One Grave Too Many

paper.

Diane took it from her. The hand-printed note on museum stationery said, Please add “In the Hall of the Mountain King” to the play list. Her initials were at the bottom.

“It was here when we returned from our first break. Luckily, we knew an arrangement for it. I mean. . is there something wrong?”

Diane forced a smile and shook her head. “No, nothing’s wrong. Someone from the staff probably wanted to hear it. They often use my name when ordering things.” Apparently, with wild abandon, she thought. “All of you are doing a beautiful job. I’ve gotten several compliments, and Mrs. Harris wants to talk with you about doing a library function.”

“That’s great. We really appreciate this opportunity, Dr. Fallon,” said Alix, and the other three murmured in agreement before they took up their bows and prepared to perform their next arrangement.

Diane turned and took another long look at the crowd. Everyone was eating, talking or looking at the exhibits. No one was looking in her direction. She walked among the guests, the note folded up in one hand, smiling at each face she met. No mischief-makers or secret enemies showed themselves.

Frank, his son and his ex-wife were looking at the computer video depiction of the receding Laurentide Ice Sheet that brought a close to the Pleistocene period. She relaxed at the sight of Frank. Silly, she thought. It was probably nothing. One of the staff just wanted to hear that piece of music. It’s a well-known piece.

She was starting toward Frank when she thought she heard her name jump out of the flow of voices around her. She looked in the direction from which she thought it had come. Over by Bison antiquus a group of board members, contributors and local real estate brokers, looking like a clutch of emperor penguins, stood talking to each other.

David Reynolds, Cindy’s husband, was there. Diane suspected that the reason the pair had wrangled an invitation through Frank was so David could meet with some of Rosewood’s high rollers. She strolled in their direction.

“Diane,” said Mark Grayson. “We were just talking about you. Great party. I’ve got some good news.”

Mark held out his arm as though he intended to wrap it around Diane’s shoulders. She stopped beside Harvey Phelps, opposite Mark, leaving his arm to gather air. Donald was there. Diane met his gaze briefly. She wondered if somehow he was responsible for ordering almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of unneeded museum exhibits and signing her name to the order. Donald was a good illustrator. Did that translate into the ability to forge a signature?

“Good news?” she asked Mark. She glanced at Harvey, who raised a bushy eyebrow in her direction. “Tell me.”

“The price on the old Vista Building has come down considerably.”

“And?” Diane prompted.

“With those picture windows, big rooms, and its central location, it would make a great museum. The board can sell this property for a premium price and have money left over for some of the other things on Milo’s wish list.”

“I’ve seen the Vista. It has only one large room. The rest are too small for our needs. The parking is miserable. There is absolutely no place for a nature trail, and I suspect the price is dropping because it’s hard to sell, sitting as it is on the edge of a high-crime area. Besides, we’ve spent quite a bit restoring this place, and I think it’s wonderful.”

Mark’s face hardened. The others looked into their drinks. “This building’s much too big for our needs. Besides, it’s a steep climb up here in the winter,” he said. “It could be dangerous for busloads of children.”

Harvey Phelps slapped him on the back. “Oh, I don’t know, Mark. We haven’t had a decent winter in years.”

Diane gave Harvey’s arm a squeeze and left them talking about the weather. She sought out Frank and Kevin. “I hope you guys are having a good time,” she said.

“Great.” Kevin answered for everybody. “Do you have any human bones?”

“Yes, we do. Actually, a great many of our skeletal exhibits are made from casts of real skeletons. They aren’t real bones, but they’re exact replicas. We have a nice exhibit of Homo sapiens and his distant ancestors in the primate room.”

“Do you have any bones from murder victims?”

Diane shook her head. “This is strictly natural history. We have rocks, shells, bugs, dinosaurs, mammals and plants. But no murder.”

“Why did you quit investigating murders?” he asked.

“Kevin!” cautioned his mother.

“Yes, Diane, why did you quit?” This was from Gordon Atwell, president of the bank that held the museum’s mortgage.

“Traveling all over the world got tiring. I wanted to settle down in one spot. Lead a normal, quiet life, for a change.”

“I guess when you’ve seen one mass grave, you’ve seen them all, huh?” He patted her on the shoulder. “There’s Amberson. I need to talk to him.”

Diane was glad to see him go off in another direction.

“What do I need to take in school to learn about bones?” asked Kevin.

“What grade are you in?”

“Eighth.”

“You need to be strong in your sciences, especially biology. You need math. If you have any anatomy courses, that would be good. You’ll need chemistry later on. And, of course, you have to learn your bones.”

Kevin frowned. “Why do I need math?”

“There’s a lot of measuring and calculations to do. Bones have a consistent size relationship with each other. You get as much information from the size indexes and ratios as you do from the physical examination of the bones themselves.”

“You should see what she told me about a piece of collarbone,” said Frank. “Darn near told me what the guy had for his last meal.”

Diane started to laugh with the others when a thought flashed through her mind. She looked at Frank. “I think I can tell you what he ate.”

Frank looked shocked for a moment. “I was joking. You mean you can? From a bone?”

“Not his last meal, but we may find a bit of information that might help identify him.”

“How?” asked Kevin. “How can you tell what he ate by looking at his bone?”

“You have to remove the collagen-that’s one of the components of bone-superheat it and turn it into gas so a mass spectrometer can detect the chemicals in the collagen.”

“Wow. I really want to be a forensic anthropologist.”

“Actually, the person I’m going to ask is a physical anthropologist. He studies bones too, among other things, but without the crime part. This is called stable isotope analysis. It’s the same method used to tell us the diet of Neanderthal man. We’re going to put one of the computer information programs about it in the primate exhibit.”

“How do you tell what he ate?” asked Kevin.

“Have you studied isotopes in school?”

“Sort of.”

“Then you know isotopes are like different species of atoms of the same element.”

“Yeah. .”

“You know about carbon fourteen, used for dating objects. Carbon fourteen is an unstable isotope-it’s radioactive and decays over time. Because it decays at a constant rate, you can measure the decay to tell how old something is. It’s a little more complicated, but that’s basically it.”

Kevin nodded. Diane was watching to see if his eyes were about to glaze over at all the science, but he listened attentively, so she continued.

“Carbon also has two stable isotopes that don’t decay. So does nitrogen. And each has different ratios in the different types of foods-like vegetables, meats and fish. When we eat these things, the same ratios of the isotopes