A Skeleton in the Family (10 page)

S
aturday afternoon, Sid came clattering down the stairs as soon as I got back from taking Madison to Samantha's house. “I've got a plan!” he said cheerfully.

“Movie, game, or dance party?”

“Murder investigation!”

“Did you remember something?”

“No, but I realized we have a suspect: Dr. Kirkland!”

“Okay, that would explain why you felt scared when seeing her, but she doesn't seem the murderous type. That whole noted-academic thing.”

“Shall I remind you of the Parkman-Webster case?” Sid replied. “Where one Harvard academic killed another?”

“Oh, right,” I said, wondering which book my parents had left lying around for Sid to get ahold of. “Whether or not she's a killer, she probably is the first person we should talk to. Fletcher says if he doesn't have police records, he starts by researching the victim.”

“You told Fletcher about me?” Sid said, eye sockets seeming to widen in alarm.

“Never on a first date.”

“Not funny!”

“No, Sid, I did not tell Fletcher about you.” I'd never told anybody about Sid, not even Madison's father. I'd intended to, but I never got around to it before I broke up with him. “I merely asked, in a general way, how somebody would go about investigating a cold murder case.”

“Did he have any good advice?”

“Just the bare bones,” I said, waiting for an appreciative laugh, but Sid didn't take the bait. “Fletcher said he'd start with police files, but that's no good for us. Then he'd talk to the victim's friends and family and coworkers—anybody the victim had known. In your case, that means Dr. Kirkland.”

“Then you haven't changed your mind?”

“Nope. I'm just as mad as I was yesterday.”

He grinned. “Then here's my idea.”

A couple of hours later, we were parked on the street in front of Dr. Kirkland's house. She'd moved into a fairly isolated neighborhood, where the houses had lots of room between them. Her ranch-style home screamed nineteen-seventies to me and looked completely out of place in an old Yankee town like Pennycross, but it was freshly painted and the yard was well maintained.

I'd put Sid into the hated suitcase, but just to get him into the van unobserved. Then I'd opened it again so we could talk. Fortunately, with the advent of hands-free cell phones, nobody looks askance at people who seem to be talking to themselves.

Though he wasn't visible unless somebody was standing right next to the van, and I had a blanket handy to cover him if need be, I was still having terrifying daydreams about being pulled over by cops and having to explain why I had a skeleton. Then I'd end up as the subject of Fletcher's next article.

“Is she here?” Sid wanted to know. “Do you see her?”

“Her car is in the driveway.”

“Have you got your cover story memorized?”

“Of course.” Not that it was that great a story. I was going to claim that my parents had heard that Dr. Kirkland had moved to town, and since they knew her from academic circles, they wanted me to welcome her. For all I knew, they might actually have met her at some point, but they had no idea Kirkland had moved to town, and even if they had, they certainly wouldn't have insisted I go see her.

Still, it sounded semi-reasonable, and if I let it slip that I was an adjunct, it would sound even more plausible. Adjunct faculty members have a reputation for trying to suck up to get jobs. I admit that it's not unwarranted.

“Are you sure I can't go in with you?” Sid said.

“How? She'd either faint or call the cops. Maybe both.”

“You could stick my skull in your purse and—”

“No.” Before he could come up with some other crazy scheme, I got out of the van with the fruit basket from the “markdown” shelf at the grocery store. In my defense, all the items in it still looked fresh.

I put on my brightest smile, went to the front door, and rang the bell. A minute passed. Two. Well, Dr. Kirkland was old and might not have good hearing. I rang the bell again, for slightly longer than before. Three minutes later, I knocked on the door loudly. I waited a few more minutes, then knocked again. Then I went back to the van and climbed in.

“I guess she's not here.”

“But her car is here!” Sid said indignantly.

“Maybe she doesn't want to come to the door. Maybe she's got two cars. Maybe somebody picked her up. Maybe she's out jogging.”

“So, now what?”

“We go home.”

“But . . .” He didn't say anything else, but two finger bones dropped to the floor of the van.

I sighed. “Tell you what. Madison is out for the day anyway. We'll kill some time, then come back.”

Sid's finger bones snapped back into place.

I was so being played.

We started with a trip to the nearest McDonald's drive-through, followed it with a sumptuous meal in the front seat of the van, and rounded off the festivities with a stop at a gas station.

Since Sid was getting what he wanted, he was good as gold. He hid and made sure not to talk to me when he could be overheard, and he didn't steal any of my fries, which Madison always does.

An hour and a half later, we were back at Dr. Kirkland's house. Even though it was dark by then, there were no lights on in the house, so I wasn't optimistic when the fruit basket and I went back to the front door. Ring. Wait. Repeat. Back to the van.

“She's still not home.” Before I could start the engine, I heard the thud of bones hitting the floor. “Dude, you've played the ‘I'm falling apart' card one time too many. If you've got a suggestion, I'm happy to listen, but otherwise I'm going to go home and eat one of these apples.”

“Maybe she's in the back of the house and can't hear the bell. You could go look back there.”

It wasn't completely ridiculous, so I got back out of the van. Sid, against all instructions to the contrary, was getting out, too. “Where do you think you're going?”

“Come on, Georgia. It's not safe for you to be wandering around alone in a strange place. It's dark, and there are trees in the way, so nobody is going to see me.”

“What if Dr. Kirkland shows up?”

“I'll duck.”

It didn't seem worth the argument, especially since I didn't have any idea that Dr. Kirkland was there, so I let it go.

We started around to the back of the house, trying to look in windows as we went. Unfortunately Dr. Kirkland kept all her blinds down and her curtains firmly closed—we couldn't even get a peek. There was a window in the back door, but even that had a blackout blind on it. The woman liked her privacy.

I gestured for Sid to step back a bit and knocked loudly. Nothing. I knocked again.

Finally, I heard noise from inside the house.

“Somebody is home!” Sid said triumphantly.

A second later, he was proven absolutely correct, though not in the way he'd hoped. A dog came barreling out of the dog flap in the door, which we hadn't noticed in the darkness.

I jumped back, thinking he might attack, but the dog barely noticed me. Because there in front of him was a canine dream come true—not just a single bone, but a whole skeleton, all for him.

T
he dog ran toward Sid with a bark that had to be one of pure joy. Sid backed away, tripped, and fell flat on his back. The dog was on him in an instant, going for a leg bone. Sid was doing his best to push it off when I got to them.

Later, I noticed that the dog was red, with a lighter belly and a tail that curled up onto its back, and later still, I found out it was an Akita. At the time, however, it just looked like a mass of fur and teeth. Especially teeth. Sid was trying to shake the dog off, but it had a good grip on Sid's left femur.

I'd always been told not to stick my hand anywhere near a dog's mouth during an attack, but when I tried for the tail, I got nothing but fluff. With an awful scraping sound, Sid finally pulled his leg bone from the dog's mouth, but it instantly turned his attention to his arm. Then I heard a kind of popping sound as one of the bones came free. The dog ran back to the door with the bone in its mouth, slipping back through the doggie flap before I could stop it.

“That ossifying hound has my ulna!” Sid yelped.

“It went into the house.” I bent over so I could peer through the flap and into the house, but there was no light and I couldn't see the dog. Or Sid's ulna. I thought I heard ominous noises that could have been the dog gnawing. “Here, boy!” I called out hopefully.

“What if it's a girl?”

“Here, doggie!” I corrected. “Come on out—there are more bones waiting for you.”

“Hey!”

“How else are we going to lure it out?”

“Forget luring. It'll just leave my ulna in there and come back for more.”

I tried the doorknob, but of course it was locked.

“Can you pick the lock?”

“Wrong sister.”

“Can we call Deborah?”

“One, she wouldn't come. Two, it would take too long.” Not only was Dr. Kirkland likely to show up at any moment, all the commotion might have convinced the neighbors to call the police. Worst of all was what that mutt could be doing to Sid's bone—we'd learned long ago that Sid didn't heal. We could glue him back together if need be, but any tooth marks would be permanent.

“You could break a window so we can open it and crawl in.”

“I could,” I said, reluctant to cause damage to the house or get myself into more trouble. “Look, she's got an alarm system.” I pointed to the telltale sticker on the door. “The doggie flap must be left off the system, but I bet any windows opening would set it off.”

I stared at the house, hoping for the dog to feel guilty and return Sid's bone.

Then Sid snapped his fingers—which is a much sharper sound with no flesh in the way. “The doggie door!”

“I don't think I'll fit.”

“Not you, me. Slide me in a bone at a time, and then I'll pull myself together on the other side.”

“That's actually kind of brilliant.”

“Don't sound so surprised.”

Sid let himself fall apart just in front of the doggie flap, and I knelt down and picked up his skull. “In you go!” I said, and slid him inside the house.

“I'm in!” he said triumphantly, if needlessly.

I kept stuffing in bones until the stoop was clear. A moment after the last handful of foot bones went in, I heard the familiar clattering of metatarsals against the floor. Then the door opened and a skeletal hand reached out to drag me inside.

“Hey! The alarm!”

“It's not on,” Sid said, pointing to a number pad right by the door. The status screen said
Ready to Arm
in blinking green letters.

“Do you think it's safe to turn on a light?” I asked.

“Probably safer than fumbling around in the dark.” Sid did fumble a little before finding the switch, and after he flipped it, waited to make sure there was no hue or cry. “Let's go find my bone.”

Sid led the way, turning on lights as we went. I followed more reluctantly, feeling exceedingly uneasy about being in a stranger's house or, technically, being the stranger in the house. Besides, though the place looked clean enough, it smelled funny—a combination of chemical scents, old lady smell, and something kind of stinky.

The back door opened into a mudroom, and from there we went into the kitchen. I noticed that the dog's food dish was empty, which might explain the attraction of Sid's ulna. The kitchen led to the dining room, but I doubted Dr. Kirkland ate in there. The table was covered with specimen jars and nothing inside them looked appetizing. Academics do have a tendency to bring their work home—I was lucky my parents were in literature.

Next was a fairly generic living room with a TV that was small by the day's standards of big-as-a-movie-theater screens. The wall was hung with maps and animal photos, not family keepsakes.

A hall led to a bathroom, then a small bedroom with a rumpled bed, which was probably where Dr. Kirkland slept. The larger of the two bedrooms was outfitted as an office, but it clearly wasn't large enough. The biggest testament to that was that I saw the piles of books and papers first, then the dog chewing on Sid's ulna, which I retrieved and tried to give back to him.

The last thing I got around to noticing was the body of Dr. Kirkland. Well, next to last. The very last thing was her blood pooling on the floor.

I
f I'd ever given thought to how I would react upon finding an apparently dead body, I would have guessed that I would either scream or immediately rush over to try to help the stricken person, but I did neither. I didn't scream, because it was more of a slow realization than a sudden shock, and I didn't rush over because I didn't want to make it real. I just stood and wished that I were just about anywhere else in the world.

“Is she dead?” Sid asked.

“I think so. Go look.” He didn't move, and I decided that if she was still breathing, having a skeleton examining her might not help her any. So I stepped closer and made myself reach out to touch her with one finger. She felt cold and stiff, and if that weren't enough, when I got closer I could see blood and tissue and other stuff that should have been in one of the creepy bottles in the dining room. “Yeah, she's dead.”

“What do we do?”

“Shouldn't we call the cops?”

“And explain us being here, how?”

He was right of course. I couldn't let the cops find out about Sid, and I couldn't explain how I'd gotten into the house without him. “Okay, then we've got to get out of here.”

I hesitated just a second to try to decide if I could have left fingerprints anywhere, then backed out of the room. “Turn out the lights as we go.” Since he didn't have to worry about fingerprints, it made sense for him to take care of anything that needed touching. We made it back to the mudroom and peered out the curtain before going back outside, leaving the door locked behind us. I thought about latching the dog flap so Dr. Kirkland's pet couldn't come back out, but decided it was best to leave the place just as we'd found it.

I really wanted to run back to the van, but I knew it was better to take my time and make sure I didn't trip and leave some trace that forensics experts would recognize as evidence of a thirtyish single mother with sedentary habits who'd just eaten a medium order of French fries.

When we got to the van, Sid hid on the floor of the front seat without being asked, even pulling the blanket over his head. I wouldn't have minded hiding myself, but somebody had to start the van.

A few minutes later, Sid said, “Georgia, are you okay to drive?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“Your hands are shaking.”

I looked down and saw he was right. “Maybe I'd better pull over.” I was close to that same McDonald's, so I parked at the back of the lot, put my head down on the steering wheel, and tried some of those deep-breathing tricks I hadn't needed since going into labor with Madison.

Sid patted me on the leg. “It's okay, it's okay.”

“I've never touched a dead person. Other than you. Could you have, you know . . . talked to her?”

“What am I, the skeleton whisperer?”

“I don't know!”

“No, I cannot talk to dead people. Or other skeletons. Your parents checked years ago.”

“Really?”

“They snuck me into the med school to visit corpses, and then to the Anthropology Department to commune with my fellow flesh-deprived. Nothing.”

“Maybe that's better.” Just the thought of Sid talking to the dead woman started me shivering again.

“I'm so sorry,” Sid said.

“It's not your fault. I wanted to talk to her, too. I don't know how we're going to find out about you now, but—”

“It doesn't matter anymore. That poor woman is dead.”

“We've got to call the cops. We can't just leave her like that.”

“And that dog needs real food.” He rubbed the tooth marks on his arm.

“I guess we should find a pay phone.” Of course, I hadn't used one in years, and didn't even know where to look for one.

“Crime Stoppers,” Sid said. “You can call them from any phone and it's completely anonymous. They advertise on late-night TV.”

“Are you sure?”

“Cross my ribcage,” he said with a trace of his usual humor. “But just in case, let me do the talking.”

I dialed the number for him—touch screens don't react to bare bone—and handed him the phone.

“I want to report a disturbance,” he said, and gave Kirkland's address. “The dog never runs loose, but he's been in the yard barking, and I haven't seen the lady who lives there all day. She's old and I'm worried something might have happened.” Then he gave the phone back to me so I could hang up. “That should do it.”

“I just hope nobody saw us. Or got my license plate. Or—” I shook my head. There was nothing else we could do. “Let's go home.” I started to back up, then stopped and put the van back in Park. “Wait a minute.” I got out, grabbed the fruit basket out of the backseat, walked to the nearest trash can, and chucked it in. Back in the van I said, “There's no way I could ever eat that.”