Page 3 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)

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D oreen nodded. “Considering I’m the one who found the picture that revealed this crime scene, yeah, I am here.”

Elizabeth frowned at her. “Now that’s fascinating.”

“That’s what I thought,” Doreen agreed, with a nod. “I mean, there’s just a little bit of something every time I turn around.”

“The fact that you found the photograph, and now we found this jawbone is huge,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s also sad.”

“We don’t know a whole lot about it, do we?” Doreen asked.

“No, what I can tell you is that the X-ray is old , old.”

Doreen interrupted, “Was it just one? I was confused about the number of X-rays found.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Nope. Just one came to my lab.”

Doreen frowned. “So just a miscommunication?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “It happens more than you can imagine. It’s been preserved and even seems to be laminated.

However, the lamination started to peel off, so somebody put it in what appears to be a liquid plastic coating.

So I don’t know if we’ll be able to date the actual X-ray after so much deterioration. ”

“So, somebody was trying to preserve the X-ray?” Doreen asked. “That seems a bit much. What was on that X-ray worth preserving?”

“That’s the fascinating thing,” Elizabeth began, warming up to the subject. Then she frowned and asked in a low tone, “Will I get in trouble by talking to you?”

“That’s the never-ending question when dealing with Doreen,” Arnold chimed in. “We would like to say no, but…”

“But you don’t know that.” Darren completed the sentence and started to walk away.

“No, I don’t know that,” Arnold stated, “but, since it’s Doreen, she can get away with a lot more than anybody else.”

Doreen frowned. Arnold was definitely having trouble with her getting her way all the time. “It’s also a cold case,” Doreen pointed out. “Which you well know is what I am working on, and the last one was certainly with the captain’s permission.”

“Sure, but that was the last one,” Darren pointed out, coming back to join them, having heard what she had said. “We very much would like to know if you’re approved to be working on this one.”

As it was, Elizabeth had already pulled out her phone and was making a call. She turned back, looked at Doreen and the others, and announced, “The captain’s fine with it.”

Doreen beamed. “No reason for him not to be,” she stated, as she once more rubbed her hands together. She looked over at Nan, who was looking absolutely thrilled to be hooked into another case and as involved as she already was.

“Now,” Doreen asked the coroner, “male or female?”

“Male,” Elizabeth replied. She looked back at her. “You and I will have a talk one day. You really should have gone into my field.”

“Maybe,” Doreen conceded, “but my life took a very different pathway.”

At that, the two men snorted, and Arnold added, “Yeah, she just became one of those nosy types, who suddenly gets all kinds of success.”

“Suddenly?” she asked in a wry tone.

“ Suddenly is relative, I guess,” Darren noted, shaking his head. “I know you deserve all the credit you get. It’s just so amazing to us that we’re even having this conversation because we’re not even working on cold cases.”

“It is a fascinating field, and I would absolutely love to be working on more of them,” Elizabeth shared.

Arnold smiled. “But you’re not because you’re still at the beginning of your career and working in a place that lacks the depth for specialties like that. Maybe when you’ve got a few more years in, you’ll get there.”

“Unless you go somewhere that has a Doreen on the loose,” Darren added.

Elizabeth burst out laughing. “There are worse things in life than to work for a department that doesn’t have any missing person cases, unidentified bodies, or cold cases that were never solved,” she declared.

“There’s always Penticton, Vernon, the Kamloops, and Merritt.

If you get to be good at it, you can go anywhere. ”

“Maybe that’s what you should do,” Darren suggested, turning to look at Doreen.

She shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere. This is home for me, and I’m staying here.”

“Particularly because Mack is here.”

She blushed and Nan chuckled. “Even if she won’t admit it,” Nan muttered.

“Hey, I’m marrying the man, so that should be enough admitting.”

Elizabeth smiled at her and asked, “Are you engaged to be married?” She sounded thrilled.

Doreen nodded. “Yes, and it’s a fairly recent event,” she noted, twisting the ring on her finger. “I’m still getting used to it.”

“Nothing to really get used to, is there?” Elizabeth asked.

“There is because I was in a pretty-ugly divorce, a quite recent one that ended up in a huge mess,” she explained. “In the midst of all that, my husband was murdered, and these guys thought I’d killed him, of course,” she added, turning to glare at them.

Both the men shook their heads. “Nope, we never thought that, but we still had to do our due diligence.”

Doreen’s shoulders slumped, and she nodded.

“So, they did their due diligence, and I ended up helping them solve my soon-to-be ex-husband’s murder,” she shared with Elizabeth.

“Anyway I warned Mack that I won’t be pushed into an early wedding, though the people around me,” she shared, shooting a glare at Nan, “don’t seem to be listening. ”

“Nope, we sure aren’t,” Nan declared.

“Neither is Mack.” Arnold cackled. “He wants you locked down and tied up, so you can’t run away.”

“I won’t say that he doesn’t feel that way, but he knows that I love him,” Doreen stated. “So, no matter what everyone makes of it,… it’s really not an issue. And Mack has been extremely patient so far.”

“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” Arnold muttered. “Look at all that you’ve got him into.”

“You mean, at all that I’ve gotten myself into,” she amended.

“Yeah, that too.” He chuckled.

“That is all very fascinating,” Elizabeth said, “but it won’t solve our current issue.”

“No, and I am very fascinated with that right now,” Doreen replied, as she looked around. “There are more than a few aspects to this case that I’m curious about.”

“Such as?” Elizabeth asked.

“Is there only one body part? Or do you think parts from an entire body are spread out here too? What is the age of the decedent at death, and how long has the jawbone been buried here? It would also help to have a cause of death,” she noted, “and—”

Arnold nodded. “ID of the body would help too, if we’re asking for miracles,” he interjected, adding to the list of questions. And then he saw Doreen’s expression, suggesting he had missed something. When he glared at her, she rolled her eyes at him.

“Significance of the X-ray. You seem to be forgetting that.”

Elizabeth looked up and beamed. “See? You’re perfect for this.”

“I am fascinated by that X-ray. The fact that it was preserved or meant to be preserved suggests that somebody needed proof,… either of injuries caused, injuries received, or”—she hesitated—“I hate to say it, blackmail .”

“Ooh, I like the way you think,” Elizabeth said, laughing.

Immediately Arnold pulled his pants up over his ample girth and acknowledged, “She’s right. Those are pretty important pieces.”

Elizabeth nodded. “So, how are you guys doing on this grid work?”

“I think we’ve pretty well done what you asked for,” Arnold responded, pointing out beyond the established grids. “So, anything beyond this, you told us not to get any closer.”

“Right, I don’t want you any closer than this just because of the proximity to where the bones could be.

So, estimating a six-foot-tall plus man, presumably buried intact, yet with some bones disturbed by wildlife, we would figure it’ll be somewhere in here.

” And, with that, she got down to work with much smaller tools, her team right beside her.

They looked at Doreen a couple times, but she just smiled and didn’t say anything.

For once, Nan decided she would stay mostly quiet too.

Doreen had to admit she appreciated Nan’s reticence because this was not the time to be causing trouble. As it was, Elizabeth’s guess had worked out quite well, since before long she had found the feet of the man. The bones barely held together. Doreen asked if she could step closer.

Elizabeth nodded. “Just don’t touch anything.”

“No, I won’t,” she said, as she bent down beside the female coroner. “Fascinating.”

“What’s fascinating?” Elizabeth asked.

“As a layperson not in this field,” Doreen shared, “I find it fascinating that the bones are somehow held together.”

“Most of that is due to the way we dug around it,” Elizabeth explained, “and we’ll have to pull out these bones one by one.” She looked back at the forensics crew. “Are you guys ready to do that? Need a body bag over here or an evidence box, but I need something to put all this into.”

It ended up being a carton, and Elizabeth very carefully lifted out each bone and securely placed it inside for safekeeping and transport.

As Doreen sat back and watched her, she whispered, “It’s nice to see the amount of care you give the bones, even after all these years.”

“In many cases,” Elizabeth explained, “it’s extra care just because of the many years involved. When you think about it, this poor man has been here for a very long time, completely unknown and uncared about.”

“Oh, he’s been cared about,” Doreen countered, “but for all the wrong reasons.”

Elizabeth stared at her.

Doreen nodded. “The killer cared about him, even if just as a question that kept popping up in the back of his mind—wondering if it’ll ever be found, wondering if he’ll ever get caught,” she suggested. “Of course I’m working on the premise that he’s still alive and that he will pay for this.”

“Do we know for sure that this man was murdered?” Nan asked in a reasonable tone.

Moments earlier, Elizabeth had opened up the area to the spine. She took a look, then turned back to them. “The ribs appear to be crushed, and the spine is broken. So there’s your answer to that.” Elizabeth turned to Nan.