A Skeleton in the Family Page 11

  After that, the conversation wandered toward odd uses for obsolete computer equipment, and I didn’t even try to bring it back to Dr. Kirkland. For one, I didn’t think he had anything else useful to tell me, and for another, I didn’t want him to wonder why I was so curious. The conversation continued over lunch at Hamburger Haven, and though we bought our own meals, I was fairly sure that counted as a second date. Though my week had been so hectic, what with finding dead bodies and such, I had been wondering if he liked me as much as I liked him. Evidence suggested that he did.

  The rest of the day was nothing special. I assigned the week’s essay to my class, trying not to think of the stack of comparison-contrast papers I’d be dealing with over the weekend, and met a few students after class to help them clarify their ideas without writing the paper for them. By the time I got home, I was happy to go fast and simple for dinner: cheese omelets with fresh fruit on the side.

  Madison was as tired as I was—the amount of homework was starting to weigh on her. So after watching a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory my parents had recorded, we were both more than ready to go to bed.

  Unfortunately for me, there was a note waiting on my pillow:

  Do you have time to talk?

  I sighed, but after my emphatic declaration of the night before, I couldn’t very well blow him off. Sid was so glad to see me that, if he’d been a dog, his tail would have been wagging.

  “Are we okay?” he asked. “The police didn’t show up today, which I assume is good news.”

  “As far as I can tell, we’re in the clear. I read everything on the Web and even talked to my source in the press, and the police are still saying it was just another break-in. The burglars stole the professor’s jewelry box and took the money out of her wallet, which was dropped on the floor next to her pocketbook.” Though I was still sorry the woman was dead, I couldn’t help but be relieved that it had nothing to do with Sid.

  “What about her being at Mangachusetts?”

  “She was meeting with a computer science grad student she’d hired to do some data translation for her. The timing was actually pretty lucky for us—if you hadn’t seen her, you wouldn’t have started to remember your past life and we wouldn’t be as far along as we are.”

  “And we wouldn’t have found a dead body.”

  “Okay, not my favorite moment, but maybe somebody wants us to find out the truth after all these years.”

  “Like a higher-power kind of somebody?”

  I nodded.

  “Call me a skeptic, but I’d rather believe in random chance than anything supernatural.”

  “Sid, you’re an ambulatory skeleton. I’m pretty sure that counts as supernatural.”

  “I get that, but it’s just that I’ve never encountered anything else supernatural. I’m not even sure what I am exactly. I suppose I could be a very skinny zombie.”

  “Also supernatural. And in that case, wouldn’t you be trying to eat my brains?”

  “That’s profiling!”

  “I’ve always thought you were a ghost haunting your own skeleton.”

  “Don’t ghosts normally have a reason to exist? Like a problem to solve or a job to finish? My schedule has been pretty open for the past thirty years.”

  “But now it’s not. So, next steps?” I looked at him expectantly.

  Unfortunately he was looking at me just as expectantly.

  Somebody had to blink, and since I was the only one with eyelids, it was me.

  “Let’s think about this,” I said. “You’re a skeleton.”

  “I am? OMG!”

  I ignored the interruption. “You’re a skeleton, and Dr. Kirkland had all kinds of specimens in her house. Maybe you were one of her specimens.”

  “Wrong time period and wrong concentration. Zooarchaeology deals with prehistoric animals, not modern man. Besides which, I remember the good doctor from when I was still among the living.”

  “Maybe you were one of her students. She would have been in her forties around the time you were in your twenties, so she’d have been teaching already, and you did know what zooarchaeology is.”

  “That’s common knowledge.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Do you have any more factoids about zooarchaeology floating around in your deceptively empty skull?”

  He thought for a minute, then shook his head. “All I’m getting is the word, and that it involves dealing with poop and statistics.”

  “Then probably you weren’t one of her students, but you could still have been a student at JTU. Or a neighbor, or a friend of the family—”

  “This isn’t helping.”

  “Too many choices.”

  “Besides, the fact that Kirkland was the first person I’ve recognized in thirty years indicates that she was important to me.”

  “Maybe you two had a thing.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “You know, a thing. A bit of Mrs. Robinson.”

  “Oh. That would explain the guilt when I saw her. According to her obituary, her husband had only been dead twenty years. Maybe he killed me to get rid of the competition.”

  “The obituary said Mr. Kirkland was an actuary. I don’t think skeletonizing remains is part of their skill set.”

  “Maybe I had a relationship with the actuary, and the professor was the killer. She would have known how to denude a skeleton.”

  “Better, but if a student handed in an essay with no more reason for making a conclusion than that, he’d be looking at an F. It’s all just speculation without evidence about who you are. Or were.”

  “We’re short on evidence, Georgia. All we’ve got is the stuff Yo told us.”

  “And the fact that you knew Dr. Kirkland.”

  He hesitated. “I know my last plan didn’t work out so well—”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “But here’s a thought. If I recognized Kirkland, I might recognize somebody else from her circle—family, friends, or coworkers.”

  “Yeah?” I said warily.

  “Aren’t those the kind of people who go to a funeral?”

  “The paper said her funeral is going to be private—family only.”

  “I saw that, but there’s also going to be a memorial service at JTU. Anybody can go to that. Well, anybody but me. And your phone takes pretty good pictures.”

  21

  Luckily for me, Dr. Kirkland’s memorial service was set for Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, which meant I had plenty of time to get there after class. After much discussion, we decided that my walking around Kirkland’s memorial service taking photos might cause a stir, so I made other plans.

  I arrived an hour early in order to score a parking place right in front of the door to the JTU chapel, then I put a webcam on the dashboard and aimed it at the door, disguising it with a partially folded map. The plan was for me to record people arriving at and leaving the service and then show the results to Sid so he could see if anybody looked familiar. Meanwhile, I’d put on my interview suit again so I could attend the service and, with luck, get names for anybody Sid recognized.

  Though I was there early, I didn’t want to actually go inside the chapel until a crowd formed, so I walked around the campus to kill time. JTU was a stereotypical New England college. There was a grassy quad in the middle with aged trees and a fountain that probably hadn’t worked properly since the trees were planted; a mixture of stately older buildings and brick monstrosities that probably had superior wiring; and fliers posted everywhere to advertise the weekend movie, available tutors, and pizza delivery joints.

  At about twenty minutes before the service was to start, I went back to the chapel—one of the stately structures—so I could mingle with the real mourners.

  Fortunately for my goal of finding Dr. Kirkland’s family, the university had
provided name tags, and I hunted for family members as discreetly as I could.

  I spotted two almost stereotypical professorial types who I suspected were Dr. Kirkland’s children, and quite likely twins. They both had glasses, tweedy jackets with suede patches on the elbows, and black shoes that were either timeless or hopelessly dated, depending on your point of view. They had the same build, too: slightly sunken chest, skinny arms and legs, and just a hint of potbelly. At first I thought the only real difference in their appearances was that the man was wearing black slacks while the woman was wearing a black skirt, but then I noticed that the man’s dirty blond hair was longer.

  The next family name tag I spotted was on a man who was the polar opposite. He was tan, fit, and had a full head of artfully dyed chestnut locks. His pinstripe suit was reflected in his gleaming Italian loafers, and the price of his Rolex could have funded a small research project.

  There were assorted younger relatives who I guessed were grandchildren, middle-aged ones I thought were nieces and nephews, and one who was elderly enough to be a brother or cousin.

  Unfortunately, the vast majority of attendees had last names other than Kirkland, and it was hard to know if they were former students, colleagues, or just friends. And of course I had no way to find out which they were.

  I was trying to get the right angle to read the name tag on a carefully coiffed woman who clearly believed in the power of Spanx, when she turned suddenly to look right at me. On the plus side, I could read the name on her tag. On the minus side, I had to pretend I’d meant to speak to her.

  “I’m so sorry for the loss of your mother,” I said when I saw her name was Corrina Kirkland.

  “She was my mother-in-law, not my mother.” Though she didn’t say thank goodness for that, the message was clear. She brushed by me, saying, “I think the service is starting.” I wasn’t surprised when she went to sit next to the man in pinstripes. They both had that same air of Get me the hell out of here.

  I took a place near the back of the chapel, which felt marginally less awkward than being up front, and made sure to pick up one of the printed programs to use as a reference. Then I tried not to doze off during the service.

  It wasn’t just that I hadn’t actually known Dr. Kirkland, it was more the fact that I’d attended countless university memorial services and they all blended together after a while. Born scholar and/or researcher, endured hardship to finish degrees, invaluable contributions to science starting with a doctoral dissertation project that set the field on its ear, even greater contributions of teaching and mentoring, incalculable loss to the field and great personal loss to colleagues. An amusing anecdote ended the service.

  In Dr. Kirkland’s case, her anecdote was about being so caught up in a project that she forgot to eat and had to raid a grad student’s stash of granola bars to get through work one night. The academics, including me, chuckled, but I noticed that Italian loafers and the Spanx queen just exchanged disgusted looks.

  The only notable thing was that all of the stories and words of admiration were for Dr. Kirkland’s professional life. Even the twins–Dr. Donald Kirkland and Dr. Mary Kirkland, who both taught at JTU—paid homage only to her work as a scientist. Either she hadn’t had much of a personal life, or it wasn’t worth talking about.

  I started to feel sorry for the deceased. My parents were pretty eminent in their fields, but when their time came, I was certain there’d be as many stories about their personal lives and family as about their publications.

  Once the service ended, Jim Michaels, the chair of JTU’s anthropology department, invited everyone to join him out on the chapel green, where refreshments would be served. I was glad for the invite, and not just because I was hungry. The happy-making part was that the buffet table was set up right in front of my van, and therefore in a perfect location for the webcam.

  Of course, that meant I was going to have to stay until the bitter end to give Sid the best possible chance to recognize people, so I thought maybe I’d take advantage of the opportunity for some snooping of my own.

  My first target was Professor Morgan from the English Department who’d read a poem in Dr. Kirkland’s honor. I made eye contact with him over the punch bowl, and said, “That was a lovely choice for a eulogy. I think so many people associate Robert Louis Stevenson with Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that they forget his other work.”

  Morgan smiled. “I’ve always enjoyed his poetry, particularly the ballads.”

  We got our punch and I casually made sure to walk in the same direction that he did.

  “Were you one of Dr. Kirkland’s students?” he asked me.

  “To tell you the truth, I never met her.” Finding her body didn’t really count. “I’m here on behalf of my father. He taught at Salem State when she was there. I’m not even in Dr. Kirkland’s field—I’m in the English Department at McQuaid.”

  “Really? I thought I knew all the professors there.”

  “I’m new.”

  “An adjunct?” he asked sympathetically, the way one might say, Have you been reduced to digging ditches for a living? “Teaching composition?”

  “I’m afraid so. My real field is—”

  He looked over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I really must pay my respects to Dr. Kirkland’s family. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  “You, too,” I said to his quickly retreating back.

  I finished my punch and went back for a refill and a fresh conversation. This time it was an archaeologist, but before I could ask if he’d known Dr. Kirkland well, he asked what I did. As soon as I uttered the word adjunct, he excused himself and walked away.

  Were people afraid my adjunct status would rub off on them, or did they think I was trolling for work at a memorial service? The fact that I was trolling, only for information, did nothing to cool my indignation.

  I thought about trying to speak to JTU’s chancellor, but he really was paying his respects to Dr. Kirkland’s family, so it didn’t seem the thing to do. Besides, I was afraid that if he found out I was an adjunct, he would instruct the caterers to take my punch cup away. Even now, the maintenance people might be preparing nets to capture me before the presence of an adjunct besmirched the ivy-covered walls.

  Maybe I was getting a tad sensitive.

  It wasn’t like I’d planned to spend my career as an adjunct, but when I’d finished up my degree, Madison had still been a toddler and I’d needed my parents and sister to help care for her. That meant that I had to stay in Pennycross. Since there’d been no available tenure-track positions in the area, I’d taken a succession of adjunct jobs, thinking that I’d use them as stepping stones. Instead they became more like millstones tied tightly around my neck.

  My parents had never worked as adjuncts and had never realized how pervasive the stigma attached to the position was. By the time Madison was old enough that I felt ready to move out of the area for a more ambitious job, I was no longer considered qualified for anything but adjunct work. Most other adjuncts had similar stories, other than the few like Fletcher who were only working part-time.

  Since nobody wanted to talk to me, I decided to exact my petty revenge by blowing through as much of the catering budget as possible. I filled my punch cup again and piled half a dozen cookies and a bunch of grapes onto my plate. I was going to slice some cheese when a hand reached in front of me and grabbed the entire chunk and deposited it onto a paper napkin.

  “Excuse me,” a grubby-looking guy said. Then he got most of the grapes, and even more cookies than I’d taken. I stepped back before he could forage from my plate. He was piling on crackers when he saw Michaels, chairman of the Anthropology Department, and scurried away.

  Michaels surveyed the wreckage, then signaled to a caterer. “They’ll have more refreshments out in a minute,” he told me.

  “I’ve got plenty,” I said. “I’m guessi
ng that was one of your grad students.”

  “A very promising one, too, despite appearances. I believe he’s scheduled to take his quals in a week.”

  “I wish him luck.” I hadn’t slept or eaten much in the week before my doctoral qualifying exam, either, though I had taken time for regular bathing.

  “Oh those halcyon days of yore.” He offered a hand. “I’m Jim Michaels, chair of Anthropology.” Michaels looked like what I would have imagined a department chairman would look like if I hadn’t encountered so many examples to the contrary. He was tall with a face that was attractively craggy, and he had salt-and-pepper hair and a strong nose. His hand was free of calluses, but I was willing to bet that, before he’d hit his fifties, he’d put in his time out in the field.

  “Georgia Thackery,” I said. “That was a very nice eulogy you gave for Dr. Kirkland.”

  “It was the least I could do. She guided me through my own quals and beyond. Of course, I hated her with a passion when she was my thesis advisor, but afterward I realized how much she’d done for me.”

  “After you caught up on sleep, you mean.”

  “Exactly. I take it you’ve been through the academic mill yourself.”

  “Yes, but in English. I’m adjunct faculty at McQuaid.” I waited for him to make a break for it.

  Instead he said, “How did you know Dr. Kirkland?”

  “Actually, I never had the pleasure. I’m here representing my parents—they’re on sabbatical.” Before he asked how they’d known her, I said, “From what people were saying, I can tell she was very well respected.”

  “Enormously so. I don’t think I ever met a more conscientious researcher, and her work was her life. She only retired because we have a mandatory age limit. After this, I really think we should revisit the issue. It would have been better if she’d stayed in harness. Of course, if we did that, we’d run into the problem of not being able to afford to hire new blood.”

  “No solution works for everybody.” Goodness knows I was sensitive to the issue of new blood finding positions.