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      Baby Bones

      Third Skeleton Series Mystery

      Donan Berg

      DOTDON Books

      Moline IL

      Skeleton Series Mystery

      DOTDON Books are published by

      DOTDON Personalized Services

      PO Box 1302

      Moline IL 61266-1302

      Order: http://www.dotdonbooks.com

      E-mail: [email protected]

      Author e-mail: [email protected]

      Published in eBook format by DOTDON Books

      Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-0-9820855-3-0

      © 2011 Donan B. McAuley

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and DOTDON Books, Moline, IL, except for brief quotation in a review.

      This is a work of fiction. The places, characters, and events exist only in this book and the author’s mind. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is unintentional and purely coincidental.

      To family and friends.

      We all enjoy and cherish special people, be they parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, spouses, cousins, nieces, nephews, or friends.

      In meaningful ways, big and small, remember to say thank you to each who crosses your path today and tomorrow.

      Pray for all who keep us safe.

      Novels by Donan Berg

      A Body To Bones

      First Skeleton Series Mystery

      The Bones Dance Foxtrot

      Second Skeleton Series Mystery

      Abbey Burning Love

      Short Stories by Donan Berg

      Bubbling Conflict and Other Stories

      One

      With ears alert, teeth bared, paws on dash, and raised ready-to-leap haunches tensed, Webster barked twice from the passenger seat into the night’s obscuring darkness.

      “E-a-s-y, boy.” Sheriff Jonas McHugh’s callused forefingers tapped the Silver County, Iowa, cruiser steering wheel. “Whatcha see, Webster?” Jonas ached for this tedious rural patrol to end.

      Could be nothing. Webster barked at rabbits and prairie dogs. The old cemetery a half-mile ahead attracted them plus rodents, deer, and whatever stray four-legged creatures ran the cornfields. Obscured secrets and prairie autumn night solitude no different this night than the patrol before the special September 2010 sheriff’s election that erased the word “sergeant” from egg-shaped badge.

      Jonas clenched back molars. A left calf cramp signaled a drive too long without stretching.

      Webster barked, right paw scratched dash, and guttural grrr flashed German shepherd teeth.

      “Save the dash, I’ll stop to see what upsets you.”

      A red glint flashed ahead. Jonas strained eyes until high headlight beams reflected on stationary unlit taillights near the cemetery gateway arch. He lifted the ball of right foot from the accelerator. Family lore had paternal great-great-uncle buried in this frontier cemetery. No marker existed, his father said. Jonas never looked.

      Suspicious a single car would linger at two a.m., he slowed, stopped cruiser on the blacktop roadway twenty feet behind the vehicle and swiveled a mounted spotlight at the 2008 or 2009 Camry. Dealer plates. Mud obscured three digits. No hazard lights flashed. Right thumb and finger reached, poised to shut off ignition switch. He gazed at Webster’s nose wet against the windshield. The barks ceased, but Webster’s body remained tensed.

      “Sheriff,” office dispatcher’s voice cracked through the dash-mounted speaker. “Fight outside The Last Drop. One shot reported fired. Aid requested.”

      Gunfire trumped Webster’s curiosity. Jonas flipped the turret’s flashing-lights switch and called out, “Hang on, boy.” When Jonas floored the accelerator pedal, the cruiser’s lurch flung Webster with a yelp drowning out any seat backrest cushion or supporting spring groan.

      A left calf spasm ignored, Jonas keyed microphone. “On my way. ETA twenty.”

      * * *

      When the headlights first approached the cemetery, the hooded figure ducked out of sight behind a stone-cross monument. With a skittish breath, the figure arose and cleared lungs. Time to hurry. The law could return any minute. Stepping briskly, the figure’s shout of “ouch, damn” didn’t echo through the pitch-black motionless air, a widow’s shawl laid flat across the land. A hand truck’s wheel stuck, plunged axle deep into a hole. Damn prairie dog. A banged, pinched hand stung; shaken, two fingers throbbed. Righted, the weighted hand truck bounced forward to bump into a toppled broken limestone grave monument.

      The figure lamented the choice to bury the remains of Timothy and his mother in this place. While beneficial clouds blocked the moon’s illumination and didn’t unleash rain, the frontier Mormon cemetery lacked defined walk paths between rock stacks and crudely chiseled headstones atop shallow graves, all perched on a bluff within hearing distance of Little Beaver Creek.

      The intruder, allowing the finger pain to ebb, rested an arm on a four-foot obelisk memorial the Mormons dedicated in July 2010 to honor heroic 19th Century settlers who departed Nauvoo, Illinois, or European ports and never completed their trek to Utah or the Great Plains.

      The figure’s repeated singular curse word floated through the noiseless air. A low groan uttered before hands tilted and lifted the hand truck around half-buried stones. The exertion ached lungs straining to capture breaths. Open nostrils inhaled the late fall flagrance of dying asters and graveyard prairie wildflowers. The earlier taste of tea long absent from a dry throat. A third curse, this one silent, preceded a penlight with dead batteries being stuffed into a front hoodie pocket.

      In daylight, three days previous, the intruder’s single reconnaissance revealed scattered clumps of prairie grasses and thistles three feet high, gnarled, interwoven vines that obscured, but granted a fleeting peek at forgotten tombstones. As a prairie sentinel, sycamore trees marked the cemetery’s western boundary with a dozen irregularly placed stumps in a neighboring field.

      That day the wind, swirling at times, lifted wilted summer black-eyed susan petals along with brittle tree leaves not crunched by animal paws or infrequent human footsteps. Remembered torrential summer rains had carved a jagged gully toward a bluff to expose the roots of a dozen trees. At the bluff, the silt-filled water cascaded to the creek below. The terrain made the burial decision easy—stop short of the sycamores.

      Now in the darkness, the figure heard the hand truck’s wheel crush a can that presumably quenched a beer thirst. An outstretched hand touched a curved handle on a unique stone urn. The urn marked an end to the zigzagged journey from the wrought iron cemetery entrance gate. The figure lowered the hand truck back on its handle. A handful of fallen leaves tossed absentmindedly into the air. With a foot poised on the steel of a short-handled shovel, the figure sighed and drove the sharpened, square-edged blade into

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