The Bone House (4 page)

    She
leaned back in her chair, brushed her long blond hair away from her face, and
adjusted her sunglasses. Even early in the morning, it was already warm on the
patio. She tried to read her husband's mind and decipher what was bothering
him. 'If we have to move, we move,' she said. 'We've done it before.'

    'What?'
he asked.

    'Home.
Money. I know you're worried. So am I. But what's the worst that happens? We
pack up and go somewhere else.'

    Mark
dragged his gaze from the sea. He rubbed his chin, which was stubbled; he
hadn't shaved yet. He picked up a fork to eat his breakfast and then put it
down. 'Who says it'll be that easy? Any high school district in the country
looks at a male teacher released after two years, and what do they think?
Inappropriate behavior.'

    'Not
necessarily.'

    He
set his mug down sharply on the glass tabletop. 'Let's not kid ourselves, Hil.'

    'I'm
just saying, budgets are tight everywhere. We're coming out of a big recession
in a small district. People get let go. It doesn't have to raise red flags.'

    Mark shook
his head. 'You don't think there's a back channel between principals? You don't
think they talk to each other off the record? "What's the deal on Mark
Bradley?" "Forget about him, he was banging one of his
students." Face it, wherever I go, I'll be blacklisted.'

    'You
don't know that.'

    'The
hell I don't.'

    She
saw bitterness in Mark's face, which had grown and deepened over the past year
of joblessness, until it was a constant fixture in his eyes. She couldn't blame
him. He'd been treated badly, convicted without a trial or an appeal. He was in
an impossible situation, and he was angry about it. The trouble was that his
anger didn't change the reality or make it better; it only threw a shadow
between the two of them. When they were together, when they were in bed, his
anger was always there with them now.

    She
let the silence linger, and then she changed the subject. 'Did you see the
bulletin board in the lobby? Amy Leigh's team from Green Bay did really well.
They got first runner-up for small ensembles.'

    'Good
for her.'

    'I
wish I could have seen their final performance, but that was the day we drove
to Tampa. Amy was one of my favorites in Chicago. Bubbly girl, really sweet.'

    'I
remember her.'

    Hilary
had coached Amy Leigh in dance for four years while she taught in the northern
Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Amy didn't have natural grace but compensated
for it with practice and enthusiasm. They'd become friends. Hilary's last name
had been Semper, not Bradley, until Amy's senior year, and Amy had been among
the students who were most excited when Hilary had announced that she was
getting married.

    'I
called Amy's room to congratulate her,' Hilary said, 'but the Green Bay bus
left early. I missed her.'

    'You
can post on her wall on Facebook when we get back,' Mark said.

    'Yeah.'
Hilary yawned and worked the crick out of her neck by stretching her arms. 'I
hope I can sleep on the plane. I'm still really tired. You must be, too.'

    'Why
do you say that?'

    'You
didn't sleep well, did you? I woke up at one point and you weren't in bed.'

    'Oh,'
Mark said. 'No, you're right, I couldn't sleep. Sorry, I was obsessing about
the job again. I know you think I should just let it
go.'

    'I
never said that. I just don't want it destroying our lives, OK? Look, we'll get
home, and you can focus on something else. You can paint.'

    'I'm
not going to make any money that way.'

    'Who
knows? That gallery in Ephraim talked about selling your stuff. Anything will
help right now.' She frowned when she saw Mark's face. He thought she was
chastising him. She tried to make it better, but she only made it worse. 'Or
you could do golf lessons this summer. A lot of women are looking for a sexy
pro to help them stop shanking. A lot of men, too.'

    'We've
talked about this.'

    'I
know, I know. I'm just saying.'

    She
let the subject drop. On some issues Mark was stubborn, and you couldn't get
him to change his mind. Golf was a big one. He'd spent several years in his
twenties on the pro circuit, working his way up the ladder and into the money,
until a shoulder injury ended his career. As an ex-pro, he could have made a
decent living giving lessons or working in the business, but Mark had an
all-or-nothing attitude. If he couldn't be competitive as a player, he didn't
want to be part of the game. She'd never been able to help him past it.

    Still,
she couldn't complain. When he gave up golf, Mark had gone in a new direction
and taken up teaching. That was how they'd met, when he was a substitute
teacher in the Highland Park system. If he'd never been injured, he would have
been on the Golf Channel, and she would probably still be single. So maybe it
was fate. On the other hand, she knew it made the current situation even worse
for Mark, because it meant that a second career had been stripped away from him
in circumstances beyond his control.

    'So
what did you do?' she asked.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'When
you couldn't sleep. Where did you go?'

    Mark hesitated.
'I took a walk.'

    'On
the beach?'

    'Yes.'

    'That
must have been great. It was a beautiful night.'

    'It
was,' he said.

    'How
long were you gone?'

    'I
don't know. An hour maybe.'

    Hilary
pushed her chair back and stood up. 'I'm going to get some more orange juice.
You want anything?'

    Mark
shook his head. He'd picked at his food but left most of it on his plate. It
made her feel guilty eating everything she'd taken. If she'd been alone, she
probably would have treated herself to another scoop of scrambled eggs, but
instead she wandered over to the buffet and poured a second glass of juice over
ice.

    She
noticed the cluster of police on the beach again. The handful of patrons in the
cafe watched them curiously. Several guests had stood up and were shielding
their eyes to get a better view of the activity near the water. A
white-uniformed waiter passed Hilary with a fresh tray of cut fruit, and she
smiled at him.

    'Do
you know what's going on?' she asked.

    The
waiter shrugged as he positioned the fruit on the buffet. 'Somebody told me
they found a body out there.'

    'A
body? What happened?'

    'Don't
know. That's all I heard. Somebody died.'

    'Do
you know who it was?'

    'A hotel
guest, I think.'

    'Here?
At this hotel?'

    'I
guess so.'

    He
slid the empty tray under his arm and left without answering more questions.
Hilary looked around the patio for someone she knew, but she didn't recognize
anyone among the morning guests. She was concerned, because she and Mark had
traveled to Florida this week specifically to watch the dance competition,
which included several of her former students from Chicago. She had good
friends among the girls and the coaches, and she hoped they were safe.

    Hilary
brought her juice back to the table. Mark saw the anxiety in her face.

    'What's
wrong?' he asked.

    'Those
are police out on the beach. The waiter says they found a hotel guest dead out
there.'

    Mark
reacted immediately. 'Dead? Who was it?'

    'I
don't know.' She saw his eyes dart to the water, and she asked, 'Did you see
anything last night?'

    'What,
like a body? Of course not.'

    'Well,
I wonder if you should talk to someone,' she said.

    'And
tell them what? I didn't see anything.'

    Hilary
shrugged. She saw the glass doors open on the other side of the patio, and she
knew the woman who emerged from the hotel lobby. It was Jane Chapman, the
mother of one of the dancers from Chicago. She waved at Jane, who made a beeline
for their table. Her face was distraught.

    'Hilary,
it's terrible, did you hear?' Jane asked breathlessly. 'I can't believe it.'

    'I
heard that somebody from the hotel died. Do you know who it was?'

    Jane
nodded. 'A teenage girl. She was murdered.'

    'One
of the dancers?'

    'I
don't think so. I heard she's from your area, though. Door County.'

    
'Who
?'
Hilary asked. Instinctively, she felt a wave of nausea and fear.

    'A
coach told me the dead girl's name was Glory Fischer.'

    Hilary's
breath left her chest. She felt dizzy. She heard Jane asking if she was OK, but
the woman's voice was at the end of a long tunnel, muffled and distant. Hilary
tried to speak and couldn't. She knew. Somehow she knew, without looking at
Mark, without saying a word, that this event was a tornado that would suck in
her and her husband. Her head swiveled slowly so that she could stare at him.
She didn't want to see the truth, but their eyes met, and his expression
confirmed all her fears. She saw emotions in his face she'd never seen in him
before. Panic. Terror. Guilt.

    Mark,
what did you do? What happened last night?

    She
hated it that her first thought had nothing to do with trusting him. She hated
it that her first thought had nothing to do with protecting him. It didn't
matter that she would never believe for a moment that Mark Bradley could ever
harm another human being. It didn't matter that she had faith in his
willingness to stare at temptation and walk away from it. Her first thought had
nothing to do with his innocence.

    Instead,
she stared at the man she loved, and all she could think was:
Not again.

    Detective
Cab Bolton didn't notice the Gulf wave riding up the beach until he felt salt
water lapping at his two-hundred-dollar Hugo Boss loafers. The surf rose above his
ankles like a margarita in a blender and soaked inside his shoes before he had
time to leap out of the way. As the wave retreated, he squatted in the sand,
removed the loafers, and peeled off his wet socks. He shook his head in
exaggerated dismay.

    'Every
time I buy a new pair of shoes, we get a beach body the next day,' he
complained.

    Cab
rolled up the trouser legs of his navy blue silk suit. With his hare ankles and
size 13 feet on display at the bottom of his six-foot- six frame, he resembled a
great blue heron. His long neck, spiky blond hair, and the ski-jump slope of
his sunburnt nose contributed to the impression of a bird on stilts.

    Lala
Mosqueda, who was the lead crime scene analyst, didn't look sympathetic. 'It's
Florida, Cab. You ever hear of flip-flops?'

    'I'd
sooner wear Crocs,' he said.

    The
damage to the leather was done, but he took a handkerchief from his breast
pocket and wiped the sand from his shoes and blotted the excess water. He
hooked the shoes on the fingers of his right hand and let them dangle. With his
other hand, he stripped off his amber sunglasses and squinted at the tower of
the hotel.

    'So
what do we have in this place, five hundred rooms?' Cab mused. 'Maybe more?
You'd figure somebody had to be up there staring at the beach at three in the
morning. Somebody saw something.'

    Lala
shook her head. 'No way. Too far, too dark.'

    Cab
pointed a long, crooked finger at the floor-to-ceiling windows, where at least
a dozen gawkers followed the activity near the water. 'Look at the binoculars
spying on us right now. Beachfront voyeurs are always looking for people
humping by the water in the middle of the night.'

    'Well,
we've got uniforms interviewing guests in the lobby,' Lala told him. 'It's
Sunday, and half the hotel is checking out. We're trying to catch people as
they leave.'