Lovely In Her Bones

by Sharyn McCrumb

  When they reached the patrol car, Dummyweed asked: “What are you going to do now that you didn’t get his fingerprints?”

  Pilot smiled. “Get ’em off his coffee cup at the office.”

  “Then why did you come out here and ask for them?”

  “I couldn’t lay him off without an excuse, could I? He maneuvered the car down the driveway. “You see, Coltsfoot, the sheriff doesn’t much like the Harknesses, especially since his nephew disappeared about ten years ago after taking on the deputy job in Sarvice Valley. That job had kinda been in their family awhile, and it looked mighty suspicious when Carver Johnson disappeared two weeks after replacing a Harkness.”

  “What did they do to him?” asked Coltsfoot hoarsely, realizing who the present Sarvice Valley replacement was.

  “Never found him,” grunted Pilot. “No evidence against them. But now that we have two fresh bodies in a situation that Harkess is mixed up in, why, I’ll see if I can’t find a connection.”

  “He just disappeared?” murmured Coltsfoot, still thinking of the last non-Cullowhee deputy.

  “Without a trace,” said Pilot Barnes solemnly. Catching sight of Dummyweed’s green and anxious face, it was all he could do not to laugh.

  “You don’t suppose they’d mind my having skulls in the church do you?” asked Elizabeth, peering into the box.

  Jake shrugged. “They were all members, probably.”

  “I guess. It was nice of Mr. Barnes to bring them back this morning, wasn’t it? Do you think we should have gone to the inquest?”

  “Nope. It’s just a formality, anyway. They’re going to announce that Alex died of a blow to the head, and that it was done by some person unknown. We already know that. I think it’s enough that Milo is representing our group.”

  “You’re right.” Elizabeth unwrapped the measuring tools.

  “Besides, you’ll have to go to the inquest on Victor since you found the body. You might as well stay and get some work done while you can.”

  “Don’t you think someone ought to be with Milo?”

  Jake sighed. “I think we ought to leave him alone for a while. I get the feeling that he’s alone even when he’s here.”

  “He wants to finish the project. For Alex. I wish I hadn’t made a mess of it.”

  Jake stared at her. “Will you snap out of it? You put him behind by maybe one day. That’s not such a big deal. On my first dig, I troweled through three soil layers, two black and one red clay, without noticing the difference.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Are you going to stay up here while I work?” She had decided to stay in the common room to do the measurements so that there would be no distractions from heat or insects.

  “I’m not going up to the site alone,” he replied. “In fact, I wish I had told the day crew to come back today. I don’t feel very safe out here with just the two of us.”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth absently, intent upon her measuring. “Especially if I find who I’m looking for here.”

  Jake nodded, glancing down at his book. A few moments later, her words set off an alarm in his mind. “What did you say?”

  “Hmm? Nothing. Don’t distract me.” Elizabeth scribbled down a number in her notebook.

  “No, wait a minute. What was that about ‘if I find who I’m looking for’?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell,” said Elizabeth in a small voice.

  “Look, if you know something that’s going to get both of us killed, the least you could do is let me in on it!”

  Elizabeth looked around nervously, expecting to see faces leering at them from the windows. “We’ll be fine,” she said nervously. “Everybody is at the inquest.”

  “Which adjourns in about five minutes,” said Jake, consulting his watch.

  “All right,” she sighed. “I guess I can trust you.”

  Jake laughed. “Considering that you are alone in this church with me in the middle of nowhere, you might as well.”

  “Don’t!” Elizabeth shivered. “I don’t want to think about it.” She put the skull back in the box. “Milo thinks one of these skulls is a ringer.”

  “One of them isn’t a Cullowhee?”

  “That’s what we think. Remember that story you told me about the Moonshine Massacre, and how the sheriff’s nephew disappeared?” Her voice sank to a whisper. “What if it’s him?”

  “Of course! What better place to hide a murder victim than in with a bunch of old bones?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “That’s what we figured. But so far I haven’t been able to prove it.”

  “So far they’re all Cullowhees, huh?”

  “Oh, Jake, I don’t know!” wailed Elizabeth. “I messed up all the measurements the first time, and now this one has come out the same as before!”

  “I’m distracting you,” said Jake quickly. “No wonder you can’t concentrate. Now, don’t cry! I’ll just sit here and read, and you start over. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes.

  The next hour passed in silence. Jake settled back with his book, occasionally peeping over the top of it at Elizabeth. She was intent upon her work: measuring, writing down the result, shaking her head, and measuring again. Finally he could stand it no longer. “How’s it going? You look worried.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Did you find the ringer? It isn’t that tiny one, is it?”

  “No. I’ve been concentrating on the skull measurements, and I don’t understand it. I came out with the same numbers I got the first time.”

  “So?”

  “Milo says they’re all wrong. They don’t fit the chart.”

  “Have you checked your instruments?” asked Jake thoughtfully.

  “No. I wouldn’t know how to go about it. Do you think something is wrong with them?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it? If somebody put your tools about of alignment, you’re not going to get any helpful results, are you?”

  “I guess not. I’ll ask Milo if-Did you hear a car?”

  Jake peered out the window. “It isn’t Milo. It’s the sheriff’s car.”

  “Milo isn’t here,” Elizabeth told the deputy.

  “No, I know he isn’t. I left him back in town,” Pilot told her. “Like you to meet Ron Garrett, FBI agent. He’s helping us on the case.” He turned to Jake. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  Elizabeth’s stomach lurched. Surely not Jake, she thought. A moment later she found she didn’t believe it. “Would you like me to leave?” she asked Jake. “Shall I call Milo?”

  “No, it’s okay. What would you like to know, gentlemen?”

  “Is your name Jake Adair?” asked Pilot, consulting a printed card.

  “Yep,” said Jake calmly. He didn’t seem surprised at being questioned.

  “And your home is in Swain County, North Carolina.”

  “Right. Route 1, Box 109, Cherokee.”

  Pilot eyed him sternly. “That is the Cherokee Indian reservation, ain’t it?”

  “It sure is,” Jake agreed cheerfully.

  “That’s neat!” exclaimed Elizabeth, forgetting the interrogation. “How did you come to live there?”

  “Because I’m a full-blooded Cherokee,” said Jake, smiling gently.

  “But-you-but…” Elizabeth realized that all the things she had been about to say were equally stupid, so she hushed and mulled over this turn of events while the officers resumed their questioning.

  “Are you aware of the weapon used to kill Dr. Alex Lerche?” the deputy demanded.

  “A tomahawk,” said Jake wearily.

  “A souvenir tomahawk from the Cherokee reservation,” Garrett corrected him.

  “Those things are shipped over by the carload from Taiwan. Shouldn’t you be questioning Chinese suspects, sir?”

  “Have you ever had such a weapon in your possession?” barked Pilot, ignoring this sally.

  “Not since I was eight years old.”

  �
��Do you have any objection to having your fingerprints taken?”

  “Help yourself.”

  “This is silly!” cried Elizabeth. “Why should he kill Alex? The Cherokees have nothing to do with all this!”

  Jake smiled. “Well, I’d say this was our land about six hundred years ago, but I’m not here to foreclose on it.”

  The officers were not amused. “Is there any way the Cherokees could get this land back?” Pilot murmured to the FBI agent.

  “About the same odds as you winning the Irish Sweepstakes,” said Jake cheerfully.

  “Have you connected him to the tomahawk?” Elizabeth demanded.

  Pilot looked pained. “Ma’am, unless you are his attorney of record, would you please stay out of this?”

  Elizabeth scowled. “My brother is in law school.”

  “It’s all right,” said Jake soothingly. “These gentlemen just want my fingerprints because they’re being thorough. You aren’t going to haul me away in handcuffs, are you?”

  Pilot Barnes and Ron Garrett exchanged exasperated glances. They had expected their surprise questioning to elicit frightened cooperation, but it wasn’t working. Garrett shrugged. “We’ll take your prints, run them through our computer, and see what we get. Don’t plan on going anywhere.”

  After a few more minutes’ questioning, the officers took Jake’s fingerprints and left. When the door closed behind them, Elizabeth put the last skull back in the box and smiled up at Jake. “Hey, can I measure your jawline?”

  Jake laughed. “You didn’t know, did you? Out at the site when you told me I looked like an Apache, I thought you must have guessed.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “You don’t… uh… you’re not what I expected.”

  “No long hair and feathers, huh? Sorry to disappoint you. The coroner knew, though, the first time he saw me.”

  “How?”

  “He asked if I was a Cullowhee, and when I said no, he wanted to know my last name. I told him Adair, and he said: ‘So that’s it!’ Adair is a very famous Cherokee name.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Jake smiled. “Dr. Lerche knew. So did Milo. But I don’t usually broadcast it. I get tired of the dumb questions: ‘Do you live in a tepee?’ And the stale jokes: ‘How! You see, I speak your language.’ I didn’t want to hear any more of it.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Like Victor, saying his great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess.”

  “Oh, God,” groaned Jake. “That one is the worst. All of you unakas claim your grandmother was a Cherokee. Why can’t you pick on the Shawnee? And why is it always a great-grandmother?”

  Elizabeth frowned. “What was that word you used?”

  “Unaka? That’s the Cherokee word for honky. Understand, I’m proud of my heritage. I just get tired of people getting so hung up with it that they can’t see me.”

  “What?” murmured Elizabeth. She didn’t seem to be listening.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Elizabeth blinked. “Sorry. I guess it’s the heat. I was wondering what we were going to have for lunch.”

  “And I thought you were getting nervous about being here with me,” Jake grumbled.

  “No. I know you didn’t do it,” she replied.

  “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  But it isn’t a matter of faith, she thought, it’s just that I know who did it. Now how am I going to get rid of you so that I can find out why? Elizabeth assumed her most simpering smile, the one usually reserved for flat tires on interstates. “Jake, do you think you could go to Comfrey’s house and get some tomatoes from his garden? He said we could help ourselves, and I want to make tomato sandwiches for lunch.”

  “Why don’t we both go?” asked Jake, getting up.

  “Okay,” said Elizabeth.

  When they reached the door, she stopped, as if something had just occurred to her. “You know, we’re almost out of iced tea. Why don’t I stay here and make some while you’re getting the tomatoes. You won’t be gone long, will you?” She asked anxiously.

  “Ten or fifteen minutes,” said Jake. “Don’t let anybody in while I’m gone, okay?”

  “I promise,” said Elizabeth solemnly. She stood on the porch and watched him walk out of sight. A moment later she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PILOT BARNES slowed down to let a groundhog scuttle across the road. Had it appeared in his garden, he would have shot it without a qualm; the incongruity of this never struck him. “What did you think of that interview?” he asked the FBI agent.

  “The Adair kid?” Garrett shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Remember at the time of the second murder, he didn’t leave the work site. That gives him a lot of witnesses for an alibi; but there’s still a chance he may know something. Our check on him didn’t turn up anything unusual.”

  “He’s an Indian,” grunted Pilot.

  “Oh, that’s no big deal. My great-grandmother was a Cherokee. That’s where I got my brown eyes. I still say he’s off the hook. In fact, those two might be in danger. Have you thought about putting a guard out there?”

  “I don’t think they need one.”

  “Better play it safe,” Garrett advised.

  The deputy smiled. “Tell you what: I’ll compromise. I’ll send Dummyweed out to guard them.”

  “Symbolic deterrent, huh? Might work. That will free you and McKenna to check up on the other people. Are any of the suspects from the first murder out of the picture now? What about the wife?”

  “Nope. You saw her at the inquest, didn’t you? She got in last night.”

  “She’s a possibility. Could have killed the husband and been seen by this Bassington fellow. Blackmail?”

  Pilot thought it over. “Can we get a record of long-distance calls to her house? Or maybe get the Virginia police to search her place for blackmailing letters?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Garrett. “Anything else?”

  “The girlfriend. She was out walking when the first murder took place, and right after that she left to do research at MacDowell.”

  “So?”

  “Yesterday she came back to get her guitar. Makes me wonder why she left it in the first place.”

  “Check up on her, too,” sighed the agent. “You’re lucky we don’t charge you locals for computer time.”

  Pilot felt the discomfort of obligation. “I’m mighty grateful to you for helping me out like this,” he said awkwardly.

  “No problem, Deputy. You sure are putting in a lot of overtime on this case. Personal interest?”

  Pilot shook his head. “I just want to clear it up before the sheriff gets back.” To show him what I can do without supervision, he finished silently. He can’t stay sheriff forever; maybe there is a promotion in this. He didn’t think it was going to happen, though. Pilot Barnes couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing some vital thread of the investigation, something that he might not even recognize if it were put before him. Duncan Johnson, he told himself, would have caught it in a minute. Pilot Barnes stared morosely at the Wise Woman of the Woods sign; it didn’t take a prophet to tell him he didn’t have a hope in hell of becoming sheriff.

  Tessa Lerche, forewarned that the inquest would take place in an un-air-conditioned courtroom, did not wear black. In her beige linen suit, matching bone shoes, and touches of gold jewelry at the ears and throat, she seemed a cool and neutral observer to the proceedings inquiring into her husband’s death. In fact, she would not wear black at all except to the funeral; it seemed hypocritical in one who had lately been studying pamphlets on community property in divorce, and Tessa loathed the semblance of hyprocrisy. She gave her evidence of accompanying Milo to the site on the night of the murder, speaking in a clear, calm voice softened by sorrow. She had used such a voice once in a college production of Riders to the Sea, in the old woman’s speech: “They’re all gone now, and there’s nothing more the sea can do to me…” Traces of a brogue crept in
to her testimony, causing the more astute listeners to suppose her Irish by birth.

  Stepping down from the witness stand, she took her seat beside Milo and listened to the medical evidence with the blank face of one whose thoughts were elsewhere. Once, at some particularly graphic phrase uttered by the coroner, Milo glanced at her, but she looked up at him with a half-smile and continued to study the placement of her neat little hands, clutching the calfskin purse in her lap.

  When the verdict “murder by person or persons unknown” had been delivered, he escorted her outside, protectively watching for reporters with cameras, but none appeared. (Stuart Morton, editor of the Recorder, was off covering the 4-H camp. He would give the inquest the customary six lines on page three.)

  “Thank you for seeing me through this,” said Tessa softly. “It meant a lot.”

  Milo shifted nervously. “Are you driving back now?”

  She looked up at him with moist eyes. “Will you think it terrible of me if I tell you I’d like to have lunch first? I guess I should get used to eating alone, but…” She trailed off, a quaver in her voice.

  “Of course,” said Milo, wondering how she had managed to make him feel guilty. “Where would you like to go?”

  Tessa sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I never notice what I eat any more. Only I couldn’t bear to be on public display in some local café.” She shuddered delicately.

  After some discussion it was decided that the Rhododendron Inn, an Edwardian mansion outfitted as a tavern, would suit Tessa’s sense of propriety. Milo, checking his hip pocket for his credit card, agreed without noticeable enthusiasm. The Rhododendron Inn, half-timbered and decorated with farm implements on the walls, fancied itself the sort of place where George Washington might have dined, had he been willing to mortgage Mount Vernon to pay for the meal.

  When they had been seated at a small pine table with a mason jar of wildflowers between them, Tessa whispered, “I hope they don’t serve that greasy country food!”

  Milo, who hoped they did, said, “Why don’t you order a salad?”

  Milo opted for the country buffet, leaving Tessa to quiche du jour and pumpkin muffins. He stayed in the buffet line longer than he might have had he been anxious to return to his table partner. He wondered if Tessa merely wanted to rehash the inquest or if she had something else in mind.