Ashes and Bones

by Dana Cameron

  “Emma…?” She wasn’t greeting me, and not really asking what I wanted. She didn’t trust me, though long ago, I’d kept secrets for her.

  “What can I do to help, Fee?” I really didn’t like her, but I would do almost anything to keep the wedding going smoothly. Once in charge of the books, she now also managed the Chandler house property. Something was bothering her, as she hadn’t even gotten the groundskeeper there on time.

  “The caterer. She’s got several more trips. Just wait here to answer any questions she might have. And she’s arrived late.”

  “Fine, no problem.” As if I knew anything about the plans.

  “Excuse me, I’ve got to make a few quick calls.” And she was off, without another word.

  I looked at the tables. Beautifully simple, ivory cloths with pale lilac plates that were the colors Meg chose for her “backup,” as she called her bridesmaids, darker purple flowers in simple-to-the-point-of-starkness arrangements that suggested formality, kept from being flouncy or stuffy, and yet were gorgeous. Meg had succeeded in keeping her wedding from looking like what Bucky had once described as “an explosion at the potpourri factory.”

  There was one thing that didn’t match, I noticed. One of the platters didn’t match the others. Pretty enough, white china, but wrapped in plastic wrap and not the little mesh tents, or silver chafing dishes, or plastic containers that the caterer was using. Frowning, I went over to check it out.

  I had just picked it up when I heard a sharp voice. “Can I help you?”

  A harassed young African-American woman in immaculate chef ’s whites was behind me, setting down a large blue plastic insulated box.

  “Uh, I was just…”

  “You can’t leave that here, I’ve already discussed the set up with Ms. Garrity, the bride. Perhaps you could keep it at your table; but I don’t have enough space for guest’s dishes.” Her name tag said CHEF VICTORIA.

  I shook my head. “It’s not mine. I wanted to check it…” Shit! What the hell could I tell her? “I’m worried someone’s trying to hurt the bride.”

  She looked at me, her face immobile, clearly assessing my sanity. “Oh?”

  “Look, it sounds crazy, but…” I told her briefly about the situation at the site. No reason to go into elaborate detail. “I’ve been trying to keep an eye out for her. I just didn’t want anything to spoil today. This didn’t fit here, but it could be…I dunno. Aunt Minnie’s Swedish meatballs or something. I just don’t want anyone to eat it, until we know for sure.”

  She cast an expert eye over the plate. “It looks like phyllo to me. It might be Aunt Melina’s spanikopita, but I don’t want it here, you don’t want it here. I’ll stick it in the hot chest, and when someone squawks, I’ll pull it out, say I was keeping it warm. But only if it looks like Aunt Melina, and not some head case.”

  “Thank you!” I didn’t bother keeping the relief from my voice. “I know how crazy—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Chef Victoria didn’t have time for thanks or debate. “Like I said, I don’t want it here, and you’ve given me the perfect excuse to hide it. Besides, anyone gets sick at one of my jobs, you know prospective clients are not going to bother to remember that it was some stalker. I’ve got my sterling reputation to maintain.”

  I nodded. “Can I help you with anything? Fee said you were running a bit behind.”

  “Thank you, no. You’ll understand if I say I’ll get this done a lot faster without you getting in the way.” Victoria picked up the odd platter and fixed me with a look. “And that Fee can say I was late all she wants, but I told her sixty times that I’d be here at ten-thirty for eleven-thirty. I was fifteen minutes early, and so were my assistants. And I’ll say no more on that subject.”

  “I’ve…worked with Fee before. I understand.”

  Chef Victoria nodded. “I’ll put this away, unload the rest of the food, and then adorn myself with my hat, so everyone will know who to thank for the amazing meal they’re about to eat.” She picked up the platter, and looked at it more closely. “Pity. It’s a pretty pattern. German, I bet; my mom used to collect china. A little old-fashioned. Love the lilies of the valley.”

  I had just turned away but was arrested by her words. “Chef Victoria. Please be very careful with that plate, how you handle it. I don’t think there is any Aunt Melina and I’d like to save it.”

  After a few hours, people began to clear out. The food was decimated, and yet the chef had managed to keep everything looking neat and presentable down to the last crumb. I noticed that she sent one of her assistants to the car for more business cards, they flew away so quickly.

  Chef Victoria packaged up the leftovers beautifully, and Meg wouldn’t need to cook for the next week. She saved the china plate for me.

  I took it. “No Aunt Melina?”

  “Nope. No Aunt Melina.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  She looked at me, politely curious. “What are you going to do with it?”

  I looked over to where Brian was talking with Neal; both had a bottle of beer. Brian was obviously giving Neal his patented “how-to-stay-married speech.” There was the joke version: “learn to say, ‘Anything you want, dear.’” Then there was the real list: don’t go to bed angry, try to argue about what you’re arguing about, trust the other person, keeping up fifty percent of the relation isn’t nearly enough, etcetera. “I’m going to give it to a chemist I know,” I said to her. “See if he can tell me anything about it.”

  She gave me a look that suggested that she still thought I had a few bats in the belfry. “Well. I hope you enjoyed the rest of the wedding.”

  “Oh, yes. Very nice.” My stomach was in a knot, but now slowly unclenching. Meg and Neal were married, and I wouldn’t tell them about the plate or my worries.

  Victoria’s mouth twitched. “If you find I’m going to be catering any other functions you attend this summer?”

  “Yes?”

  “Give me the head’s up first, would you?” She was smiling ruefully, and I found I had to, too. “I’ll want to keep an eye out for Aunt Melina.”

  “You got it.”

  “What’s that?” Brian was looking at the plate of food I handed him when we got home. “Can I have some?”

  “No! It showed up uninvited to the wedding. And no one claimed it. I want you to test it for me. Test it for poisons. So don’t eat it.”

  He cocked his head. “What exactly do you want me to do with it?”

  “Can’t you test it, see if there are compounds in it that shouldn’t be? I mean, take your favorite poisons and try them out. Or something?”

  He asked, “Why would I want to torment a perfectly nice looking plate of spanikopita? Em, I didn’t see anyone there who looked dangerous.”

  Trust a man to believe that he could sense evil from afar. “Because no one came to collect the plate afterward. Because Meg was the one to stop Tony—she shot him—and the wedding is too public, too good an opportunity to pass up, if he’s looking for revenge.” I looked him in the eye. “Because I very seldom ask you to do anything like this. And it’s no more cautious than you’ve been on other occasions.”

  Brian’s lips compressed and his eyes narrowed in thought. “Okay. There’s a toy I’m quite desperate to use and I happen to be owed a favor by its keeper. But if it comes up negative, not poisonous, can I eat it then?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Who knows how long it was sitting in the sun? I wouldn’t.”

  Brian smirked. “I’ll feed them to Kam. That way, we’ll find out for sure.”

  “Why—” But I knew why. Brian and Kam worked together, and the fact that Marty wasn’t speaking to me probably affected their friendship as well as their working relationship. Brian was taking my side. “Sure. If Kam doesn’t keel over, you can try one, too. Just make sure that you nuke them first. Kill off the biggest cooties.”

  Brian took the plate, but he didn’t look happy. I didn’t care, he said he’d do it, and he would. T
hat was one of the things I loved about him.

  Brian came home Tuesday night, a look of disbelief on his face. “I think we have a positive for ricin. I would have called you, but I asked Roddy to run the test again, just to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong. The mass spectrophotometer is his baby.”

  “Rice ’n’ what?” I said. “Mass what?”

  “Just ricin. It’s derived from the waste of processing castor beans. A powerful poison. I remember reading that it was used on an umbrella tip to poison someone in London. And the mass spectrophotometer takes the sample you give it and determines the molecular weight of all the compounds in it. Then it tells you what the ‘mother’ was. In this case, it was ricin.”

  “So there’s no chance it could have gotten into the food accidentally?” I was reaching, I knew.

  “None. The symptoms show up in a matter of hours, and if you’re not treated—well, there is no antidote, by the way—you can die within a couple of days.”

  “So no one got into it at the wedding,” I said, half to myself. “Thank God for that, at least.”

  Just then, Brian’s shorts rang. He pulled his phone from his pocket and answered it. “Yeah? Hey. Seriously? Wow. Okay, thanks, man. Just put it someplace…oh. Good idea. Thanks again.”

  He hung up. “It was Roddy. He’s confirmed it. Holy shit.”

  I sat down. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, first thing, we should call the cops.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Which ones?”

  “Hell, all of them. Stone Harbor first? I mean, that’s where the stuff showed up. And you know Bader there, so that can’t hurt.”

  “I suppose.”

  I called, and Bader was in. He greeted me in a friendly fashion. After he’d heard my story, he was concerned and then annoyed.

  “You should have called me right away,” he said gruffly. “You shouldn’t go tampering with evidence like that.”

  “What evidence? I mean, we know now. And if someone had eaten it, I guess we would have found out quickly enough. But at the time, what was I supposed to do? Call you in to investigate a plate of food? There was no crime scene!”

  “You might have brought it straight to me, if you were that worried,” he insisted.

  “Would you have believed me? And based on what evidence could you have brought it to the State Police crime lab? You know better than I how backed up and underfunded they are.”

  “Just let me talk to your husband,” Bader said.

  “Why?” I liked Bader, but he had an old-fashioned chauvinistic streak that occasionally rubbed me the wrong way. Like calling women girls, and that sort of thing.

  “Don’t get up on your high horse. He was the one who conducted the test, right?”

  “Hang on.” I handed the phone to Brian.

  “Hello? Oh, yes, positive without a doubt. Or at least, so little doubt as to be…what? United Pharmaceuticals. In Cambridge. Well, I’m pretty sure it won’t be disturbed. The whole thing, plate and the rest of the sample? It’s been put into a storage freezer. Yep, very tightly wrapped and we marked it with tape that says “radioactive,” so I don’t think anyone will confuse it with their lunch. Just me, and my colleague. Emma and the chef, that’s right. Yes, we have her card,” Brian said, nodding at me, as I dug it out of my purse and waved it at him. “You’ll contact her? Good.”

  There were a few more pauses, and I wished I’d put them on speaker phone. “No, it’s directed toward Emma,” Brian said. “Completely. No, we don’t know who, but it’s getting more and more serious all the time. I’m more than concerned. I’m scared out of my wits, actually.”

  I put my hand on his arm.

  “I didn’t catch that? Well, there was no body found, and there seem to be other clues that it’s him…his style, if you like. He would be the most likely—Perry Taylor’s in prison, isn’t she? I think it’s possible. Well, I used to think it was only improbable to impossible, so yes, I am actually moving to that conclusion. Yes, until a better suspect comes along, and Emma’s been careful to work on ruling those…I think you should take it seriously, too.”

  My heart soared. Brian was talking about Tony.

  “Yes, I know she’s not the authorities, but it’s only recently that we’ve had something more concrete. Yes. Yes, I will. Good night.”

  Brian hung up.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “He’s pissed you didn’t go straight to him, but we have to live with that. I’m going to give him the report—mine and Roddy’s—the plate, all the names of the people who handled it. It seems that he thinks you’ve got a fan in Stuart Feldman, and he might be able to do something about getting a friend of his to look at the rest of the food—the sample.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for sticking up for me.” I felt myself choking up. “Thanks for bringing the stuff to the lab.”

  “Hey, what else am I here for?” He held me tight. “And it was fun.” Brian pulled back, looking sick, though. I felt none too good myself.

  “I’m going to call Dave Stannard, up in Maine,” he said. “And then I’m going to be out on the porch for a while.”

  I thought briefly about protesting, but Brian was right. Everyone had to know.

  I nodded. “I’ll be right there.”

  “Don’t be too long, Em, okay?”

  I nodded again. I needed to think. I couldn’t tell Meg, I couldn’t ruin her wedding memories, especially since no one got hurt. I would tell her, though, to be even more careful than usual. Quasimodo the cat yowled at the door. I let him in, and watched him mow down some food while I got the bourbon out. Quasi finished in a hurry, and ran back over to the door, looking at me hopefully.

  “No way, cat. You stay in whenever I catch you; there’s coyotes out at night. Consider yourself caught.”

  Quasi growled; I poured my drink. Eventually he slunk off, sulking as obviously as any human. I went upstairs.

  Tony knows everything about me, I thought. He knows I abhor bullies, and so that’s why he went for Chuck. And Dora, I thought suddenly; for all her forceful personality, she has a lot to protect, and he found that out. He knows the painting meant something to me, and that was taken, possibly destroyed. He knows how I feel about the site, about my crews, about the artifacts. It wouldn’t be hard for him to find out about Dora’s parents—he might have been one of the few people to know, having been here as long as she—or Marty and Sophia or my parents. And Meg, there’s all of that…And don’t forget Michael—

  I put the bottle down suddenly. How did he know about Michael Glasscock?

  Michael had been to the house exactly once. Michael and I knew each other from a brief month of research at the Shrewsbury Library. While anyone could have read about the murders that left us alone in the house together—suspecting each other—there was nothing that would indicate that we’d kept in touch since. I couldn’t even describe our relationship: Michael was dismissive and rude about my style of research, clinging as he claimed, to antiquated notions of material evidence. At the same time, he occasionally sent me references that were spot on for my work, and got me thinking down avenues I would never consider, but it always made my research better and more interesting. For my part, I asked him questions about the history of philosophy for the periods I studied, and maybe my “almost Neanderthal obsession with the mundane, the quotidian, and the material” inspired him in the same way. Not that he would have admitted it.

  Brian was vaguely jealous of Michael. Despite the fact that I found him attractive, it had never been anything more than an amusing sort of crush, mostly based on how his brain appealed to me. Brian had said that was worse than mere physical attraction and teased me mercilessly about it. And Michael was notoriously attracted to anything with a double-X chromosome. Whoever sent that image knew that there had been a frisson between us.

  But we never even spoke on the phone, aside from that call last week, and he never even sent me anything in the mail, so it couldn’t be by rifling my colleg
e mailbox—

  But my home mail was another story. That had been violated.

  Michael never sent me anything there.

  It has to be through email. And anyone with half a brain looking at even one of Michael’s most innocent emails would have picked up on his obsession with sex and sensuality. It just came off him like a pheromone.

  I called Michael, just to be sure he hadn’t sent me anything through the post.

  Michael was amused, naturally. “Nope. Not me. Why, did you get a naked picture of me?”

  It really was tiring; how did men keep so constantly engaged by sex? I mean, it’s fun, but I’m not thinking about it twenty-four-seven. It had its place, but it seemed Michael had more places than me. “I’m trying to find out how someone would know we’ve been in contact.”

  “And know enough to send tawdry and yet infinitely compelling pictures to me?” he said. “That is disquieting. No, I haven’t sent you anything in the mail.”

  “So it’s email. Someone must be getting into my email.”

  “You’ve got firewalls and software and shit, though, right?”

  “Of course I do.” I do now, anyway. “It could also be someone tampering with my machine at work.”

  “Good thing whoever it is didn’t slash your credit record,” Michael said.

  “Right. Got that covered.” However stupid I’d been about firewalls, I was very careful about my credit and had it protected, checked, several times a year. And Brian had double-checked as soon as people started getting presents that I didn’t send; I figured my credit report was next. “Thanks Michael.”

  “Whatever, Auntie. Say, did you want to hear about what my friend the graphologist had to say about the letter?”

  “You got it already?”

  “Sure. The most interesting thing that happens to me all week, you think I’m going to sit on it?”