The next hour went by quickly. I finished my sandwich. Trey ate two of his protein bars. The sky darkened, and a harder cold fell, like a sandbag tumbling to the ground. I was getting antsy going through the photographs one by one, but Trey was settling into a rhythm. Pull, sort, pile, pull again.
“By the way,” I said, “Marisa’s little plan worked. Evie will be calling Phoenix to discuss security services. Apparently they’ve decided that Rose plus shotgun does not equal a secure environment.”
But Trey wasn’t listening. “Tai? Look at this.”
I peered over his shoulder. He held a daguerreotype in his lap, or a photograph made to look like one, with stark black-and-white exposures and formally posed subjects. There was Dexter in front, with his walrus-like mustache and big belly, Richard at his side. And there, in the back corner, Lucius. He wore a Confederate kepi, but the eyes were the same—rakish, devilish, intelligent. And his uniform bore the insignia of the 41st Infantry.
I pointed. “That’s him. Right there. Lucius Dufrene.”
“He was a member of Dexter’s unit?”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Is that from the Amberdecker burial?”
I flipped the photo over. “No, it’s dated six months before that.” I pulled the box into my lap and rifled through the images, stopping when I found what I was looking for. “But this one is.”
In this photograph, Dexter himself manned the cannon as he fired the salute, the smoke rolling through the red and gold trees. Evie was in the image too, as was a plush blonde I assumed to be her sister, Chelsea, the two of them beside three women in stiff black Victorian dresses, reenactors portraying mourners. Far to the left, separate from the main grouping, Rose Amberdecker stood as straight and still as one of the marble statuary. None of the Amberdeckers had gone for period clothes, but all of the men in Dexter’s unit had donned the dress grays, rifles held at parade rest.
I handed the photo to Trey. “I don’t see Lucius in this photo. According to Detective Perez, he disappeared around this time. And that was the last anyone saw of him until I found his skull.”
“A tentative identification?”
“Yes.”
Trey and I both knew that fingerprints didn’t exist on a corpse eighteen months rotting, that the cops would be looking for family and dental records. Should the dental prove a bust, they’d move to DNA. But the reality was—thanks to the cold-case nature of his death and the subsequent stirring of the pot by the tornado—Lucius’ death was a case best solved by asking a million questions of the people connected to him. Hence Perez’s visit to my shop.
I leaned back on my elbows. “I can’t believe the stuff I know now.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m not thinking of Lucius as a tragic and perhaps oddball circumstance, I’m thinking of him as a case. My case.”
Trey put down the photograph. “Tai—”
“I know, I know. Not a licensed security professional.”
“And—”
“I can’t drag you into things and expect your license to cover me. Trust me, these things have all been explained very clearly by various official people.” I paused. “But technically, I was asked to help locate the bones.”
“You were asked to locate the bones of Braxton Amberdecker. The bones you found belong to an entirely different person.”
I sat up quickly. “You’re right. Lucius’ bones are of no concern to me.”
Trey’s eyes grew wary. “True. Which means we should—”
“Follow Braxton’s bones instead.”
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“I know. But they haven’t been found yet.” I stared into the box full of photographs, layers upon layers of memories, buried one upon the other. “Trey?”
“Yes?”
“This is purely speculative, I know, but…what if Braxton’s bones weren’t in the coffin?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean none of Richard’s crew found them. Evie’s crack archaeological team didn’t find them. The cops didn’t find them. What if at some point between their original discovery and that coffin going in the ground, they were stolen? What if nobody’s found the bones because there are no bones to be found?”
“Why would someone steal bones?”
“I don’t know about bones, but collectors are hot for relics.” I started searching the piles around me, almost knocking over my bourbon. “There’s a list of the burial items around here somewhere—”
“Don’t you think the police would have considered this too?”
“Of course they would have. But they would have tucked that close to the vest and let Evie’s team keep searching, knowing full well they were on a wild goose chase.” And then it hit me. I reached out and grabbed Trey’s knee. “Omigod!”
“What?”
I clamped tighter on his knee. “What if it was Lucius in that coffin instead of Braxton?”
Trey didn’t react at first, but eventually he got the picture. “You mean—”
“I mean, what if somebody took the contents—bones, burial goods, the whole shebang—then killed Lucius with that pry bar and then stuffed it and his body in the empty coffin? Which then got cemented up in that tomb out in the cemetery. Which then got scattered across the Amberdecker woods by a tornado?”
“But—”
“You saw the coffin, didn’t you? Yesterday morning?”
Trey shook his head. “No. Richard said one of his crew had found it, and he was planning to investigate, but then you found the skull and we rendezvoused with you instead. And then Rose held you at gunpoint.”
Now he was getting intrigued. I could see him snapping to attention again, his index finger tapping, his brain sparking and whirring.
“If that coffin had Lucius in it instead of old bones, it would have looked as grotty as that skull.”
“It would have, yes.”
“And nobody would have noticed the extra weight during the re-burial.” I pointed at the photograph. “They had it on a caisson. Just roll it up to the vault and slide it right in—one, two, three, shove.”
Trey reached for his yellow pad and sketched out a bubble map, then jotted a quick timeline in the margin. I tapped my foot while he evaluated and analyzed. Finally he put down his pen and exhaled. “It’s a plausible theory.”
“I knew it! Which means that if we find the bones, the killer—”
“No, no, no.” Trey shook his head adamantly. “We aren’t finding bones, or killers. That’s—”
“Hold on a second.”
“—and plausible does not mean probable. There’s a matter of mechanics, and a means/motive/opportunity breakdown, and…who are you calling?”
I tucked my phone between my shoulder and ear. “Richard.”
“But—”
“I need to know if he actually saw that coffin and if so, what shape it was in, and…crap. Voice mail.” And then I remembered. “Damn it, he’s taken his unit on an encampment. They left an hour ago.”
“Tai—”
“I’ll have to catch him later.”
I ran my hands though my hair. The floor was a jumbled mess on my side, a series of neat stacks on Trey’s. I dragged the photograph box into my lap and started pawing through it.
Trey peered over my shoulder. “What are you looking for?”
“Any other pictures of…aha!”
I snatched another photograph out of the box, this one of a young brunette side by side with Lucius, his hand on her waist. He was wearing a Confederate jacket, but he’d paired it with jeans and his giant NASCAR belt buckle. At first glance, the girl seemed to be in Civil War dress. She wore a red corset and matching crinoline, but copper buckles accented the stays and the skirt ended in a ragged hem far above the knee. Her purple-streaked hair was cut short and razored in the back, with long jagged bangs, and a Victorian blunderbuss pistol was tucked into a holster at her hip.
“From a reenactment?” Trey said.
“Not a reenactment. Steampunk. This Victorian mad scientist thing. See?” I tapped my fingernail on the pendant she wore, what looked like a cast-iron infinity symbol with a copper gear mounted in the bottom loop. “Definitely not reenactment jewelry, or dress. But look behind them. That’s Dexter’s counter in the background.”
“Do you recognize the girl?”
“No. But that’s definitely Lucius. He’s not steampunking, though, not with jeans and that belt buckle and a tee-shirt with a picture of a…” I held the photo closer to my face. “I swear that looks like a pig in a leather vest.”
“Wait. I know that pig.” Trey took the photo from me. “That’s a shirt from Hog Wild.”
“Which is…”
“A bar in Buckhead, near the Triangle. I used to get call-outs there.”
“Bad place?”
Trey considered. “Problematic is a better description. Most of the calls were for drunk and disorderly, but occasionally we handled more serious violations. Drugs, shootings, stabbings.” He tapped Lucius’ image in the photograph. “That’s the shirt the servers wore.”
So Lucius had been dressed for work, not play. I leaned closer, placed a gentle hand on Trey’s knee. “You do realize I’m going to go roughnecking at Hog Wild tonight?”
His expression was one of stoic resignation. “I suppose I do.”
“Would you like to join me?”
He kept his face averted, but I saw the spark kindle in his eyes. “I suppose I should.”