The Secrets of Bones

by Kylie Logan

  He thought about it, but only for a moment before his mouth fell open. “Right around the time Bernadette disappeared!”

  It was too strange. Too coincidental. Jazz closed in on Mercer. “Can you get me a copy of Ms. Harper’s resignation letter?”

  He reared back, not just away from Jazz, but away from the very idea. “Are you nuts? I can’t just go rooting through old files and—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I need my job, that’s why not. And because I’m not crazy. You met Hyland the Harpy. Can you imagine what she’d do to me if she found me looking through files I’m not supposed to access? She’d skin me alive!”

  “You could say you were doing research.”

  “And you can send flowers to my funeral.”

  This time he didn’t care if Jazz was between him and the freedom of the sidewalk. Mercer pushed her aside. His uneven gait making it look like he rolled from side to side, he fled out of the alley.

  “It might help!” Jazz called after him. “What if it did? What if it helped us find out who killed Bernadette?”

  CHAPTER 20

  By Monday morning Eddie had been charged with possession with the intent to sell for the weed and assault for his attack on Jazz. He was promised a deal on the charges if he’d talk about Bernadette’s murder, but—at least according to Nick, who heard it from Gary Lindsey—he still insisted he had nothing to do with that. Who did? Jazz only wished she knew. Sam Tillner was plenty suspicious. He’d been at school on the day Bernadette disappeared and he’d moved into her home. Taryn Campbell’s dad, Leon, was never far from Jazz’s mind, either. He openly admitted his dislike of Bernadette.

  And then there was the curious fact of Odessa Harper’s resignation.

  It had niggled at Jazz all weekend, and when Nick called to tell her what was going on with Eddie she asked him to see what he could find out. The results weren’t encouraging. Odessa wasn’t married and had no children. She lived alone. Interestingly enough, right in the neighborhood. No one filed a missing person’s report and no one was likely to except the people at work, and as far as they were concerned, she’d resigned. On to greener pastures. New adventures.

  Odessa Harper was never officially missing.

  Of course, that’s what they all thought about Bernadette, too.

  Maybe that’s the reason thinking about Odessa didn’t sit well with Jazz. The reason it tapped at her brain, interrupted her sleep, stayed with her like the remnants of a bad dream, haunting and disturbing.

  Maybe that was the reason she was still thinking about it on Monday morning when the bell rang to let summer school students know they had fifteen minutes to finish up at their lockers and get to their classrooms. Jazz had been so deep in thought, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  She slapped a hand to her heart, sucked in a breath, and told herself to get a grip.

  There was no better way of doing that than getting out into the hallway to help usher their summer school students—many of whom had never been to St. Catherine’s before—in the right direction.

  She waded into a sea of young girls, some with buddies at their sides, others alone and looking as lost as if they’d been dropped on the moon. She helped a student named Tanya who was having trouble with her locker combination. She showed a girl named Jess the way to the art studio. And then there was Becka, a tiny thing with big eyes and a head of the most amazing curly hair. She was on the verge of tears trying to find the library for a session on Jane Austen and Jazz took pity on her, walked her all the way there, and left as fast as she could. If anyone asked her anything about Jane Austen, she was in big trouble.

  She was going back down to the first floor when she met Maddie coming up to the second.

  “Good morning!” Out of her uniform, in yellow shorts and a shirt tie-dyed in blue and red and purple, Maddie looked younger than a senior. There was a spring in her step and a smile on her face that was as bright as the sunshine outside. “How are you today, Ms. Ramsey?”

  It took a moment for Jazz to line up this new, sunshiny Maddie with the morose girl she’d seen only a week earlier. It took another moment before she was able to spit out, “I’m fine, Maddie. How are you?”

  “Fabuloso! That’s Spanish for fabulous,” she added, in case Jazz didn’t get it. “All set to spend a couple of weeks learning all I can before we head out.”

  “Then you’re excited about going to Honduras with your parents?”

  “Ms. Ramsey, I’m excited about life!” With a laugh, Maddie took the steps two at a time, did a pirouette at the landing, then sailed into her classroom.

  Jazz was still standing there with her mouth open when Eileen came up beside her and looked toward Maddie’s classroom. Eileen knew where every class was scheduled, of course, and she knew which girls were in each class.

  “Maddie?” she asked, her tone clearly saying she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

  “She’s…” Jazz searched for the right word. “She’s great. She’s … happy and excited.”

  “I guess she had a good weekend.” Eileen turned to go down the steps and Jazz shook herself back to reality and walked along with her. “The young are resilient.”

  “That resilient?” Jazz wanted to know, but since she knew even Eileen couldn’t answer that, she asked a different question. “Did you know she’s adopted?”

  Eileen slanted her a look. “I’ve known since she applied here. How did you find out?”

  “She told Bernadette. And Bernadette told Mark Mercer, that paralegal who was helping with her lawsuit against us.”

  “And he told you.”

  “Does Maddie know?” Jazz asked.

  “Of course.” They were back in the office now, and they found two students lost and looking for computer programming. Eileen took them out in the hallway and pointed them in the right direction, then came back into the office. “It’s not the nineteenth century. Most families don’t have secrets when it comes to things like adoption. It’s something they treasure. Something they celebrate.”

  “Bernadette thought Maddie was sad because she was adopted. That she didn’t feel…” She thought back to everything Mercer had told her. “That she somehow didn’t feel complete.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s not happy. Her parents adore her.”

  “And she’s thrilled about going to Honduras.” Jazz thought about the smile that wreathed Maddie’s face. “Do you think that’s enough to make her forget how miserable she’s been since she found out Bernadette was dead?”

  “All we can do is hope,” Eileen told her, and went into her office. “All we can do is hope.”

  Jazz wanted nothing more than to believe it was true. Bernadette and Maddie had been close. Too close if those pictures of Maddie she’d found among Bernadette’s things meant anything. Still, that wasn’t Maddie’s fault. She missed a favorite teacher. She felt bad about holding a grudge thinking Bernadette had just up and left without saying good-bye. She was miserable when she learned of Bernadette’s death.

  “If she can have one day of happiness,” Jazz said to herself, “I guess that’s all we can ask.”

  One day of giddiness grew into two and two turned into three. On Wednesday, loaded down with Spanish homework and with torrential rain falling outside, Maddie practically skipped out of school.

  It was good.

  It was better than good.

  And Jazz couldn’t help but be worried about it.

  “You’re looking thoughtful.” Working a kink from her neck, Sarah came into the office and went to the windows, checking out the driving rain. “Matt and I were supposed to go to an Indians game with the boys tonight. They’ll be disappointed.”

  “They like Matt?”

  “They do.” Sarah spun around and leaned back against the sill of the leaded-glass windows. “It took them a couple times meeting him before they warmed up, but you know how kids can be. Then again, Matt forgot the rules of our house. The first thing
he asked them to do with him was go out for burgers.”

  Jazz could only imagine the scene! Thanks to their mother, Sarah’s boys were all about veganism.

  Sarah tapped a foot against the hardwood floor. “You know, for a moment there, I thought Dhani was going to take him up on the offer.”

  Dhani was Sarah’s oldest and would be in high school the next year. It couldn’t do much for his popularity quotient for him to eat chickpea salad while his schoolmates chomped down burgers and fries.

  “I bet Loser lets them eat meat,” Sarah grumbled. “When they stay with him, I bet he lets them eat anything they want.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Jazz dared to suggest. “They can try both lifestyles and make up their own minds.”

  Sarah harrumphed. “Matt swore he’d never forget the rules again. He says he’ll always make sure the boys keep on the straight and narrow, food-wise.” She smiled. “Matt’s great.”

  “He is.”

  “And Nick?”

  “Nick is busy.”

  “Nick is always busy.”

  “Yes.” Jazz had paperwork to finish before she left for the day and she went to her desk and sat down. “But it’s okay, Sarah.”

  “Really?” She pushed off from the window. “If he’s putting you off—”

  “He’s not. But he’s not pushing, either. That’s good.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is.” Jazz was certain of it. “We’re taking it slow, enjoying each other’s company. We’re talking.”

  “And last time, what you mostly did was—” Sarah remembered herself and glanced at Eileen’s door.

  “Maybe we’ll get there again. When and if we’re both ready. For now…” She tapped the stack of papers on her desk. “If I don’t get this done, I don’t get home on time, and if I don’t get home on time, Wally’s going to pee in his crate.”

  Sarah threw up her hands in surrender. “I get the message! I’ve got to get going, too. If we can’t do the ball game tonight…” As if the weather might actually have changed since last time she checked, she looked out the window again. “There is this new Middle Eastern restaurant I’ve been reading about. I bet the boys would love to try their lemon and coriander falafel.”

  Her menu choice selected, her mood improved, Sarah swept out of the office, and Jazz got down to work. She wasn’t finished until nearly four, and by then Eileen had gone off to a meeting at the hunger center where she volunteered and Jazz had the school to herself. Now that she didn’t have to worry about Eddie, getting jumped, or hearing mysterious footsteps from the fourth floor, it actually felt like a luxury.

  If only she could put aside her worries about Maddie.

  An idea hit, and at the same time Jazz told herself it wasn’t just wrong, but underhanded, sneaky, and unethical, too, it refused to leave her alone.

  “Forget it, Jazz,” she told herself, her voice hollow in the empty school. “Go home. Make dinner. Take Wally for a walk in the rain. Maybe that will wash the craziness out of your head.”

  Good advice.

  She didn’t follow it.

  Instead, she went to the locked file cabinet where they kept the master key to all the school’s lockers. Each summer school student had been assigned a locker that would be used by an incoming seventh grader in the fall. St. Catherine’s girls were allowed to keep the lockers they’d used all year.

  Jazz knew what she had in mind was a betrayal of trust.

  An invasion of privacy.

  It didn’t keep her from clutching the key in one hand and heading upstairs.

  As if she was right there, Jazz heard a lecture from Eileen spin around inside her head. Sure, administration was allowed to examine a girl’s locker, but only in the most serious instances. Like the time one of the older girls was reported to be stashing uppers in her locker so her boyfriend’s parents wouldn’t find them at home. Or the time one of the younger girls—Jazz still cringed at the memory—wanted to surprise her mom for Mother’s Day with a cake. She bought it before she could squander her allowance money and stored it in her locker for two weeks.

  Bugs made for a serious instance, indeed.

  Was Maddie’s current good mood just as critical?

  Jazz wished she knew. And to her way of thinking, there was one way that might help her find the truth.

  On the second floor at the row of lockers used by last year’s juniors, Jazz weighed the locker key in one hand and the questions in her mind: Was this likely to help? Or was she just being nosy? She was all for kids being happy.

  Kids being suddenly and inexplicably happy?

  As far as Jazz was concerned, that fell into the serious instance category.

  She had just inserted the master key into the lock on Maddie’s locker when Jazz heard Eileen call from the bottom of the steps.

  “You up there?”

  She groaned, hung her head, and actually thought about not answering, but Jazz already felt guilty, and that would only make it worse. “Second floor!” she called back. “Junior lockers!”

  Just as she expected, she heard Eileen’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “Maddie?”

  There was no use lying about it. Jazz looked over her shoulder at the principal, but she didn’t take her hand off the key in its lock. What was the use now?

  “Yeah.”

  Eileen stepped nearer. “You don’t think a volunteer committee for the hunger center actually meets on Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock, do you? I was hoping you’d be gone when I came back so you didn’t know I was about to violate every rule I hold sacred.”

  “You mean you’re not going to—”

  “Yell and scream about privacy violations? Take you to task because you didn’t ask my permission? Read you the riot act because you went over my head and did something I’m totally and completely opposed to? What do you think?”

  “I think I feel like I’m committing a mortal sin,” Jazz admitted.

  Eileen waved a dismissive hand. “Not even close. Besides, did you see Maddie today?”

  Jazz had. “She was singing in Spanish at lunchtime.”

  “And doodling during study hall. Flowers. Sunshine. Hearts.”

  “You think she met a guy?”

  Eileen wrinkled her nose. “I hope that’s all it is. So…” She looked at the locker, at the key. “Since you beat me to it, what are you waiting for?”

  Jazz turned the key and pulled open the locker door.

  Like so many of the St. Catherine’s girls’ lockers, this one had a small mirror attached to the inside of the door, a little tray under it had lip gloss and breath mints in it. There was no coat hanging on any of the hooks. The single shelf, though, was packed with papers, and Jazz reached up to haul them down. Her hand slipped, the papers tipped, and Jazz had to scramble to keep them from falling. She moved fast enough to avoid a disaster, but not fast enough to keep one paper from fluttering out and landing on the floor at her feet.

  Her arms still raised to stem the avalanche of papers, Jazz looked down. Her breath caught.

  The paper that had fallen to the floor was a cream-colored note card decorated with blue flowers.

  Just like the ones Bernadette had once owned.

  As carefully as she could, Jazz pulled all the papers out of the locker, tucked them under her arm, then bent to retrieve the note card.

  “My office?” Eileen suggested, and together they went downstairs and into the principal’s office. Eileen shut the door behind them.

  “I think we’ve got the place to ourselves, but there’s no use taking any chances,” she said. “We don’t need someone walking in on us and asking why we’re rooting through a student’s locker.” Hands on hips, she glanced over the stack of papers. “I feel like a traitor to my girls! Remind me again, why are we rooting through this student’s locker?”

  “This, for one thing.” Jazz picked up the note card and showed it to Eileen. “There were unused cards just like this in the bag of s
tuff Sam Tillner brought over the other day.”

  “Does that mean that note is from Bernadette?” Eileen shivered. “I don’t suppose it’s unusual for a teenaged girl to keep a memento like that.”

  Jazz looked inside the card.

  “Blue ink,” she said, though how that could possibly matter she didn’t know. “Nice, neat handwriting. The letters are very straight, nothing fancy. It’s not signed,” she said. “Would you recognize Bernadette’s handwriting?”

  “Not a chance,” the principal admitted.

  “But we do have…” She raced out to her office for Bernadette’s personnel file, flipped it open, riffled through the papers inside. “Does her signature on her employment application help?”

  They examined it, then the writing inside the note card. “Looks the same,” Eileen decided. “So the note is from Bernadette. And what does it say?”

  “‘I always keep my promises.’ Then at the very bottom of the card, she’s written what sounds like a quote of some sort.” This writing was smaller and Jazz squinted to read it. “‘Come from the silence so long and so deep.’ Sound familiar?”

  “Not to me,” Eileen admitted. “You’re young. You know the music the girls listen to. Something from a song?”

  “Not one I recognize. And it’s kind of…” Jazz searched for the word. “It’s kind of gloomy, isn’t it? ‘The silence so long and so deep.’ Like Bernadette was talking about her own death.” Jazz’s comment was punctuated by a roll of thunder that shook the windows. She waited until its echoes died down.

  Eileen shivered. “It sure doesn’t tell us much, does it?”

  Jazz was hardly listening. She’d caught a glimpse of blue in the pile of papers from the locker and she picked through graded homework assignments, notes, and empty granola bar wrappers and found a stack of the same blue and cream note cards tied together with yellow ribbon.

  “Maybe these will,” she suggested at the same time she set aside the rest of the papers and pulled one of Eileen’s guest chairs closer to the desk. She sat down and set the stack of notes on the desk in front of her, pointing to the ribbon. “You want to do the honors?”

  “You go ahead.” Eileen sat down. “I feel—”