The Summer Bones (17 page)

Donna said, “This is her sister.”

“Wow.” He rocked back on his heels, still staring. “Emily said she had a twin but … wow.”

That's it,
Damon realized,
Gail's son
. Emily had mentioned that he was doing deliveries for the firm between sessions at Purdue.

Victoria smiled blandly but her fingers dug into Damon's arm. “We have to run along. Please say hello to Gail for me. Sorry I missed her.”

Damon heard Donna call out a faint good-bye as they pushed through the glass doors into the lobby. Outside, the afternoon sun throbbed downward and shimmered on the pavement. The delivery truck stood, doors open, right out front. A heavyset man was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the fender. He, too, stared at Victoria as they went by.

Gently, Damon reached over and detached her fingers from his arm.

“Sorry,” Victoria glanced over ruefully. “Was I pinching? I just wanted out of there in the worst way. I was hoping to avoid Gail, but now I suppose she'll know we stopped by. I'd guess that was her son. The resemblance is pretty strong.” She made a wry face. “Sweet little Donna might have kept her mouth shut, but I doubt her son will do the same. Here,” she dug the keys out of her purse as they walked to the car, “you drive.”

Damon caught the keys as she tossed them. “Where are we going?”

“I don't care.” She waved a careless hand. Her eyes were shadowed as she opened the passenger-side door.

He got into the car and carefully inserted the keys into the ignition. “From the way you're acting, you must have found something worthwhile in Em's office.”

Victoria looked straight ahead. Under her tan, her cheeks looked flushed. “Do you know me that well?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know if it's worthwhile, but I did find something,” she admitted.

* * * *

The restaurant was dark, tucked into the corner of a strip mall with only the front door for a window. Lamps of colored faceted glass hung down low over polished tables. The bar was a long brass counter with endless bottles stacked behind it in artistic piles. The music was nearly nonexistent, and best of all, there were no television sets hanging about to distract from conversation and food. Damon ordered a glass of wine for Victoria and a beer for himself, then settled his shoulders back on the upholstered seat, giving her a straight, questioning look.

“Boy,” Victoria smiled at him, amusement touching her mouth, “I must say, you certainly did your part. Are you and Donna the latest item?”

Refusing to be baited, he said, “She's about ten years too young to be my type. So, what's up?”

She frowned. Two men in tailored suits wove their way through the gloom and selected a table nearby. Victoria shot them a brief glance before biting her lower lip and delving into her purse. She produced a wad of folded papers, a small white card, and a square sheet of paper. Laying these items out carefully on the table, she put her hands back in her lap and looked somewhat defiantly at her cousin. “I took this stuff.”

“So I see.” The corner of his mouth lifted. He looked over her hoard with interest. “Not exactly grand theft. What is all this?”

She lifted a hand and fingered the wad of folded paper. “These are the last three months of Emily's appointment book, the one sitting on her desk. I tore the pages out.”

“Why?”

“Because sweet little Donna might object if I carted out the whole book and I couldn't fit it in my purse.”

He resisted the impulse to laugh. Obviously, petty theft was not a promising career for Victoria. Instead, he commented, “Good idea. Is there something in those pages that gives us a clue as to where Em might be?”

“Not where, but maybe … why. The book in her office wasn't her personal appointment book—that's obviously in her briefcase—but it was the book she used in the office and kept there, mostly names of clients and notes from Donna to call different people. But she did jot down several things that made me curious.” Her lashes lifted. She didn't look so much pleased as resigned and apprehensive.

“Then … show me.”

Another nod. “All right.” Her hands moved to smooth out the crumpled sheets from the appointment book.

The waitress arrived, tray in hand. She deposited their drinks, taking in the papers scattered on the table
.
“Want me to come back?” she asked.

“That would be fine.” Damon smiled at her.

“Just give me a wink.” She demonstrated, weaving off with her empty tray. Victoria seemed oblivious to the byplay. She sifted through the sheets and selected one, lifting it. “Here.”

He took it, squinting in the subdued light. The date on top of the page was Tuesday, May 20. He scanned the events in Emily's day. She had an appointment to see someone named Jordan Harsh at nine that morning, another appointment at eleven. The addresses and phone numbers were written in Emily's dashing script beside the indexed hours on the left of the page. She'd even jotted down what the person had in mind—things such as new kitchen, or redoing an office. The afternoon was busier, with more appointments and a trip to an upholstery shop.

“What's this?” he asked, moving his finger to four o'clock and holding up the paper for Victoria to see. “D.M.?”

She lifted the wineglass to her mouth and took a small sip. Her eyes were grave. “Look through. Look at June 21.”

He riffled through the pages. White bits of paper from the torn edges fell on the table like snow. Emily's flowery handwriting and Donna's girlish hand filled every page of Monday through Friday. On the twenty-first of June he found that Emily had noted D.M. again at two thirty. She had taken the rest of the day off.

“Who, or what, is D.M.?” he asked again, laying down the pages. His beer was beginning to create a puddle of condensation. He lifted it and drank, feeling Victoria watching him intently. He was fairly sure his face showed no emotion. “There's no phone number, no address. She usually writes that down, even when she's been there before.” He spoke mechanically, having a small measure of certainty at where they were going.

His gaze fastened on the white card that was laying facedown on the table.

Emily, he thought, was not methodical, but rather than looking up an address again, she would dash it down when it was in front of her. It wasn't laziness precisely, but more a sort of frenzied planning against her own disorganization. She would know she might be running late. Emily frequently ran late. She would want phone numbers and addresses at hand. D.M. should have an address, or at least a phone number. That single notation was out of character.

“I was wondering,” Victoria said as she looked at her glass of wine with concentration, “if D.M. could stand for Dr. Manfield. Look at this.” She took the tips of her fingers and pushed the white card a fraction closer to him.

He picked up the card. Turned it over. Emily, it said, had an appointment on July 24, which was four days after she had disappeared. At three o'clock. Dr. Chad Manfield was printed neatly at the top of the card. His address was near downtown, on Tenth Street.

“Chad Manfield,” Damon felt himself read out loud, “OB/GYN.”

Victoria lifted her eyes to his. She looked young in the meager light, and vulnerable. “Yes,” she said. There were shadows along her jaw, and in the hollow at the base of her throat. “It would be interesting to know if she kept that appointment.”

“Was that her regular doctor?”

“No. You remember.” Her fingers moved the stem of her glass a fraction. “We both actually met her regular doctor, at that party at Ron and Em's. She was the anorexic-looking woman with the red hair. Her husband is some sort of professional athlete. They live a couple of blocks away. That's how Em started going to her.”

He did remember. That party had been as bad as he had anticipated—a selective group of people that Emily and Ronald felt comfortable with, and he did not. Much laughter, too much booze, eclectic food that Emily thought fashionable, and some cocaine and other assorted drugs. He'd only gone because otherwise Victoria would have gone alone. “So she chose a different doctor,” he said. “So what?”

“Why go three times in three months?” Victoria asked flatly. “I don't even want to go once a year. And look at this.” She pulled out another sheet of the appointment book. “This time she noted his name and address in her appointment book. Like she wasn't worried about being secretive anymore.”

It was strange, but even in the uncertain lighting, it occurred to him Victoria looked nothing like Emily—
was
nothing like her. Looks were more than the shape of the flesh and the bones. Looks were expression and demeanor and the set of the mouth and eyes. Looks were the soul, not the flesh. His father and uncle were identical twins, but polar opposites. He didn't even think of them as looking like each other. It was the same with his two cousins.

“I don't know what to tell you,” he said. It was hard not to choke on the lie.

The place had begun to fill up with the lunch crowd. Four laughing women in skirts, jackets, and jogging shoes, came in and took a nearby table. The two businessmen glanced over and went back to their martinis and club sandwiches. The bar had filled nearly every stool.

Victoria took the last piece of paper and gave it to him. “Read this.”

Dr. Manfield had evidently written Emily a suggestion for a brand of over-the-counter medication on a sheet of prescription paper. The swirl of letters was not a huge surprise. Without a word, he handed the paper back.

“Do you know what this means?” Victoria took a gulp of wine. Her eyes were huge.

“Yes.” His mouth felt dry. He drank some beer.

“She put the notations in her book so she wouldn't forget those appointments, but she didn't want anyone to know exactly who they were with so she used initials. At least at first.”

“That's possible.”

“Possible? It's likely. You saw that book. She always wrote down numbers and addresses because she's so forgetful. She also chose a different doctor, one far away from both her office and her home.”

The music was a distant hum. Glasses rattled. Someone laughed too loudly. The glass under his fingers felt slick and cold. He nodded.

Victoria drank the rest of her wine and set down the empty glass. “You see that she had a prescription, Damon, a prescription for prenatal vitamins. She's been going to the doctor because she's pregnant and we both know that Ronald couldn't be the father.”

No matter what he did, he couldn't quite twist his features into a caricature of surprise. He did try. Victoria registered this with a face that went blank, like the color bleeding out of a canvas in the rain.

“You knew,” she whispered, shock making her voice quiver. “Damn you, Damon, you knew this?”

He didn't deny it.

* * * *

Danny listened intently. Dr. Neukam said things like impossible to determine manner of death, and that it had been an unusually warm summer. Decomposition was so much faster in warm temperatures, he said. Under the right conditions, a corpse could decay down to skeletal remains in just a few weeks. He was a short man with thick gray hair and heavy spectacles that rested on a large, friendly nose. He moved slowly, spoke quickly, and had been a medical examiner for Marion County for nearly twenty years. Danny knew him from his days at IPD. Marion County had been kind enough to lend him out. Rush County didn't have this type of case often. As a special favor, Neukam had done the autopsy directly.

The detective from Rushville wrinkled his brow. “Do you mean you can't determine the cause of death?”

The fan whirled sullenly in the corner. Danny and the detective from the Rush County sheriff's office sat in folding chairs. The room smelled of stale coffee and disinfectant.

“Not at all.” Dr. Neukam looked benign, eyebrows shifting over the top of his glasses. “The cause is clear. A severe blow to the skull right here”—he touched his forehead—”undoubtedly causing a traumatic acute subdural hematoma. At least, that type of injury
could
have killed her. There is no other forensic evidence of injury to the remains I examined this morning. No bullet holes. No fractures that aren't postmortem. No signs of damage that couldn't be traced to Mother Nature herself. Manner of death is something else, gentlemen. I can't speculate if this is a homicide or not.”

“Weapon? Any ideas?” Danny rubbed his palm absently on his pants.

“If there was a weapon, there was only one blow that I can see. A baseball bat or other blunt instrument is possible. An injury of this sort could be from a fall. A rock or curb could produce that kind of shattering effect on the skull, especially if the victim were pushed or propelled forward somehow. Of course, we're crippled by not having the flesh. Skeletal remains can tell you only so much. Organ and tissue samples would have been most helpful. If you're asking for a specific type of weapon, I can't say more than anything that might cause blunt-force trauma.”

Danny and the detective nodded in agreement. It was difficult. The average corpse had so much more to offer—levels of decomposition, body temperature, the color of the tissue, blood samples and analysis. The list went on. An almost completely decomposed body was more difficult.

“Of course, we can do DNA from the bones and what little tissue was left, but we hardly need that, do we?” Neukam's expressive eyebrows jerked around on his face. “The dental records and teeth impressions are enough and we were lucky to get our hands on them right away. I'd say the remains are of Harriet Elizabeth Helms, female, age sixteen, who disappeared from Mayville, Indiana, in early May of this same year. The initial estimated age of the skeleton bears out the identification.”

“Shit,” Danny muttered. Margaret Helms and her pleading eyes swam into his memory. His stomach felt tight.