Murder Bone by Bone

by Lora Roberts

  Claudia, finding only coffee beans instead of the instant she prefers, gave up. “I’m going home to finish my nap,” she declared. “It’s too exciting for an old woman like me around here.” She took the juice pitcher from Melanie and handed it to me. “You’ll have to give me a ride, Melanie. Liz picked me up this morning.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” The Suburban had been seeking its home driveway and carried me blindly along with it.

  Claudia tugged on Melanie’s arm. “Anyway, your family will be wondering what’s happened to you.”

  Melanie went, reluctantly. “Remember, I’m taking Moira on Tuesday and Thursday, and you’re picking up Amanda when you get the boys after school tomorrow and Wednesday.”

  “It’s very nice of you. Thanks.” It was nice, since I would be able to teach my writing workshop Tuesday without worrying about Bridget’s offspring.

  “I told Bridget I would,” Melanie said, making it clear whom the favor was for.

  When they were gone, the kitchen seemed much quieter, even with three boys in it. I sat down at the table, my breath whooshing out.

  “It’s draining, isn’t it?” Bruno smiled at me sympathetically. “I didn’t know you would be brave enough to take on staying with children while their parents are away.” His gaze turned speculative. “Do you do this often?”

  “Never again,” I said, wishing that my own juice was something stronger.

  Bruno’s face fell. Drake laughed. “Too bad, Bruno. I know you’re anxious to get your missus off to yourself somewhere and create a fourth little Morales, but you’ll have to find someone else to baby-sit. Liz is wasting away here.”

  “I can still listen, anyway.” I told them about the conversation I’d overheard, and they both took notes, Drake in his tiny paper-spewing notebook, and Bruno very neatly on his small computer.

  “It fits in with what Claudia told you. Melanie knows more than she’s telling about what happened here, for sure.” Drake, frowning, scrawled something else in his notebook.

  “We must get more complete statements from all these people at once.” Bruno pushed back his chair and stood up.

  Drake agreed. “You do it, Bruno. I’ve been slaving away on this case all weekend, and I promised to bring pizza over here tonight.”

  The boys broke into a chant of “Pizza! Pizza!”

  Bruno looked from Drake to me, smiling. “Yes, of course. You do that, Paolo. Enjoy your taste of family life. Maybe you will find it so agreeable you’ll want more of it.”

  “He can have my share.” It came out with a lot more feeling than I realized. Bruno looked chagrined.

  Drake laughed. “You’ll feel better after something to eat. Pizza with everything?”

  I shuddered.

  Bruno closed his notebook computer. “I will go, before you make me hungry. Perhaps I’ll have a name to put on those bones by morning. We don’t want the police to be the last to know, do we?”

  They made plans for the next day, while I went in to Moira, whose nap had been ended by the pizza chant. Drake phoned the pizza order in as soon as Bruno left, and the boys were gracious enough to help clear the kitchen table of extraneous cups and glasses while he went to pick it up.

  It did help a great deal to have Drake there in the evening. He kept the boys entertained pretty well by telling them all about weapons training, a subject Bridget definitely wouldn’t have approved. I didn’t either, but I was too tired to object.

  The biggest problem was getting Drake to leave. By the time we’d tucked everyone in for the night, and Sam more than once, I was ready to go to bed, too.

  “Doesn’t all this domesticity do something to you? I kinda like this homebody feeling.” Drake put his arm around the unresisting lump that I had become, sitting on the couch.

  “Five more full days of this before I’m set free.”

  “Now, Ms. Sullivan. Where are your latent motherly impulses?”

  “I was born without them.” I yawned, hugely, and Drake couldn’t keep his own jaws still.

  “It is tiring, isn’t it?” He hugged me a little closer. “I was counting on getting a couple of twelve-hour nights of sleep this weekend. Been up late three nights in a row.”

  “You can get to bed early tonight if you leave now.”

  He gave me a look. “You’re adorable when you’re so eager.”

  I was too tired even to take umbrage. “I’m sure you’ve figured out that pushing a romantic relationship on someone in the terminal stages of exhaustion would not produce quality results.”

  “Don’t you feel the need of having a man around tonight?” He looked hopeful. “You want some protection, right?”

  “I have Barker. He’s all the man I could deal with right now.” Barker stirred on the floor when he heard his name. He was stretched out on top of our feet, every so often sighing an enormous doggy groan.

  “That mutt.” Drake stood up, taking his feet away from Barker and his arm away from me. I was, of course, relieved. “Some day, Liz, you are going to stop running so hard. I just hope I’m still around then.”

  Left alone, Barker and I circled through the house, locking windows and doors and finally ending up in our temporary abode, the master bedroom. It was a nice room, furnished with Bridget’s trademark of frugality and ingenuity. Tonight, despite my fatigue, sleeping in that big, fluffy bed where procreation had regularly been accomplished made me feel uncomfortable. I read deeply into Villette with Barker snoring on the floor beside the bed for some time before sleep claimed me.

  The morning came too quickly. I could have used another couple of hours of unconsciousness, but Mick was an early, and noisy, riser, and a lot of scurrying around went on to get Corky and Sam and him off to school. The carpool Bridget had arranged came by to pick up the older boys. I put Moira in the stroller and walked Mick down to his preschool, where we lingered for a few minutes, awed by the way the teachers managed to function in the chaos.

  The walk home was very pleasant. Despite her demanding nature, with only Moira to tend I felt pleasantly carefree. We admired a couple of dogs, discussed the first crunchy leaves from the sycamores in Johnson Park, and waved at Stewart and Doug and their buddies, who were starting to deploy their equipment. When we got to Bridget’s driveway, Dinah Blakely was parking her car at the curb.

  “Am I the first?” She looked cheerful in her red jacket and black jeans. No khakis this time; I supposed she was only going to supervise, not dig. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

  Agreeing with this, I wheeled the stroller up the front walk and sat on the porch steps to disengage Moira. Dinah put down her bucket of tools, took one edge of the tarp that covered the excavation, and pulled it back with a flourish.

  Then she screamed, turning away with her hands to her face to stare at me, while incoherent noises came from her throat.

  Leaving Moira in the stroller, I ran over to the edge of the sidewalk. Richard Grolen lay facedown in the dirt. The back of his head was hidden by a heavy, jagged chunk of concrete.

  He appeared quite dead.

  Chapter 11

  The screaming upset Moira, but, strapped into her stroller with her back to the commotion, she seemed less in need of help than Dinah Blakely, so I turned back to Dinah.

  But even as I wondered whether to slap her or shake her out of her screams, she stopped. Falling to her knees beside Richard, she pulled at the chunk of concrete.

  “Um, I wouldn’t do that.” I stepped forward. “We should leave everything just as we found it. Why don’t you go call the police and I’ll stay with the body?”

  She didn’t answer at first, just flung me a disgusted look. With the chunk of concrete off his head, Richard didn’t look so bad. True, the back of his head was smashed like a soon-to-be peeled hard-boiled egg. Dinah pressed her fingers into his neck, then turned his face out of the dirt.

  “Look,” I said, kneeling beside her. “You shouldn’t be touching—”

  “He’s alive, you i
diot!” Her words came out sharp and loud. She groped in her handbag, still anchored to her shoulder by its strap. “Forget the police. Call an ambulance.” She pulled a compact out of her bag, yanked it open, polished the mirror briefly on her sleeve, then held it near Richard’s face. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it clouded.

  I leaped up and raced for the steps. Moira made urgent noises as I went by. “In a minute,” I told her, taking the steps two at a time. My voice choked with hope and dread, I told the 911 dispatcher where to send an ambulance immediately. She wanted me to stay on the line, but I had other calls to make.

  I dialed Drake’s home number, knowing he probably hadn’t left for the day yet. With the phone cord stretched to its utmost, I could see Moira at the foot of the porch steps, her little face screwed up angrily. Beyond her was an incongruous picture: Dinah Blakely using her small archaeologist’s brush to whisk the dirt away from Richard’s face.

  Drake answered on the third ring. “What?” His voice was surly—no coffee yet.

  “Come over right now.”

  “What now? Someone walk off with the dirt this time?”

  “No.” I looked out the door again. “Someone added something fresh to the display. Richard Grolen.”

  “Holy shit.” Drake hung up, so I did, too.

  I grabbed a packet of graham crackers and headed outside. Moira was easily placated with a cracker, but when the sirens started, she wrinkled up her face again.

  Unfastening her from the stroller, I hitched her onto my hip, and went over to see what Dinah Blakely was up to.

  She paid no attention to me. Her face was set in lines of fierce concentration, despite the tears that leaked down her cheeks. She didn’t seem to hear the sirens growing steadily nearer. I stepped into the street when the ambulance turned the corner, waving them to the house.

  Then Drake’s car horn blared behind me. I jumped out of the way, making Moira laugh.

  Drake was talking on his cell phone. He got to Richard Grolen in a dead heat with the emergency medical technicians.

  “This one’s mine,” he yelled, holstering the cell phone. “I’m getting my scene-of-crime team here now.”

  “The hell he is,” said the lead EMT, a tall, muscular black man. “Move it, Drake.”

  “Look, Smitty—”

  “He’s still alive, asshole. Now get out of the way.”

  Drake stepped back, nearly onto my foot. “He’s alive?” He turned to me. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “You hung up.” I watched the EMTs swarming around Richard. Smitty got rid of Dinah by the simple expedient of lifting her up and setting her aside. She perched on the curb, slumping now, all her purpose and determination drained away. “If it wasn’t for Dinah, he wouldn’t be. I can tell you that much.”

  Dinah didn’t move when she heard her name. Drake narrowed his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” His voice was dangerously low. “I hate being the last to know anything.”

  “He was under the tarp when she pulled it back. I’d just gotten back from walking Mick to preschool.” I shifted Moira to the other hip. She was entranced by the flashing lights on the ambulance. Probably she was being traumatized for life by these experiences—but at least she was alive. I hugged her warm little body closer. “He was lying there. A big chunk of concrete where his head should have been. I thought he was a goner.”

  “Is that the concrete?” Drake homed in on the fatal chunk. It had been pushed aside. Even as he looked, one of the EMTs stepped on it. Drake, howling a little, whipped off his shabby tweed jacket and dashed into the melee. He emerged with the concrete wrapped in his jacket. “It may be the only piece of evidence available, after these lummoxes get through trampling everything.” He sounded bitter.

  “Why don’t you tell them to be more careful?”

  “I don’t get in the way of people doing their job.” He watched intently, nevertheless, and at the first break in the action he left my side to question Smitty.

  “I don’t know.” Smitty wiped his forehead on the back of a sleeve. “The man’s damaged, that’s for sure. Looks like no cervical injuries, just the blunt trauma. Crushed the back of his head in. But that wasn’t the worst thing. My bet is that in another few minutes, he’d have suffocated.” Smitty nodded toward Dinah, who stared blankly back at him. “You shouldn’t have moved him, miss. He might have had a neck injury that could lead to paralysis. But I have to say that if you hadn’t gotten his nose out of the dirt, he’d likely be dead.”

  A little of the color came back into her face. She stood up. “I want to go with you. I want to stay with him.”

  “You his wife? Sister? Daughter?”

  Dinah didn’t have the presence of mind to lie. Smitty shook his head, watching while the techs loaded Richard into the ambulance. “Then you’re not authorized to ride along. You’d just be in the way while we’re stabilizing him, anyway.” He turned to Drake. “Sorry about your footprints, Sherlock. We had a job to do.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Drake clapped him briefly on the shoulder. “Go do it, then.”

  “Okay, then. I’m gone.” Smitty swung himself into the ambulance, and it roared away, sirens going, lights flashing. Moira clapped her hands.

  Dinah started toward the excavation, maybe to pick up her compact, which had fallen near the place Richard’s head had been. Drake held her back. “Let’s not mess it up any more.” He was watching down the street. More sirens, more flashing lights. This time it was a police van, closely followed by Bruno Morales’s Honda. “Took you guys long enough.”

  “We waited to let the ambulance get out of the way.” Bruno glanced at our faces when he vaulted out. “Parking is tight, Paolo. You know that.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but Drake smiled. “They’ve made a hash out of the ground, Bruno. Maybe you can find something out anyway.”

  “I’ll try.” The uniformed officers were hauling stuff out of the van, but Bruno didn’t pay any attention to them. He stood at the edge of the excavation, his eyes devouring the ground. Squatting, he checked it out from every angle. Once he glanced at Dinah’s feet and mine. Drake waited patiently.

  Finally Bruno shook his head. “Sorry, Paolo. It’s been dry, and too many people have trampled around. I can see where she—” he nodded toward Dinah— “knelt beside him. Two hollows for her knees, two dents behind for the toes of her shoes.” He indicated the area, and we all nodded solemnly. “But you already knew that. And you probably figured already that judging from the way he fell, he was hit from behind by someone standing in or near the driveway. I don’t see anything I could pinpoint as the perp’s footprints, though. Too many people have stirred it all up.” He reached forward and delicately picked up the compact. Without looking at her, he handed it to Dinah, who accepted it numbly.

  “Well, thanks anyway, Bruno.” Drake was resigned. “Guess we might as well get started.”

  “Wait.” Bruno was still bent over the churned-up earth of the sidewalk excavation. He picked up a silvery piece of foil, folded over and over to make a tiny square.

  Dinah peered at it. “Nelson and his gum,” she said, sounding disgusted. “He knows better than to drop anything around an excavation.”

  “So this is fresh?” Bruno took a plastic evidence bag and some tweezers out of his shirt pocket. He put the foil on top of the bag and unfolded it with the tweezers, manipulating them as delicately as a watch repairer. The foil was empty.

  “He was chewing gum yesterday, I noticed.” I put in my two cents’ worth.

  Still using the tweezers, Bruno brought the foil up to his nose and sniffed. “Spearmint.” He turned it this way and that. “This doesn’t appear damp, which it would be if it had been on the ground all night.” He slipped it into the evidence bag, and turned to Dinah. “Does he always fold it like this, into a little square?”

  She wrinkled her forehead, impatient. “What does it matter, anyway? Nelson is always chewing gum, I know that much. He’ll hear from
me if he’s littering around an excavation.” She turned to Drake. “Do you need me? She was here the whole time.” She pointed at me. “I want to get over to the hospital.”

  “In a moment.” Drake’s voice was gentle. “You were here this morning when Liz came back from her walk, is that right?”

  Dinah sighed, blowing up at her bangs. “I got here about the same time she came walking up.” She spoke with exaggerated patience. “It was around eight-fifteen, no later than eight-thirty. I like to get an early start, before the crew comes.” She glanced at her watch. “Which they’re going to do any moment now.”

  “We’ll take care of them.”

  “Does this mean our excavation is over?”

  “That doesn’t matter now.” Drake led the conversation back where he wanted it. “You and Liz got here at the same time. How did things look to you? Any different from yesterday when you left?”

  Dinah frowned. “I don’t remember noticing any difference. I wasn’t really thinking about how it looked. I thought about what we were going to accomplish, the best way to do that.”

  Drake nodded, scrawling on his bits of paper. Bruno had his laptop out on the hood of his Honda.

  “How about you, Liz?” Drake turned to me. “Did you notice any difference?”

  “All I noticed was how inconvenient it is to have no sidewalk in front of your house when you’re pushing a stroller.” I shivered a little and held Moira closer. She was on her third graham cracker. I didn’t know how long that would hold her. I was also feeling insecure about the whole scene. Granted, Drake was unlikely to peg me as a possible suspect. He would be looking at tying it all in with the bones, and I could have had no hand in that. But murder investigations fill me with angst. Drake teases me by saying I like them. I hate them. I never want to be involved. I don’t know why they keep swirling around me like this, like I’m some sort of magnet or catalyst for murder.

  Dinah was restive. “Is that all you need to know?”

  “I guess that gives us something to go on with.” Drake cloned his notebook. “You can go for now. I’ll be talking with you later. You’ll be at the hospital?”