Page 3 of The Bone Code

I gestured encouragement I didn’t feel.

Beecroft drew a quick breath, as though to begin. Seconds passed. No words left her lips.

“Don’t be nervous,” I reassured.

Tight nod. Then, “My twin sister died last year, bless her soul. She was seventy-three years old.”

I now knew where this was headed. Still, I didn’t interrupt.

“Harriet married but was widowed young, so she never had children. She began studying art in her thirties, from then on was totally caught up in her painting. I’m afraid she and I were not fruitful like the Bible instructs.” Quick grin. “Following Harriet’s death—”

“Miss Beecroft—”

“Polly. Please.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Polly. But if you have issues regarding your sister’s passing, you must raise them with the coroner or medical examiner who signed the death certificate.”

“Oh, no. Not at all. Harriet died in hospice of pancreatic cancer.”

OK. I was wrong about the purpose of Beecroft’s visit. Realizing that and, I’ll admit, a tad curious, I said nothing.

“Since I was Harriet’s only kin, it fell to me to clear out her home. She lived in Virginia, in a small town not far from Richmond. But that’s unimportant. While going through her things, I discovered several items that have troubled me greatly.”

The overhead lights wavered, then steadied.

“Oh, my.” One liver-spotted hand fluttered up and hovered, like a moth suddenly free and confused.

“Perhaps this could wait a day or two, until the storm has passed?” I suggested gently.

But Beecroft wasn’t to be dissuaded. “May I show you what I found? I’ll be oh so brief. Then it’s off I go.”

An image fired in my brain. My near-octogenarian mother struggling to control an umbrella in a gale.

“Did you drive here, Polly?” I asked.

“Oh, heavens. No. I came by taxi.”

Crap.

“Do you live in town?”

“I have a condo at Rosewood. Do you know it?”

I knew it well. Mama had recently moved to Rosewood. I now had an inkling how Beecroft had made her way to me.

I also had an inkling that the frumpy garb was misleading.Rosewood is a nine-acre complex modeled on George Vanderbilt’s nineteenth-century getaway in Asheville. Life in the three-towered extravaganza did not come cheap. Beecroft had means.

“Taxis may be scarce in this storm.”Crap. Crap. “How about you outline your concerns as I drive you home?”

“I couldn’t possibly impose.”

“It’s on my way.” It wasn’t.

“That’s so terribly generous. I knew you would be a kind person. Very well. But first you must see something.”

The kind person watched Beecroft dig an envelope from the tote and draw three photos from it. Withholding two, she offered one to me.

“This was made in 1966. I’m with my sister. We were feeling a bit naughty that afternoon.”