The Skeleton Takes a Bow (A Family Skeleton Mystery)

by Leigh Perry

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Sid said, but he was reaching inside the bag. “Two books of Fairy Tale?”

  “And Samantha let me borrow her DVDs of Doctor Who season six so we can have a movie night. Just please say you forgive me.”

  “Of course I forgive you!” he said magnanimously, and she threw her arms around him for a big hug.

  In the midst of that, Sid looked at me and mouthed, “Do we tell her?”

  I shook my head.

  He nodded his agreement and, out loud, said, “Which first? Manga or the Doctor?”

  “You two discuss options while I figure out what we can have for dinner,” I said, but I wasn’t completely sure they heard me.

  Poor Byron was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, looking neglected. He wasn’t—his water dish was full and he had a doggie flap so he could get into the yard to take care of business—but he was used to getting more attention from Madison when she came home.

  I called up the stairs. “Madison, Byron wants his walk.”

  If Madison had tried to beg off, I’d have reminded her that Byron was her dog and therefore her responsibility, but instead it was Sid who came down and said, “Do you think you can take him this once? Madison and I are in the middle of something.” This time he did pull the puppy-dog-eye trick.

  “All right,” I said, “but keep in mind that this will fulfill my groveling obligations.”

  “Fair enough!” He zipped back to the attic, and I found Byron’s leash to do the honors.

  Though I wasn’t going to admit it to either Sid or Madison, I didn’t really mind. Byron was well behaved, thanks to the training classes Madison had taken with him, and it was a lovely spring evening. Fall in New England gets all the good press, but spring has a special magic, probably because it’s so short. Some years, Massachusetts goes straight from winter to summer with no spring at all, but this year we’d had several weeks of warm weather and the trees were lightly painted in bright green.

  Byron seemed to be enjoying our jaunt as much as I was, so I went farther than I’d intended, passing through our residential neighborhood and into the nearby business district and its handful of shops and restaurants. The fact that I went by Town House Pizza and Subs was entirely accidental. Of course, once I was there, I smelled cheesesteak subs cooking, and there was no resisting their allure. Though I couldn’t take the dog inside, I could use my cell phone to call in an order while standing on the sidewalk.

  The middle-aged woman behind the counter laughed when I explained the situation, and she obligingly brought the two subs and the Greek salad I’d asked for out to me, and even had a bone for Byron.

  I was about to leave when she said, “You be careful walking home. This town is getting scary.”

  “Pennycross? Since when?”

  “First that murder back in the fall, and just now I heard they found another body.”

  “Another body? Was it murder?”

  “All I know is that a cop was getting a sub and got a call that made him run out of here without it. My son looked up the code they called out on the radio, and it means there was a body found. I don’t think a cop would leave his sub behind if it was somebody who’d had a heart attack, so you might want to go straight home.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised, but I didn’t say anything about going home. I had a phone call to make first.

  5

  Pennycross had recently implemented an anonymous tip line, so theoretically it should have been safe for me to call from my cell phone or the house’s landline, but the idea of the police tracking a call back to me and then somehow getting to Sid was enough to give me nightmares. So that meant I needed a public phone. The last time I’d needed to call the police with an anonymous tip—and it was a symptom of the oddity of my life that I’d had to do so more than once—it had taken me a while to find one, but this time I hit it lucky. There was one next to the convenience store two doors down from the sub shop. I only had to wait a couple of minutes for a pair of smokers to finish their break to make my call.

  “Pennycross Police Department Tip Line,” a bored-sounding voice said.

  “Hi, I need to report something about the body that was just found.”

  “Yes?” was all the woman said, but she no longer sounded bored.

  I launched into the story of how a friend had been backstage at the high school auditorium and overheard the murder and the cleanup. I’m pretty sure she was assuming that I myself was the friend, but she politely maintained the pretext. Of course she wanted to know why my friend hadn’t tried to do something, but I explained he wasn’t supposed to be in the building and that he’d been afraid to do anything. That was true enough, though not for any reason she was likely to come up with. Then she wanted to know why he hadn’t called them sooner, and all I could say was that he didn’t want to get involved. The longer we talked and the more details she asked for, the more bizarre it sounded to me, and I could only imagine how crazy it sounded to her. Finally I said, “I’m sorry, but that’s all I know,” and hung up.

  I walked home considerably faster than I should have, but I told myself it was because the subs were getting cold, not because I was worried that a squad car was going to come squealing around the corner and chase me down.

  Madison and Sid were already in the middle of an episode of Doctor Who when I got home, and since it was Friday night, I figured it wouldn’t hurt for us to eat in front of the TV. I wanted to tell Sid about the police finding his murder victim, but I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Madison. We’d have to tell her something sooner or later—she was bound to hear about a murder taking place in her high school auditorium—but I’d rather be able to assure her that the police were well on their way to finding the killer. Sid’s information, as incomplete as it was, would have to help.

  We vegged out in front of the TV for the rest of the night, but I kept using my phone to go online every half hour or so to see if the news about the murder had hit the Web. It hadn’t by bedtime, which was frustrating. Had my relationship with the Pennycross Gazette reporter ended better, I’d have called him with a tip.

  It was after eleven when I finally called it quits. Madison and Sid were still going strong, so I told them good night, reminded them to tend to Byron and set the alarm system before going to bed, and turned in. If I’d had a camera handy and any skill whatsoever as a photographer, I’d have paused and taken a picture of the homey scene. Madison curled up on the couch, Sid with his hands behind his skull and his feet up on the ottoman, and Byron gnawing happily on his bone with only the occasional longing look at Sid’s femur. Admittedly, it was more Charles Addams than Norman Rockwell, but it was home.

  I love weekend mornings because I don’t have to set the alarm clock or run around in a frenzy getting myself ready for work and Madison ready for school. Recently, I’ve also come to enjoy the sight of my daughter in her own frenzy. She worked with my sister, Deborah, at her locksmith business every Saturday to earn money to help pay for Byron’s upkeep, and Deborah was not one to take excuses for tardiness, even from her only niece. Madison made it by the skin of her teeth that day, running out the door just as Deborah drove her truck into the driveway. Knowing that Deborah would dock her pay for being late, I forgave her for not kissing me good-bye.

  With Madison safely out of earshot, I could go up to the attic to tell Sid what I’d heard and about my call to the police. He was reading—or more likely rereading—one of the manga Madison had brought him the day before. Sid didn’t sleep, so he spent most of his nights reading or tapping away on the computer.

  “That’s a relief,” he said when I was done. “Maybe I helped a little after all.”

  “Sid, you did everything you could do, and though I’m still sorry Madison left you overnight, I’m glad you were there. Otherwise the police would probably never have been able to figure out where the murde
r took place, and that’s got to be a big part of the investigation.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Have you seen anything new on the Web?”

  “I’ve been afraid to look,” he admitted. “Let’s see what the word is.” After a few minutes, he said, “Here it is! ‘Body found in Pennycross.’” But when we followed the link to the Gazette article, all it said was that a body had been found on the east side of town and that identification was being withheld until the family could be notified.

  “Wow, the police are really keeping a lid on this,” I said.

  “Maybe there’s more to this murder than we thought.”

  I shrugged. “I guess we’ll hear soon enough.”

  After that, I figured I better get started on my usual Saturday joys: laundry, cleaning, paying bills, and going grocery shopping. Sid helped with the first two, and though he couldn’t help pay bills or grocery shop, he did bring me coffee while I was writing checks and insisted on putting the groceries away once I got them home. Obviously he’d forgiven Madison and me. The day passed quickly, punctuated by fruitless online checks for more news about the murder.

  Madison texted me at four and said that Deborah had volunteered to bring over Chinese takeaway for dinner. I debated the bad example of eating take-out food two nights in a row versus knowing that Deborah would almost certainly turn down my offer to help pay, and replied that that would be great. By the time I had the table set and drinks ready, the two of them had returned, laden with bags from which arose a heavenly odor. Byron showed immediate interest and if I’d had a tail, mine would have been wagging, too.

  “How’d work go?” I asked, taking Madison’s load and getting the kiss I’d missed that morning.

  “Would you believe we had to help the police with a murder investigation? At PHS!” Madison said.

  I froze and was trying to think of what to say when she and Deborah burst out laughing.

  6

  Though Deborah and I haven’t always gotten along, I wouldn’t have accused her of being so callous as to laugh at a murder—let alone to get Madison to demonstrate such insensitivity—so clearly I was missing something.

  “A murder? At the high school?” Sid said in a tone of surprise that sounded patently false to me, but apparently neither Deborah nor Madison noticed.

  “There was no murder at PHS,” Deborah said, still snickering. “Let’s get something to eat before it gets cold, and I’ll tell you the story.”

  Once the sweet-and-sour pork, rice, and egg rolls had been distributed, Deborah said, “I got a call from the police department this morning. They needed to get into the school, and Principal Dahlgren is out of town and nobody could find whoever it is who’s supposed to open up when he’s gone, so Dahlgren had them contact me because I put in all the school’s locks and have spare keys.

  “Madison and I get to PHS, and Louis Raymond and his partner are there, looking disgusted.”

  “By the way,” Madison put in, “I think I deserve extra points for not saying anything about Officer Raymond being your beau.”

  “He’s not my beau,” Deborah retorted. “And what normal kid says ‘beau’ anyway?”

  “Who are you calling normal? But if you prefer, your BF, your boo, your fella, your hookup, your friend with benefits. Or you could go old school with ‘boyfriend.’”

  “How about my bowling buddy?”

  “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

  Deborah gave her a look, which I had to admit was a good one for a nonmother. “Anyway,” my sister said emphatically, “I let them in but then we had to hang around to lock up after them, and in case they needed any other keys. Maybe half an hour later, they came out looking even more disgusted.”

  “What were they looking for?” I asked, hoping I sounded more natural than Sid had.

  “Louis said they’d gotten some crazy anonymous tip last night. Some woman called and claimed ‘a friend’ had overheard a fight at the high school auditorium Thursday night, and she was afraid somebody was dead. She couldn’t explain how the friend had overheard without seeing anything, or why it was she’d waited so long to call, and naturally she wouldn’t give her name or the name of her friend. They knew it was a crank call, but they checked it out anyway. Louis said they have to check out all the tips that get called in, even the ones that are clearly from nut jobs.”

  “Didn’t they find anything?” Sid, my favorite nut job, asked.

  “Nothing, other than the fact that the school overpays the janitor,” Deborah said. “Louis figures the call came from a kid who was hoping they’d close down school for the day.”

  “Hey! Profiling much?” Madison said indignantly. “A kid would have called on Sunday night to get them to cancel school on Monday.”

  “Good point,” Deborah said. “It must have been an adult nut job.”

  Madison nodded, took a bite of rice, then looked at Sid. I could see her starting to figure something out. “Wait, Thursday night?”

  Wanting to stave my daughter off from realizing who the adult nut job was, I said, “But didn’t I hear there was a dead body found in town on Friday? How do they know there wasn’t a link?”

  “Because that woman wasn’t murdered,” Deborah said. “It was an overdose. Louis says the guys in the department are still taking sides on whether it was suicide or accidental, but nobody is thinking murder.”

  “A woman? And it was an overdose?” Sid said. “They’re sure?”

  “They’re still waiting on the lab guys to test whatever it is they test, but Louis says that’s what it looks like.”

  I tried to subtly signal Sid to stop looking so shocked. Of course, it was irrational for a skull to have any expression, but either Sid managed or I was really good at interpreting body language. Bone language?

  Unfortunately, Sid wasn’t paying attention to me, and since Deborah also had a lot of experience with Sid’s nonverbal cues, she caught on.

  She said, “What’s bugging you, Sid? Hoping to have another chance to play Sherlock Bones?”

  “An overdose?” Sid said again. “Not a blow to the head?”

  She rolled her eyes as she helped herself to another egg roll. “I think the police can tell the difference between a blow to the head and an overdose. They’re sticklers about that kind of thing, you know.”

  “Why were you so sure it was a blow to the head?” Madison asked.

  “What?” Sid said, trying to act innocent far too late in the conversation.

  “Sid, were you the ‘friend’ who overheard something in the auditorium Thursday night?” she asked.

  Deborah said, “What are you talking about?”

  “Sid spent the night at school Thursday night,” Madison explained.

  “Well, it wasn’t on purpose. If you hadn’t left me there—”

  “I know, I know, it was my fault for forgetting you, but—”

  “Why was Sid at the school in the first place?” Deborah wanted to know.

  Madison turned to me. “That’s why you were gone so long when you took Byron for a walk last night. You were the woman who called the cops!”

  “Georgia made the crank call?” Deborah was still trying to catch up.

  “Well, I couldn’t very well be the one to go out to a pay phone,” Sid said, “and somebody had to report the murder.”

  “There was no murder!” Deborah said, then took a deep breath. “One of you, just tell me what happened.”

  Sid went through the circumstances of why he’d been at school and the story of what happened Thursday night, ending with, “So I talked Georgia into calling the cops.”

  “You did not,” I said. “I called because I had no intention of letting my daughter spend all day where a murder had taken place without telling the police.”

  “But there wasn’t a murder, was t
here?” Deborah said.

  Sid said, “Yes, there was!”

  “So where’s the body?”

  “How should I know? If the cops are right about that woman they found being an overdose, I guess the real victim hasn’t been found.”

  “This mess is all my fault,” Madison said. “If I hadn’t forgotten him, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “It still would have happened. We just wouldn’t know about it. Right?” He looked at Madison. “You don’t think I imagined it, do you?”

  “Well, no, not exactly,” Madison said, “but I know how spooky it can be being at school at night. One time I had to go to my locker after rehearsal, and it was all dark and echoey, and I got really freaked out.”

  “You do think I imagined it.”

  “I’m sure you heard something. Maybe some of the kids in the play were running lines.”

  “I know the difference between Hamlet and a murder,” he said, but he wasn’t exactly emphatic.

  “Don’t worry about it, Madison,” Deborah said, and I’m pretty sure she meant to be reassuring. “The call can’t be tied back to you guys, so there’s no harm done other than a couple of cops missing a Dunkin’ Donuts run. Though if you’d asked me, I could have told you that taking Sid to school wasn’t a good idea.”

  Madison didn’t even bother to argue with her aunt, which I didn’t appreciate. I was the one she was supposed to ask for advice, not Deborah.

  Sid didn’t say anything, either, but I could see the connections between his bones loosen, as they did when he was feeling unhappy.

  “I believe him,” I said firmly.

  “You do?” Sid and Deborah said simultaneously, albeit with very different intonations.

  “Of course I do. Sid didn’t hear every word spoken, but he heard enough to know that it wasn’t Hamlet.”

  “You do remember that the dead woman died of an overdose, right?” Deborah said.