared, too. Bruno just smiled.

  “You can understand Old Mackie pretty well, it seems. Looked to me like you were—questioning him or something. Not accusing him of stealing, but asking for information.”

  Drake leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest, and tried not to smile. “Answer the question. It’s a good one.’’

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Nelson squirmed a little. His round face grew shinier. He took off his glasses and cleaned them nervously on his grubby shirttail. Denuded, his eyes were small and squinty.

  “Did you know we were looking for this man?” Drake gestured toward Old M
ackie, who blinked. The sour smell of stale beer and cheap wine came off him in waves.

  “How would I know that?” Nelson put his glasses back on and radiated innocence. “Look, everything happened just as I told you.”

  “Where were you yesterday morning?” Bruno asked the question gently.

  “I was at home, getting ready to dig. Only we didn’t, because Dr. Grolen was hurt and you sent us away.”

  Drake stared at him for a minute, with Nelson getting jumpier every second. A look passed between Drake and Bruno. “Okay, you can go.” Drake pushed back his chair.

  Nelson jumped as if jet-propelled. “Okay. See you.”

  “Wait. You must not leave town. Call me if there’s anything you want to tell me.” Bruno gave Nelson one of his cards, and a liquid look of concern. “You must hold yourself available if we should wish to speak with you again.”

  “Okay. Fine. Whatever.” Nelson was out of the door, before he’d even stopped speaking.

  Drake turned to Old Mackie. “Why did you put your cart in the garage? Why did you disappear?”

  Old Mackie stared at him, blinking slowly. Then he looked at me and gave a helpless shrug.

  “You were afraid. Tell them about it.” I knew I wasn’t supposed to speak, that I could say the wrong thing and invalidate the whole interview for police purposes. But Old Mackie looked so pitiful, so in need of help.

  After a long moment of silence, Old Mackie suddenly began talking. “Cdn’t rully see. Jush a—” he drew quavering shapes in the air with his dirt-blackened fingers— “blur. Shun in me eyes.” He held one hand up in front of his bleary eyeballs. “Dint look good.”

  Bruno wrote all this down. Drake turned to me.

  “I don’t always know what he’s saying—guess we should have kept Nelson around. He didn’t seem to have trouble communicating.” I got up and fetched Old Mackie a glass of water. It wasn’t what he preferred to drink, but Drake took a dim view of handing out liquor during his questioning.

  Bruno showed me his laptop screen. “That’s what I thought, too,” I said. “All he saw were blurry shapes, because the sun was in his eyes. But he felt the shapes were up to no good.”

  Old Mackie nodded eagerly. “Whammo!” He pantomimed picking up a heavy object, bringing it down on something. “Laidem flat.”

  Perhaps because I’d been around Moira so much lately, I felt that I was understanding Old Mackie better. “Did he see you?” I copied his pantomime movement. “The man who hit?”

  Old Mackie shrugged. “Dunno. God oudda dere, doh.”

  Drake tried without success to pin him down further, but Old Mackie became distressingly vague about how he’d come to leave his cart in my garage, and what his future plans were.

  “You’re still in danger, if you were before,” Drake argued. “Let us give you some protection.”

  “Noshure.” Old Mackie got up. “I godda go.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Drake let him go. I called Claudia to tell her we were detained. She had that blend of speculation and avidity in her voice that let me know what she thought we were up to.

  I offered to leave, but Bruno said no. “We don’t know enough in this case to have any secrets. Perhaps you know something we don’t.”

  Drake nodded reluctantly. He hated having me involved in his work. I wasn’t wild about it, either. But I did want all this cleared up. It was Tuesday evening. Friday night Bridget and Emery would be back. It had to be resolved before then.

  We sat around for a little while, hashing things out. “It doesn’t make sense,” Drake said, for Nelson to be accosting Old Mackie unless he knew the old man saw something of Richard Grolen’s attack.”

  Bruno nodded. “If he was the attacker, he would be afraid the old man had seen him.”

  “But would he just talk to him? Wouldn’t he find some way to eliminate a possible witness?” Drake jumped up and headed for the espresso machine. “I’ll make decaf,” he told Bruno, his voice conciliatory. “I just can’t stand it anymore.”

  “In that case, I’ll have one, too.” Bruno looked at me.

  “She’ll have some hot cocoa made with steamed milk.” Drake didn’t glance at me when he said that, just busied himself with his machine.

  Bruno raised his eyebrows. At least he didn’t wear the smug look that the other matchmakers around us wore.

  I didn’t say anything. Let them all think we were doing the funky monkey night and day. It shouldn’t matter to me. But with every significant look, I felt more and more boxed in.

  “So what made Old Mackie emerge from hiding, when he was worried enough yesterday to go into it?” I turned the conversation, more to get it away from Drake and me than to put it back on the matter at hand.

  “That’s a good question, too,” Drake admitted. He directed a brief frown over his shoulder at me. “I would have gotten around to asking that other question myself.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll just butt out.”

  “Your input could be valuable to us,” Bruno said with his gentle courtesy. His turn to frown at Drake. “Liz is a very astute observer, as you’ve noted in the past, Paolo.”

  Drake set a steaming cup in front of me and gave my shoulders a brief hug. “Very true. I’m just touchy about this one for some reason. If Old Mackie feels safe on the streets again, it must be because he’s set the assailant’s mind at rest—or thinks he has.”

  “Or else he believes that not having really seen anything makes him safe.”

  Bruno shook his head, worried. “That would not make him safe. And obviously his involvement is not a secret, otherwise this Nelson would not have been pumping him.”

  “You think just pumping? Nelson could have been getting ready to hurt him or do something.” I tried to conjure up that flash of the two of them, caught in the headlights.

  Drake, too, was thinking back. “Not what I got from seeing them there,” he said. “They had their heads together, looked like.”

  “What’s Nelson doing in this, anyway? What’s his interest?” I looked at Bruno, at Drake. Neither of them seemed to know. “He wouldn’t be in line for any kind of promotion, like Dinah Blakely. Would he have a reason to want Richard Grolen out of the way? And he would have been four or five when the skeleton was buried, right?”

  Drake didn’t reply. He rested his forehead on his hand, three fingers pressing between his eyebrows, a sure sign that he had a headache.

  Bruno pulled his laptop closer and made some notes. “Perhaps he is simply nosy. This is not uncommon.”

  “It’s not very useful, either,” Drake growled. “I don’t know what he thinks he can find out that we haven’t found out already.”

  “He seems to have located Old Mackie first,” I pointed out.

  Drake drained his cup. “We’re not getting anywhere here,” he said between his teeth. “And you’ve got to get back to the kids, Liz.”

  “Right.” I said good-bye to Bruno and headed for the door. Drake came with me; I’d expected that. He’s big on safety, and although the walk from my house to Bridget’s is normally the most boring of occurrences, I wasn’t sure it would feel the same that evening.

  Bruno offered us a ride, but Drake turned him down. We walked in silence for half a block. The vibes weren’t sweet and comfortable anymore.

  “So what’s really bothering you, Drake?”

  “Do you think you could call me Paul once in a while?”

  I hadn’t expected that response, or his surly tone either. “I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “These things aren’t easy to change. I’m used to thinking of you as Drake.”

  “You’re used to keeping me at a distance.” He stopped, taking my hand to pull me around to face him. “That’s bothering me.”

  “Seems to me that it would be a bad time to take that distance away.”

  His hand tightened on mine before he released it. “That’s true. You’re being awfully sharp tonight, Liz. I resent that, because I’m feeling pretty mu
ddled.”

  The roughness in his voice acted powerfully on me. The skin of my hand still burned from his touch. Something choked the speech in my throat.

  “I don’t like having my life mixed up like this,” Drake went on after a moment. “My job should be separate. It shouldn’t involve you. Especially after what you’ve been through.”

  I felt a Pity Alert coming on. “I haven’t been through anything lots of people haven’t handled.”

  “I know that.” He pulled my hand through his arm and started walking again. “I wasn’t feeling sorry for you, Ms. Independence. I was just trying—to cherish you a little. If that’s allowed.”

  My warmth at hearing this was slightly allayed by the acerbic note in his voice.

  “Look, Drake—Paul.” His arm tightened on mine, and I rushed on. “I have a hard time with intimacy.”

  “So Californian.” He sounded amused. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Melanie said it, or something like it,” I admitted. “But it’s true. I—don’t like being close to people.”

  “That’s probably news to Amy. And Bridget. And Claudia. And—”

  “It’s different. They give me my space—even Amy, since she’s not always here.” I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, without sounding like an idiot. But then, obviously I was an idiot to turn down what Drake was offering. “Once I let you in, I won’t be able to draw back. You’ll be everywhere, like a flood.”

  He was silent for a moment. “So you compare me to a natural disaster? I guess that’s not unflattering. I’m sorry if I come off as pushing you. I’ve been trying to show you that I don’t want to take over. Just be a part of your life.”

  “There’s something else.” I drew him to a stop in front of Bridget’s house, before he could lead me up the path. “Just in case you were thinking—in case it had occurred to you—”

  “Spit it out, Sullivan.” He was grinning. “If I was thinking we might fix up some kind of permanent bond—well, my thoughts did run along those lines.” He peered down at me in the moonlight. “Do yours?”