Kathy Reichs - Bare Bones

“No, ma’am. Tamela a good girl.”

“Might Mr. Tyree have placed pressure on your daughter because he didn’t want the child?”

“Weren’t like that.”

We all turned at the sound of Geneva’s voice.

She gazed at us dully, in her shapeless blouse and terrible shorts.

“What do you mean?”

“Tamela tells me things, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“She confides in you?” I said.

“Yeah. Confides in me. Tells me things she can’t tell Daddy.”

“What she can’t tell me?” Banks’s voice sounded high and wheedly.

“Lots of stuff, Daddy. She couldn’t talk to you about Darryl. You shouting at her, tryin’ to get her to pray all the time.”

“I got to be thinkin’ ’bout her sou—”

“Did Tamela discuss her relationship with Darryl Tyree?” Slidell cut Banks off.

“Some.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

“Yeah.”

“When was that?”

Geneva shrugged. “Last winter.”

Banks’s shoulders slumped visibly.

“Do you know where your sister is?”

Geneva ignored Slidell’s question.

“What d’you find in Darryl’s woodstove?”

“Charred fragments of bone,” I replied.

“You sure they from a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe that baby was born dead.”

“There is always that possibility.” I doubted the words even as I spoke them, but couldn’t bear the look of sadness in Geneva’s eyes. “That’s why we have to locate Tamela and find out what really happened. Something other than murder could explain the baby’s death. I very much hope that turns out to be true.”

“Maybe the baby come too early.”

“I’m an expert on bones, Geneva. I can recognize changes that take place in the skeleton of a developing fetus.”

I reminded myself of the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

“Tamela’s baby was full-term.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The pregnancy lasted the full thirty-seven weeks, or very close to it. Long enough that the baby should have survived.”

“There could have been problems.”

“There could have been.”

“How d’you know that was Tamela’s baby?”

Slidell jumped in, ticking off points on his sausage fingers.

“Number one, several witnesses have stated that your sister was pregnant. Two, the bones were found in a stove at her residence. And three, she and Tyree have disappeared.”

“Could be someone else’s baby.”

“And I could be Mother Teresa, but I ain’t.”

Geneva turned back to me.

“What about that DNA stuff?”

“The fragments were too few and too badly burned for DNA testing.”

Geneva showed no reaction.

“Do you know where your sister has gone, Miss Banks?” Slidell’s tone was growing sharper.

“No.”

“Is there anything you can tell us?” I asked.

“Just one thing.”

Geneva looked from her father to me to Slidell. White woman. White cop. Bad choices.

Deciding the woman might be safer, she launched her bombshell in my direction.

3

AS SLIDELL DROVE BACK TO MY CAR, I TRIED TO QUELL MYemotions, to remember that I was a professional.

I felt sadness for Tamela and her baby. Annoyance at Slidell’s callous treatment of the Banks family. Anxiety over all I had to accomplish in the next two days.

I’d promised to spend Saturday with Katy, had company arriving on Sunday. Monday I was leaving on the first nonfamily vacation I’d allowed myself in years.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my annual family trek to the beach. My sister, Harry, and my nephew Kit fly up from Houston, and all my estranged husband’s Latvian relatives head east from Chicago. If no litigation is in process, Pete joins us for a few days. We rent a twelve-bedroom house near Nags Head, or Wilmington, or Charleston, or Beaufort, ride bikes, lie on the beach, watch What About Bob?, read novels, and reestablish extended-kin bonds. Beach week is a time of relaxed togetherness that is cherished by all.

This trip was going to be different.

Very different.

Again and again, I ran a mental checklist.

Reports. Laundry. Groceries. Cleaning. Packing. Birdie to Pete.

Sidebar. I hadn’t heard from Pete in over a week. That was odd. Though we’d lived apart for several years, I usually saw or heard from him regularly. Our daughter, Katy. His dog, Boyd. My cat, Birdie. His Illinois relatives. My Texas and Carolina relatives. Some common link usually threw us together every few days. Besides, I liked Pete, still enjoyed his company. I just couldn’t be married to him.

I made a note to ask Katy if her dad had gone out of town. Or fallen in love.

Love.

Back to the list.

Hot waxing?

Oh, boy.

I added an item. Guest room sheets.

I’d never get it all done.

By the time Slidell dropped me in the ME parking lot, tension was hardening my neck muscles and sending tentacles of pain up the back of my head.

The heat that had built up in my Mazda didn’t help. Nor did the uptown traffic.

Or was it downtown? Charlotteans have yet to agree on which way their city is turned.

Knowing it would be a late night, I detoured to La Paz, a Mexican restaurant at South End, for carryout enchiladas. Guacamole and extra sour cream for Birdie.

My home is referred to as the “coach house annex,” or simply the “annex” by old-timers at Sharon Hall, a nineteenth-century manor- turned- condo- complex in the Myers Park neighborhood in southeast Charlotte. No one knows why the annex was built. It is a strange little outbuilding that doesn’t appear on the estate’s original plans. The hall is there. The coach house. The herb and formal gardens. No annex.

No matter. Though cramped, the place is perfect for me. Bedroom and bath up. Kitchen, dining room, parlor, guest room/study down. Twelve hundred square feet. What realtors call “cozy.”

By six forty-five I was parked beside my patio.

The annex was blissfully quiet. Entering through the kitchen, I heard nothing but the hum of the Frigidaire and the soft ticking of Gran Brennan’s mantel clock.

“Hey, Bird.”

My cat did not appear.

“Birdie.”

No cat.

Setting down my dinner, purse, and briefcase, I crossed to the refrigerator and popped a can of Diet Coke. When I turned, Birdie was stretching in the dining room doorway.

“Never miss the sound of a pop-top, do you, big guy?”

I went over and scratched his ears.

Birdie sat, shot a leg in the air, and began licking his genitals.

I knocked back a swig of Coke. Not Pinot, but it would do. My days of boogying with Pinot were over. Or Shiraz, or Heineken, or cheap Merlot. It had been a long struggle but that curtain was down for good.

Did I miss alcohol? Damn right. Sometimes so much I could taste and smell it in my sleep. What I didn’t miss were the mornings after. The trembling hands, the dilated brain, the self-loathing, the anxiety over words and actions not remembered.

From now on, Coke. The real thing.

The rest of the evening I spent writing reports. Birdie hung in until the guacamole and sour cream ran out. Then he lay on the couch, paws in the air, and dozed.

In addition to Tamela Banks’s baby, I’d examined three sets of remains since my return to Charlotte from Montreal. Each required a report.

A partially skeletonized corpse was discovered under a pile of tires at a dump in Gastonia. Female, white, twenty-seven to thirty-two years of age, five-foot-two to five-foot-five in height. Extensive dental work. Healed fractures of the nose, right maxilla, and jaw. Sharp instrument trauma on the anterior ribs and sternum. Defense wounds on the hands. Probable homicide.