A Skeleton in the Family

by Leigh Perry

  I caught him in the adjunct office after teaching my Thursday classes, and since I didn’t want anyone overhearing—particularly Sara—I asked him to join me at the McQuaid Coffee Corner.

  First we wrangled over who was paying for the coffee, which resulted in him agreeing to let me treat him to coffee and pastries as long as he got to pick up the next check. Then I said, “Charles, you’re teaching two classes at JTU this semester, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I need a favor.”

  “Anything, dear lady.”

  “It’s kind of odd, and maybe technically illegal—”

  “I said anything. Illegality does not concern me, and I know you would never ask me to do anything immoral or dangerous. So of course I am happy agree to whatever you need.”

  “Charles, you are a pearl without price.” The plan was simple: I’d meet him in the parking lot after he was done at McQuaid for the day and give him Sid’s suitcase, which he would take to JTU and leave outside Dr. Kirkland’s office. Then, just before people started arriving the next morning, he’d retrieve the suitcase. I’d meet him at Jasper’s Diner, buy him breakfast, and take the suitcase back.

  His only objection was to my paying for breakfast. He maintained that since I’d just bought coffee, the next day would be his turn. I finally conceded. Getting a free breakfast was little enough to endure.

  All that was left was to arrange a time for us to meet that afternoon. Sid was already ensconced in his suitcase in my van. At the appointed time, the transfer was made. I was supposed to be off the hook for the rest of the evening, but it didn’t work out that way.

  Madison probably slept great with no “squirrels” moving around in the attic, but I tossed and turned most of the night, worrying about Sid.

  29

  I finally dozed off at four in the morning and ended up sleeping through my alarm. If Madison hadn’t set hers, I never would have gotten up, and as it was, I was running so late that I missed the rendezvous with Charles. When I didn’t see his car at Jasper’s, I checked for text messages and found one saying he was sorry he’d missed me. He promised to leave the suitcase at my desk.

  After that, I just barely made it to class on time. As soon as that was over, I had to trot to my parents’ office to meet half a dozen students who’d asked for critiques before handing in the week’s essay. So it was nearly noon before I got to the adjunct office.

  As soon as I walked in the door, I could tell something was off. Nobody was looking at me. More than that, they were pointedly not looking at me, and the room was unnaturally quiet. Every experienced teacher or instructor knows that situation. The last time it had happened to me was when I was in the middle of a class and had to take an emergency call from Madison’s school. I excused myself, made sure that Madison was in no immediate danger, then came back to discover that I urgently needed password protection on my laptop.

  I hadn’t left my laptop unattended this time, but Charles had left Sid’s suitcase at my desk. Knowing his penchant for tidiness, I couldn’t imagine he’d left it stuck out into the aisle, and there was no reason for it to be partially unzipped. I opened the bag just enough to see that Sid was still in there. Then I cleared my throat, and one finger bone moved just enough to point at the desk in front of me. Toward Sara.

  Neither Charles nor Fletcher were in the room, which meant that I was without my closest allies, so I pushed Sid under the desk, sat down, and pulled out some random papers while I thought it through. Then, in a calm voice that was intended to carry throughout the room, I said, “Sara, if you’d wanted to know what was in my suitcase, you could have just asked.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, looking around for an informant.

  “I’m talking about you opening my bag. You know we adjuncts have little enough privacy as it is. We have to share this office, and our desks don’t lock. We have nowhere to store anything, or meet with students, or even make a confidential phone call. It always seemed to me that the only way we keep from killing each other is by respecting each other’s space. So I would appreciate it if you’d respect mine from here on out. Okay?”

  Without waiting for an answer, I pretended to read my random papers, but out of the corner of my eye I could see other adjuncts glaring at Sara. They were realizing that if she was that open about snooping in my things, she wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to them.

  “You can’t prove I opened that bag!” she sputtered.

  I tried to look surprised that the conversation was ongoing. “I don’t intend to press charges, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “If anybody should press charges, it’s JTU. You stole that skeleton from them! I know how much that thing is worth on the black market—you only wanted to see if it could be traced.”

  Now every adjunct in the room knew I had a skeleton, and in very short order, every adjunct in the college would know, too. Word might even spread to the regular faculty, and it would certainly spread to adjuncts on other campuses. It was time to redirect the conversation.

  I sighed in exasperation—that was easy, because I really was pretty damned exasperated. “Number one, I found this skeleton in my parents’ attic, where it has been for over thirty years. My sister is a locksmith, and I thought it might make a good display for her front window for Halloween. Skeletons, keys, skeleton keys?” I looked at her as if making sure she was keeping up with me.

  “Then why did you ask about the identification number?”

  “Because I realized the skeleton is real, and not a reproduction. I knew my parents had obtained it legally, but I didn’t know about the place they bought it, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to check. Which I trusted you to help me with.” I paused, letting the silence imply how sadly my trust had been misplaced. “At any rate, this skeleton can’t be from JTU—as you pointed out, they only mark female skeletons with an F. This one is male. So I don’t know where it came from. At any rate, my sister doesn’t want a real skeleton in her shop window, so I’m going to put this one back in the attic. It is legal to keep a skeleton, by the way.”

  “Not if it’s stolen! Where did your parents get it?”

  “It followed them home, okay? Look, Sara, I’ve been trying to be polite, but I have no intention of discussing my skeleton with you anymore. I’m also not going to discuss the papers in my satchel, the candy hidden in my desk, or the tampons I’ve got in my pocketbook. Because none of them are any of your business!”

  I turned back to my bogus paperwork, and pretended to work while I tried to get a feel for the reaction of the other adjuncts. Did they think Sara was in the right? Did they think I was a freak for carrying around a skeleton? Were they hoping for more fireworks?

  A few minutes later, a drama instructor I’d barely spoken to came by, and said, “If you want help tracking ID marks, a friend of mine teaches at a med school at BU.” I thanked her, and I noticed that she gave Sara a dismissive look before leaving. Then my old boyfriend stopped at my desk long enough to tell me about a book he’d read that he thought I’d like, and a physicist asked me for my sister’s phone number because he needed a new lock put on his house.

  Nobody spoke to Sara.

  I stayed in the office about an hour after that, killing time in order to make the point that I had no reason to be embarrassed, then went to teach my next class.

  I took Sid’s suitcase with me.

  30

  As soon as class was over, I headed for the van and put Sid up front so we could talk as I drove home.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “I’m sorry, Georgia. That woman opened the suitcase and—”

  “But are you okay? Are all of your pieces intact?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I let out a deep breath. “Thank goodness—I wouldn’t have put it past her to steal a bone as a souv
enir. And don’t apologize for what that ossifying piece of sacrum did. If I’d met Charles when I was supposed to, this never would have happened. It’s my fault for sleeping late.”

  “But now people know about me. I mean, they don’t know I’m alive—sort of alive. Moving, anyway. But they know you’ve got a skeleton.”

  “So what?” I scoffed. “Academics are supposed to be weird. I went to a party at a stats teacher’s house once, and he had three stuffed cats on his mantel. Not plush toys—taxidermy stuffed. They were all his former pets. Now that caused talk.”

  “But—”

  “It’s done, it’s over. Just tell me you found out something in Dr. Kirkland’s office.”

  He hung his head.

  “They’ve cleaned the place out already?”

  “No, but—”

  “Could you not get out of the suitcase?” As part of our prep work, we’d rigged it so he could open the case from the inside, but the bag was old, and the zipper could have gotten stuck.

  “It worked fine, but—”

  “Were the file cabinets locked? I knew I should have dug up a skeleton key for you. No offense. Or—”

  “Can I get a word in edgewise? Somebody else broke into the office.”

  “Somebody did what?”

  “I’m starting at the beginning now. Charles left me at the door, as planned, and I waited for half an hour to make sure he was gone.” I’d lent him a watch with a glow-in-the-dark face for the occasion. “Then I got out and used the over-the-transom method to get into the office.”

  “You didn’t chip a bone, did you?”

  “Nope. There was a rug, and that kept things quiet, too. Once I got enough of myself inside, I opened the door, pulled myself together, and got the suitcase inside. I was about to start looking around when I heard somebody coming down the hall. Of course, I didn’t know if he was coming into that office, but just in case, I got back into the suitcase and zipped it shut. I was just in time, too. The guy came in.”

  “Did he have a key?”

  “It sounded like he did.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Do you see X-ray-vision eyes?” Sid asked, and stuck his fingers into his sockets.

  “Stop that. It looks painful.”

  If Sid had had eyes of any description, I suspect he’d have rolled them. “I don’t know who it was. I was afraid it was somebody coming to pack up the office and was worried that I’d end up in storage, but as far as I could tell, all the guy did for the next hour was fiddle with Dr. Kirkland’s computer.”

  “How do you know it was a he if you didn’t see him?”

  “I don’t,” he admitted, “but it sounded like a man mumbling under his breath while he fiddled.”

  “Then what?”

  “He walked around, opened drawers, flipped through papers. I think he was looking for something.”

  “Did he open your suitcase?”

  “He tried to, but I held on to the zipper from my side.” Sid was fairly strong, given his lack of muscles. “I was afraid he was going to try to force it, but he gave up pretty quickly. Whatever it was he was looking for, he didn’t expect it to be in a suitcase. Then he rummaged around some more and left.”

  “I suppose it could have been perfectly innocent,” I said.

  “Yeah. In the middle of the night, somebody sneaks into the office of a dead professor and messes with her computer. He was probably just playing Minecraft.”

  “Okay, not innocent. Sacrum, I wish I knew who it was.”

  “Maybe we should put a peephole in the suitcase before I go undercover next time.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time! What if that guy had opened the suitcase and found you? Or just wheeled you away? I just hate that we risked you like that and then didn’t learn anything.”

  “It wasn’t like I didn’t try.”

  “Don’t tell me you left the suitcase after all that.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Sid!”

  “I waited for an hour to make sure he was gone, and the first thing I did was wedge a chair under the door to make sure nobody else could come strolling in.”

  I was torn between wanting to smack him for taking the chance, and wanting to smack him for teasing me. So I smacked him. “What did you find out?”

  He looked disgusted. “Zilch. I went through all the files, but there was nothing about the school’s skeleton collections. Nothing useful on her computer, either.”

  “There was no password protection on it?”

  “Dr. Kirkland used one of those ‘remember me’ features, so I didn’t have to enter it, so I’d have found anything if there was anything to find.”

  “Coccyx!” I thought I heard a bone drop. “Don’t you fall apart on me now, Sid. We aren’t through, not by a long shot.”

  “Then what next?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll come up with something. Okay?”

  “I just wish I had a ‘remember me’ feature for myself,” he said sadly.

  31

  Madison was doing homework while listening to music when we got back to the house, so I was able to sneak Sid into the house and up to the attic without her noticing. Only when he was out of sight did I let her know I was on the premises.

  I wandered to the kitchen to see what was available for dinner and was weighing the ease of ordering pizza against the impact on my budget when my cell phone rang. It was Fletcher.

  “Did you really take a skeleton to class?” he asked.

  “It took you this long to hear? The grapevine is running slow.”

  “I wasn’t on campus today, so it took a while for the news to get to me. So, did you?”

  “Yes, actually. My parents had one in the attic and I was trying to check on the provenance. No biggie. What is a biggie is that Sara had the nerve to open my suitcase! Why aren’t people talking about that?”

  “Because nosy coworkers are a dime a dozen, whereas skeletons in suitcases are far more gossip-worthy. If it makes you feel any better, I hear that the way in which you dressed her down was masterful.”

  “I like the sound of that. I know it’s probably not very mature, but there’s something cleansing about righteous anger.”

  “I live for righteous anger. Why do you think I became a reporter?” He went on to tell about the first really big scam he’d revealed in print, which I appreciated both because it was interesting and because it distracted him from the skeleton in the suitcase.

  Unfortunately, he eventually got back to Sid. “You know, I bet my boss would get a kick out of a feature about strange things people keep in their attics. Do you think your parents would mind if I used them as an example? Maybe take a picture of the skeleton?”

  “No. I mean, yes, they’d mind. They’re really private people.”

  “Oh,” he said, surprised by my refusal. “I wouldn’t have to use their names.”

  “Fletcher, there are people all over campus who know I was lugging a skeleton around. I think they’d figure out who you were writing about.”

  “Since everybody already knows, what difference would it make if it was in the paper?”

  “There’s a difference between everybody on campus knowing and everybody in town knowing. Not to mention the fact that the paper goes online, too.”

  “There’s already a picture of it online.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sara posted a picture of the skeleton on Facebook.”

  “Are you serious? Please tell me she didn’t use my name.”

  “She did misspell Thackery.”

  “That ossifying piece of sacrum!”

  “Um . . . what?”

  “You realize that colleges Google people before hiring them, right? Which means that any time I try to get a job, somebody could bring up Sid.”


  “Sid?”

  “The skeleton.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I’m too enraged to make any sense. But if I miss out on any jobs because of that woman, I am going to cram her into that suitcase!”

  “I could ask her to delete it, maybe sweet-talk her a little, take her out to dinner. Well, coffee. I don’t think I could stand her for a whole dinner.”

  “Thanks, but as soon as she realized you were just trying to get her to take it down, she’d plaster it all over the Web. No, this is going to require a special effort on my part.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Don’t worry—I can virtually guarantee that there will be no loss of life.”

  “Now you’re scaring me. But I like it.”

  “You go for a badass, do you?”

  “Oh yeah. I know this is incredibly late notice, but are you free for dinner tonight?”

  “I might be. Let me check something and call you back.” In other words, I wanted to see if Madison minded being on her own for the evening. It turned out Deborah had invited both of us to go out with her, but was happy to settle for a one-on-one with her favorite niece. In fact, she was willing to have Madison sleep over so I could make it a late night. I could almost see the wink when Deborah said that.

  I called Fletcher back to set a time, then scooted upstairs for a quick shower and change. I was finishing up my makeup when I saw Deborah coming up the stairs.

  “I didn’t hear the bell,” I said suspiciously.

  She just smirked and patted the pocket that presumably held her lock picks. “So you’ve got a hot prospect.”

  “A prospect? You make it sound as if I’m actively hunting for a husband.”

  “It would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?”

  “I haven’t noticed you saying yes to the dress, or ordering pastel-colored padlocks to use as wedding favors.”

  “I may not be married, but I’m settled. I have a business and a home of my own. You, on the other hand, are living moment to moment.”

  “How can one live other than moment to moment? Should I be skipping moments, or going back for moment do-overs?”