Skeleton Key(75)

“I got you all those things you asked for,” he called out, in a voice that could have carried across a football field. “The police report sheets from Watertown, Morris, and Washington for Friday night. What a zoo that was, Friday night.”

The people in the lobby all looked excessively well-heeled. The women wore good wool slacks with creases in them instead of jeans. The men wore sport coats. They turned first to look at Stacey Spratz, and then to look at Gregor. Gregor sighed.

“I take it you left them out in the car,” he said, in as quiet a voice as he could manage.

“They’re right on your seat,” Stacey said. “But I’m impressed, you know. You were right. All kinds of stuff went on that night, and all in the right areas as far as we know. Well, not out near Margaret Anson’s place, but where the Jeep and the BMW were seen together. You wouldn’t believe what I found—”

“Let’s go out to the car,” Gregor said.

The woman behind the reception desk was glaring at them. They were mucking up her atmosphere.

Stacey trailed Gregor happily across the lobby and out the front door, talking all the way. Gregor stopped on the inn’s front steps and looked around. Fall was here for real. The air was cold. The trees were nearly bare, and the leaves that lay on the ground were yellow and red. Stacey’s state police cruiser was one of only six cars in the small lot.

“You want to hear this list of things we’ve got?”

“Absolutely,” Gregor said.

He had reached the cruiser. The doors weren’t locked. Gregor was beginning to wonder if he was one of the last people on earth who locked his doors. He opened up and climbed into the passenger seat, waiting for Stacey to come around and get behind the wheel.

“So,” he said, when Stacey was settled in. “Tell me.”

“I’ve got copies in the back,” Stacey said, “but I’ll give you a rundown. First, Watertown. The Jeep was stolen. And Zara Anne Moss saw it pass.”

“We knew that”

“Right. But then it gets more interesting. Then we get to Morris.”

“And?”

Stacey started the engine. “And Martin and Henry Chandling. Two old guys who do caretaking work at this historic cemetery. The Fairchild Family Cemetery. It’s protected, or something, as a landmark. Established up here in sixteen eighty-six. Closed pretty much before the Civil War—lack of space, and lack of Fairchilds. It sits up there on its hill, you know, and the gravestones are all a hundred years old at least, and people come to take stone rubbings. You know about that, people bring tracing paper and pencils or char-coal and they rub against the stones and get the words and stuff on the paper?”

“I’ve heard of it, yes.”

“Well, I don’t get it, but it’s really big with a certain kind of woman from New York. Anyway, that’s what they do. That’s where the Jeep was found.”

“In the cemetery.”

“Right. Tipped over on its side and a real mess. We can look at that, too. But that isn’t all. This is the part I thought you’d be interested to hear. Thing is, they heard this noise and they went out to investigate it and it was the Jeep. But then when they got back to their little house, they had another surprise. They had a skeleton. Not one of their own skeletons. A strange skeleton.”

Gregor considered this. “Strange in what way? Do you mean fake?”

“If you mean fake plastic, or that kind of thing, no. I talked to the Morris PD. This was a real enough skeleton, only it came from an exhibit up at the Litchfield County Museum. That’s this little place some foundation has set up that does educational exhibits for schoolkids to take field trips to. You know the kind of thing.”

“And they were doing anatomy?”

“They were doing bones. They’ve got all kinds of skeletons—a beaver, I think I heard, and an ostrich. I don’t know where they got that one. And I don’t know what the exhibit was supposed to be in aid of, either, so don’t ask me. But somebody took their human skeleton and put it on Martin and Henry Chandling’s front porch.”

Gregor drummed his fingers against the top of his knees. He hated details like this. They almost always meant trouble, even if—like this one—there was a good chance that they had nothing to do with the case in hand. It was Halloween, after all. The skeleton could have been put on that porch by anybody at all, just as a trick or treat prank.

“Did they have to move this skeleton a long way to get it to this porch?” he asked.

“Just down the hill to the back,” Stacey told him. “Guy I talked to out in Morris was fit to bust. Seems like the guy who runs this museum, Jake something, anyway, he’s some kind of obsessive. He spent yesterday afternoon going back and forth from the museum to the house where Martin and Henry live, over and over and over again, and measuring everything—”