A Skeleton in the Family Page 22

  Since my computer was missing, I figured Sid had plenty to do on his own, so other than making sure to speak loudly enough for him to overhear, I didn’t attempt to talk to him.

  As it turned out, I should have blown off all the prep work and spent the day playing Angry Birds. The phone rang a few minutes after Fletcher had been due to arrive.

  “Georgia? It’s Fletcher. Look, I hate to do this, but I’ve got to cancel dinner tonight. A big story is breaking!”

  “Not another murder.” I didn’t think either my nerves or Sid’s could take that.

  “No, but they may have solved the first one. The cops caught two guys breaking into a house on Wannamaker Lane—some kids out playing saw them and called 911. After the arrest, the cops searched their van and found loot from previous break-ins. They’re the ones, all right.”

  “That is big news.”

  “I thought you’d want to know so that you and Madison wouldn’t be worried about them coming back to your place.”

  “Absolutely.” Of course, I didn’t think that the break-in at my house was related to the rest of the burglaries, but it was good that the break-ins were over. And that Fletcher was thinking of us.

  “Want to know the best part? One of the guys works for a locksmith! So not only was he getting the money from fencing the merchandise, but every theft got him that much more business. They picked targets by checking their database to find out which houses didn’t have alarms, and afterward called all the houses nearby to try to sell them systems.”

  “Which locksmith?”

  There was a burst of noise. “The press conference is starting. I’ve got to go. Rain check on dinner!”

  “Which locksmith?” I asked again, but he’d already gone.

  I immediately dialed Deborah’s number. “Deborah? Georgia. I just heard that they caught the burglars.”

  “It was not my assistant who was involved. It was a guy at ABC Locks and Security.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Only slightly. Most people are still going to think that all locksmiths are shady and that every time we install a lock or security system, we’re casing the joint. Which reminds me: thank you so much for assuming it was me.”

  “Cut it out. I knew damned well you wouldn’t be breaking into houses.”

  “No, you just thought I’d hire the kind of crook who would.”

  If she hadn’t been having such a bad day, I’d have answered that in the way it deserved, but under the circumstances, I let it go. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Only if you can help me improve the reputation of locksmiths.”

  “Sorry, that’s not—” Then I got an idea. “Here’s a thought: call Fletcher and tell him you’re available for an interview about how you and other reputable locksmiths screen employees. There must be some industry statistics you can toss into the mix to show how few bad apples there are in the field. Maybe he can write a sidebar or something.”

  “That’s not bad. I’ll give it a shot. Gotta go.” She hung up.

  “You’re welcome,” I said to the dead phone.

  I told Madison the bad news, put Fletcher’s share of the chili into the freezer for another night, and resigned myself to throwing out any of the salad and fresh French bread we hadn’t eaten before it went bad. I meanly hoped that Fletcher had bought ice cream before getting the story lead, and that it was melting all over his backseat.

  After dinner, Madison suggested going to a movie, so I left Sid to Byron’s tender attentions and headed for the theater. The movie we wanted to see was sold out, the one we picked instead was lousy, and the popcorn was stale. Then, to put a capstone on the evening, when we got home there was a note from Fletcher on the front door. He’d come by with the ice cream, but since we hadn’t been there to accept it, he’d taken it to his sister’s house for her kids.

  I was trying to cheer up Madison with Mom-ish aphorisms when we got inside, and might have succeeded had I not seen another note waiting. This one was from Sid and was sticking out of my laptop.

  No luck. Back to square one.

  After that, I gave up trying to comfort Madison and settled for making us each a big mug of hot cocoa before bed. Sometimes chocolate is the best part of the day.

  At least I didn’t have to wait until Sunday night to go see what was up with Sid. Deborah called Madison the next morning and told her she’d be over in an hour to pick her up. She had some emergency calls and wanted Madison to come along and start earning back some of the money spent on Byron’s accessories. I felt a little guilty about Madison having to work on the weekend, but only a little. I had a stack of essays to grade, so I wasn’t exactly going to be loafing.

  But first things first. As soon as Madison was gone, I lugged my satchel up to the attic. Sid was in the middle of the sixth Harry Potter book, and I had a hunch he’d been reading ever since he’d left me that note. His bones were still together, but they were definitely more loosely connected than usual.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Which is what’s inside my skull.”

  “You went through all those names?”

  “I tried to, but I’ve got forty left.”

  “Then why are you stopping?”

  “Because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve Googled them, gone on Facebook and LinkedIn, checked the alumni lists—nothing. Maybe I’m one of those guys, but I don’t know how I can ever find out for sure.”

  “You want me to take a stab at them?”

  “What’s the point? Besides, you’ve got work to do.” He pointed at the essays I’d brought up with me. “I may not eat, but you and Madison still need you to make a living.”

  “Let’s trade. You go through the essays for misspelled words and grammar problems, and I’ll research some of your names.”

  I thought he tightened up a bit as he put down his book. “If you think I can help.”

  “Hey, you’ve got a great eye socket for typos.”

  “Do I get to use a red pen?”

  “Absolutely.”

  While he got to work, I opened his database of Sid candidates. There were forty-one left, and I stifled a sigh so he wouldn’t start losing bones all over the essays. At least he’d organized the data thoroughly. Each name was hot-linked to its appearance in the online JTU yearbooks, and any other information he’d been able to scrape up—club memberships, majors, and so on—was carefully noted.

  Since he’d already tried the obvious places, I tried some less familiar ones: archives for the Pennycross Gazette, and when I knew a student’s major, membership rosters for applicable professional organizations. I was able to cross off two men via the Gazette—they’d both joined the Army—and found two CPAs, an actuary, and even a guy who was a fellow adjunct.

  It was encouraging, but it took over two hours of hard work to cross off those six names, and I couldn’t help but wonder what we’d do if we crossed everybody off of the list. Where would we go next? I stifled another sigh.

  At least Sid was having a good time marking up essays. He really was a good proofreader, sometimes annoyingly so when peering over my shoulder. That may be why I took such pleasure in finding a mistake in his database. “You made a typo.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.” I pointed to an entry. “You spelled that guy’s name A-L-L-E-N Reece. It’s A-L-A-N.”

  “No it’s not.”

  I clicked the link to the yearbook where Alan’s sophomore picture was printed. “A-L-A-N.”

  “Then whoever entered the caption into the yearbook spelled it wrong.”

  I should have let it go, since it didn’t matter anyway, but I was tired and cranky. “Would it hurt you to admit that you’re wrong once in a while?”

  “You tell me—you’re wrong so much more often than I am.”

  “Sid, if al
l you want to do is fight, I’ll go downstairs and play with Byron. I thought it was dogs who snapped at people, not skeletons!”

  “Fine!” he snapped—and it was definitely a snap. “I’ll go sit in the corner and twiddle my thumbs. Excuse me, my phalanges—wouldn’t want to get that wrong.”

  I resisted the impulse to tell him where he could put his phalanges, and started hunting for information on A-L-A-N Reece while I waited for him to apologize. He went back to the paper he was correcting, and I suspected he was waiting for me to apologize.

  Neither of us spoke.

  We’d probably still be there—not speaking—if I hadn’t received a text from Deborah that she and Madison were on their way back to the house.

  “I’ve got to go.” Then I made myself say, “Thanks for helping with the papers.”

  “No problem,” he said with enough hesitation that I knew he was forcing himself to be civil, too. “Thanks for taking six more names off of my database.”

  “I’ll come back up after Madison goes to bed and work on some more.”

  “No, that’s okay,” he said. “I think we need a break.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “This has been going on for weeks—another night won’t make any difference.”

  “Okay, but let me know if you change your mind.”

  He picked up the book he’d been reading, so I packed up my stuff and went to meet Madison and Deborah. I didn’t like leaving it that way, but I figured he was right. A night off wouldn’t make any difference.

  Wrong again.

  43

  Deborah and Madison had stopped by Darrow’s, a local temple to the art of chicken pot pies, so all I had to do was pull out the leftover salad from the night before and dinner was taken care of. Madison had enjoyed her day of having a real job, especially flirting with various comely young men while Deborah did the actual work. I wasn’t worried—I knew my sister wouldn’t put up with loafing for long, and would soon have Madison earning her pay. And having a daughter who could pick locks could come in handy.

  Deborah was in a good mood, too, because Fletcher had run a nice piece on her extra-careful methods of investigating employees, and that cop she knew had even thrown in a quote about her integrity. As a result, she wasn’t going to lose a thing from her competitor’s woes. In fact, she was picking up business as his monitoring clients switched to her.

  After our early dinner, we took Byron out for a walk in the brisk fall afternoon, kicking at fallen leaves and wondering when the first snow of the year would fall. While we walked, Fletcher called on my cell to apologize once again for canceling at the last minute and promised to make it up to Madison and me—both chocolate and ice cream were mentioned. Plus he had me thank Deborah for her interview. We all agreed he was a great guy.

  Back at the house, I whipped up hot chocolate for the humans and pulled out the last rawhide chew for Byron. Deborah and I didn’t argue once.

  It would have been a perfect afternoon and evening if I hadn’t kept thinking of Sid up in the attic alone. No matter how many times I told myself that it was his own choice, I still felt like a heel.

  So, despite what Sid had said earlier, I had every intention of visiting him once Madison was asleep, but I found a note on my pillow, presumably left while we were all out with the dog.

  Borrowed a couple of books from your parents’ office. Planning to read all evening. Don’t come up.

  I should have gone up anyway, but it was late and I was tired and, truth be told, relieved that I was going to be able to get to bed at a reasonable hour. So I took him at his word and turned in for the night.

  I did leave my laptop outside my bedroom in case Sid wanted to borrow it again, but the next morning I could tell it hadn’t been disturbed. I shrugged and got the week started.

  In handing out the essays to my first class, I felt guilty all over again because of Sid’s good job proofing them. That was why I started work on his list of possibilities when I went to the adjunct office afterward. I got lucky and eliminated three more names in an hour.

  Next up on the list was the contentious Alan/Allen Reece, and I decided the first thing I needed to do was confirm the spelling of his name. In the 1980 yearbook, it was definitely Alan in the sophomore-class listing, but when I went through the activities section, I found Allen Reece was a member of Film Fans and the Computer Connection. I went back to the 1979 edition—it was Allen in both the class listing and the club membership rosters, plus Allen worked tech in a production of The Night Is My Enemy.

  Sid was right.

  But how had he known? If he’d checked those other places, he’d have told me so. All he’d had to go by was the sophomore yearbook listing.

  I looked down the list of names in his database, and didn’t see a single other name misspelled, even though there were two other Alans, one Allan, an Allen, and even an Aleyn. Obviously Sid wasn’t automatically changing the spelling on all versions of the name.

  I went to the yearbooks where he’d found those other names and compared. In each of those five other instances, Sid had spelled the names exactly as they’d appeared in the yearbooks. I picked more names at random, and most of those matched the yearbook, too. The only exception was where a guy named Robert had his name misspelled as Rboert in the yearbook, and in that case, Sid had noted the discrepancy.

  It was as if he’d known that A-L-L-E-N was the proper spelling without even thinking about it. Just as he’d known about passwords even though that had hardly been common knowledge back in his day; just as he’d known the word zooarchaeology, which I’d never heard before, despite being around academia my whole life. Maybe Sid had known Allen Reece. Or maybe Sid was Allen Reece.

  Maybe I’d found him at last.

  44

  I was staring at the picture of Allen Reece, trying to decide if he looked the way I thought Sid would have looked, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

  “Hey!” Fletcher said, leaning down to give me a kiss. “Here’s the first part of my apology for missing dinner the other night.” He placed a sparkly pink gift bag, complete with sparkly pink tissue paper peeking out, on my desk.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to. The wrapping is leftover from my niece’s birthday—hope you don’t mind.”

  “I had no idea sparkle technology had improved so much since Madison went through that phase. Can I open it now?”

  “Please.” He rolled his desk chair over and sat to watch.

  I ventured in among the sparkles and pulled out a silvery tin, shaped vaguely like a skeleton, with a purple skeleton embossed on the top. At first I had a crazy thought that he’d found out about Sid, but then realized it must be a reference to my bringing a skeleton to school. I chuckled to show my appreciation, and since the tin was too heavy to be empty, pried it open. Inside was a luscious assortment of chocolates. “What time is it?”

  “Just after eleven. Why?”

  “I’m trying to decide if I’ll spoil my lunch if I eat one now.”

  “Live dangerously! And speaking of lunch, if you don’t have other plans, I’d like to take you out.”

  “If I did, I’d change them.” I carefully selected a dark chocolate morsel, hoping it held something yummy. It did, and I sighed happily. “Now you take one.”

  He went for a milk chocolate. “I’ve got reservations for us at twelve fifteen.”

  “Reservations for lunch?” Very few of the places I frequented even took reservations for dinner. “Am I dressed okay?”

  “You always look wonderful.”

  “You’re laying it on mighty thick,” I said, “but I like that in a man.”

  “Good.” He leaned forward for another kiss, and I heard a smattering of applause from some of the other adjuncts. I was a little embarrassed, but Fletcher went with it. He even bowed, and returned
a salute from Charles.

  Sara, who’d come in when I was busy, neither applauded nor saluted. She just looked dyspeptic. Since I figured I had her to blame for spreading the news that lead to somebody breaking into my house, I hoped she had an upset stomach for the rest of the semester.

  Fletcher said, “I’ve got a little work to do before lunch, so you can go back to what you were doing.” He wheeled back to his desk and pulled out his laptop.

  I looked at the picture of Allen again, enlarging it as much as I could. Allen had been lanky, though maybe he’d have filled out later on. His hair was dark, and he had a strong nose and nice eyes. I wouldn’t have called him gorgeous—he wasn’t as handsome as Fletcher—but he was good-looking in an unfinished, college-student kind of way. But he didn’t look familiar.

  The sophomore yearbook was the last one in which he appeared, so I started hunting for more mentions of him, either associated with JTU or Film Fans or any computer-programming organization I could find. There was nothing. Then I looked at the local paper’s Web site, but their online archives didn’t go back that far. If only I had a newspaper specialist nearby . . .

  “Fletcher?” I said. “Can I pick your brain?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m trying to find information about a guy who was a student at JTU in nineteen eighty, but there’s nothing online, so I’m stuck. Any suggestions?”

  “You could go to the North Ashfield Public Library, where they probably have dusty files or, if you’re really lucky, nearly legible microfiche versions.”

  “Joy,” I said weakly.

  “Or you could access one of the online newspaper archive sites designed for genealogists and amateur historians, and hope there’s one that includes the North Ashfield Times. Of course, you’ll have to pay a fee.”

  “How big a fee?”

  “It varies pretty widely. Or, best of all, you could find a friendly reporter who has a friend at the North Ashfield Times who would be willing to check their files.”

  “I like that last one.”