The Bone Bed

difficult to tell what they once were.
    “You’re sure she didn’t die in the bay?”
    “She didn’t.” Possibly tulips and lilies, which I associate with spring, an empty plastic card holder stuck in the vase.
    “No way she was tied up, thrown overboard, and drowned?”
    “There’s no way,” I reply. “She was already dead when she was tied up. If she were leaving town for the summer, would she leave a fresh flower arrangement on a table? Why not throw it out?”
    “And she was in the water how long?” Burke isn’t interested in the flowers.
    “I’d estimate her body hadn’t been in the water even twenty-four hours by the time she was found.”
    “Estimate based on what? If you don’t mind my asking.”
    “I don’t mind,” I answer, because it doesn’t matter if I do, and I’m certain she will ask whatever she wants, and I wonder if she’s slept with my husband.
    I wonder how much of this is competitive and personal.
    “My estimate is based on there being no evidence of significant immersion changes or marine depredation, for example,” I explain.
    “‘Marine depredation’?”
    “Fish, crabs. Nothing had started eating her.”
    “Right. So she died somewhere else.”
    “Yes, she did.”
    “Your thoughts based on the autopsy?”
    “I think she likely was held hostage someplace she attempted to escape from,” I reply. “Her postmortem findings indicate she’s been dead for months.”
    “Any chance she’s not been dead as long as you think?” Burke studies me as if I’m a puzzle she can take apart and reconstruct.
    “I’m not sure how long she’s been dead,” I reply. “Not down to the week or day or hour, if that’s the answer you want. But based on what I’m seeing so far, it appears to me she hasn’t been home since it was still cool enough to keep the heat on. Around here, that would be last March or April. I assume there was no card in this floral arrangement?”
    “I didn’t touch it, and Sil wouldn’t have. So apparently not.” She pinches her nose together with the tissue and looks miserable and irritable.
    “Do we know when these flowers were delivered or by whom?”
    “We’ll be checking area florists to see if there’s a record of a delivery,” she says. “And we’ll check her credit card bills to see if she might have bought the flowers herself.”
    “I wonder if someone was paying those, too.”
    “Someone who had access to her bank account. Someone who had her checks,” Burke says. “Wouldn’t be anyone in her family. Her family’s dead.”
    “Most people don’t remove the card from the arrangement and throw it away. Not if the flowers came from someone who’s significant to them.”
    “I haven’t checked the trash yet.”
    “To answer your question as definitively as I can?” I look through magazines on the coffee table. “Based on the condition of her body, I’m estimating she’s been dead for many months.”
    Antiques & Collecting, Antique Trader, Smithsonian
from December through April.
    “Knowing for a fact how long is really important,” Burke says, and that’s what she wants from me and intends to dispute because she has her mind made up about what she’s looking for and what she believes she can prove.
    Some theory that at the moment I can’t fathom, but I have no doubt I wasn’t asked to do a walk-through of this house for the reasons I assumed. I’m not here to check for evidence of violence, for asphyxia or a drug overdose. I’m here because of Marino.
    He is what Burke wants to ask about, and I have a leaden feeling of inevitability, a sense of something dark and heavy spreading over me that I can’t escape, don’t even dare to run from, because it will only be worse if I do. I know what she’s walking me deeper into, and Benton saw it coming. He warned me in his own way while we were driving here. Burke is aware of details about Marino’s past that aren’t found in searchable records.
    “Months? Two, three, five months? How does this work when you look at a dead body and calculate?” she asks, and I do the best I can to explain what isn’t simple as I walk into a kitchen dominated by an antique oak table and handmade iron chandelier.
    Double porcelain sinks are empty and dry, the bistro coffeemaker unplugged and clean, and blinds are shut in windows on either side of the door that leads out to the garage. She follows me, lets me lead the way, scarcely attending to what I say as she continues to check