Murder Bone by Bone (14 page)

“I know.” He kissed me on the forehead and headed for the door.

“You didn’t tell me about the bones. Did you identify them?”

“There’s nothing positive yet. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.” He left, jingling the house key I’d given him. I pulled out the sofa bed and fluffed the pillows, locked up, and took Barker with me into the bedroom. He was the only male of my acquaintance content to sleep on the floor beside my bed, a gallant, if hairy, knight.

I fell asleep quickly, despite my turmoil. I dreamed that someone came into my room, sat on the bed, smoothed my hair back, kissed me warmly. But in the morning I was still alone in the wide expanse of sheets.

Chapter 16

I got up when I heard sounds from the kitchen, even though the clock said six A.M., far earlier than the kids arose.

Drake sat at the table, drinking coffee. He’d made himself some toast. I started a large pot of oatmeal and got out the jar of Bridget’s extra-special blackberry jam from its hiding place. It’s not that children shouldn’t have jam; Bridget is lavish with the strawberry and plum jams, also homemade. Anything so wonderful as that wild blackberry jam is too fine for their wee, untutored palates.

Drake appreciated it. His heavy frown lightened a little after he spread a liberal amount on the toast.

“What’s wrong? Get up on the wrong side of the sofa bed this morning?”

He gave me a Look. “Every side of that bed is wrong.”

I regretted even starting that topic. “You don’t have to stay here,” I said, hating the defensive note in my voice but unable to moderate it. “There’s no danger, and if there was, Barker would let me know.”

“Huh.” Barker had taken up a stance by Drake’s knee, seeking and getting head scratches, but Drake stopped petting to glare at me. “You credit this mutt with far too much sense.”

“He’s got no sense at all, I know that.” I stirred the oatmeal. “But he’s a deterrent. Kind of like those car alarms that go off all night long.”

“And how much attention does anyone pay them?” He chomped on his toast and couldn’t help smiling.

“Blackberry jam hath charms to sooth the savage policeman,” I murmured, setting a bowl of oatmeal in front of him. "Try this. It’s Bert’s favorite.”

Drake eyed the oatmeal suspiciously. “I don’t eat much breakfast, you know that. And who’s this Bert?”

I started trying to explain the “Sesame Street” hierarchy, on which I was rapidly becoming an expert, but gave up the notion. “Nobody. And you do, too, eat breakfast. You just go down to Jim’s Cafe for it.”

Drake evidently thought his frequent forays into bacon-and-eggs territory were a secret. “Who told you that?”

“Seen you there myself.” I poured a cup of tea and sat down across from him with my own bowl of oatmeal. “See, this is what domesticity is about. An opportunity to quarrel early in the day.”

That got another smile. "What makes you so chipper?”

“The children will all be gone for the day.” It was a happy little refrain in my head—the children are gone all day, hey, hey.

“So what will you do with your time?” He leaned across the table. “Let’s see how well I know you. You’ll go for a swim, work in your garden, do some writing—”

“I’ve got my workshop at the Senior Center. And some errands. But you’re right about the swim, and maybe if there’s time, I’ll get to all those weeds I saw yesterday.”

Drake looked smug. “That’s what domesticity is about.”

Corky and Sam erupted into the kitchen. “Oh, boy,” Sam cried. “Oatmeal! Bert’s favorite!”

Drake got up hastily. He’s really not big on early morning vivacity, certainly not the brand practiced by the Montrose offspring. “Well, I’ve got to run. I want to go by the hospital and check on Grolen. And I’m expecting a fax about the dental records today.”

I followed him into the living room after helping the boys dish up their breakfast. “Must you leave so soon? Moira will be waking any minute now, and she’ll need changing.”

Drake made a big show out of folding up the sofa bed. “You make it sound very tempting, but I’m out of here.”

“Bye, honey!” I made June Cleaver faces at him until the door shut.

Mick was struggling into his clothes when I looked in the boys’ bedroom. I gave him a hand with his shoes and established him at the table with some breakfast. I got Moira up and changed, but knowing her feeding habits, I left her sleeper on. She only cried a little bit. I felt proud.

After a frantic few minutes of wiping jam off faces (I’d forgotten to hide the blackberry, and the boys made great inroads), brushing teeth, and finding school backpacks, Corky and Sam flew out the door when the carpool mom honked.

Melanie came in a few minutes later, while I was still getting Moira’s multitudinous equipment ready.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said impatiently when she saw me stuffing disposable diapers into the bag. "I’ve got everything at my house. Amanda and Susana are in the car, and I’ll take Mick as well and drop him at preschool with Susana.” She picked up Moira and cuddled her. I had cleaned her up after breakfast, putting on her grass-green leggings with little white polka-dots and a fleecy green dress that matched. With her red curls brushed and her nose freshly wiped, she looked a picture, and for once she acted as sweet as she looked, returning Melanie’s hug and blinking her big blue eyes.

“Thanks, Melanie. I really appreciate this.”

“I’ll enjoy having a baby to spoil for a while,” Melanie said, waving away my thanks. We both knew that her live-in helper, Maria, would pick up the slack for her. Maria was known to dote on babies.

“Have you heard this morning how Richard is?”

Her face tensed. “The hospital won’t say anything except that he’s doing as well as can be expected. Can you find out more than that from Drake?”

“I’ll try. He doesn’t always tell me things, but I’ll call you if I find out something new. Last night, he said Richard was probably going to pull through.”

She swallowed. “Poor Richard. I don’t understand what anyone could gain from trying to kill him.”

“Maybe he remembered something that was dangerous to someone.”

She gave me a sharp look. “I’ve now told everything I remember to that nice Bruno Morales. I’m sure he’ll work hard to find out what’s happening.”

“I’m sure he will.” I didn’t tell her that Bruno was involved in another case, and wouldn’t be free to devote himself to this one for a couple more days.

She carried Moira out and got her strapped into one of the convenient built-in car seats her luxury minivan came with. I followed with Mick and the diaper bag and toy bag. Moira waved nicely to me—of course, Amanda and Susana, two ruffled little beauties, were waving, too.

The house was quiet. I spent exactly two minutes enjoying it before clipping the leash on Barker and heading for the door.

The excavation site was deserted. All the police seals and fences looked untouched. I wondered what would happen to the first body, now that Richard had homed in on its territory. Maybe the police would just bring over that Bobcat and scoop it all up.

Perhaps that possibility was in Stewart’s mind. He jumped down from his truck when he saw me coming and intercepted me. His shambling sidekick, Doug, was with him.

“Say, we heard somebody else was killed here the other day. What’s happening, anyway?” Stewart’s brow was furrowed with concern. Doug stared, fascinated, at the trench where the sidewalk had been.

I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Someone was injured—maybe an accident. The police are looking into it.”

“Should have let us dig up those bones.” Stewart looked back at his crew, who were preparing to lift huge metal plates off the road with a portable crane. The boys would have loved it. He seemed to be on the same wavelength. “Your young ones at home?”

“School today.” I yanked back the leash. Barker was getting restive. “I’ve got a lot of errands to do—”

“Sure. We gotta get back to work, too. Just wondered how it was going.” He glanced at the police barricades around the sidewalk and his lip curled. “Mark my words, they’ll be asking us to clean it up before this is over.”

“You may be right.” I watched them walk away. Stewart pulled on a hardhat. Doug, whose hat was already on, had his chin on his shoulder, looking at the scene of the excitement as if he couldn’t get enough of it.

Barker set a brisk pace for the two blocks to my house. Drake’s car was gone from the parking area that separated his backyard from my front yard. I unlocked my door to get my swimming things together, and then opened up Babe’s side door for Barker. Babe is my blue VW bus. She started with a little encouragement. I was happy to be back in the familiar driver’s seat, with Barker sitting tall in the passenger seat. After Bridget’s Suburban, Babe seemed very brisk and supple, pouring around the corners and whipping into a tight parking spot in front of the tennis courts.

Leaving Barker to guard the car, I walked through the Magic Forest to the pool. The morning lap swim had less than an hour to go, and the pool was relatively deserted. I changed and got a lane to myself.

I don’t swim fast or even particularly well. But I love the exercise, the sleek way my body cleaves the water, the breath streaming away from my mouth in silver bubbles. I wanted to think about the whole bewildering problem of the attack on Richard Grolen, but one of the best things about swimming is the inability to think in the usual linear fashion. My thoughts took on the color of the sky, the feathery redwoods stretching up above me as I backstroked for a lap, the intricate branches of an ancient valley oak that filled my vision while I sidestroked.

After my swim, I shower in the locker room. This is a holdover from the days when I lived in Babe with only a tiny sink and cold water for my ablutions. I swam every day, as much for the shower as for the exercise. Now I shower at Rinconada to save my own water. It’s not because the shower is pleasant—it’s a powerful stinging experience that leaves my skin flayed. But the habits of thrift are the only things standing between me and an ordinary nine-to-five job.

I was fastening my jeans when Emily Pierce spoke to me.

“Liz! I wondered if I’d see you here this morning.” She ran a comb vigorously through her short iron-gray curls. “I’ve finally got something to read this afternoon.”

Emily was one of the attendees in the writing workshop I ran at the Senior Center two days a week. It paid a little stipend, and I enjoyed hearing the stories of these people who had so much to tell. Emily had done more listening than reading in the past couple of months, but that was okay, too.

“I look forward to hearing it.” I pulled on my T-shirt and made sure I had all the toiletries I’d brought. Replacing those little bottles can be expensive if I leave them behind. I can usually refill them from bigger bottles many times before they wear out.

“I’m dividing my scabiosa,” Emily said, stuffing her brush back into a bag. “You want some?”

“Sure.” Emily was an avid gardener. More than once she’d helped me with a problem, and she’d been the one to introduce me to the master gardening library at the Gamble House. “Emily, you’ve lived around here for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Since my undergraduate days at Stanford.” She walked with me out of the dressing room, and we stood in the sun by the baby pool. “Met my husband there—he was in graduate school after the war. We settled down here. Bought one of the first Eichlers. We moved over here after the kids left—it was smaller and closer to things.” She gestured toward the Magic Forest. I knew she lived on one of the streets near the Community Center.

“You must have seen some changes."

“My, yes.” She sighed. “It was so rural at first, you know. There were cows pastured on the other side of Middlefield instead of all those houses. Even where the Eichlers were, we were surrounded by fields for years. The children ran wild.”

“Your kids—did they go to Stanford, too? Were they part of that whole hippie scene?”

Emily tilted her head. “Are you collecting information for an article, Liz?”

“I’m doing a little preliminary research.”

“I liked the one you did for Smithsonian on Mayfield. Are you doing Palo Alto through the ages?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. "The sixties and seventies are of interest to everyone now, aren’t they? Really, although there seemed to be a lot of turmoil at the time, it was pretty benign down here. The real revolutionary action was in Berkeley.” She started walking toward the gate, and I kept pace with her. “Of course, that’s where my son wanted to go, just to mingle with the other radicals. But he transferred to Stanford his junior year. Not that he said so, but I think some of that rhetoric kind of scared him.”

“Did he live with you?”

“Heavens, no.” She laughed. “He wouldn’t have been caught dead living with us. He had a room in a group house over on Palo Alto Avenue. If you want the truth, I think his girlfriend shared the room with him. But we adopted a ‘don’t ask’ policy long before the military did. They showed up at our house for dinner on Sundays, and we made the washing machine available if they should want it. Despite the way they looked, they were pretty clean.”

“You have a daughter, too, right?” We stopped beside Babe.

“Oh, yes. My daughter actually went to Vassar. She was much more conservative—then.” Emily laughed. “Now she’s the environmental activist, and my son has turned into a very button-down insurance broker. You never can tell.”

“Would he be willing to tell me any stories about his college days? Or has he put that behind him?”

She looked thoughtful. “I’ll give him a call when I get home. Let you know this afternoon.”

I pushed Barker’s head back through the open passenger window. “You want a ride home?”

Emily shook her head. “No, the walk is part of my workout.” She strode off down the sidewalk, plump and gray-haired, but in good shape for a seventy-year-old woman.

I didn’t know if Drake would think I was meddling or not. But Emily had given me an idea. If I found Palo Alto in the seventies interesting, others might too. Maybe I would do an article on that time, using the bones as a framework.