The Bone Bed

her phone and probe, carrying on with what feels like a chipping away of who and what I am. I can’t help but feel betrayed. I can’t help but feel Benton chose the side he’s on and it isn’t my side, and at the same time I completely understand and would suspect nothing less from him.
    The FBI is doing its job the same way I do mine, and Burke can ask anything she wants without Mirandizing me because I’m not in police custody. I’m not a suspect in a crime or even a person of interest. Marino is. I could stop Douglas Burke at any time, but that would only further galvanize her suspicions about him.
    “It’s impossible to precisely determine how rapidly a body desiccates unless you know the conditions.” I explain mummification as she continues to question whatever I say about it. “How hot? How cold? How humid? The name Stanton isn’t French.” I look around. “Antiques and certain other items in this house are French and quite fine and somewhat unique. What was her family name?”
    “Margaret Lynette Bernard. Peggy Lynn. Born on January twelfth, 1963, in New York. Father was a French antiques dealer with shops in New York, Paris, London. She grew up in the city, was working on her master’s degree in social work at Columbia but didn’t finish, presumably because she got married and started a family.”
    She’s been doing research, digging into records, covering a lifetime of history in the blink of an eye or in the keystrokes of a cyber-expert like Valerie Hahn, who is conspicuously absent, it crosses my mind. E-mails seem to be landing nonstop on Burke’s phone.
    “All that sacrifice. Look what she gave up for him, and the guy decides to fly in bad conditions.” She stands in one spot, her watery eyes on me. “Pilot error.” She sneezes, and I think of the irony.
    The FBI’s DNA, not Marino’s, will be all over the house.
    “That’s the NTSB’s conclusion or yours?” I inquire.
    “Took off in an overloaded aircraft, failed to maintain airspeed, possible the nine-year-old daughter, Sally, might have been at the controls—”
    “A nine-year-old child was flying the plane?”
    “She’d been taking lessons, apparently was quite skilled, a lot of media attention about the latest little Amelia Earhart.”
    Live feeds from headquarters, I think. Search engines chugging through the news and downloading it to Burke so she can ambush me while she’s got the chance. I could walk out, leave.
    “Anyway, the plane went into a stall after taking off from Nantucket. One hundred percent pilot error. One hundred percent parental error.” Burke says it judgmentally.
    “That’s very sad. I’m sure a father would never mean to make such an error,” I reply. “And what did Peggy Lynn do in life after her entire family was gone?”
    “It appears she received a few public-service awards that made the news,” Burke says. “Volunteer work with the elderly, teaching them hobbies, arts and crafts. Exactly how long do you think she’s been dead?” she asks, as if I’ve yet to answer that.
    The black granite countertop is neat and mostly bare, a pad of paper and a pen next to the phone, and I notice a six-ounce pouch of salmon-flavored cat treats that has been torn open and resealed.
    “I think this should be collected.” I nudge the cat treats with my gloved finger, and the space beneath it is free of dust.
    Burke stares at the bag on the counter without stepping closer, a blank expression on her splotchy face.
    “The cat appears to be missing,” I remind her. “And it appears someone gave it treats, which suggests the cat wasn’t missing while the house was still occupied.”
    “She would have taken the cat with her wherever she went when she left here.” Her voice is nasal. “And she obviously left here, and I would say willingly as opposed to having been abducted. And it’s obvious that when she left this house she wasn’t coming back for a while.” She fires this off at me as if I’m trying her patience and have about used it up.
    “So she left with her cat but without her car, possibly for Illinois or Florida, and along the way something happened that ended with her being dumped in the bay,” I summarize what is illogical.
    “We can’t assume she wasn’t meeting up with someone.” She pulls a fresh tissue out of her Tyvek sleeve. “Someone who perhaps picked her up, which is why her car’s still here. That maybe she got involved with the wrong person, someone she met