A Skeleton in the Family

by Leigh Perry

  I didn’t mind. When it came to men, Sid’s snooping had saved me a world of hurt in the past, and though my daughter was perfectly able to stay by herself, I didn’t mind having somebody around in case of emergency.

  Madison was planted on the couch, clearly intending to inspect Fletcher. When she was four, she’d decided that if it was okay for me to vet her friends, it should be acceptable for her to do the same to mine. Her logic was impeccable, so I allowed it. Though I didn’t promise not to go out with a guy she didn’t like, I did take her feelings into account. Introducing Madison to my dates also gave me a chance to see how they acted with her—I had zero interest in going out with a guy who didn’t like her.

  Fletcher’s initial scores were solid. He arrived right on time, and his outfit was a masculine counterpart to mine, though he lost half a point for the sneakers. Then he got massive extra credit for sitting down next to Madison when I introduced them rather than rushing us out the door.

  They made polite small talk for a minute, then Fletcher said, “Do you have any questions for me?”

  “Excuse me?” Madison said.

  “My sister is a single mother, and my niece and nephews always have questions for the men she goes out with. I’ll see if I can remember what they usually want to know.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “I’ve never been married. I have a steady job, even if it doesn’t pay as much as I’d like it to. I don’t drink to excess often, but if I do get overly festive I know not to drive. I don’t do recreational drugs. And I’ve liked all pets I’ve been introduced to except a tarantula.” He smiled as if sure he’d covered all the bases, but if he’d thought he’d taken Madison by surprise, he was mistaken.

  She said, “Political leanings? Religious affiliation?”

  He blinked, but went with it. “Liberal and Democrat, though I have voted for one Republican because I knew her personally. Raised Episcopalian, but not a regular churchgoer since high school.”

  Before she could ask “Boxers or briefs?” I said, “Now it’s your turn, Madison.”

  She grinned. “Never married, full-time student, don’t drink other than one half glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve, don’t drive, and I’m a dog person. I intend to vote Democrat as soon as I can, and I’m nominally Christian in that I celebrate Christmas and Easter, but I’m not a churchgoer.”

  “Are you both satisfied?” I asked.

  They nodded, and Madison added, “You kids have a good time. Don’t stay out too late.”

  “Oh, that’s a new one,” I said drily. “I haven’t heard it since the last time I went out. Do you need me to write down the number for 911?”

  She sighed, which was hardly fair since she’d started it, and Fletcher and I left. The door clicked behind us, too, so she’d remembered to lock up. My maternal instincts satisfied, I was ready to turn my attention to my date.

  I know a lot of people detest first dates, but I rather enjoy them. The guys are usually on their best behavior, there are no simmering disagreements, and the expectations of all involved are low, which makes it all the more special if things go well. If things don’t go well, it’s easy to bow out of the relationship without acrimony.

  The night with Fletcher was definitely in the top ten. We had dinner at a cozy Italian place I’d never been to, and having had the ice broken by Madison’s interrogation, conversation was relaxed. While we were enjoying our lasagna, the subject of single motherhood came up, but I’d expected that—I like to know if my dates have ties to other women, so I can’t blame them for wondering about me. Besides, I find a man’s reaction to be an excellent litmus test of his character.

  I explained, “Reggie and I started dating in grad school—I think we spent half of our so-called dates working on our dissertations. We were just starting to plan out which universities we could both get jobs at when I got pregnant. I was all for adding a baby to the plan, but Reggie freaked. He never actually asked me to pick him or the baby, but he might as well have, so we went our separate ways.” It was an overly simplified version, but it was plenty enough information for a first date.

  At that point in the conversation, I’d had previous escorts ask me why I hadn’t aborted or, almost as infuriatingly, wax poetic about my nobility in keeping my daughter. None of those had made it to a second date. Fletcher simply said, “His loss,” which shot his score way up.

  After that, we talked about being adjuncts, but it was more shop talk than interview, so I didn’t feel that he was multitasking in order to write off our dinner bill on his taxes.

  As it turned out, I was the one multitasking. Though I was trying to keep Sid’s murder out of my mind, when Fletcher told me about some of the more interesting stories he’d covered, I asked, “Have you ever done anything with a murder? Like a cold-case murder?”

  “Only a piece about Charles Manson’s effect on society back in college. Why do you ask?”

  “Just morbid curiosity. Somebody I know had a friend who was murdered years ago, but the murderer was never caught. She’d always wanted to find out what really happened, and I wondered how one would go about investigating something like that.”

  He swirled the wine around in his glass. “First off, I’d check the police files. Then I’d research the victim—his friends and family, his job and coworkers.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, though I couldn’t quite see how to apply it to Sid. Since I didn’t want him to ask more about my cold case than I was willing to answer, I changed the subject to the choice of a movie. By the time the check came, we’d agreed on a spy thriller. I don’t like romance movies on a first date. There’s no better way to scare a guy off than have him think you’re eager for a happily-ever-after.

  We enjoyed our selection, though Fletcher had some critiques of the way the reporter love interest covered a story. Apparently wild sex with the subject of an investigation was frowned upon in journalistic circles.

  At the end of the evening, Fletcher walked me to the door but turned down my invitation to come inside. It wasn’t because he wasn’t interested in more dates—he just had to be up early the next morning to supervise his students at the soccer tournament.

  Madison pounced as soon as I came in. First she quizzed me on the date, and when I’d told her as much as I intended to, she asked if she could spend the afternoon at Samantha’s the next day for an anime marathon. After making sure she’d already done her homework for the weekend, I agreed.

  I checked out the armoire while Madison was on her way up to bed, but apparently Sid had managed to sneak upstairs at some point during the evening. He hadn’t even left a note in my room, which should have alerted me that he had a plan swirling around his empty skull.

  16

  Saturday afternoon, Sid came clattering down the stairs as soon as I got back from taking Madison to Samantha’s house. “I’ve got a plan!” he said cheerfully.

  “Movie, game, or dance party?”

  “Murder investigation!”

  “Did you remember something?”

  “No, but I realized we have a suspect: Dr. Kirkland!”

  “Okay, that would explain why you felt scared when seeing her, but she doesn’t seem the murderous type. That whole noted-academic thing.”

  “Shall I remind you of the Parkman-Webster case?” Sid replied. “Where one Harvard academic killed another?”

  “Oh, right,” I said, wondering which book my parents had left lying around for Sid to get ahold of. “Whether or not she’s a killer, she probably is the first person we should talk to. Fletcher says if he doesn’t have police records, he starts by researching the victim.”

  “You told Fletcher about me?” Sid said, eye sockets seeming to widen in alarm.

  “Never on a first date.”

  “Not funny!”

  “No, Sid, I did not tell Fletcher about you.” I’d never told anybody about Sid, not e
ven Madison’s father. I’d intended to, but I never got around to it before I broke up with him. “I merely asked, in a general way, how somebody would go about investigating a cold murder case.”

  “Did he have any good advice?”

  “Just the bare bones,” I said, waiting for an appreciative laugh, but Sid didn’t take the bait. “Fletcher said he’d start with police files, but that’s no good for us. Then he’d talk to the victim’s friends and family and coworkers—anybody the victim had known. In your case, that means Dr. Kirkland.”

  “Then you haven’t changed your mind?”

  “Nope. I’m just as mad as I was yesterday.”

  He grinned. “Then here’s my idea.”

  A couple of hours later, we were parked on the street in front of Dr. Kirkland’s house. She’d moved into a fairly isolated neighborhood, where the houses had lots of room between them. Her ranch-style home screamed nineteen-seventies to me and looked completely out of place in an old Yankee town like Pennycross, but it was freshly painted and the yard was well maintained.

  I’d put Sid into the hated suitcase, but just to get him into the van unobserved. Then I’d opened it again so we could talk. Fortunately, with the advent of hands-free cell phones, nobody looks askance at people who seem to be talking to themselves.

  Though he wasn’t visible unless somebody was standing right next to the van, and I had a blanket handy to cover him if need be, I was still having terrifying daydreams about being pulled over by cops and having to explain why I had a skeleton. Then I’d end up as the subject of Fletcher’s next article.

  “Is she here?” Sid wanted to know. “Do you see her?”

  “Her car is in the driveway.”

  “Have you got your cover story memorized?”

  “Of course.” Not that it was that great a story. I was going to claim that my parents had heard that Dr. Kirkland had moved to town, and since they knew her from academic circles, they wanted me to welcome her. For all I knew, they might actually have met her at some point, but they had no idea Kirkland had moved to town, and even if they had, they certainly wouldn’t have insisted I go see her.

  Still, it sounded semi-reasonable, and if I let it slip that I was an adjunct, it would sound even more plausible. Adjunct faculty members have a reputation for trying to suck up to get jobs. I admit that it’s not unwarranted.

  “Are you sure I can’t go in with you?” Sid said.

  “How? She’d either faint or call the cops. Maybe both.”

  “You could stick my skull in your purse and—”

  “No.” Before he could come up with some other crazy scheme, I got out of the van with the fruit basket from the “markdown” shelf at the grocery store. In my defense, all the items in it still looked fresh.

  I put on my brightest smile, went to the front door, and rang the bell. A minute passed. Two. Well, Dr. Kirkland was old and might not have good hearing. I rang the bell again, for slightly longer than before. Three minutes later, I knocked on the door loudly. I waited a few more minutes, then knocked again. Then I went back to the van and climbed in.

  “I guess she’s not here.”

  “But her car is here!” Sid said indignantly.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to come to the door. Maybe she’s got two cars. Maybe somebody picked her up. Maybe she’s out jogging.”

  “So, now what?”

  “We go home.”

  “But . . .” He didn’t say anything else, but two finger bones dropped to the floor of the van.

  I sighed. “Tell you what. Madison is out for the day anyway. We’ll kill some time, then come back.”

  Sid’s finger bones snapped back into place.

  I was so being played.

  We started with a trip to the nearest McDonald’s drive-through, followed it with a sumptuous meal in the front seat of the van, and rounded off the festivities with a stop at a gas station.

  Since Sid was getting what he wanted, he was good as gold. He hid and made sure not to talk to me when he could be overheard, and he didn’t steal any of my fries, which Madison always does.

  An hour and a half later, we were back at Dr. Kirkland’s house. Even though it was dark by then, there were no lights on in the house, so I wasn’t optimistic when the fruit basket and I went back to the front door. Ring. Wait. Repeat. Back to the van.

  “She’s still not home.” Before I could start the engine, I heard the thud of bones hitting the floor. “Dude, you’ve played the ‘I’m falling apart’ card one time too many. If you’ve got a suggestion, I’m happy to listen, but otherwise I’m going to go home and eat one of these apples.”

  “Maybe she’s in the back of the house and can’t hear the bell. You could go look back there.”

  It wasn’t completely ridiculous, so I got back out of the van. Sid, against all instructions to the contrary, was getting out, too. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Come on, Georgia. It’s not safe for you to be wandering around alone in a strange place. It’s dark, and there are trees in the way, so nobody is going to see me.”

  “What if Dr. Kirkland shows up?”

  “I’ll duck.”

  It didn’t seem worth the argument, especially since I didn’t have any idea that Dr. Kirkland was there, so I let it go.

  We started around to the back of the house, trying to look in windows as we went. Unfortunately Dr. Kirkland kept all her blinds down and her curtains firmly closed—we couldn’t even get a peek. There was a window in the back door, but even that had a blackout blind on it. The woman liked her privacy.

  I gestured for Sid to step back a bit and knocked loudly. Nothing. I knocked again.

  Finally, I heard noise from inside the house.

  “Somebody is home!” Sid said triumphantly.

  A second later, he was proven absolutely correct, though not in the way he’d hoped. A dog came barreling out of the dog flap in the door, which we hadn’t noticed in the darkness.

  I jumped back, thinking he might attack, but the dog barely noticed me. Because there in front of him was a canine dream come true—not just a single bone, but a whole skeleton, all for him.

  17

  The dog ran toward Sid with a bark that had to be one of pure joy. Sid backed away, tripped, and fell flat on his back. The dog was on him in an instant, going for a leg bone. Sid was doing his best to push it off when I got to them.

  Later, I noticed that the dog was red, with a lighter belly and a tail that curled up onto its back, and later still, I found out it was an Akita. At the time, however, it just looked like a mass of fur and teeth. Especially teeth. Sid was trying to shake the dog off, but it had a good grip on Sid’s left femur.

  I’d always been told not to stick my hand anywhere near a dog’s mouth during an attack, but when I tried for the tail, I got nothing but fluff. With an awful scraping sound, Sid finally pulled his leg bone from the dog’s mouth, but it instantly turned his attention to his arm. Then I heard a kind of popping sound as one of the bones came free. The dog ran back to the door with the bone in its mouth, slipping back through the doggie flap before I could stop it.

  “That ossifying hound has my ulna!” Sid yelped.

  “It went into the house.” I bent over so I could peer through the flap and into the house, but there was no light and I couldn’t see the dog. Or Sid’s ulna. I thought I heard ominous noises that could have been the dog gnawing. “Here, boy!” I called out hopefully.

  “What if it’s a girl?”

  “Here, doggie!” I corrected. “Come on out—there are more bones waiting for you.”

  “Hey!”

  “How else are we going to lure it out?”

  “Forget luring. It’ll just leave my ulna in there and come back for more.”

  I tried the doorknob, but of course it was locked.

 
“Can you pick the lock?”

  “Wrong sister.”

  “Can we call Deborah?”

  “One, she wouldn’t come. Two, it would take too long.” Not only was Dr. Kirkland likely to show up at any moment, all the commotion might have convinced the neighbors to call the police. Worst of all was what that mutt could be doing to Sid’s bone—we’d learned long ago that Sid didn’t heal. We could glue him back together if need be, but any tooth marks would be permanent.

  “You could break a window so we can open it and crawl in.”

  “I could,” I said, reluctant to cause damage to the house or get myself into more trouble. “Look, she’s got an alarm system.” I pointed to the telltale sticker on the door. “The doggie flap must be left off the system, but I bet any windows opening would set it off.”

  I stared at the house, hoping for the dog to feel guilty and return Sid’s bone.

  Then Sid snapped his fingers—which is a much sharper sound with no flesh in the way. “The doggie door!”

  “I don’t think I’ll fit.”

  “Not you, me. Slide me in a bone at a time, and then I’ll pull myself together on the other side.”

  “That’s actually kind of brilliant.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  Sid let himself fall apart just in front of the doggie flap, and I knelt down and picked up his skull. “In you go!” I said, and slid him inside the house.

  “I’m in!” he said triumphantly, if needlessly.

  I kept stuffing in bones until the stoop was clear. A moment after the last handful of foot bones went in, I heard the familiar clattering of metatarsals against the floor. Then the door opened and a skeletal hand reached out to drag me inside.

  “Hey! The alarm!”

  “It’s not on,” Sid said, pointing to a number pad right by the door. The status screen said Ready to Arm in blinking green letters.

  “Do you think it’s safe to turn on a light?” I asked.