The Bone Field Debra Bokur (novels for beginners .txt) 📖

said quietly. She looked at him closely, trying to guess his past occupation. She noticed the long fingers of his hands, and thought of the piano she’d glimpsed, and of the music playing in the background. “Are you a music teacher?” she asked.

He tilted his head slightly, smiling. “Yes. Was, at least.” He lifted his hands from where they rested in his lap. “I escaped arthritis in my fingers, but I’m afraid my wrists weren’t so lucky.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Did you teach here in the local school?”

“No, privately. Before I moved here with my wife, I played in a community orchestra in Northern California and taught at the high school in our town. Once we were here, it was easier to have students come to me, at the house. There were some young people, but a surprising number of adults as well.” He paused. “Am I in some kind of trouble for joining those other people at the old pineapple farm?”

Walter shook his head. “We’re just gathering information.”

Kali remembered Tomas’s mention of the loss of a child. “You moved here with your wife from California. Was it just the two of you?”

He hesitated. “Yes, it was only the two of us—my wife, Linda, and I. But we had an adult daughter who already lived here with her husband. Lily. Our only child. She was what brought us to Lna‘i, you see.”

He looked away. Kali followed his gaze to a trio of photos in matching silver frames set among a display of silver spoons. The center photo showed a much younger version of Bill beside an attractive woman, with a third person standing between them. The youngish woman in the center bore a strong familial resemblance to Bill and the older woman. All three faces looked happy and at ease.

“Our daughter’s husband, Matthew Greene, was a scientist who worked for one of the big chemical companies. They were both thrilled when he found out he was being sent to Hawai‘i to test and monitor some new soil fungicides and plant herbicides his company had created. They were supposed to make the pineapple plants stronger, and increase the crop yield.”

Kali listened, remembering reports that had surfaced about the plantation workers falling ill, and a growing number of sicknesses and cancer cases among them. Rumors had circulated that the illnesses were the direct result of exposure to the sprays used on the crops, despite denials from the chemical company. She glanced at Walter, and their eyes met. She knew that he also was thinking of the chemical controversy.

The sunlight fell in a shaft across Bill’s cheek, creating a thin river of brightness that spilled downward across his chest and one leg, and onto the floor by his feet. He was smiling.

“We came over to visit as soon as Lily and Matthew found out he’d be here for a while, and we had such a wonderful time. Matthew’s company had said he’d likely be here for about three years. We made one more trip during that time, and he gave us a tour of the operations and we got to explore the island. My wife, Linda, and I stayed on for another week to visit Maui and O‘ahu, and we fell in love with all of it—the people, the places. The extraordinary beauty of it all.”

He looked down at his hands and lowered his voice. “But things changed. Lily grew ill, you see. And, unfortunately, we began to suspect that Matthew was abusing her. She refused to talk about it. She was finally hospitalized for depression, following what seemed to be an attempt to take her own life with an overdose of pills. We came back to help at once. When the weeks dragged into months and she didn’t get better, we rented a small house to be close by.”

“Was she able to leave the hospital?” Walter asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice strained. “Once she’d been discharged, we tried to get her to leave Matthew and come back to California with us, but she refused.” He took a deep breath. “So we sold our home on the mainland and bought this place.” His eyes wandered around the crowded room. He laughed, but it lacked joy. “Linda insisted on shipping everything over. She wanted it to be just like home, I suppose. A sense of the familiar, what she saw as a continuation of normal. But then Lily died. A fall down a stairway was the official cause of death, but I’ve never believed it. I think Matthew was responsible.”

Walter frowned. “Did you express this to the police?”

“Oh, yes. But they didn’t seem to take it seriously.”

Kali watched Bill’s face closely. “You must have been devastated.”

“Destroyed,” he said.

“Did you ever confront your son-in-law with your suspicions?

“I was going to,” he said.

“But?”

The silence lengthened. Kali gave him time to gather his thoughts, knowing that it was better not to interrupt the flow of memories. Finally, he raised his head and turned to her.

“He disappeared before I had the opportunity.”

The words fell like darkness. Bill sat back, the shaft of light no longer illuminating his face. There were other shadows there as well. Kali and Walter waited.

“It was I who reported him missing. My wife and I had been away for a few days. When we returned, I went to talk to him, but he wasn’t home. His house looked as though he’d simply gone out one day and had forgotten to come back.”

Now Kali spoke, trying to recall if she had seen the surname Greene on Hara’s missing-persons list. “What year was this?”

“December of 1997. The announcement had come in late summer that the fruit company was shutting down operations. They were too small to compete with the big companies, though they also tried moving their operations to places where labor was cheaper. Eventually, they simply went out of business. All of this meant that the chemical company Matthew worked for would likely be recalling him to the mainland.”

“Was he bothered by