Scattered Graves

doing their usual bickering.
‘‘We just had pizza,’’ said Neva.
‘‘You can never have too much pizza,’’ said Jin. ‘‘It’s essential food.’’
‘‘You can have too much pizza,’’ said David. ‘‘You might want to ask the rest of us before you just go pick up food for all of us.’’
Diane smelled the aroma of pizza coming through the door. Jin was carrying three large boxes.
‘‘Hi,’’ said Neva when she saw Diane. ‘‘We finished the house.’’
‘‘You didn’t happen to find a copy of Oliver Twist in any of the rooms?’’ said Diane.
‘‘We gave all the books we found to Izzy,’’ Neva said. ‘‘Why?’’
Neva went to Diane’s small refrigerator and began getting drinks out.
‘‘Diane figured out that’s where the list was,’’ said Izzy.
The three of them stopped and looked at Diane.
‘‘Really?’’ said David. ‘‘Well, you could have saved us a lot of time.’’
‘‘The pizza smells really good,’’ said Izzy.
Neva brought several drinks over and handed them out. She raised her eyebrows at Izzy and gave him a nod. Izzy nodded back and smiled. They were all in on it, thought Diane. Apparently Izzy had discussed his idea with all of them.
‘‘So, why Oliver Twist ?’’ asked David.
‘‘It was missing on the shelf,’’ said Izzy.
‘‘Couldn’t it have been loaned out?’’ said David.
‘‘I don’t think Jefferies loaned books,’’ said Diane. ‘‘He liked them and he wanted to keep them—even the ones he didn’t read.’’
‘‘How could you know that?’’ said David.
‘‘Just a feeling,’’ said Diane.
‘‘We need more,’’ said David. He had a puzzled frown on his face, as if Diane was suddenly about to trade in her microscopes for a Ouija board.
‘‘There’s more,’’ said Diane, smiling. ‘‘We’ll have to eat on the coffee table. The computer’s on the big table and it looks like it is going to stay there for a while.’’
‘‘Any luck?’’ said David. He walked over to the computer and pulled up a chair.
‘‘Depends on what you mean by luck,’’ said Frank. He took the black light and showed David the message.
‘‘Bit of a smart aleck,’’ said David.
‘‘What?’’ asked Jin. He and Neva came over and looked inside the computer case.
‘‘What do you make of that?’’ said Neva.
‘‘Let’s eat the pizza before it gets cold,’’ said Diane. ‘‘I’ll tell you while you eat.’’
Diane got napkins from a cabinet and they all gath ered around the coffee table, grabbing slices of pizza as Diane began her story.
‘‘It started in the field that Arlen Wilson was plow ing. He found some pieces of bones, told Sheriff Canfield, and brought them to me. I examined the bone fragments—which looked like they had gone through a wood chipper. They were possibly from a male in his late teens or early twenties who might have worn jewelry or a body piercing. When I told Canfield the bones were human, he had the field searched, and more pieces of bone were found along with black hair. This second set of bones and accompanying evidence were the ones that disappeared from the crime lab under Bryce’s watch. After they disappeared, the sher iff went back to the field one more time and found a few more pieces and brought them to me. One was a maxilla with an incisor—a shovel-tooth incisor.’’
‘‘I have shovel-tooth incisors. Want to see?’’ said Jin.
‘‘Not with your mouth full of pizza,’’ said Neva. ‘‘Jeez, Jin, it’s bad enough that we have to eat pizza two days in a row without seeing it in your mouth.’’
‘‘I’ll swallow,’’ said Jin.
‘‘That’s all right. We all know what they look like,’’ said Neva.
‘‘I don’t,’’ said Izzy.
‘‘I’ll show you one later,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The point is, they’re very common among Asians. Not nearly as common among other ethnic groups.’’
Diane took a bite of her pizza before it got com pletely cold and washed it down with a sip of Dr Pep per. They all watched her, waiting for the rest of her story.
‘‘In the meantime,’’ she continued, ‘‘David was hav ing suspicions about the mayor and the people around him. He came up with credible evidence suggesting not only that Jefferies may have been responsible for the surge in burglaries that cost the former mayor the election, but that he may have been responsible for the murder of Judge McNevin and then framed some one else for it. Then Edgar