Family Skeletons by Bobbie O'Keefe

suppose, so you might as well take
them now.”
    Jonathan appeared surprised and puzzled. Then his
face cleared. “And mine, I guess. I haven’t had access to the house as long as
she has, but you’ve got to cover all the bases.”
    Tom nodded. “Yep. Should.” He motioned them toward a
narrow counter beneath a wall cabinet. He took a box from the cabinet, along
with a thick set of paper with labeled boxes and instructions in large print,
and added a packet of moist wipes. “Think Roberta will also volunteer hers?”
    That was a touchy question that Tom managed to ask
inoffensively and professionally, Sunny noted.
    “If the blood and tissue matches Franklin’s,” Sunny
said, “prints of family members will be required, not requested. So she might
as well get it over with.” She allowed him to take her hand and firmly press
each finger into the inky pad and then onto squares on the paper.
    “One more thing,” Tom said when he finished with her
other hand. He handed her a moist disposable towelette. “I’d appreciate the two
of you staying out of that attic until I can get out there and look around.”
    “Sure,” Jonathan said as he exchanged places with
Sunny. “I’d expected that.”
    “Tom,” Sunny asked, backing away as she worked on
cleaning her hands, “could you do that as soon as possible? Check the attic, I
mean. If there’s a body up there, I...”
    “I understand,” he said without looking at her, his
attention on the task at hand. “I’ll follow you out there as soon as I get that
bag of evidence over there documented.”
    When Sunny and Jonathan stepped outside, the sun
glared at them as if it thought it were still August instead of close to the
end of September. Though her hands appeared clean, her fingers felt like they
carried residue. Whether it was from the towelette, ink, or her imagination,
she wasn’t sure.
    Turning away from the sun’s glare, she spoke to
Jonathan as she looked along the sidewalk. “I don’t want to go back with you.
I’ll walk home along the beach.” She didn’t think she could face what else
might be in that attic. Not right now.
    “Sure,” he said, as if reading her mood and
responding to it. Then he added, earning even more intuitive points, “Take your
time. I don’t know how long we’ll need.”
    She wandered the town, even remembered to check the
diminutive library for tide times so she wouldn’t get surprised when hiking out
to the cove. She considered calling her mother but didn’t want to give her the
same stuck-in-limbo feeling she had, so decided to wait until she knew
something. It’d be rougher on Roberta anyway. At one time, she’d actually loved
the man.
    At a yogurt and ice cream place on the short pier
she bought a strawberry ice cream cone. As she walked away from the service
window, she spied Mavis inside at a table, so she backtracked and joined her.
    In greeting, Mavis said wryly, “Would you believe
this is lunch?” Guiltily, she looked at the half-eaten dish of ice cream. “I
love this place. They make the best banana split I ever had.”
    Sunny said nothing.
    As Mavis worked on her ice cream, she gave Sunny
glances that ranged from casual to puzzled to concerned. Then when Mavis pushed
the empty dish aside, she asked quietly, “What’s the matter?”
    Sunny explained today’s find.
    “I see,” Mavis said. The lines in her face deepened.
“You thought—hoped—it was all behind you. Yet here it is again rearing up its
ugly head. Franklin just won’t go away peacefully.”
    “Contrary to the end,” Sunny agreed wryly. “Do you
know anything about the Bowers family? Langley and Louise?”
    The question seemed to surprise Mavis, but she
answered readily. “Yes. Louise left him about, oh, maybe eight years ago. She
remarried and is living in Arizona, I think. Her marriage with Langley wasn’t a
good one. She wore a lot of bruises for a lot of years.”
    “Did she have an affair with Franklin?”
    “Oh, so