One Grave Too Many dffi-1

by Beverly Connor

  “Would Grayson go that far?”

  “I don’t think so. He doesn’t want to go to jail. I think he’s a shark, not a maniac.” Diane looked at her watch. “I’m going to go to the site and to the museum.”

  “You’re going to do no such thing. If I heard right, you require bed rest.”

  “That’s what people keep saying, but I’m just fine and I’ve been resting all morning.” She looked over at the bags sitting on her coffee table. “What have you got there?”

  “I figured you’d need some lunch and you probably wouldn’t fix any yourself, so I stopped by a restaurant. How does potato soup and a salad sound?”

  “Actually, it sounds good. You brought yourself something, didn’t you?”

  “A cheeseburger and fries.”

  Frank put everything out on the kitchen table, and they sat down to eat. She poured the soup into a mug and sipped it. It was warm and soothing going down her throat. The salad was good too; just the right thing. Frank knew just what to do in a crisis. She wondered what he was like on a day-to-day basis, living an ordinary life. She was beginning to get used to him, and that frightened her.

  “I wonder how the digging is going?” asked Frank.

  “I called Jonas this morning. It was going well.”

  “Nice to know that Luther and his wife didn’t kill the crew during the night.”

  Diane made a face at him. “Yes, I was relieved to hear his voice.”

  After eating, Diane felt much better. “I’m going to put in an appearance out at the pit. You can go with me if you like.”

  “Can I talk you out of it?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll drive you.”

  By the time they got to Abercrombie’s farm and hiked to the pit, Diane was having serious misgivings about the decision to come. Her whole body ached and her lower back throbbed. It was hotter than she expected, and the sweat trickled down her back.

  “Should you be here?” Jonas said.

  “Yes,” Diane answered. “I won’t stay long. I just want to take a look.”

  After several solicitations from the crew, Whit and the sheriff, and another brief description of the evening’s misadventure, Diane set about examining the work in progress.

  The crew had actually gotten a lot done. All of the grid units in the pit as well as the outlying areas had some work done on them. The pit looked like a mosaic of bones in relief. The skeletons were brown, like the earth, except for the ones that had been exposed; they were off-white. A few were bleached white.

  The human bone she’d seen yesterday was now completely exposed. It was a right humerus. Like the clavicle, it had similar parallel markings on the shaft where rats had gnawed.

  “I did a quick measurement,” said the woman who’d uncovered it. “It’s about thirty-seven centimeters-but that was rough, with a tape measure. I guess you’ll use a bone board.”

  Diane nodded. “I’ll have to know the race and have a more accurate measurement, but it looks like we’re in the six-foot range. See these muscle attachments? He was a muscular guy.”

  “You still think it’s male, then?”

  “I need to see the pelvis, but so far, yeah, it looks male.”

  “You feeling okay? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m going to go home, I think. I probably shouldn’t have come out here, certainly not hiking in here.”

  “Dr. Fallon, I think we may have his leg and foot.”

  Diane looked in the direction of the voice. It was a male crew member standing with the sheriff at an excavation unit several feet away from the pit.

  “Looks like the guy’s going to be all over the place,” said the woman, rising to go over with Diane.

  Frank and Whit came over too, and all of them peered down at the excavated leg and foot bones.

  “Nice excavation,” said Diane.

  “Thanks,” said the digger.

  “Whew,” said the sheriff. “Sure looks like you found another part of him.”

  Diane stooped down, looking at the bones, and raised her eyes to Whit.

  “What?” asked Frank, looking back and forth from Diane to Whit.

  “Oh, God,” Whit said. “Do we have to mention this?”

  “You do now,” said the sheriff. He was beginning to look at Whit with a measure of suspicion.

  “It’s a bear,” said Diane. “With the claws removed. Poached, I imagine.”

  “Look, I don’t know. The guy brought it in and we mounted it for him. It was a couple, maybe three, years ago, and I told Dad the next time one came in, we needed more information on where it came from.”

  “It sure looks human,” said the sheriff.

  “That’s because bears, like us, walk on their feet,” said Diane.

  “Well, what else?” asked the sheriff.

  “Deer walk on the tips of their toes, so do horses. Dogs and cats, for instance, walk mostly on their digits, but not on the soles of their feet.”

  “Well, I sure didn’t know that,” said the sheriff. “They walk on their toes?”

  “Deer have longer and larger metapodials than we do so they can do that. Because the bear walks on the soles of his feet, the bones-without the claws-can look very human.”

  “You learn something every day,” said the sheriff. “Ain’t that right, Whit?”

  Whit rolled his eyes.

  “You look like you’re getting tired,” said Frank, taking Diane’s arm and helping her up.

  “I am. I think I’ll skip going to the museum and go home,” she said. “All of you are doing a great job.” She thanked Jonas and the crew and let Frank lead her to the car.

  “I’m getting to be such a wimp,” said Diane.

  “You’re not a wimp. Getting beaten up isn’t like it is in the movies, where you get the shit beat out of you and get up and go some more. I’m going to take you home, and you are going to stay there.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me.”

  Diane felt doubly tired by the time she got back to Frank’s car. He drove her home. Diane stopped by her landlady’s apartment to see if the locks had been changed.

  “They just left.” She smiled sweetly and handed Diane two keys. “I hope you’re feeling better. It’s a shame how crime’s just moving into a nice neighborhood like this.”

  Diane thanked her, backed out the door and let Frank see her safely inside her apartment.

  “I need to go visit Star awhile. The doctors want to keep her another day. I’ll come back and stay the night here.”

  “I imagine you’ll be glad to get back to work so you can get some rest.”

  Frank smiled and kissed her. “When all this is over, we need to go do something fun-just the two of us. You like fishing?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. How about you, think you’d like to go caving?”

  “Maybe we’ll compromise and go to the beach.” He kissed her again. “I haven’t forgotten your problem with the forgery. I’m checking on some of your employees right now. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “You have a lead?”

  “Not sure. Get some sleep. I’ll be back soon.”

  Frank left, and Diane settled into the comfort of the couch and dozed off. Hours later she was awakened by the ringing of the phone. She reached over and picked it up and managed a muffled hello.

  “Diane? Is this Diane Fallon?” The voice sounded hysterical and came in gasps and sobs.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “It’s Star. Please come. Please. It’s Uncle Frank. They told me somebody shot him. I’m afraid he might be dead. Please come.”

  Chapter 30

  Diane put down the phone and fell on the sofa, sick, shaking and panicky. She ran to the bathroom and threw up.

  “Oh, God, no. Not again, no. Please, no. Please not again.”

  When she thought she was finished vomiting, she rinsed her mouth and washed her face with cool water. She had told Star she would come as soon as she c
ould. At the moment, she wasn’t sure she could even drive. One thing at a time. First, she packed an overnight bag, just in case. I’ve got to get control, she told herself as she tried to calm her shaking hands. Packing done, she raced down the stairs of her apartment and out to her car.

  She hardly remembered the drive to the hospital, but there she was, pulling into the visitors’ parking. By the time she got inside, she was shaking almost too much to walk straight. She went up to Star’s room first and found her sobbing uncontrollably while a nurse was trying to give her a sedative.

  “Can you take off these restraints?” asked Diane.

  “I’ve asked the policeman outside and he said no. You’d think he’d have more compassion.”

  Star cried and pulled at the restraints. Diane stroked her hair as the nurse gave her the shot.

  “This will take effect pretty quickly,” she said.

  “Will you find out for me?” said Star. “Go see him and tell him not to die.”

  “I will. I’ll go right now. I know it’s hard, but try to stay calm. The shot the nurse gave you will help.”

  Diane left the room, sweeping past the guard at Star’s door who was reading his Western. She resisted the urge to pull it out of his hands and toss it down the corridor.

  The nurse at the front desk downstairs told her that Frank was in surgery and gave her directions to the waiting room. When she got there, Izzy Wallace and his partner were already there.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “We don’t know. He’s in surgery. It didn’t look good.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’d just taken some money out of the ATM outside the hospital and was leaving, when this black guy came up, shot him and took his wallet.”

  Diane looked at Izzy in amazement. “Frank and I are certainly having a run of bad luck, aren’t we?”

  “We have witnesses to what happened.” Izzy sounded defensive. He didn’t like Diane, and she didn’t care.

  “What did the witnesses say?”

  Izzy hesitated a moment, as though thinking whether he should give her information.

  “A black guy in a cap and dreadlocks came up to within about ten feet of Frank and pulled out a gun and shot him just as he was putting his money in his wallet. The perp grabbed the wallet off the ground and ran. He got lost in the dark. It happened quickly. Two people saw it-well, three, but one was a little girl, a little black girl.”

  The way Izzy said a little black girl made Diane suspicious. “What did she say?”

  “Well, naturally, she didn’t want it to be a black person. That’s understandable. She was just a kid.”

  “So she said the perp wasn’t black?” Diane prodded. She was going to have to pull this out of him.

  “She gave a similar description-black skin, dreadlocks, but she said he wasn’t really black.” He shook his head. “She was only about nine years old. What would she say? Look, I need to ask you-now, don’t get mad, but I have to ask. The guy who works for you at the museum. We met him when we were there. He fits the description. Do you know if he has something against Frank?”

  “Who?” asked Diane. “Do you have a name?” She knew who, but was going to make him say it.

  “He was in the lab, the one he said got broken into.”

  The one he said got broken into. Damn you, Izzy. As much as she wanted to, Diane didn’t voice her thoughts. If I didn’t need information from you, I’d tell you where you can put that tiny brain of yours.

  “Korey, the head conservator?” said Diane. “He hardly knows Frank, and Korey has impeccable credentials. He doesn’t rob ATMs.”

  “I had to ask. He does fit the description.”

  One good thing about talking to Izzy; the adrenaline rush his conversation gave her was helping with the shakes.

  A doctor came out of the swinging doors toward Izzy. Diane held her breath.

  “A bullet grazed his heart, and another pierced his lung. He’s fortunate he was at the hospital when it happened. Time is everything in cases like this. The surgery went well. We’ll know something more in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Doc, you haven’t told me anything,” said Izzy.

  The edges of the doctor’s mouth twitched slightly upward. “I’ve told you what I know. I’m cautiously hopeful.”

  Diane hung on to cautiously hopeful. That’s what she would tell Star.

  “I need to see Star,” she said to Izzy when the doctor left. “She’s so hysterical they had to give her a sedative. While I’m gone, I’d like you to consider all the coincidences here. George Boone finds a human bone-and before you say anything, I can tell a human bone from a deer bone. We’ve since found three human bones at a site where George and his son visited a week before they brought the clavicle to Frank. Right after it’s known that George has this bone, the whole family is murdered. A week later, as I start investigating, I’m attacked outside my home. The next day Frank is shot. Do the math.”

  Diane turned and left for the elevator to go to Star’s room. A nurse in green surgical scrubs writing something on a pad at the desk turned and laid a hand on Diane’s arm. “That was Dr. Sampson. He came to us from Grady in Atlanta. We’re very lucky he moved his family here. Your guy’s in good hands.”

  Diane smiled and thanked her. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with a smart twinkle in her eyes and she was good with people. Diane felt instantly better. Grady Hospital has one of the finest trauma units in the country-thanks in part to the frequent gunshot victims they get through their doors.

  She found Star groggy, fighting the sedative. Stubborn little girl. Diane stroked her hair.

  “Star.” Her eyes popped open. “Frank came through surgery fine. The doctor believes that he will be all right.” She had put a more positive spin on the doctor’s words.

  “Are you sure?” she managed to say.

  “That’s what the doctor said. One of the nurses told me that he is an expert in trauma cases. That means Frank has the best of care.”

  Star sighed and seemed to breathe easier. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Will you stay a while?”

  “Sure.”

  Diane pulled up a chair beside Star’s bed and almost drifted off to sleep in it. She didn’t leave until the rising and falling of the sheet covering Star was smooth and regular.

  She rose quietly and went back down to Frank’s floor. Izzy was still there, but his partner was gone. Jake Houser was there talking with Izzy and two men, dressed in suits, that Diane didn’t recognize.

  “Dr. Fallon. This is just terrible,” said Jake. “They put me on the case, and I want you to know we’ll get the scumbag who did this. It means I won’t be showing up at the museum for a while. . ”

  Diane nodded. She didn’t feel like going into lecture mode again. Frank had a lot of confidence in Jake, so maybe it was good he was on the case. Jake introduced her to the two men standing with them-Frank’s boss and his partner from Atlanta. Both were somber and looked like they were at a funeral. She wanted to kick them. She couldn’t seem to shake her irritable mood.

  “Frank’s told us a lot about you,” his partner said. “I’m glad to meet you. Frank’s tough. I’m sure he’s going to pull through this.”

  “I think he’ll be just fine,” she said, trying to believe her own words. That’s what they wanted to hear too. No small talk, just Frank’s going to pull through.

  “Oh,” said Izzy. “We found this in the bushes.” He handed her her cell phone. “No sign of your purse.”

  “Thanks. I imagine it’s in a gutter somewhere.”

  After that exchange, Diane had to explain what had happened to her. The two Atlanta detectives were surprised at the coincidence. Maybe they would give Izzy a nudge, she hoped.

  She excused herself and went to the nurses’ station to ask if she could see Frank when he was awake.

  “Are you a relative?”

  “No, a friend.”

  “I’m sorry
, only family members are allowed. His wife is with him now.” The nurse was curt, and she started to turn her back on Diane.

  “He doesn’t have a wife,” said Diane.

  The nurse stopped and stared at Diane with sparkling black eyes.

  “That is probably his ex-wife,” continued Diane. “They’ve been divorced for five years, and she’s been remarried for five years. However, they have a son who needs to hear how his father is doing. So it’s a good thing for her to see for herself. There’s also a little girl upstairs whose whole family has been murdered. Frank is her guardian, and she needs to hear how he’s doing. If she had been responsible for what happened to her family, Frank wouldn’t be lying in there now.”

  “Are you Diane?” asked another nurse who had been openly listening to Diane’s diatribe.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s been asking for you. He’s pretty insistent. I think the doctor will allow you to see him.” She eyed the first nurse as she spoke.

  “If the doctor says so. .”

  Cindy Reynolds came through the double doors from the recovery rooms, and the first nurse frowned at her. Cindy didn’t notice. She headed for Diane, and the way her eyes were tearing up, it frightened her.

  “How is he?” asked Diane, afraid of the answer.

  “He looks so pale. But the nurse says he’s doing well under the circumstances.”

  “And Kevin?”

  “He doesn’t know yet. He’s at my mother’s. I didn’t want to say anything to him until I. . I had to see for myself.”

  “Of course. Star’s just terrified.”

  “That poor child. If anything happens to Frank, it’ll be as bad on her as it will on Kevin-worse, in a way. Kevin has family who love him. Star’s all alone.” Cindy took a breath and bit her lip. “Let me know how he’s doing.” She dug in her purse and pulled out a card. “Here’s my cell phone.”

  “If there’s any change, I’ll call.”

  All animosity that Cindy may have been harboring from their last encounter had evaporated. At least that was one good thing-Diane couldn’t handle any more verbal sparring.

  She had to wait another hour before she could get in to see Frank. She was tired, and all the adrenaline that had been keeping her pain-free was dissipating and her back was throbbing, as were several muscles that weren’t hurting before.