Lovely In Her Bones

“Here’s the car!” cried Elizabeth.

“You didn’t see Victor outside, did you?” Jake asked. “He went off a while ago announcing his intention of getting snakebit.”

Mary Clare was relieved that they had not questioned her about her sudden plans for departure. She managed a grim smile. “No. I was out walking around. Victor can’t have gone as far as I did; that would be exercise.”

“Excuse me. I’m looking for my husband.”

Tessa Lerche stood in the doorway smiling politely. She wore beige canvas pants, an open-throated khaki shirt, and a red silk neckerchief-her concept of expedition chic. Her newly shingled hair would be easy to care for without the aid of the beauty parlor.

Mary Clare, who was wearing faded jeans and a blue T-shirt, looked appraisingly at Tessa and remarked, “You forgot your pith helmet.”

“Dr. Lerche is up at the site,” Jake put in quickly. “Would you like me to take you there? It isn’t far.”

“Sorry we can’t call you a cab.” Mary Clare smirked.

How very un-Southern! Elizabeth thought wildly. We’re usually more polite to our enemies than we are to our friends.

Tessa, too, seemed taken aback by Mary Clare’s hostile remarks. She eyed her carefully, as if waiting for an indication that this was all in fun. The other two occupants of the room, obviously students, looked embarrassed, she noted with satisfaction, but Mary Clare continued to stare. Tessa smiled, as winners can afford to, and said gently, “I understand you are leaving us, Mary Clare.”

“I figured you put him up to it.”

Tessa’s smile faded. “No, dear, you did. You pushed.” Dismissing the matter, she turned to Jake, as if being the only male present made him the person in charge. She fished the computer disks out of her canvas purse and held them up. “I have brought these for the computer,” she announced brightly, in tones suggesting that the previous conversation with Mary Clare had not taken place. “My poor husband drove all the way back to campus to get them, and then he got so caught up with his mail and his laundry and whatnot, that he drove off without them.” She laughed fondly, inviting them all to share her amusement in her absentminded professor. She neglected to mention that she had unobtrusively moved the disks out of sight and had not reminded him to take them. “So he called me from a gas station somewhere and asked me to bring them up here. So here I am!”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered Jake warily. “Milo will be real glad to get them. Will you be staying the night? I mean, I’d be glad to bring your things up from the car.”

Tessa’s answer was addressed to Jake, but it was meant for Mary Clare. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Alex and I will be staying at a motel room in Laurel Cove. We feel it will be safer that way.”

Nice double entendre, thought Elizabeth.

Jake shifted uncomfortably, sensing another outbreak of bickering. “Would you like me to take you up to the site? It’s past dark, so Dr. Lerche should be quitting pretty soon. He doesn’t like to work much by lantern light.”

“I’m quite aware of that,” said Tessa, courteously reinforcing her status as incumbent. “Yes, let’s go and see him.”

Outside a car horn honked.

Jake jumped up as if he had heard the bugle of the Seventh Cavalry. “That’s Milo! He’ll be happy to take you up to the site. Dr. Lerche has been wanting to see him anyway.”

“Who hasn’t?” muttered Elizabeth.

Milo was careful to shine the flashlight on the path in front of Tessa. She had asked nervously about snakes when they started out, and even though he assured her that they had not seen any, she still walked with the tentative steps of one who is expecting to be ambushed. She had not spoken, except to make a few polite inquiries about the project, which Milo had answered in monosyllables. He was glad of the silence, much preferring the crickets’ mindless chirp to Tessa’s. The tedium of a day with the bureaucracy and the wait at the bus station- general store had exhausted him more than digging trenches ever did. He had taken the monitor back to the motel room and made sure it was working before hurrying back to the church to spend the evening with Elizabeth. He had not anticipated the melodrama that awaited him: his boss’s wife and mistress staring each other down like angry cats.

Milo wondered what had transpired while he had been in Laurel Cove. It was embarrassing to see Alex entangled in such a situation. Detached and unemotional Alex! He wished he hadn’t brought Elizabeth along on this dig. It could not have given her a very good impression of anthropologists. The thought that he had not been Prince Charming, either, flickered through his mind, but was dismissed in a flood of justification.

“Are we almost there?” asked Tessa.

“Almost.”

“I don’t want to fall into an open grave.” She shuddered.

“There, see the light in the clearing? That’s the lantern in the tent.” Rather awkwardly, he took her wrist. “I’ll show you how to get there, so you won’t fall.”

Tessa hung back. “Milo, I know this is silly…”

The entire day had been a farce, Milo thought bitterly, but he waited for her to continue.

“Could you just ask Alex to put the skulls away before I go in? I know I sound terribly squeamish for an anthropologist’s wife, but it’s so dark and quiet out here.” Her voice shook. “I don’t think I could take much more.”

“Sure,” said Milo, relieved at being asked to do something that was merely stupid instead of embarrassing. “You wait here. I’ll come back for you.”

He walked the last fifteen feet across the cemetery to the tent. Whatever Alex had wanted to see him about would have to be postponed, he supposed. He wondered what it was, tempted to ask before he announced Tessa’s presence to her husband. Milo pulled back the tent flap. “Hey, Alex…”

Milo’s years of studying forensic anthropology compared to this as a grainy out-of-date war movie might resemble actual combat. The outlines were similar, but the emotions were so lacking as to render the actual event unrecognizable. Part of Milo’s mind noted the curious difference between the clinical reality of a deceased stranger on a stainless-steel table, and the newly murdered body of one’s friend and colleague.

Alex Lerche lay slumped over his worktable with outstretched arms. Milo looked at the back of his head, and thought, “A broken bowl of Jell-O,” wondering if the image made him less likely to throw up or more so. Beside Alex on the table lay a bloody stone tomahawk, the souvenir kind sold in Cherokee and made in Taiwan. It consisted of a real stone tied to a pine stick with red plastic threads, adorned with chicken feathers dyed lime green and orange. The sight would have been ridiculous but for the blood on the tomahawk and the line of Indian skulls jeering in the lantern light.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DANIEL HUNTER COLTSFOOT studied the wanted posters on the sheriff’s bulletin board, trying to decide which of them to cover up with his craft fair announcement. Surely some victimless, drug-related offense could be obscured for a few days for such a worthy notice as the Nunwati Nature-Friends Herb and Craft Day. Daniel enjoyed telling people that Nunwati was the Cherokee word for medicine, and that even though none of their members was actually a Native American, they liked to think that they were Indian in spirit, keeping the old traditions alive with pottery works and leathercraft shops.

Coltsfoot and his girlfriend, Patricia Elf, ran a health food store in Laurel Cove, doing a thriving business among tourists who mistook them for Indians, an error which they did not discourage. Actually, Coltsfoot and Patricia were not even picturesque locals: he was from Baltimore, and she was a New Yorker, but they managed to obscure this with homespun outfits and colonial hairstyles. Daniel had even added Coltsfoot to the end of his name in an effort to sound more “ethno-regional,” happily unaware that the coltsfoot plant went by another name in the eastern Appalachians. Behind his back the bemused locals referred to the plant and to Daniel himself as “Dummyweed.” In their health food store they spoke reverently of Amelanchier Stecoah, and they liked to be thought colleagues of