how about those bones? Everybody knows they’re human by now.” Winnie’s expression was a curious blend of elation and worry.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Mike said, and turned to look at Hannah. “What do you think I should say?”

“That they’re really old? Like fossils, or something like that?” Hannah grasped at straws.

“It won’t work,” Norman said. “They look too new. But why don’t you say that Winnie’s brother was leveling the ground to landscape the park and he found some Indian bones in the pile of rocks and debris he was hauling away. He knew he should put them back, but he didn’t know exactly where they came from.”

Hannah began to smile as she took over the fabrication. “That’s a great idea! Arnie didn’t want to go to the authorities with the bones. He was afraid they’d stop him from working on the park and donating the land to the city. So he bundled up the bones and gave them a decent burial in the base of the statue he sculpted for the park.”

“And he didn’t tell anybody about it until he was dying and that’s when he confessed it all to me,” Winnie added.

“Sounds good,” Mike agreed, pushing back his chair. “You folks can stick around and drink more coffee with Mrs. Henderson, but I’ve got Mr. Lawrence’s killer to catch.”

Winnie showed Mike out and when she came back into the kitchen, she was smiling. “Well, doesn’t that make a body feel good? All these years I’ve been worrying about being a criminal, and I’m not.”

“Maybe not quite yet,” Hannah said, grinning right back, “but if you don’t wash out that coffeepot soon, Mike could lock you up for making paint thinner without a license.”

Chapter

Chapter

Thirty-One

It was Saturday afternoon and Hannah was standing at the back of a classroom in Jordan High, waiting for Burke Anson to play a much younger version of himself. Disaster had struck without warning when the young actor who’d been hired to play Jody at fifteen came down with laryngitis and could do no more than squeak. Burke had offered to play the teenage Jody as long as Honey could age him down. Hannah had known the term from college and the time she’d spent hanging out in the green room, another showbiz term for the backstage room that actors used to relax and wait for their cues. Aging down meant applying makeup so that an actor would look younger, and aging up was making an actor look older.