Joie de Vivre

by Micheala Lynn

  Lisa didn’t really know what to say. Of course, she loved Riley’s surprise dinner. But what touched her the most was the thought behind it. Riley had also realized the past couple weeks had been strained. Sometimes she wondered if Riley even noticed things like that. And secondly Riley had referred to this house—her house—as home. Or was she just making too much out of a simple phrase? Whatever it was, she was still touched by the gesture. “Geez, Riley. This is just lovely. Thanks.”

  Riley quickly waved her off. “Don’t mention it, my pleasure.”

  “Still, thanks.” She breathed in again deeply, taking in the savory aroma. “Mmmmm. Whatever you’re cooking, it smells absolutely delicious.”

  “I sure hope so. I wanted to fix your favorite.”

  “Riley, you didn’t.” Lisa stood there, her mouth wide open.

  Riley merely grinned. “I did.”

  “Lasagna.” They both said it at the same time and began to laugh.

  “I only hope you like it. It’s not exactly at the top of my specialities.” Riley bit her bottom lip, her eyes growing wide.

  “Riley, you don’t have anything to worry about. If it tastes half as good as it smells I’m sure it’ll be delicious.”

  “Okay, now scoot.” Riley began shuffling her out of the kitchen. “You go in the dining room, make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring everything in.”

  She couldn’t argue with that so she walked away, pulled up a chair in front of the table and sat quietly. She rolled her head back and closed her eyes, the tension draining from her. It wasn’t until Riley dropped silverware on the table a few minutes later that she woke with a wild jerk.

  “Sorry.” Riley winced. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ll be back in just a second with your plate.”

  Before Lisa could even reply, Riley scurried back into the kitchen. As quickly as she had left, she returned, a steaming plate in each hand heaped high with lasagna. She slid one in front of Lisa and the other directly across from her. “Okay, I’ll be right back.” She held up a finger and ran back to the kitchen again. She then came back with a towering plate of homemade garlic bread and slipped it on the table between them.

  “I don’t believe it, Riley, garlic bread too? You went all out.”

  Riley sat up straight and puffed out her chest. “You bet. I called Caroline and asked for her secret garlic bread recipe. I know how much you like it.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Lisa stared wide-eyed. “I’ve been trying to get that recipe out of her for years. How on earth did you manage that?”

  Riley merely shrugged. “I just told her I wanted to make something special for you and she gave it to me.”

  She couldn’t quite believe it. Riley cooking dinner, Caroline forfeiting her precious secret. It seemed surreal, as if she were living in some alternate reality. “Wow, Riley. All I can say is you’re too much.”

  “Oh, oh.” Riley leaped up. “Hold on to that thought. I forgot something.” With that she ran back into the kitchen only to return seconds later with a wine glass in each hand.

  “Oh my God, Riley, is that—”

  “Tabor Hill demi-red, yes. If I remember right, it comes highly recommended.”

  It was perfect. “Like I said, Riley, you’re just too much.”

  * * *

  Riley glanced up over the top of the current issue of The Anthropologist she had been reading intently all afternoon. Lisa sat at the other end of the couch, cheering on a college basketball game on TV—State, of course, and Purdue…or was it Penn State? Some P-word University. It could be Pepperdine, Piedmont or Portland State for all she knew. Still, Lisa seemed to be enjoying herself, which was a dramatic change from the last two weeks.

  The game went to commercial and Lisa looked over. “Why are you all smiles, Riley?”

  She hadn’t even realized she had been smiling. What wasn’t there to smile about? She was done with the term, she had three weeks of mostly uneventful time ahead of her—unless of course she got called away unexpectedly, which with her job wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities. She never knew when she might get a call, day or night, when her expertise was needed. Best of all, Lisa seemed to be in much better spirits. Susan had been right—maybe all Lisa had needed was for her to be there. The surprise dinner had been a big hit. She tossed her journal on the couch beside her. “I guess I’m just happy to be here, kicking back, and not having to worry about anything.”

  Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Are you still thinking about that lawsuit?”

  It wasn’t that. Of course, it was in the back of her mind, but she really hadn’t been giving it much attention. Mostly, she had been worried about Lisa, how remote she had been. But she couldn’t exactly say that. How heartless would that be? Hey babe, I know you’re upset about that little girl dying and all but gee, how about you cheer up and we’ll have a jolly good time. Plus, she didn’t want to jinx Lisa’s good mood. “Yeah, I guess it’s that. Between Bill having anxiety attacks every other day and Grace’s unpredictability, I feel like I have to run around and put out their little fires.”

  “What do you mean Grace’s unpredictability? I thought she was all right when I met her, maybe a bit eccentric. Has she been sued before?”

  Sure Lisa had met Grace on the mastodon dig, but that had been a fun, stress-free time. Grace under pressure was a different story. She took a deep breath. “No, Grace hasn’t been sued before. Grace isn’t good in these situations, situations that involve…” She shrugged, a quirky grin twisting her lips. “…well, situations that involve people. Don’t get me wrong, Grace is a genius, perhaps one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She speaks six or seven languages, she can recite whole chapters of textbooks from memory and she makes intuitive leaps that would have Aristotle’s head spinning, but when it comes to actually interacting with people, especially if she’s stressed, it’s as if she’s from some other planet.”

  “Wow, more so than even you?” Lisa began to giggle.

  “Very funny.” She had walked right into that one.

  Lisa now scooted closer. “Have you ever considered that Grace might be on the spectrum? That would explain a lot.”

  Riley leaned forward and thought about it. Grace had something, that was for sure, but Asperger’s? “But don’t those with Autistic Spectrum Disorders have difficulties with language? Like I said, Grace speaks half a dozen different languages.”

  “Actually, that’s not necessarily the case.” Lisa wheeled around, sitting cross-legged on the couch. “I attended a workshop last summer on just this. The difficulty with language applies more to males than females and even that is more related to communication and body language. From all the stories you have told me, Grace speaks multiple languages but not necessarily in the proper context or circumstance.”

  Riley found herself nodding with each point that Lisa made. That was Grace to a tee. “Wow, Lisa, I’ve never really considered that before. You might be right.”

  By now Lisa was bouncing in her seat. “I find it absolutely fascinating. If I didn’t teach kindergarten I would want to work with kids with high-level autism. Some of them can be brilliant in certain areas, yet be totally lacking in areas that most people take for granted. Take Grace for example. She seems almost like a savant in some ways—linguistically, memory, things like that.”

  Riley found herself getting wrapped up in Lisa’s excitement. Or maybe after the past few weeks, she was simply excited to see Lisa animated. “Yeah, you’re right. Grace is like a savant. That’s why I gave her the position. I saw something special there, despite all of her quirks or, hell I don’t know, maybe because of all them.”

  Lisa burst out laughing. She playfully slapped Riley on the leg. “I don’t mean to break it to you, babe, but you have some pretty hefty quirks of your own. That’s what I love about you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She rolled her eyes, unable to keep from smiling. It wasn’t so much Lisa’s joke that had her smiling either. This upbeat ch
ange in Lisa was amazing. She hadn’t really realized how down Lisa had been until now.

  “Don’t worry, I have a few quirks too. We all do.”

  * * *

  Lisa leaned back and closed her eyes, pulling the blankets up to her chin. Riley was still in the bathroom going through her nightly ablutions. They had spent the day lounging around the house, watching college football on TV—Riley had been indulgent—and gorging on deep-dish pizza. That perhaps had done her the most good. Whenever she had lost a student in the past, Jessie had always been there for her. Now Riley was there. Sitting on the couch, snuggled in Riley’s arms was just the life-affirming action that she needed. What she would have done without her she didn’t know. As long as Riley was at her side she could get through anything.

  Riley came in, Breslin trotting at her heels, and slipped beneath the covers. She stared at the ceiling before rolling over on her side, her head propped up with her hand. “Hey, how you doing?”

  Lisa thought for a long moment. “I think I’m doing fine.”

  “Good. If there’s anything…”

  “You’ll be the first.”

  Long after they had kissed good night and Riley snored lightly beside her, Lisa lay awake, continuing to stare up into the darkness. The upcoming weeks were not going to be easy, especially with Christmas approaching. The loss of a student was always more difficult around the holidays. But no matter how rough it got, how emotionally drained she felt, she would have Riley to come home to at the end of the day.

  * * *

  Naked, Riley sprang out of bed, gasping for breath and her heart thundering. She pawed across the nightstand in the darkness, knocking things every which direction and desperately searching for her cell phone which was now blaring ‘The Raiders March’ from Indiana Jones, the ring tone Lisa had put on her cell as a joke. A phone ringing at two in the morning could raise the hairs on the back of her neck like nothing else. Finally she knocked her cell off the nightstand where it fell to the floor face up, flooding her side of the room with its eerie blue light. She quickly snatched it from the floor, still gasping. “Hey, Riley here.”

  “Hey, Riley. It’s Len Baugher…”

  She shuffled quietly down the hall to the kitchen where she flipped on the lights. There was only one reason Len would call her at that hour. A body had been found and they needed help identifying beyond what the M.E. could do. That was her job. Burnt, buried or just plain bones, she took care of the bodies that no one else could.

  She quickly took down what information Len could give her, scratching it out on a spare legal pad she pulled from the top of the microwave. At least this one wasn’t too far away, just outside the small town of Lake Odessa. She regularly passed its exit as she drove between her home in Grand Rapids and the college in East Lansing. “Okay, Len, I’ve got all I need. Close off the scene. I don’t want anyone in there—no family, no reporters and for God’s sake, no local police or county mounties. They’ll just screw it up. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Next, she dialed Grace. It should be interesting getting Grace on the phone in the middle of the night and when she picked up, she wasn’t disappointed.

  “Chi l’inferno è questo?”

  “Hey, Grace. It’s Riley. Sorry to be calling so late.”

  “No, no, that’s okay, doc. Come stai?” She yawned loudly into the phone.

  “Italian?”

  “Sì. I was dreaming I was floating through Venice on a gondola with a gorgeous woman, wearing only a g-string and eating string cheese when you called.”

  Okay, that was strange even for Grace, but she had things other than Grace’s bizarre dreams to consider. She quickly relayed what she knew and gave Grace directions. “…okay, see you there as soon as I can.”

  Just one more thing to do. She tore her top sheet off the legal pad and quickly scratched out a message for Lisa. She didn’t want to wake her, especially for something as awful as this. Lisa had a hard enough time dealing with the little girl at her school that had died. How would it be for her to wake Lisa up now to tell her that she was leaving in the middle of the night to go identify a badly disfigured corpse? She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t do that—not to Lisa.

  She crept back into the bedroom and placed the neatly folded note on her pillow. Lisa would find it in the morning. She then gathered her clothes in the dark and backed her way out of the bedroom. As quietly as she could she tiptoed back up the hallway and dressed in the living room. Finally she tugged on her heavy leather boots without tying them, threw her jacket over her shoulders and headed out into the frigid, dark night.

  * * *

  Lisa lay in bed, staring at the wall just out of sight in the darkness, waiting for Riley to come back in. Of course, she had woken up when Riley’s cell phone had gone off. But instead of flipping on a light and sitting back down on the edge of the bed, Riley had scurried from the room, talking in hushed tones. Then, she had made a quiet phone call of her own.

  Her chest tightened as she lay there. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good. If it were bad news Riley would certainly tell her, wouldn’t she? Or would she wait until the morning, thinking that she didn’t want to wake her? Maybe that was why she had snuck back into the bedroom and grabbed her clothes. But at the loud clack from the front door closing sounding like a cannon blast in the darkness, she sat bolt upright in bed. She flipped on the lights and looked at the clock. Where the hell was Riley going at two-fifteen in the morning? Why hadn’t she said anything? All she had to do was nudge her—she wasn’t even asleep for Christ’s sake. What was going on? If something bad had happened, Riley would surely have said something, wouldn’t she? And all the hushed tones, what was that about? Was she planning on meeting someone? Who? And why?

  Lisa shook her head hard, making sure this wasn’t some sort of screwy dream. She noticed the note. Across the top of the page was Riley’s sloppy scrawl. She stared down at the words, just six words, letting them sink in. What could it mean? What had happened? Where had Riley gone? She stared at those words, those six words, running them over and over through her mind.

  “Something came up. Have to go.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  By the time Riley rolled up, Grace was already waiting, leaning against her car and blowing into her cupped bare hands. “I see you found it okay.”

  “Yeah, found it simple as ACB. Been here probably a good twenty ticks or so.” Grace stomped her feet back and forth on the cold, stiff ground.

  Riley opened the back door of her truck and pulled out two large canvas cases. She slung the strap of the first over her shoulder, the one carrying all the tools she might need—brushes, small shovels, picks, gloves, evidence bags. Her back popped as it bounced against her hip. The second case, slightly smaller but no less bulky, contained the specialized cameras for documenting the scene. She handed that to Grace.

  “I want you to take pictures this time, document the scene.”

  “That I can do.”

  “Remember, photograph everything. If you have a doubt, photograph it. Better to have something we don’t need than need something we don’t have.”

  “No problem, doc. I’ll shutterbug everything.”

  At least Grace was speaking English again, albeit her own special blend. She didn’t mind Grace’s quirkiness—in fact she found it rather endearing—but there was a time and place for everything and this situation, what they were about to walk into, was definitely neither the time nor the place. “Have you talked to anyone here yet?”

  “Yeah, someone from the local constabulary blessed my arrival with a darn fine inquisition. Seemed to think I was a lookee loo or something.” Grace rolled her eyes.

  Riley winced, mentally kicking herself. “Sorry about that. I forgot to mention I was having someone assist me.”

  Just then Detective Leonard Baugher from the Michigan State Police Forensic Lab in Grand Rapids came walking over in street clothes, his badge hanging from his belt and a gun
tucked into a shoulder harness visible under his jacket. His face was deeply pockmarked. His voice was low and gravelly, giving the impression that he rarely spoke, but when he did, people listened. “Hey Riley, good to see you.”

  “Hello Len.” Riley clasped him on the arm. She turned to Grace as she sidled up beside her. “You remember my assistant, Grace Krege?”

  “Of course. How could I forget?” Len held out his hand.

  Riley had no doubt Len would never forget her. The last time Grace had helped on one of his cases she had backed into his crime van, caving in the driver’s door.

  Grace shook Len’s hand vigorously. “Good to see you again. See you got your van fixed, huh?”

  Len glanced around as if gauging the proximity of his van to Grace’s car.

  Riley drew in a deep breath. “So, what are we talking about here?”

  Len turned and waved for them to follow. “From what I can tell it looks like someone stashed a body under the back deck of the house. New owners moved in last month. Their dog got under there and dug it up. Carried the arm right into the house and dropped it in front of the TV during the evening news. Bit of a shock as you can imagine. Called nine-one-one in a panic, didn’t make much sense at first—something about their dog wouldn’t give them a bone. County Sheriff came out, saw the arm and immediately called in the State Police. Sure enough we got here and the dog was still guarding the arm. Wouldn’t let anyone near it. Finally got it away. Took us forever but we tracked the rest of the body down to under the deck.”

  Riley lengthened her stride to keep up with Len. “Where’s the arm now?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s out by the deck in an evidence bag.”

  “Good.” She didn’t need any more damage to the body. It was already going to be more difficult since the corpse had been disturbed. “Any chance the owners had something to do with it?”

  “No. Believe me, they’re pretty shaken up. Already talking about selling the place. Don’t blame them either. Not so sure they want to keep the dog even.”