Make No Bones

'Right, sorry.'

'I'm doing the best I can.'

'Right, go ahead.'

'I mean, don't expect me to solve your whole case for you.'

John emitted a rolling growl. “Will you go ahead?” “With pleasure, if you'll let me. The thing is, they were all his graduate students at one time or another—” “All of them? Even Nellie?'

'All of them. Nellie was the first. And from the war stories I've heard, none of them had an easy time. If I remember right, it took Harlow eleven or twelve years to get his Ph.D. Jasper kept changing the ground rules on him. It was the way he was with them all, I guess.'

'But he finally got his degree?'

'Oh, he got it, but his marriage came apart during the struggle, and I understand Harlow's always blamed Jasper for that. In his own quiet way, of course. Had two kids, I think, but he never talks about them. Never remarried either, as far as I know.'

John weighed this. “Well, I guess it's a place to start.'

With Gideon, he stood at the entrance to the lodge building. “This where your round table is?'

'Yes, it started ten minutes ago.'

'Well, don't let me hold you up. When's it over?'

'Five o'clock. But the later it gets in the week, the earlier the sessions seem to let out. It's a natural law. I'd say four-thirty.'

'Good enough. I've got some stuff to write up, and Harlow'll keep till then.'

'I guess so. He's kept for ten years.'

'Yeah.” John took the last, cold french fry from the bag he'd carried from the car and crumpled it into his mouth. “Boy, am I ever gonna spoil his day.'

* * * *

With blinds drawn against the sun and air conditioners groaning, the meeting room's temperature was wonderfully cool, but the atmosphere was heated with hypothesis and conjecture. The startling news about Jasper had quickly spread, and knots of academics had turned their chairs around to face each other, the better to argue over what it might mean.

Gideon made his way to the front, where seven of the nine participants in the odontology round table were seated: Miranda, Les, Leland, Callie, and three others. Gideon, taking the empty chair next to Leland, made eight. The ninth, Harlow, had yet to arrive to take his place as moderator.

'HAAAR-lowww,” Les was singing softly to the ceiling, “where AAARRRE you?'

Leland looked irritably at the wall clock, then at Callie. “Yes, where is he?'

It took a few seconds for Callie to look up from her notes. “What are you asking me for?'

'Well, he came back with you, didn't he?'

She laid down her notebook and concentrated on getting a cigarette out of its slim metal case. “From where?” she asked absently.

Leland looked at her. “From where?'

They stared at each other with the bafflement of communication gone askew.

'From Nevada,” Leland finally said. “Where else?'

Callie had gotten her cigarette going. She squinted at him through the first acrid explosion of smoke. “Leland, Harlow didn't go to Nevada with me.'

'Of course he did.'

'Are you telling me?” Her voice was beginning to rise. “I'm telling you, he didn't go. He didn't feel well, he didn't want to fly.” She had taken only two puffs of the cigarette, but she jammed it out angrily against a flat metal ashtray, smoke pouring from her nostrils. “A year's planning, and he misses the whole damn thing. How is he going to hold up his end of the reciprocal contracting if he doesn't share ownership ‘u the development process, tell me that.'

'I really couldn't say.'

Leland had a way of looking at people as if he were examining them through a lorgnette. Callie was briefly subjected to this scrutiny before he spoke again.

'Well, then, where's he been?'

Callie's attention had returned to her notes. With a sigh she closed the binder. “Leland,” she said between set teeth, “I already told you—'...

Gideon got up and left the room, crossing the lawn and taking the footbridge over the pond toward Harlow's cottage. Halfway there he hesitated, changed his mind, and made for John's cottage instead.

'Harlow hasn't shown up at the meeting,” he told him. “I think we ought to check his cottage.'

John had come to the door with a legal pad in his hand and his mind obviously elsewhere. “I don't know, maybe he's—'

'Nobody's seen him since Tuesday. Two days.'