Disembodied Bones (20 page)

“Elan disappeared when Scott wanted to have
his up close and personal conversation slash interrogation with
me.” Leonie found herself chewing on her lower lip and made herself
stop. It had been a habit in childhood that she had used when she
was stressed. She had often made her lip bloody and infected, if
she wasn’t careful.

“Well, the kid was safe. You were safe. I’m
safe.” Dacey was summarizing. “Maybe he really had to take care of
business.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Leonie let go of the past and
tried to concentrate on the future. “You think this will be good
for business? Scott had that thought. Big publicity thing for the
Gingerbread House and all that.”

Dacey thought about it. “Not sure. As a rule
I would think people will come in to gawk at you, not actually buy
antiques. But maybe a few will do both.” She finally shook her
head. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to help us at all. I
think it’s going to be a hassle. And I think maybe Scott already
knows that. The big bubba.”

As they got into Antonio’s car, Leonie
glanced around the people in the crowd. The sun had set but
everyone thought that this was some kind of spectacular event to
attend. Eventually they would drift away. “Drop me off at the
store, Antonio?” she said. “Poor Erica and Tinie must be going
nuts.”

•

The forensics specialist was examining the
tape that had covered Olga Rojas’s mouth. Scott was standing at his
back while the man carefully turned the piece of green duct tape
under plastic this way and that. The sheriff had called for
assistance from Dallas County Sheriff’s Department Physical
Evidence Section out of Dallas and they’d appeared on the scene in
thirty minutes, driving up in a specialized van that conducted all
the equipment that they needed to gather enough proof to send men
and women to death row. Two men dressed in plastic coveralls and
wearing plastic caps and gloves collected evidence in the area with
tweezers and even a tiny piece of equipment that resembled a tiny
vacuum cleaner.

Scott was thinking about how much it was
going to cost the county for this procedure, but he wanted to cover
all of his bases. On one hand, if it were Leonie, then it should be
solved quickly. On the other hand, if a pedophile was intent on
using Buffalo Creek and Pegram County as his personal hunting
ground, Scott didn’t want to dicker about costs with the state on
whether he should have gone the whole hog or not. If a child was
involved then all bets were off. Spend the money and be damned if
the governor’s office had fits about it.

“Duct tape is a marvelous attractor for oils
on the fingers,” said the technician. “Most criminals who use duct
tape make the mistake of keeping the roll around or using a roll
that they’ve kept around in the house or the business for years. In
either case, fingerprints are often ingrained in the glue that
makes the actual tape tacky. I love to see duct tape.”

“Wonderful,” said Scott acerbically.

“See,” the technician pointed with a
glove-covered finger. “Fingerprint. Pretty good one, too. Plus we
can match the tape tears from the original roll of tape if you
recover it from a suspect’s home or business. You got a
suspect?”

Scott was thinking about how Leonie had
ripped the tape off Olga’s face after he’d pulled her back from the
edge of the overhang. Her fingerprints could have easily gotten
there, but then he’d have the technicians run it through the
various databases and see if he could find a match. Had Leonie ever
been fingerprinted?

“I’m gonna find out,” he muttered to
himself.

“What’d you say?” the technician asked
absently.

-

Listen closely, I’m hard to understand.

I am as elusive as is a handful of sand.

Even if you perceive me, you know me not,

Before you can tell me, what I have forgot.

What am I?

I am a riddle, no more, no less.

Tuesday, July 23rd - Buffalo Creek, Texas

I’m up.

I’m down.

I’m all around.

Yet never can I be found.

What am I?

“Uh, Miss Leonie,” said Tinie cautiously.

Three days after Olga’s kidnapping and all
was not normal. Leonie would have frowned crossly but Tinie would
have taken it personally. Instead Leonie continued to dust a
selection of Depression glass in a cabinet and merely said,
“Uh-huh?”

If Leonie had looked up she knew what she
would have seen. Tinie was standing behind her, all five foot six
inches of her, her café au lait skin glowing in the morning light
with her hazel eyes quietly serious. She was a seventeen year old,
black woman who was in her last year of high school and who worked
for the Gingerbread House part-time. She had done so for the last
year and Leonie liked her immensely. Good working habits were
Tinie’s forte. She always showed up on time. She didn’t complain
even if a customer wanted to vehemently argue whether some
particular something dated from the Civil War or from the last
decade. She was intelligent and eagerly anticipating starting
college in the next year. Tinie even had her career all mapped out
for her and didn’t hesitate in working every free minute she could
in order to attain that prized occupation.

In almost every respect Tinie was Leonie’s
complete opposite at the age of seventeen; it was a fact that made
Leonie admire the teenager all the more, that she knew almost
exactly what she wanted out of life and the path she would have to
take to get it. Previously to Saturday, Leonie had always enjoyed
Tinie’s perceptive questions and innate common sense. However,
Leonie wasn’t in a receptive mood, especially since in the last
half-hour two people had wandered into the Gingerbread House to ask
her if she could find Amelia Earhart’s plane and Jimmy Hoffa’s
body, and if so, why she hadn’t rushed right out and done so.

Leonie suddenly realized that Tinie wasn’t
saying anything so she put the crystal glass cruet tenderly back on
the shelf and turned to look at the younger woman. Tinie was
noticeably struggling with what she had to say and Leonie was
surprised because Tinie had never seemed at a loss for words
before.

Behind Tinie, the store was empty of
customers for the first time. The Gingerbread House had been closed
on Sunday, not a normal practice for them, but then having one’s
child kidnapped wasn’t normal, either. And Monday was their normal
day to be closed. Both days Leonie had cheerfully hidden in her
house with Vinegar Tom and ignored the phone when it rang almost
nonstop from eight AM to ten at night, only barely restraining
herself from violently ripping the cord out of the wall
connection.

Abruptly Tinie blurted it all in a rush and
Leonie wasn’t particularly surprised at what the young woman said,
“Mymamadon’twantmeworkingherenomore. She thinks you’ve got the
devil in you something terrible.”

Leonie digested it with a grim nod. “Yes.
Your mother is very strong with her beliefs. I can see why she
wouldn’t want her child associating with the likes of me.” She was
aware that she couldn’t keep the bitter note out of her voice and
that letting Tinie hear that was a low blow against the teenager.
Last week, Leonie had been a fine upstanding member of the society.
Today she was something out of a cheap novel and everyone was
talking about her, about Olga, and about the kidnapping. Certainly,
Sheriff Scott Haskell hadn’t been able to keep his big flapping
trap shut. The newspaper had a long article about Olga’s kidnapping
and featured a boxed article about Douglas Trent and Monroe
Whitechapel. It wasn’t Tinie’s fault.

“Oh, heck, I’m sorry, Tinie,” she said as she
saw Tinie’s lower lip begin to tremble in consternation. Tinie’s
mother was her entire life and Tinie was her mother’s. Both were
living and saving enthusiastically in anticipation of Tinie’s
esteemed career as a medical doctor, probably a pediatrician. And
Tinie’s mother would do anything to protect her baby.

“I’ve got an interview at Home Depot,” said
Tinie slowly, clearly not liking the words coming out of her own
mouth. “They don’t pay as well, but I’ll get more hours this summer
and you know how much medical school is going to cost. I’m really
bugging over this, Miss Leonie. My mama doesn’t know what a good
woman you are or she wouldn’t be saying it.”

Leonie sighed. “You talk to Dacey already,
chère
?”

Tinie nodded tremulously.

“Are you going to leave today, then?” Leonie
said.

She nodded again.

“Michael’s going to miss you,” Leonie added
wistfully. Michael Lynn was their other part-time employee. Another
high school student he was also Tinie’s opposite. In his appearance
he was the flip side of her coin. He was white, tall, and as skinny
as a rail, with flaxen hair and eyes the color of the deep blue
sea. The same age as his counterpart, his general carefree attitude
was also the reverse of Tinie’s front. He lived to flirt with her,
or with any pretty lady who wandered into the store. His outgoing
manner made days fly by and Leonie suspected that Tinie liked him
as much as he liked her.

“Michael will be all right,” Tinie said
firmly. “He’s got my phone number.”

Leonie was almost afraid to hold out a hand
in farewell to the teenager, but she didn’t have to worry. Tinie
suddenly reached out and swiftly hugged Leonie, then quickly
released her. “Thank you for giving me my first job. I know you
didn’t have to pay me as much or give me extra hours, but you did
and I know Miss Dacey gave you a little hell for it. I don’t really
care what they say about you in the newspaper. You didn’t kidnap
Olga and anyone who means anything knows that’s true.”

When Leonie reached up to brush a suspicious
tear away from her eye, Tinie was gone. The cowbells on the front
door were jangling before Leonie could say anything else.

All alone in the store, it was as silent as
the day after judgment day. Dacey was out at an estate sale.
Michael wouldn’t be in until the afternoon, and Erica was taking
the day off to take her children to Six Flags. For once, there
weren’t any customers around or gawkers who wanted to ask her odd
questions about missing things or people.

The six days wonder would be over soon
enough, Leonie knew. Something else would happen and her little
event would be forgotten. Soon no one would be bothered to know
whether Leonie had somehow telepathically known where Olga Rojas
was to be found and she already knew that Scott couldn’t find a
link to a kidnapper that simply wasn’t there.

As for the riddle, Leonie had considered that
one for hours. No one but Monroe Whitechapel’s victims and she had
known about it. It hadn’t been in the paper then; it wasn’t
mentioned in the weekend edition about Olga’s kidnapping. Leonie
knew that Scott was keeping the riddle under wraps to use it as a
tool to eliminate false confessions. She hadn’t heard back from
him, but it was only a matter of time. As a matter of fact, she was
positively amazed he hadn’t shown up that Saturday evening with an
ink-still-wet warrant in his hot hands to meticulously search every
inch of her cottage for the evidence he was so certain existed.

Dacey had assured her that Olga had seen only
a masked man, no one else, and she hadn’t seen the car he’d put her
into when he’d snatched her. Furthermore, the bad experience was
fading fast like a nightmare that happened to someone else, and
Olga was pretty much back to normal, except that she wouldn’t leave
her mother’s immediate location.

The door’s bells jangled harshly again and
Leonie made a decision to get some more melodic bells instead of
ones that sounded like an enraged cow was kicking the side of the
barn in its insistence for more hay. She had turned back to the
Depression glass and was holding a cruet that had been made in 1930
by a company called Hazel Atlas. It was a delicate shade of pale
green with a clear glass stopper. An octagonal shaped cruet, it
reminded her of the Chautauqua auditorium in Headrick Park.

Then she looked up and saw Elan. Dressed more
casually in jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, she knew
immediately that he wasn’t working today. Tall and lithe, he
appeared as he were a man on a mission; the mission was unknown to
her and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. He was studying her
with the intent of a scientist and a particularly fascinating
subatomic particle. Leonie couldn’t quite determine the expression
on his face; Elan was adept at keeping his face neutral and his
thoughts concealed behind shuttered eyes.

An odd thought popped up unwanted inside
Leonie’s head and bounced around like a rabid kangaroo. Six months
she had been dating Elan. It hadn’t progressed past kissing because
she thought it was what they both wanted. But while she had
occasionally made those telepathic connections with the people she
worked with and were friends with, she hadn’t made one with Elan.
Not even once. He never lost anything. Not his keys. Not his
wallet. Not some little something that prodded at the back of his
memory like a jarring note in an orchestra.
Is he so controlled?
Is he that organized? Or is it that I can’t make that connection
with him
?

It hadn’t occurred to her before. She liked
Elan. He had an amazing number of positive attributes for a man she
was dating. He was pleasant to be around. He was handsome and
articulate. He was straight and unmarried. He liked her in return.
So where’s the connection?

“Someone,” Elan said deliberately, “hasn’t
been answering her phone this weekend.”

Leonie purposely polished one of the
octagonal sides of the cruet and put it back in its place. It
wasn’t expensive but colored glass tended to move more quickly as
if their vividness attracted buyers to them. She ensured that the
cruet was displayed to its best with light from a row of ribbon
lighting showing behind it. She said, “I wasn’t sure if you wanted
to talk to me.”