Page 69
“Sure.”
Once the wine was poured, I watched as Sonny wiped black olives off the counter. I couldn’t help but notice the small smile that played on his lips. He was moving easily and comfortably, which calmed me too. He was an easy kind of guy.
“How’s the skeleton stuff going?” Sonny asked as he deposited the olive remains into the sink.
“Just keeps getting stranger.”
He gave me a long look. “Isn’t everything that you do kind of unusual? I mean, saber-toothed tigers and all.”
“I also have a box of random bones from Missouri now sitting in my lab waiting for me to determine what happened to the people they were once inside of.”
“A box? Tell me more.”
The assignment wasn’t confidential.
“I met a guy, Chuck Workman, in Flagstaff a few years back—we were both there to hear Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist who is famous in our world and the curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian. Owsley spoke to a full house at the University of Northern Arizona. I spent dinner with Chuck and his colleagues. Chuck is a journalism professor at the University of Missouri and found a strange box in the basement of the journalism building. He’d approached the anthropology department with the box, but they were bound by university rules that didn’t allow them to take a closer look at what Chuck found because it didn’t go through their proper channels. He asked if I’d take a look.”
“They found it in the basement?” Sonny said
“Bones are everywhere.”
“Well, sure, but …” Sonny squinted at me. “You have an idea of what it’s about, don’t you?”
“No. Well, not really. It’s important to go into these things with an open mind, but I’m pretty good at reading bones. I bet I figure it out quickly.”
“Why the journalism building?”
“I might not be able to solve that part, but who knows? Maybe someone gathered the bones from the anthropology department at some point and was going to write a story. Things get derailed.”
“That’s true.” The timer on the oven beeped. “Ah, dinner is ready.”
“Best news of the night.”
I placed one slice of each flavor on my plate. It was crowded, but I couldn’t resist. I took a bite.
“Oh, my God,” I said as I chewed. “What do you put in that sauce?”
“It’s a secret.”
I swallowed. “It’s so good.”
“I know. Right?”
We ate and somehow found things to talk about that didn’t have anything to do with our jobs. I asked Sonny about growing up in northern Wisconsin in mostly winter weather and how that worked with his opinion of the desert he’d moved to ten years earlier when he’d taken the job in Tucson.
“I always look forward to the Arizona winter. This summer has been hot.”
“It always is.”
“I like the people, though.”
“Well, I doubt you’ve met everyone.”
“I’ve met the important ones.”
I nodded and dug into the next slice of pizza on my plate.
Once dinner was finished, I had an onset of claustrophobia. I didn’t understand it, because I liked this guy, but I needed some space, some air.
