The Secrets of Bones

by Kylie Logan

  “I can be there with you if you want. Or Eileen.”

  Satisfied with the plan, Marilyn moved across the room to wipe down the sills of the windows that looked out over Lincoln Park across the street.

  “The way I figure it,” Marilyn said, “I can do most of the cleaning up in the chapel on Monday when it’s light out and the school is buzzing. It never bothers me then. Not when I know there are other people around and—”

  As if they’d been snipped with scissors, Marilyn’s words cut off. Her mouth fell open.

  “What?” Instinctively, Jazz hurried to her side. “What is it?”

  “It’s…” Marilyn leaned forward for a better look out the window. “It’s that man.”

  Jazz looked where Marilyn was looking. In the hours since word went out about the discovery of the skeleton in the school, local news crews had set up across the street. There were three vans parked there, each with a satellite dish on its roof, and since there was nothing going on at the moment and there wouldn’t be until the journalists saw the board members or Eileen leave the school, the crews were socializing, sipping coffee, smoking. To their right, a couple of young girls from the neighborhood jumped rope. To the left of the TV vans, a man stood alone on the sidewalk.

  “Him?” Jazz asked, and when Marilyn nodded Jazz did a quick assessment. The guy was in his thirties. He had shaggy, dark hair, a wisp of a beard. He was short and squat, and he was wearing brown pants and a navy-blue windbreaker. “Who is he?”

  “That’s the man…” Marilyn didn’t need to point, but she did anyway. “He was here. In the school.”

  He wasn’t a parent; Jazz was sure of that. He wasn’t a vendor, because all of them worked through her. He wasn’t someone who’d come to do maintenance or grounds work, either. “For what?”

  Marilyn inched closer to the window just as the man turned and paced down the sidewalk, then spun around and walked back in the direction of the school. “Back when Ms. Quinn was here. Yeah, it’s him, all right. See the way he walks? He sort of rolls from side to side. Like maybe he’s used to being on a boat. He doesn’t look like a sailor, though, does he? I remember him, all right. I remember that walk.”

  “Why was he coming around here when Bernadette was here?” Jazz wanted to know.

  Marilyn slid her a look. “To see her, of course.”

  “Bernadette?”

  Marilyn bobbed her head. “A time or two. At least as far as I know. I saw him with her. Always late. Always after school was done for the day and there wasn’t anyone around. Like I said, she used to go up to the chapel and sit there for hours. And sometimes, I think he went up there with her.”

  It was absolutely against the rules. Bernadette should have known that. Without a pass, visitors weren’t allowed in the school. That fact may or may not have been important. For now, Jazz wanted to know, “Were they friends?”

  Marilyn had to think about it. “Well, once I saw them sitting in the chapel talking. Just talking. But one time when I was cleaning on the second floor, I saw them going up to the third. They were holding hands.”

  “Then friends for sure. Or maybe more?”

  Marilyn’s lips puckered. “Not the last time I saw them together. That’s for sure. I just finished up for the night and I was heading home. It was cold; I had my winter coat on.” As if she was wearing it then, she bunched one hand against her chest, holding an imaginary coat closed against the icy chill. “They were out in the parking lot. Over by Ms. Quinn’s car.”

  “Doing what?” Jazz wanted to know.

  Color shot through Marilyn’s cheeks. “It wasn’t like I was putting my nose where it didn’t belong or anything. But it was strange. That’s what I thought at the time. Ms. Quinn, I’d just seen her up in the chapel and told her it was time to get a move on. And he wasn’t up there with her then. He must have been waiting outside for her. And I thought it was strange on account of how it was so cold. You’d think when it’s like that outside, you could find a better place to talk.”

  “About?”

  She tried to come up with the words and failed, shrugged. “It was a while ago. And I couldn’t hear real good. I remember that whatever it was, his voice was really mellow. Like he was trying to be sweet. You know how men can be.” She gave Jazz the sort of conspiratorial look that said there wasn’t a woman in the world who didn’t know what she was talking about. “Like he wanted something from her.”

  “And Bernadette?”

  “Stood just like that.” Marilyn pulled back her shoulders and clutched her hands together at her waist, her head high, her chin up. “You know, like she was a statue or something. Or like she was trying to show him that no matter what he said, she wasn’t listening.”

  Jazz took a moment to study the man in the park. He looked harmless enough, a plain guy in unremarkable clothes. A little overweight. He looked left and right up and down the street. He glanced at the school. He stepped forward, then back. Like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do next.

  “Were they yelling?” Jazz wanted to know. “Arguing?”

  Marilyn thought about it. “No. If they started to tussle, well, I would have done something. I mean, it’s not like I could have fought him or anything.” Marilyn glanced down at her own scrawny body and chuckled. “But I’ve stood up to some guys. I know I don’t look up to it, but it’s true. I would have made a scene. I would have called the cops. I would have done something if I thought she was in some sort of danger. But there was nothing physical. None of that. It was just sort of awkward. Pathetic. Then whatever he said, well, Ms. Quinn, she started to cry and she turned away from him and he…” She cocked her head, picturing the scene. “It was like he was a balloon and somebody poked him with a pin. That’s how it looked to me. That’s what I thought. Like I was watching all the air leak out of him. It wasn’t until he backed away from her that whatever she said must have registered. Because that’s when he talked louder, like the words were all bunched up inside him, straining at his heart, and he couldn’t control how they came out.”

  “What did he say?”

  Trying to remember, Marilyn squeezed her eyes shut. “How she’d be sorry. How she’d regret it.” She lifted her hands, then let them flop back to her sides. “That was it. He turned around and walked away. And that Ms. Quinn, she stood there crying and shaking, and then she got in her car, and she drove away.”

  “Do you have any idea who he is?” Jazz asked.

  Marilyn shook her head.

  “How about when this all happened? I don’t suppose you remember that?”

  “Well, I do. See, that’s the thing. I never thought anything of it. Because when we got back from vacation, everyone said Ms. Quinn quit and we wouldn’t see her again, except none of us knew…” She looked up at the ceiling. Up to the fourth floor where Bernadette had lain wrapped in plastic sheeting for three years.

  Jazz imagined Marilyn was thinking just what she was thinking. About the skeleton. About the cross around its neck.

  She cleared her throat and Marilyn flinched. “When was it, Marilyn?”

  “I was just heading home and I was so relieved because we were going to be on vacation soon.”

  Jazz sucked in a breath. “Not the day before Christmas break started?” The last time anyone saw Bernadette alive.

  “No.” Marilyn sucked on her bottom lip. “A couple days before, maybe. I remember I saw Ms. Quinn the next day in the hallway and I thought about saying something to her, about asking how she was. But you know how she could be, she walked right by me like I was invisible, and I thought if that’s the way she wanted to be, I wasn’t even going to ask.” She slid Jazz a look. “She was alive and well. I can tell you that.”

  “That doesn’t mean this guy, whoever he is, that doesn’t mean he didn’t come back another day.” Jazz spun away from the windows and went to the desk where she’d left her phone.

  “You going to call that detective guy?” Marilyn wanted to know.

 
She was, but not the detective guy Marilyn thought she was going to call. “I know someone…” When she got Nick’s voicemail, Jazz made a face at the phone and disconnected the call. “I’ll try him again in a few minutes,” she assured Marilyn. “I’m going to have him drive by and talk to this guy. Until then, we’ll keep an eye on him and—”

  Jazz went back to the windows and her voice sagged along with her spirits.

  Whoever he was, however he knew Bernadette, whatever they’d been fighting about in the days before Bernadette disappeared, he was gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  She was in the backyard working on come and stay with Wally when Nick’s unmarked police car pulled into the driveway. It was Saturday evening, and she wasn’t surprised he was on the clock. Nick was always working. Then again, he was something of a superhero, what with finding and collaring bad guys. After the shock of finding Bernadette’s skeleton, after the grim realization that Bernadette had been killed in a place that should have been solely about learning and nurturing, one look at Nick and Jazz felt a sudden rush of warmth. Back in the day when they were a couple, it was all about sex. Right then, right there, it was deeper than that. Stronger. She felt safe when Nick was around.

  She gave him a big smile that was totally wasted since he ignored her completely and headed right for Wally. Aside from gnawing on shoelaces, the puppy liked nothing better than making new friends and seeing old ones, and he jumped up on Nick and yipped a greeting. “He’s getting so big!”

  “Bigger and feistier every day.” Jazz told Wally that jumping was not acceptable behavior, and while she was at it, she reminded Nick, too. “Don’t let him do that.”

  Nick rubbed a hand over Wally’s woolly head. “Why not? He’s cute.”

  “It’s not going to be so cute when he weighs sixty pounds and he’s knocking people over.”

  “Point taken.” When Wally jumped up again, Nick told him no and backed away. “He’s doing well?” he asked Jazz.

  “As happy as a clam and as smart as an Airedale is supposed to be. And that’s plenty smart.”

  “And plenty stubborn, right?”

  “He has his moments.” Since Wally insisted on proving this by jumping up again and again, she hooked his lead to his collar and reeled it in nice and short so he couldn’t get near enough to Nick to hop onto the legs of his khaki pants. Wally tugged, tried again, grumbled, and finally gave up and sat down at Jazz’s side. “All in all, he’s a great dog.”

  “I’m glad.” Nick smiled down at the dog, then up at Jazz. It was seven in the evening, but it was nearly summer and the light was still strong, and the sun glinted against his sandy hair and sparked in his blue eyes. “I’m on dinner break. Thought you might want to get something to eat.”

  It wasn’t the first time in the weeks since they’d reconnected that he’d offered the gift of his time—and a meal. All those other times, Jazz had been reluctant. What they’d had, her and Nick, had been so good that when it fell apart thanks to the pathetic but undeniable fact that they both forgot they were supposed to be the most important thing in each other’s lives, it made her ache in ways she never knew were possible.

  She refused to think about letting herself fall under the spell of his kindness and his intelligence and his darned sexy self again because she hated the thought of getting hurt again.

  But not nearly as much as she hated not having Nick in her life.

  She looked down at her black running shorts. “Do I need to change?”

  “I was thinking of La Bodega.”

  One of her favorites, and she didn’t need to change.

  “I’ll put Wally in his crate,” she told Nick. “And lock up. We can walk.”

  “We’d be crazy not to. You don’t think there’s anywhere to park around here on a Saturday, do you?”

  He was right and Jazz knew it. More than one hundred years earlier when the neighborhood was settled by immigrants who built its working-class houses, its churches and schools, no one had imagined modern traffic. Streets were narrow. Parking was at a premium, and Jazz always thanked her lucky stars that her Kurcz grandparents, who had once owned her house, had the foresight to buy the lot next door and put in a driveway.

  Jazz got the puppy into the house, and while she was inside she checked her hair (presentable), changed her shirt (the T-shirt she’d been wearing was a little threadbare even for La Bodega), and changed out of her crummy house sneakers into ones that were a little more decent.

  She stepped out onto the back porch, locked the door, and turned to find Nick at the bottom of the stairs, grinning up at her.

  “You look terrific.”

  “I look like a woman who’s been cleaning the house all day and just spent the evening outside with her dog.”

  “Yeah, like I said”—when she descended the steps, Nick wound an arm through hers—“terrific.”

  It was good to walk side by side with him, great to feel the warmth of his body so close to hers, distracting (in a good way) to breathe in the woodsy scent of his aftershave.

  All of which didn’t mean she’d completely lost her mind.

  “What do you want?” she asked him.

  “I was thinking of the roast beef sub. You know, the one with the caramelized onions and mushrooms.”

  When they stopped to wait for traffic to go by so they could cross the street, she slid him a look. “Not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Or maybe the Greek sub with the artichoke hearts and—”

  She untangled herself from him and crossed to the restaurant, where she pushed open the door and stepped up to the counter to order. She decided on a salad with chicken and walnuts, and while Nick ordered—who knew if it would be the Greek or the roast beef sub—she snagged a table outside near the sidewalk.

  He joined her in a minute and set down two bottles of iced tea. “They’ll bring our dinners out when they’re ready.” He sat next to her, opened his iced tea, and took a drink. “So…” He set the bottle on the table. “Tell me about it.”

  Of course she knew exactly what he was talking about, but she took her time, collecting her thoughts, her emotions. Washing the kitchen floor, scrubbing the bathroom, and doing three loads of laundry had pretty much helped to push thoughts of yesterday’s discovery at the school out of Jazz’s head all day.

  Now she was forced to face them again.

  She opened her iced tea and took a long drink. “It?”

  He leaned forward. “No way you’re not thinking about the skeleton at school.”

  A chill scraped her shoulders. “That would be pretty impossible.”

  “Then tell me about it.”

  “You’re not working the case.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

  “About the case?”

  “Maybe about the woman who found the skeleton in the first place.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she was fine and, while she was at it, to ask him why he cared, but she never had the chance. Tony, a man who’d worked at the restaurant forever, came out of the restaurant with a plate in each hand, took one look at the two of them, and grinned.

  “Hey, Detective Nick!” Tony set down both plates so he could shake Nick’s hand. “And Jazz! I haven’t seen you two in here together in forever. What, you decided you didn’t like the food?”

  “The food is always good,” Jazz said at the same time Nick mumbled something about being busy.

  “Well, this one…” Tony glanced her way. “She’s in here once a week, I bet. Always by herself. I asked her a couple months ago … remember, Jazz? I asked you a couple months ago where Supercop was.”

  “And Jazz said?” The question was meant for Tony, but Nick looked at her when he asked it.

  “Just like you said, told me you were busy!” Tony answered before Jazz could, and it was just as well, since she wasn’t sure what she would have said. “I told her I don’t care how busy you are, you gotta eat. Isn’t that right, Detective N
ick? You gotta eat. I’m glad you’re here eating now.” He put one hand on Jazz’s back, the other on Nick’s. “You two enjoy!”

  Once Tony was gone, Jazz thought about the other times he’d been to their table to chat, all the times she and Nick had sat just like this—at ease and at peace, not wanting anything more than to enjoy each other’s company.

  Nick was a good man. No matter their differences, she’d never forgotten that. No matter how hard she tried not to get too close, not to get too involved, not to get so wrapped up in him and in their relationship, she could never deny that. Nick was honest and he was loyal. He could be funny and he was a great dancer. For weddings on her mother’s side of the family, he’d learned to polka. On her dad’s side … well, none of them could really do an Irish jig, not properly, but at least Nick was game enough to try.

  And he could slow dance.

  Oh, how Nick could slow dance.

  The memory caused a rush of heat and she sat back and smiled.

  “What?” Nick wanted to know, basically proving with that one word what she already knew about him—he was suspicious of everyone and everything, even the smile that lit her face and the color that touched her cheeks.

  “Nothing. I’m just enjoying the moment, that’s all. This is good.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t touched your salad yet.”

  She could have played along with his misconception, but there was something about the evening air and the delicious promise of summer and the fact that he’d come to see her on his dinner hour that made her brave, reckless.

  “I wasn’t talking about the salad. I was talking about this.” As if it would somehow demonstrate what she was saying, she tapped the table. “Being here. Now. With you. This is good.”

  A slow smile lit his expression. “Like the old days.”

  “I hope not,” she said, and then so he didn’t get the wrong impression, she added quickly, “It would be nice if we could work around the things that went wrong back then.”