Beverly Connor: One Grave Too Many

To Diane Trap

A special thanks to GBI crime scene specialist Terry Cooper for his help-and sense of humor. And another special thanks to Genny Ostertag for her amazing work on my manuscript.

RiverTrail Museum

Second Floor

Thrid Floor

“His head isn’t on straight.”

“It doesn’t seem to fit. Maybe it’s not his.”

“Dr. Fallon-”

Diane Fallon, director of RiverTrail Museum of Natural History, looked up from the work she was trying to finish to see the spectacle of Gary and Samantha, two university students, balancing between a ladder and a construction platform, holding the skull of a giant sloth tilted at an odd angle atop its fifteen-foot skeleton. She raked her gaze over the offending skull as Gary was trying to wire it in place. “Wait a minute,” she said.

Diane climbed the ladder to the platform to have a look at the problem. She glanced at her watch as she lay down on her stomach on the platform. It was late and she was tired. She inspected the bones and shook her head and pointed to the neck of the giant creature. “You have the atlas on backward.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Gary, I’m sure. Bones are like puzzle pieces. When they’re put together right, they fit together perfectly. How do you think your head would fit if your neck was on backward?” The other students giggled. “Did you follow the diagram I gave you?”

“Yes. . I thought we did. I already have it wired in place.” He said this as if expecting Diane to say, “Well, then, I guess we’ll just have to make the head fit, won’t we?”

“You’ll have to redo it.”

“It’s getting late, Dr. Fallon. I’ve got a big test tomorrow to study for.”

“The opening of the exhibit is tomorrow evening. Test or no test, we have to finish this display. You’ve known the schedule since the beginning of the semester. Lay the skull here on the platform, gently. Unwire the atlas and put it on correctly. Follow the diagram.”

“Ah, man,” Gary whined.

Samantha looked close to tears. Diane could hear the frustration in their voices, but there was nothing else to do. The exhibit had to be finished and they were aware of the timeline.

Leslie, the third of the student threesome, looked at her watch as Diane stepped down off the ladder. “It is getting late,” she said.

“I realize this is terribly unfair.” Diane pulled loose a piece of packing tape that had stuck to her slacks. “Normally, students get to ask fellow students which teachers are a bitch to work for, but I’m new at the museum and have no track record. You guys can spread the word. Do the work assigned, do it correctly and on time. I give only A’s and F’s. We miss the opening, it’s an F.” The three students’ eyes widened in surprise. “You’ve already wired the entire postcranial skeleton and done a good job. Getting the head on straight won’t take as long as you think.”

“Dr. Fallon, telephone.” Andie, her assistant, brought the cordless phone from Diane’s office. Diane took it and retreated across the room away from the grumbling students.

“Yes?”

“Diane, how are you?” It was a voice she hadn’t heard in three years, and she was surprised that the sound of it made her smile.

“Frank? Frank, I’m. . fine. And you? It’s been a while.”

“I’m good.” He hesitated half a beat. “I wrote you several letters.”

“I didn’t receive them.”

“I didn’t mail them.”

“Oh.”

“Could I take you to dinner?” he asked. “There are some things I’d like to talk with you about.”

“I don’t know. This is a bad time, Frank.”

He hesitated again. “I hate to ask a favor of you over the phone.”

“A favor? What is it?” Diane looked over at her students busily working on the sloth exhibit. She hoped she had sufficiently put the fear of God into them so that they wouldn’t mess up again.

“I have a bone that may belong to a missing girl. . ”

Diane’s voice caught in her throat. “A bone? No,” she said a little too roughly, almost choking on the words.

“No, what?”

Andie was standing in front of her, holding out two handfuls of artificial leaves. The interruption gave her mind time to think and her racing heart time to slow down.

“Hold on just a moment, Frank.” Diane placed a hand over the mouthpiece and raised her eyebrows at Andie.

“They sent the wrong plants, Archaeopteris , but Donald insists we go ahead and use them. He says no one will know the difference.”

“That’s why we’re here-to teach them the difference. Tell him this is a museum of natural history, not a B-grade movie set-we have to be accurate.”

Andie smiled. “That’s about what I told him you’d say.”

“I’m sorry, Frank. We’re opening a big exhibit tomorrow evening and I’m up to my ears.”

“What do you mean, no ?”

“No, I don’t do that anymore.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Forensic work. I don’t do it anymore.”

There was such a long stretch of silence on the phone that Diane thought he might have hung up. “You still there?”

“But that’s what you do,” he said.

“Not anymore.”

“Look, this is off the record. It’s only one bone.”

“I don’t care. There are other bone experts you can take it to. Get them. . One bone? You have only one damn bone? There’s probably nothing I could do with that anyway.”

“It’s half a bone, really. You can tell me if it’s human.”

“If that’s all you want to know, any decent osteology student can tell you that.” If you can find one, she thought, watching hers fumble with the sloth. “But I can’t do it.”

“It may belong to someone I know. I play poker with the missing girl’s father. He’s been my best friend since we were kids, and his daughter baby-sat Kevin. The police are treating this as a runaway, but the girl’s parents are afraid her boyfriend has done something to her. Her brother found the bone in the woods behind her boyfriend’s parents’ home.”

In the woods, Diane thought. “No.”

“Diane. .”

“I have to go, Frank. I’m working with some students, and if they see me talking on the phone, they’ll want to do it too. It’s good to hear your voice again. It really is. Come by sometime.” She hung up.

Diane stood still for a moment. Hearing Frank’s voice was good. The tenor of it brought back past feelings-of warmth and passion. Why did he have to be talking about bones? She filled her lungs with air to clear her head, exhaled and went back to her students.

It was almost ten o’clock before the last person left. Diane was alone in the museum-but not completely alone. Jake Houser and Leonard Starns, the two night security guards, were making their rounds. And somewhere in the three-story structure the cleaning crew was hard at work.

Everything was almost ready for the reception the next evening-just a few odds and ends left. Diane walked among the exhibits representing North America in the Pleistocene. The skeleton of a huge Bison antiquus stood, as if on the ancient tundra, against the background of a restored mural of a grazing herd, oblivious to the Paleo-Indians hiding in the tall grass with their Clovis point-tipped spears.