Murder Bone by Bone

by Lora Roberts

“Unless those bones are really old,” he said, shaking his head, “unless they’re Ohlone or something, they don’t belong under a sidewalk. Only foul play would have put them there.”

  Dinah chewed her lip. “They’re not Costanoan,” she said at last, reluctantly. “I could tell by the shape of the skull fragment. Native American skulls have a ridge—” She drew an imaginary line that bisected her own head, as if she were going to put that shiny hair into pigtails.

  “And if you had to pin it down, would you say between ten and twenty years, or less?” Drake was intent, leaning toward her.

  She sighed. “I’d be inclined to say more than ten, less than twenty, although it’s hard to be so precise with bone that’s been in the ground for a while.” She put her hand on his arm again, leaning forward persuasively. “It’s such a great opportunity for our students. We’ll dig up everything according to correct excavation technique. We’ll find every last piece of anything that’s in there—buttons, cloth fragments, you name it. And we’ll be able to tell you exactly where in the area under study the fragments came from.”

  Drake shrugged. “After the Montrose boys stirred everything up, that doesn’t matter so much.”

  Dinah pressed his arm. “So if it’s already disturbed, what difference would it make for us to go at it?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Drake said, smiling at her, but disengaging his arm. I could have told her that was as good as saying no, but I didn’t.

  He came over to me. “This is dull for you, Liz.”

  “No, I’m riveted.”

  “Moira’s not.” Moira was twisting a bit in my grip, but I wouldn’t set her down so close to the street. “Listen, I’m getting a crew out here. We’re going to tarp the area and put caution tape around it. I’ve let Public Works know that the sidewalk crews will have to give this one a miss for the time being. So you don’t have to worry about it anymore.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You look beat. Why don’t you go have a cup of tea or something?”

  I didn’t feel that beat, but probably next to Dinah’s dewy youthfulness I did look bad. I took myself off, since that was what he wanted, but I didn’t clean Moira up right away. Instead I stood just behind the lace curtain over the front door window and watched while Drake and Dinah conferred. Finally they both drove away in their separate cars, and I went to find a washcloth.

  Chapter 4

  The washcloth made Moira mad. That’s why I didn’t hear Claudia Kaplan knocking at the door. She was in the living room when I came back.

  “Hi, Liz. Hi, sweetie.” She came and took Moira out of my arms, and, contrary creature that she was, the baby beamed at her. Of course, Claudia was very comfortable-looking. Her gray hair was pulled back into a rather untidy braid, and her tall, queenly body was encased in one of her many brilliant muumuus. “I saw Drake drive away,” she continued, after suitably greeting Moira. “And some woman—young woman.” She said the word “young” with a slight emphasis, and looked a question at me. “What’s with those butcher’s rejects on the front porch? They for Barker?”

  I gestured her into the kitchen. “Come in here and have some tea while I check on the boys. It’s a long story.”

  Claudia loved the story; I knew she would. She wrote well-researched biographies of women she considered important: though scholarly enough to gain her the respect of her colleagues, they were also popular enough to provide her with a living, something the rest of us writers envied. I thought of my notes for the article I was writing for Organic Gardening. A week hadn’t seemed so long to wait before starting it; in fact, I had kind of thought I could just whip it out on Bridget’s computer in my spare time. Now I got a glimmering of how difficult that would be with four children around my neck. I wondered how Bridget had ever managed to produce anything, let alone her first novel, which would be published in two months.

  “You get all the luck,” Claudia said with envy. “Now you’ll be able to hear everything about the investigation. I bet this time Drake keeps you filled in.”

  “It’s not my idea of a good time.” I poured some more iced tea into Claudia’s glass and hit myself again, too. Stimulation would definitely be needed if I were to survive the week. “It’s hard enough to ride herd on all these kids without having to deal with the police and all.”

  “And that young woman. What’s her role here?”

  “She’s the anthropologist.”

  “Oh.” Claudia drank thoughtfully. “She and Drake seemed very … friendly.”

  “They met on a previous investigation. Dog bones, as it turns out.”

  “And these are truly human?”

  “That’s right.” I watched Moira play with the many strands of Claudia’s necklace. Why couldn’t she cuddle up to me like that? Admittedly I didn’t have Claudia’s advantage in the lap department, but it still didn’t seem fair.

  “Well, how long have they been buried? That seems to me to be the question.” Claudia frowned. “You know, I’ve lived in my same house for nearly thirty years, and I don’t remember anything like this happening. Of course—” she waved an inclusive arm— “it would be more likely to happen around here than in my neighborhood. It’s more respectable now, but all this used to be rental housing. Students, mostly. In fact, this place was a student rental until Emery and Bridget bought it ten or twelve years ago.” She fell silent, her lips moving a bit. “Twelve years,” she decided.

  “Dinah Blakely, the anthropologist, guessed between ten and twenty years for the bones. But she doesn’t really know how long, I think.”

  Claudia suddenly looked very fierce. “Drake doesn’t believe this has anything to do with Bridget or Emery, does he?”

  “At times like this, I know very little of what Drake is thinking.” I grinned at her. “But I doubt he suspects Bridget of knocking someone off and sticking them under the pavement. How is it that you remember so much about this neighborhood before Bridget and Emery? Your house is in Professorville.”

  Moira paused in her necklace play and assumed an expression of great concentration. Claudia patted her absently.

  “One of Alfred’s graduate students lived here for a while,” she said. “Let’s see, Jack was in elementary school—I think Carlie was, too. During the summer, before all the summer kids’ programs were available. This graduate student used to baby-sit for us, until we found out she was taking the children over to her place—” Claudia looked around— “here, and smoking dope with her friends while the kids watched TV.” She shook her head. “Real mangy group lived here then. Hippies, drug dealers, you name it. A lot of houses in this area were rented out to groups. Wild parties, loud music. Really, it was everywhere, even down the street from us. Alfred didn’t like it. He wanted to move to Crescent Park before Carlie started school, but the prices had gone up, and he decided we couldn’t afford to move. And I felt it gave the neighborhood vitality, even if you didn’t trust any of those young people as baby-sitters.

  Claudia’s house, though she didn’t keep it in very good repair, would be worth probably twenty times what they’d paid thirty years ago. Even my tumbledown little shack was worth a lot of money. I’d often thought of selling it and moving somewhere cheap. It’s just that nowhere seems particularly cheap anymore.

  “Do you remember anything about someone who disappeared and was never found?”

  Claudia wrinkled her forehead and then, when it delighted Moira, made more faces. “Not really,” she said finally. “I wasn’t real involved in community things then. Just coping with kids and trying to do some research.” She sniffed, and sniffed again. “Speaking of coping—”

  “I figured as much.” I stood up. “I’ll change her.”

  “Let me,” Claudia suggested, heaving herself to her feet while holding Moira a little away. “I haven’t changed a diaper in a long time.”

  “I won’t fight you for it.” I went to the back door and watched for a minute while the boys threw tennis balls for Barker, and he played keep-away with them, a g
ame he much preferred to fetch. Then he started teaching them to fetch; after they threw the ball, he stood there, his head cocked, and they eventually ran to get it. It was as good a way as any I could have devised to tire them out. I left them to it.

  Claudia came back, holding Moira’s hand while she toddled tippily along. “I still know how to put a diaper on,” she bragged. “Such knowledge is never really lost. Maybe I’m ready to be a grandmother now, if my kids would only cooperate.”

  She’d used a cloth diaper, and it was snug, not drooping anywhere. “That’s great,” I said. “Can you show me?”

  She spent a few minutes showing me how to fold and pin a diaper. Then the boys came in, bursting with high spirits and followed by an excited Barker.

  They were glad to see Claudia, who must have seemed like an ocean liner of familiarity in a cast-adrift world, and showered her with fervent hugs.

  “Say, I know.” She gathered the boys into a huddle. “How about I take you fellows down to the Peninsula Creamery for a milkshake?”

  We were all enthusiastic about that. I just had one reservation. “Uh, Claudia—you will be walking, right? Not driving?”

  “If you insist,” she said huffily. Claudia’s driving was famous for its wretchedness. Considering her plunging, absentminded method of progression, her actual lack of accidents was thought by her friends to be positive proof for the concept of guardian angels. However, I didn’t want to risk that this expedition would be the time that Claudia had the accident she’d deserved for years.

  I watched them down the street, Claudia puffing along pushing Mick in the stroller while Corky and Sam ranged ahead. Moira wept a little in a desultory way, but was placated by sitting in the high chair with Cheerios and apple slices on the tray. For a few minutes she ate happily while I swept a fresh accumulation of dirt off the faded linoleum, which was not much newer than my own ancient floor covering.

  Bridget and Emery hadn’t remodeled their early-l900s bungalow, although she was always talking about doing it. Except for a newish refrigerator, the kitchen probably looked much as it had for the past fifty years, roughly the age of the Wedgewood stove. The cabinets and woodwork were from the same era as those in my place, a time when cabinets were made from solid wood, painted with thick white enamel, and placed scantily around wainscoting-clad walls. It was charming, if run-down, and at least Bridget had a walk-in pantry for actual storage. Despite its age and inconvenience, her kitchen was homey and welcoming.

  Bridget had mentioned once that she and Emery had painted over a lot of Day-Glo colors before they moved in. I could imagine the marijuana brownie-baking sisters from the seventies in the kitchen, along with their long-haired, draft-dodger boyfriends, before cynicism and life brushed the bloom off them, listening to Hendrix and toking up. My sister, eight years older, had worn platform shoes and skirts as short as she could get away with; the arguments about her skirt length had made an impression on an eight-year-old. By the time I was old enough to rebel, the initial parental shock over bell bottoms and torn jeans had dissipated; impassioned discussion of the principles of peace and love had given way to uninterested acceptance of bizarre dress and provocative pronouncements.

  I still held those times up in my mind as purer, less sullied than the era of greed that followed. However, my feelings probably had more to do with my own wide-eyed youth than with historical truth. And it’s been a long time since abstract virtues have had any impact on my life.

  Moira contributed some Cheerios and an apple slice to the dirt I was sweeping, so I took her down from the high chair, washing her face again. We settled in the living room with a basket of bristle blocks. It was nearly lunchtime; I wondered if the boys would still be hungry after milkshakes. I also wondered if Claudia would survive. I should have taken Moira in the stroller and gone with her, but the notion of having just one child to tend for a while had been too enticing. I stuck some bristle blocks together to form a frame and prayed to survive the week.

  Barker roused from the blissed-out sleep of a well-exercised dog and began living up to his name. Startled, Moira turned a worried face to me. I picked her up and went to the door, expecting the mail carrier.

  A battered white van with the Stanford emblem on the side panel had pulled up in the driveway. Several people were milling around, directed by a tall, slim man whose long, graying hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  Moira and I went out on the porch. I let Barker out, too, but I kept a hand in his collar.

  “Excuse me,” I said politely. “What are you doing?”

  No one paid any attention. Besides the ponytailed man in charge, three other jeans-clad people hauled shovels and other equipment out of the van. All of them wore baseball caps. One was a woman in her early twenties, I judged. The other two were men about the same age.

  I raised my voice. “Hey!”

  The older man looked at me and held up his hand in a laconic wave. Barker began growling. He doesn’t like men much until he gets to know them. Sometimes not then.

  “Hey! What are you doing!”

  The older man came over, stopping at the front of the porch steps when he heard Barker’s growl. His three companions quit working and watched.

  “Hi. You the home owner?” The ponytailed man smiled. His face was lean, with leathery skin and pale, almost silvery blue eyes. The charming smile revealed a flash of gold tooth back among his molars. His sleeveless T-shirt emphasized a limber, attractively muscled build, showing a bit of curling grayish chest hair. A red bandanna was tied jauntily around his neck.

  “I’m living here. Who are you?”

  His grin widened. “You get to the point, don’t you. Will your dog bite?”

  “Probably.” I kept my finger in Barker’s collar. He still had his fur raised, though it wouldn’t take much friendliness from the man to make Barker his buddy for life. He’s a good watchdog for five minutes, then he wants to play.

  The man laughed, gold tooth flashing. “Well, I hope he doesn’t. I’m Richard Grolen, from the archaeology department. At Stanford,” he added when I frowned.

  “That’s nice. Why are you here?”

  He shook his head, still smiling. “Man, I guess Dinah didn’t tell you. We’re the excavation team.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the group of students who leaned against the van.

  “Dinah told you to come?”

  He settled his thumbs in the belt loops of his worn jeans. They fit him, I noticed, very well. “She said you had some bones to dig up.” He looked at the pile of dirt where the sidewalk used to be. One of the rib bones still stuck out. “I see what she means. This will be great lab work.”

  He moved as if to turn away. I tightened my grip on Barker’s collar, and he growled again. “Did she also tell you,” I said, “that the police don’t want you to dig them up?”

  “They don’t?” Richard Grolen’s face registered shocked surprise. “No, she didn’t mention that. Truth to tell, I haven’t actually spoken with her. She left a message with this address, said she was looking into it as a lab site.”

  “She looked. It isn’t.”

  He took off his baseball cap and brushed one hand over the top of his head, where the straight, gray-blond hair was thinning. “Thing is,” he said confidentially, “we were heading for a site up near Jasper Ridge and we got kicked out. There’s a big butterfly count going on or something, and they were afraid we’d disturb the bugs.” He smiled disarmingly. “So when I got her message we were already loaded up looking for a place to dig. So …” He shrugged, moving those nice chest muscles in an interesting way. “Here we are. Rarin’ to go.”

  Moira started squirming to get down. Barker pulled at his collar. One of the students called plaintively. “Should we get the stakes out, Dr. Grolen?”

  A doctor, yet. “Look,” I said, starting to lose my grip on child, dog, and temper. “The police want to do their own investigation here. You’ll have to talk to them before you can lift so much as one
shovelful of dirt.”

  Richard Grolen frowned. His voice was a little crisper. “You know, the sidewalk isn’t on your property or anything. I’ll take care of the police. You don’t have to worry about this at all.”

  “That’s what you think.” I knew how Drake would feel about the archaeology department moving in on his bones, no matter how charming their representatives. “I can’t control the dog anymore.”

  Luckily a bigger force of nature was unleashed, before Barker could bound down the stairs and kill the students with big, wet, dog kisses. Melanie Dixon’s BMW drew up to the curb. She climbed out, tightening her mouth in disapproval when she saw the pile of dirt. She scanned and dismissed the students before lighting on Richard Grolen at the foot of the stairs. Her eyes widened.

  “Why, Richard!” She hurried up the sidewalk and took his hands, laughing. “Richard Grolen! How nice to see you again, after all this time!”

  Richard’s face wore that charming smile again. “Melanie! Good God, this takes me back. As if this neighborhood wasn’t enough, now you’re here!”

  “It’s been so long.” She gave him a dainty hug and stepped back. “You look just the same, you old pirate. What have you been up to? Why are you at Bridget’s house?”

  Richard gave me the tail end of the smile. “Is this Bridget? You’re Melanie’s friend? Small world, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be silly.” Melanie scowled at me as if I had been guilty of impersonation. “This is Liz. What in the world is happening here, Liz? What’s that?” A toss of her head, which hardly disturbed her shiny, perfectly cut brown hair, indicated the dirt pile. “Why are you keeping Richard standing in the yard?”

  “I’m not keeping him at all. He can leave now.” Melanie and Bridget are both part of a poet’s group that meets regularly in Palo Alto, and they both have young children. Aside from those points in common, they are an ill-assorted pair to be friends. Bridget has a warmth and common sense valued by everyone she knows; Melanie comes from a well-connected Palo Alto family and knows something, usually something detrimental, about everyone who’s anyone in this town. She is not much taller than I am, always perfectly groomed, and always seems skeptical of my right to live in the same town that she does.