“Yes, I am. You asked Dr. Lymon to work with your education department on the computer lessons. I’m a grad student always looking for a job, so she assigned me.”
“You did a good job. I’ll write a letter of appreciation to Dr. Lymon, if you like.”
Diane thought he hesitated a moment before he said, “Sure. That would be good.”
She turned to the computer guys. “Are all the displays ready?”
“We want to do one more check, but it looks like they’re ready.”
Bang! A loud shot behind her caused her to start. Her breath caught, she whirled around, eyes wide.
“Sorry,” said Andie. “The mop fell over. Loud in this hall, isn’t it?”
Diane put a hand over her breast, her heart still racing. Ashamed of herself for being so skittish, she headed for the mammoth exhibit to see how it looked. She’d wait to talk with Donald about the vegetation until after the opening.
“Phone, Dr. Fallon.” Andie, still holding the mop handle in one hand, gave her the portable.
“Hi.” It was Frank. “I’m bringing you breakfast. Egg McMuffin. I know you didn’t stop to eat this morning.”
“I’m not really hungry. I . . .” She had bent over to rearrange the weeds by the bison’s foot and something in the wall painting caught her eye—a tiny figure hidden in the tall grass near the Paleo-Indian hunters. It looked like a unicorn. She moved closer.
“Diane, you still there?”
“Sorry, I was examining this unicorn.”
“Unicorn?” He paused. “You mean there really was such a thing? They were here, in Georgia? You have a skeleton?”
Diane took the phone away for a second, stared at it, then put it back to her ear. “No. There’s one in the painting.”
“Oh.” Frank sounded disappointed, and Diane almost laughed. “I’m on my way over,” he said. “See you in a minute.”
He had hung up before she could protest.
“Andie, have you seen this?”
Andie had her brown frizzy curls tied up in a ponytail on top of her head, making her look sixteen instead of twenty-six. She came over and looked where Diane pointed. “I haven’t seen that one,” she said.
“There are more?”
“At least two in here. One grazing around the feet of the mammoth herd and another on the edge of the pond behind some weeds, sticking its horn in the water. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo?”
“How odd.”
“I’ll say. But nice.”
Within five minutes, Frank came through the door, followed by a herd of museum staff. He took Diane by the arm, led her to a bench by the door and produced a still warm egg-and-biscuit sandwich.
A little waft of steam rose from the sandwich when she folded back the wrapper and it had the aroma of breakfast. She took a bite.
“I guess I am hungry.”
“I thought so.” Frank waited until she had taken several bites before he spoke again. “It was a false alarm about the bone.”
Diane cocked an eyebrow at him.
“It was part of my friends’ efforts to persuade the police to investigate the boyfriend. The bone they gave me came from a deer and not from the boyfriend’s back-yard.” He flashed a gleaming set of white teeth through a sheepish expression.
“You have the bone?”
“Sure.” He took it out of his briefcase.
She finished her biscuit and dropped the wrapper into a waste container by the door. “Come with me,” she said, leading him through double doors into the mammal exhibit.
“Clavicles are like struts. They keep our shoulders straight and our arms from falling onto our chest.” She stopped at an exhibit labeled ODOCOILEUS VIRGINIANUS. “OK, here’s a deer. Find the bone.”
“What?”
“Find the bone on the deer identical to the one you hold in your hand.”
He started with the long metapodial bones of the feet, moved to the ribs, walked around the deer and stopped by the shoulder. He shrugged. “This skeleton doesn’t have one.”
“Neither do any of its kin. Deer don’t have clavicles. They don’t need them. It doesn’t matter if their forelegs fall onto their chest. We primates have them. So do bats and birds. In birds it’s called a furcula—wishbone to you laymen.”
He looked at her as if not quite understanding, and she dragged him along into another room filled with primate skeletons and stopped at Homo sapiens sapiens.
“OK, wise guy, can you find the bone now?”
Frank looked at the skeleton’s collarbone. Bingo. It was identical. He shook his head. “George told me it was from a deer. I’ve known him for years.”
“Maybe he thought it was. You need to find out what pile of bones he took it from. Now, I have a reception to get ready for tonight and I haven’t looked at all the interactive media yet.”
“About tonight.”
Here it comes. Another broken date before we even get started again. Diane stood waiting.
“My son—you met Kevin—he wants to be a forensic anthropologist.”
“And you want me to recommend a good child psychologist?”
“Funny, Diane. No. I would like to bring him. I know it’s one of these invitation-only affairs, but . . .”
“Fine. I’d like to see him again.”
“There’s more.”
“You have more children?”
“You’re real cute this morning, aren’t you? No. His mother and her husband would like to come too.”
“Family affair?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll leave tickets at the door.”
“I appreciate this. It’s not every woman who would let her date bring his ex-wife.”
“We have an entomologist on staff you can show the bug parts to.”
“What? Oh.” Frank studied the design on the floor, making a face, as if he had just felt a wave of pain. “I—uh—threw them away.”
“Threw them away? You threw evidence away?”
“I didn’t think it was evidence. The Rosewood police weren’t interested. And they were, I thought, bug parts from a deer bone.”
“What does your friend do for a living?”
“He’s a roofing contractor.”
“A roofing contractor. Frank, did you know that before I took the directorship of the museum here, I was an internationally known forensic anthropologist? Did you know that I can give expert testimony in courts of law all over the world about anything concerning the identification and disposition of bones? And you believed a roofer’s identification over mine?” Diane threw up her hands.
“I’ve known him forever. We play poker together.”
“What? Is this some kind of guy thing?”
“No. He said it was from the skeleton of a deer, and I believed him.”
“He told you he grabbed some deer, skinned him out, and took this bone?” Diane put her forefinger on his chest.
“No. He said he found it with a pile of deer bones in the woods. I’m sure there were probably antlers present,” he added, as if that were a reasonable defense, “and hooves.”
Diane put her fingertips to her eyelids. “You do know that once an animal is completely skeletonized, it becomes disarticulated—it comes apart. Does the word co-mingle have any meaning?”
“No, it doesn’t. I’ve never worked with a forensic anthropologist. I work with white-collar crimes—paper, computers, ideas and people who at least act civilized while they’re stealing from you. All bones look alike to me. Are you going to continue to hit me over the head with this? I’m sorry. He and his wife are best friends of mine. I don’t believe he’d lie to me—I mean, I know they lied originally, but they were desperate. Were the bug parts that important?”
“Maybe not. You may be able to extract more from deeper inside the bone.”
“How about that spider’s web?”
“I’m not sure you could do anything with that anyway.”
“So the only damage
is to your pride?” He grinned.
“No, to my sensibilities.”
Frank laughed. He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I have to be in Columbus this afternoon to appear in court, but I’ll be back in time to pick you up. I promise.”
“OK.”
“I miss arguing with you.” He kissed her cheek.
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I miss a lot of things we used to do.”
“It took you a long time to remember.”
“Now, that’s not fair. As far as I knew, you were still somewhere up a tree with Cheeta,” he said.
“That’s Africa, not South America.”
“You were in Africa?”
She ignored him. “When you find the pile of bones your friend says he got this one from—even if you find a pair of antlers with matching hooves with them—tell whoever’s in charge to treat it like a crime scene. Don’t let anyone just take the bones and put them in a sack. Their pattern of dispersal will tell you a lot about what kind of agent scattered—or piled—them.”
“Did you know you get really pretty when you talk about bones? I mean, you always look great, but there is something about the way your eyes shine when you talk about bones.”
“I’ll see you tonight. Remember, it’s black-tie.” She realized she was still holding his hand, and it felt comfortable. It had been a while since she felt so comfortable.
Diane spotted Donald, his thick, square body rigid, glaring into the mammoth exhibit.
“I need to speak with you,” she said as he shifted his glare to her.
“You took up the plants.” He had a childlike quality to his voice that made her pause a second before she spoke.
“Donald, they were wrong. There is four hundred million years’ difference between your plants and the ones that belong in here. Yours didn’t even represent the whole tree, only the leaves.”
“It won’t matter for the event tonight.”
“Yes, it will. Donald, this is not a battle to go to the mat for. Leave it alone. We have a lot to do before this evening.” Diane turned to go to her office.
“Wait. There are a couple of things we need to discuss.”
“Can we do it in my office?”
Donald followed her into her office. He moved a pile of books from the only chair besides hers and dropped them in an empty box. Diane noted ruefully that it was the box the books had arrived in. She took a seat at her desk and pulled out the budget folders but didn’t open them. Instead, she gave Donald her attention.
He glanced down at the folders before he spoke. “Some building plans have come to my attention.”
Diane started to laugh at the way he made it sound as if he were in charge and speaking to a recalcitrant employee. She forced her face to remain in what she hoped was a frown.
“Came to your attention? How?”
“That’s not important.”
“It is important. This discussion will end now unless you tell me.”
He shifted in the chair as if suddenly off balance. “We can’t afford to start a new building project. This building is too big already,” he said, leaning forward with his hands gripping the arms of the chair.
Diane stood up. “Donald, I’m too busy for this now.”
“I found a copy in the waste can by the Xerox machine,” he said quickly. The way the barely articulated words slid out of his lips so fast, she knew he was lying.
Diane narrowed her eyes. “Do you have the adult education exhibit ready for this evening?”
“It’s almost finished. The computer people are setting it up. The plans—”
“Go supervise their work.”
He hesitated a moment, then stood. “This isn’t the end of this. After tonight, you will have this discussion with me and the board.”
Diane stared at her closed door for several moments after he left. Maybe she should have talked to him. Milo’s plans for the museum weren’t secret, but Donald must have thought they were her plans. He must have been poking around in her office. She opened the folder and reread the budget figures. Money would certainly come up this evening and she wanted to be prepared. She could deal with Donald later.
The phone rang. She let it go for several rings and picked up the receiver when no one answered.
“RiverTrail Museum.”
“This is the Bickford Museum, confirming an order placed with us. May I speak with Diane Fallon?”
“This is she. What order are you confirming?” Diane searched her memory, trying to remember what might have been ordered.
“Casts of Albertosaurus, Pteranodon sternbergi, Tylosaurus , and a triceratops, for a total of 143,500 dollars.”
“Oh, yes. We received the items in perfect condition. The display is opening this evening. I’m sure our records show that the invoice has been paid. I reviewed the accounts myself.”
“No, you’re correct, payment was received. This is a new order.”
Diane stared into space, shocked for a moment. “For the same items?”
“Yes, identical to the first order.”
“When was this order placed?”
“It’s dated last Wednesday. We saw that we had shipped an order for the same items to RiverTrail Museum six months ago, so I’m calling to verify that this is not a duplicate of that order.”
“I’m glad you called. There has been some mix-up. How did you receive this order?”
“By fax.”
“Please cancel the order, and if you don’t mind, would you fax a copy of that order back to me so that I can straighten it out here?”
“Certainly. I’ll send the fax right now.”
Diane put down the receiver and sat at her desk for a moment, trying to imagine how duplicate orders of a purchase that large and that unique could have been made. She tried buzzing Andie, then remembered that she had gone out to speak with the caterers. She walked into Andie’s office just as the fax was arriving from Bickford. The order was as the man had said, placed the past Wednesday. It showed Diane’s name—and her signature. She punched in the number code to print the recent history of fax transmissions and tried to make some sense out of the order while she waited. Had she actually forgotten and duplicated the order? No, she couldn’t possibly have forgotten; she already had life-sized skeletons of dinosaurs standing in the exhibit hall. In getting away from human bones, she hadn’t expected dinosaurs to cast a giant shadow over her life. Diane had expected to find peace here. She scooped up the report from the print tray and went back to her office.
Chapter 4
Frank was late. Diane wasn’t surprised. Columbus, Georgia, was a four-hour round trip, aside from whatever business he had to do there. She wrote a note telling him to meet her at the museum and was taping it to the door when she heard a voice coming from the apartment across the stairwell.
“Cats aren’t allowed.”
“I beg your pardon?” Diane turned, tape and message still in hand, and saw a woman in a blue chenille robe and pink hair net peering out of an apartment door.
“Marvin’s allergic to cats. That’s why we chose this apartment house. Cats aren’t allowed.”
There was a distant sneeze. The woman’s head retreated momentarily into the apartment, leaving behind a veined hand gripping the edge of the door and a blue sleeve as visible cues that she was still there. After another sneeze and a man’s muffled voice from inside, the woman spoke with that tone of impatience and irritability that arises between two companions of long duration.
“I’m telling her. She’s right here, and I’m telling her.”
Diane waited, trying to think of the woman’s name—Ogle, Ogden, Adell, Odell—that was it, Veda Odell. When the rest of Mrs. Odell appeared again, Diane spoke.
“I’m sorry for his allergy.”
“He doesn’t need sympathy, he needs for you to get rid of the cat.”
“I don’t have a cat.”
Veda Odell thrust out her chin. “You heard Marvin sneezi
ng. He’s allergic to cats. Nothing else. Just cats.”
“Perhaps he has a cold.”
Mrs. Odell eased herself a little farther into the hallway, craning her neck as if trying to get a peek into Diane’s apartment. “It’s a cat. He gets this way around cats.”
Diane taped her note to the door and turned to go. “Well, Mrs. Odell, I don’t have a cat. Maybe one passed through the yard.”
“No . . .” She hesitated, as if just noticing Diane’s black sequined dress and the cashmere wrap over her arm. “That’s a mighty pretty dress. I hope it doesn’t rain tonight.”
“I think the weather is supposed to be clear. We’re having a party for the contributors to the museum, and I’d hate for the attendance to be low because of rain.”
“You work for the museum?”
“I’m the new director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History.”
“You are? I heard you’re a grave digger.”
Diane opened her mouth, closed it again and wrinkled her brow. “A grave digger?” she said at last. “No, Mrs. Odell, I’m not.”
“Well, I could have sworn,” she said, but let her voice trail off. “Marvin and I were hoping you could tell us about the funeral homes here. The inside scoop, you know.”
Diane stared a moment before she said anything, trying to imagine the scenario going on inside Mrs. Odell’s head. “No. I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got to be going. I hope your husband gets better.” Diane hurried to her car.
It was a short drive to RiverTrail Museum. It’s why she had chosen the apartment, even though they didn’t allow pets. What I’d like to have is a house, she thought, as she drove slowly down the steep meandering road, a big house with big airy rooms—that cleaned themselves. No—she unconsciously clutched the locket that rested on her chest—an apartment is better right now.
At the bottom of her mountain road she turned onto a stretch of level four lane before starting the climb to the museum. The trees still blossomed with spring blooms, and the days were getting longer. She rounded the curve and RiverTrail came into view. It was a lovely old building, especially with the new renovations. But as the evening grew darker, the outline of the museum would look like an old sanatorium out of a Dracula movie.
One Grave Too Many Page 3
