ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * * *
The idea behind Make No Bones sprang from the wonderful “Mummies, Mayhem & Miseries” exhibit put on by the San Diego Museum of Man under Curator of Physical Anthropology Rose Tyson. Later, Dr. William D. Haglund, Chief Investigator, King County Medical Examiner's Office, took, a morning to help me work out a “perfect” murder (and then helped me solve it). Sergeant of Detectives Greg Brown filled me in on how things work in Deschutes County, Oregon. Dr. Ted Rathbun of the Anthropology Department, University of South Carolina, provided insight into the trickier aspects of reconstructing faces from skulls. Dr. Walter H. Birkby of the Anthropology Department, University of Arizona, spent a sunny hour beside a swimming pool cheerfully filling me in (so to speak) on the ins and outs of burial and exhumation.
I am extremely grateful to the tolerant and good-natured scientists of the Mountain, Desert & Coastal Forensic Anthropologists, who welcomed me among them at their 1990 annual meeting, and in particular to Dr. J. Stanley Rhine of the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, who first suggested the idea of a murder set at a gathering of forensic scientists, provided technical assistance at several points along the way, and helped me in even more ways than he knows.
[Back to Table of Contents]
CHAPTER 1
* * * *
* * * *
Nelson Halston Hobert, president of the National Society of Forensic Anthropology, Distinguished Services Professor of Human Biology at the University of Northern New Mexico, and at sixty-four the undisputed dean of American forensic anthropologists, frowned as he read the letter. The breakfast dishes had been cleared to one side, his third cup of coffee was freshly poured, and his morning pipe was newly lit and fragrant. His posture was one of thoughtful repose, his mood benign but troubled.
'Damn,” he murmured, “that's going to stir up a few old anxieties.'
Across the table from him his wife appraised him and found him wanting.
'You have something in your beard,” she told him in a matter-of-fact tone. “Banana bread, I believe.'
'Mm,” he said abstractedly, “I suppose.” He continued to read.
'Honestly,” Frieda Hobert said, not unfondly. She reached across the pile of mail and used the tip of her folded napkin to dab the offending crumb from her husband's bristly gray beard. Another flick removed a shred of tobacco from his old brown jogging suit. She looked him over once more, this time approvingly, and sat back satisfied.
If Hobert was aware of these attentions he gave no sign. “Miranda's set up this year's WAFA meeting,” he told her. “The week of June sixteenth.'
'You can't make it. Pru is getting married on the sixteenth. In Fort Lauderdale.'
'I know, but couldn't I—'
'Absolutely not. You were rooting around in Ethiopia when Vannie was married. You're not going to miss this one.” She dipped her chin and looked at him over the top of her plastic-rimmed glasses so he would know she meant it.
'No, I suppose I shouldn't,” he said reluctantly. “Well, we could see about flights out of Fort Lauderdale that evening—'
'Nellie, I am not sitting up in an airplane all night long, not after what is bound to be an exhausting day. We can leave the next day, after a good night's sleep. Believe me, WAFA will manage to survive without you for a day or two.
Nellie scratched his gleaming scalp and frowned. “Normally I'd have no doubt about that. But...all right, we'll get a flight the next day.'
The “we” was a foregone conclusion. For a dozen years, ever since she'd quit her job teaching, Frieda had accompanied him to his conferences and conventions. Occasionally this was annoying, but not often. She was extremely helpful on his trips, making airplane and hotel reservations, arranging his appointment calendar, even packing his clothes, and relieving him of a hundred bothersome details. He had become, he realized, a substitute for the generations of grade-school kids she'd nurtured for twenty-five years, but that was all right with Nellie. If not him, then who?
