A Skeleton in the Family

by Leigh Perry

  “I didn’t get rid of him! I came home and he was gone.”

  “You mean he just left? Do you think anybody saw him? Could he be traced back to you?”

  “He wouldn’t leave—somebody took him!”

  “Why would anybody steal a skeleton?”

  “Because he’s evidence in a murder.” As briefly as I could, given the many interruptions from Deborah, I explained what Sid and I had been doing since he first recognized Dr. Kirkland.

  “You’re insane,” Deborah said. “You’ve been playing games with a murderer. You must be insane.”

  “Fine, I’m insane. The point is, I think the murderer has Sid and he’s going to kill him.”

  “Georgia, it’s already dead. How could anybody kill it again?”

  “Crush him with a sledgehammer, put him in a garbage disposal, use acid, give him to the dog pound—I don’t know what he’s planning, and I don’t care. All I know is that Sid is in trouble!”

  “Sis, I know you’re fond of the old . . . You’re fond of Sid, but don’t you think this is for the best?”

  “How could—?” I stopped and thought. “Deborah, did you take Sid?”

  “What? No. Why would I—?”

  “You have been on me to get rid of him ever since I moved back to town.”

  “That doesn’t mean I stole him. Somebody else must have—Wait a minute! How could anybody get past the security system?”

  “The alarm was turned off when I got here.”

  “Say that again.”

  “The alarm wasn’t on.”

  “Georgia, I armed that system myself when I picked up Madison. What does the status screen say?”

  I carried the phone over to the system’s control board by the front door and followed my sister’s instructions until she was satisfied.

  She said, “It was disarmed thirty minutes after Madison and I left. So, who have you given the access code to?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Not even your honey?”

  “No, and Fletcher hasn’t been here since you installed it, so he couldn’t have seen me do it. The only ones who know our code are Madison, you, and me.”

  “What about bone boy? Did you tell him?”

  “No, but I did leave the instruction manual on the kitchen counter.”

  “With the code written in it?”

  “You told me to write the code in there.”

  “Yeah, okay. I did.”

  “So, yes, Sid could have read it and unlocked the door. But he didn’t wheel his own suitcase down the sidewalk. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Deborah gave a kind of barking laugh. “Nothing about that freak has ever made sense, Georgia. Look, I’m sorry you’re upset, but I don’t know where the skeleton is or how it got there. I’m just glad it’s gone.”

  “You—you—” I was so mad I couldn’t even get the words out. “Just keep Madison for a while longer. Can you do that for me?”

  “Of course, but I think—”

  I hung up on the rest of the sentence. I didn’t care what Deborah thought—I was going to get Sid back.

  Okay, I had to assume that Sid had disarmed the system to let somebody in. So he must have found something or figured something out while I was at work. If he’d just had a eureka moment or had shaken a memory loose, there was no way I could catch up, but if he’d been working on the computer again, I might have a chance. I’d had mine all day, but there was still my parents’ desktop system.

  When I got to the den, I found the computer turned on and open to a Web page, so I knew I was on the right track. Only the site he’d been looking at was the JTU Web site, which we’d looked at a dozen times before. I experienced no new revelations from the panorama of smiling students, enthusiastic instructors, and earnest administrators. So what other sites had he visited?

  I checked the browser history and saw that he’d been going through the JTU yearbooks. My first thought was that Sid had zeroed in on Allen Reece, too, but the pages he’d visited were faculty pages, not student photos. I found several shots of the late Dr. Kirkland teaching classes, showing bones to students, and working in the lab. Could Sid have been hunting for himself in those photos? I looked at the students shown to see if Allen appeared in any of them, but unless he was that one guy with his back to the camera, he wasn’t there.

  That’s where the trail stopped. The browser didn’t show any other Web sites viewed for the day, and I couldn’t figure out what else he could have been doing.

  Time was ticking away.

  I decided to stop worrying about what Sid had found so I could focus on what I’d learned.

  I knew Sid was really Allen Reece, who’d been romantically entangled with Kirkland’s future daughter-in-law and her son. The problem was, while I could link his murder to either of those two, or even to the twins, I couldn’t make that match up with Dr. Kirkland’s murder.

  What else did I know? Allen had recently lost his family in a fire. Maybe that was the link. What if one of the Kirklands had been behind it? What if Mary was an arsonist, and Allen had tracked her down, and she’d killed him to protect herself. . . . Nope, no good. For one, the article about Allen’s family had said it was a lightning strike that had caused the fire, and for another, the Allen family had lived in Wisconsin. Why would a Massachusetts arsonist have struck in a random town in Wisconsin? And I couldn’t connect that theory with Dr. Kirkland’s murder, either.

  What else? Allen was a computer guy who’d done some kind of work for Dr. Kirkland. Computers . . . The day Sid recognized Dr. Kirkland, she’d been at McQuaid to enlist a grad student for some statistics work. I hadn’t given it any further thought, but now that I did, why hadn’t she tried to get somebody at JTU? Maybe McQuaid was closer to her house, but surely she had more pull at JTU—even retired professors of her stature had juice. Could it be that she hadn’t wanted somebody at JTU to know what she was doing?

  Maybe whatever that was had something to do with what Allen had been doing for her in 1980.

  I flashed on Yo and her insistence that I not badmouth McQuaid for fear of cheapening her degree. She’d been overreacting, but it was true that a grad student’s thesis advisor could lend glory to a new career or, if a scandal arose, taint it. What if Allen had found something like that in the work he was doing for Dr. Kirkland, and he’d been killed to keep it hidden? Maybe she’d been killed to bury it, too.

  I went back to the page of the JTU yearbook that Sid had been looking at last, and suddenly I saw what Sid had seen. He’d seen his murderer.

  48

  I was close to panicking, but I told myself that panic wouldn’t help anybody. So I sat down and tried to think about who Sid was, just as I’d analyzed countless characters in literature.

  Once Sid realized who his killer was, he would have known that there might not be any way to catch him. After all, the only real evidence was Sid himself. Had he been the vengeful type, he might have gone after the killer with violent intentions, but I couldn’t see him doing that. The only times he’d ever shown real menace or even tried to be frightening were in my defense, either at that carnival or by pulling pranks on people who’d been mean to me.

  Nor would he have tried for a preemptive strike to defend himself. All during our haphazard investigation, he’d only been worried that he was endangering Madison and me. Our welfare was more important to him than his own.

  Then there was his concern that he was causing me trouble or that I might lose my job because of the time I was spending on his identity crisis. Belatedly I remembered the argument I’d had with Deborah, an argument Sid could easily have heard. Sid was probably thinking the same thing as my sister, that he was getting in my way. Plus there was the dog, the new boyfriend . . . He could have concluded that I no longer wanted him around.

  Adding all that up, I could easily see hi
m deciding to leave.

  So maybe he did disarm the security system at the house, climb into his suitcase, and . . . and what? Somebody must have wheeled that bag away, and who would Sid have asked? I couldn’t imagine that he’d have invited the killer into my house. The only people he knew were my parents, Deborah, and me. Come to think of it, how would he ask anybody?

  The answer was so obvious, I could have kicked myself: the phone. I thanked God that I’d used my cell to call Deborah, reached for the landline handset, and pressed Redial.

  After two rings, a familiar voice said, “Charles Peyton.”

  “Charles? This is Georgia.”

  “Good evening, Georgia. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, but—Okay, this is an odd question: Did somebody call you earlier from this number?”

  “Why yes, your friend Sid called. He said you were hoping that I could ferry that suitcase back to JTU. He told me to use the key under the mat to get into your house and get the case from the front hall, then lock the door behind me.”

  “Where did you leave the suitcase?”

  “Just inside the door of the Turner building, as requested. Did it not reach its intended recipient? Do you need my assistance?”

  I knew I could trust Charles, but I couldn’t imagine him reconciling Sid with his worldview. It was too much to ask. So I said, “No, I’m good.”

  I must not have been overly convincing, because he said, “Georgia, are you quite certain nothing is amiss?”

  “Everything is fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I hung up gently, though what I wanted to do was throw the phone up against the wall.

  Coccyx! That ossifying piece of sacrum was throwing himself onto his sword to protect Madison and me, and had enlisted Charles to deliver him to the killer.

  At least I knew were Sid had to be—in the basement of the Turner building. The question was how to get him out of there.

  Obviously I couldn’t call the cops or campus security. I could have asked Charles to lend me his key card, but after that last conversation, he’d want to go with me, and I didn’t want that. I could break into the building, but that would just bring the cops and/or security down on me. What I needed was a way to get in the door. Then I realized that I had a way if I could convince Deborah to help.

  I called her back.

  “You hung up on me!” she said.

  “I know, you’re right. I’m sorry, and I need your help.”

  “If it has anything to do with that bag of bones, forget it. You’re better off without him.”

  “Are you sure? Deborah, do you remember when I decided not to marry Reggie?”

  “Of course,” she said, startled by the apparent change of subject. “You went from ‘I want to spend my life with this man’ to ‘Who needs men anyway?’ overnight, with the wedding less than a week away.”

  “That’s because Reggie was cheating on me.”

  “Son of a—How did you find out?”

  “He used our phone to call another girl to make a date.”

  “Where you could hear him?”

  “No, I was upstairs, but Sid heard him. He’d gotten caught downstairs and was hiding in the armoire.”

  “And you never considered the idea that the skeleton was lying because it didn’t like Reggie?”

  “Of course, but Reggie admitted it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “He said marriage and the baby were scaring him, so he’d been sowing a few wild oats, but he really loved me and the baby and he would end it with the other girl.”

  “Did he?”

  “I have no idea. After that, I couldn’t trust him, and I was pretty sure I didn’t even love him anymore.”

  “No wonder you broke it off so suddenly.”

  “That’s the thing. I didn’t break up with him until a month after I found out.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because I was in grad school and I was pregnant. I figured I had to marry him for the baby’s sake. The only reason I didn’t was Sid. He found me crying late one night, and wouldn’t leave me alone until I told him the truth. I wanted the baby more than anything, but I was dreading being stuck with Reggie so much I was barely sleeping. It’s just that I figured there was no way I could handle raising Madison alone. You thought I was nuts to try it, didn’t you?”

  She hesitated. “I did think it would be difficult.”

  “Difficult or impossible? Honestly, Deborah, if I’d asked you back then if I’d be able to have a baby, finish grad school, and support the two of us, what would you have said?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you could do it,” she admitted.

  “I knew that, and I knew Mom and Phil would have the same doubts. Sid never did. When I told him I couldn’t do it alone he thumped me on top of my head—hard—and said I could do anything I wanted to. If I wanted to raise a baby by myself, I should stop my ossifying whining and do it. There were plenty of women who didn’t have half my brains who were bringing up half a dozen kids by themselves, and if I couldn’t figure out a way to make it work, then what use was all my education anyway?”

  Deborah chuckled in spite of herself.

  “He believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself. And because of that, I have Madison. Now are you going to help me get him back or not?”

  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  49

  After a quick stop at Deborah’s house to pick up what I needed, I headed to JTU. Luckily, JTU didn’t have a walled campus like McQuaid—the classrooms were interspersed with homes and businesses. I parked as close as I could get to the Turner building without actually being on campus and strolled across the street. There were still a few people around, which I hoped meant that Sid was still safe. The kind of work it would take to totally destroy him was best done when nobody else was nearby. That was if I was right and the killer wanted to destroy him—I was working on a tottering tower of assumptions, but it was all I had.

  I tried to be casual as I approached the building. The door was locked, as I’d expected, so I pulled out the key card that Deborah had given me.

  Since the reputation of locksmiths with shaky integrity was exactly what Deborah had been trying to dodge, it was a testament to her change of heart that she’d been willing to help me get past JTU security. No matter what else happened, I had to make sure it didn’t get traced back to her. So as soon as I got in the door, I started breaking the card into pieces, and each time I passed a trash can, I dropped in a piece until they were gone.

  The hallway was empty and the classrooms I passed were dark, so every footstep echoed. There weren’t even any cleaning people around. Though I’d grown up around colleges, I can still get creeped out by a school building at night. It was even worse in the dimly lit stairwell, but I knew how much noise an elevator makes in an otherwise unoccupied building, and I didn’t want to warn anybody that I was coming.

  I slowed to a crawl as I got to the basement, trying for utter silence as I crept toward the lab where Donald and Mary Kirkland had examined Sid. The door wasn’t closed all the way, and light was leaking around the edges. I peered through the crack when I got there, but didn’t see or hear anyone. I did see the suitcase on the floor. It was empty, and there was a haphazard pile of bones on the worktable that I was sure were Sid’s.

  I watched for what felt like an hour, but was probably more like five minutes, waiting for movement or sound. Nothing. Finally I hissed, “Sid.”

  There was no response.

  “Sid!”

  What was the matter with him? Couldn’t he hear me? Why was he just sitting there? Surely he wasn’t dead. Deader? I was afraid to call out again, so I just kept waiting for him to move. After another eternity, I stepped into the room, and finally I sensed movement. Except it wasn’t from Sid—it was from behind me. Before I could tu
rn, a hand reached over my mouth, and I smelled something sickly sweet before passing out.

  I woke up feeling vaguely uncomfortable, as if I’d fallen asleep at my desk. When the fog burned out of my brain, I realized I was propped in a desk chair, but not mine. My arms were tied to the armrests, and my feet were fastened to the chair legs. I blinked away the rest of my confusion and saw a man looking at me with what I had to admit was a convincing expression of concern.

  It was Jim Michaels, the chairman of the JTU anthropology department. And unless I’d totally blown it, he was Sid’s murderer and likely Dr. Kirkland’s as well. Knowing that, I wasn’t buying his concerned face.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Kind of dizzy, and my eyes are burning.”

  “It’ll pass. I thought the use of chloroform would be preferable to something more damaging.”

  I looked over at Sid’s remains. “Good to know that you’ve refined your methods.”

  I’ll give him points—he didn’t pretend not to know what I meant. “I was so young then, so caught up. I didn’t even know what I was doing when I hit that boy.”

  “Did you know what you were doing when you used that knife?”

  “I tried to make it painless, but I really had no choice. If I’d been arrested for assault, I never would have finished my dissertation on time.”

  “You must have been cutting it close on the deadline.”

  “Dr. Kirkland would have given me more time, but not my parents. I was out of money, and they weren’t going to give me so much as a month more. You don’t know how lucky you are to have parents who understand academia.”

  I wasn’t feeling overly lucky at that moment, but he did have a point. “What did Allen find anyway?”

  “I was afraid you’d discover his name. Might I ask how?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Only if someone else is involved.”

  “Neither my daughter nor my sister know,” I said quickly. “Just me, and Allen, there in the suitcase.”

  He raised one eyebrow at the part about Sid, but let it pass, perhaps attributing it to the lingering effects of the chloroform.