Dead Secret

hand.
    “At least we have a start. I’m not sure it will lead anywhere, but it’s more than we had. I was beginning to think whoever stabbed you and Seger was a ghost.”
    When Garnett left, Diane turned to David. “So the Odells liked you?” David rolled his eyes. “I told you they were weird folks,” she said.
    David shook his head. “Weird is when Druids and Wiccans come to the museum to demand a box of bones. Weird is enjoying hanging on the end of a rope over a hundred-foot precipice. These folks are several steps beyond weird. I’m telling you, you need to move away from there. Go stay with Frank. If you can’t do that, you can stay with me.”
    “You propositioning the boss?” Jin had come through the doorway carrying a plastic garbage bag, which he set in the corner.
    “I’m trying to get her to move away from her freaky neighbors,” said David.
    Jin’s face lit up. “You tell her about your visit?” He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.
    “I was about to. Seriously, Diane. These people are disturbed.”
    “I saw Veda Odell this morning. She said she showed you their collections. They seemed to have taken to you.”
    David looked somber. “You don’t know how that disturbs me to hear that.” Jin laughed, and David shot him a stern look. “Do you know what they collect?” he said.
    “No, and I’m not sure I want to,” said Diane.
    “Go on, tell her,” said Jin.
    “The more innocuous of their collections is mourning jewelry—rings, lockets, brooches that people wore in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to commemorate dead loved ones. Most of them have the deceased’s hair in little compartments. Some of the hair-work jewelry has scenes made from bits of hair. Most of it is actually very good. They had a lock of woven hair that was supposed to have belonged to one of the Hapsburgs—Empress Elizabeth, I think they said.”
    “Tell her about the other stuff,” urged Jin, leaning forward on his forearms and grinning at Diane. “You’re not going to believe this, Boss.”
    “The jewelry was kind of nice, and I made the mistake of showing an interest. That’s when they brought out their other collection.”
    “Dare I ask?” said Diane.
    “They have a collection of daguerreotypes of dead children.”
    Diane opened her mouth and shut it again. “What?” she said finally.
    “Can you believe it?” said Jin.
    “Dead children?” repeated Diane. “Who would take pictures of dead children? You mean like autopsy photos, funeral shots?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more.
    “As nearly as I can understand it, it was the rage in the eighteen hundreds to photograph the dead—mostly children, but adults too. They would frame the photos in these velvet-lined gold-and-leather frames. Sometimes they would set the dead up in fancy chairs like they were alive. The Odells had a whole collection of them. I can’t tell you how depressed I was when I left.”
    “You didn’t tell her the worst part,” said Jin.
    “They had albums of their own children’s funerals. Seven of them, and they all died in the fifties before the age of ten. I’m telling you, Diane, someone needs to investigate these people.”
    “My landlady mentioned something about their children once. How did they die; did you ask?”
    “Some hereditary illness, they said, but jeez, you’d have thought they would have stopped after, say”—he made an exaggerated shrug with his shoulders—“four.”
    “That was the forties and fifties,” said Diane. “I imagine birth control wasn’t as good.”
    “Neither was forensics,” said David.
    “Maybe all this death stuff is just their way of dealing with grief,” said Jin. “You know, like making death commonplace so it looks like their children’s dying was just a common part of life. Supposing they didn’t help their children into the afterlife; it must have hurt big-time to lose so many. That’d make you go crazy. Maybe that’s their way of being close to them.”
    “I still think Diane ought to move,” said David.
    Diane shook her head. That was a little more than she wanted to know about her neighbors. She had thought they were odd before. Now they were downright creepy. “Okay, let’s change the subject. David, you said the bodies were piling up. Fill me in.”
    “Jin and Neva worked a crime scene yesterday—two men found drowned in a quarry lake north of here just at the county line. One was a scuba diver. It’s