The Skeleton Takes a Bow Page 13

  “Didn’t you hear them? A biology project? Boy, you don’t remember what it’s like being a kid, do you? Like that time you and Reggie—”

  “Don’t go there, Sid. And besides, I need to talk to you about something a little more serious than some innocent necking.”

  “So you think they’re going to neck?”

  “Sid! I trust Madison!”

  “But what do we know about Tristan?”

  “We know Madison likes him and that she’s a pretty good judge of character.”

  “You’re not going to let me spy, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You used to let me spy on Deborah.”

  “I was in little-sister mode then—annoying Deborah was part of my job description. In fact, you could spy on Deborah now if you wanted to. But when it comes to Madison, I’m in parental mode, which means I’m supposed to be mature.”

  “Parental mode sucks.”

  “I kind of like it. So what did you hear at school today? Anything useful?”

  “Bubkes. Though a kid from one of your SAT classes said he thinks you’re hot.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “Huh. I don’t know if I should be flattered or disturbed.”

  “What you should be doing is telling me that you got some good dirt at McQuaid. Did you manage to get anything else out of Charles?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I never even saw him.”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “Not interesting. He’s just busy.”

  Sid didn’t say anything, but I knew, sure as sacrum, that if he’d had eyebrows, he’d have been lifting one of them significantly.

  “Anyway, for once I couldn’t get any gossip out of Sara Weiss. At least, I couldn’t get the right flavor of gossip. She’s got her panties in a twist about the Sechrest Foundation.”

  “The Sechrest Foundation?”

  “Didn’t I tell you about that?” I explained the letters offering grants. “I wouldn’t mind something like that myself so I could hit a conference or two, but I definitely don’t have the look they seem to be going for. I wonder if they can be sued for age discrimination.”

  “Maybe somebody did,” Sid said. “That name is ringing a bell for some reason. Something I read on the Web.”

  He booted up his computer and went online, but after a few minutes he said, “Not finding anything but a bare-bones Web site.”

  I thumped his skull.

  “Sorry. Anyway, it looks like they took a stock layout and just added their contact info. I mean, is that a lame logo or what?”

  “Big talk for somebody who only discovered the Web six months ago.”

  “You learn quickly when sleep is not an issue.”

  I yawned, demonstrating that I didn’t have that particular advantage. “Is it just the one page?” There was a brief, vague paragraph about the aims of the foundation, which were apparently to help academics reach their goals, and an e-mail address. No street address, and no names or pictures of the people involved. “I think I was right to tell Yo to run from this group. And if Sara were smart, she wouldn’t be bothering to chase them down, either.”

  “I admit I’ve only encountered the woman briefly, but has she ever shown any sign of being smart?”

  “I don’t know about her work as a biologist, but she is an excellent snoop—that should count for something. I just wish I could get her back on the subject of Robert Irwin.”

  “I don’t think I ever added what she told you before to the Irwin dossier.”

  “Is it even worth adding?”

  He shrugged noisily. “Maybe not. I hate to say this, Georgia, but I’m getting kind of discouraged.”

  “Hey, I’ve only taught the two classes at PHS so far, and I still haven’t had a good chance to snoop around. We’re not beaten yet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If it was easy, the cops could handle it,” I said in as lighthearted a tone as I could muster.

  After that, Sid caught up with Facebook while I went back to grading homework. Eventually, I figured I’d better go downstairs and see what Madison and Tristan were up to. In deference to their privacy, and my own sensibilities, I made as much noise as possible walking down the stairs. If they were sharing any unauthorized smooches, I didn’t want to know about it.

  As it turned out, they were seated decorously, with Madison on the couch in the living room and Tristan on the easy chair. Books were open, papers were spread far and wide, and, if the empty plates, bowls, and potato chip bags were any indication, half the food from my kitchen had been consumed. I didn’t think they’d have had time for making out.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Mom, tell me I’m never going to need to know about cell mitosis to succeed in this world!” Madison pleaded.

  “You’ll need it long enough to get through this year of biology,” I said heartlessly. “Tristan, I was thinking about getting dinner started, and I wanted to see if you could join us.” Assuming that there was enough food left in the house.

  “No, thanks, Ms. Thackery. My dad is going to pick me up any minute. I better start packing up.”

  I’m always impressed by just how much stuff teenagers manage to fit into a backpack without it coming apart at the seams. It reminded me of the time I’d made too much stuffing at Thanksgiving but insisted that I could get it all into the turkey. It had been a poor choice.

  The doorbell rang as Tristan was in midstuff, and when I answered it, I found a nice-looking man who looked like a mature version of Tristan. He had the same eyes and smile, but none of the awkwardness, and if he had a cowlick in his blond hair, he’d used just enough product to tame it. “Hi, I’m Adam McDaniel. I’m here to pick up Tristan.”

  “I think he’s getting his things now. Come on in.” I pushed Byron aside to make it possible. “I’m Georgia Thackery.”

  McDaniel stepped in with his hand stretched out for a handshake. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Dr. Thackery. I understand you’ve joined the PHS faculty.”

  “Only temporarily,” I said.

  “That’s what I hear. You see, as part of being PTO president, I’m part of the school search committee, and normally we have to vet all new hires. Naturally Mr. Dahlgren had to move quickly this time, what with Mr. Chedworth’s injury. We’re just lucky that somebody with your background was available, and grateful that you’re willing to fill in.”

  “I know how important the SATs are.” I felt marginally guilty that my reason for taking the job had almost nothing to do with the SATs, but only marginally.

  “I managed to get my older boy through them, but it took some doing. Bright boy, Adam Jr., but not great with tests. Tristan, here, is a different story. Tristan has this thing down cold, don’t you?”

  “I guess we’ll see,” Tristan mumbled.

  “You bet we will,” McDaniel said and tousled his son’s hair, making the cowlick even more pronounced. “I’m not worried about you at all.”

  Madison, who’d come over to see her guest off, said, “Hi, Mr. McDaniel.”

  “Hello, Madison. You making sure Tristan gets his lines right?” To me, he said, “I met your daughter during career day this week.”

  “That’s right, she told me. Pharmaceutical sales, isn’t it?”

  “That’s me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of bone pens like the one Madison had given Sid. “Here’s a little thank-you for having Tristan over. Hope he didn’t eat you out of house and home.”

  “Well, the house is still here,” I said, taking the pen. McDaniel and I smiled, and the kids rolled their eyes simultaneously. It was a nice bonding moment right until the extended car honk from out on the street.

  Tristan made a face, but McDaniel forced a laugh. �
��Speaking of Adam Jr., I think he’s impatient to get going.”

  “It sure sounds like it,” I said loudly so I could be heard over the sound of the horn.

  “Thanks again for letting Tristan come over, and for taking over that class.”

  Mercifully, Adam Jr. stopped honking as soon as his father opened the door. From the look on the man’s face, I was pretty sure Junior was going to get a well-deserved talking-to as soon as his father got into the car.

  “I told you he was a jerk,” Madison said.

  “No arguments here.”

  “So did I hear you say something about dinner?”

  I looked pointedly at the mess in the living room. “It depends on if I find any food left.”

  “No problem. We left all the boring stuff,” Madison said and started gathering up snack-related debris. Then she took Byron for a walk while I fixed dinner.

  The two-teenager horde had missed the hamburger meat I’d set aside for sloppy joes, and though we no longer had the chips I’d intended to go on the side, I filled in with oven-baked French fries. Once I retrieved Sid’s skull and hand from the attic and got him connected with the rest of his bones, he was happy to keep us company, and even managed to resist interrogating Madison about Tristan’s intentions.

  After dinner, Madison texted half of the Western world in order to arrange a trip to the movies for her and a bunch of her friends, and when I learned somebody else was going to drive, I gave her my blessing and the requisite cash. Sid and I divided our evening between watching TV and my letting him thoroughly defeat me in several games of Operation.

  By the time Madison got back from the movies, I was yawning, so the breathing members of the family went to bed while the nonbreathing minority headed to his attic.

  I woke up with a skull looming over me in the darkness, and even after years of living with a skeleton, I couldn’t hold back the yelp of alarm. “Sid! What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! I found something.”

  I sat up and checked the clock. “And you had to tell me at three in the morning?”

  “I couldn’t wait.”

  “Okay, tell me.”

  “I decided I better add that stuff that Charles and Sara Weiss told you to the Irwin dossier, even though I was pretty sure the whole thing was a waste of time.”

  “It wasn’t a waste of time—”

  “I know that now. Because I found something in there I’d forgotten. Robert Irwin used to work for the Sandra Sechrest Foundation!”

  25

  “What? Are you sure? Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “Irwin worked for the Sechrest Foundation. Yes. And because it was in a cache. Did I miss any?”

  “You missed explaining what cash has to do with anything.”

  “Cache—c-a-c-h-e. Which in this case means a Web site that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “It’s three in the morning, Sid. My brain doesn’t exist right now.”

  “Okay, let me break it down for you. Four years ago, Robert Irwin was puffing up his profile on his college alumni site.”

  “As one does.”

  “I prefer a bare-bones approach myself.”

  “Don’t we have a no-puns-until-dawn rule in this house?”

  “No.”

  “We do now.”

  “Anyway, Irwin put all this fluff into his profile: fancy titles and obviously expanded job descriptions. And he said he was an associate with the Sandra Sechrest Foundation. Two months later, he went back in and deleted all references to the Sechrest Foundation. Everything else was the same.”

  “If he deleted it, how do you know about it?”

  “This is where the cache comes in. You see, just because you delete something from the Web, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore. The original version is put into a special storage area—the cache—and then the locator IDs—”

  “Three in the morning.”

  He sighed. “Pretend it’s pieces of paper. He wrote stuff on a piece of paper and put it into a file folder. Then he made a photocopy of that piece of paper, cut out the stuff about the Sechrest Foundation, and put the new piece of paper into a new folder and hid the old folder. But that old folder still exists, if you know where to look for it.”

  “And you found the old folder?”

  “That’s right. And I added that information to my big stack of papers—”

  “I’ve got it now.”

  “Okay, then. I added the info to the Irwin dossier, which is why the foundation’s name sounded familiar when you mentioned it earlier.”

  “So let me see if I have this right. Irwin said he worked for the Sechrest Foundation, but then took the information off his profile for some reason. When we looked at the Web site for the Sechrest Foundation, it looked suspicious. Irwin got Patty Craft involved in something that Charles thought was unsavory. Which adds up to . . .” I rubbed my eyes. “Add it up for me, Sid.”

  “Irwin got his girlfriend to work for the Sechrest Foundation, even though the foundation was—and likely is—doing something immoral and/or illegal. They were both killed within a day of each other. Therefore their deaths likely had something to do with the foundation.”

  “But what could the foundation be up to? Wait, do we know how old Irwin was?”

  “Thirty next month.”

  “Do you have any pictures of him? Especially from when he supposedly worked with the Sechrest Foundation?”

  “Sure! Come up to the attic and I’ll show you.”

  I just looked at him.

  “Or I could go get them and bring them to you.” He hopped off my bed and I tried not to fall back asleep while he was gone. Fortunately, he was swift and came back with a stack of pictures in under a minute. “Okay, these are from his Facebook page, and these are from archives of the schools where he taught.”

  I looked through them, realizing that I’d never even thought about what he must look like. In the earlier pictures he was slim, with a full head of blond hair, and looked awfully young for his age. By the time he disappeared, the hair had thinned and his comb-over aged him to the point where he actually looked older than he was.

  “He sure used to fit the pattern of the people at McQuaid who’ve been getting letters from them,” I said.

  “So what is Sechrest doing? Making a ‘campus guys and girls gone wild’ tape? Full-blown porno? Prostitution? What would require people who looked young?”

  “I have no idea.” I yawned again. “Tell you what—let me sleep on it.” I settled back down under my comforter.

  “You’re not going to be able to sleep now, are you? Won’t this keep you up?”

  “I’ll risk it. Turn the light off on your way out, will you?”

  He wasn’t happy about it, but he complied. At least I think he did. I was asleep before the light went out.

  The situation seemed just as confusing in the morning. Madison was off for her workday with Deborah, which gave Sid and me plenty of time to discuss the options, but we never did come up with a better theory than pornography or prostitution, but why would anybody recruiting for either of those professions focus on the halls of academe?

  “What we need to do,” Sid finally said, “is score an interview with the foundation.”

  “How’s that going to work? I don’t look nearly young enough, and, well, you look dead.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as well preserved.”

  “Still, not quite what they’re looking for.”

  Sid and I kept talking while we tackled the weekend chores, but we didn’t get anything out of it but clean laundry, which was of more interest to me than it was to Sid.

  When Madison came in, I was dreading Deborah coming in with her to rail at me for taking the job at PHS. But it appeared Madison hadn’t told her, or maybe she had better things to d
o with her time than criticize me or she’d realized I had good reasons for doing what I was doing. Nope, I knew my sister. The only reasonable explanation was that Madison hadn’t told her.

  The rest of the weekend went by without excitement or progress. It wasn’t that we’d forgotten the murders, of course, but there wasn’t anything we could do until Monday.

  I did call Charles and invite him over for dinner Saturday, but he said he had other plans. I couldn’t talk him into coming on Sunday, either. Sid, of course, thought this was highly significant. I didn’t want to think that way, but it was hard not to.

  I was just hoping something would break on Monday to get us moving again.

  26

  By the time I got home from work on Monday, I was thinking that nothing was ever going to break. I didn’t see Charles all day, and, despite consulting Sara’s database of people who’d received a letter from the Sechrest Foundation, I couldn’t find a single adjunct who’d actually gone in for an interview with them. We adjuncts might be a little bit desperate, but apparently we’re even more paranoid. Though I admired my fellow adjuncts’ caution, I wished one of them could have been more like Sara, who would apparently have had a face-lift if she could have gotten an invite.

  Added to that, so many students showed for office hours to discuss their grades on the essays I’d just handed back that I ended up staying at McQuaid for an extra hour.

  So by the time I got home, I wasn’t in a happy mood.

  Sid and Madison were waiting for me in the living room.

  “Just in time!” Madison said. “I think we’ve got it now, Mom.”

  “Got what?”

  “Show her, Sid.”

  “Stay here,” he said and clattered upstairs. I heard the attic door shut. Then I heard him coming down again, but clumsily. A second later, I saw why. Sid, on the other hand, saw nothing. He’d left his skull upstairs.

  “Wow,” I said. “I’m trying to decide if this is amazing or deeply disturbing.”

  “I know, right?” Madison said, clearly delighted.

  From the attic, Sid yelled, “Aim me back in this direction, would you?”