Sing It to Her Bones Read online

  Colonel continued to bark, but I couldn’t see the rabbit. Perhaps it was hiding in the bushes that had grown up, lush and green, around the foundation of the house back by the cistern where water was plentiful.

  When I was still about twenty feet away, Colonel trotted over to me, circled twice, then returned to his duty station by the cistern. He barked, then looked at me expectantly. He barked again.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, dog? Who do you think you are? Lassie?”

  As I got closer, I could see that the cistern’s cover was cracked.

  “Did your rabbit go down the well, Colonel?” I peered through a gap in the cover but could see only a sliver of light on the water below that reflected the blue sky above me and a dark shape that must have been the shadow of my head.

  “Well, boy, if your rabbit’s down there, he better be a damn good swimmer.”

  With both hands, I pushed one of the rocks to the ground, then the other. It took more effort to wrestle the cover itself aside. This done, Colonel, ever helpful, placed both paws on the lip of the cistern, hunched his shoulders, and peered in.

  The cistern was fed from a pipe leading into it from the roof of the house. It was impossible to tell how deep it was because of all the water it contained. After the recent rain the water level was fairly high, only four or five feet from the place on the rim where my hand rested. A rusty automobile axle jutted out of the water at an angle, wrapped in a tangle of baling wire. Like the house, this cistern clearly hadn’t been used in years.

  “No rabbit, Colonel, old boy. Just a lot of junk.” I grasped his collar and pulled until his front paws touched the ground. Before I could turn to push the wooden cover back into place, however, Colonel was leaning into the cistern again, howling pitifully. “For heaven’s sake, Colonel! I told you there’s nothing down there!” Using both hands, I tugged on his collar again, but Colonel refused to budge.

  While my hands were occupied with the stubborn dog, a sudden gust of wind lifted my Orioles cap and snatched it from my head. I watched helplessly as it sailed into the cistern, revolving slowly like an autumn leaf. It floated on the surface for a few seconds, then began to sink beneath the stagnant water.

  “Now look what you’ve done, you stupid dog!” I picked up my stick and used it to poke around in the floating debris, trying to fish up my precious cap before it sank and was lost forever. I had no intention of walking back to the house bald. I leaned into the cistern as far as I could with safety and used my stick to push aside some deteriorating blue fabric, an old milk carton, and what looked like a white plastic garbage bag.

  But it wasn’t a bag. Something solid was floating there that responded to my gently prodding by turning over lazily. Not a plastic bag at all, but a pair of human buttocks, with what looked like part of a leg attached.

  “Oh, God, Colonel! Let’s pray I’m seeing things. Let’s hope it’s a dead deer or a small calf down there.” I felt ill. But I couldn’t convince myself, let alone the dog, that I was seeing anything but the sad remains of a human being.

  I ran the mile or so back to Connie’s at record speed, although everything conspired to delay me: the barbed wire fence plucking at my clothes, the muddy field sucking greedily at my shoes. After what seemed like hours, I burst into the studio, the screen door slapping shut behind me. I found Connie in the kitchen, slicing a grapefruit.

  “What happened to your hat?” she asked.

  “Connie, I think there’s a body in the cistern over at the old Nichols place!” I paused to catch my breath, bracing my arm on the kitchen counter. “Who do I call out here? You were married to a cop! Who would you call?”

  Dear, unflappable Connie looked up at me, then laid the knife down with elaborate care on the cutting board. “Nine-one-one,” she said. “Just like everyone else.”

  chapter

  3

  You’ve got to hand it to those folks at 911. While I stood at the kitchen counter panting, my heart pounding in my ears and feeling as if a live, leaping thing in my chest had swollen to twice normal size, crowding out my lungs, Connie made the call. Almost as soon as she hung up, we heard the firehouse sirens in town kick in, wailing long and loud, the old-fashioned way, to call in the volunteers.

  Connie led me back to her studio. There the windows offered a panoramic view over the fields as far as the next ridge where the road into town and a scattering of houses lay.

  “Watch that road. Once the trucks round the corner at the light and head out Church Street, we’ll be able to see them.”

  “Why are they sending the fire department?”

  “I’m not sure.” Connie draped my shoulders with a mohair afghan she had lifted from the back of a barrel chair that sat in front of the wood stove that made it possible for her to work in her studio in the wintertime. “I told them you found a body. Maybe they think it’s possible to revive it.”

  A chill began just behind my ears, slithered down my neck and spine, and radiated out into my limbs until I was shaking uncontrollably.

  “It was just pieces, Connie. They can’t revive pieces!”

  Connie, who was standing behind me at the window, reached out to rub my arms up and down briskly. “Better?” She pressed my coffee mug, which had been mysteriously refilled, into my hands. I had time for only a few perfunctory sips before the fire truck went screaming by.

  I don’t know why I thought the police couldn’t begin their investigation without me. “Should we go over now?” I turned to look at Connie over the rim of the mug, the image of her face slightly distorted by the steam rising from the hot liquid.

  “Not yet, silly. They know where to find us when they need us.”

  A few minutes later an ambulance streaked by, sirens wailing, a blur of yellow and white against the green fields. A tan and black county patrol car followed at a more sedate pace, with a single officer inside. We could see him talking on the radio.

  Connie took the half-empty cup from my hands and set it on the workbench. She pointed to my torn sweatshirt and muddy shoes. “You might want to wash up and decide whether you want to greet the police like that.…” She pointed to my scruffy head. “Or are you thinking about putting on some hair today?”

  I hugged her, and we stayed that way for one long, comforting minute while Connie rubbed my back. I pulled away first, managing a halfhearted smile. “Let’s go for the hair.” I was still shaking and drew the afghan around me a little closer. “Just give me a few minutes to get myself together.”

  “Sure, honey. If anyone shows up, I’ll keep them busy with my gourmet coffee and dazzling repartee, but you’d better hurry.” She turned and pointed out over the fields. Two cars passed, taking their time, followed within a minute by someone in a blue Volvo station wagon. “See those cars? The vultures are gathering already. Picked up the police call on their scanners, I’ll bet.”

  I watched as a red Miata caught up with the Volvo, a caboose on the slow-moving train. I had little patience for ambulance chasers. “You’d think they’d have something better to do with their time.” I ran a hand over my head where thin, pale wisps of hair lay, plastered with cold sweat to my skull. I felt like hell and probably looked like it.

  “Can’t say that I blame them. It’s probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in Pearson’s Corner since old Mr. Meadows blew his wife away with a shotgun blast in 1952. Folks say she deserved it, too!” Connie turned me by the shoulders and shoved me gently in the direction of the bathroom. “Off you go!!”

  I smiled, for real this time. “Yes, Mother.”

  * * *

  It took ten minutes to run a warm washcloth over my head, face, and neck and to dress in clean tan slacks and a burgundy turtleneck. With my wig in place, I looked almost presentable. I was haphazardly brushing a bit of blusher on my cheeks when Connie appeared in the bedroom door. She studied me critically. “Much better.” Connie had changed out of her jeans and into a pair of crisp white shorts and a red striped T-shirt tha
t, I had to admit, seemed more appropriate for a tennis game than a crime scene, but I was hardly an expert in these matters. With her copper curls brushed, she looked much younger than her forty years.

  “Anyone show up yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet. But judging from the cars that have passed by, I’d say over half the town is over to the Nichols place by now.”

  “Well, I’m ready to join them.”

  A look of concern crossed Connie’s face. “Are you sure you haven’t had enough excitement for one day, Hannah?”

  I looked at the wall clock which Connie had decorated with gilded seedpods. “I can’t believe it’s only eleven o’clock. I feel like I’ve lived a hundred years since this morning.”

  “Maybe you’d prefer to wait here? I’m not sure I’m prepared to see any of that … well, whatever it is.”

  “Come on, Connie. Let’s walk over. I’m sure the police won’t be letting anyone anywhere near that cistern. They’ve probably even called in reinforcements to help hold back the mob.”

  I returned the blusher to my makeup bag and zipped it shut. When I tossed the bag carelessly on top of the dresser, it skidded sideways and toppled a picture of Paul taken at Camp Letts the summer he turned twelve.

  “Gosh, Connie! How could we have forgotten to tell Paul? Just give me a minute, okay?”

  I dialed Paul’s number at work but got his voice mail. “There’s been some excitement down on the farm,” I told the recording. “Give us a call.”

  Rather than take the long way across the fields, Connie and I walked together down the driveway, the gravel crunching pleasantly beneath our sandals. At the end of the drive we turned right onto paved road. It was early May, and the sun had warmed the pavement so we could feel the heat through the soles of our shoes. Grass and wildflowers grew in high hedges along both shoulders. The plants absorbed the sun, seeming to convert it into sweet, spicy perfume that washed over us in warm waves.

  Several cars passed, followed by a small white Isuzu pickup that honked and slowed. The driver, a ruggedly attractive, ruddy-faced fellow I guessed to be in his middle fifties, rolled down his window.

  “Hi, Con. I heard the news down at the marina office. Someone said you found a body at the old Nichols place.”

  “Not me, Hal. My sister-in-law, Hannah, here.”

  Hal nodded in my direction. “Wonder who it is?” he inquired.

  “Hard to tell.” She lowered her voice and rested her arms against the window of the truck. “Hannah said it looked like it had been there for quite a while.”

  Hal shifted into park. In the silence between them, I could hear WTOP, all-news radio, blaring over the noise of the air conditioner running full blast.

  “You gals want a ride?” Before Connie could answer, Hal twisted sideways and struggled to move a huge sail bag which fully occupied the passenger seat. “Genoa #3” was stenciled on the canvas in black letters. It refused to budge.

  “Thanks, Hal, it’s a nice thought, but where would we sit?” She gestured toward the back of his truck, where several plastic buckets and four striped lawn chairs lay, folded up. “Should we set up those chairs and ride in the back like queens in the Fourth of July parade?”

  Hal chuckled and saluted with his left hand. “Suit yourself! Guess I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.” His face gradually disappeared behind the tinted glass as the window rolled up, and he sped away, taking the curve at the bottom of the hill at least fifteen miles over the forty mile per hour speed limit in a squeal of steel-belted radials.

  “Who was that?” I asked Connie as the smoke from his exhaust dissipated in front of us.

  “Hal Calvert. He owns the marina where I keep Sea Song.” She pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket and put them on. “His family’s lived in Chesapeake County for centuries. Old Mr. Calvert’s still alive. Walks down to the boatyard from the family compound every day. Keeps his hand in, too, refinishing teak. He varnished Sea Song’s toe rails this spring. Eighty-eight years old and he still has a steady hand with the brush.”

  Another car approached and tooted its horn. Connie waved as it passed.

  “You take the boat out much?”

  “Oh, about once a month when I can find someone to sail with me.” She turned to look at me. “That’s something I was hoping we could do while you’re here.”

  I groaned. I had taken a course at the Annapolis Sailing School several years ago just to please Paul, but I wasn’t especially good at it. I knew port from starboard by remembering that port and left had the same number of letters. I had memorized a whole book full of nautical terms; living in a sailing capital like Annapolis, I didn’t want to embarrass myself by calling the mast a pole or by referring to the bow of the boat as the pointy end. As for the mechanics of sailing, though, if anyone fell overboard with me at the helm, he’d better resign himself to drowning.

  “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned in sailing school, Connie.”

  “Nonsense! It’s like riding a bicycle. It’ll come back to you.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “I thought about selling Sea Song, you know, after Craig died. But he loved her so much! He must have said it a million times: ‘That Tartan’s a good, sturdy bay boat, Connie. Should last us for years.’ That’s why I don’t think he’d have minded my paying off the loan with part of his life insurance settlement. Sometimes I wonder, though. You know what they say about sailboats: It’s a hole in the water where you throw your money!”

  By then we had reached the Nichols farm, where trucks and cars were parked higgledy-piggledy along both sides of the road, their tires half on the asphalt and half on the grassy shoulder. A crowd of approximately twenty people had gathered, and I noticed Connie’s friend Hal, still in his truck, deep in conversation with three firemen clustered in a disorderly huddle outside his window. Yellow crime scene tape stretched from the battered Nichols mailbox to the telephone pole at the foot of the drive. A uniformed officer stood nearby. He was young and trim; the sleeves of his uniform strained against the muscles that bulged in his upper arms. He looked perfectly capable of discouraging anyone from wandering too close to something he shouldn’t. Farther up the drive, next to the house, sat a fire truck, an ambulance, two Chesapeake County patrol cars, and a dark silver Ford Taurus.

  “What do they need the fire truck for?” I asked the officer, whose name tag said “Braddock.”

  “Routine.”

  I stepped closer. “And the ambulance? I found the body, Officer Braddock. I don’t think an ambulance is going to help much.”

  “Also routine.” He smiled a straight, white, gap-toothed grin, causing the deepest dimples I’d ever seen to appear suddenly in his cheeks. He looked about twelve years old. “I’ll need to get your names,” he added.

  Braddock wrote our names at the bottom of a long list.

  “What’s happening up there?” I asked.

  “Nothing much. We’re waiting for the medical examiner and the ECU.”

  “What’s the ECU?”

  “Evidence Collection Unit.”

  While we were busy distracting the talkative Officer Braddock, a young boy seized the opportunity to slip under the tape. “Hey!” Braddock was on him in two steps, catching the youngster by the waistband of his jeans. “Out you go, young man!” The kid smiled and shrugged as if to say, Well, it was worth a try!

  Connie and I stepped back then to join the others milling about on the road, creating a significant traffic hazard. A heavyset woman in a flowered dress had just emerged from a car parked a short distance away. When she caught sight of Connie, she waved and struggled up the hill.

  “Ellie Larson,” Connie informed me. “She owns the Country Store with her daughter, Angie. Angie must be minding it today.”

  Ellie arrived, wheezing and out of breath. She dabbed at her forehead with a crumpled tissue, leaving specks of white behind. “Just driving by and saw all the cars. Someone having an auction or a garag
e sale?”

  “Hannah was walking the dog this morning and thinks she saw a body in the old cistern out back.”

  Connie turned to me, and I got to tell my story all over again, concluding, because I knew Ellie would ask, with “No, I don’t know who it is!”

  Ellie looked thoughtful. “Not many people have disappeared around here in the past few years. Some teenage runaways is all, but they always turn up. Except … well, except for the Dunbar girl.”

  “What about her?” Connie asked.

  “She disappeared about eight years ago. It was after the homecoming dance at the high school. Hasn’t been seen since. A pretty, curly-headed girl. Looked like a cherub. Do you think it could be Katie Dunbar?” Ellie looked at me expectantly.

  I felt the chill returning. “If she’s been dead for eight years, it’d be a little hard to tell, don’t you think?”

  Connie took off one sandal and tapped it on the side of her leg to dislodge a stone. “I remember her now. Pretty, yes, but not terribly bright. I used to see her down at the Royal Farms convenience store. She worked as a cashier evenings and weekends.” She lowered her voice. “Gosh! There’s Katie’s parents now.” She jerked her head to the right.

  I turned in time to see an older man in denim overalls climb out of a battered red Ford 4 × 4. A toolbox was bolted across the back of the cab; plastic buckets and miscellaneous pieces of lumber with red rags tied to their ends protruded over the tailgate. A woman I took to be Mrs. Dunbar sat in the passenger seat, but she seemed reluctant to get out. As if to persuade her, Mr. Dunbar held out his hand. Mrs. Dunbar slid across the seat to the open door on the driver’s side, took his hand, and alighted from the cab clumsily. I could see she had been crying, and she kept wiping her eyes with a huge white handkerchief. Wet splotches dotted the front of her quilted jogging suit, and she seemed to be having trouble walking in the thick-soled shoes she wore. Mrs. Dunbar’s hair was so pale it was hard to tell if it was white or blond. It was clamped high at the crown with a fluorescent plastic butterfly clip, and strands had escaped and fallen in a disorderly way around a face that was as pink as her outfit and almost as puffy. The Dunbars stood together next to their truck, looking lost. I had seen that look before. It was the haunted look of a shell-shocked veteran, the same look that had stared out at me from my own mirror in those tortured days after Emily had run away from home for the first time and I thought we’d lost her forever.