Serendipity Green (24 page)

“No we don't. No options at all.”

With no major snowstorm imminent, Bittinger's Hardware is empty. They find the Bittinger boy hunkered over the counter. There's a stack of unruly blueprints in front of him. “Hey!” he calls out when the bell on the door dingles. “Serendipity man!”

“Bone Head!” Howie Dornick answers as he and his woman make their way up the garden tool aisle. “Blueprints? You expanding?”

“Diversifying,” says the Bittinger boy. “Two national home improvements chains are going in north of town. Opening just in time to steal half of our spring business. In the hardware game spring is like Christmas. Hence, diversification.”

“To what?” asks Katherine Hardihood.

“Anything but hardware,” the Bittinger boy says. He shows them the plans. “We're going to divide the building into three separate stores. Put walls in here and here. The hardware business will be here on the left—luckily there are still a few old-timers left who wouldn't be caught dead in one of those chain stores—and this space in the middle is going to be a gift shop.”

“The world sure needs another one of those,” Howie Dornick says.

“Not just any gift shop,” the Bittinger boy says. “A year-round Christmas shop with all handmade imported ornaments. Imported chocolates, too.”

Katherine Hardihood lowers her librarian's finger to the blueprint. “And this shop on the end?”

“Espresso bar,” says the Bittinger boy. “Muffins. Bagels. The markup on that stuff is incredible. I figure we can draw students and professors from the college.” He pulls another blueprint from the bottom of the stack. “I took dad's life insurance and bought the old A&P store next door. Been empty for about ten years. If I can swing a loan from the bank—which is unlikely given that
two
home improvement chains are opening—I'm going to open a gourmet grocery. All organically grown fruits and vegetables. Range-fed beef. Imported beers. Herbal medicines. A grocery is a big risk, though. One of the Bittinger family rules is never stock perishables. Nails and screws have one helluva lot longer shelf life than tangerines imported from Spain. But we'll see what the bank says.”

“Well, good luck on the diversification,” Howie Dornick says. “Now, what about our bones?”

The Bittinger boy puts his blueprints away and lifts the box of bones to the countertop. “This is going to knock your socks off,” he says. In a few minutes of silent work he has the two skeletons laid out, every bone in its proper place. He begins his analysis, exuding the confidence of a real forensic anthropologist, of a real hardware man: “First, it's a shame I couldn't have examined the skeletons
in situ
—at the grave site. The environment around a skeleton often tells you as much as the bones themselves. But not to worry, the bones tell us plenty. First, we can say with certainty that the larger skeleton is that of an adult woman. See the skull here? And the jaw? Adult female bones remain smooth after puberty. Males skulls are much rougher where the muscles insert. And look at the chin. A pointed chin like this usually implies a female, too But that's not all. See the pubis bone down here? Male pubis bones are triangular. Female pubis bones are more rectangular, like this one, to accommodate a larger pelvic inlet—see here—for childbearing. And see this scarring on the pubis? Evidence she gave birth. As to her age, I'd guess late teens, early twenties. No signs of wear or disease. Healthy teeth, too. All in all, what we've got here is a young adult woman, five foot-two, hundred and ten pounds, gave birth to at least one child.”

Katherine Hardihood loves all these facts. She is also anxious. “But is it our Pogawedka?”

The Bittinger boy ignores her: “Now the little skeleton. Given the development of the skull—see how these frontal bones are still separated and how these teeth haven't erupted yet—it's safe to say we've got an infant here. Not a newborn, mind you, but a child of, say, twenty-eight, thirty months.”

“Boy?” asks Katherine Hardihood.

“No way to tell. Simply too young for gender identification. Or racial identification.”

“Coulda been a girl then,” says Howie Dornick.

“And half white,” says Katherine Hardihood.

The Bittinger boy ignores them. “So what we have is a young adult woman and an infant who both died of severe head trauma.”

“A clubbing?” asks Katherine Hardihood.

The Bittinger boy runs his fingers over the skulls. “Certainly something big and blunt and swung with great force. Not just once but several times. Look at all these fractures. Lots of missing pieces. These weren't pretty murders.” He now runs his finger along the adult female's arm bones. “And look at these fractures. She fought like hell. For a long time. Not pretty murders at all.”

The Bittinger boy starts putting the bones back in the box. “Now you told me, Mr. Dornick, that you found these skeletons buried on top of another grave.”

Katherine Hardihood answers for her man. “On top of Seth Aitchbone's grave. Seth was the son of Jobiah and Almira Aitchbone. He died in 1807 at age 22. Apparently unmarried.”

“And how far down did you find them?” asks the Bittinger boy.

“About four feet,” Howie Dornick answers for himself.

“And was there any sign of a coffin? Old nails? Fragments of rotted wood? Discolored soil?”

“Don't know about discolored soil,” Howie Dornick answers, “but there weren't any nails or old wood or anything.”

The Bittinger boy plays with his inherited hardware man's chin. “Just the fact that these skeletons were buried two feet above ol' Seth implies they were buried after he was. Still, there's also evidence they died first.”

Katherine Hardihood is flabbergasted by this fact. “First?”

“Maybe a year or more,” says the Bittinger boy. “Before these two were buried they laid out in the open for quite a while. He pokes at the dirt clinging to the inside of the woman's skull. “See that? Petrified beetle pupa. Insects don't burrow more than an inch or two below ground. These bodies decomposed above ground. There are signs of insect infestation everywhere. And tooth marks where rodents gnawed. And look here, half of the infant's left foot is missing. More than likely carried away by a fox or something.” He holds up the woman's femur to the light. “Most interesting of all is this. See that? On the dirt there? That's the impression of cloth. Rough Cloth. Burlap I'd say. These bones not only laid out in the open for a long time. They also laid in a sack for a long time. Meaning—”

Katherine Hardihood understands the meaning: “Meaning that Seth Aitchbone found and kept the bones of the woman and child he loved, and when he died, some member of his family, somebody who knew how much he loved them, buried them with him.”

This unprofessional conclusion makes the Bittinger boy squirm. “Well, I can't say it means all that, of course. But it does mean they were gathered up sometime after their deaths and kept in a sack and then buried on top of ol' Seth.”

Katherine Hardihood is not finished drawing conclusions: “So the Tuttwyler brothers clubbed Pogawedka and Kapusta, or whatever their real names were, and Seth Aitchbone after a long agonizing search finds their bones and keeps them hidden away in a sack, under his bed maybe, or up in the rafters. And when he dies of a broken heart, his mother, or maybe one of his five brothers—though it's hard to imagine any Aitchbone man having that kind of compassion—secretly buries the bones in his grave, in the middle of the night, so no one else knows. And there Seth and Pogawedka and little Kapusta lie together in eternal peace, until Bill Aitchbone sells the family farm to developers.”

“And sends me like some lackey ghoul to re-plant them,” says Howie Dornick.

“I wish you hadn't re-planted ol' Seth,” says the Bittinger boy. After the surprise on Katherine Hardihood's face fades he explains. “If this scenario of yours is true, then it might also be important how he died—other than from a broken heart.”

Katherine Hardihood splays her librarian's fingers across her bony librarian's chest. “You mean the Tuttwyler brothers might have murdered Seth, too?”

“Didn't say that,” says the Bittinger boy. “Maybe he murdered himself.”

“Of course! Suicide!” says Katherine Hardihood. “That would prove everything, wouldn't it.”

“Like what?” asks Howie Dornick.

“That he loved this woman and her child,” his woman says. “That he couldn't bear living next to the evil brothers who killed them, who weren't brought to justice just because their victims were Indians. Jiminy Cricket, Howard, we've got to dig Seth back up and prove he killed himself.”

“Oh no!” says Howie Dornick.

“Oh yes!” says Katherine Hardihood.

“Sorry, Mr. Dornick, but I think we should, too,” says the Bittinger boy. “We're already breaking a zillion state laws. We might as well go whole hog for the truth.”

“Of course whole hog,” repeats Katherine Hardihood.

The Bittinger boy holds up Pogawedka's skull. “If it's the truth you're after—the real truth and not just all those conclusions you're jumping to—then hold onto your underwear. See these recessive cheekbones? And the length of this face? And the nasal passage? And this overbite here? This is not the skull of an Indian woman. This is the skull of a white woman. With 93% certainty at least.”

Katherine reaches out for something to hang onto other than her underwear, finding only a revolving rack of flower seeds, which spins to the floor, packets of zinnias and marigolds flying. “White woman? The Tuttwyler brothers killed a white woman?”

The Bittinger boy is nodding proudly. “With 93% certainty they did. So, when do we exhume ol' Seth, folks?”

Howie Dornick drops Katherine Hardihood off at her two-bedroom ranch on Oak Street, then drives home to his two-story frame on South Mill. There is no moon. No stars. No passing cars. No lights in his neighbors' windows. Only February clouds and the dirty glow of the streetlight.

As he grinds up the driveway he sees someone on the porch. He hopes it is Hugh Harbinger. He fears it is Bill Aitchbone. It turns out to be Charles Pasquinade, American correspondent for the French arts magazine,
Fiel
. “It gets cold in Ohio, does it not?” says Charles Pasquinade.

Pasquinade, of course, wants an interview. All of Paris has lost its senses over Serendipity Green®. Even the nuns are wearing it, he says. Howie Dornick leads him to the kitchen table and pours him a glass of grapefruit juice.

“So tell me,” Pasquinade begins, tiny tape recorder pointed at Howie's tired face, “did you paint your house this color out of your love for mankind or your hate for it? Or merely out of your ambivalence?”

After Pasquinade leaves Howie takes his checkbook out of the refrigerator freezer, where it is hidden behind a huge bag of frozen waffles, and writes the Bittinger boy a check for $100,000. He puts it in an envelope with a note:

Dear Bone Head,

You're as much to blame for Serendipity Green® as me. Good luck with the gourmet grocery.

Howie

“You know I believe in the truth more than anything,” Katherine Hardihood says. She has just settled into the huge chair and the leather is still cold.

Dr. Pirooz Aram is chasing the last drop of espresso in his demitasse with his little finger. “That is what I like about you more than anything else, Katherine.”

“I'm a fraud,” she confesses.

There is a sweetness in the doctor's eyes as he walks toward her on his knees. “Boool-shit! I suppose you also want me to believe that the world is not round? By the way, did you know that the great Persian physicist Abu ar-Rayham al-Biruni calculated the diameter of the earth a thousand years before John Glenn learned to ride his bicycle?”

She lets him take her hands. She tells him about her skullduggery with Howie Dornick and the Bittinger boy; how they found not the bones of an Indian woman and an Indian baby, but the bones of a white woman and a white baby; how this unexpected discovery has upset her applecart but good.

“A little applecart upsetting is good for the soul,” says Dr. Aram.

“But the truth I was sure I'd find was not the truth I found,” she says. “And now if I tell that truth, Squaw Days will be kaput. Everybody in Tuttwyler will hate me.”

“What is so wrong about being hated for telling the truth? It will put you in some very exclusive company.”

As Katherine laughs, Dr. Aram pulls her from the chair, and humming “Yankee Doodle,” he dances her around the office. “Dammit, Katherine! Listen to me! If you found a truth other than the one you were looking for, then the one you were looking for was not the truth at all. Was it? And if you had told anyone that un-true truth, it would have been a lie! Are you following this? I find that sometimes American minds cannot keep up with a first-class Persian mind.”

“I'm keeping up.”

“Good! Now keep up some more! If you had told this lie that you thought was the truth, people might have been happy for a while. But sooner or later they would realize your lie
was
a lie. And they would be very angry. And they would hate you anyway! So, Katherine! Tell them the true truth you have found, and then to hell with them.”

“I guess you're right.”

“All these years I have been taking your money and you
guess
I'm right? Katherine! Know it! Know it! Now tell me, are you and this Howie Dornick still having fun in bed? Yes?”

20

D. William Aitchbone drives north as fast as he can, to catch the last flight of the night to Washington. Victoria Bonobo is next to him, her seductive face sideways on the headrest, her fingers playing with the epaulet of his Burberry. He does not know whether he will copulate with her tonight or not. If he does, the VP will come to Squaw Days and make it a big success, and ensure his election as mayor, an office from which he can launch a successful campaign for Congress. If he doesn't, Squaw Days will be stuck with the secretary of some worthless department. And that won't be the end of it. Vicki will vote against every bill he wants the village council to pass, making him look weak and out of touch with voters. Copulating with the wife of Bud Weideman didn't ruin Donald Grinspoon's marriage. He sold enough Weideman boots to buy a condo in Florida! And Karen already thinks he's copulating with Victoria Bonobo, anyway! So he might as well! But can he? He loves Karen to bits.