A Skeleton in the Family Read online

  Like so many of my recent plans, that one went awry.

  33

  Instead of getting up at eight when my alarm went off, I apparently woke up just enough to slap my alarm off and then shove it off the nightstand and into my trash can. When I finally did wake up for real and pulled the power cord to retrieve the clock, I saw it was 10:30.

  I told myself that Charles was probably still asleep and Madison wouldn’t be returning from her sleepover until noon at the earliest. I continued to think that until I’d gotten out of bed, gone into the hall, and seen that the guest room door was wide open, showing that the bed was both empty and neatly made. From downstairs I heard voices—one was Charles’s low rumble and the other was Madison.

  I pulled on jeans and a sweater before taking a deep breath and heading for the kitchen.

  Charles was wearing his regular suit except for the jacket, had one of my mother’s aprons tied around his waist, and was scrambling eggs at my stove. Madison was putting hot bacon onto a platter. The table was set for three. One of them, most likely Charles, had even pulled out cloth napkins. It was a disturbingly domestic scene.

  “Good morning all,” I said.

  “A lovely morning to you, too,” Charles said cheerily. “I hope you don’t mind my taking over the kitchen to prepare breakfast. I rarely have the opportunity to cook.”

  “Knock yourself out. It smells wonderful.” I turned to my daughter. “How long have you been home?”

  “Half an hour? Aunt Deb got an emergency call from McQuaid. Somebody broke into an office or something, so she’s got to replace a lock.” I’d forgotten, but thanks to our parents’ connections, Deborah had contracts for maintaining security systems at several local colleges, including McQuaid.

  “Did you two have a good time last night?”

  “Yeah, great. You?”

  “Very nice.”

  Madison gave me a look, but I suddenly remembered that I was the grown-up and didn’t have to explain myself. “Is there any coffee?” I knew I’d pay for it later, but for the moment, I intended to enjoy the eggs that Charles had nearly finished cooking.

  Despite the inauspicious beginning, it was a lovely meal. Charles was a good cook, and kept Madison and me thoroughly entertained with historical trivia about the British royal family of years past. Afterward, he wanted to wash the dishes, but I put my foot down and said that Madison would be delighted to take care of them. She made a face when he wasn’t looking, but agreed.

  After thanking me for my hospitality, Charles refused my offer of a ride, insisting that he felt perfectly able to walk home. “In fact,” he said, “it’s past time that I take my leave and tackle an urgent task. My current quarters have proven to be less comfortable than I’d hoped, so I will be devoting my day to securing a new abode.”

  Even when I walked him to the door, he said nothing more about the events of the previous night, so I didn’t either, other than to say that he should feel free to call me anytime. Once he was gone, I went back to the kitchen to face my daughter.

  She raised one eyebrow, which she loves doing because I can’t. “I could have sworn you were going out with Fletcher last night.”

  “I did.”

  “You went out with Fletcher, and came home with Charles? Yay, Mom!”

  “It wasn’t . . . It isn’t . . .” Then I bowed to the inevitable. “Yay, me!” I left her to finish cleaning the kitchen while I went upstairs to take a nice, long shower. It’s good to be the mom.

  The rest of the weekend was considerably quieter than the start. I called Deborah to find out about the break-in at McQuaid, though I neglected to mention that Charles had been a witness. She told me that the burglars had gotten into the building by breaking the lock on a door which was usually only used by kitchen staff and janitors. Otherwise, only the adjunct office had been interfered with. That door was undamaged because apparently it had been left unlocked.

  Since Deborah believed in locking everything, she was appalled, but it was no surprise to me. Theoretically security was supposed to lock up each evening, but frequently an adjunct or two were still in there working after hours. Since administration didn’t want to give the adjuncts keys, it was left open as often as not.

  According to Deborah, campus security had three theories: either students had broken in to play a prank, students had broken in to get a peek at an upcoming test, or students had broken in to take revenge on an adjunct. Campus security at McQuaid has a love-hate relationship with students.

  No matter which subset of students had been involved, security figured they’d been scared off before doing any major damage.

  Sunday evening I got an e-mail from McQuaid’s human resources office. Without actually laying blame, the tone was that it was the adjuncts’ fault that our office had been broken into because we hadn’t been observing basic safety precautions. Despite that, we were assured that we and our belongings were completely safe. I was not particularly comforted, and I intended to check on the contents of my desk as soon as possible.

  As soon as my first Monday class was over, I went to the adjunct office where, unsurprisingly, there was a fair amount of hubbub. A copy of the e-mail from human resources was in every mailbox, even those currently unassigned, and another copy had been posted outside the office door. Inside, adjuncts were checking their desks and discussing the situation. As I came in, I heard a statistics teacher proclaim, “People, we all know that correlation does not prove causality.” I had no idea what that was in response to, but I nodded just the same, and went to my place.

  Somebody had been in my desk.

  Though nothing seemed to be missing, and I’m not the the most persnickety person, I could tell that there was something off about the way my folders were hanging in the file drawer and that my pens were scattered in my lap drawer more than they should have been.

  I looked suspiciously at Sara, wondering if she’d been snooping again, but it didn’t seem likely. Not that I trusted her integrity, but I didn’t think she’d have risked being seen after our confrontation on Friday. That meant that the burglar who’d conked Charles over the head had been searching my desk. Of course, I told myself, the burglar had likely searched a number of desks.

  I joined in the hubbub, asking who had been robbed, vandalized, or just snooped into. As it turned out, the only one who laid claim to signs of invasion was Sara, and from the eye-rolling I got from Charles, he thought she was just putting it on.

  Since nothing was missing, I kept quiet about my own concerns. Still, I was uneasy. Maybe campus security was too eager to blame students. I hadn’t had enough time to annoy any students enough to come after me. Of course, nobody knew about the attack on Charles, which would have put a different spin on the incident, but I couldn’t tell anybody about that, and I didn’t think he would.

  It left me feeling unsettled all day, and the feeling hadn’t improved when I went back to the office after my last class and found a pink message slip in my mail cubby:

  Dr. Kirkland of JTU called—wants you to call back.

  34

  I’d read ghost stories about messages from the beyond, but those messages weren’t usually as prosaic as “while you were out” slips. Eventually I remembered that the late Dr. Kirkland had two children teaching at JTU, both of whom were academics with the same last name.

  Then I had a moment of the heebie-jeebies, thinking that I’d been identified as having found the body of the dead Dr. Kirkland, but if that had been the case, it would have been the police who called, not one of the dead woman’s children.

  Since staring at the slip wasn’t helping, I took it and my things and headed for my parents’ office, where I could return the call in private. I dialed the number, and a low-pitched voice answered, “Dr. Donald Kirkland.”

  “Hi, this is Dr. Georgia Thackery. I had a message to call you.”

  “
Yes, Dr. Thackery. I hate to bother you about this, but I’m an archaeologist at JTU, and it’s come to my attention that you have a specimen in your possession that may be part of our collection.”

  “A specimen?”

  “A skeleton? A human skeleton?”

  “Oh, that specimen.” My brain wasn’t keeping up with the conversation—all I could think of was that I’d been an idiot to yell at Sara, because she must have been the one to tell on me. “I don’t think my skeleton belongs to you.”

  “The information I have indicates that the numbers correspond with a specimen that’s missing from our collection.”

  “My skeleton is male, and I was told that the ID number is for a female skeleton.”

  Donald must have put his hand over the phone, but I could still hear him. “She says it’s male.”

  “How would she know? She’s an English teacher!” said a woman with obvious disdain. “Tell her to bring it back!”

  Back on the phone to me, Donald said, “It can be difficult for a layperson to determine the gender of a skeleton.”

  “I had an expert sex it.”

  “Can you tell me who?”

  I wasn’t going to bring Yo into it—I didn’t even want to bring myself into it. “A grad student.”

  The woman must have been listening in, because she said, “A grad student? Probably wouldn’t know the difference between a human hand and a bear paw! Tell her we’ll report her to her chancellor!”

  Donald said, “I hate to insist, but it would be so much simpler if you’d bring it over so we could examine it for ourselves.”

  “You know, I’m really not sure I wrote the ID number down correctly. The lighting wasn’t very good.”

  Donald relayed my excuse to his cranky companion. “Who does she think she’s fooling? Tell her we’ll give her twenty-four hours, and then we’re calling the police! We’ll get her fired and arrested!”

  I said, “Why don’t I check the number again and call you back tomorrow morning?”

  Donald sounded relieved as he said, “I would certainly appreciate that. As I’m sure you realize, it doesn’t look good for a specimen to just walk off.”

  I said something noncommittal before hanging up, but all the while I was thinking about how he’d like it if a specimen just walked in. Of course, I had no intention of taking Sid to JTU. It was too risky, which is what I told Sid that night after Madison was in bed.

  “It’s too risky. I’ll just tell Kirkland Jr. that I wrote the wrong number—he won’t be able to prove any differently. Unless Sara looked inside your skull the other day. She didn’t, did she?”

  “No,” Sid said, “but I want to go see Kirkland.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m not the one talking to a skeleton!”

  “Then tell me why you want to risk being kidnapped. Or stolen. Whichever word applies.”

  “Three reasons,” he said, ticking them off on his finger bones. “One, maybe Yo really did mess up my exam. Two, maybe I’ll recognize Donald when I see him in person and I’ll remember something else. Three, his reaction to seeing me might tell us something.”

  “What if he decides you belong to JTU after all? He could claim there was a clerical error or some such, and it would be awfully hard for me to argue with him. Let alone the woman who kept wanting him to threaten me.”

  “Worst-case scenario, I’ll sneak out as soon as I can and get back here.”

  “What if you can’t? Maybe they’ll lock you in a safe or something.”

  “No safe can hold me.”

  “What if you’re seen, or caught by dogs, or—”

  “And what if you lie to Donald and that woman convinces him to play hardball? It could cost you your job.”

  “I’d rather lose my job than lose you!”

  “I know,” he said, patting me on the knee, “but I don’t want you to lose the job or me.” Before I could outline more possible disasters, he added, “Georgia, it’s been over three weeks since I recognized Dr. Kirkland, two weeks since she died, and we’re out of ideas. I need to find out more about myself, and this is my best chance.”

  I couldn’t argue with that—I was out of ideas, too—so the first thing next morning, I called Donald Kirkland and told him that I’d bring Sid to his office that afternoon.

  35

  Donald Kirkland looked oddly familiar when I met him at his office in JTU’s Turner Science Building, and not just because I’d seen him at the funeral. After a minute, I figured it out. His face looked that of fifty-year-old version of Donald O’Connor, the actor. I’d been a big fan of O’Connor’s Francis the Talking Mule movies when I was a kid, probably because I’d strongly identified with O’Connor’s character. He had a talking mule—I had a talking skeleton. The movies had provided a dandy cautionary tale about what could happen if I ever told anybody about Sid.

  He shook my hand. “Dr. Thackery, I really appreciate your coming by so we can straighten this out. You have the specimen?”

  “In the suitcase.”

  “What a practical solution. May I borrow it long enough to transfer the specimen to my lab?”

  “I thought I’d come along,” I said, not letting go of the handle. “I’m curious about the procedure.”

  “Certainly.” He picked up a folder from his desk and led the way to the elevator, and on to the basement lab, which was a lot more impressive than McQuaid’s facility. It was bigger and brighter, with a bewildering array of equipment that looked like props from the latest version of Star Trek. Obviously JTU had put money into their department, and I suspected from what I’d read that the late Dr. Kirkland had been responsible for a lot of that fund-raising. There was nothing like having the leader in a field to help bring in grant money.

  I helped Donald remove Sid’s bones from the suitcase and place them on a generously sized table, hoping that Sid would behave this time. He seemed to be doing so, other than a tiny twitch of the skull so he could take a better look at Donald, but the archaeologist didn’t notice.

  Even more quickly than Yo, he put Sid’s bones into their proper positions. “Our specimens are typically articulated,” he said when he was done.

  “This one was, too, but the wires rusted and broke, so we took them out.” I was ready to repeat the imaginary tale of how my parents had ended up with a skeleton, but he didn’t ask, so I saved it. The less said, the less I could be accused of.

  Donald started with the skull, using a magnifying lamp to look inside. “This is the ID number all right,” he said, and jotted it down on a pad of paper. Then he looked into the folder, took a look at Sid’s pelvis, and frowned. “Hmm . . .” That was all he said for the next half hour as he poked, prodded, measured, and weighed. I found a stool and sat to watch him work, noticing that he was looking more and more concerned.

  When he seemed to be done, he said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to call a colleague to verify my findings.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He pulled out a cell phone, but said, “Reception down here is dreadful, so I’ll just step into the hall.”

  I’d hoped to take a look at that folder of his while he was gone, but he took both it and his notes with him. After making sure we were alone, I whispered, “You okay, Sid?”

  “Fine, but what is it with scientists and cold hands?”

  “Probably most of their patients don’t notice.”

  Kirkland stepped back into the room, and said, “She’ll just be a minute.” It was more like five, and he spent the whole time looking through the papers in his folder as if he expected them to change.

  Finally a woman came bustling in, and I recognized yet another Dr. Kirkland: Dr. Mary Kirkland, who I’d also seen at the memorial service. When she spoke, I realized she’d been the one who’d wanted Donald to bully me the previous night. “What do you mean it
’s not our skeleton?” she demanded.

  “See for yourself,” Donald said.

  Ignoring me, she pushed past her brother and grabbed Sid’s pelvis. She went on to repeat Donald’s examination from start to finish, only faster and with more slamming of bones. When she was done, she compared her notes with her brother’s. “You mismeasured the right femur.”

  “Or perhaps you did,” he said calmly.

  She snorted, remeasured, and wrinkled her nose as she erased her original figure. Then she spent a good ten minutes rereading the information in the file folder, which I was dying to see. Finally she turned and acknowledged my existence with a glare. “This isn’t our skeleton.”

  “I suspected as much,” I said.

  “Our skeleton was a sixty-year-old Asian woman, and she was nearly a foot shorter than this skeleton.” She waved at Sid. “This is a Caucasoid man in his twenties. Our skeleton was missing several teeth that are present in this specimen. Ours had a fibula that had been broken postmortem and expertly repaired—this one had a broken rib that was glued together by an amateur and a healed broken wrist. Ours showed signs of poor nutrition and arthritis, but no apparent cause of death—this one had a skull fracture and a knife injury.”

  “That sounds pretty definitive,” I said. So much for her comments about grad students—Yo had hit every nail on the head.

  “Then where is our specimen? And why does this skeleton have the same ID number?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “We just had the one in our attic.” I gave her a shortened version of the fiction—parents bought it at an auction, thought it was fake at first, and so on. “Since this isn’t your skeleton, I’ll just get it out of your way.”

  I stepped toward the table, but she got in front of me. “What do you want it for, anyway?”

  I could have told her it had sentimental value or explained that it was my parents’ and I was honor-bound to protect it, but I just didn’t like her. So I told her the truth. “I like to watch movies with him, and sometimes we dance.”