The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking Read online

  “I would appreciate it.”

  I knew all the back routes, so it didn’t take us long to get to the department Louis was looking for. “Are you going to be able to find your way out again?” I asked.

  “Eventually,” he said, not very confidently.

  “Or I could wait until you’re done and walk you out again.”

  “That would be great, but I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “You might be interested anyway. I’m working on the case involving the skeleton your dog found.” He gave me a sideways look. “I don’t know how much interest you’re taking in this one.” This was his way of acknowledging that I’d been involved in unofficial investigation in the past. I wasn’t sure if he approved or if he only accepted it because he was dating my sister.

  “Did you identify the person? Was it a McQuaid employee or student?”

  “No, and I don’t know. I’m here because the coroner did what he could with the remains, but he doesn’t have much experience with remains in this condition.”

  “Meaning a skeleton?”

  He nodded. “We normally work with Dr. de la Cova on bone cases, but she’s at a conference, so she recommended we consult one of the other faculty members.”

  “I’m not faculty,” a voice from behind us said. “Merely a lowly adjunct.”

  I turned and saw a young woman with azure hair shaved nearly to the scalp on one side, and hanging down to her shoulder on the other. She was wearing a lab coat over leggings and a sweater that was the same color as her hair.

  “You here to talk bones?” she said.

  “Dr. Jacobs?” Louis said hesitantly.

  “Yo,” she responded, and led the way into the lab.

  Louis looked at me for reassurance.

  “Yolanda Jacobs, PhD,” I confirmed. “Yo for short.”

  I’d met Yo when I’d taken Sid to be analyzed in hopes of finding out more about him after decades of having him around the house. That’s when we’d learned that he’d been murdered. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been finishing up her dissertation and had been confident that she’d never end up as an adjunct. Then again, becoming an adjunct wasn’t usually anybody’s career path.

  Still looking doubtful, Louis followed Yo into the lab, and after only a moment’s hesitation, I went along too. Surely Sid would want to hear about what Yo had found in her examination.

  Even though it had been moved to a different building, the lab looked much as it had the last time I’d seen it. We were surrounded by battered metal shelves holding plastic bins filled with the bones and skulls that made up the department’s reference collection. Any available wall space was covered with anatomical charts and photos of bones, with and without meat. A rolling cabinet held a wide selection of scales, measuring gadgetry, and sharp objects whose use I didn’t care to think about too carefully, and in the center of the room were two body length tables covered in black, inert laminate. The jointed cardboard skeleton rescued from a post-Halloween discount bin was missing, but had been replaced by a stand-up of Jack Skellington. A word balloon was taped to his mouth with the cheerful invitation, “Let’s get boned!”

  The table closest to me held a skeleton I deduced was the one Byron had found, though I couldn’t be sure. Sid was the only skeleton I recognized on sight.

  It looked as if the worst of the dirt had been brushed off, and it was no longer covered by the bits of fabric we’d seen. Seeing it lying there gave me mixed feelings: familiarity, because it was a skeleton; sadness, because it had been a person; and creeped out, because it was a dead skeleton.

  Yo said, “What we’ve got here is a female, who was approximately five-foot-six when standing. The age is a little tricky. From the epiphyses, I can tell she was above thirty, in the thirty-five to fifty year range, but given the wear on the teeth and other areas, I’m going to guess on the younger end of that range, thirty-five to forty. She was in good shape, though she could have used a trip to the dentist—she had a cavity that does not look as if it had been filled.”

  Louis was scribbling rapidly in his notepad. “Could the filling have fallen out?”

  “Maybe, but you’d expect signs of dental drilling around it if that had happened, and I’m not seeing it.”

  “Any idea about cause of death?”

  “Strangled.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Mostly sure. The hyoid bone is fractured, which is usually indicative of strangling, either manually or by ligature.”

  “It couldn’t have been postmortem?” I asked.

  “Not likely. Postmortem fractures tend to splinter and show color differences, which I’m not seeing, and it wasn’t antemortem because there’s no sign of regrowth. That only leaves perimortem. It’s possible that the blunt force trauma that broke her hyoid didn’t kill her, while something else did immediately thereafter. But since I’ve found no bullet holes, knife marks, or other blunt force trauma, my money would be on strangulation.

  Louis nodded. “What about the time of death?”

  “I’d say between 3 and 4 p.m. on Friday, March 6, 2009.”

  “Really?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t write that down! This isn’t CSI. I’ll be doing well if I can get you into the right decade!”

  “I was wondering,” he said, but I saw him scratching out something in his notebook.

  “The body wasn’t in a container or plastic wrapping or anything like that, right?” Yo asked.

  Louis consulted his notes. “We found what looks like a blanket, but that’s it.”

  “Then she was in the ground for at least eight years—that’s how long it would take a body in our environment to decay down to the bones. I’d guess she was probably in the nine to fifteen year range—a specialist in forensics might be able to be more precise. You might also get something from her clothes, which I assume you’ve sent elsewhere for analysis.”

  “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “Cotton fibers stuck in some of the joints, some dark staining on the legs. That is information it would have been good for me to know beforehand, by the way.”

  “Sorry. Working with skeletal remains is new territory for me.” He jotted a note. “Can you tell me anything else?”

  “This is more speculative, but I’ve got a couple of thoughts. See these bony ridges on the wrists?” She pointed them out. “This tells me that she worked with her hands. I’m also seeing signs that she was on her feet a lot. When she was still alive, that is.”

  I’d intended to stay quiet but couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Couldn’t that have been from exercising?”

  “Possibly, but a runner or a walker presents differently, and even the most enthused walker doesn’t usually have this much wear and tear at this age. There’s more osteoarthritis than typical in a woman this age, and her feet were going flat. Plus, there’s something about the spine that makes me think she bent over a lot.” Yo shrugged. “It’s just the impression I get, so don’t get aggravated if it turns out she had a cushy desk job.”

  “I won’t hold you to it,” Louis said, slipping his notepad back into his pocket. “Should I arrange to have the bones shipped back to the morgue?”

  “Let me keep her around for a few more days while I write up the formal report. I want to triple check my measurements, and I’ll poke around some more and see if I notice anything else.”

  “You’ve already given me a lot more than I had before,” Louis said. “Appreciate it.”

  Yo waved away his thanks. “Doing actual science beats the snot out of teaching freshmen the difference between a femur and a finger bone.”

  “Thanks for letting me sit in,” I said.

  “It’s the same rate for one or two,” she said. “Speaking of which…”

  Louis said, “I’ll get the paperwork in as soon as I get back to the station. Accounts payable should cut you a chec
k tomorrow, next day at the latest, and get it into the mail ASAP.”

  “Good deal. I hate to be mercenary, but Georgia can tell you how little adjuncts get paid.”

  We left her glaring at the skeleton as if she, too, was a troublesome student or a stingy college administrator.

  Chapter Five

  Fortunately for my credibility as a native guide, I was able to get Louis back to the building’s side entrance without any wrong turns. When we got outside, we found a sandy-haired man in a McQuaid security officer uniform waiting for us.

  “O’Leary,” Louis said stiffly.

  “Raymond,” Oscar O’Leary replied just as stiffly.

  I sighed. I really hated being with both of them at the same time, especially when Deborah wasn’t around. The problem was that both of them were dating her. It was all above-board, with no guilty secrets. They knew about one another, and she’d been honest that she wasn’t interested in being serious with either of them and that they could either accept it or move on. Neither of her beaus was entirely happy with the arrangement, but they’d stuck around. I just hoped it was because their affection for Deborah was that strong and not because they’d gotten caught up in their competition.

  “Hi, Oscar,” I said, hoping to cut some of the tension. “How’s it going?”

  I got a smile. “Pretty good, Georgia. I still hate that you aren’t teaching here anymore.”

  “It’s all part of the happy-go-lucky adjunct lifestyle,” I said.

  Oscar turned back to Louis. “I heard you were on campus. Anything I need to know about?” Oscar was head of McQuaid security, and even without personal issues, turf wars often crop up between campus cops and town cops.

  “Just consulting one of your scientists about a murder case. It’s a police investigation, nothing for campus security.” He didn’t quite make campus security sound like kids playing dress-up.

  Oscar turned to me. “Are you helping him out, Georgia?” I wasn’t sure if this was intended as a compliment for me, which I might then tell Deborah about and earn Oscar a brownie point, or an insult to Louis. Or both.

  I said, “Right now, I’m only leading him through the current campus maze.”

  Back to Louis, sans smile. “Let me know when you’re on campus again, and I’ll provide an escort. In fact, I’ll show you the way back to your car now.”

  “I was going to—” But one look at the expression on Oscar’s face showed me that he was going to direct us no matter what I said. The idea of spending another ten minutes between them did not appeal, but luckily, Yo came out the door behind us. I said, “You two go ahead. There’s something I want to talk to Yo about.”

  Louis paused long enough to say, “Thanks for your help, Georgia,” then hurried to catch up with Oscar. Neither of them wanted to be behind the other, so each kept trying to go faster. I suspected they’d be sprinting by the time they got to Louis’s car.

  “What’s up with them?” Yo asked.

  “Testosterone.”

  “Best thing about skeletons? No hormones. What did you need to talk about? Or was that just an excuse?”

  “Just an excuse.” It had been an excuse, and while I’d have made up a polite fiction with most people, Yo preferred people to be as blunt as she was. “It is good to see you.”

  “Yeah, ditto. You want to get some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  We had to take a detour or two to reach McQuaid’s Coffee Corner but were soon seated at a table with our caffeine fixes.

  “So here you are tied up with another skeleton,” Yo said. “Is this like a fetish for you? I mean, I don’t judge. I’ve run into other skelesexuals.”

  “Skelesexual? Are you making that up?”

  “Why bother to invent stuff when the real world is weird enough? I don’t care what people do with consenting inanimate objects as long as they don’t try to raid my lab’s reference collection to introduce themselves to new special friends.”

  “That’s very open-minded of you. Anyway, no, I am not sexually attracted to bones, though our dog Byron has a certain fondness for them. He brought home one of those femurs, and we helped the police find the rest of the skeleton. So I can’t help but be curious.”

  “Yeah, I hear through the adjunct grapevine that you can’t help but be curious in a lot of odd cases.”

  I started to deny it but realized there was no reason to. If it was so thoroughly imbedded into adjunct lore, the tale would travel with me wherever I went in academia. As Madison would have said, I might as well start owning it. So I said, “It’s a hobby. What’s going on with you?”

  “You don’t have to dance around it, Georgia.”

  “Dance around what?”

  “My job. Don’t you want to know why I didn’t get a real job instead of working as an adjunct?”

  I’d really just been making small talk, but I shrugged and said, “I figured it was for the same reason as everybody else. Not enough permanent and tenure track jobs available because schools would rather pay adjuncts chump change and not worry about those pesky contracts and benefit packages.”

  “Or maybe I decided I didn’t want to be trapped by a system that chains academics to the never-ending treadmill of publish-or-perish.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Nah, you nailed it. I’d love a good set of chains, and I haven’t given up on getting a set padlocked on. Which reminds me, I kind of remember dissing you for being an adjunct back before I realized how things were. Sorry about being a jerk.”

  “No worries. I used to be a jerk about adjuncts myself. My parents made it sound like anybody who couldn’t get a tenure track job just wasn’t good enough or trying hard enough. That may have been true in their day, but it hasn’t been that way for a long time.”

  “A long time in a galaxy far, far away,” Yo agreed. “I bet they never have nightmares about having to teach on three different campus in the same semester just to pay the bills.”

  “That’s definitely the worst.”

  “Speaking of other campuses, what’s the latest on the Bostock strike?”

  “You are the second person to mention a possible strike to me today, but I don’t know a thing about it.”

  “What rock have you been under? Where are you teaching this semester anyway?”

  “Bostock, as a matter of fact.”

  “Then maybe you ought to be paying more attention to your living colleagues and not dead people. No offense.”

  “Actually, that’s pretty offensive.”

  She considered it. “Yeah, I guess it is. Sorry again. So they’re talking about something happening in the next couple of weeks.”

  “This late in the semester? That’ll cause no end of problems.” Like many colleges, Bostock’s fall semester culminated with exams right before Christmas break, only a few weeks away.

  “I bet that’s part of the union’s strategy. Which isn’t bad, as far as it goes. Anyway, Bostock administration has been sending out feelers to see which local adjuncts would be available to cover extra classes if the tenured faculty does strike. I haven’t heard if they need any physical anthropologists, but if they do, it’d be a sweet way to get some extra bucks.”

  “Would you cross a picket line?”

  “Why the heck not? The tenured faculty is all, ‘We’re in this together,’ and ‘loyalty to your peers,’ but a month ago, they barely acknowledged my existence. Or is it different at Bostock?”

  “Not so much. Of course, that might be because I’m in English, not in anything business related.”

  “Yeah, sure. I heard that the union bozos want Bostock adjuncts to strike, too, even though the contract doesn’t mention you guys because they won’t let adjuncts into the union! And, yeah, the union will give financial aid to striking faculty, but I bet they won’t offer adjuncts a lousy McDonald’s discount coupon. Why should we tighten our belts so they can get better pay and insurance?”


  “You’re not wrong,” I admitted. “But what about after the strike is settled? Some of those people whose picket line you crossed might be the ones you’re hoping to work with some day.”

  “Sure, maybe, but I can see it going either way. If the strike goes on long enough, administration might hire some of the so-called scabs long-term. All I know for sure is that making some extra money while I’ve got a chance would help me keep up with my student loan payments.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “And not to sound overly selfless, because I’m not, I’m also thinking about the students. They’re not going to be happy if their semester schedule gets scrambled.”

  “I can only imagine the helicopter parents circling if that were to happen.”

  “Like choppers of doom! And I don’t blame ’em—if the schedule means their kids have to go an extra semester to make up for the mess, that means a whole lot more money.”

  I nodded. Madison would be looking at colleges all too soon, and the thought of her future tuition bills was already giving me heartburn.

  “I’ve already got all the hours I can handle,” I said, “but I’ll keep an ear out to see if they need anybody in your field.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Yo had to head to her next class, and we parted amicably.

  I brooded about the strike on my way home. There had been many semesters when I would have been tempted to take extra work, even if it meant crossing a picket line. The fact was, Yo was right. I’d never been on a campus where the faculty union represented adjuncts, whereas I had been on several where the tenured and contract faculty treated adjuncts with poorly concealed disdain. Why shouldn’t Yo take an opportunity to make some extra cash? Why shouldn’t any adjunct?

  Still, I had a hunch that most of the tenured professors I knew would have a different opinion, including my parents. I just hoped that the strike would be forestalled and that the question would remain academic.

  Chapter Six

  I didn’t bring up the examination of the skeleton during dinner because past experience had told me that discussing the nittier and grittier aspects of crime investigation wasn’t good for my parents’ digestion. Besides, Andrew, the grad student who needed a haircut, was eating with us, stowing away chicken and broccoli stir-fry as if he hadn’t eaten all semester. While my reputation might already be permanently tainted by playing detective, I didn’t think my parents’ needed to be.