The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking Page 5

  “All right, all right. I admit it. I like playing detective with you.”

  “Playing detective?” He waggled a finger bone at me. “Must I point out that we have successfully detected more than once in the past?”

  “Yeah, but it was…Okay, you’re right.” Then I had a thought. “Sid, were you trying to make a point? Was that why you kept pretending you weren’t interested?”

  “No. Yes. Sort of. I just wanted to make sure you really did like doing this stuff. The first time we got involved, it was because of my murder. The second and third times were because of something I knew but couldn’t tell the police. I dragged you into the fourth because I was afraid you were a suspect, and the fifth time was because of a friend of mine. This time there is no particular reason we needed to get involved, and I thought maybe you’d prefer it that way.”

  “The fact that I’d been trying to give you background information didn’t convince you that I was interested?”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ve been messing with you a little.” He grinned, which technically he did all the time, but sometimes it was more emphatic than others. “It was fun watching you try to lure me into the murder.”

  “You ossifying piece of sacrum!”

  He just snickered.

  “What would you have done if Charles hadn’t pulled us into the case?”

  “We’d have found a link somehow. A murder in our neighborhood? A haunted house? A skeleton? How could we resist?”

  “Fair point. I guess we know who was doing the haunting now.”

  His eye holes widened. “Do you think the spirit of Charles’s girlfriend couldn’t rest?”

  “Some skeptic you are. What I think is that the neighbors heard Charles and Rose moving around a supposedly vacant house and thought it was a ghost.”

  “That makes more sense. I’ll add that to the file.”

  “You’ve already got a file?”

  “Of course I’ve got a file. Not that there’s much in it so far. Now we know a whole lot more.”

  “It’s not that much more. Charles doesn’t know the victim’s real name, where she lived, or anything about her.”

  “But we do know an approximate timeline for her death, and that’ll make it easier to figure out who she was. From there, it won’t be hard to find out who killed her.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself, Bone Boy.”

  “Team Supreme,” he said, holding his fist up for a bump.

  I couldn’t leave him hanging, so I returned the gesture. “By tomorrow, I should have more for the file because I gave Charles homework. He’s going to try to remember every single conversation he had with Rose to see if there are any clues to who she really was.”

  “Wouldn’t that work better with you questioning him?”

  “I don’t think so, Sid. I think this is something he needs to do by himself. He got very emotional when he was talking about Rose. He nearly cried.”

  “Wow. Yeah, that’s not like Charles. He’s usually so reserved.”

  “I know. Gracious and warm, but kind of restrained.”

  “Who’d have guessed he had a romantic tragedy in his past?” he said.

  “Sid, you’ve never met Charles.”

  “I have, however, hidden in the armoire to eavesdrop on your conversations with him a number of times.”

  “That’s true.” If there was an Olympic competition for eavesdropping, Sid would take the gold.

  “Plus I’m taking his class,” he added.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m taking one of his online classes from McQuaid—your mother got me in for free. I watch him on video, but I told him I’ve got bad internet so we can only interact by voice and text. He’s an excellent teacher, you know. He was talking about the Christmas Truce of World War I today, and it was riveting.”

  “He is good, and he’s a great guy, too. So even if I didn’t like playing detective…”

  Sid waggled a bony finger at me.

  “I meant to say, even if I didn’t like investigating, I’d do it for Charles. It can be a Christmas gift for him.”

  Sid turned back to his computer. “Now I want you to go through his story with me in detail and let me make sure I’ve got it all. And you better tell me about Yo’s examination of the remains again. When you told me before, I was distracted by pretending not to care, so I might have missed something.”

  I did so, barely having to pause as I went because he typed so much faster than I did. He was having a great time, and had I been pushed, I would have admitted that I was enjoying myself, too.

  Still, I did wonder if Sid and I had been able to do other things together, like going out to dinner or a movie without having to sneak in his skull while the rest of him stayed behind, would we have wanted to investigate murders? Maybe not, but I sure wouldn’t have traded having him as a friend for ordinary activities.

  Once I’d given Sid all I had, he said, “Let’s recap. According to Charles, Rose had some money, so she wasn’t just homeless, but she didn’t seem to be prepared to squat the way he was.”

  “Right. She didn’t have any of the proper supplies. Charles said she’d run away from someone and was hiding, but he doesn’t know who from or why.”

  “Okay then.” He drummed his finger bones noisily against the table. “Let’s run down the possibilities and then figure out how we can investigate them.”

  “My first thought was that she was running from an abusive spouse or partner.”

  “Couldn’t she just go to the police?”

  “Sid, you read the news. How many times have women been beaten or killed when they tried to escape abusers?”

  “You’re right, unfortunately. You should check with Charles to see if she had any scars or bruises. Assuming he saw her without clothing, that is.”

  “Given the way he spoke about her, I think that’s a safe assumption. What else?”

  He tapped his jawbone speculatively. “What if she was hiding from the police?”

  “You don’t think Charles would fall in love with a crook, do you?”

  “Lots of people do. Crooks can be excellent actors. Or maybe she wasn’t that bad of a crook, just got in over her head and made a mistake. She could still be a basically decent person even if she was in trouble with the law.”

  “Okay, I’ll accept that as a possibility,” I said. “How can we test it?”

  “I could go through news sites for people who went missing after being arrested or tried.”

  “We don’t know where she was from.”

  “Charles said she didn’t have a car, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Then it probably wasn’t from too far away. I can start with Pennycross and expand the search as necessary. And yes, I know it’s a needle in a haystack, but it’s something. Next idea.”

  “She could have been running away from home.”

  “She was kind of old for that, wasn’t she?”

  “Not necessarily from her parents, but what if she had a house full of children, or was the caregiver for an ailing relative, or was just feeling overwhelmed?”

  “Georgia, tell me you never felt that way.”

  “I’ve only got one child, and I’ve got a good support system with you and my folks, but not everybody is that lucky. Anyway, I don’t know how we could check that one. I’m not sure how we could check any of them.”

  “Well, if she was hiding, she must have thought somebody was looking for her. If they were looking for her ten years ago, I should be able to find a trace online. Maybe a newspaper or a police report or even something on social media. Having a date to start with puts us way ahead of the cops, but it still sounds like a long and tedious job of going through countless web pages in hopes of finding some small crumb.”

  “You can’t wait to get started, can you?”

  He cracked his knuckles. “Nope!”

  “I’m going to leave you to it. I’v
e got papers to grade.”

  Sid didn’t respond. He was already cheerfully typing away.

  I might have been fooling myself about getting a kick out of investigations, but Sid had no such illusions.

  Chapter Nine

  Though Mom and Phil hadn’t invited any grad students to dinner that night, we did have an extra person at the table. My sister Deborah had come over to make sure that her latest security gadgets were working as intended, and it hadn’t taken Phil long to talk her into staying for baked ziti.

  “I changed out the backup batteries,” she said between mouthfuls, “so everything should be up to speed. Just remember to monitor the front door camera. There are a lot of package thieves out and about this time of year.”

  “They better not grab any of my Christmas boxes,” Sid said indignantly.

  “I wasn’t sure the camera was necessary,” Mom said, “but it did come in handy the other day. Georgia used it to track Byron and help the police find that body.”

  “Louis told me all about it,” Deborah said. “They still don’t know who the dead woman is—she doesn’t match any of the open missing person reports from the area. By the way, he wanted to know if Georgia is going to be sticking her nose into this one. Are you?”

  Madison snickered. “As if you had to ask.”

  I really hated it when my entire family knew something about me that I’d just barely concluded for myself.

  “Our investigation is indeed underway,” Sid said loftily. “It seems that we have sources the police do not.”

  Deborah made a face. “Whatever. Just don’t make Louis look bad, okay? He’s up for a performance review.”

  “We’ll be careful,” I said.

  “It’s so odd, a body being found on that lot. It’s like a bad luck magnet,” Mom said. “First Professor Nichols’s death, then his wife Margo’s mental issues after he died, and now a body. It sounds like something out of Poe, doesn’t it?”

  “Did you know the Nichols?” Sid asked.

  “Not well, just enough to pass the time of day when we ran into each other at the grocery store or around town. We used to see the two of them at campus events now and then, and they seemed nice, but we didn’t really have much in common. Professor Nichols was a physicist, and Margo had been in business before their marriage, marketing or management I think, and they both said that they didn’t read fiction at all.” She shook her head sadly at what the two of them had missed. “After her husband died, I invited Margo over here for dinner a few times, but she always reciprocated with restaurant meals. After I heard about her affliction, I realized that she must not have wanted to have anyone in her house, but at the time I just thought that she didn’t like to cook. I wonder if the hoarding began before her husband died or after.”

  “And Sid, before you ask, Professor Nichols died of a heart attack,” Phil said. “There’s nothing there for you to get excited about.”

  “Probably not. Wait, how long before her death did he die?”

  There was some discussion back and forth while my parents tried to figure it out. They finally decided there had been six years between the deaths.

  “That’s enough time for her to have done some serious hoarding,” Sid said.

  “The house was bad when I saw it,” Deborah said.

  “I didn’t know you knew Margo,” said Phil.

  “I didn’t. This was after she died. The executor hired me to help out when they were clearing the place out. It turns out that in addition to everything else, Mrs. Nichols collected locks: padlocks, combination locks, knob locks, even some Rabson locks. Those are the best.” Her voice turned wistful. “It wasn’t just modern stuff either—she had some antique decorative locks that were just amazing. Things I’d never seen outside of pictures.” Then she was back to practical. “Of course, those things are easy-peasy to pick. I just wish I could say the same for all her modern padlocks. She’d locked everything—room doors, the cabinet doors, pretty much anything that could be locked. Plus there were lockboxes of all sizes and descriptions, and one honest-to-God safe I had to call in a specialist for. And not a key or combination to be found. I don’t think they ever located those, or if they did, it was after I was done. I spent a week at that place.”

  “A whole week of picking locks?” Madison said. Since she worked part-time with Deborah, she took a professional interest.

  “It wasn’t just dealing with the locks. It was getting to them. It was a big house. Full basement, full attic, and I don’t know how many rooms. And most of it was packed ceiling to floor with stuff. At least the living room had a path through it, and the couch was clear.”

  “What about her bedroom?” Mom asked.

  “There wasn’t an accessible bed in the place. As far as we could tell, she slept on that living room couch. I think she ate there too.”

  “The kitchen? The bathrooms?” Phil said. “Or should I not ask?”

  “You sure shouldn’t ask at the dinner table,” Deborah said. “Anyway, there was a crew sorting and cleaning, and whenever they found anything portable that needed unlocking, like a jewelry box or a lockbox, they’d bring it to me. We had a staging area outside in the driveway because there was nowhere inside to work. I’d open the boxes as fast as I could without damaging them, but sometimes there’d be half a dozen of them stacked up waiting for me. Then, when they cleared enough stuff to create a path to a locked door or cabinet, they’d call me into the house.” She made a face. “I had to wear a hazmat suit.”

  “What did she hoard?” Sid asked.

  “What didn’t she hoard? Newspapers, books, pizza boxes, tote bags, shipping boxes, clothes, shoes, old toys, brand-new toothbrushes still sealed up, magazines, makeup, records, tacky little figurines, dog food.”

  “She had a dog in there?” Madison was horrified.

  “Nope. Just the food. Which was even weirder. Though probably the weirdest was this bureau that was stuffed with meticulously folded paper bags. There was nothing in the bags, mind you, not even a spare receipt. Just four drawers of empty paper bags.”

  Phil said, “What kind of items did she have in the lockboxes?”

  “My job was to unlock, not to peek inside,” Deborah said loftily.

  We all just looked at her.

  “Okay, I peeked in some of them, but it was mostly junk. Cancelled checks, coupons, photos, rolled pennies… There was no rhyme or reason why any of it needed to be locked up. Her tax records—which you’d expect to be put away somewhere—were in a clothes basket along with a bunch of singleton socks.”

  “The whole house was like that?” Mom asked, and when Deborah nodded, she said, “What a shame. It was a lovely house, at least from the outside. I was surprised when they tore it down rather than fix it up.”

  “Had it just been the mess, they could have renovated it, but even basic maintenance had been neglected, probably since before Professor Nichols passed away. The roof leaked, the appliances were all junk, there were mold issues, the plumbing and electrical systems were shot…” She shrugged. “Everywhere we looked was another problem that would have cost big bucks to fix. The executor was talking about breaking up the lot or building condos. I guess the heirs thought they’d get more money that way.”

  “They might have if the town hadn’t stopped them,” Phil said. “I remember reading something in the Gazette. That area is zoned for single family housing, and since the head of the zoning board lives next door, they won’t be getting a variance any time soon.”

  “Who was the heir?” I asked, theorizing that he or she could have found Rose living in his or her newly acquired house and turned violent.

  “There were no children,” Mom put in.

  “You know this was ten years ago,” Deborah grumbled, but thought for a minute. “That’s right—that’s part of what made it complicated. The house and the land went to some cousins of the late Professor Nichols—that’s who wanted to build the condos or sell the
land for condos. The contents of the house went to Mrs. Nichols’s alma mater.” She waved a fork in my direction. “Which was your new stomping grounds, Georgia.”

  “Bostock?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Phil said. “There was some vexation at McQuaid at the time. As a longtime employee, Professor Nichols had said there would be a bequest for the school, but after his death, Margo changed the will to benefit Bostock instead.”

  “If you ask me, they didn’t miss out on much,” Deborah said. “Not that that stopped the squabbles. I remember one endless argument over whether a built-in china cabinet counted as furniture or as part of the house? I don’t know how they resolved that one. Since I had no dog in the race, once I unlocked it, I left them alone to slug it out.”

  We were finished with dinner by then and broke apart for the evening. I offered to give Sid a hand with research, but he turned me down, saying he could do it faster on his own.

  It was just as well. With the end of the semester looming, I had plenty of papers to grade before bedtime.

  Chapter Ten

  When I opened the door into Sid’s attic after I got home from work the next day, for a moment I thought I was in the wrong room. The place was spotless. Not that Sid is normally overly messy. His flesh-free lifestyle means he doesn’t have to deal with dirty dishes, towels, or clothes, but he does like books, movies, comic books, and video games, all of which are usually scattered around. Plus he’s gotten hooked on action figures and has several shelves jam-packed. But now everything was organized within an inch of its life. He’d even arranged the action figures by fandom and, within that, alphabetically.

  “Whoa!” I said.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?” he said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “I even snuck down to borrow the vacuum cleaner while everybody else was out of the house.”

  “What brought this on?”

  “Research.”

  “Come again?”

  “I started looking through missing person reports but didn’t get anywhere. So I switched to hunting for dirt about the Nichols family.”