Free A Skeleton in the Family by Leigh Perry

swiveled his chair toward me.
    He said, “Hey, I really owe you one! I told my class I was looking for people to cover the soccer tourney for extra credit, and I got enough volunteers to cover every single one of the playoff games. All I’m going to have to do is take pictures.”
    â€œThat’s great,” I said. Then one word he’d said sank in:
pictures
. “I read your article about Mangachusetts in Sunday’s paper. Nice job.”
    â€œThanks. I think I captured some of the experience.”
    â€œDefinitely.” Of course, Madison had turned her nose up at his obvious unfamiliarity with manga and anime, but I’d thought he’d done a decent—and most importantly, respectful—job. “Good pictures, too, but I was expecting more, given what you said Saturday.”
    â€œOh, I had far more than I could use.”
    â€œI’d love to see them,” I said, trying to put just the right touch of admiration into it.
    â€œAll of them?”
    â€œI was hoping to find some photos of my daughter and her friends to send to my parents. They’re dying to see how she’s settling in. So I’ve been checking the Web, but I haven’t had any luck.” Other than that extremely good shot of Madison on Kevin Bolk’s Tumblr, but my legs were crossed, so it didn’t count as a fib. “Unless there’s a rule about showing them.”
    â€œNo, it’s just that there are a
lot
of them. The best way to get publishable photos is to take a bucket load of shots. I filled up most of a memory card.”
    â€œI have a gadget I can plug into my laptop to look at memory cards,” I said. A former boyfriend who’d been a fan of computer gadgetry had given it to me after watching me spend half an hour hunting for the right cord to transfer photos from my camera to my computer.
    â€œYeah, okay, then.” He rummaged around in his leather backpack to find the memory card while I dug around in my satchel to find the gadget. We emerged victorious at about the same time, and Fletcher rolled his chair over to my desk so we could look at the photos together.
    â€œI’m really not that great a photographer,” Fletcher warned me as we started, and I had to admit he was being honest. A lot of the pictures were no better than what I took with my phone, and many were far worse. There were more images of his thumb than of the Sailor Scouts.
    Still, it was kind of cozy to flip through them together, and I liked the way Fletcher was willing to laugh at his own photography skills. I liked it even more when Sara came by and gave us a remarkably dirty look—if I’d had a camera handy, it would have made a terrific photo.
    About two thirds through the directory of files, I finally found what I was looking for. At least, I thought I had. There were four shots of an older woman without a Mangachusetts name badge who looked like the woman Sid had described.
    â€œWho’s that?” I asked, hoping I sounded nonchalant. “That’s not a costume I recognize.”
    â€œOh, I remember her. She’s dressed as Eminent Scholar, but it’s not a costume.”
    â€œOkay, now you’ve got me curious.”
    â€œShe was there to meet somebody and got caught up in the festivities.”
    â€œHer face does have that ‘what an interesting specimen’ expression, with just a hint of ‘I hope they don’t bite,’” I said.
    â€œWhen I realized she knew even less about manga than I did, I figured I didn’t need the picture for my story.”
    â€œIt’s a nice shot, though. What’s her name? Now that I look at her, she looks kind of familiar. Maybe she’s a friend of my parents.”
    â€œI’d have to check my notes.” He rummaged some more, pulled out a notebook, and flipped through it. While all that was going on, I surreptitiously copied the photos of the woman to my hard