Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 8

Wednesday finally arrived—cold, but not as cold as Monday. And clear, with enough sunshine to filter through the ancient windows and vents of the attic. A perfect day for prowling.

In the day and a half since that brief and unexpectedly devastating kiss, David had managed to act as though it had never happened. Because his actions echoed her own admittedly conflicting desires, she had done the same. At least she hoped she had. She wasn't looking forward to an entire afternoon of guarding her words and emotions, but she also wasn't looking forward to an afternoon of searching out a mystery without David's steady presence beside her.

The attic stairs took them up into the northeast corner of the house, completely opposite to the area they needed. She had been up there, once before, right after she took possession of the house, but the profusion of actual walls, as well as those created by the studs of the walls below rising to the roof trusses, had confused her then, and it confused her now.

"My God," David said when she led him through a cut in what had to be the original wooden-shingled roof into the main part of the attic. "You have enough floor space for most small city halls. How many rooms are there up here?"

"I don't know. Not as many as it looks right now. If I remember correctly, the area we want is in the original part of the house, and it's basically open."

"Let's hope so," he said, testing the flooring beneath him with a cautious foot before he trusted it with his weight.

The attic wasn't completely floored, and in those parts where it wasn't they stepped over the roll insulation someone had installed long enough ago for the pink to be distinctly gray, making their way carefully along planks laid across thick, sturdy cross members.

Considering the condition of the rest of the house, the attic was surprisingly free of clutter. But then, except for furniture and some household goods, Anne had found nothing resembling Great Aunt Ellie's personal property, and she wondered, not for the first time, who had come for it and when. Since her bid had been for the house and furnishings only, she supposed she didn't really care who had divided up the essence of Ellie Hansom that probably had remained in the house after her death.

There were no halls, but brick chimneys, sloping ceilings, and, of course, the rising studs helped guide her, until they reached the south side of the house. A change in the roof line placed what windows there were in the end wall at the front of the house, and only a slatted vent lighted the rear. Cautiously, carefully, Anne made her way to the chimney flue for the small parlor stove below, and directed the beam of her flashlight along wires she found snaking their way across studs and insulation toward the wiring box for what she suspected must be the art deco light fixture.

They'd brought a metal tape measure with them, but they didn't really need it. The box lay off-center of what was clearly a rectangular area approximating that of the room below. And what she had thought to be a framed-in closet wall rose as a stud wall through the ceiling of the floor below, as did the walls of all the other rooms of the second floor.

"Another room?" she asked David, who had made his way to the other side of the stud wall.

"Yeah." He knelt down and began pulling at the insulation until he uncovered some ancient electrical wiring and followed it to a lighting box. "And it looks as though it's been wired."

She walked to the stud wall and looked toward the back of the house. There was enough space for a good-sized bedroom behind that wall, not just a three-foot-deep closet. "Why?"

David pulled back the insulation. There, as in the rest of the house, the ceilings were solidly framed and covered with thick boards. He knocked on it, and she almost expected an echo, but all they heard in the silence was the sound of their breath.

"Want to go find out?" he asked.

Anne shook her head, a reflex action, surely, because at that moment she didn't want to find out. She wanted to leave the mystery of that back wall in limbo as it had to have been for fifty years or so. But she couldn't. And David couldn't either.

 

The room was as eerie as it had been Monday night. She glanced at David and found him studying her. He felt it. Oh, yes, he felt it too, but neither of them said anything.

Taking a deep breath for the courage she suddenly needed, she opened the closet door and stepped in. The back wall inside the closet had been papered over drywall. David knocked around on it looking for studs, tapping on it and the front wall, listening for differences. Even she could hear them.

She hefted the hammer. "Anywhere?" she asked.

"Looks like it."

She found a spot out of sight of the open door and waited for David to come to her side. Now that the moment had come, she didn't want to do this—but she knew she had to.

She raised the hammer, gripping it, and swung it. The ease with which it penetrated the wall stunned her. For some reason she had almost been expecting a vault or a fortress. She stepped back, and David bent to step closer beneath the rod and looked into the gaping hole before he moved aside for her. Nothing but darkness greeted her. Darkness, a chill, and that same attracting, repelling force that had gripped her Monday night at the foot of the stairs.

She handed the hammer to David. He nodded, and began knocking hunks out of the drywall, while she switched on a flashlight.

This time, the hole was large enough for both of them to look through it at the same time. The circle of light from the flashlight played across windows, still in place but covered on the outside by the wooden shiplap exterior siding, across a small floral paper, across a bare bulb hanging from a broken fixture in the ceiling, across years of dust on the bare pine floor, across something that gleamed faintly from the floor in the far corner of the room.

Anne dropped the flashlight.

"Was that—"

"I don't know," she said quickly. "I don't know."

Both of them stood silently for a moment, then, without speaking, they began tearing chunks of drywall away. Why, she didn't know. She wanted to run away, to leave the room as they had found it, to forget all about windows and measurements and secrets. And she suspected David did, too. Instead, they worked silently but almost frantically at enlarging the opening while the beam of the flashlight reflected off whatever it was that lay in the corner.

Once they'd torn away enough drywall to make an opening large enough to squeeze through, David laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. Foolish man. Did he think she was going to argue with him about who went through first? She didn't want to go through that opening at all. But she did, easing her way in behind him as he stooped and retrieved the flashlight. Instead of doing the obvious, going immediately to the corner, he shined the light on the bare bulb and broken fixture above them. A long cord dangled from it. Miraculously, when David pulled on the cord, the bulb lighted, casting its forty-watt glare into all corners of the small room.

Illuminating what lay there on the floor.

"Oh, my God." Anne caught her hand to her mouth, tasting the chalk of drywall as she fought to hold in a moan.

Four wooden poles outlined a large rectangle covered with beads, pottery, shells, weapons—axes, celts, maces, and assorted blades and points—and what appeared to be small statues. Two others served as bracing. And in the center, covered with glowing, engraved copper plates—

"It's a body," she whispered.

"No." David spoke softly. He walked to the edge of the first pole and knelt down, reaching out but not touching the abundance of artifacts that surrounded what her eyes told her was definitely a skeleton. A human skeleton.

"It's a burial," he said, his voice hushed. "My God, it's a—it can't be—complete archaeological burial. But who? What? He must be—what do you think, Anne? Six feet seven? Eight?"

He. Yes, this was—had been—a man. A tall man by anyone's standards. The copper that covered him had to be a form of armor. Thin, engraved with warlike hawks and snarling, prowling cats, it was impractical for any protection so it had to be ceremonial. It had to be . . .

And then she recognized the copper feathers that sprang from his mask, the human representations with their distinctively outlined eye that adorned a breastplate, the almost abstract snakes, the swirling repeated designs, and most of all, the cats. It couldn't be. But it was.

"My designs."

Slowly she sank to her knees at the foot of this impossible find. She too stretched out her hands, drawn to the man but like David, unable to bring herself to touch him.

"Who—" She lost her voice entirely for a moment and only managed to recover a small part of it. "Who is he?" Did she know? Should she know? Somehow she thought she must. But how?

"A monarch of some sort. Obviously a powerful warrior, because of his armor and the number of weapons." David shook his head, still speaking in hushed tones. "But how did he get here? Into a closed-off room in Allegro, Oklahoma. How did he get into your house, Annie? And why is he still here and not in some museum?"

A small box rested near the warrior's left foot, from which the covering had long ago disintegrated, leaving the bones visible and strangely vulnerable. Cautiously Anne reached for the box, almost expecting a crack of thunder or an ominous voice demanding that she stop.

The box appeared to be—cedar? It was hard to tell. It had a fitted, almost transparent top, with a design etched in it. She held it for David's inspection. He touched it as cautiously as she had lifted it.

"The top is mica, I think," he said.

She nodded, swallowed, and began carefully working the top from the box. The inside of the box was lined with copper and contained only two items. Small shell cameos lay among the remains of some woven fabric. They were perhaps two inches in diameter, each bearing the representations of a person: a man and a woman. The man pictured was this one. She knew it. She felt it in every chilled inch of her being. She looked at the items surrounding him. Possessions. Awesome in their diversity and antiquity, but only possessions. "But where is she?" Anne asked.

She sensed David's eyes on her and looked up to see him watching her warily. She tried to smile. When that didn't work, she handed him the box containing the two cameos. "The woman whose likeness accompanied him," she explained.

David took the box from her and lifted one of the cameos, turning it in the light of the bare bulb. Carefully he replaced it and the mica lid and settled it back in its original place.

"Come on, Annie," he said, rising to his feet and putting his hand on her arm. "Let's get out of here for a minute."

"No, I—"

"Come on, Annie," he said more forcefully. "We need to get out of here."

He sounded so convinced she hadn't the heart to argue with him, until he reached to turn off the overhead light.

"No—"

He shook his head, but he pulled the cord, plunging the room into darkness except for the small beam of light that seeped through the opening they had made. Then, holding her arm firmly—for her support or his?—he walked her to the opening and all but pushed her through it.

They didn't make it to the warmth and familiarity of the kitchen. At the base of the stairs, Anne stumbled. David stopped and turned to look at her. He muttered an oath and threw his arm around her, almost dragging her to the front of the house, to the safety and sanity of her bedroom. There, he pushed her down on the side of the bed and shoved her head down between her knees.

Anne sucked in a deep breath and tried to raise her head. His hand on the back of it wouldn't let her. "I'm not going to faint," she protested.

"Could have fooled me. Breathe. Slowly."

As she struggled for air, she dimly realized that his words were as ragged as hers. "I've seen worse," she choked out.

"Yeah. Me, too."

She felt the pressure on the back of her head ease and the mattress dip slightly as he sat beside her, heard him working as hard at controlling his breathing as she was, and knew as she fought her reaction that it was all out of proportion to what had gone before. And that David Huerra, the big-city cop who had to have seen more carnage and mayhem than even she, had reacted just as strongly.

Eventually his hand slid from the back of her head to the nape of her neck, and his touch gentled. Eventually her breathing settled into a rhythm that would supply her body with the oxygen it needed. Eventually she heard him draw a deep breath.

She looked over at him to find him pale beneath his bruises. Paler even than when she had pulled him from his car. He looked back at her. Both of them had questions; neither of them had answers.

And at almost the same time, both of them realized that David's hand had begun tracing a pattern on her neck that was more sensuous than protective.

Anne tensed. He withdrew his hand. And she once again felt the chill of the house. But at last she was able to begin to identify the emotion that had gripped her so strongly when she looked at what remained of that bare, vulnerable foot. Not horror. Or perhaps, not entirely horror, because that was mixed in with it. But grief. A grief so intense, so all-encompassing, that it threatened to paralyze her.

Fighting it, she reached for the bedside telephone.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm calling the sheriff," she said. For the moment that seemed the only thing to do. "We've got to report this."

"Annie, however he got there, he's been there for a long time. A few more minutes won't make any difference. Let's think about this. Blake Foresman is a good man, but I'm not sure his department is what we need right now. I'm not sure he's up to handling what—whatever it is that we just exhumed."

He was right, of course. Anne knew that. A few more minutes wouldn't make any difference. Whoever was up there had been there for—what?—fifty years or so, and, if she allowed herself to think clearly about him, had probably been dead for a lot longer than that.

He was definitely not anything Blake Foresman would want to be responsible for.

She sighed and slumped back onto the bed, releasing the telephone, and nodded. They did need to think about this. About who and what and when. And about why it had affected both of them the way it had. David squeezed her hand and released it with a sigh of his own.

"Good girl."

Anne glared at him. "Don't be patronizing, David Huerra. I'm not the only person in this room who just fell apart."

He managed a grin, a lopsided one that didn't quite disguise the fact that he was still as deeply affected by their find as she was. "Damn," he said. "I was hoping you hadn't noticed."

Her laugh surprised her. And as weak as it was, as reluctant as it was, it was enough to bring them both out of the morass of emotions and into a semblance of normality.

 

Anne had no alcohol in the house. David brewed coffee so strong she choked on the first swallow. But that jolt of caffeine was what she needed. That, and his touch, which she no longer had. Even though he sat beside her at the round kitchen table with its familiar nonmealtime clutter of phone books and construction invoices and a pile of opened but unsorted mail, he kept his hands securely wrapped around his mug of coffee. As she did.

She was weakening though. She could tell that at any moment she would give way and act on her uncharacteristic need to be connected to someone, anyone.

David stood and paced the length of the room before returning to the table. "You worked the emergency room during your internship, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And I've been in homicide for five years." He sat down. "So why did we react the way we did?"

She looked up to find him fighting to find answers that just weren't there. To hell with it, she thought. She needed human touch regardless of how proud or stubborn he thought he had to be. She reached for his hand. Without looking, he grasped hers, and slowly, gradually, she felt the tension begin to leave her, begin to leave him.

Remembering his words the first time he saw her house, she attempted a lightness she didn't feel. "Maybe someone walked over our graves?"

He smiled, or grimaced. It was difficult to tell which. "Maybe," he said. "But it felt more as if we were the ones doing the walking."

Yes. Now that he mentioned it. Yes it had. And the graves had been their own.

"I don't suppose this uncle of yours was a grave-robber?" he asked tentatively.

She shook her head. "I don't know much about him. Only that for a while he was, or at least was thought to be, extremely wealthy. He owned half the town. And then he lost his money, had to sell off his holdings."

"But not this place?"

"No, and I think everyone wondered why. But we found out, just months ago in fact, that this was always Aunt Ellie's place, part of her allotment from the Choctaw Nation, and he never owned any part of it."

David glanced around the kitchen, and she knew he was seeing the size and scope of the house of which this room was just a part. "Somebody had some money."

Yes, someone did. "He did, early on. And of course her family had coal and gas and lots of timberland."

"When?" David asked.

He hadn't released his grip on her hand, but he turned over an envelope from her untidy pile of mail and began, idly, she thought at first, drawing a design on the stark white with a fine-line black pen.

"When what?" she asked as she watched a design emerge. A design she had just seen upstairs on a round piece of shell.

"When did he lose his money? The depression? That far back?"

"I don't know. Is it important?"

"I don't know. I don't know what is and what isn't anymore. Damn!"

"David?" What was happening here was serious enough, but she sensed his frustration came from more than just—just?—this afternoon's bizarre happenings.

Again he smiled. Or grimaced. "I told you I came to Lake Allegro to think, didn't I?"

She nodded.

"But not what I had to think about."

He knew he hadn't. That was one of those secrets she had sensed in him.

"I blew a case, really blew it, because I had closed myself off in my preconceived notions."

She didn't see the relevance, not really, and he must have sensed that she didn't.

"I almost cost a couple of nice people their lives, maybe did cost one woman hers, because I insisted on seeing something the way I knew it had to be. And then I learned that I didn't know it all after all."

"So you came here to—?"

This time it was definitely a grimace. "To learn whether or not I could ever be a cop again. To learn whether or not there was enough left in me after fifteen years on the force to rejoin the human race.

"I didn't want to," he continued slowly, "but I was ordered to come here or someplace like this. I thought I'd spend my thirty days staring at strange walls and feeling my brain turn to mush. I had no idea that I would have to face something that had no apparent logical explanation."

She had to set aside what he said about self-discovery, for the moment, to address the second part of his statement. "There's a logical explanation," she insisted. "Just because we don't know what it is—"

"I'm not talking about just what we found upstairs, Annie. Or maybe I am. Maybe it's all tied together."

And of course, she had no answer for that.

David squeezed her hand. "Okay," he said. "For now, let's not dwell on our reaction to what we found in that room. If we do that, maybe we can find something logical in why there's a copper-armored skeleton with most, if not all, of his grave goods surrounding him in a carefully constructed secret room in your house."

"Uncle Ralph was a grave-robber?" she offered tentatively.

"Maybe."

"David, I was not serious."

He flashed a wry grin at her. "There are different kinds of grave-robbers," he told her. "Some of them operate within the law. Maybe your uncle was a collector. The question is, which particular set of graves did our friend upstairs come from?"

"No. The question is, why is he still here? I may not be knowledgeable about archaeology and artifacts, but it seems to me that there's a fortune hidden here. Supposedly, Uncle Ralph sold everything of value he owned, so why didn't he sell what . . . what we found upstairs? Unless there's something really bizarre going on and the skeleton isn't as old as we think it is."

"Good point, Annie. Let's find out."

"Right. And just how are we going to do that?"

He scooted the drawing toward her. "I know a collector. I wouldn't call him a friend, but he's reputable, probably even honest. Let's ask him—discreetly—about some of these designs. They seem familiar, but I can't place them. Maybe he can."

She thought about that for a moment. Discreetly was the operative word here. Since he'd stopped her from calling Blake, she'd realized she didn't want cops, or now collectors or reporters, crawling all over her house. Finally she nodded. "And I have a friend who just finished a residency in pathology. I can ask her to assure us we're not dealing with a reportable corpse."

"Is there any way you can get more information about your uncle?"

"Maybe. Probably not from anyone around here," she admitted. "But maybe my mother knows something."

"Okay." He chuffed out a breath. "If we hurry we can get this started before the holiday officially begins so that maybe by Monday we might know something."

She glanced at her watch, knowing it was far too late to accomplish anything before Monday, only to find that barely an hour had passed since they had started their search. "You first," she said.

David brought the phone to the table and dialed information in Dallas, asking for the number of the collector he knew, while she dug through her junk drawer for her address book containing Karen Ready's new, unlisted Chicago phone number. David had his number before she found hers and had dialed by the time she returned to the table. While the telephone rang at the other end of the line, he continued drawing on the sketch he had started.

"Jack?" he said. "David Huerra." He laughed. "Yes, it has been a long time. How was your trip to Peru? Oh, really. I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe next year."

He waited, listening for a moment. "Well, yes, there is something you can do. I'm hoping you can identify an artifact for me.

"No, not official business. As a matter of fact, I'm on vacation. It's something that's—Well, hell, Jack. It's personal."

David laughed again, but the pen in his hand pressed down on the envelope. "How about my sending you a drawing—okay, a tracing of a shell gorget?"

He frowned slightly. "Oh, yeah, it's engraved all right. . . . A couple of heavily dressed figures with speech symbols. They're holding some sort of vessel with a cat-headed snake, the world or four winds symbol and a couple of other things I don't remember seeing before.

"Yes. Oh, yes, there's enough to identify. It's intact. No, it hasn't been killed. I don't know. Let me check."

He held his hand over the mouthpiece and frowned at her. "He's excited, but trying to hide it. He says he needs to see the real thing."

"Should we send it to him? Can he be trusted?"

"Probably," David said. "And it's either send him a piece or invite him here if we want any kind of positive I.D."

"Not here." That much she was sure of.

David nodded. "FedEx? UPS? Do we have time to make their pickup schedule?"

"No, not this late. We'd have to drive to Fort Smith. How about overnight mail? It takes two days to get most places from here, but that would put it there Friday."

"You're sure?"

She wasn't, but they had to do something. This at least was a start. "Yes."

He lifted his hand to her cheek and held it there for a second. Encouragement? Who knew why at that time? She didn't; David probably didn't either. But that small gentle contact was needed, oh, so needed.

Slowly he withdrew his hand and lifted the receiver. "Okay," he said to the man on the line. "We'll get this out to you tonight. Where do you want it sent?" He scrawled the address on the envelope beneath his sketch. "Right. No, I don't know whether the owner will want to sell or not. I'll ask, and I'll certainly recommend you. Yeah, thanks. Right. I'll call you what—Sunday morning? Will that give you enough time? Okay. Thanks again, Jack. I really appreciate this."

Reflective, David replaced the receiver and scooted the telephone toward her. "Your turn."

She reached Karen at the apartment she still shared with two of their original roommates, although that would change soon. Anne knew Karen had been chasing a slot at a university med center somewhere in the west—Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado. Anywhere closer to the mountains she loved and away from the man she didn't.

"It's about time you contacted somebody, Locke," Karen told her with a laugh. "We were all beginning to think you'd either fallen in the lake down there, or taken root and started to sprout. How the hell are you? And what's it like not to have to chase yourself around the clock?"

"Excuse me," Anne said. "I thought I'd reached the mature and eminently respected Dr. K. Ready. I must have misdialed."

"So, kiddo." Karen dropped her voice half an octave and affected a mixed-eastern European accent. "You call, you joke, you must vant somet'ing. Tell Dr. Ready how she may help. But remember—none of my patients survive."

Karen had been the one who held the roommates together back in those early crowded years. When tempers, already short because of stress and long hours, threatened to get out of control over whose turn it was for the shower or who should have carried out the trash, she was always there with a joke when needed, a soft word, or even an occasional dressing-down.

Anne and Karen had gone through a residency in internal medicine together, but Karen had learned early on she couldn't stand losing a patient. She was the only person Anne knew who'd gone into pathology because she was too softhearted to watch the living die. In pathology, Karen swore, she'd have a chance at finding out how to fight disease and trauma without risking her heart. Knowing Karen, Anne thought she probably would.

"I've missed you," Anne told her friend.

"Yeah." Karen lost the accent. "Me, too. Damn." Anne heard a strange muffled noise and then a sniff. "Did you just call so we could have a good cry together, or was there a more important—excuse me—another reason for you spending long distance dollars I know that practice down there doesn't provide?"

That comment was part of one of Karen's ongoing gibes, made without malice, and Anne let it slide. Besides, Karen's opinion of her practice wasn't so very far off the mark. "Yeah," Anne said. Now that the moment had come, she almost relished her reaction. It was all too seldom that she got the best of Karen Ready. "I want you to look at a bone and tell me if I have to call the cops."

Absolute silence filled the line. Finally, Karen whispered softly, "You're serious?"

"Yeah."

"But you're qualified. Surely you can tell if it's—"

"I can tell that it's human, and that it's dead. Longtime dead. But I need your expertise to tell me how long, and whether I need to call a homicide division or a museum."

Anne looked at David to see him frowning and shaking his head as though to tell her to be careful about how much she said. But this was Karen, someone she'd trust with her life. Still, when he leaned closer she held the receiver so he could hear both parts of their conversation.

"Oh. Oh, well, sure I can do that. I do that a lot. But generally it's the cops who bring me the bone. Are you sure you don't want to go the regular route—of course, you're sure. I'm sorry Anne. You have a reason for not contacting the cops, right? Something to do with that godawful old house you bought and that mean-spirited cousin of yours?"

David glanced at Anne and grinned, and his eyes taunted her with his knowledge that no matter how circumspect she had tried to be with him about her family, she had not suffered in complete silence.

"I can send you a right femur," Anne said.

Again silence filled the line. "You have more than the one bone, don't you?" Karen asked. "You have the whole damned thing. What did you do, literally find the skeleton in the closet?"

David's frown grew fierce. And not without cause. He didn't have any kind of shared history with Karen on which to base trust. And for now, maybe the less Karen knew, the better—for her own sake, if they were wrong about the age of the man upstairs.

"I have a right femur," Anne repeated. "Will you look at it for me?"

"Oh, hell yes, you know I will," Karen said with only mild exasperation blunting her words. "I suppose you want it yesterday, and in complete confidence, too?"

"Got it in one," Anne told her and laughed softly knowing Karen's eyes were dancing and her mouth was drawn in a mock pout. "With overnight mail to your door, it should get there Friday morning, and I'll call you Sunday morning for an unofficial report. Okay?"

"You're damned right it will be unofficial. Do you have any idea—"

"Lots and lots of ideas, Karen. You know that. It's the reason you put up with me all these years. When you couldn't get into enough trouble on your own, I was always able to help you out. And I'll owe you for this. Big time."

"Big time and big explanation," Karen added. "Anne . . ." Her voice was hesitant. Anne knew why, of course. Karen couldn't fail to ask, yet she didn't want to bring up harsh memories. "Are you all right? Really all right? We worried about you so much when you left. You know, you had some pretty serious injuries, lady. Physical and, well, and otherwise."

Anne didn't miss David's sharp glance. Only inches away from her, his already dark eyes took on an even darker glitter. She wanted to take the telephone receiver and pull away from him, but the damage had already been done.

"I'm fine, Karen," she told her. "Really. The practice is every bit as slow as we thought it would be, and so is the town. I've had lots of time to rest. And to heal."

"And to find skeletons in the closet," Karen added dryly. "Yeah, it sounds as though you've found a perfect place to recuperate."

"Better dead skeletons in the closet, than live, persistent secret admirers. Have you found out who he is, yet?"

"Pu-leeze, Anne. Jeeze. You could have gone all day without mentioning that."

Anne chuckled. Karen still sounded more provoked than frightened by this unknown suitor. "More flowers?"

"Twice a week," Karen told her. Maybe provoked wasn't a strong enough word, because Anne definitely heard more in her friend's voice than that. She also heard hesitation, as though Karen were holding something back.

"And what else?"

"Nothing," Karen said. "Nothing except my paranoia. You know I never could keep track of my things. And with Rae and Molly in the apartment, it's no wonder that I occasionally lose something."

Anne felt David tense beside her. She shook her head as she saw him reaching for the receiver. "Well, if it's clothes, check Molly's closet," she told Karen. "And if it's more serious than that, maybe you'd better reconsider talking to the police."

"Yeah. I can just see the headlines on something like that: 'Bone doctor blows whistle; flowers mask scent of formaldehyde.' "

"Karen—"

"It's okay," she said. "I promise. Now send me your femur and start practicing for the time when you're going to give me this wonderful explanation. Is it too much to hope there's a living man mixed up in it somewhere?"

"Dream on. I'll talk to you Sunday, but let's keep in touch, okay? I worry about you. And thanks."

Anne sank back in her chair after she hung up, as drained as if she had just taken a major test. Concerned, David asked, "Are you up to calling your mom now?"

"Doesn't matter whether I am or not," she told him after a glance at her watch. "I never can remember whether it's a seven-and-a-half or an eight-and-a-half hour time difference. They get up early, but if I call them now, Mom's fully capable of putting a contract out on my life."

He had to have heard the affection in her voice in spite of her words. "You love her, don't you?"

"Yeah," she told him. "A lot. And I miss her. A lot. But I'm so damned glad she's happy at last."

David dropped his hand on her shoulder, and it was like his touch to her cheek had been earlier. Necessary. Too much. Not enough.

"Okay," he said, squeezing her shoulder gently before releasing it and standing. "Let's go get the stuff to send."

Anne didn't want to. God knew she never wanted to go back into that room. But she knew they had to. "Right," she said. "Just let me find some boxes first."

The two items they were mailing were fragile and would need a lot of protection. She grabbed two boxes left over from her move and scooped up a double handful of polystyrene peanuts and a couple of lengths of bubblewrap.

David stopped her as she was reaching for tape and scissors. Stilling what even she recognized as nervous procrastination, he put everything but the boxes on the table. Those he took from her. "This is all we need for now," he said. "We'll bring them down here to pack."

She stood looking at him in silence, every fiber of her being rejecting her conscious decision to go back upstairs. We'll bring them down here to pack. David had said that, linking himself with her even though she knew he didn't want to return to that travesty of a grave either. She swallowed once, still silent, wishing he didn't have his hands full with the boxes so that he could at least touch her, and then realized that she could reach out. She could offer the touch that maybe he needed, too. She rested her hand on his arm. He glanced at it then back at her eyes. "Okay," she said abruptly, sounding much braver than she felt. "Let's get this over with."

Back | Next
Framed