A Whisper of Bones

by Ellen Hart

  “Lena. The younger sister. Eleanor is older by ten years.”

  “Older and nicer. She’s the murderer.”

  Jane did a double take. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s called casting against type. The murderer is always the nice one. Secretly, she probably eats children for lunch. I know, I know. Lena seems far more homicidal.”

  “I don’t think either one of them seems homicidal.”

  “Well, now that Olive Hudson—aka Cordelia M. Thorn—is here, we’ll get to the bottom of it. One of them murdered Tiny Tim and hid his remains in the garage.”

  Jane figured it was time to fill her in on her aborted lunch with Britt, Britt’s visit to the house, and her screaming match with Lena. She finished by telling Cordelia what she’d learned from talking to a Saint Paul police investigator earlier in the afternoon.

  “Are you kidding me? Those bones didn’t belong to Tiny Tim?”

  “It was a middle-aged man.”

  “Oh my stars and garters,” she said, waving air into her face.

  Jane asked her if she’d had a chance to study the pictures she’d surreptitiously snapped of the two small bones and the piece of metal. She’d sent copies to both Cordelia and Britt.

  “Yeah, I looked at them. Didn’t tell me much.”

  Jane had to agree, though she continued to think they might be important. She wished she’d been able to get a readout of everything the crime scene unit had collected from the root cellar. Even many years after the fact, there still had to be evidence.

  “So, if the bones belonged to a grown man,” said Cordelia, sitting up and adjusting her wig, “I wonder who he was? A neighbor maybe? Someone Eleanor and Lena didn’t like?”

  Jane’s cell phone rang. Checking the screen, she saw that it was Britt. “I better get that.”

  “I need to talk to you,” came Britt’s breathless voice. “Right away. I’m at the hotel. The Marriott Courtyard over by the U. Room three twenty-eight. Can you come? Now?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No. There’s something you’ve got to see.”

  “Can’t you tell me over the phone?”

  “Please. Just come. It’s important.” The line disconnected.

  The last thing Jane wanted to do was drive around in a snowstorm. “Are you up for a visit to Britt’s hotel?” she asked, glancing sideways at Cordelia.

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  “Aren’t you going to change clothes?”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just a random thought.”

  “I conceived this outfit as part of Olive’s idiom. She was a child star, Janey. Has a decidedly thrift-store sensibility. Think about it. The poor dear can only afford a room the size of a deck of cards.”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “Possibly. But come on, we’re wasting precious time. Olive will leave first. You will follow a few minutes later. We have to be stealthy.” She put a finger to her lips.

  “Stealthy,” repeated Jane with a weak smile.

  The problem was, if anybody in the Skarsvold house looked outside and saw Cordelia brushing snow off her gleaming new Subaru, her “idiom” wouldn’t make sense. Then again, that sort of logic would hardly deter Cordelia.

  “Just act like you don’t know me.” She gave a broad wink.

  “When I get into your car?”

  “Exactly. Now, chop chop, Jane. The game’s afoot.”

  19

  Driving across town during the first heavy snow of the year was a slow process. Even with Cordelia’s lead foot, it took them nearly an hour. The plows were out, but because it was snowing so heavily, they weren’t making much headway. As soon as the snow was pushed aside by the mighty snowplow blades and a mixture of salt and sand was sprayed on the road, more snow covered it up. They eventually fishtailed into the lot next to the hotel, grabbed for a ticket as they slid by, and found a place to park. Taking the elevator up to the third floor, they hustled toward the room. Britt was out in the hallway, pacing. She seemed relieved to see them, motioning them inside.

  “I don’t suppose the Marriott is classy enough to furnish a roaring fire in their guest rooms,” said Cordelia, dumping herself into one of the two chairs in the small living room.

  Britt tried but failed not to stare. “You look—”

  “Marvelous?” said Cordelia. “Mysterious?”

  “I was going to say … strange.”

  Cordelia glanced down at the housedress and smiled. “When one goes undercover, one has to take fashion seriously. In other words, sometimes you’ve got to stand out to blend in. You feel me? It’s PI 101.”

  Jane took off her coat and stepped out of her wet boots. “You sounded upset on the phone. What’s going on?”

  “Come here,” said Britt. She sat at the desk next to the TV and opened her laptop. “You sent me two pictures this afternoon. I didn’t get a chance to really look at them until a few minutes before I called you.”

  Jane stood behind her as she pulled up the two shots.

  “It’s that piece of metal. Look at it closely.”

  Jane already had, multiple times. Under the rust she thought she could see indistinct letters, though it was hard to be sure. It could have simply been the way the rust had formed.

  “It’s a belt buckle,” said Britt, enlarging the picture.

  “How do you know that?” asked Cordelia, fingering her blond ringlets.

  “Because I’ve seen it before.” She opened the desk drawer and took out a photo, an old snapshot. “Look.” She handed it to Jane.

  Cordelia was up in a flash, bending over Jane’s shoulder. “Who’s the guy?”

  “My father.”

  “And the little girl?” asked Jane.

  “That’s me. I was six. It was the last photo taken of me and my dad before he left. I’ve carried it in my wallet for years.”

  “Where’d he go?” asked Cordelia.

  “I don’t know. We never found out. He and Mom were in the midst of a divorce, so I hadn’t seen him for a while. Actually, he’d always been around pretty erratically. He’d be gone for weeks and then he’d be sitting in the living room when I came home from school. Mom never knew his schedule. He was an over-the-road trucker. Gone for long periods.”

  The stocky, sandy-haired man and the somber little girl were standing in front of an old locomotive.

  “We were at a train museum. My dad loved trains.” She hesitated, returning to the photo on her laptop. “Look at his belt buckle and then compare it to this rusted piece of metal.”

  Jane held the snapshot next to the screen. The rust had changed the shape a little, but it seemed pretty clear that they were identical.

  “S-I-N,” read Cordelia. “He had the word ‘sin’ on his belt?”

  “They were his initials. His first name was Stew. Stewart Neil Ickles. He asked a guy, a friend of his, to make a belt buckle for him. Monograms often have the last name in the middle, sometimes larger. That’s what my dad asked for. He loved that buckle. Always wore it. He wasn’t,” she added, somewhat wistfully, “a very good man.” She continued, “He was nice enough to me, when he was around. Back then, we lived in a small town just north of Milwaukee. Mom had a degree in library science, so she worked in the town library. I grew up there until I was twelve, when we moved down to Chicago. Mom had been offered a better job. That’s when she met Alan Kershaw and everything changed, for both of us. Alan was an environmental scientist, worked for the state of Washington. Mom and I moved out there to live with him when I was fifteen. He had a home right on Puget Sound. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. He was a wonderful person, the one who got me interested in science.”

  “So your mom married him?” asked Jane.

  “Not right away. She had to wait seven years before she could petition to have my father declared dead in absentia. She actually waited much longer.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” said Jane. “Nobody ever sa
w your dad again after that photo was taken?”

  “No,” she said, biting at her lower lip.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jane. “This must be hard for you.”

  Britt gave a tight nod.

  “Did your mom ever try to find him?” asked Cordelia.

  “Sure. When he didn’t sign the divorce agreement, as he said he would, she called the apartment he’d rented after they’d separated. It was in Milwaukee. She left messages, but he never called her back. Next, she phoned the trucking company he worked for. They told her he’d stopped coming to work in mid August. She called a couple of his friends, but nobody had seen him. It took her almost a year, but she eventually gave up. Then years later, when she and Alan started talking about getting married, they knew they’d have to petition the court for a legal finding about my dad, so they hired an investigator to look for him. The guy tried, but never had any luck. Dad had a younger brother living in Boston—Matt Ickles—but he hadn’t seen or heard from my father in years. No other living family as far as we knew. It was all a dead end.”

  “Refresh my memory,” said Jane. “When exactly did you and your mother visit your aunts—when you met Timmy?”

  “It was June 1978. We could probably find the exact date if we searched for Minnesota State death records.”

  “And tell me again. You were how old?”

  “I’d just turned six. Timmy was six, too. And Frank was maybe thirteen.”

  Cordelia seemed to have tuned them out. She was clomping to and fro in front of the couch, hands on her hips. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Stew’s belt buckle was found in the root cellar, ergo, he must be the man buried there. I mean, it’s axiomatic, right?” She whirled around and spread her arms wide. “I’ve solved the crime.”

  “But I’ve still got so many questions,” said Britt.

  “It would be easy enough for you to give the Saint Paul PD a DNA sample,” said Jane. She sat down on one of the living room chairs. “You could go by tomorrow and show them the photo.”

  “Back up a minute,” said Cordelia, collapsing onto the couch. “Let’s talk about this a little more. To your knowledge, did your father ever visit your aunts in Saint Paul? Were they close? Maybe he was trying to find dirt on your mother because of the impending divorce.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” said Britt, slumping against the back of her chair. “As far as I know, he’d only met my aunts once—when he and Mom were married. I have an old family album back home with pictures of their wedding. I haven’t looked at it in years.”

  “Is it possible that there was bad blood between your aunts and your father?” asked Jane.

  “Not that I ever knew about. He wasn’t a real friendly guy. He never liked people coming to the house. He didn’t even want Mom and me going back for the funeral. I remember that clearly. They had a big argument about it. It was the one time I remember Mom absolutely defying him. And then, shortly after we got back, she must have told him she wanted a divorce.”

  “Do you remember how he took it?” asked Jane.

  Britt tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “I just remember that it was a very tense time. A lot of fights. A lot of shouting. I hid under the bed when they’d go at it, cover my ears. And then he was gone. Poof. And I never saw him again.”

  Jane spent a few moments digesting the information.

  “Here’s one question,” said Britt. “If those are my dad’s remains, do I talk to my aunts, demand that they tell me the truth about what happened, or do I simply talk to the police and let them figure it out?”

  “You think your aunts would tell you the truth?” asked Cordelia. “Or even talk to you again?”

  “I’d like think they would, given what I know.”

  “You want my advice?” asked Jane.

  “I do,” said Britt.

  “Give the police your DNA and tell them what you know. Assuming you’re right about the belt buckle, and I believe you are, they’ll nail it down. Once you have the facts—not just your word against theirs—then you can talk to them.”

  “But by the time the police get the DNA results, I’ll be back home.”

  “It’s better to take it slow and do it right than to go off half-cocked, accuse them of something you can’t prove.”

  Britt groaned. She didn’t say anything for almost a minute. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I’ll head over to the police station again tomorrow morning.”

  “But,” said Cordelia, her finger rising into the air, “we can’t forget that we still don’t know the whereabouts of Tiny Tim.”

  “You want me to keep working on it?” asked Jane.

  “Absolutely,” replied Britt.

  “I don’t suppose anyone’s interested in ordering up some dinner?” said Cordelia. “All this cerebration is making me ravenous. Besides, it must be dinnertime somewhere.” She glanced at her watch. Pointing to it, she said, “Look! It’s almost seven.”

  “Dinner is the least I can do,” said Britt. “You two are saving my life.”

  “Of course we are,” said Cordelia, kicking off her clunky shoes and stretching out across the couch. “We’re the kickass sisters. The complete bag of Fritos. No worries. We’ll figure this all out or my name isn’t Olive Hudson.”

  Britt appeared confused. “Who?”

  “Don’t ask,” said Jane.

  20

  Frank was supremely annoyed by reality TV and yet he couldn’t seem to stop watching it. He bounced a beer bottle on his knee, full of disgust, but still pulled in by the sight of Tia Torres rescuing another dog. Pitt Bulls & Parolees was his current favorite. This wasn’t a particularly good episode, which was disappointing. He thought about switching to Fox News for a few laughs.

  “Nah,” he whispered. Fake reality TV was bad enough. The real thing was too much to take tonight. When his stomach growled, he drank more beer.

  Wendy had called around five to say that she’d be late getting home. He asked her to stop by the Chinese restaurant near their house to pick up their usual—two double orders of egg rolls, one of fried dumplings, an order of sweet and sour chicken, and an order of moo shoo pork, her favorite, with extra pancakes. He didn’t want to tell her his good news—as well as the not so good news—on the phone.

  Wendy explained that she’d promised her parents that she’d swing by their place after work to look at some of the years of collected crap they were planning to donate to charity. They were downsizing so they could move into an assisted living facility in the spring. Frank assumed Wendy’s visit would mean that she’d stuff the car with a bunch of useless junk, destined, as usual, for their basement.

  Hearing the back door open, he pushed out of the chair, feeling a pleasant buzz. He was on his third beer and hoped it wouldn’t be his last of the evening.

  Wendy lumbered into the kitchen carrying the sacks of food. “I parked in the garage. We could have seven inches by morning.” She set everything on the kitchen island and then removed her coat. “When did you get home?”

  “Around four.”

  She glanced at the kitchen sink, still filled with dishes.

  “I’ll load the dishwasher after dinner, hon,” he said, pulling out a stool and sitting down.

  Wendy grabbed herself a beer from the refrigerator and sat down next to him, opening the packages and removing the white containers.

  “Did you bring home a lot of junk?” he asked, yanking the paper off the chopsticks. They usually ate straight from the cartons, thus creating fewer dishes. Neither one of them liked to cook or clean.

  “Not so much,” she said, taking a bite of egg roll.

  They talked amiably about nothing in particular while they ate. Frank could hear barking coming from the TV in the family room, but figured the pit bull’s fate would remain forever a mystery, unless he caught a rerun.

  As he was polishing off his fourth beer, feeling utterly stuffed and deeply mellow, he asked Wendy a question. “I have good n
ews and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”

  She stopped chewing and turned to face him. “Is that a trick question?”

  “Don’t overanalyze. Good or bad first.”

  “Good.”

  He told her about the meeting he’d had with Walter Mann. He’d been practicing what he would tell her all afternoon. He wanted to relish the moment, to enjoy the surprise and delight in her eyes, but instead of taking his time, the words tumbled out too fast. Still, she did seem pleased, if a little bewildered.

  “Does that mean you’re quitting your tax preparation job?”

  “I don’t know yet. Yeah, I hope so. Wouldn’t it be incredibly cool if it all worked out? Which it will. For the first time in forever, I see a way out of my daily grind.”

  “You hate your job that much?”

  “Of course I hate it.”

  “So,” she said, wiping her mouth on a napkin, keeping her eyes averted, “what’s the bad news?”

  “Well, ah—” He pushed the empty beer bottle away. “See, here’s the deal. I told you that my mother’s garage burned down, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When the arson investigator was looking through the rubble, she found some bones.”

  Wendy straightened up. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Animal bones?”

  “Human.”

  “Whose bones?”

  “They don’t know. I shoulda called my mom when I got home to get more details, but I was in such a good mood because of the meeting with Mr. Mann that I couldn’t. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “You have absolutely no idea who the bones belong to?”

  Of course he knew. He got up to find another beer. “Nope. Sorry, hon. It’s probably nothing to worry about.”

  She pushed back from the island. “The police find human bones in your mother’s garage and you think it’s nothing to worry about?”