Old Bones

1. Old Bones and New Neighbors-1

1

Old Bones and New Neighbors

“They’ve found a body at the empty lot,” said Manda, standing on my front cement porch letting cold air into the house. She was my dear friend and neighbor and had a wide grin on her face.

Manda’s dark brown eyes were twinkling as she patted her head to make sure her long, black-and-silver hair was secure in its braided ponytail. She was an active, petite, older Indian woman in her early seventies with enough energy to put me—I’m a healthy fifty-five-year-old—to shame.

My eyes opened wide in surprise as I heard the news. I was shocked. Not possible. I looked at her to see if she was pulling a practical joke on me. She knows I write mystery books as well as other genres, but my current project happens to be a mystery novel.

“There may be bones, but I think it must be an animal, a cow or a horse, something like that,” I said as I swung open the oak front door to let Manda enter and hopefully to keep some of the warm air inside too.

Manda shook her head. Her warm, fudge-brown eyes looked straight into mine, and while I saw excitement, I didn’t see any guile. “No, it’s human; and you know what that means.”

I moved aside and let her into the little foyer of our home.

Just think, a murder in our neck of the woods?

I stopped short at that thought. Manda said that they found a body, then some bones and now she was saying that it was human. Interesting. There was nothing about a murder, at least not yet.

“Old bones?” I asked her, opening the hall closet.

“Human, old bones,” Manda added, her voice filled with authority.

I nodded and smiled at her.

This had never happened in our quiet Vancouver neighborhood, as far as I remember, and I’ve lived here my entire life.

I was having trouble with my latest book. I‘m a storyteller, a full-time fiction writer looking for a good story. My latest deadline was coming up fast. It was mid-March now and my book was due at my editor by the end of May, the same time as my birthday.

That meant the best present for me this year would be to finish this book and turn it in as soon as possible, hopefully before the deadline.

Bones. A body? This might be exactly what the doctor ordered. A nice, simple, local mystery that I could ramp up and turn into a book.

“Excellent,” I said, smiling at Manda. “Let’s check it out, shall we? Come in; it’s cold out there. I’ll get my jacket. It’s time to take Buddy out anyway,” I said as I stepped back from the open door.

“It is cold. I can’t believe it’s the middle of March. Usually it doesn’t get like this after January,” she said as she stepped into the warm front hallway.

I closed the heavy oak front door, painted sage green, behind us. We went to the hall closet to get my heavy navy-blue parka and Buddy’s leash.

“Where’s Lucky?” I asked as I snapped Buddy’s leash to his collar. Lucky was Manda and Dillon’s chubby beagle, who really needed his walks.

“He was sleeping in his bed by the heater in our bedroom. You know, doing his job keeping Dillon company,” she said with a chuckle.

Like Manda, her husband Dillon was in his early seventies. They had emigrated from India a long time ago. After arriving in Canada, Dillon had earned his teaching certificate and taught school at John Oliver Secondary School for many years. They had lived in the South Vancouver community since they came to Canada. Manda worked at the local drug store on Fraser for a very long time too. They had retired at the same time and were a very close couple.

The foyer of our house is a small area between the front door and the door which led to the seldom-used attic. Tom, my husband, and I placed a tall Parsons bench in front of it for people to hang their coats and to sit on when putting on their shoes.

On the left side of the foyer was the hallway that went toward the back of the house and the extra large kitchen and small bathroom. The three upstairs bedrooms were on the left too starting with the master closest to the front of the house.

On the right side of the foyer behind a beveled glass French door was the living room, with cheery red couches and lots of wood.

I was putting on Buddy’s leash after pulling on my coat when there was another knock on the door. I looked at Manda, who looked back at me, her eyes curious, and shrugged.

I stepped forward, opened the front door, and saw Betty, another neighbor, from down the street. I motioned for her to come into the hallway, which was getting very crowded with the three of us, especially since they were wearing thick, heavy winter parkas.

“I see your new neighbors have arrived, Heather,” said Betty as she entered the foyer and closed the door behind her.

I quickly took a peek over her shoulder before the door was shut to see a large moving truck.

“I hadn’t noticed. I guess they just arrived,” I said as I herded everyone to the door.

The noise in our home was deafening. Although there were only three ladies in the hallway, we were all talking and laughing, asking about the body and at the same time trying to find out about Manda’s trip to India. She had been gone for two months and had just returned.

“Come on ladies, let’s get going so that we can come back sooner. I’ll make us a nice pot of tea and I have biscuits,” I said, taking charge of the situation and ushering everyone out into the cold March day.

We knew we had to hurry. If we didn’t get to the empty lot soon, all the good vantage points would be taken. Two of us being shortish ladies, we were very aware of the importance of being early to get a good viewpoint or we wouldn’t see anything interesting.

Soon we were all shivering in spite of our warm coats. The only one not affected was Buddy, my little red cairn terrier, who was too busy sniffing and marking every tree and bush to notice the cold.

I usually enjoyed my daily walks with Buddy, so I wasn’t sure if I was shivering from the cold or excitement at the thought of seeing a dead body in our little quiet neighborhood.

I wondered if it was someone from the neighborhood, or if the body had been just dumped here. And how long had the body been there? Going over the basic who, what, where, when, and how in my mind, I wondered if and when we were going to get any answers.

I told myself it was pointless, speculating without more information, but my mind had gone off on a tangent and was asking all sorts of questions. Most of all, I was wondering if I’d be able to use any of this information for my newest book.

I wanted a good story. That’s what my readers wanted and what I enjoyed writing, but that was also my worst problem: coming up with a good story.

It seemed everything that I’d come up with lately had already been done a dozen times or more and seemed deadly dull to me.

As Manda and Betty walked down the front stairs, I turned to lock the door behind us; then I remembered that I didn’t need to, Tom was home.

My husband had taken this week off to work on one of his projects. He was a writer too, but he still had a day job, at least for now. His three loves are me, writing, and golf.

He planned to go in to the office next week and then take holidays until his birthday in May, when he would be turning fifty-five years old. He’d always planned on retiring at fifty-five. I guess it was past the planning stage since he had already submitted his resignation letter and management had accepted. His retirement was a done deal as far as he was concerned. I wasn’t so sure.

One more week and then we would both be home writing full time.

I retired last year at fifty-five after working for the Bank of Nova Scotia for thirty-five years. I ended up as the Senior Loans Manager in the training branch at Forty-Ninth and Fraser, close to home. And Tom had worked for the Canada Border Services Agency, the old Canada Customs, as a Senior Compliance Verification Officer. He only had thirty-four years in, but since he meets the age requirement, he won’t have any penalty so his pension should be fine.

I was startled to hear a female voice yelling just as a golden retriever puppy came bounding from around the moving van. The young dog ran over to where Buddy and I were standing. I stopped walking so that the two dogs could say hello to each other.

“Kirby, get your funny face back right here, right now,” said a young-looking woman, probably in her late thirties, with a bright purple toque pulled down low over all her hair and the tips of her ears, and a hot pink-and-purple striped scarf wrapped round her neck. She had a heart-shaped face with a small nose and inquisitive, bright blue eyes. She jogged around the corner of the van, running after her escaped pet. She wore a friendly grin on her face as she slowly ran toward us.

I reached over to let the young golden sniff my hand as the dog wagged his tail and smiled at me. I gently, slowly reached for his collar. The metal chain collar was new and had a strap that was a lovely shade of bright green against his dark red-brown fur. It was a Martingale collar, the kind that I favored for Buddy. Only, for the golden, it was the extra-large size. He was a big boy, but from the way he was acting, probably only about two and a half years old.

“I gather he belongs to you?” I said as I held on to the dog’s collar until the young woman came over to my friends and me.

Since we were all owners or previous owners of different kinds and sizes of dogs, Kirby didn’t spook any of us.

“Hi, my name is Joy Kendal. Thank you so much for holding Kirby,” she said as she took a firm hold of his collar and smiled at our little group. We all introduced ourselves.

“Nice dog, how old?” asked Manda. Kirby had come over to her to sniff the edge of her coat, his tail wagging all the time as if taking great delight in this new game of chase he had discovered.

“Yes, he’s a year and a half old, a really wonderful dog, but the move hasn’t left much time for his daily walks in the last few weeks.”

Joy took off one of her matching purple gloves to shake hands all around. She pulled her toque off since it had slipped down over her eyes. Her hair was cut in a nice shoulder-length bob and was a lovely rich red color, natural too, judging from her red eyebrows and a sprinkle of freckles over her nose and cheeks.

She seemed to be a warm, intelligent person.

“If you’d like, we could help you with walking Kirby this week while you get settled,” I heard myself say as I smiled back at Joy.

I felt my heart clench in my chest. What was I doing? I had enough on my plate with my normal schedule, a book due in the next four weeks, a Spring Tea at the church I was organizing for the end of May and Tom’s impending retirement would take some adjustment for both of us, too. I couldn’t possibly take on another task, especially with a dog the size of Kirby. He was probably about ninety pounds and stood up to my hip.

“Thanks, that would be wonderful. We would really appreciate it, at least for a few days until we can at least get the big stuff inside,” said Joy, beaming at me.

“Don’t worry, we could all take turns during the day. He’s a big dog, but he’s leash trained so it shouldn’t be a problem,” piped up Betty.

Betty and her husband George used to have a dog too, but Ruby had passed away a year ago. Since Betty worked shift work and her husband worked very early hours at a bakery, they didn’t feel that they could do another dog justice—especially a puppy.

“I know that George used to run with Ruby; do you think that he could do the same with Kirby? That would really help use up some of that energy he has,” I suggested to Betty.

Just then I saw Kirby lunge forward and pull out of Joy’s hand, then with head and tail high, start running next door to our house.