Beverly Connor: One Grave Too Many

“I’m not really hungry. I. .” She had bent over to rearrange the weeds by the bison’s foot and something in the wall painting caught her eye-a tiny figure hidden in the tall grass near the Paleo-Indian hunters. It looked like a unicorn. She moved closer.

“Diane, you still there?”

“Sorry, I was examining this unicorn.”

“Unicorn?” He paused. “You mean there really was such a thing? They were here, in Georgia? You have a skeleton?”

Diane took the phone away for a second, stared at it, then put it back to her ear. “No. There’s one in the painting.”

“Oh.” Frank sounded disappointed, and Diane almost laughed. “I’m on my way over,” he said. “See you in a minute.”

He had hung up before she could protest.

“Andie, have you seen this?”

Andie had her brown frizzy curls tied up in a ponytail on top of her head, making her look sixteen instead of twenty-six. She came over and looked where Diane pointed. “I haven’t seen that one,” she said.

“There are more?”

“At least two in here. One grazing around the feet of the mammoth herd and another on the edge of the pond behind some weeds, sticking its horn in the water. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo? ”

“How odd.”

“I’ll say. But nice.”

Within five minutes, Frank came through the door, followed by a herd of museum staff. He took Diane by the arm, led her to a bench by the door and produced a still warm egg-and-biscuit sandwich.

A little waft of steam rose from the sandwich when she folded back the wrapper and it had the aroma of breakfast. She took a bite.

“I guess I am hungry.”

“I thought so.” Frank waited until she had taken several bites before he spoke again. “It was a false alarm about the bone.”

Diane cocked an eyebrow at him.

“It was part of my friends’ efforts to persuade the police to investigate the boyfriend. The bone they gave me came from a deer and not from the boyfriend’s back-yard.” He flashed a gleaming set of white teeth through a sheepish expression.

“You have the bone?”

“Sure.” He took it out of his briefcase.

She finished her biscuit and dropped the wrapper into a waste container by the door. “Come with me,” she said, leading him through double doors into the mammal exhibit.

“Clavicles are like struts. They keep our shoulders straight and our arms from falling onto our chest.” She stopped at an exhibit labeled ODOCOILEUS VIRGINIANUS . “OK, here’s a deer. Find the bone.”

“What?”

“Find the bone on the deer identical to the one you hold in your hand.”

He started with the long metapodial bones of the feet, moved to the ribs, walked around the deer and stopped by the shoulder. He shrugged. “This skeleton doesn’t have one.”

“Neither do any of its kin. Deer don’t have clavicles. They don’t need them. It doesn’t matter if their forelegs fall onto their chest. We primates have them. So do bats and birds. In birds it’s called a furcula-wishbone to you laymen.”

He looked at her as if not quite understanding, and she dragged him along into another room filled with primate skeletons and stopped at Homo sapiens sapiens.

“OK, wise guy, can you find the bone now?”

Frank looked at the skeleton’s collarbone. Bingo. It was identical. He shook his head. “George told me it was from a deer. I’ve known him for years.”

“Maybe he thought it was. You need to find out what pile of bones he took it from. Now, I have a reception to get ready for tonight and I haven’t looked at all the interactive media yet.”

“About tonight.”

Here it comes. Another broken date before we even get started again. Diane stood waiting.

“My son-you met Kevin-he wants to be a forensic anthropologist.”

“And you want me to recommend a good child psychologist?”

“Funny, Diane. No. I would like to bring him. I know it’s one of these invitation-only affairs, but. .”

“Fine. I’d like to see him again.”

“There’s more.”

“You have more children?”

“You’re real cute this morning, aren’t you? No. His mother and her husband would like to come too.”

“Family affair?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ll leave tickets at the door.”

“I appreciate this. It’s not every woman who would let her date bring his ex-wife.”

“We have an entomologist on staff you can show the bug parts to.”

“What? Oh.” Frank studied the design on the floor, making a face, as if he had just felt a wave of pain. “I-uh-threw them away.”

“Threw them away? You threw evidence away?”

“I didn’t think it was evidence. The Rosewood police weren’t interested. And they were, I thought, bug parts from a deer bone.”

“What does your friend do for a living?”

“He’s a roofing contractor.”

“A roofing contractor. Frank, did you know that before I took the directorship of the museum here, I was an internationally known forensic anthropologist? Did you know that I can give expert testimony in courts of law all over the world about anything concerning the identification and disposition of bones? And you believed a roofer’s identification over mine?” Diane threw up her hands.

“I’ve known him forever. We play poker together.”

“What? Is this some kind of guy thing?”

“No. He said it was from the skeleton of a deer, and I believed him.”

“He told you he grabbed some deer, skinned him out, and took this bone?” Diane put her forefinger on his chest.

“No. He said he found it with a pile of deer bones in the woods. I’m sure there were probably antlers present,” he added, as if that were a reasonable defense, “and hooves.”

Diane put her fingertips to her eyelids. “You do know that once an animal is completely skeletonized, it becomes disarticulated-it comes apart. Does the word co-mingle have any meaning?”

“No, it doesn’t. I’ve never worked with a forensic anthropologist. I work with white-collar crimes-paper, computers, ideas and people who at least act civilized while they’re stealing from you. All bones look alike to me. Are you going to continue to hit me over the head with this? I’m sorry. He and his wife are best friends of mine. I don’t believe he’d lie to me-I mean, I know they lied originally, but they were desperate. Were the bug parts that important?”

“Maybe not. You may be able to extract more from deeper inside the bone.”

“How about that spider’s web?”

“I’m not sure you could do anything with that anyway.”

“So the only damage is to your pride?” He grinned.

“No, to my sensibilities.”

Frank laughed. He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I have to be in Columbus this afternoon to appear in court, but I’ll be back in time to pick you up. I promise.”

“OK.”

“I miss arguing with you.” He kissed her cheek.

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I miss a lot of things we used to do.”

“It took you a long time to remember.”

“Now, that’s not fair. As far as I knew, you were still somewhere up a tree with Cheeta,” he said.

“That’s Africa, not South America.”

“You were in Africa?”

She ignored him. “When you find the pile of bones your friend says he got this one from-even if you find a pair of antlers with matching hooves with them-tell whoever’s in charge to treat it like a crime scene. Don’t let anyone just take the bones and put them in a sack. Their pattern of dispersal will tell you a lot about what kind of agent scattered-or piled-them.”

“Did you know you get really pretty when you talk about bones? I mean, you always look great, but there is something about the way your eyes shine when you talk about bones.”