Dead Past

last night.”
    “Actually, I did get a few hours. I stayed the night in my museum office. Nice and comfy. Why don’t I take you down to the restaurant for breakfast and send you home?”
    “That sounds great. Yeah, I can get behind that idea. By the way, I put some more bones in your lab. We concentrated on retrieving bones last night because we thought that would yield the best results,” said David. “Early this morning Garnett told us that the GBI will be handling the evidence from here on out. So, our plan worked out well. I’m glad to hand it over to them. I wasn’t looking forward to going through all the junk.”
    “I’m glad they are involved, too,” she agreed. “I’ll work on the skull today. I have a feeling that Jin is going to get his DNA lab.”
    “There’s something he wants to know but is afraid to ask,” said David.
    “What’s that?” asked Diane.
    “Does he still get the lab if the police are the ones to break the case?”
    “They’ll probably break it on our evidence, so yes,” said Diane.
    “You’ve already decided on a lab haven’t you?” said David.
    “If you tell Jin, I’ll transfer you to taking care of the dermestid beetle colony for the rest of your life.”
    “He won’t hear anything from me,” said David.
    Diane treated herself and David to a big breakfast in the restaurant. She wished her personal choices weren’t always centered between either food or sleep lately. And she hadn’t even had a run in the past week and a half. Maybe this evening.
    After breakfast she sent David home, and she went back to the museum office to call Juliet’s grandmother.

Chapter 37

    Diane dialed the number that Laura had given her. After seven rings, an older woman answered.
    “Who is this? I don’t know anyone at a museum.”
    Mrs. Torkel obviously had caller ID. Diane started to speak, but Ruby Torkel started again before she could get a word out.
    “Unless it’s Juliet. Is that you, Juliet? What are you doing calling me from work? Does your boss know you’re calling me from there?”
    Diane smiled. “Mrs. Torkel, I’m Diane Fallon, the director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History.”
    “Well, what are you doing calling me?”
    Good question, thought Diane. How am I going to approach this?
    “I’m also the director of the crime lab in Rosewood. . . .”
    “Crime lab? Juliet’s not in trouble is she? She’s not a bad girl,” Mrs. Torkel said, concern evident in her voice.
    “No, Mrs. Torkel, Juliet is not in trouble,” said Diane. “I’m helping to find out what happened to her in 1987.”
    There was silence on the other end of the phone for a long moment.
    “She got snatched, that’s what happened.”
    “She was a child and it was a great trauma for her. She is very frightened by what little she remembers.”
    “It’s best not to remember,” said Mrs. Torkel.
    “Her fears are very real. She wants to know what happened so she can get rid of those fears once and for all. What she does remember is blurred and fragmented.”
    “She never remembered anything before. Lord knows the police tried to get something out of her.”
    “Juliet is a lovely young woman now, but she’s haunted by this incident from her past. I’d like to help her; she is a good employee.”
    “What does she do there exactly?” asked Mrs. Torkel.
    “She takes care of our seashell collection and she makes kits to teach schoolkids about seashells,” said Diane.
    “She always did like to collect seashells with me. She calls them mollusks now. I don’t know what that is. What do you want to know?”
    “She told me about a doll that you said she stole,” said Diane.
    “You thinking that had something to do with her kidnapping?”
    “Maybe,” said Diane.
    “I don’t see how. She was kidnapped in Arizona. She got that doll here in Florida.”
    “I thought it might help her remember that time in her life,” said Diane. “Didn’t she get that doll just before she was kidnapped?” It was a guess on Diane’s part, but she had a feeling she was right.
    “Why, yes, she did. She was visiting me just a month before she got kidnapped. She came home with that doll. She was playing with some child she met on the beach. That’s where I live, here on the beach, here in Glendale-Marsh. It was a nice doll and people don’t just give away nice things.”
    “Do you know where the doll is now?” asked Diane.
    “Sure. I got it. I took it away from her. I told her she