by Tina Whittle
Rico’s voice came through the speakers, but his on-screen image didn’t move. “I’m here.”
“You’re frozen.”
“That happens with Skype. Just wait.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor of the shop, my laptop in front of me, and dribbled another finger of bourbon into my glass. I was an island in a sea of Dum Dum wrappers and dusty paper boxes, a ham and cheese sandwich balanced on one knee. Rico kept his baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, shadowing his café au lait features, but I didn’t need to see his eyes to realize he was a walking hangover. His neon-splattered black hoodie was the brightest thing about him, and it was as wrinkled as a shar-pei.
His screen image unfroze, and he blurred into motion again. He was sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, Fourth Ward Park showing through the window behind him. Martin Luther King, Jr. had walked those streets, preached at New Ebenezer, and usually the area was a colorful tapestry of locals and tourists. It was empty now, for even though the sky was a brilliant blue, the temps hovered in the upper thirties.
I’d been griping. He’d been patiently listening, or seemed to be anyway.
“This isn’t the same as face-to-face,” I said.
“So drag your ass down to the East Side for a change.”
“I will, I swear, once this damn audit is done. And this mess with the skull.”
Rico considered. He’d been my best friend since high school, and we’d developed a strong tolerance for each other’s idiosyncrasies. We counted on each other for both brutal honesty and unconditional support, and as he’d listened to my story, he’d managed to serve up helpings of both. His final word on the matter was clear, however.
“Skull mess ain’t your mess.”
“The cops seem to think it’s my mess.”
“That makes it a mess to run away from as fast as possible. You do not want to be hanging around when The Man decides it’s time to put the handcuffs on somebody.”
I started to argue as I heard the Ferrari pull up. “Speaking of The Man, mine just arrived.”
“Trey will agree with me. Leave it be, baby girl.” A pause. “Miss you.”
“Miss you too.”
Rico logged off just as Trey came through my front door. He assessed the situation—noting the Jack Daniels bottle and candy wrappers—then paused in the threshold.
“I thought we were going to dinner,” he said.
“We were. But that was before Detective Perez informed me that Uncle Dexter is a person of interest in the case of the grotty skull. Before I went next door and yelled at Brenda, who swears she’s going to put me out of business. Before I decided to go through all eleven of these boxes I dragged out of the storage room.”
He stayed in the doorway, briefcase in hand, my new monitor under his arm. “What’s in the boxes?”
I swept my arms out. “You are looking at the fossil record for Dexter’s Guns and More. You name it, Dexter saved it. Old A&D books. Newspaper clippings. Photographs. Grocery lists.”
Trey put his things down and came over. “Why is everything…”
“Dumped on the floor?”
“Correct.”
“Because Detective Perez asked for all of Dexter’s records involving Lucius Dufrene.”
“Who?”
“The guy whose skull I found in the field. Apparently, he used to work for Dexter.”
“So you’re…”
“Doing what I’m told, boyfriend.” I reached for the bourbon again, then changed my mind. Maybe I’d had enough bourbon. “Me following orders. Brave new world.”
I waited for Trey to ask another question, make another declaration, voice a complaint. Instead, he took off his jacket and draped it neatly on the back of the chair behind the counter. The holster went next, the dark leather shoulder rig with his H&K and the extra mags, right into my private gun safe. Then he stood and faced me, loosening his tie.
“Would you like some help?” he said.
I patted the linoleum. “Pull up a square of floor.”
***
Trey started by rolling up his sleeves and sitting next to me, thigh to thigh. Paperwork mesmerized him, absorbing him in a zone of almost sensual concentration. I remembered what it was like to be the center of that sustained, unwavering focus, and I almost reached for him. Almost. But then I remembered our agreement.
“This had better be part of your strategy,” I muttered.
He looked up. “What?”
“Never mind. Continue.” I propped my chin in my hand. “I’ll watch.”
He eventually created two large stacks—the professional and the personal—breaking those down into smaller piles. Some of Dexter’s things fit both categories; these Trey handed to me to make heads or tails of, and I did the best I could. There was an arcane logic to the materials in the box, but it wasn’t logic like Trey was accustomed to.
He shook his head in bewilderment. “Why didn’t your uncle collate his payroll? Or keep electronic records? Or—”
“I think I just found out why.” I handed him a blue-ruled notebook with rings at the top. “Look at this.”
He opened it and frowned. “What is it?”
“Keep reading and you’ll see.”
Trey ran a finger down the columns of names, dates, and transactions, all of it rendered in Dexter’s tight, cramped scrawl. “It’s an off-the-books payroll.”
“Look at page nineteen.”
He flipped through the pages until he found the list. The month before the Amberdecker burial, my uncle had paid Lucius seventy-five dollars to unload a delivery truck, install new shelving in the storage room, and clean the ductwork. I squinted at the last phrase—which involved a word that looked suspiciously like “bats”—and shook my head. Didn’t want to know.
“Dexter kept everything under the table,” I said. “Nothing official.”
“But it demonstrates that Lucius did work here, in some capacity.”
“So make a Lucius pile and stick it in there.”
Trey did. We finished up the remaining materials in the cardboard box and moved to the most daunting task—the photographs. Two paper boxes overflowing with black-and-white shots, candids, studio portraits with Kmart scenery in the background. Uncle Dexter never got rid of a photograph, it seemed, and never spent a penny on albums.
I took a deep breath. “Have mercy, this is going to take forever. There must be fifty years of photos here.”
Trey didn’t reply. When I looked his way, I saw him staring at a five-by-seven, his expression puzzled. He cocked his head. “Tai? Is this you?”
He handed me the photograph, and I felt a blush of embarrassment rising. “Aw, hell.”
In the photo, I was sixteen, wearing a white froth of a dress. I was also deep in a curtsy. It’s a hard thing to pull off, a proper curtsy. It takes grace, poise, and well-muscled thighs. I’d had none of those things except the thighs. Thanks to all the waterskiing Rico and I had done that summer, I had the quads of a Russian gymnast.
“Is it your prom?” Trey said.
“No. It’s the winter cotillion, this pseudo-debutante thing at my parents’ country club.”
Trey listened politely, waiting for me to share the story. It was a painful one, however, one I’d always glossed over. But I remembered all the deep things he’d shared with me, and knew I had to try.
“Dad and I had been very close when I was little, but right after I turned thirteen, he started drinking. A lot. Mom said it was because he’d gotten the promotion to department chair, that he was stressed, but…” I hesitated, feeling my voice shake. “Some drunks get loud and mean. My dad got quiet and cold. This ridiculous dress was a last-ditch effort to get his attention. It didn’t work. Two months later I got banned from the club for driving a golf cart into the lake, and I never had to mess with that crap again.”
Trey’s voice was soft. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. It sucked.” I stared at the person I’d been, the forced smile like a mask. “Your dad abandoned you when you were two, mine when I was thirteen. Different methods, but equally effective.”
Trey examined the photograph more closely. “Are you wearing boots?”
“Yep. Black snakeskin. Nobody noticed them until the curtsy.” I managed a half-smile. “Rico bought them for me. They’re the thing that got me thorough.”
Trey nodded. Far more than most people, he understood how physical things could be talismans.
We sat that way for a full minute—knees touching, silent. And then he stretched, unknitting the knots in his lats and traps and deltoids, working the tight tendons supple again. He took his time with it. I let him. I knew digging through the dusty avalanche of photographs was going to be sloggy work, tedious and hard on the lower back. But if my uncle’s life was about to become an open book for the Cobb County Police Department, I had to know what they’d find there.
Trey pulled the box toward him. “Do you want to sort these? Or would you rather watch me some more?”
I swatted him on the knee. “Don’t be getting all cocky. You haven’t even come close to seducing me yet.”
Chapter Nineteen
The next hour went by quickly. I finished my sandwich. Trey ate two of his protein bars. The sky darkened, and a harder cold fell, like a sandbag tumbling to the ground. I was getting antsy going through the photographs one by one, but Trey was settling into a rhythm. Pull, sort, pile, pull again.
“By the way,” I said, “Marisa’s little plan worked. Evie will be calling Phoenix to discuss security services. Apparently they’ve decided that Rose plus shotgun does not equal a secure environment.”
But Trey wasn’t listening. “Tai? Look at this.”
I peered over his shoulder. He held a daguerreotype in his lap, or a photograph made to look like one, with stark black-and-white exposures and formally posed subjects. There was Dexter in front, with his walrus-like mustache and big belly, Richard at his side. And there, in the back corner, Lucius. He wore a Confederate kepi, but the eyes were the same—rakish, devilish, intelligent. And his uniform bore the insignia of the 41st Infantry.
I pointed. “That’s him. Right there. Lucius Dufrene.”
“He was a member of Dexter’s unit?”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Is that from the Amberdecker burial?”
I flipped the photo over. “No, it’s dated six months before that.” I pulled the box into my lap and rifled through the images, stopping when I found what I was looking for. “But this one is.”
In this photograph, Dexter himself manned the cannon as he fired the salute, the smoke rolling through the red and gold trees. Evie was in the image too, as was a plush blonde I assumed to be her sister, Chelsea, the two of them beside three women in stiff black Victorian dresses, reenactors portraying mourners. Far to the left, separate from the main grouping, Rose Amberdecker stood as straight and still as one of the marble statuary. None of the Amberdeckers had gone for period clothes, but all of the men in Dexter’s unit had donned the dress grays, rifles held at parade rest.
I handed the photo to Trey. “I don’t see Lucius in this photo. According to Detective Perez, he disappeared around this time. And that was the last anyone saw of him until I found his skull.”
“A tentative identification?”
“Yes.”
Trey and I both knew that fingerprints didn’t exist on a corpse eighteen months rotting, that the cops would be looking for family and dental records. Should the dental prove a bust, they’d move to DNA. But the reality was—thanks to the cold-case nature of his death and the subsequent stirring of the pot by the tornado—Lucius’ death was a case best solved by asking a million questions of the people connected to him. Hence Perez’s visit to my shop.
I leaned back on my elbows. “I can’t believe the stuff I know now.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m not thinking of Lucius as a tragic and perhaps oddball circumstance, I’m thinking of him as a case. My case.”
Trey put down the photograph. “Tai—”
“I know, I know. Not a licensed security professional.”
“And—”
“I can’t drag you into things and expect your license to cover me. Trust me, these things have all been explained very clearly by various official people.” I paused. “But technically, I was asked to help locate the bones.”
“You were asked to locate the bones of Braxton Amberdecker. The bones you found belong to an entirely different person.”
I sat up quickly. “You’re right. Lucius’ bones are of no concern to me.”
Trey’s eyes grew wary. “True. Which means we should—”
“Follow Braxton’s bones instead.”
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“I know. But they haven’t been found yet.” I stared into the box full of photographs, layers upon layers of memories, buried one upon the other. “Trey?”
“Yes?”
“This is purely speculative, I know, but…what if Braxton’s bones weren’t in the coffin?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean none of Richard’s crew found them. Evie’s crack archaeological team didn’t find them. The cops didn’t find them. What if at some point between their original discovery and that coffin going in the ground, they were stolen? What if nobody’s found the bones because there are no bones to be found?”
“Why would someone steal bones?”
“I don’t know about bones, but collectors are hot for relics.” I started searching the piles around me, almost knocking over my bourbon. “There’s a list of the burial items around here somewhere—”
“Don’t you think the police would have considered this too?”
“Of course they would have. But they would have tucked that close to the vest and let Evie’s team keep searching, knowing full well they were on a wild goose chase.” And then it hit me. I reached out and grabbed Trey’s knee. “Omigod!”
“What?”
I clamped tighter on his knee. “What if it was Lucius in that coffin instead of Braxton?”
Trey didn’t react at first, but eventually he got the picture. “You mean—”
“I mean, what if somebody took the contents—bones, burial goods, the whole shebang—then killed Lucius with that pry bar and then stuffed it and his body in the empty coffin? Which then got cemented up in that tomb out in the cemetery. Which then got scattered across the Amberdecker woods by a tornado?”
“But—”
“You saw the coffin, didn’t you? Yesterday morning?”
Trey shook his head. “No. Richard said one of his crew had found it, and he was planning to investigate, but then you found the skull and we rendezvoused with you instead. And then Rose held you at gunpoint.”
Now he was getting intrigued. I could see him snapping to attention again, his index finger tapping, his brain sparking and whirring.
“If that coffin had Lucius in it instead of old bones, it would have looked as grotty as that skull.”
“It would have, yes.”
“And nobody would have noticed the extra weight during the re-burial.” I pointed at the photograph. “They had it on a caisson. Just roll it up to the vault and slide it right in—one, two, three, shove.”
Trey reached for his yellow pad and sketched out a bubble map, then jotted a quick timeline in the margin. I tapped my foot while he evaluated and analyzed. Finally he put down his pen and exhaled. “It’s a plausible theory.”
“I knew it! Which means that if we find the bones, the killer—”
“No, no, no.” Trey shook his head adamantly. “We aren’t finding bones, or killers. That
’s—”
“Hold on a second.”
“—and plausible does not mean probable. There’s a matter of mechanics, and a means/motive/opportunity breakdown, and…who are you calling?”
I tucked my phone between my shoulder and ear. “Richard.”
“But—”
“I need to know if he actually saw that coffin and if so, what shape it was in, and…crap. Voice mail.” And then I remembered. “Damn it, he’s taken his unit on an encampment. They left an hour ago.”
“Tai—”
“I’ll have to catch him later.”
I ran my hands though my hair. The floor was a jumbled mess on my side, a series of neat stacks on Trey’s. I dragged the photograph box into my lap and started pawing through it.
Trey peered over my shoulder. “What are you looking for?”
“Any other pictures of…aha!”
I snatched another photograph out of the box, this one of a young brunette side by side with Lucius, his hand on her waist. He was wearing a Confederate jacket, but he’d paired it with jeans and his giant NASCAR belt buckle. At first glance, the girl seemed to be in Civil War dress. She wore a red corset and matching crinoline, but copper buckles accented the stays and the skirt ended in a ragged hem far above the knee. Her purple-streaked hair was cut short and razored in the back, with long jagged bangs, and a Victorian blunderbuss pistol was tucked into a holster at her hip.
“From a reenactment?” Trey said.
“Not a reenactment. Steampunk. This Victorian mad scientist thing. See?” I tapped my fingernail on the pendant she wore, what looked like a cast-iron infinity symbol with a copper gear mounted in the bottom loop. “Definitely not reenactment jewelry, or dress. But look behind them. That’s Dexter’s counter in the background.”
“Do you recognize the girl?”
“No. But that’s definitely Lucius. He’s not steampunking, though, not with jeans and that belt buckle and a tee-shirt with a picture of a…” I held the photo closer to my face. “I swear that looks like a pig in a leather vest.”
“Wait. I know that pig.” Trey took the photo from me. “That’s a shirt from Hog Wild.”
