Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

“Mom? Dad? The cops are here,” Annika announced. The living room was silent and her words fell like thunder.

Terence Bellington jumped. He sat next to his father on the couch. The older man’s wheelchair was folded in, leaning against the coffee table. Across from them, Ellen sat with her legs tucked up under her, a coffeepot in one hand and a mug in the other. She didn’t look up, but kept her attention on the hot liquid she was pouring.

Finished, she set the mug down and said, “A call would have been appreciated.”

I nodded. “I agree, but there wasn’t time. I apologize for disturbing you, Mayor, Mrs. Bellington. Something has come up. We’ll only take a few minutes of your time. This is my partner, Finn Nowlin. You may remember him, he headed the investigation on Nicky’s accident, three years ago.”

Finn buttoned his suit jacket and stepped forward and put his hand out to Terence Bellington. After a moment, the mayor stood and shook it.

“Of course, of course. Have you found Nicky’s killer?” he asked. Like his daughter, he wore a navy sweat suit and slippers.

“No, unfortunately.”

I glanced at Frank Bellington. The elderly man seemed unaware of our existence, let alone his own. He stared in Ellen’s direction but I don’t think he really saw her. Annika was probably right; her grandfather was beyond enjoying much of anything these days.

The Frank Bellington I remembered from my childhood was a boisterous man with a naughty sense of humor and a never-ending supply of hard butterscotch candies. He was attractive and compelling; a businessman who built up an empire selling real estate and properties in what was to become a booming ski town. I wondered again at what had happened between him and Bull, why their weekly poker nights had stopped, why one day Frank was family and the next he was persona non grata.

My grandmother Julia’s words came back to me. Was Frank the man she warned me to stay away from?

“Is there somewhere else you’d prefer we talk?” I asked.

The mayor shook his head. “No, please, take a seat. Coffee? Annika, hon, bring us some more cups, would you? My father is having a good morning. He adores the rain.”

I looked at Frank Bellington again. The mayor saw my skepticism.

“Well, he used to adore the rain,” he corrected. “He’s got his good days and his bad days and lord knows, we try to make the good days count for something. Gemma, I know you understand what I’m talking about; I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother’s diagnosis. Finn, are your parents still with us?”

Finn nodded. “Yes, sir. They live down in Florida. Fit as a fiddle, both of them. They just won a bridge tournament. My dad, he’s great. He can’t keep his hands off my mom, and they’re going on seventy. It gives a man hope.”

“Well, consider yourself blessed. It’s terrible, just terrible watching a parent decline like this,” Terry said.

Annika returned with two more cups and Ellen poured for us. Unlike her husband and daughter, she was dressed to the nines. A soft gray cardigan hung on her narrow shoulders, over a white silk blouse. Her black trousers were cut wide, palazzo style, and her beaded flats looked expensive. She noticed me looking.

“I had a meeting this morning with one of the charities I’m involved with,” she said. “And this evening I’m meeting with Reverend Wyland. I’m sure you’ve heard; we have a funeral Saturday. I expect you will both be there?”

Finn and I nodded.

Ellen continued. “We’ve had an awful time with the Reverend. We are, of course, using the same plot for Nicky but the man is insisting we pay a surcharge for the re-laying of our son. I don’t know how he did things in whatever dark cave he crawled out of back home in Africa, but I simply won’t tolerate that here. It’s not about the money, but it’s the principle of the thing, you see. We have already paid for one funeral for our son.”

I swallowed and set my coffee down and turned to the mayor. I didn’t want to be in this house one minute longer than I had to.

“Sir, we’ve made an interesting discovery. I’m not sure how much relevance it has to Nicky’s disappearance three years ago, or his murder this week, but we’ve got to look at everything that comes up,” I began.

As I spoke, Ellen leaned forward and spooned something white into Frank’s half-open mouth. The substance, pale and jiggly, sat there for a moment and then Ellen pushed it in further with the silver spoon. Frank obediently closed his mouth and swallowed and I thought that age is not a progression at all, but a return. We emerge helpless and dependent and the end, for many, is marked by the same helplessness and dependency of infancy.

Terry stared at me. “Well, what is it?”

“It appears that in the months leading up to the accident at Bride’s Veil, Nicky was spending most of his free time at the local library, researching the murders of the McKenzie boys. By all accounts, he was there every day after school, and not at basketball practice, as you may have thought.”

The mayor’s mouth fell open. From her end of the couch, Annika sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. She knocked her cup of coffee to the floor and swore. Ellen continued to calmly spoon more of the gooey white curd into Franklin’s mouth. Hannah Watkins chose that moment to join the party. She came in quietly, somehow aware that she’d just missed a bombshell.

Annika spoke first. “That’s crazy, I would have known if he had been looking into that old mystery. We didn’t keep secrets from each other.”

If that was true, either Annika was lying and she already knew what I had just revealed, or Nicky had decided to keep something to himself. I watched as the same realization struck her and she slowly sank to the floor, a confused look on her face. She began to pick up the broken shards of her coffee cup.

Bellington looked as confused as his daughter. He said, “He never mentioned anything about the Woodsman murders. How do you know about this? Murders, death, mystery, that sort of thing didn’t interest Nicky at all. He was into sports, and if I remember right, that year he was obsessed with perfecting his basketball game. He was determined to make captain his senior year.”

“He may have told you he was practicing, but he was at the library most afternoons after school,” Finn said. “In fact, he quit the team right before Christmas.”

Mrs. Watkins was silent through the exchange. She shooed Annika away from the mess on the floor and pulled a towel from her pocket. She dabbed at the stain gently, careful not to rub the coffee into the carpet.

“Thanks, Aunt Hannah,” Annika said. She watched as her childhood nanny picked up the shattered pieces of china. It was clear Mrs. Watkins knew her way around broken things; she carefully stacked the shards into a tidy pile on the table and then scooped them all into the towel with the edge of her hand.

Finn finished off his coffee, reached across the table, picked up the pot, and poured himself another cup. He added a dollop of milk and dropped in a sugar cube that splashed into the hot liquid with a wet plop.

He took a slurp and smacked his lips. “This is great coffee, ma’am. Is that Starbucks house blend? It sure tastes like it.”

Ellen ignored him and scooped the last of the white gunk-I’d decided it was tapioca-into her father-in-law’s mouth. She said, “I knew he was at the library.”

Surprise hit me. If she’d known, why point me to the basketball coach, Darren Chase? Had Ellen thought she was sending me on a wild goose chase? Before I could ask, though, the mayor spoke up.

“You did? You never said anything,” Terry protested.

“Darling, you were up to your ears at the office. You had just decided to leave the private sector and make the move to politics. You were courting every person who might have a connection to someone, anyone, who would help get you elected,” Ellen said calmly. “You were kissing every ass that you could get your lips on, except mine, to be frank. You were utterly and completely distracted.”