A Skeleton in the Family (15 page)

M
y burst of optimism was unfounded.

Yes, Sid was thrilled by the news, and speculation kept us happily engaged all the way back home. It was even better when Madison texted me to ask for more time at Samantha's. With her gone, we could get onto the computer right away. That's when we hit another dead end. As far as I could tell, there was no college in New England whose mascot was an ox.

In fact, I couldn't find a single college in the country that used an ox. The closest was a high school team—the Blue Oxen. Going further afield, there was the Minnesota Blue Ox roller hockey team, but it hadn't been founded until 1995, which left them out of the picture.

“Still, college boys and Dr. Kirkland,” Sid said. “That's got to be the link.”

“Except that, at that point, she was already at JTU. Their mascot is a Wildcat.”

“So maybe the guys who sold me weren't wearing college sweatshirts.”

“Or maybe they weren't college kids at all, and the link with Dr. Kirkland has nothing to do with a college.”

That only stopped him for a second. “No, from everything you've heard, Dr. Kirkland's work was her life, and we know I was college age, so that's the most likely place for me to have known her.”

“I guess that's logical. Maybe you'd recognize the JTU campus.”

“Another road trip?”

“How about looking at pictures on the Web?”

“Boy, you know how to suck the fun out of things.”

“Hey, at least I have lips with which to suck.”

“Cheap shot!” He nudged me to one side. “Let me drive. I'm faster.”

“You're noisier, anyway.” I moved to another chair so he could take over the keyboard. He was getting awfully fast. I only wished I'd known that when I was typing all those essays and papers during my grad-school days.

As I watched, he Googled up the JTU Web site and started looking at the pictures posted to attract students—sunny days with smiling students studying on the grass, brightly lit classrooms filled with smiling students, smiling students conferring with distinguished faculty members, suspiciously clean dorm rooms peopled by smiling students. . . . After twenty minutes of viewing a parade of smiling students, I said, “Anything?”

“Maybe. I'm not sure.” He paused. “No, not really.”

“You know, these are current shots. It seems to me that I ran across a site that has uploaded digital files of old college yearbooks. Maybe we could find one from the right era.”

“Good idea!” Sid's finger bones flew across the keyboard to find the site I'd mentioned, then to track down a 1982 JTU yearbook. He started flipping through the pages.

There had been smiling students back then, too, but their hairstyles and clothes were different, and more important, the buildings they inhabited were different. At some point, JTU must have had as busy a building program as McQuaid.

“You know, this does kind of . . . Maybe . . . Yeah, I think this could be something,” Sid said.

“Really?”

“It doesn't look familiar, exactly, but it doesn't look strange either.”

“You're not filling me with confidence, Sid.”

“I'm trying!”

“I know, I know, but—” He flipped past a virtual page. “Wait! Go back!”

“What?” He pressed the back button and went back to a montage of pictures labeled
Greek Life
. “More like
geek
life if you ask me.”

“Look at that guy in the picture in the middle of the page.”

“Hey! His shirt says
OX
.”

“Not it doesn't,” I said. “That's not an
O
. It's a theta. That's a shirt from a fraternity. Theta Chi! Of course Treasure Hunt would have read Theta Chi as
OX
.”

“Because it was all Greek to him!”

I thumped him on the top of his skull, which would have hurt my finger if I hadn't had years of practice doing it. It didn't hurt him, either, but it made such a satisfying sound.

I directed Sid to make a quick search to confirm that there was a Theta Chi chapter at JTU. Moreover, it was the only chapter of Theta Chi in the area. Just to be extra paranoid, I also checked for the sorority Omicron Theta—which really was spelled
OX
—but there were no chapters nearby.

“So what were three frat boys doing with a skeleton from somebody else's collection?” I wondered.

“Either they took hazing their pledges a bit too far, which would make another great movie, or judging by fraternity stereotypes formed by watching too much TV, they stole it.”

“Do you suppose we can scope out which of the fraternity brothers was as big as an ox?”

Sid got us to the yearbook page for the fraternity. There was a photo of what looked like all the guys in the frat, but it was hard to tell because the original photo was pretty fuzzy, and the scan wasn't exactly high quality. “What about him?” I asked, pointing to a big guy in the back row with a mop of curly hair.

“He looks oxlike to me,” Sid said. “What are you thinking? That we find him and ask him if he ever stole a skeleton?”

“It sounds nutty when you say it out loud.” I showed him how to enlarge the photo, but the low resolution on the picture meant that the pictures got blurrier as we enlarged. “Can we figure out what his name was?” There was a list of names under the photo, and since our ox was the eleventh guy in the third row, I started counting off. “Sid, look at the ninth name on the list for the second row.”

“One, two, three . . . oh. That's interesting.”

The name was Rich Kirkland. Dr. Kirkland's son.

“That doesn't make any sense,” I said. “Rich and his large friend—who we assume sold you to the carnival—were at JTU, but you didn't come from JTU. Where on earth did you come from?”

Sid drummed his fingers on the table, which made a horrendous noise. “I bet Rich could tell us.”

“I bet you're right.”

By the time I had to leave to pick up Madison from Samantha's house, Sid and I had found out what Rich did for a living and decided how I was going to get to him.

O
n Sunday, I finally got the quiet time with Madison I'd been craving. We slept in, went to a used bookstore and the comic book store, cooked Mexican food, and did only the chores necessary for the coming week. Sid stayed quietly upstairs, which I appreciated. I returned the favor by leaving a stack of my purchases from the used bookstore where he could find them.

Monday was fairly normal—school and work. The only thing out of the ordinary was my call to Rich Kirkland's office. It turned out that he was a financial planner who offered free consultations to new clients. I made an appointment with him for Tuesday afternoon.

Kirkland had an office with several other financial consultants in a small brick building with awnings that were the dark green of a dollar bill. I was right on time, and the receptionist smilingly led the way to Kirkland's office.

“Ms. Thackery?” he said. “I'm Rich Kirkland.” He stood up from behind a well-polished wooden desk and offered his hand for a firm “trust me with your money” handshake. “A pleasure to meet you.” He didn't show any sign of recognizing me, which was all to the good.

As I remembered from the memorial service, he was a tall man, well built, with dark hair, a good tan, and a snazzy suit. He looked prosperous but not showy: frayed cuffs wouldn't speak well of his financial acumen, and too much bling would make it look as if he was gouging his clients.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I replied. We both sat.

“What can I do for you?”

“I'm trying to look ahead toward retirement. I'm a single mother, I have next to nothing saved, and a daughter starting college in a few years, so it may be too late.”

“It's never too late to improve your financial position,” he said confidently. “It is better to start sooner, but I'm sure there's a lot we can do. Before we go any further, let me tell you a bit about my qualifications. I've been in financial planning for eighteen years, and I also act as consultant to a number of charitable organizations, including my college fraternity.”

“Theta Chi, right?”

“That's right. Joshua Tay University chapter.”

“I recognized your tie tack,” I said, grateful he'd worn it to give me an excuse to bring up the frat.

“Very observant. I was wondering if you'd seen me listed on the frat Web site.”

“Actually, I saw you at your mother's funeral and somebody mentioned to me that you're a financial planner. I figured that you'd understand the academic lifestyle better than the average guy in your field.”

“Ah. I should warn you that I'm not an academic myself.”

“Thank goodness for that. I never met an academic yet who could handle money.” I smiled. He smiled back. We were united in our opinion of academics.

“I take it that you're in academia yourself?”

“I teach at McQuaid.”

“Tenured?”

“Adjunct.”

“Ah.”

The tone was unmistakable. Even he knew enough to diss me, though it was probably more for my income level than for my lack of academic stature. His smile started to fade as he mentally tallied how much money I was likely to bring him, so I decided to sweeten the pot. “As a matter of fact, I'm part of a group of adjuncts.”

“A union?”

“Oh, don't say the U-word—colleges don't like it when adjuncts go in for collective bargaining. We're just trying to pool resources.”

“How many are in your group?”

“About thirty. No one has a decent retirement plan, and we're looking to change that. The idea is for me to be the guinea pig.”

“I'll try to make the experiment as painless as possible,” he said, looking more cheerful. Maybe I could only bring him a pittance in fees, but thirty pittances might add up to a car payment or three.

Rich started asking questions about my finances, and entered my answers into his computer. I gave him points for not sneering at my income or paltry savings, and even my credit card debt only prompted him to say, “That's probably the first thing I'd like to look at—I bet we can get you a better interest rate than you're paying now.”

When I'd answered all his questions, he said, “Let me look at some current offerings, and I should be able to suggest some things to consider.” He started scrolling through windows on his screen.

I figured that I'd better get to the real reason I'd come before he presented me with something to sign or buy. “You know, I think I knew a Theta Chi from JTU who used to date my aunt. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but he was a big guy.”

“Moose?”

“That's it.” It had to be.

“I pledged with Moose—great guy, but I haven't heard from him in years.”

I was relieved—though I'd purposely kept the relationship vague, I had been worried he'd offer to reconnect me with my old pal Moose. “He used to tell our family the funniest stories about you guys. Did you really pull all those pranks?” I tried to make it sound as admiring as possible.

“We may have played a few jokes,” he said with what was surely intended to be a boyish grin.

“So the story about the professor's car?”

“No, it was the football coach's van. And it was completely filled—it took us days to blow up all those balloons!”

That had been a shot in the dark, but vehicles are a popular target for collegiate pranksters. “But the office . . . ?”

“That was a professor. We wrapped every book, every pen, every piece of paper. Even wrapped her can of Sprite—an open can.”

We laughed merrily, and I thought I'd bonded with him enough to get to the question I wanted to ask. “Did you really run off with a skeleton?”

He barely chuckled. “Did Moose tell you about that? That one was supposed to be a secret.”

“Oh, sorry.” Feeling bad for Moose and not wanting to get him into trouble, I added, “He'd had a lot of my grandmother's eggnog at the time. I doubt he even remembers saying anything.”

He looked somewhat mollified. “I don't suppose it makes any difference now. But it was just gathering dust in that classroom, and I doubt anybody at JTU even noticed it was missing.” He looked back at his screen. “Of course, we took it back after the party.”

I didn't have to be a parent or a teacher to know that was a lie, but I was too distracted to call him on it, and it wasn't by his recommendations for investment opportunities I should look into. I was stymied by a seeming impossibility.

I did try to look interested as I took the hefty sheaf of materials he printed out for me, and I really was planning to look the stuff over—just because he was a skeleton-napper didn't mean he wasn't a good financial planner. But I wasn't thinking about money market accounts as I drove back to Pennycross.

It just didn't make sense! Unless some other Theta Chi students had stolen some other skeleton from some other collection which then ended up in Fenton's carnival, Rich's story meant that Sid had come from JTU. Which was impossible—he didn't have JTU markings.

Unless . . . What if Yo had simply misread the ID number? She'd been tired and not all that invested in the result. It was such a simple explanation that I convinced myself that it had to be true. Madison was already home when I got there, so I had to save my brainstorm about Sid's brainpan until she went to bed. Then I hotfooted it up to the attic and told Sid what I'd found out.

“Can I look inside your skull to check those numbers?”

“Mi cranium es su cranium.” He popped his skull off of his spinal column and handed it to me.

I peered inside but couldn't get a good angle in the dim attic light. “Have you got a flashlight?”

“Sure.” His headless body walked in the direction of an old dresser Sid used for storage, and banged his patella against a table. “Aim my head this way, would you? I can't see what I'm doing.”

“Sorry.” I carried him to where he could look inside the drawer his body had opened.

“Found it,” he said, and handed me a pink-and-white plastic flashlight.

“Hello Kitty?” I said. “Oh, man, was this Deborah's?”

“I grabbed it from the Goodwill box when she moved out. It still works fine.”

If the evening produced nothing else, at least I knew what to get Sid for Christmas. Maybe by December I'd even figure out why a creature with no eyes needed light in the first place.

“Hold Kitty for me, would you?” I pushed his hand into place so I could see the numbers more clearly.

“Coccyx. P-A-F-60-1573.”

“That's what Yo said,” Sid said, his voice echoing oddly from his upside-down skull.

I wrote the numbers down on a pad of paper on Sid's table, noticing that the pen was from a Holiday Inn and the pad was from Toys for Tots. Had we always stuck Sid with castoffs, or was it a habit the family had fallen into? If his head hadn't been right there, I'd have started a Christmas list for him that very minute.

“Now what?” Sid wanted to know after I'd given him back his skull.

“I'm not sure. I want to know what this ID number means, but if I ask somebody at JTU, they might lay claim to you. Since Rich and his frat brothers stole you, legally you do belong to them.”

“Not unless they grant me tenure!” Sid said indignantly.

“Granted, but I still think we might get in trouble.”

“Is there perhaps somebody who used to be at JTU who might help? Somebody who is not necessarily completely loyal to that institution?”

I hit myself on the head when I realized what he was implying. “Like an adjunct, you mean? Of course. I bet we either have somebody at McQuaid who knows that system, or we have somebody who knows somebody who knows that system, or we have—”

“Stop now. Please.”

“Anyway, I'll see what I can find out tomorrow and cross my fingers that word doesn't get back to JTU.”

“Hey, if they come get me, I'll just steal myself this time. No cage can hold me!”

“Truly you are the Houdini of skeletons. Though I guess, at this point, Houdini is the Houdini of skeletons. Anyway, now that we have a plan, I'm off to bed.”

“Sleep well,” he said a little wistfully. Sid didn't sleep as far as we could tell. I wasn't sure if that led more credence to the skinny-zombie theory or the bone-bound-ghost idea.

“I'll get started on this first thing tomorrow!” I said, and he looked happier.

The way things worked out the next day, I wished I'd just promised him a new flashlight.