Murder Bone by Bone by Lora Roberts Page B

beside herself. “How could you just go away and leave that—that savage in charge?”
    “I didn’t think he was so combative when I met him yesterday.” I set the Suburban’s parking brake. The middle-seat kids slumbered on, but Corky and Sam watched the drama, wide-eyed. They were more used to their own brand of fighting.
    “Melanie means Detective Drake, don’t you?” Claudia fished around on the front seat and assembled her purse, the bag of bagels, and the various pamphlets she’d collected during our excursion. “What’s the fight about?”
    “Oh, it’s terrible.” Melanie’s distress was evident; her mascara was streaked, her lipstick gnawed away. “Richard and his crew had found a lot of the bones and put them on the lawn in some kind of order. Then they went to lunch. After all, a policeman was here, even if he was too busy to come out and help them.” She darted a glare over her shoulder at Drake. “When the crew came back from lunch, the bones were gone.”
    “That is terrible.”
    “And the oh-so-alert policeman didn’t even notice.”
    “Be fair.” Dinah Blakely entered the conversation, coming down the steps. “Nobody thought to tell Paul we were leaving. It was kind of careless.”
    “Kind of careless?” Drake shook his head. His hair was wild, a sure sign of excessive perturbation. “Evidence in a possible homicide! And after you’d agreed to follow procedure!”
    He glared at Richard. “I ought to arrest you for obstructing an investigation.” His gaze swept Kathy, Nelson, and Hobart, who huddled together on the sidewalk, Dinah Blakely, and Richard.
    To his credit, Richard backed away from the confrontation. “Look, Drake—” His hands unclenched. “It’s true. I blew it. I should have taken better care—”
    “It’s not Dr. Grolen’s fault.” Nelson stepped forward, pushed perhaps by the other two. He was wearing sunglasses with thick prescription lenses. “I brought my lunch today, and I said I’d stay with the bones. But—” he swallowed. “I—I started thinking about ice cream, and figured I could get downtown and back in no time. I just didn’t think to let Detective Drake know. It seemed so busy here with the road crew and all. I never thought anyone would just come up and walk off with the bones. Guess I didn’t think at all.”
    “As usual,” Kathy said brutally under her breath. Nelson’s ears turned red.
    “We would have been glad to keep an eye out, if you’d let us know,” Stewart put in. “Sorry to say we didn’t see anything unusual. But we were concentrating on our trench.”
    “At least the bone-nappers didn’t get this.” Richard Grolen pulled a tissue-wrapped object out of his pocket. Tenderly he folded back the paper, showing a curved piece of bone with three discolored teeth attached to it.
    We all moved a little closer. Drake asked, “What’s that?”
    “Jawbone.” Richard gazed down at it fondly. “With molars! Look at those roots. And a filling! Makes it easier to identify the body, if that’s a concern of yours.” He grinned at Dinah Blakely. “Also good from the anthropological point of view.”
    “Now, Richard!” Dinah Blakely laughed, sounding coy. Melanie’s eyes narrowed, going from Dinah to Richard. “Given that the bones are modern, I doubt this person ate enough stone-ground corn to wear down his enamel, or carried a burden sling in his teeth.”
    “You’ve already figured out a few things, though. Right?” Richard made room for Dinah at his side.
    “Well, I thought whoever it was might have been a nervous, uptight kind of person,” she said, diffidently. “See, looks like he did grind his teeth. Pretty noticeably, since he was under twenty-five.”
    “How do you know that?” Drake had his untidy little notebook out, scrawling things down. He hovered over the jaw fragment in Richard’s hand, as if he didn’t trust the archaeologist not to whisk it away.
    "It's a guess, really.” Dinah Blakely was