The Skeleton Paints a Picture: A Family Skeleton Mystery (#4) Read online

“But—”

  “No buts. And in my case, that’s literal.” He tapped the back of his flesh-free pelvis. “Georgia, the problem is that you’re doubting yourself.”

  “Always.”

  “Then you have got to learn to trust your gut.”

  “My gut is tied up in knots.”

  “Well, trust my gut, and mine says it’s Dahna.”

  “Sid, you don’t—”

  “I don’t what?” he said ominously.

  I swallowed my intended comment about his lack of a gut. “You don’t understand how nervous I am about leaving you here alone.”

  “I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll wait here until I’m sure nobody is around, and I’ll text you as soon as I find out anything. Go home.”

  “I’m going.” Admittedly, I didn’t go swiftly, but I did pack up and leave only after confirming our plans one more time. Well, maybe one and a half because I think I repeated some parts.

  But eventually I was wearing my coat and winterizing accessories, had left Sid in my office, and was halfway to the exit when I heard somebody call my name. I turned around to see Dahna coming toward me.

  Given the acid rush of fear that shot through me, apparently my gut agreed with Sid after all. The only reason I resisted the impulse to scream and flee was because I didn’t want her to chase me, and I was pretty sure she was smart enough to interpret “scream and flee” as a sign that I’d figured out she was the killer.

  “Hi, Dahna,” I said, trying to sound normal. “What’s up?”

  “I was just finishing up at the Writing Lab and realized we’d never discussed staffing it from now on. With Owen… gone, it will be more difficult.”

  “Oh, I never even thought about that.”

  “I am not surprised. It must have been a frightening experience. You are very clever to have thwarted him.”

  “I was mostly lucky,” I said. “And you’re right, we need to work out staffing the Writing Lab, but can it wait until next week? I’m on my way out, and we should bring the rest of the department in on the discussion.”

  “Of course. I just thought that you should have the first choice of the extra hours since we other adjuncts are taking over Owen’s classes.”

  “I heard, and it was the right decision, but we should all have a shot at the extra Lab hours.”

  “You are very gracious. Perhaps Professor Waldron will want to call another meeting on Monday.”

  “That’s a great idea—why don’t you suggest it to her? Just let me know about the timing, and I’ll see you then.” I had to turn my back on her to walk toward the door, and it wasn’t easy, especially not when I could see her reflection in the glass door in front of me. It looked as if she watched me the whole time, but at least she stayed put instead of pursuing me with an ax. I didn’t really relax until I got outside, and even then I looked behind me to ensure that she hadn’t followed.

  It was already full dark, and the sky was clear the way it only is when the weather is extra frigid. I walked quickly both from excitement and because I wanted out of the cold. I should have been more careful, Sid pointed out later, but in my defense, I was sure that Dahna couldn’t be anywhere near me. So I wasn’t paying particular attention when I turned the corner to go to my minivan.

  Just for a second I sensed that somebody was behind me. Then I saw stars brighter than those above, and an instant later, felt the pain from the blow to my head before sinking into the snow.

  Chapter Forty

  I woke up cold. Not just the-covers-slipped-off-during-the-night or the-heat-is-set-too-low chilly, but draining, painful cold. I was shivering so hard it took a while for me to realize that I wasn’t in my bed at the bungalow. I didn’t know where I was. It was so dark I wasn’t even sure my eyes were open at first. I was lying on my side on something hard, and my head hurt so much it took me a while to notice that my hands and feet were bound.

  At least my hands were tied in front of me so I could feel around enough to be fairly sure that I’d been left on rough concrete, and it was inside…somewhere. Unfortunately, it was somewhere without heat.

  I know what it can mean when a woman wakes up in a place she doesn’t remember going. So as best I could, I checked to make sure all my clothes were intact. When I’d verified that I was still wearing jeans, long underwear, flannel shirt, sweatshirt, and all the usual undergarments, I breathed a bit more easily. I just wished I had my coat, hat, and gloves, too. A pillow and blanket would have been welcome, too.

  With that off my mind, I tried to untie my feet, which would probably have been possible if my hands hadn’t been nearly numb from the cold. Chewing on the rope binding my hands didn’t do a thing, either. I abandoned the effort and twisted around in hopes of seeing something.

  Though the room was inky dark, I spotted a tiny line of light along the floor a few feet away. I hoped that meant it was a door, and I started scooting my way in that direction. I’d hoped to lever myself upright somehow once I got there, but my ankles were tied too tightly for that to happen. The best I could do was to get up on my knees, which got me high enough to reach the knob, but of course it only moved a fraction of an inch. There was a rattling, and I decided it was chained shut from the outside.

  I lay back down and put my face right up to the crack in the door. “Hello! Is anybody out there?” There was no response. “HELLO! I’m stuck in here.” Nothing. I continued to yell until my throat started to hurt, but nobody came. Then I rolled over onto my back and used my feet to pound against the door. Still nothing.

  The walls on either side of the door felt like ridged, bare metal, frigid enough that it almost hurt to touch. Hadn’t I seen university storage buildings with corrugated walls? Did that mean I was still on campus? I switched to kicking the wall for a while, which made a cacophony of sounds, but nobody came and it made my head ache more.

  I hated to leave my one area of light, but I was going to have to find another way to get somebody’s attention. The kicking had warmed me up some, but not enough, and I was far from certain that I could make it through a whole night of below-freezing temperatures. Plus there was the off chance that I’d find something useful that I might use to cut myself free. So I started wriggling like an inchworm well past its prime and aimed for what I thought was the center of the room. At some point, I ran into a pile of something in bags. From the smell, I was guessing it was something landscape-related—grass seed maybe or fertilizer—but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to help me.

  I managed to crawl on top of the sacks, thinking that they’d be a little warmer than the concrete, and I was still trying to convince myself that it was working when I heard a noise at the door. It opened, and I had just a second of seeing distant streetlights when somebody shone a flashlight in my face.

  “Look who’s awake,” a familiar voice said.

  “Renee?” I said. “How did you find me?”

  “Easily. This is where I left you. Though obviously I should have hit you harder.”

  Coccyx! I wasn’t being rescued after all. “HELP! HELP! HELP!”

  “Oh, shut up! The campus is closed down for the night, so there’s nobody to hear you anyway.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked, still trying to see past the light in my eyes.

  “I’ll pass on the explanatory monologue if you don’t mind. And don’t try anything stupid. I’ve got a gun.”

  Renee? How had Sid and I gone so far wrong? She’d only taught at two of the schools involved. “You’re Scarlet Letter?”

  She moved enough that I could see the pistol in her hand and aimed the flashlight at my hands and feet. “At least the knots held.”

  “She’s awake,” another voice said, and Dahna stepped inside. “You said you knocked her out.”

  “Next time, you do the dirty work,” Renee snapped.

  “You’re the one with experience with violence,” Dahna shot back.

  “Whereas an art thief is such a law-abiding citizen?”

  �
�Better to be a plagiarist than a murderer.”

  “At least I had the balls to do what I had to. I didn’t drag innocent people into my mess.”

  “What innocent people? Certainly not you.”

  “I’m talking about Jeremy. You know damned well he had no idea what you were up to.”

  “Is that what he told you? And you believed him?”

  “My fiancé doesn’t lie to me!”

  I had a vague idea that as long as they were fighting with one another, I would be better off staying quiet. Plus I was confused enough that I had nothing to say anyway. If I was interpreting their sniping correctly, Dahna really was the art thief, but Renee had killed Kelly. And Jeremy was involved, too, somehow. Or maybe whoever had hit me had scrambled my brains.

  Dahna and Renee glared at one another, but Dahna was the one to relent, possibly because of Renee’s weapon. She said, “It is of no possible difference now. What are we to do with Georgia?”

  “I think the answer is simple. If she lives, all three of us go to prison.”

  “People do not get sent to prison for plagiarism. I had nothing to do with Kelly’s murder, and I suspect Jeremy did not either.”

  “And I had nothing to do with your art theft, but at this point, we’re all accessories to everything. If not in the eyes of the law, then in the court of public opinion. Are you ready to lose your job? To abandon your life’s work?”

  “No, but…”

  “I’m not, either, and I’m not throwing away Jeremy’s chance at tenure. Why do you think I took care of Kelly in the first place?”

  “I will never understand why you had to do that. She would never have caught me or Jeremy.”

  “Georgia almost did—Kelly would have sooner or later.”

  “I do not think that’s true. Kelly had no idea, and Georgia wouldn’t have even gotten involved if Kelly hadn’t died.”

  “How was I supposed to know Georgia was terminally nosy?” Renee gave me a look. “Emphasis on terminal.”

  “This is not a joke!”

  “No, but the way you’re acting is. Stop playing Hamlet. You knew exactly how this was going to end as soon as I told you Georgia didn’t believe Owen was the art thief. Once she’s gone, we can move on with our lives. Jeremy gets tenure, and if we’re lucky, you or I do, too. I get married and take care of my dogs, and you can keep stealing art. Just keep Jeremy out of it from now on out. All we have to do is get rid of Dr. Nosy here.”

  “Georgia has a daughter. The girl will be an orphan.”

  “That’s not my problem. The kid will be grown in a couple of years, anyway. Until then, her grandparents can keep her. She’ll be fine.”

  Dahna hesitated. I held my breath, hoping that she was going to balk, reject Renee’s plan, and save me. But what she said was, “How shall we do it?”

  That was my cue to start yelling again, though I didn’t expect it to do much good. It didn’t. They had me gagged with Dahna’s scarf in seconds, and continued their discussion as if I hadn’t screamed.

  Renee said, “I’d really like it to be an accident, but that’s not going to fly again. The cops are going to be suspicious enough after how that idiot Owen muffed it. If he hadn’t let Georgia see him drugging her coffee, she’d be out of our hair already. Nobody would have believed anything she said if they thought she was a lush.”

  That explained how Owen had come up with his plot. Now that I considered it, it had been uncharacteristically devious for him.

  “How did you convince him to help us?” Dahna wanted to know.

  “He doesn’t know anything about us. He just wanted to get back at Georgia. All I had to do was act sympathetic and listen to him whine about how she’d done him wrong. Then I made up a story about how a guy I knew had gotten his revenge on a colleague, and pointed out that the plan would work perfectly in his case, too. He did the rest.” She went on. “Anyway, I was thinking about faking a robbery. That bungalow she’s staying in is plenty isolated. We’ll take her laptop—which we should do anyway, just in case she’s got anything incriminating on it—and anything else she might have that’s worth stealing. Tie her up, kill her, and get out of there. With luck, she won’t be found for days. Or maybe we could set a fire.”

  “What about her car? We should not leave it here.”

  “We’ll use it to take her to the bungalow. I’ll follow in my car—I’m parked right next to her.”

  They went on to discuss myriad details like keeping gloves on; disposing of the property they were going to steal; and whether they should shoot, bludgeon, or stab me. I could see why Renee had been so successful in killing Kelly. She wasn’t the type to leave anything to chance.

  The mention of my van reminded me that Sid was still in my office, waiting for his chance to search Dahna’s office. Or maybe he was already searching it. I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious.

  I tuned back in when Renee said, “You untie her. And Georgia, don’t try anything stupid. I’ve still got a gun.”

  By that point, I couldn’t have done much if I’d wanted to. My ankles had been bound so tightly for so long that they were nearly without sensation, and my legs weren’t much better. Renee had used some sort of nylon cord to tie me up, and she had to loan Dahna an uncomfortably large knife to cut me loose. Unfortunately, she left my hands bound.

  “I will help you get up,” Dahna said.

  I shook my head.

  “Do not be stubborn, Georgia.”

  I wasn’t being stubborn—between stiffness and returning circulation, my legs weren’t up to the job, which she realized as soon as she tried to get me upright.

  “Her legs must be asleep,” she said.

  “Then you’re going to have to carry her,” Renee said.

  Dahna made a face. “Where is her coat?”

  “Back there with her purse and other stuff,” Renee said, gesturing with her gun.

  For some reason, that made me angrier than their calm discussion about how to kill me. I understood why Renee had taken my satchel. Like most women, I carried a wide assortment of useful objects, and of course, my phone was in there. But once she’d searched my pockets, there was no reason to take my coat. That was tantamount to torture, and finding out that it had been in the building with me the whole time only made it worse. Had I been able to move properly, that gun might not have stopped me from going after her.

  Dahna handed my satchel to Renee, then put my coat around my shoulders and buttoned it so it would stay on before helping me stand up. By that time I was able to stumble forward with her support. Renee waved us ahead, and followed, no doubt with the gun aimed right at my unprotected back. On the good side, Dahna was so focused on helping me walk that she didn’t notice that the scarf they’d used to gag me had slipped down and a discreet tug pulled it the rest of the way off. I wasn’t going to start calling for help yet, but I would be ready if I got the chance.

  They’d stashed me in some sort of storage building in an isolated corner of the FAD campus, far away from any dorms where students might be looking out the windows, and apparently security didn’t bother with it, either. Maybe it was the time of night. I still hadn’t seen a clock, but it felt like midnight. Or maybe it was too raw out for the guards to care—it was snowing again and the wind was blowing it right into my mostly unbuttoned coat. Our progress was slow, which was fine with me, but Renee was getting impatient and there was a limit to how much I was willing to risk being shot.

  We turned a corner toward where I’d parked that morning. My minivan and Renee’s car were the only vehicles in the lot. At least, I’m pretty sure it was my minivan—I couldn’t speak for the lump next to mine.

  “What has happened?” Dahna said.

  “Why are you stopping?” Renee came up beside us, and then she, too, stared.

  The cars were covered in snow. No, not just covered. Buried, from tire to hood level, with more snow blown against the windows. There was just barely enough of the roofs showing to tell which
car was which.

  “What did you do?” Renee demanded, shoving me.

  I almost answered before remembering I was supposed to be gagged, so I just grunted my ignorance.

  “I don’t understand,” Dahna said. “There was some snow this afternoon but not enough to do this. Even a snowplow wouldn’t—”

  “Shut up! I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve got to get out of here. Where’s your car?”

  “On the other side of the English wing.”

  “Come on!” Renee shoved both of us this time, and once we were moving, cursed freely at our slowness. This time I was actively stalling. I could only think of one way my van could have been buried. Or rather, only one person who would have buried it.

  Renee kept pushing and prodding as we went, but as we turned the corner, we saw another snowy mound in the middle of that parking lot. “Oh no!” Dahna moaned. “My car as well.”

  “We’ve got to dig one of these cars out!” Renee said. “Have you got a shovel in your trunk?”

  Dahna shook her head, and Renee cursed Jeremy, who apparently had broken hers and not replaced it. “I bet Georgia has one.” She started pulling us back to the other lot.

  Then we heard something. At first I thought it was a car, and I was about to try to break free and yell for help at last, but it was the wrong kind of engine. A few seconds later, it came into view. It was a snowblower, the kind that attaches to a lawn tractor.

  I later read that eight miles an hour is considered speedy for a snowblower, and I doubted this one was going that fast, but it seemed to zoom toward us, headlights illuminating the snow it was throwing like icy diamonds. Dahna and Renee just stared at it at first, then tried to run away, still dragging me along.

  Dahna tripped and fell, and I went down on top of her, digging my knees into her back as hard as I could to pin her to the ground. Renee turned to grab me, but I screamed out, “HELP! SHE’S GOT A GUN!”

  I thought Renee was going to shoot me, and she did, too, but the tractor was overtaking us too quickly and she took off running.

  The tractor slowed as it reached me, but I yelled, “I’m good! Get her!” It sped up again, and the chase was on.