Aaron Elkins - Uneasy Relations

They were all there, Adrian, Corbin, Pru, Buck, and Audrey. Everybody but Rowley. While their eyes were on the bones, he took the opportunity to do what Julie had suggested and watch their reactions. She was doing the same thing, he could tell. Alas, nobody’s eyes bugged out, nobody’s jaw dropped, nobody appeared to swoon with apprehension. They just looked at the glued-together bones with mild, scholarly curiosity.

“It’s those neck bones that were in the bag,” said Buck.

“Actually, they would appear to be thoracic,” Adrian corrected. “Lower thoracic, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Correct, as always, Adrian,” Gideon said. “T9 and T10.”

“And they would appear to have that pathology, what was it, that you found on Gibraltar Woman,” observed Audrey. “Ankylitis spondylosis …”

“It’s ankylosing spondylitis, Audrey, dear,” Adrian said with a tolerant chuckle.

“Right again,” said Gideon. “Anybody notice anything else significant about them?”

“Wait just a minute…” Corbin said. He picked them up, turned them around, fingered them. “This one’s a cast. But this other one is real.”

“Right again.”

“But they go together perfectly, see?” Corbin said, demonstrating, and then setting them back down on the table, one atop the other. “They have to be from the same person. You know, they almost look.. . I don’t understand… they almost look…”

“Holy cow!” Pru blurted. “Hey, let me see those things!” Her muscular arm shot forth for it. Corbin flinched away and gave it up without a fight. It was the T9 she was interested in. “You know what this is a cast of?” she exclaimed when she had it in hand. “You know what this is?”

“I know what it is,” Gideon said quietly.

“This is a cast of Gibraltar Woman’s ninth thoracic vertebra!” She brandished it for everyone to see. “I should know, I spent all day digging it out with a couple of chopsticks and a damn toothbrush. But

… this is incredible… this tenth… this tenth…”

“Did she even have a tenth?” Audrey asked with a scowl. “As I recall-”

“No!” Pru practically shouted. “That’s what I’m trying to say! She didn’t! She doesn’t!” She turned incredulous eyes in Gideon’s direction. “Where did you get this, Gideon?”

“A friend wanted to know if it was human.”

“Your friend, the policeman?” Adrian inquired after a short pause.

“Yes, Chief Inspector Sotomayor.”

“And where did he get it?”

“He got it from Sheila Chan’s room at the Eliott Hotel.”

This time there was plenty of eye bugging and jaw dropping, but, with the exception of Buck, who, as a nonarchaeologist wouldn’t be aware of the bone’s scientific importance, it was universal, so it provided no useful information. It did, however, produce an excited flurry of observations.

“My God,” Adrian whispered, “she found another piece.”

“Sure,” Pru said angrily, “remember how she was always down there, prowling around the site, even though she wasn’t supposed to? Now we know why. She had no right to keep this to herself. For all we know, she turned up more than this. There may be other bones.”

“I’m sorry, I refuse to believe there was anything left to find,” said Corbin with a distinct edge to his voice. “As Adrian will confirm, we were extremely thorough. We left no stone un-”

“I bet that’s what her paper was going to be on!” Pru said. “She wanted all the credit for herself.”

“No, I think not,” Corbin replied. “The topics for the papers had to be in two months before the conference, so a bone that she found a day or two earlier couldn’t possibly have been the subject.”

Gideon took advantage of the calming, damping effect of Corbin’s sensible, put-you-to-sleep delivery to raise a question. “What exactly was the topic of her paper, does anybody remember? Pru, you were the program chair.”

“Yes, I was,” she said, thinking. “But you know, as I recall, it wasn’t anything that grabbed you. Europa Point Reevaluated, something along those lines. Nothing about a new find.”

“ The First Family: A Reevaluation, actually,” Audrey corrected. “I remember being quite curious about it.”

Adrian was peering hard at Gideon. “I have the impression you know more about this than you’re saying. I suggest you let the rest of us in on it.”

“No, I don’t, Adrian. You’ve come to the same conclusions I have. You have the same facts I do, and the same questions.” Which was pretty much the truth, if you didn’t count the fact that no one but Gideon (and Julie) was aware that Sheila’s death was now the subject of a murder investigation.

“Why exactly would the police have had it?” Adrian asked, scowling at Gideon. “Perhaps you can tell us that.”

Corbin answered for him. “From when she disappeared – when nobody knew what happened to her – the police were looking into it, remember? They would have searched her room. And afterward, inasmuch as she didn’t have any next of kin, there would have been nobody to send-”

“Yes, yes,” an impatient Adrian said. “I understand all that. But why is it of interest to them now?” He turned again to Gideon. “Why should they care if she had some vertebrae in her room? She was an archaeologist. And why exactly would they care now? She’s been dead for two years.”

“That’s a good question,” Pru said, also looking at Gideon. “Have they reopened her case? Do they think there was something suspicious about it?”

“Well, um-” Gideon began.

He was saved by a hearty knock-knock coming from the entrance to the dining room – Rowley’s cheerful greeting. “Your opulent transportation to the Society meetings awaits outside. All aboard that’s coming aboard.” His eyes did some bugging of their own. “I say, what are those?”

While everybody tried to tell him at once, Gideon snared the vertebrae, which had been making their way around the table – under his extremely attentive scrutiny – and popped them safely back into the sack.

“What are you going to do with them?” Corbin asked as his eyes greedily followed their progression.

It was just the question Gideon wanted. “I have to return them to the police, of course. I’m off to do that right now.” This much was true. Just before coming down he’d received a call from police headquarters asking him to be in Fausto’s office at ten.

“But will they return that tenth thoracic to us?” Corbin asked. “The cast doesn’t matter, but that tenth is a new find. It belongs in the British Museum with the rest of her.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll get back to the museum eventually,” Gideon said.

But for the moment, at least, two important points in regard to his safety had been established. Everyone at that table understood that (a) the T10’s provenance was now common knowledge, and (b) it would no longer be in Gideon’s keeping.

Very good, Julie’s satisfied nod told him. Mission accomplished.

While Julie went off to make a prearranged courtesy call on the head naturalist of the Upper Rock Nature Preserve, Gideon walked down to police headquarters at New Mole House. He found the DCI waiting for him, seated behind his desk in his usual office uniform – an immaculate silk dress shirt (plum colored this time) with the cuffs neatly folded over his forearms, and a tie (blue-gray) that must have been carefully chosen to match. A few forms were spread out before him.

“You know an archaeologist named de la Garza?” he asked without looking up.

“Good morning to you too,” Gideon said, sitting down across the desk. “Esteban de la Garza? Yes, I do. A prof at the University of Cadiz.”