A Skeleton in the Family (25 page)

I
was close to panicking, but I told myself that panic wouldn't help anybody. So I sat down and tried to think about who Sid was, just as I'd analyzed countless characters in literature.

Once Sid realized who his killer was, he would have known that there might not be any way to catch him. After all, the only real evidence was Sid himself. Had he been the vengeful type, he might have gone after the killer with violent intentions, but I couldn't see him doing that. The only times he'd ever shown real menace or even tried to be frightening were in my defense, either at that carnival or by pulling pranks on people who'd been mean to me.

Nor would he have tried for a preemptive strike to defend himself. All during our haphazard investigation, he'd only been worried that he was endangering Madison and me. Our welfare was more important to him than his own.

Then there was his concern that he was causing me trouble or that I might lose my job because of the time I was spending on his identity crisis. Belatedly I remembered the argument I'd had with Deborah, an argument Sid could easily have heard. Sid was probably thinking the same thing as my sister, that he was getting in my way. Plus there was the dog, the new boyfriend . . . He could have concluded that I no longer wanted him around.

Adding all that up, I could easily see him deciding to leave.

So maybe he did disarm the security system at the house, climb into his suitcase, and . . . and what? Somebody must have wheeled that bag away, and who would Sid have asked? I couldn't imagine that he'd have invited the killer into my house. The only people he knew were my parents, Deborah, and me. Come to think of it,
how
would he ask anybody?

The answer was so obvious, I could have kicked myself: the phone. I thanked God that I'd used my cell to call Deborah, reached for the landline handset, and pressed Redial.

After two rings, a familiar voice said, “Charles Peyton.”

“Charles? This is Georgia.”

“Good evening, Georgia. How are you?”

“I'm fine, but—Okay, this is an odd question: Did somebody call you earlier from this number?”

“Why yes, your friend Sid called. He said you were hoping that I could ferry that suitcase back to JTU. He told me to use the key under the mat to get into your house and get the case from the front hall, then lock the door behind me.”

“Where did you leave the suitcase?”

“Just inside the door of the Turner building, as requested. Did it not reach its intended recipient? Do you need my assistance?”

I knew I could trust Charles, but I couldn't imagine him reconciling Sid with his worldview. It was too much to ask. So I said, “No, I'm good.”

I must not have been overly convincing, because he said, “Georgia, are you quite certain nothing is amiss?”

“Everything is fine. I'll see you tomorrow.” I hung up gently, though what I wanted to do was throw the phone up against the wall.

Coccyx! That ossifying piece of sacrum was throwing himself onto his sword to protect Madison and me, and had enlisted Charles to deliver him to the killer.

At least I knew were Sid had to be—in the basement of the Turner building. The question was how to get him out of there.

Obviously I couldn't call the cops or campus security. I could have asked Charles to lend me his key card, but after that last conversation, he'd want to go with me, and I didn't want that. I could break into the building, but that would just bring the cops and/or security down on me. What I needed was a way to get in the door. Then I realized that I had a way if I could convince Deborah to help.

I called her back.

“You hung up on me!” she said.

“I know, you're right. I'm sorry, and I need your help.”

“If it has anything to do with that bag of bones, forget it. You're better off without him.”

“Are you sure? Deborah, do you remember when I decided not to marry Reggie?”

“Of course,” she said, startled by the apparent change of subject. “You went from ‘I want to spend my life with this man' to ‘Who needs men anyway?' overnight, with the wedding less than a week away.”

“That's because Reggie was cheating on me.”

“Son of a—How did you find out?”

“He used our phone to call another girl to make a date.”

“Where you could hear him?”

“No, I was upstairs, but Sid heard him. He'd gotten caught downstairs and was hiding in the armoire.”

“And you never considered the idea that the skeleton was lying because it didn't like Reggie?”

“Of course, but Reggie admitted it.”

“Are you serious?”

“He said marriage and the baby were scaring him, so he'd been sowing a few wild oats, but he really loved me and the baby and he would end it with the other girl.”

“Did he?”

“I have no idea. After that, I couldn't trust him, and I was pretty sure I didn't even love him anymore.”

“No wonder you broke it off so suddenly.”

“That's the thing. I didn't break up with him until a month after I found out.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because I was in grad school and I was pregnant. I figured I had to marry him for the baby's sake. The only reason I didn't was Sid. He found me crying late one night, and wouldn't leave me alone until I told him the truth. I wanted the baby more than anything, but I was dreading being stuck with Reggie so much I was barely sleeping. It's just that I figured there was no way I could handle raising Madison alone. You thought I was nuts to try it, didn't you?”

She hesitated. “I did think it would be difficult.”

“Difficult or impossible? Honestly, Deborah, if I'd asked you back then if I'd be able to have a baby, finish grad school, and support the two of us, what would you have said?”

“I wouldn't have thought you could do it,” she admitted.

“I knew that, and I knew Mom and Phil would have the same doubts. Sid never did. When I told him I couldn't do it alone he thumped me on top of my head—hard—and said I could do anything I wanted to. If I wanted to raise a baby by myself, I should stop my ossifying whining and do it. There were plenty of women who didn't have half my brains who were bringing up half a dozen kids by themselves, and if I couldn't figure out a way to make it work, then what use was all my education anyway?”

Deborah chuckled in spite of herself.

“He believed in me when I didn't even believe in myself. And because of that, I have Madison. Now are you going to help me get him back or not?”

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

A
fter a quick stop at Deborah's house to pick up what I needed, I headed to JTU. Luckily, JTU didn't have a walled campus like McQuaid—the classrooms were interspersed with homes and businesses. I parked as close as I could get to the Turner building without actually being on campus and strolled across the street. There were still a few people around, which I hoped meant that Sid was still safe. The kind of work it would take to totally destroy him was best done when nobody else was nearby. That was if I was right and the killer wanted to destroy him—I was working on a tottering tower of assumptions, but it was all I had.

I tried to be casual as I approached the building. The door was locked, as I'd expected, so I pulled out the key card that Deborah had given me.

Since the reputation of locksmiths with shaky integrity was exactly what Deborah had been trying to dodge, it was a testament to her change of heart that she'd been willing to help me get past JTU security. No matter what else happened, I had to make sure it didn't get traced back to her. So as soon as I got in the door, I started breaking the card into pieces, and each time I passed a trash can, I dropped in a piece until they were gone.

The hallway was empty and the classrooms I passed were dark, so every footstep echoed. There weren't even any cleaning people around. Though I'd grown up around colleges, I can still get creeped out by a school building at night. It was even worse in the dimly lit stairwell, but I knew how much noise an elevator makes in an otherwise unoccupied building, and I didn't want to warn anybody that I was coming.

I slowed to a crawl as I got to the basement, trying for utter silence as I crept toward the lab where Donald and Mary Kirkland had examined Sid. The door wasn't closed all the way, and light was leaking around the edges. I peered through the crack when I got there, but didn't see or hear anyone. I did see the suitcase on the floor. It was empty, and there was a haphazard pile of bones on the worktable that I was sure were Sid's.

I watched for what felt like an hour, but was probably more like five minutes, waiting for movement or sound. Nothing. Finally I hissed, “Sid.”

There was no response.

“Sid!”

What was the matter with him? Couldn't he hear me? Why was he just sitting there? Surely he wasn't dead. Deader? I was afraid to call out again, so I just kept waiting for him to move. After another eternity, I stepped into the room, and finally I sensed movement. Except it wasn't from Sid—it was from behind me. Before I could turn, a hand reached over my mouth, and I smelled something sickly sweet before passing out.

I woke up feeling vaguely uncomfortable, as if I'd fallen asleep at my desk. When the fog burned out of my brain, I realized I was propped in a desk chair, but not mine. My arms were tied to the armrests, and my feet were fastened to the chair legs. I blinked away the rest of my confusion and saw a man looking at me with what I had to admit was a convincing expression of concern.

It was Jim Michaels, the chairman of the JTU anthropology department. And unless I'd totally blown it, he was Sid's murderer and likely Dr. Kirkland's as well. Knowing that, I wasn't buying his concerned face.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Kind of dizzy, and my eyes are burning.”

“It'll pass. I thought the use of chloroform would be preferable to something more damaging.”

I looked over at Sid's remains. “Good to know that you've refined your methods.”

I'll give him points—he didn't pretend not to know what I meant. “I was so young then, so caught up. I didn't even know what I was doing when I hit that boy.”

“Did you know what you were doing when you used that knife?”

“I tried to make it painless, but I really had no choice. If I'd been arrested for assault, I never would have finished my dissertation on time.”

“You must have been cutting it close on the deadline.”

“Dr. Kirkland would have given me more time, but not my parents. I was out of money, and they weren't going to give me so much as a month more. You don't know how lucky you are to have parents who understand academia.”

I wasn't feeling overly lucky at that moment, but he did have a point. “What did Allen find anyway?”

“I was afraid you'd discover his name. Might I ask how?”

“Does it matter?”

“Only if someone else is involved.”

“Neither my daughter nor my sister know,” I said quickly. “Just me, and Allen, there in the suitcase.”

He raised one eyebrow at the part about Sid, but let it pass, perhaps attributing it to the lingering effects of the chloroform.

I went on. “It was mostly guesswork. I had a list of students who'd never finished their degrees at JTU, and went through it until I got to Allen's name. The story of his disappearance matched the timing for the skeleton. I promise that nobody else knows.”

“I'm glad to hear that. And I must say that you have excellent research skills. You should really consider publishing some papers.”

Great. Even murderers had career advice for me. “One thing I didn't find out is exactly why you killed him. Was it something to do with Dr. Kirkland's data?”

“Precisely. You may know she made her reputation with her own dissertation, a seminal work about migratory patterns of early man as shown by the remains of prey animals. Computers weren't easily accessible then, at least not to zooarchaeology grad students, so she had to calculate her statistics by hand. Somewhere along the way, she made a mathematical error, and without realizing it, invalidated her results.”

“So her premise was wrong?”

“Completely. But nobody knew that in the nineteen eighties—the study wasn't replicated until just a few years ago, and everyone assumed the original study was flawed by not having a statistically significant sample.” He stopped. “I'm sorry, I realize this isn't your field. Let me just say that it was an honest mistake, one that Dr. Kirkland never realized.”

“But Allen did.”

“When computers became more common, she decided it would be worthwhile to have her data input for future scientists to use. She hired the boy to take care of it for her, and just before Christmas break, he realized there was something wrong with the results. Dr. Kirkland wasn't on campus that day, so he came to me.”

“You were her research assistant, right?” The picture Sid and I had both spotted in the JTU yearbook was of Kirkland and Michaels in a lab bent over a tray of fossils.

He nodded. “I told him that she couldn't have made a mistake like that, but he showed me the numbers. I was horrified! If word had gotten out, she could have been accused of falsifying data on purpose. At the very least, every study she'd ever done would have been reviewed, and there was no telling what else they'd find. In the meantime, she'd probably lose her privileges as a professor and I'd be without the head of my thesis committee. Even if I'd had time to find another, who would have wanted me? My thesis work was based on hers—if hers was faulty, so was mine. My career would have been over before it started.”

“But Allen didn't care about that?”

“Oh, he was sympathetic, but he was an undergrad. He didn't really understand what it meant. Nobody who hasn't been through it really understands.”

Once again, he had a point.

“He wanted me to call Dr. Kirkland right away, and when I tried to stall, he said he'd find her number himself. Then he turned away from me, and—”

“And you hit him.”

He nodded, looking ashamed. “I had to stop him. Dr. Kirkland was completely devoted to science. If she'd learned there were discrepancies in her data, she'd have been the first to report it, no matter what the cost to her own career.”

“Or to yours.”

“Not just to mine. She'd advised other students, and all of them would have been affected. Even her own children's research would have come under scrutiny.”

“So you hit him out of desperation, and killed him to hide that. And the skeletonization?”

“To hide him, of course,” he said, as if it were the only reasonable thing to do. “With Dr. Kirkland gone for the holidays, I had all of Christmas break to get the job done. It took time away from my dissertation, of course, but that couldn't be helped.”

“Then you marked him with the ID of another skeleton.”

“I'm impressed—you have figured it all out. Yes, I replaced our specimen with the new one, and donated the older one to a high school for gifted students. Anonymously, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I admit that I panicked when the new skeleton went missing from the classroom, but now I realize that Dr. Kirkland had it all along. By the way, how did you find out she had it?”

“What?” I'm sure I looked confused—Dr. Kirkland had never had Sid.

“You must have known,” Michaels said. “I saw this suitcase in her office before you stole it.”

“I didn't steal it.”

“Come on, you didn't exactly keep it a secret. One of your McQuaid colleagues sent an e-mail about it, and I immediately recognized the ID number. Then when I looked at the photo she included, I recognized the suitcase as well. How did you know to steal it?”

“I told you, I didn't steal it!”

“Then how did you get it?”

I couldn't think of anything reasonable to say, so I went for the unreasonable. “It followed me home.”

He looked pained by what he clearly thought was inappropriate humor. “If I'd had any idea that Dr. Kirkland had the skeleton in there, I'd have taken the case myself when I first saw it. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“You mean like breaking into the adjunct office at McQuaid? And into my house?”

“And the car.”

“Which wasn't even mine,” I said, thinking of poor Yo's battered Corolla.

“How was I to know? It was your parking pass. I don't know about McQuaid, but at JTU only the person to whom a permit is assigned is supposed to use it.”

I was momentarily bemused by his indignation for what seemed like a pretty minor offense compared to murdering two people.

“While I was trying my best to get the skeleton back, your colleague was trying to use it to get a job. When I didn't respond to her note, she got in touch with one of the professors here and told him about it. I only found out after the fact that it was actually here in this room. If I'd known, I would have bought it from you on the spot.”

I didn't bother telling him that I would never have sold Sid.

Michaels said, “I was considerably relieved when I got the phone message that the skeleton would be left for me in the vestibule.” He cocked his head quizzically. “I'm confused by what you intended. First the obviously faked voice on the phone, then leaving the suitcase as promised, followed by sneaking back into the building. Did you mean to trap me? Blackmail me? What exactly did you expect to accomplish?”

I'd been wondering that very thing ever since I'd woken up tied to a chair with a murderer in front of me, and my reasoning would make no more sense to him than it was currently making to me. “I was going to give the skeleton back, but I changed my mind.” Then, to distract him from the utter inanity of that statement, I asked, “What about Doctor Kirkland? You killed her, too, didn't you?”

“I had to,” he said almost sadly. “Once she retired, she decided to finally finish putting her data into digital form—she'd given up the attempt after her intern disappeared. She wanted to use one of our students, but knowing what she'd find, I blocked her.”

“So she went to McQuaid.”

“And soon enough found the mistake. She called to tell me, and as I suspected all those years ago, had no concept of the damage the revelation would do to me, her children, or her other students. Even to the university. I hope you don't think me any less of a scientist, but human costs outweigh a minor scientific error, certainly in this case.”

He didn't want me to think he was a bad scientist? I'd thought that living with a skeleton had resulted in some of the strangest conversations of all time, but this one was raising the bar.

“So you've got me, and you've got the skeleton. Now what?”

“I'll destroy the skeleton,” he said calmly. “Pulverization and then an acid bath should take care of it. Then there will be nothing to tie me to the boy's death.”

“What about me? A fresh body won't be nearly as easy to get rid of as a skeleton. Or are you going for another skeleton approach?” Would I wake up like Sid some day?

But Michaels made a calming gesture. “There's no need to be concerned. Just sit there quietly until I'm done, and then I'll let you go.”

“Seriously?”

“You're no threat to me. You have no evidence, and the police won't listen to you—no offense, but you're the oddball who carried a skeleton around in a suitcase. You can go about your life on the fringes of academia as long as you stay away from JTU.”

It was all totally reasonable, given his twisted frame of logic, but I'd been deceived by too many college administrators in the past not to be able to see the signs. Besides which, I wasn't going to let him destroy Sid.

“You're lying,” I said flatly. “As soon as you're done with him, you're just going to kill me, too. HELP! HELP! HELP!”

“Stop that,” he said, but I could hear the edge in his voice. “Nothing is going to happen to you if you just cooperate.”

“HELP! HELP! HELP!” I was yelling as loudly as I could, even though I really didn't expect anybody to hear except Sid, and he wasn't moving. For the first time, I really started to believe that my friend had gone on to . . . wherever . . . leaving his skeleton behind at last. Since there was nothing to lose, I kept on yelling.

Finally the facade of the rational academic broke, and the desperate man showed his face. “Stop it!” He grabbed Sid's thighbone by one end and lifted it over his head. “Shut up!”