Buttons and Bones (23 page)

“Yes, of course.”

Betsy had half a loaf of artisan bread, which she contributed to the feast, along with butter. The salad had candied walnuts, dried cranberries, and bits of orange in it; the hot dish was at least as delicious as it smelled. Everyone fell to, and silence reigned for nearly twenty minutes while they all ate their fill.

“The salad I can reconstruct,” said Betsy as the meal wound down, “but I would like the recipe for that hot dish, Peg.” She was feeling much better.

“All right,” said Peg with a pleased smile. “You really do say ‘hot dish’ here in Minnesota, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Betsy. “Also ‘uff da’ and ‘up at the lake.’”

“Speaking of up at the lake,” said Connor, “how’s the investigation going?”

“There’s not much movement at present,” said Betsy. “They’ve identified the skeleton as Corporal Dieter Keitel, and they suspect he was the victim of a homicide, but the person they would like to talk to about it is dead herself.”

“That’s too bad,” said Peg. “Da says you have an uncommon talent for solving mysteries. I could admire that very much in myself if I had it. Is it innate or did you work to acquire it?”

Betsy touched a place over her left eye where a faint remnant of the headache remained. “Both, I think. It started out as a wild card thing, but experience has made it better. Surely you use detection in the work you’re studying to do?”

“Absolutely. In forensic and biological anthropology we study known skeletons to learn to make estimates and predictions about newly found ones. It is like solving a mystery. But you didn’t study those subjects, did you?”

For a wonder, this didn’t come as an accusation and Betsy was just able to realize that before she took offense.

“No, I didn’t. Anyway, I don’t solve a murder by looking at the dead person, but by talking with living people who were around him or her.”

Connor said, “Tell her about that little case you solved just last week.”

Betsy frowned at him. “What case?”

“The case of the unlisted number.”

“Oh, that was nothing.”

“Tell it anyway.”

She sighed, but lightly, and began, “Well, this customer picked up a slip of paper from the library table down in the shop and got all agitated because it was a list of four phone numbers and hers was at the top of the list—and hers is an unlisted number: 555-3346. I managed to get the list out of her hand and saw that the last ‘phone number’ had only six numbers in it, and I just had to laugh because what she had was a list of DMC floss colors.”

“I don’t understand,” said Peg.

“DMC list its colors by number. The number 555 is for a shade of lavender and 3346 is a shade of green. Someone had brought in a list of floss needed to work a cross-stitch pattern, and left it behind instead of throwing it away.” Betsy looked at Connor. “It wasn’t a difficult or complicated mystery.”

“But clever of you to see what your customer couldn’t, though presumably she herself is a cross-stitcher,” said Peg.

“I told you she was a
schlauskopf
,” Connor said to Peg. “A real ‘clever head.’ ”

Betsy said, “Really, it wasn’t anything special at all. But thank you.”

Connor said, “May I ask you to show Peg that needlepoint project you’re working on?”

“Certainly. But first, let me clear the table. Would you like a cup of black tea or coffee or cocoa?”

“Oh, coffee, please, thank you,” said Peg.

“Me, too,” said Connor.

“I’ll put the coffeemaker to work. Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable in the living room? This won’t take a moment.”

In a few minutes Betsy brought two cups of fragrant brew to her guests and then brought out the stand to which her needlepoint project was fastened. It was a Melissa Shirley tapestry called “Circus Bear,” and it depicted, in a style to delight a child, a brown bear on all fours wearing a green and red birthday paper hat and a pink ruffled saddle, being ridden by a long-tailed monkey in a harem costume. She was working it in Hungarian ground, pavilion diamonds, and bargello stitches, among others, with the background in the stitcher’s basic basketweave.

Peg broke into a smile when she saw it. “How sweet!” she exclaimed.

Betsy showed Peg how the basketweave stitch was done and allowed her to complete a row, which she did with no problem. But Betsy could tell Peg was displaying good manners rather than a real interest in the technique, so she put the stand away.

When she came back, she found that Peg had picked up the wanted poster and physician’s report again.

“You’re studying biological anthropology at the university,” said Betsy, “so I imagine you are reading all sorts of interesting things in that report I wouldn’t understand.”

“Perhaps, but you saw the actual skeleton, didn’t you?” said Peg. “I am discovering that I’m much more a hands-on person than a document person.”

Betsy said, “I knew a forensics person who claimed she sometimes got hints about who a person was by just handling their skull. Her work was putting faces back on them, in a manner of speaking, of course—and she said the dead sometimes would tell her things, like the color of their eyes or how they wore their hair.”

“It’s a psychic gift.” Peg nodded. “I know of other people who have it. I’m not sure if I have it or not. I just know that it’s exciting to find a skeleton or set of skeletons where they were laid down, either angrily or with love and grief. Such finds can tell us a great deal about the living folk who put them there.”

“I think I can see what is drawing you to such a profession.”

Peg looked askance at Betsy. “I don’t suppose you believe in ghosts?”

Betsy smiled. “Yes, I do. I’ve actually seen one or two in my life. But I don’t have the gift of calling to them or hearing their attempts at communication.” Betsy returned the slantwise look. “Do you?”

“Believe in ghosts? I wouldn’t be a true daughter of Ireland if I didn’t! But bones and ghosts are two different things, and I’m less sure about what bones might have to say. Perhaps it’s because I’ve so little experience with them and so I don’t know how to listen yet, but it could be I haven’t the gift at all.” For the first time, Betsy felt a liveliness in Peg, a deep stir of interest in a topic. Maybe it was because they were talking about something Peg really knew a lot about.

Betsy said, “I remember a feeling of awe when I saw those bones. I didn’t handle them, of course, I only looked. I do remember seeing the gold tooth gleaming under the dust, and that made the humanity of the bones apparent. I could suddenly feel that those dusty old bones used to be an actual person. But it was more interesting to me to see that photograph, to see an actual face.”

“So the jaw hadn’t rolled away when it came loose from the skull,” said Peg.

Betsy was puzzled. “Yes, it had. It was upside down in a scatter of ribs.”

“But you saw the gold tooth in it.”

“I saw a gold tooth in the upper jaw.”

Peg frowned at her. “But it says the gold crown is in the lower jaw.”

“It does?”

Peg touched her chin. “This is the mandible. If the crown were in the upper set of teeth, it would have said maxillary.”

Betsy stared at her. “But the gold tooth I saw
was
in the upper jaw—the maxillary.”

“Then something’s wrong. The doctor—and he probably was a doctor, this is very physician-like language—said a gold crown on a right mandibular molar. That’s here.” Peg touched the right side of her jaw, working the joint back and forth.

Betsy felt a curious sort of electrical current running from her elbows to her fingertips. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“That’s very interesting. No, it’s
terribly
interesting, and important. I want to tell someone right away what you’ve told me. Will you excuse me a minute?”

“Of course,” said Peg.

Betsy hurried into the kitchen to call Jill. She repeated the conversation she’d just had with Peg, concluding, “Tell Lars he’d better contact that investigator up in Walker right away. The skeleton might not be Dieter Keitel’s after all.”

Betsy went back to the living room, feeling a shaky smile pulling at her mouth. “Peg, you’ve just done the most fantastic thing! You’ve broken a homicide case wide open!”

Peg said, “I can’t believe people in charge of the investigation read that description and didn’t realize where that gold crown was located.”

“I’m sure the sheriff back then knew it was in the lower jaw, and I’m sure there were other documents that pointed it out. This came about because all we have are two documents, and it didn’t say ‘lower jaw’ on the wanted poster, and none of the few modern-day folk who read the doctor’s description understood it. I’m so glad you picked that up. You’re the hero of the day, for sure!”

Peg’s face was glowing and her smile was wide. Her father looked proud.

But now, of course, the question standing up with a hand raised was—if not Dieter Keitel’s, whose bones were they in that root cellar?

Nineteen

BETSY thought she was in for another bad night. She was excited about this break in the case and her mind puzzled over the unstable way the known facts butted up against this new one. If the skeleton was not Dieter Keitel’s, what was his identification tag doing in the cellar?

Was Dieter Keitel the murderer, not the victim?

Who was the victim? Could it be Matthew Farmer? That would explain why he never turned up in San Francisco.

But wait, wasn’t he seen getting on the train to Chicago?

And what about the civilian-style buttons instead of military brass?

Betsy crawled into bed prepared to think things over, but the moment she closed her eyes, she fell asleep.

And she woke the next morning feeling refreshed and energized—and with a new idea. Well, not exactly a new idea. She showered and dressed, then got onto the Internet to check her e-mails and read a couple of newsgroups. She sent an e-mail to Jill:

Hello to Emma Beth and Airey
[because they loved getting messages handed along from their mother’s computer]
and good morning to you. All right, at long last I feel we might have a grip on this thing. I now believe Robert Nowicki, or some other member of his family (of course he told them all about his adventure in Excelsior as soon as he got home) sent that 4 X 5 card warning me to Lay Off. Because it’s now likely the skeleton belongs to Robert Nowicki’s missing Uncle Jerry, poor fellow. That he was put down in that root cellar by Robert’s grandparents. As soon as you hear what the sheriff’s department up in Walker is going to do with the case, let me know, all right? I can’t believe we all were so stupid about that mandible business. Have a super day!

She sent it, read some messages on RCTN, replied to a couple of e-mails, and shut her computer down.

She set her books on the dining noon table so she wouldn’t forget to take them downstairs—her accountant was due in this morning to check her records, reconcile her bank account, and take the payroll figures to write paychecks. Then she went into her kitchen to prepare her breakfast and feed her cat.

It had taken months of determined effort, but she had managed to move the cat’s breakfast feeding time back from “right after the morning trip to the bathroom” to “when I have my own breakfast.” Sophie still complained about it, but Betsy refused to budge or feel guilty. Bad enough that the cat’s current weight was a morbidly obese twenty-two pounds.

Not that Sophie waddled or showed other symptoms of discomfort at that weight. She was a large, heavy-boned cat with long fur, mostly white, with a cap of tan and gray that extended down her back and up her tail. She was beautiful, graceful, and had no apparent metabolism at all. At one time Betsy had gotten her weight down to seventeen pounds, but had become alarmed at the meager amount of food it took to keep her at that weight—and her customers, who took to slipping Sophie bits and pieces of food as part of their Crewel World shopping experience, grumbled, so she released her strict control. Sophie put on three pounds in two months. Her vet sighed and said she seemed otherwise healthy, so that was that.

But Betsy kept a needlepointed sign that said, NO, THANKS, I’M ON A DIET, on display on the back of Sophie’s favorite chair. Her customers cooperated by sneaking food to the cat rather than feeding her openly, and Sophie did her part by hiding her erratic and dangerous snacking habit.

Betsy looked with exasperated affection at her pet, who was licking the bottom of her bowl with a raspy tongue, helping along the pretense that this was all she’d have to eat until the shop closed that evening.

Then the two of them went downstairs to open up.

Godwin came in right at ten, making a comedy of peering around the edge of the open front door as if afraid of the mood he might find his boss in. Betsy’s laugh reassured him that yesterday’s gloom was gone and he came in with a laugh of his own.