One Grave Too Many

damn bone? There’s probably nothing I could do with that anyway.”

“It’s half a bone, really. You can tell me if it’s human.”

“If that’s all you want to know, any decent osteology student can tell you that.” If you can find one, she thought, watching hers fumble with the sloth. “But I can’t do it.”

“It may belong to someone I know. I play poker with the missing girl’s father. He’s been my best friend since we were kids, and his daughter baby-sat Kevin. The police are treating this as a runaway, but the girl’s parents are afraid her boyfriend has done something to her. Her brother found the bone in the woods behind her boyfriend’s parents’ home.”

In the woods, Diane thought. “No.”

“Diane. .”

“I have to go, Frank. I’m working with some students, and if they see me talking on the phone, they’ll want to do it too. It’s good to hear your voice again. It really is. Come by sometime.” She hung up.

Diane stood still for a moment. Hearing Frank’s voice was good. The tenor of it brought back past feelings-of warmth and passion. Why did he have to be talking about bones? She filled her lungs with air to clear her head, exhaled and went back to her students.

It was almost ten o’clock before the last person left. Diane was alone in the museum-but not completely alone. Jake Houser and Leonard Starns, the two night security guards, were making their rounds. And somewhere in the three-story structure the cleaning crew was hard at work.

Everything was almost ready for the reception the next evening-just a few odds and ends left. Diane walked among the exhibits representing North America in the Pleistocene. The skeleton of a huge Bison antiquus stood, as if on the ancient tundra, against the background of a restored mural of a grazing herd, oblivious to the Paleo-Indians hiding in the tall grass with their Clovis point-tipped spears.

The giant sloth turned out not to be the disaster she had feared. It stood majestic among prehistoric flora, head on straight, looking out at the skeleton of Mammothus columbi several feet in front of it. Something in the mammoth exhibit caught her eye. Archaeopteris leaves sprouting around the mammoth’s feet. Donald, damn him, had put the wrong vegetation in anyway. He was such a willful. . She stepped over the barrier rope carefully and took up the plants. A loud knock on the front doors brought her head up with a start.

She leaned over to look through the double doorway into the museum lobby. Jake appeared from the direction of the primate room.

“I’ll get it, Dr. Fallon,” he called out as he pressed the intercom button. “The museum is closed,” he said into the speaker.

“Hey, Jake, it’s Frank.”

Frank Duncan. So he wasn’t giving up. Diane heard the clank of keys in the door and their voices.

“Frank, what the hell you doing around here this late?”

“Checking up on your moonlighting. Might try it myself. You get to sleep a lot, I hear.”

She heard them both laugh.

“How’s that boy of yours?” asked Frank. “In an Ivy League school, isn’t he?”

She still couldn’t see Frank, but Jake had turned so she could see his face. He was a lean-looking man, at home with a scowl, but a large grin pushed his deep frown lines upward.

“Dylan’s great. You know he graduated? With honors. I have this cousin who’s always bragging about his boys being first in our family to get a college education.” Jake laughed. “The twins went to community college. Dylan went to Harvard.”

Diane listened as Jake and Frank talked about Jake’s son. She liked the normalcy of their conversation-so far removed from recent events in her life. Coming here to the museum was the right decision.

“What’s he going to do now he’s graduated?” asked Frank.

“Looks like he’s going to be accepted to Harvard Business School. They don’t just take everybody right out of college, you know. Most of the time they wait till they’ve worked a bit. See who’s rising to the top. I’m real proud of the boy.”

“What I can’t figure,” said Frank, “is where he got his brains.”

“Not from his daddy, that’s for sure. I told Carol it’s a good thing he looks like me, or I’d be suspicious. How’s your Kevin?”

“Growing. He’s in eighth grade now. I’m glad I have a while before I have to start shelling out for college tuition.”

“I hear you there.”

“Diane Fallon here?” asked Frank.

Jake turned and looked in her direction. “Yes, she’s here.”

Diane was still standing underneath the huge tusks of the mammoth. She watched Detective Frank Duncan of the Metro-Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit set down a briefcase at the door and cross the wide marble lobby into the Pleistocene room. He had the same handsomeness, the same smile, the same familiar face- perhaps just a little older than the last time she saw him.

“Nice,” he said, reaching up and brushing the tips of his fingers along the bottom of a gigantic curved tusk. It reminded her of that Celine Dion song-“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”

“Did these things used to roam the neighborhood?” he asked.

“Up until about ten thousand years ago.”

“Long gone, eh?”

“A mere blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.”

He stood under the head and tusks of the mammoth with her, his eyes searching her face. “You look good. Damn good.”

Diane brushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “Too much time in the sun. My face is looking like parchment.”

Frank shook his head. “A few lines around the eyes and mouth only give you character. You’re a little thin, maybe. Didn’t they feed you in South America? You’re all right, aren’t you? Didn’t pick up anything?”

“No, Frank, I didn’t pick up anything. I’m fine.”

Frank tilted his head to one side, inspecting her wrist and arm. “A fellow I know came back from the Amazon and he had this insect bite on his arm that wouldn’t go away. Swelled up, started itching and turned black. When he couldn’t stand the itch any longer, he went to the doctor. The doctor thought it was a boil and started to lance it. Just as he touched the skin with his scalpel,” Frank touched his finger gently to her forearm, “the thing burst open and this big, black, ugly fly crawled out of his arm and flew off. Disgusting.” He tickled her skin with the tips of his fingers.

Diane pulled her arm back reflexively, but smiled despite herself. “You haven’t changed. What are you doing at the museum this late?”

His eyes were smiling again, searching her face. “I just got off from work. I was passing this way.”

“Don’t tell me that. You don’t pass this place going anywhere.” She stepped out of the exhibit, still holding the artificial leaves like an odd bouquet.

“It’s been a couple of years. . ” he began.

“Three years.”

“I wanted to see you. How about a late dinner?”

He was wearing jeans and a navy sweater and smelled like aftershave. He hadn’t just stopped off from work. Diane wished she didn’t feel so comforted by that realization. She lay the leaves next to the exhibit and dusted off her hands, aware that she must have the aroma of the day’s accumulation of glue, paint and perspiration. “How about you telling me why you’re really here?”

“I really came to see you. Talking with you got me worried about you. What happened? Why did you give up your career?”

“I changed jobs. People do that.” Diane turned away from his gaze and started toward the Bison antiquus. “I need to check out the exhibits before I leave. We’re having a preopening party for the contributors tomorrow evening.”

“Wait.” Frank put a hand on her arm. “I want to know about you. What do you mean, you aren’t a forensic