Free Head Games by Eileen Dreyer

Molly did laugh. “Probably because whatever your idiosyncracies may be, femur tossing just isn’t one of them.”
    â€œOr femur decorating.” Winnie shook her head. “Is this something I should expect from you on a regular basis? If it is, let me know now. I hate surprises.”
    â€œDon’t be silly,” Molly scoffed. “If you hated surprises, you would have worked in a hospital lab. Not a city morgue.”
    Winnie didn’t react past lifting the bone. “Here. Give this to one of the techs to sign in. We’ll pass it along to the forensic anthropologists and see if it’s a problem.”
    Molly accepted the bone and headed out of the office for the morgue downstairs. She hadn’t made it four steps before Patrick popped off the secretary’s desk and followed her.
    â€œThis is such a cool place,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell us you worked here? There are, like, bodies back there, aren’t there, Aunt Molly?”

    Molly stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs and faced her tooexcited nephew. “Whom you are not invited to visit. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
    â€œYou could get me a job here,” he suggested to her back.
    â€œNo jobs open.”
    She could almost hear his cold displeasure, but he remained on good behavior by visiting with the receptionist whose desk was the only thing in the echoing foyer of the old white granite block building. Molly continued on back to the morgue area where she could pass the bone off to one of the intake techs who logged in bodies and protected personal effects.
    The tech was even more excited than Patrick.
    â€œIt’sch real pretty, ischn’t it?” Lewis asked with a decided lisp when he saw the bone. Lewis was shorter than Molly, roly-poly and disheveled. And, unfortunately, he had a lisp. It seemed to Molly, suddenly, that everybody was hissing at her.
    She found herself staring at him. “What do you decorate your house with, Lewis?”
    He grinned to show a gap or two in his teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Misch Burke? Wouldn’t you juscht like to know?”
    Miss Burke was sure she just didn’t. She hadn’t worked with Lewis long, but she figured they should be past the Miss Burke stage by now. But then, Lewis was unfailingly polite and devoted to the details that would have driven Molly insane. And, to be frank, Lewis wasn’t exactly waiting for that big astrophysics grant, which made him content with the odd hours and odder clients.
    â€œWinnie would like it logged in,” she said, motioning to the bone in its bag. “It’s going to need to be tested.”
    â€œOne bone full of red and gold paint,” he said, taking hold with short, square hands. “What’sch to tescht?”
    Whether or not the bone was from a medical supply house. Whether it was an old bone, the kind that kept popping up in the St. Louis area every time the mass transit needs crossed old, untended cemetery land. Whether it really was enough to give Molly fresh nightmares.
    Oh no, she thought with a mental shake of her head. That was a path she did not plan to follow. Her nightmare schedule was already booked up, thanks very much.

    â€œWinnie has a call in to an anthropologist,” Molly said and thanked him. And got out before she let Lewis creep her out, too.
    â€œNow,” she said, picking up her nephew from where he was making the receptionist smile. “Let’s go find you a job.”
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    They found him a job. Even better, they found him a job with hours that almost matched Molly’s. So they bought him black pants and white shirts—on his credit card—for his bussing position and got him keys for the house. And for the next three days Molly redesigned her life to accommodate another person.
    â€œIt’s not really that bad,” she told Sasha on the fourth day as the two of them drew up meds side