Murder Bone by Bone (18 page)

“He had a hot affair with her during the dig,” she said, speaking as if to the picture, “and when they got back, she just moved in with us. He slept with her in the spare room, although they hinted they would like the queen-sized bed in our bedroom. I ignored that. I tried to ignore it all. I was gone all day, working in the City, and they were together. He told me I wasn’t open enough.” Her lips trembled. “After a month of that, I just left. Divorced him. Tried to forget I’d ever made such a mistake.”

By this time I’d picked Melanie out in the group on the steps. “That’s you, right? With the granny sunglasses and the print dress?”

She laughed. There was no amusement in it. “We all seemed to play dress-up back then. I was into long skirts and all that stuff. But let me tell you, after I graduated, after I left Richard, I left those frumpy granny dresses behind with no regrets. The guys liked us to wear all that old-fashioned stuff—made us look submissive or something. When I put on my first business suit, I felt the power of it. I realized what we’d been lying down for.”

Somehow I couldn’t picture Melanie as a crusader for the women’s movement. Inadvertently I glanced around at the honey-colored maple cabinets, at the lovely daughters surrounded by every comfort.

Melanie caught my glance. “Does this look like selling out to you?” She, too, looked around the room. “Not really. My mom did the fifties’ equivalent of this, of course. But the difference is, I chose it. I chose Hugh and I chose to come back to Palo Alto and give my children the good life I’d had. I’m doing exactly what I want to do. That’s the difference between my mom and me. She did what was open to her, and it wasn’t enough. I know what’s out there, and I chose this."

Nice work if you can get it, I wanted to say. But even though we’d agreed to dislike each other, I couldn’t say it to Melanie. And besides, if she were going to be so talkative, I thought she might as well talk in the right direction.

“So you and Richard were living in that house—Bridget’s house?”

“Oh, no.” She looked surprised. “We rented our own little bungalow in Menlo Park. Rents were much cheaper then. We both had student assistantships. We got along financially. Ran around with our friends on weekends. We lived together like that for several months before we got married.” She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes for a moment. “We should never have gotten married. It was my idea—I pressured him into it one weekend when we were at Tahoe. He only did it to oblige me, not because of any commitment to me.” She spoke eagerly, as if to acquit Richard of wrongdoing.

“But you still hung out with people living in Bridget’s house?” I looked at the picture again. Everyone in it looked young, unmarked. I felt I knew more of them than just Melanie and Richard.

“In the group house. Yes.” She looked back down at the picture. “That’s why I knew about Nado—the guy who disappeared. The one that nice Bruno Morales thinks might be the skeleton under the sidewalk. Nado wasn’t around at the end of that final quarter. We thought he was in trouble and hiding, actually. Rumor had it that he’d been seen in Mexico, that he was still dealing from a P.O. box. That kind of thing. It never occurred to any of us that he could be dead.”

“Maybe it did occur to one of you.”

“Maybe.” She rubbed that crease between her eyebrows again. “This is all so painful, so upsetting. I thought I’d put Richard behind me. That he was just a guy in my past, nothing to me.” She got a fresh tissue. “Of course, it helped that he left Palo Alto before Hugh and I came back to live, and I didn’t see him. Now I realize—”

“You never got over him.”

“A cliché not worthy of either of us, Liz.” Melanie slumped a little. Her face was pale, and I realized what was different about her appearance—she wore no makeup. “But yes, that’s it. It’s not that I’m still in love with him, but I’m just—not finished with him, somehow.” She threw me a look. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this stuff. It must be because Biddy’s out of town. You messed up your marriage, right?”

“You could say that. I tried to kill my husband.”

Once again, our eyes met and we laughed. “Somebody else finally finished him off for you last month, right? Isn’t that what Biddy said? That cute niece of yours, Amy, was mixed up in it.”

“It’s over now, anyway.”

“I don’t want Richard to die.” Melanie’s face crumpled. She turned away from the family room, so the kids wouldn’t see her tears. “I want a chance to clear it all away.”

“Is that what you were doing Sunday, in the driveway? When I was getting Moira out of the Suburban?”

“So you did listen.” She got up and went to the cabinet with the Oscar the Grouch sticker on it. It pulled out to reveal a trash can, into which she tossed her soggy wad of tissues. “Don’t blame you, I guess. And of course you told it all to the police. I would have, too, in your case.” She glared at me. “But I would have been up front about overhearing, too.”

“Not me.” I stood up, ready to get Moira and go, nap or no nap. “I’ve learned to duck when it comes to confrontation.”

“So you’re leaving now?” She laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t push the issue, and since Richard got attacked it’s moot anyway. Yeah, he wouldn’t talk to me at all. Like we’d never been lovers, never married. Obviously he was hitting on that Blakely woman. And she had no problem with it.” Melanie scowled. "That made me kind of mad—that he would flirt with her right in my face.”

“But you’re not married now, for what—fifteen years? I mean, you’re married to someone else.”

“I know that.” Melanie closed her eyes. “It’s just so hard to believe—that someone I’ve loved could be attacked like that.”

“Believe it.” My ears caught the sound I’d been waiting for—a faint cry. "There’s Moira.”

“So you can get away, finally.” This time Melanie’s smile seemed genuine. “You’re not so bad, Liz. Next time, you spill your guts, and I’ll listen and offer self-righteous comments.”

“Not on your life.”

She laughed and slid off her stool. “I’ll get Moira. You round up the boys.”

That took some doing, since the boys were now reluctant to leave. Mick had been methodically building walls of huge cardboard bricks and then demolishing them. He didn’t want to put the bricks back on their shelf. Corky was in love with riding the little bulldozer and protested loudly about dismounting. Sam wanted a turn on the bulldozer and was equally loud about that.

I herded them into their car seats and was buckling Mick’s seat belt when Melanie came out carrying Moira.

"Did you hear the phone?” Her voice was tremulous. “That was Bruno Morales. He wanted to let me know that Richard regained consciousness briefly. He’s been upgraded from critical.”

“That’s good news.”

“It is. I know that.” She handed Moira over, and I began the insertion process, getting her to sit in the car seat, buckling, strapping, finding the right toys to mitigate the whole experience. Melanie was so preoccupied with Richard’s health that she didn’t even offer to do it better than I.

“If he recovers—if he really recovers—”

“Is there some doubt of that?”

“In any head injury there’s doubt. You know that.” She slung the diaper bag into the car. "Probably Dinah Blakely’s sitting next to his bed every moment. If she’s not over at Stanford plotting to take over his job.”

This echoed what Nelson had said earlier, and I remembered something that had occurred to me then. “I thought Dinah said Richard was a visiting professor. How could she get his job?”

Melanie pushed the hair out of her eyes. “He told me that was the story the department wanted to put around. But they’re considering him for an anthropology chair. He was keen to get it, too. Said he wanted to move back to the Bay Area because the sailboarding was better here than in Massachusetts.” She choked up again, but then rushed on, leaning closer. “Now maybe Dinah Blakely’s in the running for that job. There’s a motive for your detective. Make sure you tell him that.”

“You can tell him if you want.” I didn’t care for the vindictive glitter in her eyes. Melanie really had it in for the younger woman. “And he’s not my detective.”

“He could be.” Melanie looked me up and down and visibly refrained from shaking her head. “You could certainly do worse.”

I got behind the wheel. “Thanks for sharing, Melanie. And thanks for keeping Moira and picking up Mick.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiled, a little ruefully. "Thanks for letting me be a total bitch.”

“I had nothing to do with it.” I put the car into reverse and left her standing in the driveway.

Chapter 21

I had to wait in the street in front of Bridget’s driveway while the Public Works guys lumbered several big pieces of equipment away from the blocked drive. It was like watching dinosaurs get valet-parked.

Eventually we could pull into the driveway. Stewart jumped out of the backhoe and came running up.

“Sorry about that.” He spoke apologetically. “We can’t always keep the driveways free every minute. You going out again soon?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Kids have classes.”

“Okay. We’ll keep you unblocked.” He grinned. “Most of the folks around here aren’t home during the day, so they never know we’ve been parking in front of their drive.”

“Well, we do a lot of coming and going in this house.”

Sam interrupted, pulling on Stewart’s shirttail. “Hey, mister. What are you digging up today?”

Corky writhed with embarrassment. “Don’t bother him,” he whispered fiercely to his brother.

“Can I sit in the backhoe?” Sam was oblivious.

“Not today, fella.” Stewart ruffled Sam’s hair and smiled at Corky. “We’ll be here tomorrow, though, and if you get out here early, before we start work, I’ll see what I can do for you.”

Sam smiled blissfully. “I get firsties, okay?”

“Sam!” Corky was outraged.

Sam didn’t care. “You hogged the bulldozer at ‘Manda’s,” he argued. “I get firsts tomorrow.”

“Nobody gets firsts if there’s any arguing.” Stewart took the words out of my mouth. He looked at me apologetically. “Sorry if I started something, ma’am. I don’t have kids, so I don’t know how to deal with this kind of stuff like you parents do.”

“Believe me, I don’t know either.” I looked at the boys. Corky was sulking and Sam wore a “so-there” expression. “You guys take Mick in and get your backpacks put away while I take care of Moira, okay?”

Sullenly, they took Mick’s hands. By the time they got to the top of the steps they were all laughing, letting him hang between them like a monkey. I unfastened Moira and picked her up; for once she didn’t protest, just sucked her thumb and stared at me as if she were planning a coup.

When I turned from the car, Stewart was still standing there. “Do you know how that guy is doing?” He pointed over his shoulder at the sidewalk excavation. “The crew asked me about it, and I couldn’t tell them.”

“Last I heard, he was holding his own. Maybe doing a little better.”

“Poor guy.” Stewart shook his head. “I mean, what a fate. He might end up a vegetable, huh?”

“There are worse things than vegetables.” I thought about my little plants, needing someone to love them, mulch them, water them. Even at that, they’re far less trouble than children.

When I realized that I was putting vegetables ahead of Richard in my mind, I felt bad. But not for long. After Melanie’s revelations, I didn’t have a very high opinion of him.

And I liked her better when she was straight with me, instead of treating me to all that holier-than-thou stuff.

Stewart glanced at the sidewalk excavation. “You wouldn’t believe the calls we’ve gotten since this hit the newspapers, from people worried that there are bodies under their sidewalks, too. As if someone’s been stuffing corpses around all over Palo Alto.”

“It doesn’t seem very likely.”

“Of course not.”

“Were you working for the city the last time this sidewalk was torn up?”

“Couldn’t say. We’re always tearing up the sidewalk somewhere in town. I’ve been doing this for so many years I forget the last job before the next one’s done.”

“But you all don’t tear it up anymore, right? I thought for the past few years a contractor’s been doing that.”

“Sometimes it’s put out for bid, depending on how busy we are.” Stewart raised his hard hat for a quick wipe of his head, and backed away. “I won’t trouble you any more, ma’am.”

I carried Moira inside. The phone rang while I was fixing a snack to carry everyone through their various before-dinner activities.

“Liz!” It was Bridget. “How’s everyone? How are things going?”

“Great, just great.” I cradled the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could walk around the kitchen on the long cord—just as I’d seen Bridget do so often. Again I got the weird feeling that I was channeling her. “We’re having a snack now before the boys go to karate class.”

“That’s right, karate today, soccer tomorrow.” Bridget laughed. “You are doing us such a favor, Liz. I know the schedule’s hectic, mostly because now that I’m not doing it, I feel so leisurely. It’s terrific.”

“So you’re enjoying your vacation, are you?”

“So much!” She launched into a bright recital of their activities. “. . . and then we snorkeled. I’d never snorkeled before. I kept thinking how much Corky and Sam would have loved it.” There was a catch in her voice. “And Mick would love the music—every night they play, and sometimes there are dancers. We saw the Royal Hawaiian Orchestra with a whole troupe doing Island dances—it was fabulous. How’s Moira doing?”

“She’s fine. Didn’t wake up once last night, and has been eating really well.” I looked over at Moira, who was using a slice of cantaloupe to draw designs on her high chair tray. “We’re having melon now, and PBJ cut into shapes.”

“You’re doing fabulously.” Bridget sighed. “I do miss them, and I worry about them even though I know you’re on top of everything. Is Drake still coming over?”

“He’s enjoying playing Dad-for-a-week.”

“He’s always wanted children, you know.” Bridget’s voice was heavy with meaning.

“Maybe someday he’ll get them.” I wondered if I could probe Bridget for information about her house. “Melanie had her photo albums out today when I went to pick up Moira. There was a picture of your house with all these hippies standing on the porch.”