The Killing Game(22)

Except for the bones of the male who’d died at around age eighteen. Those had been jumbled in with all the rest, and there was no explanation for them. September looked back to the Singletons’ house. Several months had passed since the discovery. Fairy and Craig had been taken in for questioning, and they’d told September and Gretchen that Gran and Gramps—Jan and Phillip—had never reported Uncle Harold’s death—possibly from heart failure as medical records showed years of cardiac decline—and instead had stowed his bones in a basement closet to keep collecting his social security checks along with their own. But Gran and Gramps really didn’t like each other all that much—couldn’t stand each other—and had resorted to a double suicide at the table where they’d shared so many meals.

Everyone said that was impossible. They would be too ill to stay seated, couldn’t have had the nerve to wait there and die. But upon a complete examination, it was determined the two had also taken a shitload of sedatives, and maybe it could have happened that way. Aunt Carol believed her niece and her filthy hippie husband were “lying through their meth-ruined teeth,” which was also false because Fairy and Craig hadn’t tested for anything stronger than marijuana and had perfectly nice teeth. Impossible as it seemed, it looked much like Fairy and Craig had said: Gran and Gramps had been pretending Harry was still alive for years in order to keep his social security payments and then had eventually killed themselves. Fairy and Craig had followed suit once Gran and Gramps were gone, adding their bones to the pile with Uncle Harold’s and pocketing their social security checks along with his. Fairy and Craig were facing jail time for a whole host of charges, but it didn’t appear they were murderers. To say Aunt Carol was biased was putting it lightly. She blamed Fairy and Craig totally for the entire scam, which, truthfully, might have gone on for decades had Aunt Carol not wondered what the hell had happened to her sister and contacted the authorities, blowing the whistle on the miscreants.

It was while the pile of bones was being tagged and bagged that extra pieces were discovered: the skeleton of an as-yet unidentified male, someone who, if they’d lived, would be about September’s own age now, had been part of the basement jumble. The crime lab had recovered trace DNA from the bone marrow, and there was dirt concentrated on the bones, suggesting the body had been buried once. But the identity of the bones was still a mystery, one September and Gretchen had been tasked to solve. Gretchen had initially predicted they would wrap the case up in a matter of days, but it had dragged on into the fall, past September’s thirty-first birthday on the first day of the month.

The detectives had been canvassing the neighborhood. They’d initially placed calls to the residents, seeking to learn more about the Singletons, who’d lived in their house for nearly fifty years, but no one had offered anything. Most said they didn’t know them. That they were a cold couple who pretty much kept to themselves. That they had one son, Nathan, Frances’s father. Some knew Nathan had died, but no one knew how, except Carol Jenkins, Nathan’s aunt.

“You’d think someone would know something,” Gretchen said now. She’d rapped on another door and no one had answered.

“What about Nathan?” September asked Carol.

“What about him?”

“Your sister and her husband have been described as cold and keeping to themselves, and no one seems to remember their son that much.”

“Oh, they’re all just scared to talk to you.” She glared down the row of houses.

“I think it’s more of a case that they don’t know anything,” Gretchen said.

Carol ignored her. “Nathan was a good little boy. Jan and Phillip doted on him, absolutely doted on him. When he and that terrible woman he married—Davinia—died in that small plane crash, they doted on Frances. They took her in and cared for her, more like a daughter than a granddaughter, until she hooked up with Craig. Then things weren’t good. They weren’t good at all.”

Gretchen squinted down the street at the twenty-some houses Carol had glared at. “We’re going to have to run these people down at work. The Singletons didn’t live here fifty years without someone knowing them.” She then slid a sidelong look Carol’s way. “I don’t care if they’re scared. You came here today to make introductions and we’re still standing out in the sun.”

“Yes, of course, but I don’t know them that well,” she backed off.

September reminded, “You said you know the Myles family.”

They all turned to look at the faded yellow, shingle-sided home across the street from the Singletons’. It was why Gretchen had allowed Carol Jenkins to be any part of their investigation.

“I knew Grace Myles, but she’s in assisted living now. Early dementia, you know.”

“The Myles’s son lives there now,” Gretchen reminded her.

“Well, I hardly know him. Tynan’s Nathan’s age, not mine. I’m much more familiar with Grace, but since she’s losing her mind . . .”

“Let’s go see who’s home,” Gretchen encouraged.

September and Gretchen started up the cracked sidewalk that led to the equally cracked cement porch, but Carol stayed rooted to the spot. They stopped and looked back at her.

“Shouldn’t we call first?” Carol asked.