Murder Bone by Bone Read Online Free PDF Page A

door. She was in the living room when I came back.
    “Hi, Liz. Hi, sweetie.” She came and took Moira out of my arms, and, contrary creature that she was, the baby beamed at her. Of course, Claudia was very comfortable-looking. Her gray hair was pulled back into a rather untidy braid, and her tall, queenly body was encased in one of her many brilliant muumuus. “I saw Drake drive away,” she continued, after suitably greeting Moira. “And some woman—young woman.” She said the word “young” with a slight emphasis, and looked a question at me. “What’s with those butcher’s rejects on the front porch? They for Barker?”
    I gestured her into the kitchen. “Come in here and have some tea while I check on the boys. It’s a long story.”
    Claudia loved the story; I knew she would. She wrote well-researched biographies of women she considered important: though scholarly enough to gain her the respect of her colleagues, they were also popular enough to provide her with a living, something the rest of us writers envied. I thought of my notes for the article I was writing for Organic Gardening . A week hadn’t seemed so long to wait before starting it; in fact, I had kind of thought I could just whip it out on Bridget’s computer in my spare time. Now I got a glimmering of how difficult that would be with four children around my neck. I wondered how Bridget had ever managed to produce anything, let alone her first novel, which would be published in two months.
    “You get all the luck,” Claudia said with envy. “Now you’ll be able to hear everything about the investigation. I bet this time Drake keeps you filled in.”
    “It’s not my idea of a good time.” I poured some more iced tea into Claudia’s glass and hit myself again, too. Stimulation would definitely be needed if I were to survive the week. “It’s hard enough to ride herd on all these kids without having to deal with the police and all.”
    “And that young woman. What’s her role here?”
    “She’s the anthropologist.”
    “Oh.” Claudia drank thoughtfully. “She and Drake seemed very . . . friendly.”
    “They met on a previous investigation. Dog bones, as it turns out.”
    “And these are truly human?”
    "That’s right.” I watched Moira play with the many strands of Claudia’s necklace. Why couldn’t she cuddle up to me like that? Admittedly I didn’t have Claudia’s advantage in the lap department, but it still didn’t seem fair.
    “Well, how long have they been buried? That seems to me to be the question.” Claudia frowned. “You know, I’ve lived in my same house for nearly thirty years, and I don’t remember anything like this happening. Of course—” she waved an inclusive arm— "it would be more likely to happen around here than in my neighborhood. It’s more respectable now, but all this used to be rental housing. Students, mostly. In fact, this place was a student rental until Emery and Bridget bought it ten or twelve years ago.” She fell silent, her lips moving a bit. “Twelve years,” she decided.
    “Dinah Blakely, the anthropologist, guessed between ten and twenty years for the bones. But she doesn’t really know how long, I think.”
    Claudia suddenly looked very fierce. “Drake doesn’t believe this has anything to do with Bridget or Emery, does he?”
    “At times like this, I know very little of what Drake is thinking.” I grinned at her. “But I doubt he suspects Bridget of knocking someone off and sticking them under the pavement. How is it that you remember so much about this neighborhood before Bridget and Emery? Your house is in Professorville.”
    Moira paused in her necklace play and assumed an expression of great concentration. Claudia patted her absently.
    “One of Alfred’s graduate students lived here for a while,” she said. “Let’s see, Jack was in elementary school—I think Carlie was, too. During the summer, before all the summer kids’ programs were available. This