The Bone Bed

water that is warmer than she was. What that means is she was colder than forty-two degrees when she first went in.”
    “Maybe she was kept in a freezer somewhere.”
    “There’s no damage to her from fish and other sea creatures, which she likely was going to get if she was submerged for even a day or two. I seriously doubt she was in the water long enough to thaw,” I decide. “Either she’d already begun to thaw when she went in or she was kept really, really cold somewhere but not frozen solid.”
    I begin to undress her, the clothing soaking wet, soiled, and gritty, and she smells more strongly of decomposition. The foul acrid stench crawls up my sinuses and coats my teeth, and soon it will be bad enough to make my eyes sting.
    “Shit,” Marino complains, and he swaps out his surgical mask for one with a filter.
    I work silk-lined dark blue cashmere over her shoulders, pulling stubborn arms out of long, clingy sleeves, holding up her jacket to look at it front and back. I see no holes, no tears, no damage. But the three brownish metal buttons in front don’t match and look very old.
    “Possibly antique. Possibly military,” I say to Marino. “Let’s get close-ups. Like the ring with the old coin, these could be important because they’re unusual.”
    I spread out the soaking-wet jacket on the sheet-covered table, noting the long curved back, the tapered waist, the tonal embroidery on the sides and sleeves.
    “The label is
Tulle Clothing,
size six. Well, she’s not a six now. More like a zero,” I comment.
    “How do you spell
Tulle
?”
    I tell him, and he jots it down on a clothing diagram. “It’s quite distinctive,” I add. “Sort of a Tallulah style.”
    “Got no idea what that is.” He begins taking photographs of the buttons.
    “Retro-cut, with structured shoulders and wide lapels, and ornate embroidery stitched in thread the same color as the fabric,” I explain. “Imagine Tallulah Bankhead.”
    “Someone with money trying to be glamorous,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense if no one knows she’s missing.”
    “Someone knows. The person who dumped her in the bay does.” I begin going over the buttons with a hand lens.

fifteen
    TARNISHED BRASS WITH A HINT OF GILT, EACH BUTTON has some type of eagle design and an iron shank at the back that has been sewn onto the jacket’s front with heavy dark thread.
    “Civil War. The genuine article. Around the same date as the coin in her ring.” Marino leans close, peering through his reading glasses. “Holy shit, these are something.”
    I return to the stretcher, and the putrid smell gets stronger as I begin unbuttoning the blouse. Decomposition is darkly swarming in like a plague of invisible insects as we work and time slips away, moving her closer to putrefaction as I move closer to being held in contempt of court.
    “Probably not from a regular foot soldier. Probably officers’ buttons.” Marino reaches for a hand lens, judgment creeping into his tone. “Most people who collect old buttons don’t sew them on clothes. No normal person would do that.”
    “It does seem a bit out of the ordinary,” I remark. “Wearing antique or estate jewelry and so on is one thing, but sewing it on clothing would be another, I suppose.”
    “You got that right, and button collectors don’t.”
    His voice is flinty with disapproval, as if he’s made a sudden decision about the dead woman’s character.
    “They display them, put them in picture frames, swap them, sell them, maybe donate them to museums, depending on what they are,” Marino says. “I’ve seen buttons like these go for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.”
    He studies the three buttons closely with the lens, nudging each one with a gloved finger.
    “If you look at them from the side”—he shows me—“they’re not dented in at all, are in really great shape, which adds to the value. You’d never sew something like this on a jacket. Who the hell does that?”
    “Well, she did, or someone did,” I reply.
    Removing her wet blouse, I decide it’s purple, not burgundy. The tag at the back of the collar is
Audrey Marybeth,
size six.
    “Maybe she was involved in antiques,” I add. “Maybe she collected or was a dealer, or the buttons belonged to someone in her family.”
    The bra underneath is loose around her chest, the cups several sizes too big, and I estimate the body has lost at least twenty percent of its weight due to dehydration. She dried out