A Skeleton in the Family (23 page)

D
eborah and Madison had stopped by Darrow's, a local temple to the art of chicken pot pies, so all I had to do was pull out the leftover salad from the night before and dinner was taken care of. Madison had enjoyed her day of having a real job, especially flirting with various comely young men while Deborah did the actual work. I wasn't worried—I knew my sister wouldn't put up with loafing for long, and would soon have Madison earning her pay. And having a daughter who could pick locks could come in handy.

Deborah was in a good mood, too, because Fletcher had run a nice piece on her extra-careful methods of investigating employees, and that cop she knew had even thrown in a quote about her integrity. As a result, she wasn't going to lose a thing from her competitor's woes. In fact, she was picking up business as his monitoring clients switched to her.

After our early dinner, we took Byron out for a walk in the brisk fall afternoon, kicking at fallen leaves and wondering when the first snow of the year would fall. While we walked, Fletcher called on my cell to apologize once again for canceling at the last minute and promised to make it up to Madison and me—both chocolate and ice cream were mentioned. Plus he had me thank Deborah for her interview. We all agreed he was a great guy.

Back at the house, I whipped up hot chocolate for the humans and pulled out the last rawhide chew for Byron. Deborah and I didn't argue once.

It would have been a perfect afternoon and evening if I hadn't kept thinking of Sid up in the attic alone. No matter how many times I told myself that it was his own choice, I still felt like a heel.

So, despite what Sid had said earlier, I had every intention of visiting him once Madison was asleep, but I found a note on my pillow, presumably left while we were all out with the dog.

Borrowed a couple of books from your parents' office. Planning to read all evening. Don't come up.

I should have gone up anyway, but it was late and I was tired and, truth be told, relieved that I was going to be able to get to bed at a reasonable hour. So I took him at his word and turned in for the night.

I did leave my laptop outside my bedroom in case Sid wanted to borrow it again, but the next morning I could tell it hadn't been disturbed. I shrugged and got the week started.

In handing out the essays to my first class, I felt guilty all over again because of Sid's good job proofing them. That was why I started work on his list of possibilities when I went to the adjunct office afterward. I got lucky and eliminated three more names in an hour.

Next up on the list was the contentious Alan/Allen Reece, and I decided the first thing I needed to do was confirm the spelling of his name. In the 1980 yearbook, it was definitely Alan in the sophomore-class listing, but when I went through the activities section, I found Allen Reece was a member of Film Fans and the Computer Connection. I went back to the 1979 edition—it was Allen in both the class listing and the club membership rosters, plus Allen worked tech in a production of
The Night Is My Enemy
.

Sid was right.

But how had he known? If he'd checked those other places, he'd have told me so. All he'd had to go by was the sophomore yearbook listing.

I looked down the list of names in his database, and didn't see a single other name misspelled, even though there were two other Alans, one Allan, an Allen, and even an Aleyn. Obviously Sid wasn't automatically changing the spelling on all versions of the name.

I went to the yearbooks where he'd found those other names and compared. In each of those five other instances, Sid had spelled the names exactly as they'd appeared in the yearbooks. I picked more names at random, and most of those matched the yearbook, too. The only exception was where a guy named Robert had his name misspelled as Rboert in the yearbook, and in that case, Sid had noted the discrepancy.

It was as if he'd known that A-L-L-E-N was the proper spelling without even thinking about it. Just as he'd known about passwords even though that had hardly been common knowledge back in his day; just as he'd known the word zooarchaeology, which I'd never heard before, despite being around academia my whole life. Maybe Sid had known Allen Reece. Or maybe Sid was Allen Reece.

Maybe I'd found him at last.

I
was staring at the picture of Allen Reece, trying to decide if he looked the way I thought Sid would have looked, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey!” Fletcher said, leaning down to give me a kiss. “Here's the first part of my apology for missing dinner the other night.” He placed a sparkly pink gift bag, complete with sparkly pink tissue paper peeking out, on my desk.

“You didn't have to do that.”

“I wanted to. The wrapping is leftover from my niece's birthday—hope you don't mind.”

“I had no idea sparkle technology had improved so much since Madison went through that phase. Can I open it now?”

“Please.” He rolled his desk chair over and sat to watch.

I ventured in among the sparkles and pulled out a silvery tin, shaped vaguely like a skeleton, with a purple skeleton embossed on the top. At first I had a crazy thought that he'd found out about Sid, but then realized it must be a reference to my bringing a skeleton to school. I chuckled to show my appreciation, and since the tin was too heavy to be empty, pried it open. Inside was a luscious assortment of chocolates. “What time is it?”

“Just after eleven. Why?”

“I'm trying to decide if I'll spoil my lunch if I eat one now.”

“Live dangerously! And speaking of lunch, if you don't have other plans, I'd like to take you out.”

“If I did, I'd change them.” I carefully selected a dark chocolate morsel, hoping it held something yummy. It did, and I sighed happily. “Now you take one.”

He went for a milk chocolate. “I've got reservations for us at twelve fifteen.”

“Reservations for lunch?” Very few of the places I frequented even took reservations for dinner. “Am I dressed okay?”

“You always look wonderful.”

“You're laying it on mighty thick,” I said, “but I like that in a man.”

“Good.” He leaned forward for another kiss, and I heard a smattering of applause from some of the other adjuncts. I was a little embarrassed, but Fletcher went with it. He even bowed, and returned a salute from Charles.

Sara, who'd come in when I was busy, neither applauded nor saluted. She just looked dyspeptic. Since I figured I had her to blame for spreading the news that lead to somebody breaking into my house, I hoped she had an upset stomach for the rest of the semester.

Fletcher said, “I've got a little work to do before lunch, so you can go back to what you were doing.” He wheeled back to his desk and pulled out his laptop.

I looked at the picture of Allen again, enlarging it as much as I could. Allen had been lanky, though maybe he'd have filled out later on. His hair was dark, and he had a strong nose and nice eyes. I wouldn't have called him gorgeous—he wasn't as handsome as Fletcher—but he was good-looking in an unfinished, college-student kind of way. But he didn't look familiar.

The sophomore yearbook was the last one in which he appeared, so I started hunting for more mentions of him, either associated with JTU or Film Fans or any computer-programming organization I could find. There was nothing. Then I looked at the local paper's Web site, but their online archives didn't go back that far. If only I had a newspaper specialist nearby . . .

“Fletcher?” I said. “Can I pick your brain?”

“Sure.”

“I'm trying to find information about a guy who was a student at JTU in nineteen eighty, but there's nothing online, so I'm stuck. Any suggestions?”

“You could go to the North Ashfield Public Library, where they probably have dusty files or, if you're really lucky, nearly legible microfiche versions.”

“Joy,” I said weakly.

“Or you could access one of the online newspaper archive sites designed for genealogists and amateur historians, and hope there's one that includes the
North Ashfield Times
. Of course, you'll have to pay a fee.”

“How big a fee?”

“It varies pretty widely. Or, best of all, you could find a friendly reporter who has a friend at the
North Ashfield Times
who would be willing to check their files.”

“I like that last one.”

“Of course, that would also require a fee. Of sorts.” He waggled his eyebrows, presumably going for lascivious.

“What kind of fee?”

“I'm sure we can work something out.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. “Give me the name, and I'll call my friend.”

“Allen Reece: A-L-L-E-N R-E-E-C-E. Or possibly A-L-A-N. He was a sophomore in nineteen eighty, but I don't know if he actually graduated.”

Fletcher called his friend, and the friend promised to have something to him that afternoon.

“You're amazing,” I said.

“Reporters like to trade favors. He does this, and I give him a heads-up on something sometime.” Then, ever so casually, he said, “So what's the story on this Allen Reece guy? Anything for me?”

“No wonder you were willing to lend a hand.” Before he could insist that he'd done so purely for the pleasure of helping me, I said, “There's no story, just curiosity. If that changes, I'll let you know.”

“Fair enough.”

By then it was time to leave for lunch, and he escorted me to his car to drive us to the River Inn, the nicest place in town. It's not gourmet dining by Boston or New York standards, but it's got staid New England charm, wonderful food, and enormous portions. The Yankee pot roast and sweet potatoes smelled too good to pass up, and I figured I could take the leftovers home. I would have, too, if there'd been any.

“How are you enjoying crime reporting?” I asked Fletcher.

“It's a lot more exciting than soccer tourneys,” he said. “Catching the murderers was really satisfying—the cops were high-fiving everybody in sight. There aren't that many murders in Pennycross, and they were afraid they'd blow it.”

“Are they sure the burglars killed that woman?”

“No doubt about it. The guys haven't confessed to it, mind you—they're saying they didn't go near her house.”

“Isn't it odd that they broke into a place with a burglar alarm? I thought their M.O. was to target places without security systems.”

“How did you know Kirkland had an alarm?”

Oops. “Read it in the paper, I guess.”

“Not in any of my articles.”

“Maybe on TV?”

He looked a touch perturbed, but went on. “The guys' lawyer is saying the same thing, but nobody buys it.”

I felt kind of bad for the burglars. They were thieves, but they weren't murderers. I just didn't know how I could convince the police of that without bringing Sid into the conversation. Hopefully their lawyer was good enough to make a case for them—even if they were thieves, there wouldn't be any evidence tying them to Kirkland's house.

Fletcher said, “I don't know if you want to tell Madison this, but it's possible that these guys weren't the ones who broke into your house. They had an alibi for that afternoon—they were installing a system at a house across town, and the homeowner was with them the whole time.”

“The police did speculate that it might be somebody who thought the house was empty. We'll stay on guard, just in case.”

“And if you should feel the need for a man around the house . . .”

I tried not to make a face. I'd received so many similar offers in the past, men thinking that because I was a single mother surely I needed a big, strong man to protect me. Instead I just said, “I'll keep that in mind.”

Conversation wandered down other paths, and we had such a nice time that I really regretted having to say, “This has been lovely, but I've got classes to teach.”

“Can't you blow them off?” Fletcher coaxed. “We could go over to my place for a while. . . .”

I smiled, though honestly I thought that was a bit pushy. We hadn't been dating that long yet. “I can't. If I don't show, I don't get paid.”

He took it gracefully enough, and admitted he had some work he needed to do at the
Gazette
. So he drove me back to McQuaid, and I thanked him for our lunch with what I judged to be one of my better kisses. Since he repeated his suggestion about indulging in afternoon delight, I daresay he agreed, but I turned him down again.

Two dreary sessions of English comp later, I was wishing I'd taken Fletcher up on his offer. Students argued with the corrections I'd made on their work and disputed my description of what they were supposed to have turned in. One indignant student stridently insisted that he'd e-mailed me his essay on time and it had to be my fault that I hadn't received it.

Feeling more than a little aggravated, I stayed in the classroom long enough to boot up my laptop and check my e-mail while the student watched. No paper. I felt that after then looking in my spam filter and scanning every file on my computer, I could authoritatively say I'd never received his paper, but then he had to pull out his laptop to prove that he'd sent it. Except that he'd sent it to the wrong e-mail address, which he should have realized—I always send a confirmation that I've received an essay via e-mail.

A tussle ensued. He asserted that since he'd finished and e-mailed the essay a whole ten minutes before the deadline, he should get full credit. I reminded him that the rule was that a paper had to be
received
on time. I agreed to accept the essay if he sent it to me on the spot, and he agreed to accept an automatic ten-point deduction to his score.

When I checked to make sure the essay had actually arrived in my e-mail box, I found a note from Fletcher's friend at the
North Ashfield Times
. If I could give him a fax number, he'd send over the information he'd found, but he was leaving the office at five o'clock.

I checked my watch. Four forty. If I ran for it, I had just enough time to get to my parents' office, with their personal fax machine. I got there at four forty-eight, called the
Times
reporter, and breathlessly gave him the fax number. A minute later, pages started churning out, and I sat down to read them.

Then I read them again.

I was convinced.

Sid was Allen Reece.