Ashes and Bones

by Dana Cameron

  “Uh-huh. I wasn’t implying anything. It’s just…quite a story.”

  I couldn’t be bothered to rise to the bait. “What can I do? Is there anything else I can do to help?” Not that I’d been all that helpful to begin with. “Is Chuck all right?”

  “He was released from the hospital, he’s doing fine. Cuts and bruises, no broken bones, nothing major.” The officer stopped suddenly and looked at me. “Were you and Mr. Huxley involved?”

  “Involved with what?”

  “Each other.”

  “What? No! Are you kidding me?”

  “Why is that such a strange question? There must be some reason that he was targeted, if that’s what’s going on here. What exactly is your relationship with him?”

  “Chuck…well, I’m fond of him. We’re not really friends, we don’t hang out or anything, but he’s been over the house when I’ve had departmental parties. I like him…and I feel protective of him. I think Tony knows that.”

  “Why protective?”

  “Chuck’s…not naïve, that’s not it, not entirely. He just tends to believe the best of people, even when they’ve given him no reason to expect it. He thinks people want to be good.”

  He scowled. “That’s not very bright, these days. My friend Jim lying in the morgue will tell you that.”

  I found myself getting angry, even though I knew he was right. “Maybe not, but it doesn’t deserve punishment like this.”

  As he apologized, there was only one thought that kept going through my head, and it was exactly as Tony had planned, I was sure.

  Scars last so much longer than bruises. If it hadn’t been for Chuck’s rescuer, he’d have been marred for life, with marks both he and I could see.

  I walked out in a daze. There was little comfort in the young woman’s rescue of Chuck, and while I was grateful, all I could remember was Chuck’s limp form and the dark blood stain on the pale fabric of his recycled book bag.

  As always, there was plenty of work for me to flee into. I presently was tracking down more leads on the Chandler family, who were leaders of the community of Stone Harbor, the next town over from where I lived. Although there were a number of interesting primary documents that mentioned the English-born Matthew Chandler and his work as a judge in the early eighteenth century, I was actually more interested in his wife, Margaret, whose diary I’d had the chance to study.

  The accounts that didn’t fall in line to praise her were the interesting ones. I’d only recently come across one, by painstakingly going through every period diary and collection of letters that I could lay my hands on that had anything to do with anyone in coastal Massachusetts. While locating the diaries was time consuming, reading them wasn’t as arduous as it sounds. Usually they weren’t too hard to read, if they were in good condition, and the handwriting wasn’t too awful. Awful, you could get used to, especially reading the scribbled exam papers of panicked and hyperventilating freshmen. And sometimes, rarely, there was even a transcription, though you were usually better off rereading the original for yourself, to avoid errors the transcriber made, intentionally or not. The problem, as far as I was concerned, was that oftentimes these diaries were one-line accounts of weather, ships arriving and departing, or amounts of grain harvested. That was fine, and the right kind of scholar could do a lot with them.

  What I had was a fragment of a note that mentioned Margaret. It described her as an “iron-hearted wretch,” which was remarkable to me, given her reputation.

  This was the best part of my work and I couldn’t stomach it. I couldn’t concentrate, but worse, I found myself not wanting to. I’d been tired before, overworked and pressed for time, but had never been able to put something as juicy as this aside with so little regret. I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  I thought about eating the sandwich I’d brought with me, but these days, the thought of food just made me queasy. I knew what I was avoiding, so I decided to confront it head on. I went to Chuck’s apartment.

  Chuck rented the top floor of a three-decker not too far from campus, in the center of Caldwell. As I had come to expect, the Christmas lights were still up, though the bulbs were still red, white, and blue, for Independence Day. Chuck believed that if lights on a house were pretty at one time of year, they were pretty all year round: What his landlord must have thought, I didn’t know. The windows were uneven, giving the house a rather cockeyed look.

  I climbed to the third floor. The front door was propped open. I knocked on the door to his apartment, and after a moment, heard shuffling, the chain being drawn across, and then the door was cracked open.

  Chuck peeped out, a black eye turning to green and yellow behind thick glasses that replaced his usual granny glasses. Something as fragile as they were wouldn’t have survived that brutal attack. Chuck had a cut on his mouth, and his grin at seeing me rapidly turned to a grimace of pain as it pulled at the scar. Then something clouded in his eyes, and he looked wary.

  “Hi, Professor Fielding,” he said. “Uh…”

  The fact that he hesitated worried me. Whatever physical damage he’d escaped, there was a blight on his trusting nature now. Understandable. To me, heartbreaking.

  “Would you like to come in?”

  “Yes, please. Just for a minute. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “Oh, I’m okay.” He looked dull, the light had gone out of his eyes. “A little shook up still. I still can’t believe…it doesn’t seem like it happened to me, somehow.” Then his face became fixed; Chuck had thought of something and was trying to conceal it. It was a look I’d never seen before.

  “I brought you a carrot bran muffin,” I said, handing him the bag from Joey’s Sandwich Shop. They were his favorite.

  “Oh, thanks. That was really…maybe I’ll eat it later. I’m not much hungry, lately.”

  “I see.” You and me both.

  He led me into the living area, and offered me a choice between a beat-up love seat and a beanbag chair. As there was an afghan on the love seat—for comfort, certainly not for warmth—I took the beanbag. Sank in, my knees up to my chin. Chuck settled under the afghan.

  I cleared my throat. Chuck looked away. Then we spoke at the same time:

  “Chuck, look, I have to tell you—”

  “Uh, Professor? There’s something—”

  “You go first,” I said.

  “Um. This is hard. I think…it’s hard for me to remember everything—it happened real fast. But I think, I think the…the guy who beat me up? I think he mentioned your name. I thought you should know, if it isn’t, you know. My concussion talking or something.”

  “Oh, Chuck—!” A lump rose in my throat.

  “He said your name. He said, ‘Ask Emma.’ Or at least, that’s what I thought he said. But I could have heard wrong.” He laughed, but it wasn’t convincing. “I was kinda busy at the time.”

  The words froze me: At the conference earlier this year, a hotel room had been trashed—and students threatened—because I was believed to be looking into a murder. The same words, “ask Emma,” had been written on the walls. Duncan Thayer knew that; everyone at the conference knew it. I felt myself go clammy.

  Chuck had gone pale, and that brought me back to the sunny, warm little room. “Are you okay?” I asked. “You look a little peaky.”

  “I feel okay, not even headachy anymore. A little Tiger Balm, a little ice, a little Motrin…” He shrugged. “But I’ve been afraid. It comes in flashes, you know?”

  I hated that I had brought this on him. “It’s understandable,” I said. “You’ve been traumatized.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not just that. I…” He played with the fringe of the afghan. “I was afraid to tell you. That he’d mentioned your name. I’m not a brave person, I know that. I just couldn’t go…and tell you. I didn’t remember, not really, until yesterday. But I’ve been hiding.” He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his tie-dyed baseball shirt. “I’m not brave, like I said. It was like…if I said anyt
hing, it would happen all over again.”

  Oh Christ…I thought briefly about running away, but I couldn’t move my legs. The truth was a poor second choice. “Chuck, I came here…because things have been happening. I’m afraid you were beat up because…I think Tony Markham is back.”

  I told him what had been going on. He stared at the squares of the afghan the whole time.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, that you got dragged into this. I don’t know why he—or whoever it was—chose you, but—”

  “I do. You like me. That’s why. If it was Professor Markham, well. He was never very nice, though sometimes he tried, I could tell. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew this would make you sad. Angry.”

  The tears slid down my cheeks, fueled by an apparently inexhaustible supply of guilt and regret. “Chuck, I’m so sorry…”

  “I know. I know you are. But you know, it’s kinda my fault, too. He wouldn’t’ve picked on me if he didn’t think…he didn’t think he could get away with it. I’m not very brave. He knew that.” Chuck picked at the worn yarn. “I’m an easy mark.”

  His words cut me to the heart. I had no idea what to say next.

  “Look, I’m okay. Robin—that’s the girl who saved me—got there before anything worse happened.” He flushed red. “I’m not going to die. I feel dumb, and I feel scared, and I feel kinda mad. I don’t like it, but I’ll survive. And you know, if it is Professor Markham—”

  Even after all Tony had done, and might yet be responsible for, Chuck still used his title.

  “—or anyone else, for that matter, you find them, okay? Whatever you’re doing, don’t you let me be the thing that stops you. Don’t let them get away with that, promise me.”

  “Chuck, I—”

  “Professor, promise me.” He looked at me now, his face red and swollen from tears and the beating. I’d never heard him use the imperative before.

  “I promise.” I swallowed, rummaged in my pockets for a tissue, found none. I went into the kitchen, found some tissues, brought the box back for both of us. “Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need groceries, or anything?”

  “Naw.” He blew his nose, then blushed again. “Robin’s coming over this afternoon. She said she’d bring some stuff.”

  “Robin sounds very nice,” I said.

  “I think she’s great,” he said simply, looking at the afghan again, blushing again like mad. “Robin is great.”

  Chuck said “Robin” the way other men had said Helen or Cleopatra.

  He brightened a little. “You know, I’m just thinking…I wouldn’t have met her, if it wasn’t for…that guy. You never know what will come out of a situation, no matter how bad it is at the time. If he…if I…she and I would never have met. We would have walked along the path, never thinking about the other one.” He smiled now, and I saw a little of the Chuck I was used to.

  “Well, you let me know if you need anything,” I said, getting up. “You take care of yourself.”

  “You take care of yourself, too. And you find whoever this is. Make sure they don’t hurt anyone else.”

  I nodded and left. It was a heavy task he was charging me with, but I would take on an even heavier penance than that if I could just forget the alien hurt and anger in Chuck’s eyes.

  Chuck’s place was near one of my favorite spots—the Caldwell Burial Ground—but I couldn’t bring myself to stop and rest under the shade. The burial ground was, for my money, the best refuge on campus—away from my office, away from everyone, great headstones to look at, but there was too much room for reflection and I couldn’t face that yet.

  That evening, all hell broke loose. I dutifully overcame my reticence to tell Brian about Chuck, when he started telling me that he already knew.

  I stared at him. “What? How can you—?”

  “I didn’t know it was him at first,” Brian said slowly. He looked a bit dazed. “I’ve been getting alerts on my search engine at work, anything to do with you, Caldwell, Lawton. I read about the attack in the archives, but I didn’t realize that it was Chuck. I didn’t know his last name and the Caldwell paper, well, it was the town paper, not the college, so it said ‘college employee.’ Nothing about the anthropology department.”

  “You’ve been getting…alerts?”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d keep my eyes open, look for anything that seemed suspicious. I’m glad you told me—”

  “What, did you think I wouldn’t?” I said sharply.

  Brian gave me a startled look. “No, that’s not it—”

  “You’re spying on me,” I blurted, and immediately wished I could take it back.

  “Wow. Emma, you’re scaring me. I’m not spying on you.”

  “I didn’t mean spying, I just meant…you’re going to take this the wrong way.”

  Brian laughed, a sound with no humor in it. “I’m taking everything the wrong way, these days.”

  “It’s just, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bark at you. But…it just struck me wrong, when you said you were getting the alerts. Like someone else was…keeping tabs on me.”

  “Emma, it’s not stalking, I’m looking out for you. I’m just concerned about you.”

  The look in Brian’s eyes told me that it wasn’t just my physical safety he was worried about.

  Life doesn’t stop because you’re worried, can’t sleep, or start at the sound of every siren, so the next day, I went out to do a bit of surveillance work at the Chandler site. I was there because I’d been invited to a blackmailing party as the guest of honor. I don’t mind a spot of blackmail, now and then—I indulged in it myself, occasionally—but Bradley Chandler, director of the Stone Harbor Historical Association and cheapest man on the face of the planet, had threatened Meg’s wedding.

  Meg wanted to have her wedding on the site of the old eighteenth-century house overlooking the harbor and Bradley had said to me, her application in hand, that they were just too strapped for time and staff. Couldn’t accommodate her request and meet the requirements that the state had put on him regarding archaeological research…

  Which was crap, I knew, because the two weren’t related, but he had the say-so over functions, and knew Meg had her heart set on it. Bray, as he was known, had a faint smile on his lips—a faint smile decorated with something green, which I hoped was spinach and not an alarming lapse in dental hygiene. We had a long history of locking horns over topics just like this. I was an archaeologist, so I cost him, or rather the historical society, money and time. I also had indicated that while he might be related to the Chandlers who’d built the house, he was not a direct descendant, and that nettled him. I’d caught him fooling around on his wife. I was clean, reverent, loyal…and he was a slob, mean, and a liar.

  So I pointed out that I could do the afternoon’s work by myself, gratis, if Meg got her day, with a “friends of the historical society discount,” of, say, twenty percent. If anything of importance came up, I’d be back with a full crew, at the usual rates.

  Bray twitched nervously as he tried to recall my reports about what might be located on that section of the property. He quickly realized it was a good bet, hemmed and hawed and allowed that he might be able to see his way clear to fifteen percent.

  And I allowed as that would be fine. Of course, I was taking a big risk, I’d pointed out, by wedging this last bit of work into my schedule, I could put the finish dates behind on a number of projects he’d asked me to do on other properties. “The work at the Crane Farm, for example,” I said, “after all your hard work getting the permits from the city, the state, lining up the contractors, the grand opening…I’d hate to think that I would impede that by taking on this other work.” I looked him straight in the eye. “And I know you would never dream of doing that work without an archaeologist.”

  “But…delay that project?” he said. “We can’t, you couldn’t…” Bray twitched again, then his eyes narrowed. It took a weasel to recognize a weasel’s tricks, but he got the message. “But it would b
e just one day…”

  “One afternoon,” I corrected. “Plus my time to do the artifacts and report.”

  “One afternoon isn’t so much. And if it was understood…between us…that this sort of arrangement…was just for this once…maybe you could work it out?”

  “Well…I could only do this kind of favor once. Just for you.” Damn straight; there was no way he was getting any other freebies from me. This was a special deal.

  And so I found myself outside on a gorgeous afternoon, watching over the shoulders of the alarm installers. Every once and a while, I’d stop them, and noted what was there when I saw a bottle or sherd poking out of the ground, but luckily, as I’d suspected, there were no features, no unmixed stratigraphy. Under the grass mat, there was a little topsoil that was probably put down in the sixties when the site was turned into a tourist attraction, and then debris from the widening of the road about the same time.

  Once I stopped them; there appeared to be an assemblage, a cache, of artifact fragments clustered together. The excavators, not thrilled with my presence, had soon learned that I wasn’t automatically going to cause trouble, and were grateful for the twenty-minute break they got, on the clock, while I took a few quick measurements and a photo, just in case. It turned out to be a late-nineteenth-century flowerpot that had landed in a divot in the pathway alongside the house; the fragments on the bottom were smaller and closer together, those on top were larger and scattered, and some of them seemed to be broken in situ. I looked up and saw that we were almost directly under a window and envisioned the scene: A strong wind or a careless gesture knocked the pot off the windowsill, it fell beside the house on a narrow pathway between the house and the fence that delineated the street that wasn’t often used at the time. Someone walked past—no, better yet, make it a kid skinny enough to squeeze through the narrow space, a game of hide and seek—and stepped on the larger surviving fragments, breaking them in place. The pot is left there because it wasn’t in the way, wasn’t noticeable, or perhaps it was left because it filled in a low space in the pathway.