Murder Bone by Bone (24 page)

“Whoever covered Richard up,” Melanie insisted, “knew he was alive and wanted him to die, wanted him to lie there undiscovered as long as possible.”

"That could be,” Bruno agreed. He and Drake were both looking at Stewart.

“I got no comment.” Stewart gulped his coffee. He was jittery with nerves. The silence from Drake and Bruno got to him. "Look,” he said finally, “I drive up to the work site, and here comes Doug saying he’d killed Richard Grolen. So I checked it out. I thought the guy was dead, too. I covered him up because dead people shouldn’t be lying out uncovered, and I went to my truck to report it, and then that female archaeologist came along and started shrieking, so I knew I didn’t have to report it.” He stared at Drake, at Bruno. “If you think it’s worth arresting me for that, go ahead.” He glanced down at his shirt. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened tonight.”

Then Melanie said, “So how did old Nado get under the sidewalk? Did Doug do that too?”

Stewart stiffened. “I don’t know about that. I do know he was upset when the bones turned up. He kept saying they should never have been found.”

Again there was silence. I kept waiting for Drake and Bruno to take Stewart downtown for his official questioning. But maybe they were getting a lot more information out of him in this informal setting, with Melanie there to goad him on.

Bruno broke the silence. “Your friend Doug has family here, is that not right?”

Stewart looked stricken. “You’re right. I should call. He was estranged from his dad, but his mom lives in San Jose. She'll have to know.”

“It's too bad, isn't it?” Drake spoke in a meditative tone. “She’ll feel awful that her son not only killed himself, but evidently tried to kill another man and is suspected of yet another homicide years ago.”

Stewart put a hand up to his eyes.

Melanie chewed her lip. “But,” she said, glancing at Bruno, “I just don’t see how that could have been. I mean, it wasn’t long after that bad drug incident that Nado was missing. And I remember now visiting Skipper in the convalescent home just before—just before Richard and I got divorced. That was months later. How was Skipper able to get Nado buried under the sidewalk like that while he was in a convalescent home?”

"But you see,” Bruno said, “it must have been Doug. Who else could dig a big hole where the sidewalk was to go without causing comment? Someone from Public Works. Someone in familiar work clothes, arriving very early to prepare the area to be poured, who fills in the hole, tamps it down, makes everything nice and normal-looking. Someone who can easily truck away any leftover dirt to the dump. Who else could it be, but Doug?”

Before Bruno finished his summation, we were all looking at Stewart. Drake stood beside him, and when Bruno was done, he put one hand on Stewart’s bloodstained shoulder.

“We’d like you to come to the office and make a statement,” Drake said, not ungently. “You may want to call a lawyer. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right—”

“Never mind all that.” Stewart stood up. He looked around the table, at Melanie’s shocked face and Nelson’s avid one, at Claudia’s austere frown, and finally at me. A smile twisted his mouth. “I knew, as soon as those kids of yours dug up Nado’s filthy bones, that it would come to this. I’ve just been hoping—” His voice died. “Well, not much point in that. I killed the bastard.”

Bruno interrupted him, his gentle voice concerned. “You are making statements that may be used in evidence against you, Mr. Corman.”

“We’re taking you into custody now,” Drake said. Officer Rhea moved forward, relaxed but ready for action.

It took moments for them to whisk Stewart away. Nelson rose to follow them.

“Where are you going?” Claudia stopped him in the doorway.

“To the police station. I bet I can just wait there and find out what happens. And if not, I might call up the newspapers. I saw they were interested before. They’ll love this.” Nelson’s face shone with zeal. “I might make enough to stay in school next quarter!”

Claudia didn’t move from the doorway. “It’s a shame in a way,” she said, looking from Melanie to me. “I do think it’s important to stay in school. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to alert the newspapers just yet.”

“What do you mean?” Nelson tried to push past her. “I have a perfect right—”

“We’ll go discuss it in the living room.” Claudia encircled his shoulders with one massive arm. "These are your options . . ."

The door swung shut behind them.

Melanie roused from her stupor. “Did they just arrest poor old Fritzy?”

“Yes. Looks like he killed poor old Nado.”

Melanie sank into a chair. “Man,” she said, dazed. “Who would have thought people in our group could kill each other. Why, we believed in peace and love!”

"Things change when you go from the universal to the particular.” I collected coffee cups and made a great effort to rise and carry them to the sink.

“I think,” Melanie said coldly, “I’ve mentioned your annoying habit of mouthing platitudes at the drop of a hat.”

“I think you did. A word to the wise—”

She laughed a little, but shook her head. "This is just too staggering. And we don’t know why, or how, or anything—”

I tried to keep my face totally neutral, but Melanie was sharper than I gave her credit for. “Drake’s coming back here tonight, isn’t he?” She looked at me closely. “You’re going to get the whole story out of him then.”

Claudia pushed open the kitchen door, dusting her hands together. “So I fixed that,” she announced. “If that little academic weasel says anything to anyone about Bridget’s kids or any of us, I’ll make it hot for him at Stanford. I still have some markers I can call in over there.” She looked from me to Melanie. “What’s going on? What have I missed?”

“Drake’s coming back here tonight, after they finish up at the police station.”

“It could be really late,” I protested. “I’m planning to go to bed. The kids are up at the crack of dawn, you know. I need my rest."

"That’s all right,” Claudia said affably. “You go on to bed. Melanie and I will just sit here and talk quietly for a while. I’m sure Bridget wouldn’t mind.”

I looked at them, sitting on opposite sides of Bridget’s table, where I’d seen them so often before. Claudia looked triumphant, as she often does when she wins an argument. But Melanie’s face crumpled.

"To tell the truth," she said, sniffing, “I really need to talk about it. I’m just feeling so overwhelmed by it, by the past and my feelings for Richard, and by this—this violence—”

“But Melanie, you were mixed up in those murders a couple of years ago,” Claudia objected. “Everyone in the Tall Tree group was. Don’t you remember?”

“I didn’t really know the victims that well,” Melanie protested. “After all, neither of them was my ex-husband.” Her eyes teared.

“Okay.” I put on the teakettle and sat down between them. “We’ll wait for Drake.”

Chapter 28

"It was an accident, or so he says.” Drake stretched out his legs under the table and sipped the lemon-peppermint tea I’d made, for once without complaining about the strength of its flavor.

Claudia snorted. “Of course, it could have been anything. No witnesses, no way to substantiate—”

“Well, in an odd way, the bones testify.” Drake has learned just to break in on Claudia when she gets started on one of her rants about documentation. “Remember, when she looked at the bones, Dinah pointed out that the knuckles had been broken a number of times, perhaps indicating a man who liked to fight.”

“Nado did like to fight.” Melanie was listening intently. “If we went out to a bar and he was there, we left before the trouble started.”

“Well, Stewart says he saw Nado walking down the street one evening, a few days after Doug’s OD, and he pulled over in his Public Works truck to give Nado a piece of his mind, threaten him with the police. Nado wouldn’t accept any of the responsibility, and said if Stewart turned him in he’d implicate everyone in their group who’d ever bought anything from him.”

“That was pretty much everyone,” Melanie admitted. “Could have been, well, awkward.”

“Nado got hot, wanted to fight. They were standing in the street, right in front of the truck. Stewart knocked him down, he hit his head on the curb, broke his neck. We’ll find evidence in the cranium, in the cervical vertebrae, if that’s true.”

“I thought you didn’t have those bones.” Claudia sat up straighter.

“Stewart took them. He bagged them up and buried them in the landfill.” Drake smiled grimly. “Now we just have to get them back. He’s told us where to look.”

“So he concealed an accidental death instead of reporting it.” Claudia’s voice was thoughtful. “Put the body in his truck and covered it up, probably, instead of calling nine one one.”

“That was the mistake he made, of course.” Drake rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Under the circumstances, it would have counted as involuntary manslaughter. He might have gotten off with a suspended sentence.”

“But that sidewalk replacement. Of course he knew about it. He might even have worked on it.” Melanie sounded frustrated. “I’ve remembered a lot more about that particular time than I thought I could. But I still can’t remember anything about that.”

“And how easy for him.” Claudia sounded almost admiring. “He could dig the hole deeper during the day, and no one would say anything. He could fill his truck up with the dirt and dump it, easy as pie. He could tamp it down nicely—it all would look so innocent.”

“But he didn’t feel innocent.” Drake spoke soberly. “Partly he stayed in Public Works to look after Doug, but a big part of why he never got a different job was his need to keep tabs on that sidewalk. He started worrying when it was scheduled for replacement. He offered to do the root pruning, even though it wasn’t his usual thing, so he could make sure nothing came to light in there. And he traded for weekend duty so he could be on hand if anything happened. When the work order came in to secure the excavation site, he changed it to a demolition permit.”

“It was almost the perfect crime.” I swirled the tea left in my cup. “If the boys hadn’t wanted to excavate . . ."

“If Richard hadn’t come back after so long away—”

“If your Richard hadn’t stolen from a disabled person,” Claudia said tartly. “If he does recover, I expect him to make restitution to that man’s family. Or he can kiss his hopes of an endowed chair at Stanford good-bye. That sort of thievery is still frowned on in the academic community.”

“Whatever the reasons, we’ve got plenty to go on now for making our case.” Drake nodded toward the leather-bound album. “We’d like to use that for a while, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Dixon. It could be valuable.”

“I don’t know if I want to help out Fritzy’s prosecution.” Melanie handed over the album with reluctance. “After all, he had provocation.”

“It’s difficult to say anything about the penalty phase now, but Stewart’s probably not looking at that long a sentence.” Drake tucked the album away in his big satchel. “Poor Doug is the real victim here.”

“What I don’t understand,” I began, and Drake groaned.

“Now, Sully, if you’ve thought up some damned clever reason why we’re all wrong, just save it. In this case, we’ve got a lot of stuff right from the horse’s mouth.”

“You still have to prove it, don’t you?” I silenced him with that. “And I’m sure everything is right. I just don’t understand about Doug bashing Richard. I know Doug was mad about the sailboard thing. But what happened?”

“Doug told Stewart,” Drake said, “that he had followed Grolen the previous night, found out where he was staying, but he was with some other people, and Doug didn’t want to confront him in front of strangers. He went back early the next morning and found Richard just driving off toward the Baylands. Doug was really overcome by that—he didn’t go near the water anymore, according to Stewart. He waited for Richard to drive back down Embarcadero afterward and followed him to Bridget’s before he tackled him.”

“He tackled him? Right away?” Melanie asked.

“I mean, he went up and started talking to him. Grolen just denied it all, and told Doug that he knew the bones were Nado, and he figured it was Skipper’s good friend Fritzy who put Nado there. He said if Doug pressed him about the sailboarding royalty, he’d have to turn Stewart in for Nado’s murder. Evidently,” Drake said, “he was quite nasty about it. He turned away, and Doug just heaved up a chunk of concrete and dotted him. Then he thought Grolen was dead and bolted back to his backhoe. Stewart arrived for work, and Doug told him about it, almost incoherent with fear and remorse. Stewart went and covered up Grolen to buy time before the body was discovered, time for Doug to compose himself. He says he thought Grolen was dead, too. Maybe he did.”

“You think he—wanted Richard to die?” Melanie covered her mouth with her hand.

“I think that would have been fine with him, if it never involved him or Doug.”

We were silent for a moment, and then Drake stretched, yawning hugely. “And now ladies, I’ve told you far more than anyone would approve of, so keep it under your collective hats. And don’t go messing around with this stuff anymore.”

“Don’t be so patronizing,” Claudia said disdainfully. “If it hadn’t been for Melanie, you’d still be fumbling around with this.”

“You said it much better earlier, Claudia.” I grinned at her. “You said he was sniffing around like a bloodhound on a bad-hair day.”

Drake grinned, too. Claudia blushed.

“Well, it is late,” she said, standing up. “I’ve got to get going. And you should get some sleep, Liz. Those kids get up early, you know.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“Maria will be wondering what’s become of me.” Melanie stood up too, reaching for her Coach bag. She glanced at Drake’s bulging briefcase. “Be careful with that album, Detective. It’s not some cardboard throwaway.”

“I’ll be careful.”

I saw them to the door and locked it after them. Barker, stretched out impossibly long on the living room floor, sighed deeply. Drake echoed the sigh.

“You must be pooped.”

He winced. “Please, don’t use that word so cavalierly. I’ll be afraid Moira is going to wake up.”