Kathy Reichs - Bare Bones

A boater on Lake Norman had snagged a portion of an upper arm. Adult, probably white, probably male. Height five-foot-six to six feet.

A skull was found on the banks of Sugar Creek. Older adult, female, black, no teeth. Not recent. Probably a disturbed cemetery burial.

As I worked, my mind kept drifting back to the previous spring in Guatemala. I’d picture a stance. A face. A scar, sexy as hell. I’d feel a ripple of excitement, followed by a prick of anxiety. Was this upcoming beach trip such a good idea? I had to force myself to focus on the reports.

At one-fifteen I shut down the computer and dragged myself upstairs.

It wasn’t until I was showered and lying in bed that I had time to consider Geneva Banks’s statement.

“It wasn’t Darryl’s baby.”

“What!” Slidell, Banks, and I had replied as one.

Geneva remumbled her shocker.

Whose?

No idea. Tamela had confided that the child she was carrying had not been fathered by Darryl Tyree. That was all Geneva knew.

Or would say.

A thousand questions jockeyed for position.

Did Geneva’s information clear Tyree? Or did it render him even more suspect? Knowing the child was not his, had Tyree murdered it? Had he forced Tamela to kill her own baby?

Did Geneva have a valid point? Could the infant have been born dead? Had there been a genetic defect? An umbilical cord problem? Had Tamela, heartbroken, merely chosen the most expedient way and cremated the lifeless body in the woodstove? It was possible. Where had the baby been delivered?

I felt Birdie land on the bed, explore possibilities, then curl behind my knees.

My mind circled back to the upcoming beach junket. Could it lead anywhere? Did I want that? Was I looking for something meaningful, or merely hoping for rock-and-roll sex? God knows, I was horny enough. Was I capable of committing to another relationship? Could I trust again? Pete’s betrayal had been so painful, the breakup of our marriage so agonizing, I wasn’t sure.

Back to Tamela. Where was she? Had Tyree harmed her? Had they gone to ground together? Had Tamela run off with someone else?

As I drifted off, I had one final, disquieting thought.

Finding answers concerning Tamela was up to Skinny Slidell.

When I awoke, scarlet sun was slashing through the leaves of the magnolia outside my window. Birdie was gone.

I checked the clock. Six forty-three.

“No way,” I mumbled, drawing knees to chest and burrowing deeper beneath the quilt.

A weight hit my back. I ignored it.

A tongue like a scouring brush scraped my cheek.

“Not now, Birdie.”

Seconds later I felt a tug on my hair.

“Bird!”

A reprieve, then the tugging began again.

“Stop!”

More tugging.

I shot up and pointed a finger at his nose.

“Don’t chew my hair!”

My cat regarded me with round, yellow eyes.

“All right.”

Sighing dramatically, I threw back the covers and pulled on my summer uniform of shorts and a T.

I knew giving in was providing positive reinforcement, but I couldn’t take it. It was the one trick that worked, and the little bugger knew it.

I cleaned up the guacamole Birdie had recycled onto the kitchen floor, ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts, then grazed through the Observer as I drank my coffee.

There’d been a pileup on I-77 following a late-night concert at Paramount’s Carowinds theme park. Two dead, four critical. A man had been shotgunned in a front yard on Wilkinson Boulevard. A local humanitarian had been charged with cruelty to animals for crushing six kittens to death in his trash compactor. The city council was still wrangling over sites for a new sports arena.

Refolding the paper, I weighed my choices.

Laundry? Groceries? Vacuuming?

Screw it.

Refilling my coffee, I shifted to the den and spent the rest of the morning wrapping up reports.

Katy picked me up at exactly twelve noon.

Though an excellent student, gifted painter, carpenter, tap dancer, and comic, promptness is not a concept my daughter holds in high esteem.

Hmm.

Nor, to my knowledge, is the Southern rite known as the pig pickin’.

Though my daughter’s official address remains Pete’s house, where she grew up, Katy and I often spend time together when she is home from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. We have gone to rock concerts, spas, tennis tournaments, golf outings, restaurants, bars, and movies together. Never has she proposed an outing involving smoked pork and bluegrass in a backyard.

Hmm.

Watching Katy cross my patio, I marveled, yet again, at how I could have produced such a remarkable creature. Though I’m not exactly last week’s meat loaf, Katy is a stunner. With her wheat-blonde hair and jade-green eyes, she has the beauty that makes men arm-wrestle their buddies and perform swan dives from rickety piers.

It was another sultry August afternoon, the kind that brings back childhood summers. Where I grew up, movie theaters were air-conditioned, and houses and cars sweltered. Neither the bungalow in Chicago nor the rambling frame farmhouse to which we relocated in Charlotte was equipped with AC. For me, the sixties were an era of ceiling and window fans.

Hot, sticky weather reminds me of bus trips to the beach. Of tennis under relentless blue skies. Of afternoons at the pool. Of chasing fireflies while adults sipped tea on the back porch. I love the heat.

Nevertheless, Katy’s VW could have used some AC. We drove with the windows down, hair flying wildly around our faces.

Boyd stood on the seat behind us, nose to the wind, eggplant tongue dangling from the side of his mouth. Seventy pounds of prickly brown fur. Every few minutes he’d change windows, flinging saliva on our hair as he whipped across the car.

The breeze did little more than circulate hot air, swirling the odor of dog from the backseat to the front.

“I feel like I’m riding in a clothes dryer,” I said as we turned from Beatties Ford Road onto NC 73.

“I’ll have the AC fixed.”

“I’ll give you the money.”

“I’ll take it.”

“What exactly is this picnic?”

“The McCranies hold it every year for friends and regulars at the pipe shop.”

“Why are we going?”

Katy rolled her eyes, a gesture she’d acquired at the age of three.

Though I am a gifted eye roller, my daughter is world-class. Katy is adept at adding subtle nuances of meaning I couldn’t begin to master. This was a low-level I’ve- already- explained- this- to- you roll.

“Because picnics are fun,” Katy said.

Boyd switched windows, stopping midway to lick suntan lotion from the side of my face. I pushed him aside and wiped my cheek.

“Why is it we have dogbreath with us?”

“Dad’s out of town. Does that sign say Cowans Ford?”

“Nice segue.” I checked the road sign. “Yes, it does.”

I reflected for a moment on local history. Cowans Ford had been a river crossing used by the Catawba tribe in the 1600s, and later by the Cherokee. Davy Crockett had fought there during the French and Indian War.

In 1781 Patriot forces under General William Lee Davidson had fought Lord Cornwallis and his Redcoats there. Davidson died in the battle, thus lending his name to Mecklenburg County history.

In the early 1960s the Duke Power Company had dammed the Catawba River at Cowans Ford and created Lake Norman, which stretches almost thirty-four miles.

Today, Duke’s McGuire Nuclear Power Plant, built to supplement the older hydroelectric plant, sits practically next to the General Davidson monument and the Cowans Ford Wildlife Refuge, a 2,250-acre nature preserve.

Wonder how the general feels about sharing his hallowed ground with a nuclear power plant?