Twenty-Seven Bones

an eye on him, make sure he didn’t steal any of Andy’s stuff.

But the big bulvon was surprisingly graceful on his Hush Puppies as he explored the A-frame, meticulous about replacing every tchatchke and objet he picked up, including Andy’s bong, remarkably perceptive in his running monologue, and nowhere near as dumb as he looked-but then, he couldn’t have been, could he? Not and breathe.

He was looking for anything to indicate what Andy was up to before he left, Pender told her. What was the last thing he did, did he appear to have packed, did he leave any perishables around? And most importantly in a search like this one, Pender had added, he was looking for the hardest thing to find: what wasn’t there that should have been.

C. B. Dawson, Arena’s ex-girlfriend, would probably be able to answer that last question when she returned from her latest rain forest trek, Holly informed Pender. But she was able to tell him that if the unopened carton of Half amp; Half in the knee-high refrigerator, the new loaf of store-bought bread, and the ripe bananas were any indication, Andy didn’t appear to have been planning an extended absence.

How Holly segued from there to telling Pender her life story was something she wasn’t quite clear on. (The beauty part of an affective interview, Pender used to tell his students, was that if it was done right, the interviewee never even had to know it was taking place.)

“But you did know about Marley’s…condition before you moved down,” he prompted her. He didn’t want to use the term handicap or disability, lest she go off on him again.

“Yes-and I’d seen pictures. But it was still a shock, seeing him in person for the first time. That’s why I’m so sorry for tearing into you yesterday-I know what a…disconcerting experience it can be.”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Pender. “I expect better of myself.”

“Oh.” No arguing with that. “Anyway, I knew Dawnie would be okay in Big Sur-she’d be okay anywhere. But to take Marley away from St. Luke, where everybody’s known him since birth, where his handicap is hardly even noticed anymore, where he knows all the kids and they all know him-not to mention the fact that he almost never has to wear shoes here-for him wearing shoes is like us wearing boxing gloves. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Did you ever look into prosthetics?”

“Just long enough to find out how much they cost.”

“How much?”

“For what he’d need, between thirty and fifty thousand dollars apiece.”

Pender whistled low. “That’s a lot of massages.”

“Tell me about it,” said Holly, as the setting sun lit up the rain tree in the meadow on the other side of the lane like a great pink Japanese lantern.

7

After the formal identification of Hokey’s body, Lewis accompanied Chief Coffee back to headquarters, where he allowed the lovely Layla to take a DNA sample. If she hadn’t been the chief’s daughter, Lewis would have suggested a few more interesting ways for her to extract her sample. As it was, he settled for having the inside of his cheek swabbed for epithelial cells.

There was of course no danger of Lewis’s DNA betraying him. The test could only bear out his story: that the widower had made love to his wife on the last night of her life. Poor chappie.

Chief Coffee himself drove Lewis home afterward, though it was out of his way. Lewis expected to find the Great House torn apart, but the police had been unusually considerate, and Johnny Rankin had taken it upon himself to call in an extra housekeeper, so by the time Lewis returned, things were more or less back to normal.

Lewis didn’t think he was hungry, but when Johnny brought him a plate of sandwiches in the study, he surprised himself by absentmindedly gobbling them down, crusts and all, while he pored over the latest statements from his brokerage. What remained of his portfolio had taken a few more hits in the last several days. But now that the airport project would be going ahead, the losses weren’t nearly as painful.

It was a little like exploring a bad tooth with your tongue on the way to the dentist, Lewis thought as he washed down the last of the sandwiches with the last of the Red Stripe beer Johnny had poured out for him: knowing it would soon be over made the pain sort of enjoyable. And kept his mind off Hokey.

When Johnny returned to clear the tray, he asked Lewis if he wanted him to spen’ night. “It bein’ ya firs’ one alone, an’ all.”

“No, you go on home,” Lewis told him. “I think I’d rather be alone.”

“Good night, den, Mistah Lewis. An’ m’say again, sah, fa boat of us, how terrible, terrible sorry we boat are for ya loss. Dissa terrible, terrible t’ing, what hoppen. Sally, she say-”

Lewis cut him off. “Thank you, Johnny. See you tomorrow.”

“T’ank ya, sah. Dis a terrible-”

“A terrible, terrible t’ing-yes, I know. Good night, Johnny.”

Lewis felt Hokey’s absence more acutely when the Great House was empty. Struggle to suppress them as he might, the good memories started to flood his mind once he was alone. The honeymoon, the early years when the sex was still good, winning the mixed doubles tennis tournament at Blue Valley and dancing in the moonlight at the Champion’s Ball afterward.

And while Lewis was not superstitious, he did find himself looking around nervously as he wandered through the big empty mansion clutching a bottle of St. Luke Reserve by the neck and taking a slug every now and then. It wasn’t that he believed in ghosts-just a nagging what-if, a reluctance to enter a dark room, and a little voice in his ear whispering don’t turn around.

If Hokey did come back, she was going to be extremely pissed, thought Lewis, trying to josh himself out of his funk. And what a vengeful-looking spirit she’d make, that small head floating above that long neck, that whitish blond hair, that rabbity nose, and those buggedy eyes. And of course she’d be waving her stump and looking for her hand and-

What was that? Sounded like footsteps, out back by the patio.

Eh, eh, well me gad, and what poppyshow are you frettin’ yer-self over, me son? Ain’ no ghos’, ain’ no jumbies. A deadah is a deadah an’ dey don’ come back, Lewis reminded himself as he hurried into his bedroom.

The police had thoughtfully replaced his revolver in the nightstand drawer. Keeping a firearm by one’s pillow was both a right and a time-honored tradition among the Twelve Danish Families, and had been ever since the slave uprising that led to the emancipation of 1848. Lewis, dressed in the same rugby shirt and shorts he’d been wearing all day, checked the cylinder to make sure there was a round in the firing chamber, clicked off the safety, and crept softly out of the bedroom and down the back stairs.

The Epps were out by the pool, in bathing suits. The little Indonesian was nowhere to be seen-which didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding in the bushes someplace. If Lewis had learned one thing last night, it was never to take Bennie’s absence for granted.

“What are you two doing here?” he whispered, though the next nearest occupied dwellings after the overseer’s house were half a mile across the pasture to the north, where the ranch foreman and his family lived. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“It’s the most natural thing in the world,” said Emily, dipping a toe into the water lapping the top step at the shallow end of the pool. “We came over to pay a consolation call to our nearest neighbor-it would have been unnatural if we hadn’t. How’s your head?”

“A little sore.”

“Did you remember to smear some blood out here for the cops to find?”

“I did, they did.”

“Everything go smoothly?”

“Like guava jelly. How about you?”

“Five-minute interview with a Detective Hamilton. I’ve known more intelligent carp.” Emily started down the steps. When she was in the pool up to her waist, she turned, stooped, stretched out the neck of her black tank suit