Free Blue Moon Rising: A suspense thriller by Lillian Francken Page B

pan and set the spoon down. He went over to the desk and took out a small envelope. Dan reached in his pocket and pulled the pocket inside out. The dust bunnies and black-bear fur fell onto the desk. Kelly looked at him with disgust.
    “Didn’t your mama teach you any manners?”
    “Hey, there’s a reason for this,” he said and then pointed. “And Grandma taught me manners.”
    “You aren’t going to save that dirt?”
    “It isn’t like that,” Dan said in his defense.
    Kelly walked up to him and then looked down at the desk. “What are those?”
    “Fur from a black bear.”
    “What are you going to do with it?”
    “Have them checked out,” Dan replied, not really wanting to explain further.
    Kelly walked over to the sink. She opened up the cupboard doors under the sink and reached in for the spray cleaner and a roll of paper towel. She walked back over to Dan and handed them to him.
    “You can clean the desk off when you’re done.”
    Dan put the black-bear fur in the small envelope and then quickly cleaned off the desk. He turned and handed the cleaner and paper towels back to Kelly.
    “Does that meet your satisfaction?” he asked and then laughed. He then turned to walk out.
    “I’m going to shower,” he said.
    Kelly just stood there, looking at her father with arms crossed and a big grin on her face.
    * * *
    Dan pulled up to the Medical Examiner’s office. The only car in the parking lot was an Outback with a parking sticker for Little Rock. Dan had been nervous and feared that maybe Nancy only was teasing him when she accepted the invitation. He was relieved now. At least she had not changed her mind.
    He got out of the squad and walked in. Nancy sat at her desk, doing paperwork. Dan was taken aback for a moment when he saw her. She was wearing a red dress, his favorite color, her hair flowing flawlessly over her shoulders. It reminded him of Kay for an instant, but then he tried not to think about that.
    Dan glanced at the table at the far end of the room. It was there the bones were assembled in approximation of where they would be in life.
    “Must be hard work trying to figure out what happened.”
    Nancy got up and walked over to the table. Dan could not take his eyes off the nicely shaped woman in front of him. Nancy finally turned to Dan and caught him looking at her.
    She cleared her throat and then quickly added. “The victim was male.”
    Dan appeared puzzled. “How can you tell?”
    Nancy calmly pointed to some bones in the center of the table. “The pelvic bone. Definitely male.” She points up at the head. “Also on the skull, the ridge on the brow confirms it.”
    Dan was curious now. “What else do you know about him,” he asks.
    “From the sutures in the skull and the closure in the epiphyses of the shoulder and the basilar synchondrosis of the spheroid, I’d say the victim was about eighteen.”
    Dan just stared at Nancy. He was never good in biology and it amazed him she could pronounce those words, and seemed confident in what she was relaying.
    “I’d ask you to repeat that, but I still wouldn’t understand what you just said.”
    Nancy laughed. “We learn things like that in school, that’s how any medical examiner can determine age when the body is in this condition. The body’s bones are constantly developing.”
    “I can tell you he’s been dead nearly twenty years.”
    “All that from a pile of bones?” Dan asked.
    “That and the class ring we found.”
    Nancy turned and walked over to the tray that was covered with a cloth. She lifted the cloth. Nancy picked up the ring and handed it to Dan.
    Dan had a cold chill go through him. It was a ring he longed to have in high school, but money was tight. His parents could not afford the extravagance of a class ring for him and his part-time job did not pay enough for such a luxurious item. He put the ring back on the tray.
    “Pine Bluff High,” was all Dan could muster up to say.
    “I talked to Mac. He