The Skeleton's Knee by Archer Mayor

you hear, I’ll find you another left-wing loonie to talk to—maybe someone who’s into crystals or pyramids. The boys’ll love that.”
    I conceded defeat. “All right. I’ve already committed myself. Did you manage to dig up any other natural-foods suppliers?”
    “Just one. Who do you have looking into that?”
    “Kunkle.”
    She laughed. “Oh, perfect. Tell him to contact Sunshine Jackson in Guilford. He supplies a lot of people who think the Food Co-op is a subdivision of Dow Chemical.”
    I pulled my small notebook from my pocket and wrote down Jackson’s name, not that I thought I’d easily forget it.
    “I take it you still don’t know who shot that man, or who stole the chart?”
    I rested my head against the pillow behind me and watched the moon between half-closed lids. “Nope. I think Coyner’s hiding something, but I don’t know what. He may be the beginning and the end of this case, or he may just be a suspicious old woodchuck who resents his property being invaded. Hard to say.”
    “And all you’ve got is the chart and some money.”
    I was silent for a while, thinking about that. “That’s the sexy stuff; there is more.”
    Gail sounded surprised. “What?”
    “The house itself, for one—it was like a shrine to his own emptiness.” I envisioned the contents of his house slowly parading by in the half-light before me, including those most cherished possessions that he’d hidden away especially. “And there was a holster without a gun… and a few old bullets.”
    She mulled that over, similarly baffled. “Why keep those?”
    “I don’t know,” I answered, “but I think I’ll make an effort to find that missing gun.”

7
    LOCATING FULLER’S GUN was dependent not only on securing another search warrant but on getting hold of the right tool for the job. I thought I could coax the former from a judge; the latter, in this small state, would take some research.
    I was standing by Harriet’s desk the following morning when she walked in, impatient to get things rolling. “Do me a favor, would you? Call the state police and ask if we can borrow their metal detector. I think the Rockingham barracks has one, but you might have to dig deeper.” I handed her a sheet of paper. “Also, please make sure Willy gets this—it’s some homework Gail did for him. And last,” I added with an apologetic smile, “I’d appreciate it if you could get either Sammie or Dennis to file for a search warrant for Fuller’s missing gun.” I handed her the rough draft of an affidavit I’d worked up before her arrival.
    She took both sheets of paper. “Will one detector be enough?”
    “You think you can get another?”
    “We could rent one.”
    I stared at her nonplussed for a moment, astonished at my own lapse, then broke into a grin. “Great. See what you can find. I’ll be at Billie Lucas’s house on Whipple in the meantime.”
    She shook her head slightly as I walked away.
    Whipple Street had once been a convenient alleyway in which to leave the garbage for removal, and before then had probably served as a tree-shaded side street for horse-drawn buggies. But in the time-honored tradition of old neighborhoods yielding to technology’s endless pushiness, it had been widened, denuded, and paved over. It was now a heavily traveled connector street between Green and High. It was, no doubt, convenient for traffic, but it had turned what once had been an ideal spot for stickball and hopscotch into a potential killing zone.
    The house Billie Lucas had described was fairly nondescript—two-storied, clapboarded, in need of paint—but it showed signs of having once been the pride of a burgeoning middle class. The tasteful and frugal use of stained glass here and there and the occasional extravagance of some gingerbread molding at a corner or along a roof edge belied the building’s present plight.
    The gate didn’t work, so I walked around the small picket fence, along the side of the house, and