Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

Frank nodded. “That’s something-a good place to start. How is it that you know so much about bugs?”

“Part of my old job. Bodies, bones, bugs and blood.”

“All that?”

“It’s all connected. Besides, it’s hard to find a crime lab in the places I had to go. Those countries often don’t want us there in the first place, and their cooperation doesn’t extend to lending expert personnel and lab facilities. The team learned how to do everything ourselves.”

“So you’re familiar with crime scenes?”

“Yes.”

Frank stood and walked over to a photograph on her wall of the inside of a cave. He didn’t turn around, but spoke to the photograph. “Warrick’s finished with the crime scene. I wonder if you’d take a look at it?”

“Frank, I. .”

He turned in her direction. “They matched the gun with the bullet that killed Jay. It was Louise’s gun. Star’s just sixteen. Sixteen, Diane. I don’t think she did it. I’m getting her a lawyer, but I need to get a handle on the crime scene.”

“It’s already been contaminated.”

“I know, but you said ‘bodies, bones, bugs and blood.’ You know about blood spatters?”

“Yes. Like other crime scene evidence, blood spatters can be an important element in human rights cases, but. .”

“That’s a place to start. There are spatters. Diane, for now, I’m Star’s guardian, until she’s eighteen. I’ve known her since she was a baby. She’s like a daughter, and I know she didn’t do this, but I need help proving it.” He was silent a moment, turning back to the picture. “It looks like you in this cave.”

“It is.”

“It looks like you’re hanging from a rope.”

“I am.”

“Why?” He turned around and faced her with a puzzled frown.

“The entrance to that particular cave was from above. You knew I was a caver?”

“Well, yeah, you mentioned it, but I thought you visited as a tourist-like Ruby Falls or Mammoth Cave, you know-with a bunch of other people.”

She gestured to the photograph. “That cave’s in Brazil. I was mapping it.”

“Mapping it? Why?”

Diane shrugged. “It hadn’t been mapped.”

“So that’s what you do for fun?”

She leaned forward with her elbows on the desk. “It’s very relaxing. Caves are beautiful. The line from Frost’s poem-‘lovely, dark and deep’-fits caves better than woods. It’s like being in the center of a velvet black universe-often as silent as the vacuum of space must be.”

“You say it like that’s a good thing.”

Diane laughed at him standing there with that curious look on his face. “It’s a very good thing.”

Frank picked up a geode paperweight sitting on her dark walnut desk and turned it over in his hand. “We need to get reacquainted. We hardly knew each other before.”

“It seems there’s a lot we don’t know about each other.”

Diane’s private line rang and she picked it up, still holding his gaze in hers.

“Diane, how about letting Dylan Houser come down and make an assessment of your interactive computing needs.”

Diane hesitated a moment, pulled her attention away from Frank and focused on the caller. “Ken, hi. How are you? You don’t waste time, do you?”

“This isn’t a business where you can waste time-not like real estate, apparently.” He laughed so loud Diane had to pull the phone away from her ear.

“What’s up with Mark anyway?” asked Diane.

“Damned if I know. Makes no sense to me, unless he’s got his money tied up in it somehow and needs the deal to cover his losses or something. I can’t believe he’d put us through all this trouble for commission. How about Dylan? It was his idea. I think his girlfriend wants to work there. He’s a smart kid. Already figured out how much money I can make if he talks you into it.”

“His father, Jake, is one of our evening security guards. Sure, why not make it a family affair? It won’t hurt to see what he comes up with.”

“Good. I’ll tell him. If I figure out what Grayson’s up to, I’ll let you know.” He hung up. Ken rarely cluttered up his conversations with hellos and good-byes.

As she placed the phone back in its docking station, her gaze shifted to the envelope on the desk. “Is that the crime scene information?”

“Yes.”

Diane regarded the yellow-brown envelope for a moment before she reached for it. She held it tentatively, like it might morph into a snake if she moved too quickly. She knew the envelope held the photographs of a mother, father and their son-dead. Not peacefully asleep, like some people describe the dead, but lifeless, possibly covered in blood, probably limbs lying at odd angles where they fell, stilled when their efforts to defend themselves failed.

Opening the envelope would be opening a door she thought she’d closed and locked for good.

Diane stared at the envelope.

“Are you all right?” Frank asked after a moment.

“What?” Diane looked from the envelope to Frank as if she had forgotten he was there. “Yes. I was just thinking.” She snatched up the envelope, opened it and pulled out the crime scene photos.

Frank dropped into the chair, loosened his tie and leaned forward.

“Have you seen them?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s hard looking at people you know, murdered. How did you come by the photos? Who called you to the crime scene?”

“A uniform cop friend with the department. Izzy Wallace. He doesn’t like the new guys any better than I do. He got them for me. George was his friend too.”

“Another poker buddy?”

“Yes. And we all belong to the same hunting club.”

Diane grimaced. “Do you know the time of death?”

“Just generally-the coroner thinks somewhere between two and four in the morning. They’ll know more after the autopsies.”

“Can you get the autopsy reports?”

“Yeah, Izzy can get them.”

“Tell me, why do they suspect the daughter? Do they have more evidence than that she may have been a drug user and may have had access to the gun?”

Frank bowed his head a moment, and Diane looked up from the photograph.

“They caught her trying to sell a coin collection. It’s one George inherited from his father-very valuable.”

“How do the detectives know the collection was in the house at the time the Boones were killed?”

Frank looked like he had just tasted something bitter. “George’s mother and stepfather, Crystal and Gilroy McFarland, said they were.”

“You don’t believe them? They wouldn’t deliberately incriminate their granddaughter?”

“You’ve got to know Crystal. She was a piece of work, even when George and I were kids. Not what you’d call the nurturing type. Nothing like Louise.” He paused a moment and glanced down at the spread of photos lying on the desk in front of Diane. “Crystal didn’t call Star or Jay her grandchildren. They were adopted, and that didn’t count with her.”

Diane clenched her teeth and began examining the first photo. Fourteen-year-old Jay lay crumpled on the ground near a large oak tree. He was on his stomach, one arm under his body, the other at his side and bent at the elbow. One leg was straight; the other was bent at the knee. He was wearing a light blue jacket, jeans, and white Nike running shoes. A close-up of his back showed the bullet hole in the jacket and just a small amount of blood. Possibly small-caliber gun, she thought. Just a kid . She shivered. Even with her experience excavating massacres, it still astonished her that the architects of such atrocities included children in their plans.

“What does Detective Warrick think happened?” Diane asked.