Murder Bone by Bone by Lora Roberts Page A

for Drake about Claudia’s revelations. I didn’t go into detail—didn’t have that much change. But I felt he should know.
     

Chapter 9
     
    We had meant to have our picnic on Ocean Beach, but the wind blew a cloud of fine sand over the beach right at sandwich level if you were sitting on a blanket. So we spent a few minutes looking at the few hardy souls sailboarding in that cold water, located a sea lion or two, and then took our lunch to Queen Wilhelmina’s Tulip Garden by the north windmill. The tulips were long gone, of course, but a vivid display of zinnias and petunias took their place, and the windmill proved interesting to the boys.
    On the way home, everyone slept, even Claudia, whose soft snores began soon after we wheeled onto 280. I felt a little guilty for dragging her all over the Academy of Sciences. Standing in the middle of the Fish Surround, a circular room with walls made from a continuous fish tank, watching the leopard sharks and salmon and rockfish and groupers swimming by had made all of us dizzy, but Claudia had had to sit down.
    I didn’t mind that my passengers were snoozing, especially when the “Riders in the Sky” tape ended and no little fingers pushed the rewind button. There’s only so much yodeling a person can take. In the quiet, with just engine noise to distract me, I started thinking about what Claudia had said earlier.
    I found Melanie Dixon irritating, but she was in a bad position if Claudia were right. Anyone who came within the boundaries of a criminal investigation had my sympathy. I was just glad Bridget was well out of it. She would have been aghast at the trouble her house had gotten into—still would be, when she returned. If only Drake could clean up the investigation by then.
    I turned it over in my mind, wondering how you could ever learn the details about something that had happened so long ago. Even if the bones could be firmly identified, reconstructing the last few hours or days of that person’s life would be nearly impossible. Anyone whose movements were noticed enough to be recollected would also have been missed at the time.
    Drake didn’t talk about his job to me, and I didn’t want to know about police work, but I wondered how they searched for old information. This is a subject I know something about, having written a couple of articles on Palo Alto history for Smithsonian. I decided to do some checking of my own the next day, Monday. The boys would be in school, leaving only Moira to tend. Surely she and I could do some library work without too much hassle.
    Claudia started yawning and blinking when I turned off 280 at Sand Hill. The kids slept until we pulled into the driveway.
    Or rather, tried to pull into the drive. It was occupied at the time—not by a car or truck, but by Drake and Richard Grolen. They stood in the middle of the drive, heads thrust toward each other, fists clenched, like male-aggression poster boys. The students watched incredulously, as if unable to believe that people so old could still put up their dukes. Even Stewart had left his crew and was standing nearby, his expression bemused.
    Claudia leaned forward. “Now, what’s this? The menfolk are squaring off.”
    “But why?” I wondered if I should park on the street.
    “Melanie, probably,” Claudia said. Melanie was there, fluttering around, pulling at Richard’s arm, pushing at Drake. Dinah Blakely, too, stood on the front steps, her hands to her mouth as she watched the men. Richard had a good four inches on Drake, who’s not that tall for a man, although he towers over me. Drake was younger, but he didn’t have those shovel-lifting muscles that us girls had been admiring in Richard the day before.
    Appalled to find myself measuring them as opponents, I honked the horn. For a long moment, neither man moved. Then, reluctantly, they stepped apart.
    Melanie came running over to the passenger door before I even got the car parked. “Where have you been?” She was