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The Boneyard
(continued)

Sam didn’t dispute my report of the chat I had with Alexander and his alter-ego. I guess it confirmed his expectations. “Neville Bone killed his wife,” I said. “I think the kid could be called to testify. The couple may be buried out in the woods.” I flung my hand out in the general area of the hills. “Someone will trip over them in the fall—or never. Christ knows why he did it—maybe ‘cause they were having an affair.

“So Alexander invented a sister? To deal with the trauma?”

“Andrea had a wig that Alexander put on. I went back and found other hairpieces in Andrea’s closet. Girl’s clothes are easy enough to pull off someone’s clothesline. But it wasn’t entirely his imagination. I ran a check on Neville Bone, M.D. There was a twin sister who disappeared in a boating accident last fall. The doc lost her when the family was on Cape Cod. Andrea was hysterical and accused him of ‘manifest indifference to the welfare of a child.’ The Hyannis P.D. put it down as accidental drowning—body not recovered.”

“I guess that wraps it.” Dexter didn’t smile a lot, but I was rewarded with a nod of appreciation. “I’ll send it all up to the Attorney General. Family Services will pick the kid up for counseling. I’ll go out and collar Doc Bone in a minute.”

“Well, I can’t say my vacation wasn’t interesting, Sam, but give me a shootout in Newark any day over weird crap like you got up here.”

---

“You were in the Forgotten Corner? Interesting part of the state,” the barman at Foxwoods said as he put a cold one in front of me. Everyone comes down the funnel of I-95 to Foxwoods sooner or later, dropping their dreams in the slots and on the blackjack tables. The casino had a gas station where I filled the tank on the way and I was a sucker for a beer and half an hour on the one-armed bandits. Cold beer makes me wake up the way it puts other people to sleep. Who could sleep anyway with the ching-ching-ching of the slots?

“Basically,” he continued, “they got no rules up there. Cabin-in-the-woods mentality.”

“Explains the rust buckets and porch potatoes out on the county road.”

“They pretty much stay under control using common sense.”

I pulled out a pack of smokes and reached for the ashtray. State smoking ban hadn’t reached the casinos yet, but there ought to be a law against people sucking Gauloises. I picked the French butt out of the ashtray. They’ll kill you twice as fast as a Camel, but they weren’t the only thing that’ll kill people. Take Andrea, for example, who I saw coming out of the ladies room looking like the queen of Beacon Hill. I grabbed her arm as she passed me.

“Hold it, Andrea. Let’s have a drink and a little chat.”

“Let go of me! Bartender!” Her voice sounded like a swallow of 12-year-old cognac—golden and mellow even in her anger. She was a wonderful sight with her translucent skin and eyes that glittered like blue sapphires.

The barman stared at us, looking for Security and wiping a glass so furiously I thought it would break.

“I’m a police detective.” I pulled out my badge. “If you’re here and the doc’s in the slammer, where’s that leave Nathan? Under a pile of rocks?” My Glock was an inch away from my hand.

“How did you know my name?” Confusion began to fill those brilliant sapphires that stared back as me.

“Sam Dexter asked me to come up to Branford and look around. I admired your picture in the rumpus room, but not your taste in cigarettes.”

“You have to listen,” she said, bathing me with her perfumed breath. She sat down and I imagined my face was that barstool being smothered. “Yes, I had an affair and Neville tried to kill us. He stabbed Nathan. I managed to get away with just a bruised rib. He was insane!”

“You took off and left your kid to go crazy? Face the situation alone?”

“Neville doesn’t hate Alexander—only me. I’ll come back to my son—but in a few days. I’ll do anything if you’ll let me handle things on my own terms. Just another day to get over this and I’ll go back and testify against Neville.”

I flashed on the kid I couldn’t save in Newark. Some things deserve protection at any cost, and kids and abused wives rank high on my list. Alexander needed help his mom might deliver. Call me a middle-aged fool, but I felt no rush to collar Andrea. The doc was in custody. The kid in Family Services would be questioned by the prosecuting attorney. I’d call Sam shortly to tell him the babe was hanging out at the casino and he could do what he wanted.“I’ll buy you that drink now, Andrea, then I’m going to hit the highway. I’m a Newark cop and this isn’t my jurisdiction.”

“God, I love you—and I don’t even know your name.” She leaned over and dropped a wet one on my cheek.

---

Summer hung over the Connecticut shore like a fighter on the ropes as I waited for the valet to bring up my car. Newark would be frying too, but it was home.

And then my eye caught Alexander strolling by a concession, a preoccupied pre-teen tourist in a wig and cutie-pie dress. Everybody comes to Foxwoods.

“How’d you skip out of Family Services, Alexander?” I shot my hand up his crotch to get his attention.

She shrieked as my hand realized that was no boy under the skirt. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andrea’s punch coming a second before it connected with my nose. Then she was all over me with claws and teeth.

“How dare you!” she spit out.

“I dare because your kid and I had a long talk,” I said, on my knees and holding off the wildcat. “I figured him for a loony—until just now when a dead kid come to life. Is this the daughter that drowned?”

“Run, Angie,” she shouted, kicking me in the knee.

The Glock jumped into my fist. “Don’t move, Andrea. I shot a street punk last week. I can pull the trigger on a woman just as well.”

---

“Neville’s the one with the big money—not Andrea,” I told Sam back in his office. “I called her sister in Brookline an hour ago. She’s frantic that her balloon mortgage will put her out in the street. My take on this is that Andrea wanted the doc charged with Angelica’s drowning so she could put him away.”

Andrea was in a cell. Angelica had fallen asleep in an office next door. Tomorrow, one would be transferred to the Windham County jail and the other would go home to a wholesome family life with dad and brother.

“Where was the little girl all this time?” Dexter had a hard time digesting my story.

“Hidden by a friend nearby believing some cockamamie excuse from Andrea. She embroidered the plan with her own apparent murder when the drowning charge didn’t work out. The chili dog guy was the schlemiel.”

“Just crazy what people come up with,” Sam said. “Thanks, Mike.” This time I got a smile.

“Look at it this way, Sam. You only have half as many bodies to look for now.”

---

I whistled my way down Main Street, happy to be driving back to Newark. But a mosquito bite still itched in the back of my mind. Something wasn’t right—the setup was just too complicated. I pulled a brody in the middle of the street and headed back up to Doc Bone’s house in the woods.

The place was empty, unchanged from the day I’d left Alexander. His book still anchored the lawn chair. A big fat book called One Hundred Best Murder Plots.

Alexander had done his research, underlining page 247 about a case that cast blame on an innocent man by faking his child’s drowning. Andrea had been the boy’s best student.

My first question to the kid should have been, “Are you the good twin or the evil twin?”