Beneath us, in the crawlspace, I could hear muted conversation, and then Wayne ’s voice, calling Brandon and Derek upstairs for pizza. It sounded surprisingly domestic. The activity downstairs ceased, and a moment later, several sets of steps came up the stairs to the back door. Shannon, Paige, and I left the bathroom and headed for the kitchen, where Josh had already dug into the top box and was halfway through his second slice of pizza.
Now, if it had been me downstairs, digging up bones and scraps of hair and clothing, I wouldn’t have had much appetite. In fact, the idea that such digging was going on, even if I hadn’t been a part of it, was enough to put me off my feed. I found myself nibbling daintily on a piece of crust while I watched the others tuck in.
Derek and Brandon seemed to have no adverse reaction to what they’d been doing. If anything, the digging had built up their appetites.
“So what’s the news?” Josh wanted to know as soon as Brandon had polished off a piece of pie and was reaching for another slice. “What have you found?”
Brandon rattled off, “Scapula, humerus, radius, five metacarpals, fourteen phalanges, a handful of carpal bones…”
“Sounds like you’ve found rather a lot of bones.”
Derek shook his head. “Not really. The human hand has twenty-six bones in it. Brandon has uncovered the bones in one hand and an arm, up to the shoulder. And he has just started finding leg bones. A femur-that’s the thigh bone-and a tibia and fibula.”
I nodded.
“No head?” Wayne asked.
Brandon shook his own.
“Did you look? Or is it missing?”
I put my crust down. A headless skeleton? Worse and worse.
“I’m sure it’s there,” Derek said reassuringly. “When Brandon got to the shoulder, he decided to go in the other direction. And leave the head for last.”
“As long as we get it out today.” Wayne bit into a piece of pepperoni pizza. Tomato sauce oozed unpleasantly. “The dental records are our best shot at getting an identification. Unless some benevolent higher power has seen fit to gift us with a wallet or a wedding ring with an inscription or something like that?”
He didn’t sound optimistic, nor did he look surprised when Brandon shook his head. “Sorry, boss. Not yet, anyway.”
“Of course not,” Wayne said. “That would have been too easy.”
Derek picked up another piece of pizza. “Don’t worry,” he said to Wayne between bites, “you’ll figure out who she is.”
“She?” Wayne glanced over at Brandon, who rolled his eyes.
“Dr. Ellis here thinks we’re looking at a female.”
“Really?” Wayne looked at him.
Derek nodded. “I can’t say for sure until I see the pelvis-the hip cradle is a dead giveaway-but it’s either a woman or a very young man. The bones are less heavy than you’d find in a full-grown male skeleton, and they also look shorter. Judging from the length of the femur, the tibia, and fibula, you’re looking at someone who was well under six feet in height. Because some people are long-waisted and short-legged, while others are the opposite, it’s hard to determine without the entire skeleton, but from what you’ve got right now, I’d say you’re looking at a person who was somewhere around five and a half feet tall at the time of death.” He bit into the pizza again.
“Interesting,” Wayne said. He pulled out his trusty notebook and pencil and made a notation.
Derek swallowed and added, “Also someone youngish. The bones are brittle now, but there’s no evidence of any arthritis or other bone disease prior to death. Also no fractures in what we’ve found so far.”
“So a young and healthy person, possibly a female, approximately five and a half feet tall. It’s not much, but it’s something. Anything else?”
Derek indicated Brandon, who cleared his throat. “We found a couple of little metal thingamajigs-grommets or something-that we think may have come from a pair of jeans.”
“Thingamajigs,” Wayne repeated, straight-faced, his pencil poised. “That’s the technical term, is it? Not much help there, I’m afraid. Everybody in the world wears jeans these days.”
Including the chief of police, when off duty. I’ve seen him. A quick look around the kitchen showed me that every one of us, except for the two policemen in their uniforms, were dressed in denim, from Derek’s comfortably threadbare Levi’s to Shannon’s seemingly brand-new hip-huggers, which fit her like a second skin.
“Where’s Ricky?” Josh said, and it wasn’t until then that it occurred to me that Ricky Swanson hadn’t been standing here with us, partaking of the pizza and gruesome conversation.
“The last time I saw him, he went into the master bedroom.” I gestured down the hall. “That’s a few minutes ago, though.”
“I’ll go,” Paige said quickly as Josh made to push off from the counter where he was leaning. She gave him a pat on the arm on the way past, and he smiled at her. Shannon quirked a brow, and Josh shrugged.
“I went to the newspaper archives while I was out,” I said, wondering what the byplay was all about.
“Yeah?” Wayne turned to me.
“I couldn’t find anything about any missing persons any time in the past twenty years, though.”
He shook his head. “Before Professor Wentworth disappeared this spring, we hadn’t lost anybody for a long time. The few people who went missing always turned up within a couple of days. Some of them were dead, but we always found them.”
I nodded, but before I could bring out my other booty-the prom photographs of Derek and Brandon-Paige came trotting into the kitchen again. “He’s locked himself in the bathroom,” she said, her soft, little-girlish voice even softer than usual. “I don’t think he’s feeling well. There were…” she hesitated delicately, “noises.”
Wayne hid a grin. “We should probably get back to work. If you think you’ve had enough to eat?” He glanced pointedly at Brandon, who was still chewing, but who thought it best to nod.
“See you, Tink.” Derek bent and gave me a quick peck on the lips before he followed the others toward the back door. I watched him walk away then flushed and started transferring slices of pizza into a single box when I caught Shannon ’s eye. She grinned.
No sooner had the back door closed and the crawlspace door creaked open outside, than we heard a door close inside the house, as well. A moment later, Ricky shuffled around the corner and into the kitchen. And although it was difficult to see his face behind all the hair, he did seem a little pale. Shannon and Paige exclaimed when they saw him and started flitting around to see what they could do for him, which must have served to make poor Ricky feel even more uncomfortable and embarrassed.
I turned to Josh. “I came across your prom photos in the Weekly when I was in town just now.”
“My prom photos?” He reached for the pieces of copy paper I pulled out of my bag and unfolded them while he continued, “Why would you want to see my prom photos?”
“I wasn’t really looking for them. Venetia Rudolph, our next-door neighbor, told us there were squatters in the crawlspace two years ago. I was looking for information about that, and then I came across the article about the prom.”
Josh nodded, grinning at the photographs. “The Weekly does an article about the prom every year. Hey, Shannon, do you ever hear from Alan Whitaker? What’s he up to these days?”
“The University of Kentucky,” Shannon said over her shoulder, still busy ministering to Ricky. “Baseball scholarship.”
“Ri-i-i-ght.” Josh drew the word out, sarcastically. I could tell he didn’t really like Alan Whitaker. Josh, while adorable in his lanky, bespectacled, brainy way, didn’t quite have the golden-boy appeal of the blonde and athletic pseudo-Norse god in the photograph. Shannon rolled her eyes but didn’t answer. Josh flipped through the stack of other articles while he was at it.