Mim asked,“How do they know the man was white?”
“Well, Mrs. Sanburne, determining race from skeletal remains can actually be a little tricky sometimes. We’re all much more alike than we are different. The races have more in common than they have dissimilarities. You could say that race has more to do with culture than physical attributes. However, forensics starts by considering the bone structure and skeletal proportions of a specimen. Specifically, the amount of projection of the cheekbones, the width of the nasal aperture, and the shape and distance between the eye sockets. Another factor is the amount of projection of the jaw. For instance, a white man’s jaw is generally less prominent than a black man’s is. Prognathism is the term for the way the jaw figures more prominently in the faces of those of African descent. There is also in many white skeletons the presence of an extra seam in the skull, which extends from the top of the nasal arch to the top of the head. Perhaps even more helpful is the amount of curvature in the long bones, especially the femur, of an individual. A white person’s skeleton tends to have more twisting in the neck or head of the femur.”
“Amazing.”
“Yes, it is,” the sheriff agreed.
“Thank you,” Mim said politely, and hung up the phone.
“Well?” Cooper asked.
“She didn’t succumb to the vapors.” Rick referred to the Victorian ladies’ habit of fainting upon hearing unwelcome news. “Let’s run over to Kimball Haynes’s. I want to see him away from Oliver Zeve. Oliver will shut him down if he can.”
“Boss, the director of Monticello isn’t going to obstruct justice. I know that Oliver walks a tightrope up there, but he’s not a criminal.”
“No, I don’t think so either, but he’s so supersensitive about this. He’ll put the crimp on Kimball somehow, and I think Kimball is the one person who can lead us to the killer.”
“I think it’s Medley Orion.”
“How often have I told you not to jump to conclusions?”
“Eleventy million times.” She rolled her big blue eyes. “Still do it though.”
“Still right most of the time too.” He kicked at her as she walked by to stub out her cigarette. “Well, I happen to agree. It was Medley or a boyfriend, father, somebody close to her. If we could just find the motive—Kimball knows the period inside and out and he’s got a feel for the people.”
“Got the bug.”
“Huh?”
“Harry told me that Kimball eats and sleeps this case.”
“Harry—next she’ll have the cat and dog on it too.”
31
The night air, cool and deep, carried stories to Tucker’s nose. Deer followed the warm air currents, raccoons prowled around Monticello, a possum reposed on a branch of the Carolina silver-bell near the terrace which Mrs. Murphy, like Kimball, thought of as a boardwalk. Overhead, bats flew in and out of the tulip poplar, the purple beech, and the eaves of the brick house.
“I’m glad Monticello has bats.” Mrs. Murphy watched the small mammals dart at almost right angles when they wanted.
“Why?” Tucker sat down.
“Makes this place less august. After all, when Thomas Jefferson lived here, it probably didn’t look like this. The trees couldn’t have been this grand. The garbage had to go somewhere—know what I mean?—and it must have been filled with noises. Now there’s a reverential silence except for the shuffling of human feet on the tours.”
“It must have been fun, all the grandchildren, the slaves calling to one another, the clanging in the smithy, the neighing of the horses. I can imagine it, and I can envision a bright corgi accompanying Mr. Jefferson on his rides.”
“Dream on. If he had dogs out with him, they would have been big dogs—coach dogs or hunting dogs.”
“Like Dalmatians?” Tucker’s ears dropped for a moment as she considered her spotted rival.“He wouldn’t have owned Dalmatians. I think he had corgis. We’re good herding dogs and we could have been useful.”
“Then you would have been out with the cattle.”
“Horses.”
“Cattle.”
“Oh, what do you know? Next you’ll say a cat sat by Jefferson’s elbow when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.”
Mrs. Murphy’s whiskers twitched.“No cat would ever have allowed the phrase ‘All men are created equal’ to pass. Not only are all men not created equal, cats aren’t created equal. Some cats are more equal than others, if you know what I mean.”
“He wrote it in Philadelphia. Maybe that affected his brain.” Tucker giggled.
“Philadelphia was a beautiful city then. Parts of it are still beautiful, but it just got too big, you know. All of our cities got too big. Anyway, it’s absurd to plunk an idea like that down on parchment. Men aren’t equal. And we know for sure that women aren’t equal. They weren’t even considered at the time.”
“Maybe he meant equal under the law.”
“That’s a farce. Ever see a rich man go to jail? I take that back. Every now and then a Mafia don gets marched to the slammer.”
“Mrs. Murphy, how could Thomas Jefferson have dreamed of the Mafia? When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, only a million people lived in the thirteen colonies and they were mostly English, Irish, Scottish, and German, and, of course, African from the various tribes.”
“Don’t forget the French.”
“Boy, were they stupid. Had the chance to grab the whole New World and blew it.”
“Tucker, I didn’t know you were a Francophobe.”
“They don’t like corgis. The Queen of England likes corgis, so I think the English are the best.”
“Jefferson didn’t.” The cat’s silken eyebrows bobbed up and down.
“Not fair. George III was mental. The whole history of the world might have been different if he’d been right in the head.”
“Yeah, but you could pick out any moment in history and say that. What would have happened if Julius Caesar had listened to his wife, Calpurnia, on March fifteenth, when she begged him not to go to the Forum? Beware the Ides of March. What would have happened if Catherine the Great’s attempt onher looney-tunes husband’s life had failed and she was killed instead? Moments. Turning points. Every day there’s a turning point somewhere with someone. I think the creation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gets my vote as most important.”
Tucker stood up and inhaled.“I pick the founding of the Westminster Dog Show. Say, do you smell that?”
Mrs. Murphy lifted her elegant head.“Skunk.”
“Let’s go back in the house. If I see her, then I’ll chase her and you know what will happen. The odor of skunk in Monticello.”
“I think it would be pretty funny myself. I wonder if Jefferson would like the idea of his home being a museum. I bet he’d rather have it filled with children and laughter, broken pottery and wornout furniture.”
“He would, but Americans need shrines. They need to see how their great people lived. They didn’t have indoor plumbing. Fireplaces were the only source of heat in the winter. No washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, or televisions.”
“The last would be a blessing.” Mrs. Murphy’s voice dripped disdain.
“No telephones, telegraphs, fax machines, automobiles, airplanes …”
“Sounds better and better.” The cat brushed up against the dog.“Quiet except for natural sounds. Just think, people actually sat down and really talked to one another. They were under an obligation to entertain one another with their conversational abilities. You know what people do today? They sit in their living room or family room—isn’t that a dumb word? Every room is a family room—they sit there with the television on and if they talk they talk over the sound of the boob tube.”
“Oh, Mrs. Murphy, they can’t all be that crude.”
“Humph,” the cat replied. She did not consider the human animal the crown of creation.