One Grave Too Many

frizzy curls tied up in a ponytail on top of her head, making her look sixteen instead of twenty-six. She came over and looked where Diane pointed. “I haven’t seen that one,” she said.
    “There are more?”
    “At least two in here. One grazing around the feet of the mammoth herd and another on the edge of the pond behind some weeds, sticking its horn in the water. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo? ”
    “How odd.”
    “I’ll say. But nice.”
    Within five minutes, Frank came through the door, followed by a herd of museum staff. He took Diane by the arm, led her to a bench by the door and produced a still warm egg-and-biscuit sandwich.
    A little waft of steam rose from the sandwich when she folded back the wrapper and it had the aroma of breakfast. She took a bite.
    “I guess I am hungry.”
    “I thought so.” Frank waited until she had taken several bites before he spoke again. “It was a false alarm about the bone.”
    Diane cocked an eyebrow at him.
    “It was part of my friends’ efforts to persuade the police to investigate the boyfriend. The bone they gave me came from a deer and not from the boyfriend’s back-yard.” He flashed a gleaming set of white teeth through a sheepish expression.
    “You have the bone?”
    “Sure.” He took it out of his briefcase.
    She finished her biscuit and dropped the wrapper into a waste container by the door. “Come with me,” she said, leading him through double doors into the mammal exhibit.
    “Clavicles are like struts. They keep our shoulders straight and our arms from falling onto our chest.” She stopped at an exhibit labeled ODOCOILEUS VIRGINIANUS . “OK, here’s a deer. Find the bone.”
    “What?”
    “Find the bone on the deer identical to the one you hold in your hand.”
    He started with the long metapodial bones of the feet, moved to the ribs, walked around the deer and stopped by the shoulder. He shrugged. “This skeleton doesn’t have one.”
    “Neither do any of its kin. Deer don’t have clavicles. They don’t need them. It doesn’t matter if their forelegs fall onto their chest. We primates have them. So do bats and birds. In birds it’s called a furcula—wishbone to you laymen.”
    He looked at her as if not quite understanding, and she dragged him along into another room filled with primate skeletons and stopped at Homo sapiens sapiens.
    “OK, wise guy, can you find the bone now?”
    Frank looked at the skeleton’s collarbone. Bingo. It was identical. He shook his head. “George told me it was from a deer. I’ve known him for years.”
    “Maybe he thought it was. You need to find out what pile of bones he took it from. Now, I have a reception to get ready for tonight and I haven’t looked at all the interactive media yet.”
    “About tonight.”
    Here it comes. Another broken date before we even get started again. Diane stood waiting.
    “My son—you met Kevin—he wants to be a forensic anthropologist.”
    “And you want me to recommend a good child psychologist?”
    “Funny, Diane. No. I would like to bring him. I know it’s one of these invitation-only affairs, but . . .”
    “Fine. I’d like to see him again.”
    “There’s more.”
    “You have more children?”
    “You’re real cute this morning, aren’t you? No. His mother and her husband would like to come too.”
    “Family affair?”
    “Something like that.”
    “I’ll leave tickets at the door.”
    “I appreciate this. It’s not every woman who would let her date bring his ex-wife.”
    “We have an entomologist on staff you can show the bug parts to.”
    “What? Oh.” Frank studied the design on the floor, making a face, as if he had just felt a wave of pain. “I—uh—threw them away.”
    “Threw them away? You threw evidence away?”
    “I didn’t think it was evidence. The Rosewood police weren’t interested. And they were, I thought, bug parts from a deer bone.”
    “What does your friend do for a living?”
    “He’s a roofing contractor.”
    “A roofing contractor. Frank, did you know that before I took the directorship of the museum here, I was an internationally known forensic anthropologist? Did you know that I can give expert testimony in courts of law all over the world about anything concerning the identification and disposition of bones? And you believed a roofer’s identification over mine?” Diane threw up her hands.
    “I’ve known him forever. We play poker together.”
    “What? Is this some kind of guy