Кэти Райх - A Conspiracy of Bones

Despite the temperature, Pete was on the patio at Toscana, our favorite restaurant since back in the day. He was wearing khaki shorts, a cotton polo, boat shoes, no socks. Standard dress.

Pete smiled on seeing me. Rose as I crossed to the table.

“Tempe.” He’d been out of town, and we hadn’t spoken in a month. As usual, hearing Pete’s voice stirred memories long dormant. Snuggling in a carrel in the law-school library, his worn leather jacket soft against my cheek. His hair glinting white-gold under a full Barbados moon. His eyes beaming joy, infant Katy raised two-handed high above his head. His eyes wide in horror, like those of the lady beside him in our bed.

“Hey, Pete.” Kicking the memories aside.

“You look terrific.”

I didn’t. I’d thrown on a sundress, my sole inspiration for coping with the merciless heat.

Pete’s arms went around me. My cheek brushed his shirt, and my nose took in his Aramis cologne, a scent he refused to supplant with any other. I relaxed into his chest. For a moment, all was as it once was.

Sweet Jesus! My overloaded stress-strain curve was turning me into a mooning adolescent. The treasonous glitch in my arterial wiring?

Right, Brennan. Blame everything on the aneurysm.

I stepped back. The moment ended. We both sat.

Through long-standing and hard-won mutual agreement, my ex and I strive to keep all conversations neutral. That night, we discussed Katy. Mama. The Hornets’ prospects for the upcoming season. When Pete queried my work, I shook my head no. When I asked about his travels, he said they’d involved a Winnebago and parklands. Alrighty.

As we ate, I tried not to glance at my watch. To wonder what was occupying Slidell. Behind Pete’s head, a faulty carriage-lantern bulb winked on and off. I absently tracked its sputtering decline. Thought again about the AWOL electrician. Resolved to keep nagging until he finished the job in the new study.

We were sipping decaf espressos when I said, “OK, big guy. What’s this news that must only be shared in person?”

Pete’s face went all tight angles and bones. A beat, then he set his tiny china cup on its tiny china saucer. It made a soft chinking sound. Long after, I recalled that odd little detail.

“My trip was for Boyd.”

Pete’s strange response. His somber tone and obvious tension. I felt a tickle of unease.

“For the dog,” I said.

“Yes.”

When anxious, I often joke. I did so then. “The chow’s worried about the rising cost of admission to national parks?”

Unsmiling, Pete took my hand. The gesture, meant to comfort, had the opposite effect.

“Boyd has a brain tumor, Tempe. I took him to a specialist in Raleigh.”

“A tumor.” The bulb was dead, the lantern across the terrace now a hazy Cyclops eye.

“It’s frontal. He’s losing vision on the right.”

I swallowed. “How will they treat it?”

Pete squeezed my hand harder.

The cold hollowness spread outward. I said nothing.

“He loved being out on the trails,” Pete said. “I think Acadia was his favorite.”

I nodded.

“Boyd’s had a good life.”

I’m lousy at expressing emotion. At offering condolence. I spoke the first words to come into my head.

“It’ll be fine.”

My artless response hung between us on the hot summer air. We both knew it wouldn’t be fine. It would be agonizing. Heart-wrenching. Achingly sad.

“I want to see him.”

“Of course. We’ll—”

“Now.”

“Sure.”

Pete signaled for the check. Paid. I was too devastated to argue.

I followed Pete to the house we’d shared for almost twenty years. His now. I waited while he used his key to let us in.

We’d barely cleared the door when Boyd came strolling into the foyer, ears at half mast, tongue dangling purple. Seeing me, the dog went into his usual routine, not full-out berserk but pretty excited, circling me and nudging both my hands with his snout. I petted his head and ruffled the fur on his neck. Which did nothing to calm the display.

At Pete’s suggestion, we all moved into the family room. I accepted his offer of coffee, too focused on Boyd to consider the consequences of late-night caffeine. As Pete disappeared into the kitchen, I dropped onto the sofa, leaned forward, and opened my arms.

Boyd put his head on my knee, looked up, and rotated his eyebrow whiskers. I gazed into the doleful brown eyes, a million memories colliding in my mind. Fighting tears, I wondered. Did the dog know something was amiss in his head? Did he sense his upcoming decline? His death?

Was I projecting my own angst onto the chow? My newborn sense of my own mortality?

Pete and I took Boyd for a very long walk. I stayed far later than I should have. While starting the car, I noticed the time on the dashboard clock. 11:37.

I wept all the way to the annex.

Another shock awaited me there.

24

The porch light was on, but the usual squadron of moths wasn’t fluttering in the nimbus around it. My ears registered no soft ticking of wings against bulbs. The air smelled of petunias and marigolds and freshly mowed lawn. And something else. An acrid tinge overriding the floral mix.

A ghostlike shadow materialized from the darkness at the corner of the house. To either side of it, the ground looked oddly rippled, as though the soil had been gouged, the grass trampled and flattened.

My mind logged all the incongruous cues. Offered no explanation.

“Bird?”

As the cat padded toward me, I checked my surroundings. Still no alarm bells. My gaze fell on the door leading into the kitchen. Dark slashes ran along the edges where the wood should have met the frame.

Had the wind knocked it ajar? For those in my line of work, security is second nature. Like washing your hands with soap. Or breathing. Plus, there had been break-ins in the past. No way I’d ever forget to lock up.

Seriously, Brennan? Lately you’ve been acting like a sparrow caged with a Maine Coon.

Pete was with me during dinner and later at his house. Katy wasn’t in Charlotte. Mama didn’t drive after dark. No one else in town had a key. Who?

I jumped at the brush of fur on my ankles. Squatted and scooped Birdie into my arms.

“Good boy for hanging close to home.”

The cat purred and raised his head. I buried my nose behind his right ear.

My pulse quickened.

He smelled like cinders.

Flash image of the incinerator at the fenced bunker.

Alert Slidell?

Detective Delightful would either go radioactive at being phoned so late or set a land record rushing over to protect my ass. Before dialing, I had to know what the hell was going on. If anything.

Another quick glance around, then I eased the door inward and stepped inside. No ski-masked figure lurched from the gloom. Every familiar shape was in its normal position. The sink, the appliances, the table and chairs.

But the smell of smoke was unmistakable.

Nervous energy must have goosed me into squeezing harder than I realized. Birdie yrrrped and twisted. With a four-paw brace, he launched from my chest and shot from the room.

Lights?

I knew the layout. An intruder, if there was one, would not. Advantage to me.

Feeling half foolish, half frightened, I crept forward in the dark. The dining room was undisturbed. Ditto the living room, the only movement the gentle swaying of the pendulum on the mantel clock. The only sound its low metronome.

But why so black? Usually, I leave the hall table lamp burning. I’d also forgotten that?

As I inched toward the guest room/study, the air felt wrong. Too heavy, too warm. Had the hot mugginess seeped in through the open back door? And why the smell of burning?