Dead Secret

labeled it.
    David opened the door and came into the room, sporting a disposable cap, gloves and a glass container. “Thought I would help you with the insects. Good heavens,” he said, looking into the sack filled with litter. “What did he do, shovel the body in?”
    “From some of the markings I’m seeing, yes, that is exactly what he did.”
    “I called Sheriff Canfield. He was happy we were able to tentatively identify one of the quarry victims. I told him we will process the evidence as soon as we can.”
    Diane nodded. “What did you find out about Dr. Lymon?”
    “She has an alibi for the time of the graveside attack. I spoke with several of her geology graduate students. I didn’t find any hint that she has ever sexually harassed any other student. Most of the gossip was about her teaching methods. She isn’t well liked. In fact, Mike seems to be one of the few who got along with her. In her classes she’ll zero in on a particular student and verbally quiz them during the lecture. The more they don’t know, the more she focuses in on them. Geology has lost several students because of her.”
    David stopped to scoop up several bugs and put them in his container. “ Dermestes maculatus . Nice little scavengers,” he said.
    “We need to be sure we get them all. I don’t want any infesting the museum colony of beetles,” said Diane, staring at the dark beetles running around in David’s jar.
    “I’ll get them all. You know, there are a lot of them.” he said as he peeked into the bag. “And I’m seeing a lot of bug parts.”
    “What do you mean?”
    David shook his head. “I don’t know. It just looks like more beetles than usual, if you think about all the bugs left behind and the ones that scared the deputy.”
    Diane pulled another bone out of the sack and held it in her hand. It was cleaner than the others, a long bone, a humerus, but not human.
    “What is this?” She said out loud and put paper out on another table and set the bone on it. “I’ll get Sylvia Mercer in here to identify this. Go ahead with what you were saying about Lymon.”
    “Not a lot more. The students were aware that Mike lost his assistantship, but no one knew why. They thought maybe it was because she was angry over his changing his dissertation research to crystallography, which is out of her field. But she apparently encouraged him and helped him pick someone in crystallography to replace her on his committee. That doesn’t sound like anger. I’m thinking maybe this harassment was a onetime thing, and her anger came later.” He stopped talking a moment and stared at the bones Diane was laying out on the table.
    Diane turned to look at him. “You look like you have something else to say.”
    “Just trying to think it out. From what I can find out, her husband’s leaving hit her hard. I think she wanted to get some self-esteem back and thought Mike would be receptive.”
    “Because he worked for her?”
    “Because she knew he was attracted to another older woman.”
    “You mean me. Is there something I should know about that?”
    David looked up at her, surprised. “About you? No. I’m just thinking out loud. You said she thought you and Mike were having an affair. Everyone knows you and Mike go caving and that you’re friends. Some even know Mike would have liked to go out with you. She probably thought that Mike would be a safe place for her pride to land. She was wrong, and that’s why she got so angry.”
    Diane noticed that David was tiptoeing around calling her an older woman, like Dr. Lymon—they were about the same age. She smiled. “You may be right. I guess the question is, how angry was she? If she didn’t stab us, could she have gotten one of her students to do it?”
    David leaned with his back against the wall and folded his arms. “I don’t think so. Not the ones I talked to. I didn’t find evidence of any students who liked her well enough to carry her briefcase, much less kill for her.”
    “How did you get all this information, if I may ask?” said Diane, looking in the garbage bag again and finding a foot bone.
    David grinned. “The students were pretty easy to talk to. I pretended to be a father checking out the department for his kid.”
    She looked up at him. “The students didn’t think that was funny?” Diane remembered when she was a young student, and she would have thought that strange.
    “I’m sure they did, but what was really funny was that several