Dead Secret (24 page)

“The FBI at this point had come to my way of thinking, and they tried to set a few traps, but they couldn’t lure him in. Then the thing about Pitcairn Island came up in the news—the mayor and his buddies convicted for multiple rapes. The mayor served as a de facto dictator on the island for years. It turns out, too, that the basis of Pitcairn’s economy is stamps. It was a long shot, but I thought maybe it might appeal to him. So I picked out a set of stamps that he would find interesting—and rare—and set my own trap.

I put them up for sale—called them a rare collection from the realm of Pitcairn’s petty dictator—he bit and we got him.”

Diane laughed and clapped her hands. “Frank, I’m impressed. I really am.”

“Sometimes it comes down to paying attention to words.”

“You certainly went a long way with a few jumbled words.”

Diane took a bite of her potato and kept her fork in her mouth so long that Frank put his own fork down and looked at her.

“I know that look,” he said. “You thought of something.”

“I did. It was the word. You’re right: Sometimes it comes down to words.”

Chapter 35

Frank’s eyes sparkled in amusement as he watched Diane.

“Okay, what’s the word?”

“Cave. You know about the break-in here?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been assuming that the real target of the break-in was the Moonhater Cave witch bones—but it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No, I don’t believe it was. It was a sleight-of-hand kind of thing—you watch one thing while something else is really going on. John Rose sent a decoy box of bones because he expected that an attempt would be made to steal the Moonhater witch bones somewhere in transit or after they arrived here.”

She explained to Frank about the controversy over the Moonhater Cave witch bones and about the Wiccans and Druids.

“He expected the bones to be stolen by the Druids or by someone they hired to do it. The bones were stolen, and that’s what fooled me. It was a natural conclusion that his expectation had come true. The thieves also took a couple of microscopes, but I thought that was a distraction meant to hide their real intent. They stole a box of Caver Doe evidence too, and I thought maybe that was also for show.”

Diane punctuated her sentences with her fork. “The real Moonhater witch bones arrived today. They’re in a box packed and labeled identically to the box of bones that was stolen. It was a plain box cushioned with bubble wrap inside the shipping box. On the box containing the bones, John Rose wrote the words ‘Moonhater Cave Bones’—didn’t say ‘Moonhater Witch Bones,’ which is the way we’ve been thinking about them. It said ‘Moonhater
Cave Bones.
’ You see?”

Frank squinted at her. “Spell it out.”

“The thieves came looking for the bones we found in a cave. They saw a box lying in plain sight that said ‘cave bones’ and probably thought, ‘How many could there be?’ They were after Caver Doe. They thought they got him. And that’s why they also took the box of evidence labeled Caver Doe.”

“It makes sense,” said Frank. “But why? Caver Doe’s bones are, what . . . about fifty, sixty years old?”

“I don’t know yet.” She reached for her cell. “I need to call David.” She dialed his number and he answered on the first ring.

“Hey, Diane, what’s up?” David sounded hopeful.

“Something just occurred to me.” She told him about her theory.

David was silent a moment. “That makes more sense to me than that the Druids did it.”

“You know what that means, don’t you? It means the Caver Doe death, the crime lab break-in and the quarry murders are linked. If Caver Doe is linked to the quarry by the buttons, and the break-in was about Caver Doe, then the break-in and the quarry murders are linked.”

“Interesting,” said David. “Of course, it depends on your scenario being right.”

“It is right,” she said emphatically and laughed. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I just wanted you to be thinking about it.”

“That sounded interesting,” said Frank.

“No more crime. Let’s talk about dessert. Let’s order something really rich.”

Diane was in early the next morning. After a workout at home, she jogged the museum nature trail and took a shower in her office suite. She felt invigorated. Her arm was healing nicely. She did some museum business and had put all the finished papers on Andie’s desk by the time her assistant arrived. They spent a few minutes discussing museum business; then Diane went upstairs to the crime lab.

David was in the lab. So was Jin.

“I thought I was early,” said Diane.

“You are,” said David. “We’re just earlier. I told Jin about your revelation.”

“I think you’re right, Boss.”

Jin and David were writing on two whiteboards. On one board, Jin was listing each crime and the evidence they had so far. On the other board, David was making a matrix. The top of the matrix he labeled
Crime Scene
and listed
Cave, Lake Bottom, Quarry, Lab
. The side of the matrix he labeled
Evidence
and listed
Buttons, Picture of Car, Decade, Theft
. He marked an X wherever one of the pieces of evidence was linked to a scene.

When he finished he stood back and looked at his work. An X at one intersection in the matrix indicated that identical buttons were found at the Caver Doe and the Plymouth Doe crime scenes; another showed that both deaths occurred during the same decade. Another X in the matrix confirmed that the picture of the submerged car found near the bodies of Scuba Doe and Quarry Doe linked their deaths with the car containing Plymouth Doe found at the bottom of the quarry. The crime lab break-in and the Caver Doe death were connected by the box of Caver Doe evidence stolen from the lab. Most of the connections were tenuous, but all were suggestive.

Jin looked at the matrix David had constructed. “It’s like a logic problem,” Jin said. “If A is connected to B, and B is connected to C, then C is connected to A. All the crime scenes could be connected in some way. Isn’t that a surprise?”

“Okay, but how?” said Diane. “What motive or driving force connects a sixty-year-old body in a cave and a sixty-year-old body in the bottom of the lake with the recent quarry murders and the crime lab break-in?”

“My first thought would be money or something valuable,” said David.

“If their deaths weren’t so long ago,” said Jin, “I’d say the murderer was trying to protect himself by keeping Plymouth Doe from being found and by stopping us from analyzing the Caver Doe evidence. But that seems unlikely, because . . . well, everyone who was involved in the original murders, including the perp, is probably dead now.”

“Not necessarily,” said David. “Diane, didn’t you say Caver Doe was in his late teens or early twenties, and that Plymouth Doe was about the same age?”

“Yes,” said Diane.

“So they would be in their eighties or nineties now,” said David.

“What?” Jin laughed. “You thinking somebody in a nursing home is orchestrating all of this? I know the statute of limitations doesn’t run out on murder, but I really can’t see them doing hard time now, even if they’re caught.”

“And we don’t know that Caver Doe was murdered,” said Diane. “We only know he wasn’t rescued.”

The elevator opened and Neva rushed in, out of breath. “Sorry I’m late. I had a terrible time talking Mike out of taking a run. God, he’s going to be the death of me. Between him and that stupid caller.”

“What caller?” asked Diane. They all looked over at her with identical expressions of concern.

“This guy—I think he’s a guy; his voice is kind of high-pitched—he’s been calling Mike the past couple of weeks and saying he’s the top of the food chain.”

Jin and David grinned. “What does that mean? Who’s the top of the food chain?”

“The caller. It’s really weird. That’s almost all he says. Once he told Mike he wasn’t getting his rabbits. I think the guy’s on drugs. I wish he’d lose Mike’s number.”

“What does the caller ID say?” asked Diane. She didn’t find it as humorous as Jin and David.

“Mike doesn’t have it. Can you believe it? He doesn’t even have a cell phone.”

“Could it be the person who stabbed him?” asked David.

“That’s what I thought,” Neva replied. “But Mike doesn’t think so. He said it’s just somebody on drugs or somebody who hates vegetarians.”

“Tell the police anyway,” said Diane. “Get them to put a tap on the phone.”

“I’ll try to talk him into it. We first thought it was my uncle Brad—the family clown. Uncle Brad’s a stonemason and he has these really strong hands, and he likes to intimidate people with his strength. When he shakes hands, especially with my and my cousin’s boyfriends, he likes to squeeze real hard until it hurts.”

Diane could see where this was going.

“Mom and Dad invited Mike over for a family barbecue. When Uncle Brad heard Mike was a vegetarian . . . well, you should have heard him making fun.”

“Ah,” said David, “Real-men-don’t-eat-quiche kind of thing.”

Neva nodded. “I introduced Mike, and Uncle Brad shook his hand and started his squeeze routine. But Mike’s a rock climber. I didn’t tell Uncle Brad that Mike often has to lift his body weight up by his fingers. Well, Mike could squeeze harder than Uncle Brad.” Neva grinned. “They stood there holding hands, Uncle Brad’s face getting redder by the second. Finally, Mike said that if they didn’t quit holding hands, people were going to start talking. Ever since then, Uncle Brad keeps talking about how he’d hurt his hand at work and it wasn’t as strong as it usually was. He’s the kind who can dish things out but can’t take them.” Neva shrugged. “But the phone calls are weird even for him.” As she spoke, Neva looked at the board with David’s crime scene and evidence chart. “What’s this?”

Jin explained to her about the possibility that Caver Doe was the real focus of the lab theft and the witch bones had been stolen by mistake.

“That makes sense. I have to tell you, I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around the theory that Druids broke in. So are you telling me that all our crime scenes are related?”

“The evidence and the logic say they are,” said Diane. “It’s something to look into. We need to get Detective Garnett, Sheriff Burns and Sheriff Canfield in here together to discuss this. They’re going to love that. There’s nothing like cross-jurisdictional cases to deal with. Okay, let’s finish the trace evidence. I’ll go call Garnett and the others.”

“I was just thinking,” said Neva. “Why don’t I use our software and age the girl in the snapshot—the one found with Caver Doe? Show what she might look like today. I could do another drawing. Maybe two drawings. One where she ages well and one where she doesn’t.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Diane. “She might still be alive, and people would more likely recognize her face as it is now rather than the way she looked when she was young.”>

“Good thinking,” said Jin, gently shoving her. “You’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”

Diane went to her office and called Garnett, Burns and Canfield. All were surprised at the connections. Burns was skeptical. They agreed to come and discuss pooling resources. Garnett would like that, thought Diane. That was exactly what he and the mayor wanted—for Rosewood to become the place where all the surrounding counties came to get help solving their crimes.

While Diane was at her desk, she gave Lynn Webber a belated call to thank her for working on Caver Doe.

“Why, you’re welcome,” said Lynn. “It was interesting to work on mummified remains. I hope the bones were nice and clean when you got them. I miss Raymond every day that goes by, but my new assistant, Grover, is just precious. Have you met him?”

“No. I haven’t had the pleasure yet. But he did a fine job on the bones. Did you know he put them in separate boxes according to their side? Got it right too.”

“Did he really?” Webber laughed with that mirthful laugh that Diane noticed men just loved, but she found grating. “Why am I not surprised?” she said.

“He is obviously very conscientious in his work.”

“Next time you’re over here, I’ll introduce you. He worked as a mortician’s assistant before he applied for Raymond’s job. He knew Raymond. I think they may even be related, like third cousins. He’s a really big guy with a large round face and hands as big as dinner plates. But he has a delicate touch with the cadavers when it’s called for. He talks to them too, and is so solemn all the time that I have to make an effort not to laugh. You know how Raymond had that great sense of humor. Grover is completely opposite. But I’m pleased with his work.”

Lynn Webber obviously still grieved for her former assistant, who was murdered not that long ago.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Diane. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to thank you for your work on Caver Doe.”

“Anytime—well, not anytime—but I like interesting challenges. How are you? I’ve been hearing the most alarming things—that you got stabbed at a funeral? That can’t be right.”

“I did. Some maniac, I imagine. We don’t know who did it. But I’m healing fine. It wasn’t serious. Just very annoying. Thanks for asking.”

Diane got off the phone before Lynn started asking about the break-in and other questions she didn’t want to answer. When she hung up, she went to finish Caver Doe. She’d put him on the back burner, but if there was a connection among the crimes, he’d just moved himself to the front burner.

She rolled the table with Caver Doe’s bones from the vault out into the osteology lab. She read over her notes from her preliminary examination. His right tibia was broken. His right heel bone and ankle bone, the bones in his right wrist and two lumbar vertebrae were also fractured.

Diane examined the bones one by one under the microscope, looking for any minute breaks or marks that she had missed. She found nothing else. Up until the time he died, Caver Doe appeared to have been in good health and well muscled. He was probably right-handed. When he died he was in substantial pain from his broken bones. She packed up Caver Doe’s bones and stored him in the vault.

Diane checked in on Jane Doe’s bones from the woods site that were being worked on by the dermestid colony. The beetles had made substantial progress. She lifted the skull out of the tank, cleared it of beetles, checking all the orifices, and took it into the vault. Neva was there working on aging the snapshot picture.

“I’m going to do a laser scan of Jane Doe’s skull so we can have a picture of her when the sheriffs and Chief Garnett get here,” said Diane.

“If I have time, I’ll do a sketch of her,” said Neva.

“If you have time. But don’t rush.”

Diane scanned Jane Doe’s skull, and Neva downloaded the scan data into the imaging software.

“You say Mike’s restless?” asked Diane.

Neva nodded. “He’s a pain in the butt right now.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t like being weak.”

“No, he doesn’t,” said Neva. “I think he must have been a hyperactive kid. He absolutely hates sitting still.”

“You’re doing a good job taking care of him.”

“I ought to just not say anything and let him do what he wants to do and suffer the consequences. I did talk him into calling his doctor and asking him what kind of activity he can do.”

Diane left her alone with her work. Neva seemed to enjoy the solitude of the vault and the work she did there. Jane Doe’s skull went back to the insects. The sheriff and Garnett couldn’t come until after lunch, so Diane decided to go to the museum to do some work.