Make No Bones

Those who didn't know Miranda glanced around them for cues on how to respond. Those who knew her laughed, or groaned, or shook their heads.

'In conclusion, folks, you have to admit that this is a pretty appropriate windup for a teacher of anthropology. So, when you get back home, remember us in your wills. There'll always be a place for you in the Central Oregon Museum of Natural History.'

The laughter now was more general. “Don't get any ideas,” Julie said to Gideon. “I'm not about to be the widow of a museum case, no matter how beautifully laid out.'

'Ali, but there are advantages,” said the spare, fiftyish man on Julie's other side. “I had a woman once—I speak figuratively, you understand—who donated her husband's skeleton—he'd died under somewhat ambiguous circumstances—to our lab on the condition that she be allowed to visit him monthly. She did, too. We'd pull out the drawer for her and she'd sit down and look at him for a while. We always made sure he was quite attractively displayed. After half an hour she'd leave, always with a sad, thoughtful smile.'

Julie's mouth curled downward just a little.

'Personally,” the man went on, “I've always been convinced she poisoned him. I suppose she needed the periodic reassurance that he was really dead.'

'That's really touching, Leland,” Gideon said. “That's a wonderful story.'

'But seriously now,” the man said, wide-eyed behind heavy, plastic-rimmed glasses. “Surely you wouldn't deny the world the bones of America's Skeleton Detective, the ‘Quincy’ of the bone labs, the darling of the media?'

Gideon laughed. Leland was Leland. It was the way he was made, and you couldn't take what he said personally.

The pale-eyed, amber-mustached Leland Vernon Roach was another of Jasper's students. Unlike Miranda he'd managed to complete his doctorate, but like her his main interests had strayed from the forensic. In Leland's case they were in the direction of the relatively new science of coprolite analysis—the study of fossilized excrement to determine food content and eating habits.

Once, when Gideon had asked him how it was that he'd gotten into so arcane a subfield, Leland had shrugged. “You happen to like bones,” he'd said with his prissy, exquisite diction. “I happen to like shit.” Gideon still didn't know if he'd meant it to be funny.

Now he clapped the smaller man lightly on the shoulder. “I'll give it some serious thought, Leland,” he said. “Assuming I can talk Julie into it.'

Julie muttered something as they moved on to the next exhibit with the others.

'What?'

She arranged her mouth to speak with Lelandlike precision.

'Fat,” she said, “chance.'

[Back to Table of Contents]

CHAPTER 4

* * * *

Gideon was shaving the next morning, listening to Julie tell him from the shower about her plans for the day— she was driving to the Lava Butte Geological Area south of Bend to talk shop with the head ranger—when the telephone rang.

'Gideon, this is Miranda. Something peculiar's come up. Would you mind skipping the first session today?'

He had glanced at the schedule a few minutes before. The first session was Recent Developments in Quantitative Microradiography and Histomorphometric Analysis.

'Urn, I think I could manage that,” he said. “What's come up?'

'Albert Evan Jasper's disappeared.'

It took a second to make any sense at all of this. “I don't—what did you say?'

'His skeleton—it's missing.'

'Missing?'

'It's been stolen.'

'Stolen?'

Miranda's sigh crackled in his ear. “As wildly enchanting as this conversation is, I need to break it off and make some more calls. I want to get the FMs together. Meet in the lounge in half an hour? I'll have coffee and stuff sent in.'

'Yes, sure, be there.” He hung up, replaying the brief conversation. Now how the hell could...

'Who was that, Gideon?” Julie called.

'Miranda,” he said, walking abstractedly back to the bathroom. He used a towel to dab shaving cream from under his ear. “Jasper's skeleton is missing.'

The shower door opened. Julie stuck her head out, looking puzzled.

'Missing?'

* * * *