Lovely In Her Bones

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Lovely In Her Bones

  Sharyn Mccrumb

  “Lovely in Her Bones is a parable of modern Appalachia, disguised as a mystery.” – LIA MATERA

  “Sharyn McCrumb’s first novel, Sick of Shadows, is one of the best and funniest comic mysteries anyone’s ever written. Lovely in Her Bones is equally recommendable.” – Roanoke Times World-News

  “Lovely in Her Bones is a lighthearted romp of a murder mystery leavened with hearty helpings of backwoods medicine, Indian lore, and anthropology… A fun read.” – AARON ELKINS

  “Like The Name of the Rose-offers unexpected rewards and cerebral nourishment… Sharyn McCrumb writes with style and humor. Lovely in Her Bones… is a well-researched and engaging whodunit.” – West Coast Review of Books

  "Who but Sharyn McCrumb can make a skull with a bullet hole funny? Those who like sardonic wit, slightly bent characters, and good fun will love LOVELY IN HER BONES."

  Tony Hillerman

  The sequel to SICK OF SHADOWS.

  When an Appalachian dig to determine if an obscure Indian tribe in North Carolina can lay legal claim to the land they live on is stopped on account of murder, Elizabeth MacPherson – eager student of the rites of the past and mysteries of the present – starts digging deep. And when she mixes a little modern know-how with some old-fashioned suspicions, Elizabeth comes up with a batch of answers that surprise even the experts…

  Sharyn McCrumb

  Lovely In Her Bones

  The second book in the Elizabeth MacPherson series, 1985

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although this is a work of fiction, about an imaginary Indian tribe, I have tried to be as faithful as I could to the reality of Appalachia and to the science of forensic anthropology. I would like to thank the scholars who helped me in my research, and to absolve them of any blame for liberties I have taken with the information provided. Thanks to Dr. David Glassman, for graciously allowing me to audit his forensic anthropology course at Virginia Tech; Dr. David Oxley, Roanoke medical examiner; Officer Mike Meredith, Virginia Tech police department; Dr. Jean Haskell Speer, Appalachian Studies Program; and to the following naturalists for help with plant lore: Clyde Kessler, Janet Rock Alton, Elizabeth L. Roberts, and Clarence “Catfish” Gray.

  The Cullowhees are based on several groups of “racial isolates” in Appalachia and elsewhere, and their social and political situation is consistent with the actual experiences of some of these groups.

  To my father,

  for my roots in Appalachia

  I knew a woman, lovely in her bones…

  – Theodore Roethke

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I KNOW it’s my turn to cook,” Bill MacPherson informed his roommate. “I’ll fry a chicken on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” asked Milo, absently collecting his scattered papers from the kitchen table.

  “You have to promise not to tell me which leg of the chicken I’m eating. And I’m not interested in its age or gender either!”

  “Sorry,” grinned Milo. “Reflex action. You show me a bone and I analyze it automatically. Did you know I can approximate the height of the bird from a drumstick?”

  “Well, don’t! It’s a bad habit. People don’t want to get that intimately acquainted with their dinners. I know you live and breathe forensic anthropology, but you don’t have to think about it constantly. Do I talk about law all the time?”

  “Okay, man. I promise. No autopsy on the fried chicken. I’ll go study in the living room.”

  “All right,” grumbled Bill. “You’ve got about an hour.”

  Milo padded off to the living room with an armful of notes and a human-origins text, which he proceeded to spread out on the coffee table in front of the window. Bill shook his head and began to cut up the chicken. Milo was a little overzealous in his archaeological studies, but he was a decent guy. He didn’t let mold grow on his laundry like the last roommate, and he wasn’t a selfish swine like the one before that, who used to bring girls home unannounced at midnight and had expected Bill to go off and sleep in the law library. Bill had laid down the law about that the day Milo came to look at the apartment, and Milo had replied cheerfully: “Don’t worry! If I bring home any girls, they’ll be dead!”

  It turned out that he was a research assistant to Dr. Lerche, the university’s forensic anthropologist. Milo acted as lab instructor for Dr. Lerche’s classes in archaeology and human origins and assisted him on cases for the state medical examiner. Lerche and Milo were called out to find bone fragments after house fires or to identify bodies too far gone for recognition or fingerprints. To Bill’s great relief, Milo didn’t bring any of his casework home, but he did haul in a few lab specimens from time to time, to reattach a mandible to a fragile skull or to prepare some samples for the undergrads to study.

  Bill had grown so used to Milo’s bizarre form of clutter that he hardly noticed it any more, but Milo’s habit of treating fried chicken as a lab exercise still grated on his nerves. He put the wet chicken into a plastic bag containing flour and assorted spices (old family recipe) and shook vigorously. Now what came after that? He peered at the recipe card propped against the saltshaker. He had remembered to dip the pieces in butter and egg this time. His family still laughed about his first attempt at frying chicken, when he’d had to call long-distance for instructions, making it one of the most expensive home-cooked meals he’d ever prepared. Well, he could hardly be expected to clutter his mind with recipes, considering all the trivia he was expected to memorize in law school. Another couple of months of it and he’d be reduced to writing his phone number on his hand for lack of brain space.

  “Now here’s an interesting specimen!” yelled Milo from the living room.

  “Oh, really?” called Bill politely as he dipped a drumstick in hot oil. He decided to humor the zealot. “How so?”

  “Bipedal, orthognathous… pyramidal-shaped mastoid process… foramen magnum facing directly down…”

  “Neanderthal?” guessed Bill, mispronouncing the word.

  “No. Your sister. She’s coming up the walk.”

  Bill came to the kitchen doorway and saw that Milo was looking out the front window instead of at his anthropology notes. Elizabeth was coming up the walkway toward the building. “I suppose she’ll want to be fed,” he grumbled, doing a quick mental tally of chicken pieces.

  “I hope she doesn’t want to cook!” said Milo. “She’s got her herb bag with her.”

  “I’ll be firm,” Bill assured him. “I’m not drinking any more of that concoction of weeds that she calls tea.”

  “What was it last time? Fennel and rosehips?” Milo shuddered. “Does she really know what she’s doing? She’s only been in that wretched course for three weeks.”

  Bill shrugged. “I taped the rescue squad number to the side of the phone.”

  “Well,” sighed Milo, “if she poisons us, give me to Dr. Lerche for the lab.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Bill’s younger sister, Elizabeth, who had just graduated from the university in June, had-after a brief adventure at a family wedding-returned to the university to take summer courses while she tried to decide what to do with her degree in sociology. (“What’s it gonna be, Elizabeth? Burger King or grad school?” Bill would say.) She was presently enrolled in an Appalachian studies course in folk medicine, and she was developing an alarming tendency to try out her brews on Bill and his roommates.

  “You’re just in time for dinner,” Milo was saying as he ushered her in the door. “But I warn you right now: if you make us drink any of your herbal swill, I intend to do an autopsy on the chicken.”

  Elizabeth made a face at him. “It isn’t swill!” she retorted. “Herbal tea con
tains no caffeine, no additives, and aids in digestion. In Scotland they-”

  Milo took a deep breath. “The epiphysis of the avian femur-”

  “But I didn’t come here to make tea!” she continued loudly, drowning him out.

  “Safe!” muttered Bill from the kitchen.

  “I came to consult you,” she said to Milo with frosty dignity. “Would you follow me to the kitchen, please?”

  Milo obediently trailed after her into the kitchen, where Bill was turning over pieces of chicken in the iron skillet. “Go ahead,” he told her. “I’m listening.”

  “Well, it’s really Milo that I wanted to talk to.”

  Bill shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  “Okay.” She hoisted her blue canvas bag onto the table and leaned against the back of a kitchen chair. “Our assignment for tomorrow was to find three woodland herbs, and since I didn’t want to get the same stuff everybody else was finding, I took the car and drove a few miles out of town to look around in the woods out there.”

  Milo groaned. “Okay. What did you find? Some fraternity’s marijuana crop?”

  “Poison oak?” snickered Bill. “Or-not kudzu! I refuse to taste kudzu in any form!”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think kudzu is edible,” she decided. “But I can ask tomorrow in class if you want me to.”

  “No, that’s okay,” said Milo quickly. “Just show me what you found.”

  “This!” said Elizabeth dramatically.

  She unzipped the canvas bag and set the skull in the middle of the kitchen table. In the center of its forehead was a neat round hole.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ELIZABETH noted their astonished faces with satisfaction. She folded her arms and waited. “Well?”

  “I’ll phone the police,” Bill said hoarsely.

  “No! Wait! Let me take a look at it.” Milo shook his head. “In the first place, Elizabeth, you shouldn’t have moved it. The police want to see a gravesite as undisturbed as possible.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to just leave it there!” Elizabeth protested.

  “Yeah, that’s a natural reaction,” Milo conceded. “I suppose you’d be able to find the place again? Did you mark it or anything?”

  “No, but I think I could find it.”

  Milo looked as if he wanted to embark on a lecture, but he checked himself, merely remarking: “Oh, well, as long as it’s here I might as well take a look.” He picked up the skull with practiced familiarity and peered at it closely. The lower jaw was missing, and many of the upper teeth had been broken out. The brain case was discolored with brownish streaks, and the back of the head was a gaping hole of jagged perimeters, parallel to the neat round hole in the forehead. After a moment’s scrutiny, Milo said simply, “It’s real.”

  “Of course it’s real!” said Elizabeth indignantly. “What did you think it was? Plastic?”

  Milo shook his head. “No. I know it’s a human skull, but I thought it might have been part of a skeleton swiped from a med school or doctor’s office. That’s been known to happen. I just checked for little steel pins in the skull, which would have held the mandible in place. They aren’t there, so it’s no lab specimen.”

  “Well, of course it isn’t!” snapped Elizabeth. “I told you I found it in the woods! It’s a murder victim. Don’t you see that bullet hole in the forehead?”

  Milo smiled. “Sure, I see it,” he told her. “People bring skulls like this to Dr. Lerche every now and then. Usually they turn out to be lab specimens or skulls from an Indian grave. And about twice a year, we get Yorick brought in.”

  “Yorick?” echoed Bill.

  “Yeah. You know-the skull from the drama department. Some fraternity wise guys steal him every so often and leave him on the steps of a girls’ dorm or on top of a parking meter. Then somebody finds him and brings him to us, thinking they’ve discovered Jimmy Hoffa or something.”

  “But-this isn’t Yorick?” asked Elizabeth, pointing to the skull.

  “Oh, no,” Milo assured her. “I know Yorick on sight. This guy is much younger. And he’s been in the ground awhile. Yorick is bleached a nice glossy white.”

  “Anyway, Yorick didn’t have a hole in his forehead, did he?” asked Bill.

  “Not the last time I saw him,” said Milo. “But that’s what I started to tell you. We get skulls brought in with bullet holes in them, but they’re usually not murder victims. They’re skulls from Indian graves or people who died from natural causes, and some hunter has found the skull and used it for target practice.”

  Elizabeth sat down. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I never thought of that.”

  “Sure. It’s amazing what clowns some people are. So before we jump to any conclusions about murder, we examine the bullet hole to see if we can determine whether it’s a new hole in an old skull or the original death wound.” He lifted the skull again and peered at the small, neat hole.

  Bill and Elizabeth watched the examination in uncomfortable silence. Finally Elizabeth burst out: “Stop being so mysterious, Milo! Tell us what you think!”

  Milo looked thoughtful. “Well, I wouldn’t want to say for sure without Dr. Lerche to back me up, but if you insist on having an answer right this minute…” He glanced at his audience and saw that this was indeed the case. “Okay, now remember I can’t be positive, but I’d say that the indications are that this is not a postmortem injury. There are no cracks radiating from the entry wound, and the bone on the inside of the hole is the same brownish color as the exterior. New breaks show whiter bone.”

  “You mean he was murdered?” asked Elizabeth, leaning down to look at the skull.

  “I think he was shot while he was still alive,” said Milo carefully.

  “Same thing!” Elizabeth declared, slapping the table. “Hah! I knew it! Call the police, Bill.”

  “Hold it, Bill,” said Milo. “I’d like to check out the site before you get the cops out there tramping all over the evidence. This guy”-he pointed to the skull-“has been in the ground for at least five years, judging by those soil stains and root marks. Another couple of hours isn’t going to make much difference.”

  “Five years, huh?” said Bill thoughtfully. “Did anybody disappear around here five years ago? Wasn’t there a camper from Richmond…”

  Milo gave him a disgusted look. “You don’t think it’s that easy, do you? It could be five years or fifty, Bill. Once it’s been in the ground for more than two years, it’s hard to pinpoint age. I mean, I can tell you that this guy died around age… oh… twenty-five to forty…” He ran his fingers along the lines on the top of the skull and nodded. “Yep. Say thirty-five when he died. But I don’t know whether he was thirty-five in 1980 or 1880. It’s a tricky business.”

  “A lot of help you are,” Elizabeth remarked.

  Milo stood up. “Well, I might do better if I could see the actual site. Take me to where you found him.”

  Bill flipped off the burner under the pan of chicken. “I take it nobody’s hungry any more?”

  No one paid him any mind. Elizabeth got up and was following Milo into the living room, listening to him expound on the fine points of site investigation.

  Bill gazed sadly at the skull, still sitting in the middle of the table. “I don’t suppose you’re hungry either?” He tossed the potholder on the countertop and went off to join the expedition.

  “Why do I have to sit in the back? My legs don’t bend this way!”

  “I’m driving,” said Elizabeth, glancing at her brother in the rearview mirror. He was stuffed into the back of her Volkswagen, all legs and elbows, looking like an improperly folded jack-in-the-box.

  “I’m consulting,” said Milo. “Consultants always get the front seat. You’re just a tourist. Now, Elizabeth, how far is this place?”

  “Couple of miles. Don’t worry. I know where I’m going. It’s on your side of the road, past a church, a couple of barns, and a darling little black goat.”

  “A darl
ing little black goat!” mimicked Bill. “Gimme a break! Whatever possessed you to take this screwball course anyway? Couldn’t you find one on Scottish history?”

  Elizabeth frowned. “They don’t offer one here. Anyway, I don’t see why you tease me about being interested in the family origins. If you aren’t proud of being a MacPherson, I certainly am.”

  “Well, if you’re interested in the family origins, you ought to take Milo’s course,” Bill suggested.

  Elizabeth glanced at Milo. “Oh? What are you teaching?”

  “Uh…” Milo looked uncomfortable. “I’m just the lab instructor, really.”

  “For anthropology? I knew that. Are you doing a course on Scotland?”

  “No. On the evolution of man. You know, cavemen, evolution…”

  Elizabeth directed a glare at the rearview mirror. “I’m not interested in tracing the family as far back as that, thank you!” she snapped.

  “Well, I wish you’d consider it.” Bill grinned.

  “Anything would be better than having you stewing weeds every other night.”

  “Why did you pick that course?” asked Milo quickly to forestall the sibling argument in the offing.

  Elizabeth thought for a moment. “I probably got the idea from my Uncle Robert.”

  “Dr. Chandler?”

  “Yes. He’s been writing a book on colonial medicine for as long as I can remember. It’s practically all he talks about. When I visited him, he mentioned the different herbs the pioneers used to use as medicine-like ginseng. He said that scientists today are just beginning to realize that some of them really worked. I thought it was an interesting subject, and since this course was being offered, I decided to take it. And it does not involve stewing weeds!” she finished loudly for Bill’s benefit.

  “Well, it certainly-”

  “Excuse me,” said Milo loudly. “Is that the goat?”