Lovely in Her Bones by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

fiddling with the alignment.
    Milo hurried toward him, intending to distract the man from the delicate instrument as politely as possible. “Hello there! May I help you? I’m Milo Gordon, the person in charge here.”
    “Naw, you ain’t,” leered the man, turning as he spoke. “I’m in charge in these parts.”
    Milo recognized him as the disrupter of Dr. Lerche’s slide presentation. “You wanted to see me?” asked Milo in tones of careful politeness and understated dislike.
    “Depends.” The man shrugged. “I’m Deputy Sheriff Bevel Harkness, here on police business. Where’s your boss, boy?”
    Milo’s mouth twitched with annoyance. “Dr. Lerche is gone for the day. I’m in charge now.”
    “Okay. I hear you’uns got a crime to report. Would that be other than this one?” He nodded toward the excavation with a taunting smile.
    Milo could see no point in embarking on a shouting match with the deputy. The chances of getting a competent investigation of the vandalism depended upon maintaining good relations with the investigators. He said: “Last night before eight o’clock, someone broke into the motel room we rented in Laurel Cove, and they damaged our computer and destroyed the disks.”
    “Don’t that beat all?” Harkness remarked. “How do you reckon they got in?”
    “Those doors didn’t look any too sturdy to me,” said Milo. “I expect a credit card would have jimmied the lock. Don’t you think you ought to investigate the scene instead of asking me?”
    Harkness took the criticism calmly. “They sent meout to talk to you, being that you’re in Sarvice Valley, which is my section. Reckon the other stuff will get done as well. I got a form here.” He produced a notebook and pencil and proceeded to read off questions, most of which seemed to concern the complainant’s age, occupation, and permanent address. Milo answered them in tones of decreasing civility. “That ought to about do it,” Harkness said at last. “Will y’all be closing this thing down now?”
    Milo grinned. “Oh, no, Mr. Harkness. We’ll be back in business by tomorrow.”
    “Now, what do you want to go and do that for?” asked Harkness in a pained voice. “All those people want is to get themselves declared an Indian tribe so they can sit back and collect government benefits like a bunch of pet squirrels. And you folks are helping them get a free ride. It’s going to cost the taxpayers a bundle.”
    “I thought you were a Cullowhee yourself.”
    “Reckon so,” Harkness allowed. “But that don’t mean I want to get by without working. I don’t need no handouts.”
    “The only thing these people seem concerned with is saving this valley from strip mining, Mr. Harkness.”
    “Well, I can’t stand around here all day,” said Harkness, pocketing his notepad. “Y’all just watch out for that old Indian curse when you go disturbing the dead.”
    “We will certainly watch out,” said Milo carefully.
        Elizabeth spent most of the morning in the shade of an oak tree, rechecking measurements and recording her findings legibly in a spiral notebook. By now the skulls had become so familiar that they had lost their grotesqueness, and with it their ability to distract her. They had ceased to be “real” to her in the same way the money she once handled as a cashier had become green pieces of paper after a few days offamiliarity. The money had no value because it was not hers to spend; likewise, the skulls had no power over her emotions because she had come to know them as objects and she had never known them as people. She was, therefore, just as surprised as Mary Clare when the latest addition to the collection reduced her to tears.
    “Good Lord!” said Mary Clare, setting it carefully in the box. “What’s one more in this bunch? Why wouldn’t you pick it up?”
    “It’s so small,” said Elizabeth faintly.
    “Oh, that.”
    “All the others had been just … specimens, I guess. And,