Buttons and Bones (6 page)

LESS than a minute later, Betsy, from inside the bedroom, heard the Larson’s SUV start up and drive off. Jill came into the bedroom right after that, with a look on her face that Betsy interpreted as world-weary.

“What is it, what did you find?” Betsy asked.

“An S-K-E-L-E-T-O-N,” Jill spelled out.

“No!”

“What’s a ess-kay, Mama?” asked Emma Beth from the center of the bed where she sat straight-legged. Airey lay curled up beside her with Binky.

“It means some old bones, Baby,” said Jill.

“I’m not a baby, Airey is a baby,” replied the child.

“That’s true, you aren’t a baby anymore. So what shall I call you? How about ‘child’?”

“Em-Beth. I like Em-Beth. It’s Emma Beth, only shorter.” She sounded as if she’d been thinking about it for some while.

“All right, for the rest of today you are Em-Beth. Now, Daddy’s gone to use the telephone at The Lone Wolf General Store. He’s going to call some people who are going to come and look at the old bones.” Jill looked at Betsy. “It’s a root cellar, dirt walls and floor. Takes up maybe a third of the area of the upstairs. There are some shelves down there with some old home-canned goods on them.”

“How old is the—I mean, how old are the bones?”

“They look very old. It’s naked, no clothing visible.”

“Mama, you said naked!” said Emma Beth in a shocked voice.

“You’re right, Em-Beth, I shouldn’t have said that word in front of company. Little pitchers have big ears, my grandmother used to say whenever the conversation got interesting and we were in the room.”

Betsy laughed softly. “My grandmother said the same thing. Then we got sent out to play.”

“Us, too. We’ll have to make different arrangements now, because it’s raining.”

It was a sparse rain with no wind, but the occasional flicker of lightning and the lengthy pause before the rumble of thunder meant this was just the leading edge of the storm. The sky was very dark.

“Looks like it’s going to come down in buckets pretty soon,” said Jill.

“Jill, may I go look at the bones?” Betsy was not fond of gory stuff, but a skeleton wasn’t gory.

Jill hesitated, then said, “If you’ll stay on the steps. I don’t want the scene disturbed.” She handed Betsy the flashlight.

The cellar wasn’t very deep, barely head-high—and Betsy was five feet, four inches tall. The steps down into it were made of thick planks of unfinished wood, gray with age. Betsy stood on the bottom one, shoulders hunched to keep her hair from brushing one of the cobwebby timbers supporting the ceiling.

Two of the walls were lined with a double row of thick, rough-plank shelves, supported by pegs hammered into the dirt. There were perhaps a dozen glass jars, very dusty, with some long, greenish vegetables suspended in them, probably green beans. What had probably once been white adhesive tape with a short message—a date?—could be discerned on the closest jar. Like the ceiling, the shelves were draped with cobwebs.

Betsy let the flashlight linger on the shelves for a few long seconds before bracing herself and turning it downward.

The skeleton lay in a disarticulated heap in the center of the floor. Its details were blurred with dust but it seemed all there. The skull was turned upward and away from the rest of the bones, its square eyeholes looking toward her, a gold molar gleaming faintly under the flashlight’s beam. The rib cage had collapsed, the lower jaw lay teeth down among them. The shinbones were across the thighbones—Betsy had the sudden thought that the body had initially lain with its knees drawn up. One arm was outflung, the ends of the fingers mere suggestive bumps under the dust.

There were no footprints; obviously Jill had stayed on the steps, too.

There were small round objects here and there around the skeleton, barely discernable, and Betsy puzzled over them for a while. Then,
Oh
, she thought,
buttons.
But there did not seem to be any remnant of clothing present. That was another puzzlement until—
Mice
, thought Betsy, recalling the fate of the mattress and quilts. She shuddered at the thought of mice making nests from a dead man’s clothes.

But was it a man? It could be a woman. Betsy didn’t know how to tell the sex of a skeleton.

Who are you?
She thought at the skeleton.
And how did you come to be here in this root cellar?

There came no reply. She went back up the steps.

Jill was sitting cross-legged on the bed regaling the children with the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

Lars got back a few minutes later, ahead of the heavy rain, but only just, rushing back into the cabin right as the wind picked up. Betsy went out to greet him. He had a big block of something wrapped in newspaper.

“Ice for the ice box,” he explained and went to put it in a compartment at the top of the refrigerator, next to a much-diminished bag of ice cubes. “Sheriff’s on his way,” he added.

“Deputy John!” cried Emma Beth happily from her place in the bedroom doorway.

“No, honey; up here they have a different deputy. I don’t know his name yet.”

“Will he want a Cherry Coke?” In Emma Beth’s experience, a deputy always appreciated a Cherry Coke.

“We can ask him when he comes. But first we’ll have to talk some business over with him. I want you and Airey to stay in the bedroom while we talk. Can you do that?” Lars could put on an air of authority that was scary. He wore it lightly now, but it was unmistakable, and Emma Beth nodded. Even Airey nodded, his face solemn.

“Yes, Daddy. Can Mama stay with us?”

“No, darling, Mama has to talk business, too.”

“I can stay with you,” said Betsy. “We can color and I can read to you.”

“Color!” cheered Emma Beth.

“Book!” said Airey.

“We’ll do both,” decided Betsy.

The children were each given a cookie and a glass of milk to entertain them until the sheriff’s department arrived. When it did, it came in the person of a stocky Native American man. He drove a white patrol car with big green letters spelling SHERIFF on its side. He wore the brown and tan sheriff’s department uniform under a yellow rain slicker, and a shower cap over his hat. He introduced himself as Deputy Jack McElroy—pronounced “mackle-roy”—and stood streaming water onto the linoleum floor right inside the door while Lars introduced himself as a sergeant on the Excelsior police department and produced identification to confirm it. McElroy’s eyebrows lifted and Betsy thought she could detect a slight lessening of the tension he had brought into the cabin.

“This is my wife, Jill, our children Emma Beth and Erik, and this is our friend Betsy Devonshire, also of Excelsior. We bought this cabin six weeks ago, and this is our fourth visit to it. We were taking up the floor coverings when Jill discovered the trapdoor.” He turned and gestured at the yawning opening.

McElroy took off his hat and slicker while Jill swiftly explained how they had made the discovery.

“We only looked and didn’t disturb the scene,” Jill concluded.

“All right, Em-Beth and Airey, you come with me,” said Betsy. “We’ll get you out of the way so this man can look at things and talk to your mama and daddy.”

“Thank you,” said McElroy, nodding at her, as he pulled a big, black Kell flashlight from his utility belt. He had draped the slicker over one of the folding chairs.

He walked to the open trapdoor and shone the light down the steps. Then he bent himself into a shape suitable to go down and slowly sank out of sight. Betsy, herding the children into the bedroom, heard him give a low whistle. Then she firmly closed the door and said, “Let’s color!”

Soon there was the sound of other arrivals, men’s feet clumping around, a woman’s voice—not Jill’s—and voices giving orders. It went on and on and on; the children were getting bored and cranky long before the door opened and Betsy changed places with Jill.

Betsy was so relieved when Jill came in that it was a shock to find herself confronted by the grim face of a man in civilian attire. He stood in the dining area looking at her. “Good afternoon,” he said in a voice oddly light for his size and expression. “You are Elizabeth Devonshire?”

“Yessir,” replied Betsy.

“I’m Investigator Mix, with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Will you sit down over here?” She joined him at the table, sitting on the least wobbly folding chair. Betsy could hear men’s voices—no, one was a woman’s—down in the cellar, speaking so quietly she couldn’t understand the words.

Mix said, “We’re here assisting the Cass County Sheriff’s Department in this matter. Is it all right if I ask you some questions?”

“Certainly. Ask whatever you like.”

“How long have you known the Larsons?”

“I’ve known Jill since before she was married, since before I inherited my needlework shop.” Betsy told him how she had come to Minnesota some years back. Guided by his questions, she explained about the other company she owned, New York Motto, and how it had led to Jill and Lars buying the cabin.

“You bought it sight unseen?” Mix asked.

“Yes, I almost never visit the property New York Motto buys. I’m a silent partner in the business and pretty much stay out of the day-to-day running of it. But this time I did take an interest, directing my partner to look for cabins in the northern area of the state, on or near a lake. Jill and Lars looked at several and said this cabin was what they wanted, so I recommended the purchase and sale.”

“Have you done something like that before?”

“No, most of the people I know don’t know about New York Motto, or if they do, they aren’t interested in my help acquiring property. This was a special case.”

Satisfied that there was no link between Betsy and the skeleton, he thanked her and was about to dismiss her when she asked, “Do we have to stay here until you’re finished? The kids are getting bored, and frankly I’m tired of sitting in that room myself.”

Mix smiled and said, “I understand. And I think we’re done with you. Unfortunately, we’re not done with processing the scene.”

Betsy’s heart sank until he continued, “Is there someplace nearby you could go? There are motels and resorts in the area, if you’re willing to stay until we’ve finished up here.”

“How long might that be?”

“I’d say we’ll finish up by late tonight or early tomorrow.”

Betsy turned in her chair and called, “Lars? Can you come here a minute?”

He came in off the back porch with an inquiring look on his face. “Something wrong?”

“No, in fact you might be pleased to know that Investigator Mix says we can find someplace else to stay for the night while they work on the scene. I don’t know about you, but the children and I have a case of cabin fever.”

Lars chuckled. “Me, too. Just sitting around is hard on all of us. All right, let me talk with Jill.”

Jill came out of the bedroom, leaving behind the sounds of whining children, to gratefully accept the offer of escape.

The three adults swiftly packed two suitcases and an overnight bag, exchanged cell phone numbers with Investigator Mix, and departed.

They went up the road in the rain to The Lone Wolf and used their landline phone. Anderson’s, the resort on Thunder Lake, had no vacancies. A motel outside of Remer was full. Two resorts on the way to Longville had no cabins available. Longville itself had a motel, but it was also full. However, a place called Camp O’ My Dreams just the other side of Longville had two bed-and-breakfast rooms available, one with two beds, the other with a single queen-size bed.

“We’ll take both rooms,” declared Jill and Betsy in one voice.

The rooms were in the finished basement of a new, large, and severely plain house overlooking Long Lake. The shoreline was occupied by four RVs and one mobile home near the house, and six cabins of varying sizes and styles farther down. Mature trees dotted the landscape, and the view down the length of the lake was lovely.

“Will you want breakfast in the morning?” asked Wilma Griffin, the middle-aged widow who owned the property.

“Yes, please,” said Lars.

He and the children took the room with two beds, while Jill and Betsy took the other. The rooms were simply furnished, but clean, and the mattresses on the beds seemed comfortable.

Betsy treated everyone to dinner at the nicest restaurant in Longville, Patrick’s, which had an extensive menu and a big salad bar. The children had “busketti” while the adults ordered the walleye—listed, to Betsy’s amusement, under “Seafood.”

Driving back on the rain-wet street toward the main street of the little town, Emma Beth suddenly shouted, “A turtle, a turtle!” and Lars, thinking one of the creatures was trying to cross the road, slammed on his brakes.

But Emma Beth had spied a bronze statue of a turtle on a pedestal between the street and the sidewalk. Hanging from a nearby building was a big sign declaring LONGVILLE THE TURTLE RACING CAPITOL OF MINNESOTA and advertising Tuesday afternoon turtle races.

“Can turtles run?” asked Emma Beth. “Can we watch? When is Tuesday?”

“Day after tomorrow is Tuesday,” admitted Jill. “And we’ll see.”

“See tuttle!” declared Airey, to seal the deal.

Six