Aaron Elkins: Skeleton dance

Things were good. It had been a smart move.

"Going to have any more wine?" she asked, reaching for the bottle.

"I don't think so, thanks," he said, smiling, just as the telephone in the kitchen rang. "Oh, jeez," he said, "that has to be Lester. Would you mind taking it? Tell him I'm anywhere but here, and you don't know when I'll be back."

"I'll do what I can," she said, getting up, "but you know, you'll have to talk to him sometime."

"Not if I can help it. Tell him I went out for a quart of milk last Monday," he called after her, "and you haven't seen me since."

For over a week his editor had been pestering him about the title page. Lester wanted the author listed as "Gideon Oliver, the Skeleton Detective," making use of the irksome nickname that had been applied to him years before by a reporter and had stuck to him like a blood-sucking leech ever since. Lester thought that it might sell a few extra books. After all, he had pointed out in his straightforward way, a lot of people had heard of the skeleton detective, even if they couldn't say exactly where, but who the hell ever heard of Gideon Oliver

Gideon could hardly argue with that, but he'd put his foot down anyway. His academic colleagues, who were a lot more important to his daily happiness than Lester was, would never have let him live it down.

Julie was back in a few seconds with the telephone. "It's not Lester, unless Lester pronounces your name Geedyong Ohleevaire." She handed him the phone and went back to her chair and her brochures.

"Gideon? This is… ahum…"

"Lucien?"

"Yes, that's right. I'm pleased that you recognize my voice."

"Well, of course I would."

Actually, it wasn't the voice, or even the accent; it was that "ahum." Lucien Joly, a formal type, wasn't all that comfortable referring to himself by his first name. Gideon had considered it a major accomplishment that afternoon in the little French village of Dinan, when the inspector had first done it. At the time, Joly had been been attending a forensic sciences seminar in St. Malo a few miles away, where Gideon had been one of the speakers. Afterward they'd worked together on a case and had become friends of a sort. Later Joly had been transferred to Perigueux, the capital city of the departement of the Dordogne, and when Gideon had made his current plans to go to nearby Les Eyzies to research the celebrated archaeological hoax known as The Old Man of Tayac, he had telephoned him to suggest that they get together. They had agreed to meet for dinner at the restaurant Au Vieux Moulin in Les Eyzies, one of Joly's favorites, on October 7. That was still five weeks away.

"Is there a problem with the seventh?" Gideon asked. "Need to change our date?"

"Change the date?" Julie said from the sofa. "No way, it's taken me a week to work everything out as it is. Besides, I'm only halfway through my French lessons."

"Not a problem, exactly, no," said Joly. "But do you suppose you might come a little earlier?"

"Could be. When did you have in mind?"

"The sooner the better. I was thinking of next week."

"Next week?"

"Next week?" echoed Julie. "Absolutely not! Gideon, I'm warning you, you're in very dangerous territory here."

"Yes," said Joly, "I was hoping you could make France your first stop instead of your last."

"I don't think so, Lucien," Gideon said. "We've been working on our itinerary for weeks-"

" We've been working?" said Julie to the ceiling. "I really love that."

"-making reservations, arranging flights, and so forth. We already have room reservations in Les Eyzies next month, at the Hotel Cro-Magnon. That's where I stayed the last time I was there and I really like it. I wouldn't want to lose-"

"I'm sure I would have no trouble changing your reservation for you. The thing is, you see, these rather intriguing bones have just turned up here-"

"But we don't even arrive in France until-" He stopped. "Um… bones, did you say?"

"Yes, it's a curious case. They've been found in what seems to be a Paleolithic cave, oddly enough-by a dog, as it happens-and although I have no doubt that it's a homicide, I can't prove it. I was hoping that if you came earlier you might look them over while they're still there and see what you can turn up. It would be a great service to me, but, of course, if it's impossible…"

"Well, no, I wouldn't say it's impossible…"

Up into the air in a fountain of glossy, colored paper went the brochures. "I knew it," Julie muttered. "The minute I heard that 'um… bones?' I knew it. Les Eyzies, here we come. Honestly-"

"Lucien, it seems to be a little noisy at this end. Could you speak up a bit?"

Paris may well be the most beautiful city in the world, but its outskirts are nothing to brag about. Leaving the Gare d'Austerlitz by train and rolling south toward the Dordogne one travels first through what seem like tens of miles of railroad yards, empty of people but dotted with grimy, isolated freight cars and passenger coaches that stand like tombstones on spurs that lead nowhere. Then come block on block of drab apartment houses, followed by grubby, gray suburbs that are succeeded in turn by grubby gray villages (relieved by an occasional glorious church), all set in flat, featureless countryside.

"Every time I take a train out of Paris," Gideon mused, "I wonder if the landscape is really this ugly, or does it just look that way after you've had your eyes dazzled by Paris itself?"

"It has to be the former," Julie said. "We didn't see enough of Paris to get dazzled."

"That's a good point," Gideon said, nodding.

"And what we did see wasn't that dazzling."

"Very true."

They had begun the fourteen-hour, eight time-zone flight from Seattle early the day before, arriving jet-lagged and seedy at 6:15 this morning, showered and changed at the airport, taken the Air France bus to the city, had a disappointingly so-so breakfast in a glassed-in streetside brasserie, managed to get in a morning walk around the Tuileries and then caught a taxi to the train station, where a two-day old garbage men's strike had left the place looking as if it had been hit by a tornado. All in all, not a wildly successful Paris visit, and their moods reflected it.

After an hour or so on the rails, however, during much of which Julie slept, the land developed some character, the fields becoming more contoured, the villages a little prettier and more individual; about on a par, say, with what you'd see driving through southern New Jersey. But then, as the train moved deeper into the rural heart of France, eventually crossing into the departement of the Dordogne-or the Perigord, as most Frenchmen still referred to it-there were increasingly frequent glimpses of deep-green forests of chestnut and oak, smooth-flowing rivers, and wonderful outcroppings of limestone, brilliant against the darkness of the green.

Gideon too tried sleeping, but, although he was relaxed and comfortable enough, it came only in drifting patches, and most of the time he simply looked dumbly and contentedly at the scenes sliding by the window, or equally dumbly and contentedly at Julie, sound asleep in the chair opposite in their otherwise empty compartment, a single misplaced tendril of her glossy, curly, black hair quivering back and forth on her cheek with every quiet breath.

"You're not watching me sleep, are you?" she asked with her eyes closed.

"Yeah, you caught me. I can't help it. You're sure pretty. I keep meaning to tell you that."

She smiled, brushed away the tendril, opened her eyes, and straightened up, looking surprisingly rested. "Oh-it's beautiful out there."

"We're in the Dordogne. You've been asleep for a couple of hours."

"Those hollows in the cliffs-those are the famous abris?"