Forgotten Bones

by Vivian Barz

  “Mind if I ask where you got it from? Yard sale?” Despite the stink, Eric found that he wanted the trunk anyway. Any smell could be scrubbed away with the right pine cleaner. If not, maybe Rustler was right, and it would enhance his bedroom’s fig shoe.

  “Nah,” Rustler said, as if that were sufficient explanation. Eric allowed the silence that followed to float in the air around them, let it settle. Eventually, Rustler added, “Found it on the side of the road just up the way.”

  “You must have a good eye.”

  Rustler nodded noncommittally. “That’s why I’m not too concerned with profit. When I saw it just sitting there, I was amazed that somebody would toss it out. I knew how much these trunks were worth even before you told me. Been peddling antiques probably longer than you’ve been alive, sonny. But when I opened it up and took a whiff, it made sense.” He made a face and fanned a hand under his nose. “Lordy!”

  “Still, you could clean it up and probably get a lot more than twenty bucks for it.” With this comment, Eric felt his obligation to civic duty had been fulfilled. He wasn’t going to twist the man’s arm into charging him more.

  Rustler snorted. “Take a look around. I could go on living another fifty years and still have junk to hock. I don’t need any more, since I’ll be lucky if I’m alive in fifteen.”

  Eric was thinking the dude would be lucky if he were still kicking in five, but he kept his opinion to himself.

  “Antiques aren’t moving as quickly as they used to. It’s these damn millennials,” Rustler said with a scowl. “They only want what’s new. Spend a thousand bucks on phony mass-produced garbage that’s meant to look old, when they could just as easily buy the real thing for a quarter of the price. Then they wonder why their houses look like every other place on the block. Course, maybe that’s what some of ’em want.”

  Eric offered the two tens. “Well, okay . . . if you’re sure you’re fine with twenty, I’ll be happy to take the trunk off your hands.”

  “Deal, long as you load it yourself,” Rustler said, kneading his lower back. He pocketed the bills before Eric had a chance to agree. “That’s all I really want the money for. My trouble, that is. Nearly broke my damn back trying to get the thing into my flatbed, so I figure I might as well get something out of it. How people used those things as luggage is beyond me. My suitcase has those wheelie-mabobs, and I still struggle, not that I’m doing too much traveling these days. But I got a daughter and grandkids over in Arizona we’re planning to go and see over Christmas. Me and the wife restored a ’73 Airstream that we’re hauling down with us—it’ll be its maiden voyage, so let’s hope everything goes right! Hate to have it go kaput in the middle of Route 66; it’s hotter’n hell out that way. Be withered like raisins before anyone found us. Ever been to Sedona?”

  Eric shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”

  “It’s real pretty, if you like rocks.”

  Eric opened his mouth to say that rocks just so happened to be his area of expertise but then thought better of it. As much as he’d been lonesome earlier, all the talking had exhausted him, and so what he wanted to say more than anything was that he needed to shove on.

  As if sensing his eagerness, Rustler finally cut him loose. “Anyway, I’ll quit jabbering so we can both get on home. My wife’ll kill me if I make her keep Wheel of Fortune on pause too long. We got that new service that lets us do that. Pause it, I mean. It’s our dinner show. That and Jeopardy .”

  Eric once again held his tongue, this time against the urge to share with Rustler that his wife hadn’t allowed the TV to be on during dinnertime. She’d said it wasn’t healthy for the marriage, if you could believe that an adulterer would have the audacity to make such a claim.

  Eric moved to load the trunk, making sure the lid was latched down tight. The last thing he needed was the stench permeating the upholstery. Elbowing aside a pair of tennis shoes he’d forgotten to take into the house—he’d been wondering where they were—he hefted the trunk down into the back of the Jeep. He closed the hatch on his vehicle and then turned to face the antique dealer. “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Rustler looked up from the ample stack of cash he was counting, most of it tens and twenties, none of it taxed, unquestionably. “Wonder what?”

  “What was in that trunk that made it smell so bad. Wish I could find its previous owner just so I could ask.”

  “Not me,” Rustler said with a wry yellow smile. “If the dude who had this trunk before smells even half as bad as the inside, I don’t wanna go anywhere near ’im.”

  At home, Eric moved the trunk out of his Jeep and into the garage, raring to get to work on his new fixer-upper. He made a mental checklist of all the cleaners and tools he’d need to pick up at the hardware store the next day.

  “Screw you, Maggie,” he said.

  With a final glance at his sweet antique score, Eric turned out the light in the garage with a vow to prove just how wrong his ex-wife had been to underestimate his passion.

  CHAPTER 8

  To Eric, teaching a new class always felt a bit like going on a first date. He wanted to be liked, to show that he was interesting and easygoing—but not too easygoing, or else he’d run the risk of students thinking he was a pushover. Then they’d only try to get him to put out for them.

  Eric typically didn’t get first-day jitters, but today he was a mess, pulling at his hair and gnawing his nails right down to the quick. He wasn’t sure if it was boredom, depression, his medication, or the new time zone, but he’d been feeling off since his relocation: sluggish but antsy, exhausted but wide awake.

  Now he was feeling all these things and tweaky. He’d had more coffee than was probably prudent, which had only exacerbated his twitchiness. (He’d been shocked to find the pot empty before the machine had turned itself off automatically, a rarity typically reserved for end-of-semester grading sessions.)

  He checked his watch for what very well could have been the hundredth time. More than two hours to go. He checked again. More like two and a half.

  That was the problem with having classes that started at eleven in the morning and ended at seven at night, with small breaks in between. It made getting into a routine difficult. There wasn’t enough time to accomplish much in the a.m., yet he’d be so tired once he was done at night that he’d have no energy left to do anything of significance. Eric supposed that over time he’d adapt. As he’d recently come to understand, it was amazing the things a person could get used to when they really had no other choice.

  Complicating Eric’s routine further was his staggered teaching schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Of course, he’d also have to grade papers during his “time off.” A small college, Perrick City didn’t have the budget to provide him with a teaching assistant. At Warrenton, he’d had two. Eric imagined the attendance numbers for his night classes would dwindle significantly once the semester got going—they always did at community colleges, from what he’d heard—but that didn’t have any bearing on him, since he’d still have to show up.

  Eric went to make another pot of coffee and then reconsidered; he’d give himself an ulcer if he didn’t do something soon. He needed to use his hands to expel the nervous energy that had fizzled up inside him like a pop bottle ready to blow its cap. It used to be his old drum kit that he’d pound out energy on, but like a good many other things he used to own, it was

  (gone, baby, gone)

  back at the house in Philly. Eric wondered if he’d left the kit covered, because it tended to get a little grimy out in the garage. Scowling, he reminded himself that it didn’t matter too much anyhow, since, like the house, coffee table, and plasma TV,

  (and Maggie—don’t forget Maggie)

  it was no longer his.

  After this thought came a much nastier one: Had Jim been using his drums, the shithead? Though he’d tried to hide it, Jim had always been jealous of Eric’s musical ability. Why, Eric could never figure out, though he s
uspected it had something to do with the fact that it was the one domain where Eric held marked superiority over his brother. He wouldn’t put it past Jim to steal his drum set.

  (Though it’s hardly stealing if you left it behind, now, is it?)

  After all, Jim clearly hadn’t had a problem stealing his—

  “No, stop this shit right now,” Eric commanded the murmurs within his brain. He’d been down this road before, and if he allowed himself to continue getting worked up, he’d spend the rest of the day with thorns of bitterness needling his gut.

  (Good for you for taking control of your emotions! I’m proud of—)

  “Oh, give it a rest, you insufferable goody two-shoes,” Eric spat at one of the perkier voices and then let out a quiet chuckle. He wondered if all recent divorcés talked to themselves this much or if it was just his own brand of crazy. He supposed it was probably a little bit of both.

  Mini–Dirt Devil in tow, Eric went out into the garage with the intention of vacuuming his Jeep’s carpet. He’d taken a few hikes along the coastline—Tomales Point, Point Reyes, Bodega Head—and its floor was starting to resemble a sandbox. He’d never realized just how sticky damp sand was, having been an urbanite most of his life. He kind of liked it, having sandy carpets. It made him feel . . . Californian. He imagined the sand could be problematic over time, though, if he let it build up. All that brackish moisture in the air.

  His little vacuum tended to run out of juice after only a few minutes of use, so he’d brought the charger base with him. Eric hadn’t needed to plug anything in out in the garage previously, so he had to search for an outlet. He found one just behind the steamer trunk. A flitter of guilt tickled the underside of his belly as he moved it aside to reach; he was supposed to have started the restoration, wasn’t he? He didn’t even have the excuse of being busy at work. The trunk—his kindred spirit—should have been given his love and undivided attention, but instead it had turned into a

  (half project)

  chore he hadn’t wanted to contend with. Eric wasn’t at all surprised to hear Maggie’s smug voice lurking at the back of his mind, and he was peeved that he’d proved her right once again. What irked him more was that his ex-wife’s opinion on things still mattered to him at all, since it was unlikely that he had crossed her mind even once since he’d left town.

  Eric went back into the house and grabbed a couple of rags and the bottle of wood cleaner he’d picked up during his last shopping trip. At the time of purchase, Eric hadn’t even known if he needed wood cleaner, but it seemed like the sort of thing a responsible adult would have in his home. Back in Philly, it had been Maggie who’d bought all the innocuous domestics: paper towels, aspirin, dish soap, floss, air freshener. On this front, Eric was clueless. He supposed in time he’d learn.

  Eric was planning on giving the trunk only a quick wipe down. Just to get the project rolling. He hadn’t done any real research on steamer trunk restoration, and the information he had skimmed online had been laughably inconsistent. For every blogger that hyped a specific method of refurbishment as being the best out there, another would come along claiming that the same method had splintered their trunk’s woodwork. Or scratched the metal. Or stripped the patina.

  But a simple cleaning couldn’t hurt, right?

  Eric was once again reminded of the trunk’s stink as he lifted the lid, which prompted another trip back inside the house to change out of his work clothes. That would be the worst, going to his first day on campus reeking like roadkill. His character was already shaky enough. He didn’t need to smell weird too.

  He’d found one of those sponge kneeling mats used for gardening back when he’d decluttered the cottage. It was hot pink and embellished on the edges with puff-paint daisies. Doris had left a few other things in the garage that she supposed Eric might need. He appreciated her thoughtfulness, but he didn’t think he could ever bring himself to use a leopard-print beach umbrella out in public, or the folding chairs that matched. At least not while he was on his own.

  In the privacy of the garage, Eric had no problem using Doris’s daisy kneeling mat, which he pushed right up to the trunk so he could apply some real elbow grease. He was so eager to get started that the stink didn’t even bother him much. Eric’s initial task was to remove the dust, first with the vacuum and then with a dry rag. It was tedious work, but if he skipped this step, he’d only spread the grime around and make things worse once he started with the wood cleaner. He chuckled a little when he found a few chunks of potpourri at the bottom of the trunk, picturing that raspy-voiced old codger sitting in front of the TV with his pruned wife, the two of them heckling Wheel of Fortune contestants over pot roast.

  He wrapped the cloth around his index finger and used it to scrape oily muck from around the metal studs and latches. It was fascinating, in an esoteric sort of way, touching all that history. He wondered how many owners the trunk had passed between during the century or so that it had been in existence. Where in the world had it been? What treasures had it held?

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his bare hands against the wood, willing it to speak to him the way only old furniture could. He opened his eyes and frowned as he felt something splintery on the underside of the lid. What the hell?

  It looked like . . . “Scratch marks,” he said. Now, what would cause those? Would somebody keep a pet locked inside the trunk? With it flipped upside down so that its claws were resting on the lid? Maybe somebody had been smuggling an exotic pet way back when, and then the trunk had gotten tumbled around during transit. Eric pictured a sailor coming back from some exotic island in the South Pacific during the turn of the century, a Gila monster hidden among his belongings. A pet for his wife or child, maybe. Weird, though the trunk did smell as though an animal had been kept inside it.

  Eric was so caught up in his ruminations that he jumped when his cell phone alarm chimed in his pocket, indicating that he needed to get cleaned up for work.

  “Olly olly oxen free,” he said as he silenced his phone. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  Eric snapped his head back and permitted himself a nervous little laugh. Now, what would possess him to say that ? Schizo, indeed.

  A more important question Eric should have asked himself, had it only occurred to him, was why he’d been chanting the phrase from the very moment he opened the trunk.

  CHAPTER 9

  Susan was surprised when she awakened on Monday morning and discovered that it wasn’t morning at all. She’d slept most of the day, but she had no regrets. Her head was volumes clearer, rational, after the much-needed rest. She felt like her whole self again and not the exhausted, cobbled-together individual she’d gone to bed as. Coffee and energy drinks were fine and dandy, but sometimes, what a person really needs is sleep.

  She changed into her workout gear and then went about putting an hour in on the treadmill that she kept at the nook of her kitchen intended for a dining table. As a singleton, she ate the majority of her food, usually bits and pieces of chow in lieu of a complete meal (a couple of slices of cheese here, a few cold cuts there, crackers), parked on the sofa. Though she normally watched television while she ate, work remained at the back of her mind, as was the case now.

  As Susan sweated and huffed, she thought about the wisdom Ed had imparted to her back when she was a rookie, that sometimes—many times—hunches paid off. Words that were ironic, given that it had been Ed who’d discouraged her earlier from going to Emerald Meadows to chat with Mary. Susan, despite the quandary that now weighed on her conscience, was glad that she’d ignored Ed’s pessimism about Mary’s mental state and gone anyway. Though she couldn’t quite connect the dots now, she felt that the information she’d been provided by the old woman might later have some significance.

  Susan found that she still did not want to arrest Mary Nichol. She couldn’t see what good it would do, what justice it would serve. Even if a prosecutor was unsympathetic enough to bring a ninety-six-year-old woman up on mu
rder charges, she would almost certainly be dead before she was convicted, as Mary herself had pointed out.

  Still, Susan had her career to worry about. If it ever got out that she’d said and done absolutely nothing after hearing not only a murder confession but also a blow-by-blow account of how it had been executed, she’d be kicked off the force. Maybe even brought up on charges herself.

  But would it ever get out was the question.

  Susan pressed the button with the large plus sign a few times to crank up the speed of the treadmill’s belt. Of course there was always the chance that it would get out. If not by Mary herself during a last-ditch deathbed confession, then by someone else she might have told. Susan would have bet a year of her salary that Gracie Hoguin had also heard Mary’s confession. Still, it was unlikely that the nurse would talk even long after Mary was dead and gone, given how protective she seemed of the old woman.

  Despite the humiliation it would cause Susan if she were fired or arraigned, what would bother her most of all would be the sense of betrayal Ed would feel. Her actions on the force reflected back on him. The man had, after all, been the one responsible for her becoming a cop in the first place.

  It had been Ed who’d recognized Susan’s potential back when she was a directionless seventeen-year-old with no real plans for college or a job after graduation; he’d liked her enough even way back then to fret for her future, the same way he’d fret for his own daughters’ futures, if she didn’t soon cultivate a plan for it. He’d been the one who’d noticed how often she’d gone above and beyond her required high school–internship duties down at the station, oftentimes staying long after her classmates had all gone home. It had also been Ed who’d fostered Susan’s curiosity about the law when he could have as easily dismissed her as just another nosy, violence-obsessed teenager.

  Later, at Susan’s graduation from the police academy, Ed would claim that he’d simply acted as a map—that she’d been the one who’d done all the driving. Susan understood that Ed was only being humble. She suspected that he knew way down deep, just as she did, that she owed him everything she’d become. Chief Bender wasn’t only Susan’s mentor; he was the closest thing to a father she had.