Murder Bone by Bone

by Lora Roberts

  Stewart nodded, wiping the tears away with one hand. “Poor old Skipper.” He almost smiled, looking at the picture. “He loved to sail. That’s how he got that nickname. We grew up sailing together on the Bay. Built ourselves a catamaran, joined the Sea Scouts. Doug invented sailboarding, you know.” He said this with such conviction that no one cared to debate the probability of it.

  “Doug was the one whose slate was wiped clean.” I remembered how Claudia had referred to it earlier.

  “That’s right.” Stewart’s shoulders slumped. “We were just partying like guys in their twenties do—beers, drugs once in a while. Skipper got this job with the Public Works so he could fund his sailboard experiments, and I got one too—just meant to work for a few months, through the summer.”

  “You were acquainted with John Hessman?”

  Stewart stared blankly. “Maybe. I don’t remember anyone like that.”

  “You called him Nado.” Bruno touched Nado’s image with one finger, measuring the inch of space that separated him from Stewart’s pictured younger self. “You had dealings with him?”

  Stewart hesitated, then nodded when Melanie showed signs of bursting into speech. “It’s no secret. All of us bought a little something once in a while back then.” He looked at Melanie, and she nodded. “Nado sold Skipper that MDM. I wasn’t around that weekend—chasing some woman or other to Santa Cruz, I think. When I came back I found Skipper like he was—just sitting in a corner in his room, almost catatonic.” He stared down at the photo of his friend, the intelligent expression, the lazy smile. “After a year or so he got a little better—he could function and all. But he never really came all the way out. He was such a sharp guy, before that.”

  “You have been a good friend to him, it sounds like.”

  Stewart glanced quickly at Bruno. “I stuck by him. Stayed on at Public Works at first just to help him out. They gave him his job back, you know, but at first it was hard for him to do.” He shrugged. “Never would have thought I’d still be doing this so many years later, but it’s comfortable.” He glanced down at his uniform shirt, at the ominous stains, and winced. “It was, anyway.”

  “Why would Doug take his life? What was bothering him?” Bruno was, as always, courteous, interested. But in his own quiet way, relentless. Drake sat back, occasionally making a scrawled comment in his untidy notebook. The way he sat, his shoulders held rigid, told me that he didn’t yet see his way clear, that something about the sequence of events troubled him.

  Stewart answered Bruno. “Lately he’s been depressed. He didn’t like working in this neighborhood, where he lived before his life got fucked up.”

  We were all silent for a while. Claudia came to the kitchen door. Officer Rhea, behind her, looked a question at Drake; he shook his head. She stood there, quietly waiting.

  Melanie puzzled over one part of the conversation. “You said Doug invented windsurfing—”

  “Maybe not invented,” Stewart conceded. “But he had one of the first working prototypes. Don’t you remember? You were at those picnics.”

  “What I remember is that Richard did sailboarding, and I know he took out some patent or other. He still gets money from a sailboard design.”

  “It was Doug’s design!” Stewart sat up in his chair. “Grolen outright stole it from him after Doug’s OD because he figured the Skipper would never know. That money would have meant a lot to Doug. And it might have given him back sailboarding. He hardly went at all in the last few years because it reminded him that he wasn’t even sharp enough to keep a grip on his own inventions. Just the recognition of having accomplished that would have made him feel better.”

  “Did Doug know what Grolen had done?” Bruno asked, exchanging glances with Drake.

  “Or at least what you say he did.” Melanie thrust herself forward. “Richard and I were married at the time. I don’t think he would have acted like that.”

  “He didn’t take out the patent right then,” Stewart explained. “He borrowed Doug’s board—I said he could. Doug wasn’t up to using it, and I thought nothing of it. Then a couple of years later when the Skipper felt like boarding, I remembered Grolen never gave it back. He wasn’t around anymore, we didn’t know where he was. Next thing we know, this company is selling boards based on that design. They told us who they were licensing it from, and that’s when I realized that Grolen had just stolen the whole thing. I wanted to turn some lawyers loose on him, but Doug wouldn’t do it until just recently.”

  “He agreed to sue?” Drake sat up, his gaze intent.

  “Yeah. He sort of built up a slow burn.” Stewart looked down at his hands, then averted his gaze. “When he saw Grolen at the sidewalk that morning, he wanted to take him out then and there.”

  “So you’re saying Doug is the one who hit Richard and left him under that tarp to die.” Melanie sounded distraught. “Maybe he was going to come back later and bury Richard—bury him alive! Maybe the same thing happened to Nado, fifteen years ago!”

  Drake and Bruno looked at each other again. Drake was about to speak, but Nelson interrupted.

  “He wasn’t under a tarp.”

  We all looked at him, and redness washed over his face.

  “So you were there. When did you see him?” Drake’s voice was soft. “And why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

  “I didn’t know it would matter.” Nelson ran a finger around the collar of his grubby polo shirt. “I walked to the excavation that morning, and I was early. I’d just turned the corner when this old dude comes dashing past me with his shopping cart full of bottles, rattling away. At first I thought it was because of the recycling truck around the corner. But when I got to the excavation, I saw Dr. Grolen lying there with that chunk of concrete on his head.” He swallowed at the memory. “I—couldn’t touch him, but he looked dead. And I didn’t want to be the one that found him. That’s always bad in mysteries. So I—I left.”

  “You just left? You didn’t report it? He might have died, and you wouldn’t have helped?” Melanie’s voice got shriller and shriller. Nelson shrank a little.

  “I thought he was already dead,” he said stubbornly. He turned to Drake, who was scrawling wildly, and then to Bruno, tapping away on the laptop. “But there wasn’t any tarp over him. He was just lying there.”

  “Did you see the assailant?” Drake rapped out the question.

  Nelson looked miserable. “I didn’t pay any attention. I—I don’t see so well at a distance anyway. Somebody might have walked away in the other direction. That’s all I know.”

  “Whoever covered Richard up,” Melanie insisted, “knew he was alive and wanted him to die, wanted him to lie there undiscovered as long as possible.”

  “That could be,” Bruno agreed. He and Drake were both looking at Stewart.

  “I got no comment.” Stewart gulped his coffee. He was jittery with nerves. The silence from Drake and Bruno got to him. “Look,” he said finally, “I drive up to the work site, and here comes Doug saying he’d killed Richard Grolen. So I checked it out. I thought the guy was dead, too. I covered him up because dead people shouldn’t be lying out uncovered, and I went to my truck to report it, and then that female archaeologist came along and started shrieking, so I knew I didn’t have to report it.” He stared at Drake, at Bruno. “If you think it’s worth arresting me for that, go ahead.” He glanced down at his shirt. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened tonight.”

  Then Melanie said, “So how did old Nado get under the sidewalk? Did Doug do that too?”

  Stewart stiffened. “I don’t know about that. I do know he was upset when the bones turned up. He kept saying they should never have been found.”

  Again there was silence. I kept waiting for Drake and Bruno to take Stewart downtown for his official questioning. But maybe they were getting a lot more information out of him in this informal setting, with Melanie there to goad him on.

  Bruno broke the silence. “Your friend Doug has family here,
is that not right?”

  Stewart looked stricken. “You’re right. I should call. He was estranged from his dad, but his mom lives in San Jose. She’ll have to know.”

  “It’s too bad, isn’t it?” Drake spoke in a meditative tone. “She’ll feel awful that her son not only killed himself, but evidently tried to kill another man and is suspected of yet another homicide years ago.”

  Stewart put a hand up to his eyes.

  Melanie chewed her lip. “But,” she said, glancing at Bruno, “I just don’t see how that could have been. I mean, it wasn’t long after that bad drug incident that Nado was missing. And I remember now visiting Skipper in the convalescent home just before—just before Richard and I got divorced. That was months later. How was Skipper able to get Nado buried under the sidewalk like that while he was in a convalescent home?”

  “But you see,” Bruno said, “it must have been Doug. Who else could dig a big hole where the sidewalk was to go without causing comment? Someone from Public Works. Someone in familiar work clothes, arriving very early to prepare the area to be poured, who fills in the hole, tamps it down, makes everything nice and normal-looking. Someone who can easily truck away any leftover dirt to the dump. Who else could it be, but Doug?”

  Before Bruno finished his summation, we were all looking at Stewart. Drake stood beside him, and when Bruno was done, he put one hand on Stewart’s bloodstained shoulder.

  “We’d like you to come to the office and make a statement,” Drake said, not ungently. “You may want to call a lawyer. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right—”

  “Never mind all that.” Stewart stood up. He looked around the table, at Melanie’s shocked face and Nelson’s avid one, at Claudia’s austere frown, and finally at me. A smile twisted his mouth. “I knew, as soon as those kids of yours dug up Nado’s filthy bones, that it would come to this. I’ve just been hoping—” His voice died. “Well, not much point in that. I killed the bastard.”

  Bruno interrupted him, his gentle voice concerned. “You are making statements that may be used in evidence against you, Mr. Corman.”

  “We’re taking you into custody now,” Drake said. Officer Rhea moved forward, relaxed but ready for action.

  It took moments for them to whisk Stewart away. Nelson rose to follow them.

  “Where are you going?” Claudia stopped him in the doorway.

  “To the police station. I bet I can just wait there and find out what happens. And if not, I might call up the newspapers. I saw they were interested before. They’ll love this.” Nelson’s face shone with zeal. “I might make enough to stay in school next quarter!”

  Claudia didn’t move from the doorway. “It’s a shame in a way,” she said, looking from Melanie to me. “I do think it’s important to stay in school. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to alert the newspapers just yet.”

  “What do you mean?” Nelson tried to push past her. “I have a perfect right—”

  “We’ll go discuss it in the living room.” Claudia encircled his shoulders with one massive arm. “These are your options …”

  The door swung shut behind them.

  Melanie roused from her stupor. “Did they just arrest poor old Fritzy?”

  “Yes. Looks like he killed poor old Nado.”

  Melanie sank into a chair. “Man,” she said, dazed. “Who would have thought people in our group could kill each other. Why, we believed in peace and love!”

  “Things change when you go from the universal to the particular.” I collected coffee cups and made a great effort to rise and carry them to the sink.

  “I think,” Melanie said coldly, “I’ve mentioned your annoying habit of mouthing platitudes at the drop of a hat.”

  “I think you did. A word to the wise—”

  She laughed a little, but shook her head. “This is just too staggering. And we don’t know why, or how, or anything—”

  I tried to keep my face totally neutral, but Melanie was sharper than I gave her credit for. “Drake’s coming back here tonight, isn’t he?” She looked at me closely. “You’re going to get the whole story out of him then.”

  Claudia pushed open the kitchen door, dusting her hands together. “So I fixed that,” she announced. “If that little academic weasel says anything to anyone about Bridget’s kids or any of us, I’ll make it hot for him at Stanford. I still have some markers I can call in over there.” She looked from me to Melanie. “What’s going on? What have I missed?”

  “Drake’s coming back here tonight, after they finish up at the police station.”

  “It could be really late,” I protested. “I’m planning to go to bed. The kids are up at the crack of dawn, you know. I need my rest.”

  “That’s all right,” Claudia said affably. “You go on to bed. Melanie and I will just sit here and talk quietly for a while. I’m sure Bridget wouldn’t mind.”

  I looked at them, sitting on opposite sides of Bridget’s table, where I’d seen them so often before. Claudia looked triumphant, as she often does when she wins an argument. But Melanie’s face crumpled.

  “To tell the truth,” she said, sniffing, “I really need to talk about it. I’m just feeling so overwhelmed by it, by the past and my feelings for Richard, and by this—this violence—”

  “But Melanie, you were mixed up in those murders a couple of years ago,” Claudia objected. “Everyone in the Tall Tree group was. Don’t you remember?”

  “I didn’t really know the victims that well,” Melanie protested. “After all, neither of them was my ex-husband.” Her eyes teared.

  “Okay.” I put on the teakettle and sat down between them. “We’ll wait for Drake.”

  Chapter 28

  “It was an accident, or so he says.” Drake stretched out his legs under the table and sipped the lemon-peppermint tea I’d made, for once without complaining about the strength of its flavor.

  Claudia snorted. “Of course, it could have been anything. No witnesses, no way to substantiate—”

  “Well, in an odd way, the bones testify.” Drake has learned just to break in on Claudia when she gets started on one of her rants about documentation. “Remember, when she looked at the bones, Dinah pointed out that the knuckles had been broken a number of times, perhaps indicating a man who liked to fight.”

  “Nado did like to fight.” Melanie was listening intently. “If we went out to a bar and he was there, we left before the trouble started.”

  “Well, Stewart says he saw Nado walking down the street one evening, a few days after Doug’s OD, and he pulled over in his Public Works truck to give Nado a piece of his mind, threaten him with the police. Nado wouldn’t accept any of the responsibility, and said if Stewart turned him in he’d implicate everyone in their group who’d ever bought anything from him.”

  “That was pretty much everyone,” Melanie admitted. “Could have been, well, awkward.”

  “Nado got hot, wanted to fight. They were standing in the street, right in front of the truck. Stewart knocked him down, he hit his head on the curb, broke his neck. We’ll find evidence in the cranium, in the cervical vertebrae, if that’s true.”

  “I thought you didn’t have those bones.” Claudia sat up straighter.

  “Stewart took them. He bagged them up and buried them in the landfill.” Drake smiled grimly. “Now we just have to get them back. He’s told us where to look.”

  “So he concealed an accidental death instead of reporting it.” Claudia’s voice was thoughtful. “Put the body in his truck and covered it up, probably, instead of calling nine one one.”

  “That was the mistake he made, of course.” Drake rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Under the circumstances, it would have counted as involuntary manslaughter. He might have gotten off with a suspended sentence.”

  “But that sidewalk replacement. Of course he knew about it. He might even have worked on it.” Melanie sounded frustrated. “I’ve remembered a lot more about that particular time than I thought I
could. But I still can’t remember anything about that.”

  “And how easy for him.” Claudia sounded almost admiring. “He could dig the hole deeper during the day, and no one would say anything. He could fill his truck up with the dirt and dump it, easy as pie. He could tamp it down nicely—it all would look so innocent.”

  “But he didn’t feel innocent.” Drake spoke soberly. “Partly he stayed in Public Works to look after Doug, but a big part of why he never got a different job was his need to keep tabs on that sidewalk. He started worrying when it was scheduled for replacement. He offered to do the root pruning, even though it wasn’t his usual thing, so he could make sure nothing came to light in there. And he traded for weekend duty so he could be on hand if anything happened. When the work order came in to secure the excavation site, he changed it to a demolition permit.”

  “It was almost the perfect crime.” I swirled the tea left in my cup. “If the boys hadn’t wanted to excavate …”

  “If Richard hadn’t come back after so long away—”

  “If your Richard hadn’t stolen from a disabled person,” Claudia said tartly. “If he does recover, I expect him to make restitution to that man’s family. Or he can kiss his hopes of an endowed chair at Stanford good-bye. That sort of thievery is still frowned on in the academic community.”

  “Whatever the reasons, we’ve got plenty to go on now for making our case.” Drake nodded toward the leather-bound album. “We’d like to use that for a while, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Dixon. It could be valuable.”

  “I don’t know if I want to help out Fritzy’s prosecution.” Melanie handed over the album with reluctance. “After all, he had provocation.”

  “It’s difficult to say anything about the penalty phase now, but Stewart’s probably not looking at that long a sentence.” Drake tucked the album away in his big satchel. “Poor Doug is the real victim here.”

  “What I don’t understand,” I began, and Drake groaned.

  “Now, Sully, if you’ve thought up some damned clever reason why we’re all wrong, just save it. In this case, we’ve got a lot of stuff right from the horse’s mouth.”