Lovely in Her Bones Read Online Free Page A

World for something to eat. That’s what would keep me awake until breakfast time. So I’m strolling past the animal science building when the three cops come hustling out the front door, clustered around a prisoner. I knew the cops, of course. They’d stop in and pass the time with me every now and then. I said hello to Boyce and Wade, and then I saw who it was they’d arrested. Dr. Lerche and I recognized each other at the same time, in fact, but before I could say anything, Dr. Lerche said: ‘This man can identify me! He is my new lab assistant.’ ”
    “So you identified him?” asked Elizabeth.
    “Oh, sure. I would’ve anyway, but when he said I had the lab job, I would’ve let him be whoever he wanted. The cops apologized and left, and Dr. Lerche and I went over to Burger World and drank coffee and talked. I’ve been working for him ever since. It’s a great job.”
    “It sounds interesting,” Elizabeth agreed. “I’d like to study bones—what do you call it?”
    “Forensic anthropology. Would you like to work on a dig some time? We often use students as field workers, and I could probably get you hired. I know Dr. Lerche isn’t teaching second summer session, sohe might be planning to do field work somewhere. Are you interested?”
    “It sounds wonderful,” said Bill.
    Milo turned to gape at him. “You mean
you’d
like to come along?”
    “No. I was thinking of getting rid of the two of you for the rest of the summer. Six weeks without bones or weeds. Wonderful!”

CHAPTER THREE
    A LEX didn’t know she was there. His office door was open, but she had heard him in conference with a student, so she waited in the hall without announcing her presence. She didn’t mind waiting. It would give her time to decide what to say.
    Tessa Lerche studied the bulletin board beside the door of her husband’s office. It contained the usual end-of-term notices posted by undergrads: ride needed to D.C. area; apartment to sublet; textbooks for sale—cheap! Nothing ever changed except the phone numbers. The “Professional Typing—Reasonable Rates” looked like the cards she used to post when Alex was in grad school, the lean years when a few term-paper jobs meant the difference between peanut butter and hamburger. At the time those years had seemed a long prologue to what she had thought of as “real life.” Looking back now, she saw that time as a golden age. Alex had studied a great deal, but he had also talked to her about his work. She had typed his papers. Now his work was put on computers by one of his assistants, and he seldom discussed it. Perhaps she should have continued to go on digs with him as she had out west, but over the years her interest had decreased and she had been less willing to spend blazing summers in the desert. She was thirty-three now. Her looks wouldn’t stand the weeks of roughing it as they used to. Once you passed thirty, you couldn’t take your looks for granted. She jogged, and moisturized her skin regularly, and she watched her diet. Sometimes people still mistook her for an undergrad. Alex neverseemed to notice, though. He came home for dinner; there was no nonsense about worrying where he was or with whom, but even when he was at home … he wasn’t. He’d eat his dinner in an abstracted way, making polite murmurs to her attempts at conversation, and he’d spend the rest of the evening at his desk in the den, hunched over a column of figures, while she read or watched television. When she asked him what was the matter, he’d shrug and say, “Nothing,” or that he was tired, or the work wasn’t going well. She had decided that their marriage was in a seven-year slump, a thing to be waited out as gracefully as possible—until this morning’s discovery had convinced her otherwise. She had been straightening up Alex’s desk—which he preferred her not to do—when she found the yellow legal pad he made notes on. Scribbled in the margins beside data on