Dead Man's Bones

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Thanks, China,” she said casually, not looking up, “but please don’t bother about lunch for me. I’m really not hungry.”

  “Too late—I’ve already bothered.” I reached under the counter and turned down the volume on the whales. “Tomato soup with sour cream, and chicken salad, mayo, no mustard, just the way you like it. Eat. It will give you strength for your inner journey.”

  “Oh, all right,” Ruby sighed. “If you insist.” As she reached for the cup, her hair swung back and I caught a glimpse of her face.

  I gasped. “Ruby! What’s wrong with your eye!”

  “It’s black,” she said calmly, and dipped her spoon into her cup.

  “I can see that it’s black, you goony-bird!” Black wasn’t an accurate description. Ruby’s left eye was a dark purple-black, trimmed with a greenish-yellowish border, and swelled. “How the hell did it get that way?”

  She dipped again. “I ran into the pantry door at Colin’s house.” Her voice was serene, but her freckles were like copper flecks against her pale cheeks, and her mouth was nervous. “I put on some makeup,” she added. “Can you still see it?”

  “I don’t mean to be cruel,” I said cruelly, “but the only way to hide that eye is to put a bag over your head.” I sat down on the other stool, thinking of Alana’s story of the night before. The story about domestic violence that had ended, twice, in murder. I pushed the thought out of my mind. “The pantry door?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe it.” She put down her soup and picked up half a croissant and added, in a joking tone that sounded so false it made me wince, “I told Colin you’d probably think he slugged me.”

  I frowned at her. I didn’t really think Colin would do something like this, did I? But since she had brought it up—

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Of course not!” she flashed indignantly. “That’s absurd! Even the thought of it is totally ridiculous.”

  I regarded her closely. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me if he did.”

  She sniffed. “Well, he didn’t, so I don’t have anything to tell.”

  We ate in silence for a moment, until I said, “Honest Injun, the pantry door?”

  Ruby held up three fingers, solemn. “Brownies’ honor. It was halfway open and the hallway was dark. I just banged right into it.” She sighed. “I’m hoping it won’t be so noticeable by tomorrow night. And anyway, Chris is pretty good with makeup. She can fix it, I’m sure.” Tomorrow night was dress rehearsal, and Chris Delaney is the makeup person.

  We didn’t say any more about Ruby’s eye. I didn’t ask about her dinner with Colin, either, and she didn’t volunteer, an omission that spoke louder than words, I thought. Mostly we talked about the play—about Max Baumeister’s inability to loosen up onstage—and about the shops, and Hank’s repair of the deck, and paying the bills. Ah, yes, the bills. About as pleasant a topic of conversation as whether Ruby’s boyfriend had socked her in the eye.

  At last, I stacked the plates and cups on the tray and stood up.

  “I have to get back to work,” I said. “But first, a hug.” I put my arms around her. “I’m really sorry about your eye,” I said softly.

  “Yeah.” She was rueful. “I just wish you’d believe me, that’s all.”

  “I believe you,” I protested. I did, too. I couldn’t picture Ruby taking a fist in the face without slugging the guy back. And if she’d done that, she would definitely have told me.

  She sighed again, an exaggerated, pretend sigh. “No, you don’t.”

  “I am not going to argue with you,” I said loftily, and picked up the tray. “If you don’t want to believe that I believe you, that’s up to you.” And with a chuckle to show that both of us were joking, I took our plates back to the kitchen and rinsed them off.

  In the afternoon, Ruby watched both shops and I went out to the garden, where I weeded the bed of culinary herbs and cut the basil. We’d had a huge crop this fall, and it looked like we’d have plenty right up until frost. I took enough to make pesto for supper, filled a plastic bag for Ruby, and another one, and took all three bags inside. It was just four-thirty.

  “You opened up the shop for me this morning,” Ruby said, “so if you want to go home early, I’ll close up for you.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” I said. “Thanks.” I handed her a bag of basil, seeing that the purple of her eye had become noticeably more garish, and the yellow-green ring seemed to be expanding, like a flower coming into full bloom. I suppressed a tsk-tsk. Chris’s makeup artistry would be challenged.

  I was leaving the shop when I met Alana Montoya coming up the walk. She seemed subdued and pale, and her face was puffy. She looked like somebody who’d been to a heck of a party the night before and had lived to regret every minute of it.

  “You got your car okay, then?” I asked. That had been one of the points of discussion as we left Bean’s—what to do about her car.

  She nodded. “I guess I had a little too much to drink. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.” Her smile was crooked. “Anyway, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “I’m just on my way out, but Ruby Wilcox can help you find whatever you need.” Maybe some powdered ginger. A teaspoonful stirred into hot water, with honey and a shot of lemon. A tried-and-true hangover remedy. Or there’s the old Southern plantation favorite, Jezebel Tea. Fresh mint, parsley, celery leaves, a few cloves, a piece of cinnamon stick, and some freshly grated ginger steeped in boiling water for ten minutes or so. It’s supposed to cure what ails you, and it doesn’t taste bad.

  Alana’s glance evaded mine and slid down and away. “I’m not really shopping for—” She stopped. “That is, I came to see you. I thought maybe you could help me with . . .”

  There was a longish pause. Across the alley, I could hear Mr. Cowan’s little Pekingese yapping ferociously. Lula is about the size of a possum, but when it comes to her territory, she’s a grizzly bear. She was probably defending her pecan tree against an invading squirrel.

  The barking went on. “Help you with what?” I prompted finally.

  Alana swallowed. “It’s . . . it’s personal, and . . . well, kind of a long story. If you’re in a hurry . . .” Her voice trailed off weakly.

  I was in a hurry. I wanted to get somewhere before five. And I had the feeling that she wanted to talk about her drinking problem. Well, if that’s what it was, she could count me out. I had to deal with Leatha’s alcoholism because she was my mother. I didn’t have the patience to deal with Alana’s.

  “Another time would be better for me, if you don’t mind,” I said briskly. “We could try for lunch next week. I’ve got a catering job tomorrow night, and I’m hoping to get some time to relax this weekend.”

  A look—of desperation, perhaps?—crossed her face, and her shoulders slumped imperceptibly. “Thanks,” she said. “Next week. I’ll give you a call.”

  She turned, and I fell into step beside her, feeling half-guilty for disappointing her and wanting to make it up.

  “How’s the analysis going?” I asked conversationally, as we walked. “The bones from the cave, I mean. Have you had the chance to get a closer look at that skull?”

  Her expression brightened. “Yes, I spent a couple of hours working with it this afternoon.” She turned to face me. “The victim—his skull was fractured, probably by the rock that was found beside him. But that’s not what killed him.” She was animated now, excited, and I knew that the bones had spoken to her, had told her their story. “He was shot.”

  “Shot!” I said, startled. And then, somehow, I wasn’t. I already knew from the conversation with Blackie on Monday night that the victim—a young man, Alana had said—hadn’t come to that cave alone. Someone had come with him, someone who drove a vehicle and carried a light—and a gun. Someone who had brought in a rock from the cave’s entrance and who had then taken the light, and the gun, and gone away, leaving a corpse behind. The bones had told their story. What we had here was a murder m
ystery.

  Alana was nodding, almost eagerly. “The rock—it weighs just under ten pounds—was slammed against the base of the skull, with force. That’s what caused the postmortem trauma.”

  “So he was already dead when his skull was crushed,” I said thoughtfully. “Shot in the head?”

  She nodded. “I found a smooth-edged circular hole with internal beveling, consistent with a bullet’s entrance, in the lower left section of the occipital. There was an exit fracture, externally beveled, in the right frontal bone above the eye orbit.”

  Shot in the back of the head, then smashed with a ten-pound rock, probably in an effort to obliterate the gunshot wound and make the death look like a caving accident. I didn’t have to ask Alana how she could tell the sequence of these terrible events. I’d listened to enough courtroom testimony—and questioned enough forensics experts on the stand—to know what she’d say. The radiating and concentric fracture lines from the blunt impact of the rock had terminated into the radiating fracture patterns caused by the bullet. Alana had read the story of the victim’s murder in his bones.

  “You’ve reported this to Sheriff Blackwell, I suppose,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’ve talked with him by phone. I’ll send him a report tomorrow.”

  “That’s good,” I said. Blackie would be pleased at the fast turnaround on this cold case. If he’d sent the bones to Bexar or Travis, he’d still be waiting for a receipt, and the report itself wouldn’t be along until after the first of the year, or the year after that.

  We had reached my car, and I stopped. “Give me a call, and we’ll do lunch,” I said.

  “I . . . I’ll try,” she said, not looking at me. The energy that had charged her story of the bones had fizzled, and her voice was flat, without passion or even interest.

  I like to think that, if I had known what Alana Montoya was going to do in a matter of days—might have been thinking of, even now, as we discussed getting together for lunch—I would have put my other errand on hold and sat down and listened to her, would have tried to hear her story, to get to the bottom of what was troubling her. Or maybe I would have sent her to see Pam Neely, the therapist Ruby talks to when she’s feeling low. Surely I would have done something, wouldn’t I?

  I hope so.

  Chapter Seven

  For over three thousand years, Cannabis sativa was regarded as a Godsend to the human race. It was one of the world’s most important all-purpose plants, producing essential fiber for fabric, rope, and paper; indispensable oil for lighting and for food; vital plant protein for humans and animals; and a valuable pain-relieving medicine. Since the 1940s, in the United States, it has not been possible to grow this herb without penalty.

  My mind had two puzzles to play with as I drove the couple of blocks to the square and parked in front of Hoffmeister’s Clothing Store. One was the skeleton in the cave, known now, some thirty-plus years after the fact, to be a murder victim. Unknown, still, who he was and why he was killed. Perhaps forever unknown, who had killed him.

  But that was an old, very cold case, and the killer, for all I knew, might be long dead. Far more immediate and puzzling was the matter of Alana Montoya, and this urgent business that she wanted to discuss with me. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment, was probably nothing I could do, ever. I laid it aside. I had other things to think about.

  Pecan Springs’ town square used to be the town’s center of gravity, although more recently, this seems to have shifted east to the malls along I-35. That’s where Wal-Mart is, and Home Depot and Office Depot and The Gap and the chain supermarkets and the branch banks. That’s where the new people, residents of the bedroom communities that are springing up like toadstools everywhere, do their shopping. Still, the tourists like the square for its turn-of-the-century look, and lots of townfolk still do all their business here. The shopkeepers are friendlier, the service is more personal, and you don’t have to trudge a mile of aisle to find what you want.

  The centerpiece of the square is a pink granite wedding cake of a courthouse, built of rock that was quarried near Marble Falls, at the southern tip of Burnet County, and transported to Pecan Springs via the Missouri and Pacific Railroad. It sits on a square of straggly grass, worn by the summer’s foot traffic, with a pot of petunias and a bench for the old guys anchoring each of the four corners. Around this center are arranged a motley collection of stone buildings, several of them built in a style called the German Vernacular: the Ben Franklin Variety Store, Beezle’s Hardware, the Enterprise office, the public library, the Library Thrift Shoppe, the Sophie Briggs Historical Museum, Mueller’s Antiques and Fine Crafts, Krautzenheimer’s Restaurant, and Hoffmeister’s Clothing.

  If you’re guessing that Pecan Springs was settled by Germans, you’ve guessed right. These sturdy, God-fearing people came to Texas in the 1840s and ’50s, taking passage on wooden ships to Corpus Christi, then trekking overland by wagon and horseback. They brought with them their axes and knives and plows, their Bibles and bags of seed, their skills in carpentry and smithing and wagon building, their disciplined habits of work and their stern morality. They came in search of self-determination and a better life, but most of all, land. The ones who survived—those who were adaptable, resourceful, and lucky—got all three.

  They settled first at New Braunfels, on the Balcones Escarpment. The rich blackland prairie lay flat and fertile to the east and the hills and canyons of the Edwards Plateau rose to the west, the uplands blanketed with cedar, with pecan and hackberry and cypress growing green along the creeks. Life wasn’t easy, for the settlers hadn’t watched any reality TV shows or read any do-it-yourself books and weren’t quite prepared to be pioneers. This can be a brutal land, especially when you don’t have air-conditioning in the summer and central heat in the winter. But there were plentiful artesian springs and a long growing season, and some of the settlers were adventurous enough to move west and north, building towns like Boerne and Fredericksburg and San Marcos. They also built Pecan Springs, and eventually the courthouse square and the shops around it.

  It was one of those shops I had come to visit, Good Earth Goods, which is owned and operated by Colin Fowler. I had dropped in before, when the shop first opened, and came away with a fairly favorable impression. In general, I think it’s smart to buy environmentally sensitive products, although the Good Earth items struck me as pricey. I prefer to find less expensive ways to be kind to the environment. However, I was on a reconnaissance mission this afternoon—to get a clearer fix on Colin—and price was no object. How much can a couple of environmentally friendly lightbulbs cost, anyway?

  Thirty-seven bucks, that’s what.

  “These are CFLs,” Colin Fowler told me, noticing the telltale pain of sticker shock on my face. “Compact fluorescents. They use about a quarter of the electricity to provide the same amount of light, so they significantly lower the pollution and carbon dioxide emissions that result when fossil fuels are burned to make electricity. Not only that, but they lower your electrical bill. And since they last several times longer than ordinary bulbs, less raw material is required to make them.”

  “Well, I’m for that,” I managed. I took out my environmentally insensitive plastic credit card and handed it to him, along with the bag of basil. “From my garden,” I said. “Live long and pesto.”

  “You brought this for me?” he asked, looking pleased. He put his face in the bag and inhaled deeply. “Hey, this is terrific! Thanks, China.”

  “A natural high,” I said, “and legal.”

  “There aren’t enough of those,” he said, smiling. Studying his face, I could see what had attracted Ruby. Colin Fowler is definitely a good-looking man, with a strong-featured face, high cheekbones, chestnut-brown hair worn a little long, and dark eyes. He’s six-feet and then some, which makes him taller than Ruby (a real plus for her, I’m sure). He has the build of a man who works out regularly and often. He smiles easily and seems outgoing and friendly, although i
t seemed to me that the smile on his mouth wasn’t quite reaching his eyes. He was wearing jeans and rope sandals and his T-shirt, naturally green, said “Legalize Hemp.”

  Legalize Hemp. It’s not a slogan you see much of around here, where the T-shirts promote Lonestar Long-necks and the Pecan Springs Panthers. Most guys wear cowboy boots, too, not sandals, and they’d rather chew tobacco than sniff basil—in fact, most of them wouldn’t be caught dead sniffing basil. But all this was probably part of Colin’s attraction for Ruby, who doesn’t have much use for your average Pecan Springs macho male.

  However, as I glanced from his T-shirt to his dark eyes, I caught a glimpse of something unsettling. It wasn’t just the absence of smile, but a distrustful, watchful wariness, the look of a man whose life has taken him into the shadows, who has seen a great many ugly sights and would not be surprised when he saw them again. It was just a glimpse, so brief that I could not be sure what I had seen. And then he lowered his glance.

  “Did you see Ruby’s shiner?” he asked casually, running my credit card through the machine.

  “Hey, how could I miss it?” I made my voice light, matching his. He was still looking down, punching numbers, and I couldn’t read his expression. “She’s hoping that some stage makeup will take care of the problem tomorrow night, but I have my doubts.”

  He handed back my card. “I feel just awful about it. The whole thing was my fault, you know.”

  “It was?” I felt distinctly uneasy.

  “Yeah. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d turned on the light in the hall. Or if I hadn’t left the bathroom door open. Poor kid walked right into it.”