Skeletons by Kate Wilhelm

From the Publisher

Lee Donne's family is gifted. Her mother has three doctorates, her father is an economics genius, and her grandfather is a world renowned Shakespearean scholar. Lee's own gift, if you could call it that, is an eidetic memory that seems to maintain a visual representation of everything she's ever seen. For the most part, this gift is useless; it certainly hasn't helped Lee in college, where she's just spent four years drifting from major to major, with no degree in sight.

Without a job or prospects, Lee is relieved to be housesitting her grandfather's isolated Oregon home. But her stay soon becomes a nightmare when she is tormented by strange and menacing noises at night. Emboldened by a visit from her friend Casey, Lee finds that the source of these haunting sounds is an all-too-human force--a young and well-respected man.

He knew that Lee's grandfather would be away, but what could he have been looking for? The search for answers takes Lee from the Pacific Northwest to the streets of New Orleans.

Using her strange gift as she probes into her family's past, Lee uncovers secrets more far-reaching and sinister than she ever could imagine.

Publishers Weekly

Marilee Donne is the academic loser of an overachieving family who is accidentally responsible for a young stalker's death while house-sitting for her grandfather in Eugene, Ore. The novel follows her attempt-with the help of her best friend, Casey, and a smalltown reporter, Bruno-to unravel the stalker's motivation, as we discover that he was not after Marilee but evidence of a Klan lynching tucked away in her grandfather's house. When they learn that the lynching involved an up-and-coming presidential candidate, their trip takes them to New Orleans in search of the evidence they need to seal the case against him. Wilhelm tackles difficult material in her latest novel, not altogether successfully. Her dated hyper-consciousness of race is jarring: Casey, Marilee's brainy African-American friend, is described as a sort of unlikely prodigy, and Marilee constantly worries that their friendship will be misinterpreted-"I could imagine what his report had been: lesbian lovers, a violent black woman beating up on her little blond partner." Wilhelm equates the Crescent City with the racist Deep South of yore, and the dire warnings strangers give Casey not to be seen eating with Marilee (or "someone might decide to run a truck into that old heap of yours") are-in a modern town that's more than half African-American-ludicrous. Likewise, statements such as "although desegregation was the law of the land, segregation ruled" take powerful liberty with the actual city. The mystery at the heart of the novel is well crafted, but the gee-whiz narration and implausible context sink this well-intentioned whodunit. (Aug. 12) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

No degree, no job, no boyfriend, no prospects for floundering underachiever Lee Donne, whose most prestigious position is housesitting for her grandfather while he's off lecturing on Shakespeare. When someone keeps throwing gravel at the roof in the middle of the night, Lee is scared. With help from her visiting college roommate, computer whiz Casey, she tries to trap the intruder, with horrendous results. Soon enough, the FBI pops 'round and insists on searching the house. They find nothing, but Lee does: a cache of pictures taken at a lynching 45 years ago. One of the participants is her grandmother Geneva; another is Walter Dumarie, now a third-party presidential candidate. When Lee calls her supposed FBI contact to report, the Bureau insists it never heard of him. Baffled, she rings up the most honest man she knows, ugly Bruno Perillo, a former college instructor now a San Jose newspaper reporter. Together, aided by some new skullduggery by Casey and some backing from Bruno's paper, they hotfoot it to New Orleans to try identifying the locations in the photographs. They're shot at and chased across the country before the fake FBI agent reappears, only to be thwarted by a brave and wily bank teller. What starts as a creepy endangered-woman scenario quickly deepens to a study of family secrets and loyalty before it's undercut by a typical high-speed chase. Even then, old pro Wilhelm (Desperate Measures, 2001, etc.) presents the women in Lee's family with such psychological acuity that you can't help caring about them.

Product Details

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Skeletons

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

Chapter One

"I'll call you back," I told Tess, and hung up the telephone. Then I cursed.

Casey, my roommate, was grinning, listening. When I paused for breath, she said, "You're
getting better, baby. Mama in a snit?"

"God, you wouldn't believe what she wants now."

"She'll spring for a mail-order diploma."

"Don't laugh." Casey could afford to laughat me. She had just finished her master's degree in
computer science and had been accepted to the doctoral program at CalTech. She was mocha
colored with short, nearly black frizzy hair, tall and lanky, all arms and legs and big brain. And
she had beautiful eyes, almond shaped, slanting, brown with light flecks. When we filled out our
census form two years earlier, she had come to a stop at the entry about ethnic origin. "How do
I know?" she said after a moment. "I got so many races running in me, I could be a one-woman
marathon." She entered Martian.

At the moment she was lying on her back on the floor, with her legs on the decrepit sofa that
had stuffing leaking from one arm; we patched it now and then with Band-Aids. I looked from
her to the rest of the room - boxes everywhere, some packed and taped, most not finished
yet. It looked as if the Vandals had moved in, made a mess, and were getting ready to leave.

"Tess said since I don't have anything better to do, and nowhere to go, I might as well house-sit
for my grandfather."

"Oh yeah? I thought he never left home."

He had never spent a single night away from home that I was aware of. I sat down on the floor.
No chair was without a pile of stuff.

"He's been invited to lecture at Oxford. On Shakespeare. Tess said he probably won't go unless
he knows he has someone reliable to watch the house. Me, reliable? Hah!"

"Wow! Really?" Casey swung her legs off the sofa and sat facing me. "Baby, that's incredible!
Of course you'll do it. What else do you have in mind?"

The question of the day. My mother had asked it, now Casey, and I had no answer. My job at
the bookstore did not pay enough to keep even this tiny apartment, and all Berkeley rents were
fierce. Maybe I could find a new roommate, but probably not until the fall term, and I couldn't
hang on that long.

Then I was thinking of the day I had arrived there to find Casey looking things over. The
housing administrator had said there was someone willing to share an apartment, no more than
that.

"Angela Casada?" I asked that day, ready to turn and run.

"Yeah, but call me Angela and I'll cut your throat. I'm Casey. Who are you?"

"Marilee Donne. Call me Lee."

"Merrily done?" She laughed. Her teeth were very white and large. Then she turned and waved
at the apartment. "What do you think?"

It was small, two rooms. The bedroom was jammed with two narrow beds, two chests of
drawers, two desks and chairs. The other one we named the Everything Else Room; it had the
ancient green sofa, sink, stove and fridge, and a minuscule table with a faded and cracked red
Formica top, plus everything else we owned.

"Listen," Casey said, leaning forward, all serious now. "You can't live on the street. You'd be
like cotton candy on the midway, gone without a trace by the end of the first hour. You won't
live in your mama's house. You can't stay here. The YWCA? That's where they house women
with crazy men on their tails, gals on parole, addicts, shit like that. Why won't the old man just
close up the house and take off the way other folks do?"

"Haven't you got it yet, after all these years? My family is nuts, crazy, wacko. I don't know
why."

"Okay. Okay. Would he pay you?"

"Tess said he would, and the utilities and stuff are all on an automatic payment schedule through
his bank."

"So you get room and board plus something. For how long?"

"He would go in July, start his lecture series in late August, and stay until around Thanksgiving."

"Five months of freeloading. Doesn't sound too shabby." She reached out and patted my knee.
"And, baby, you need some thinking time. Come fall, you could go to the university there and
take a couple of classes, finish things."

Things were always simpler for Casey than for me. She had known what she wanted to do
from the day she saw her first computer. She called me her Renaissance pal - dabble in
everything, commit to nothing. And I had broken up with my latest boyfriend, the one who was
supposed to be for good, just a month earlier. I dabbled in life, too. In fact, I didn't have
anything better to do than house-sit for my batty grandfather.

"Want to come and hang out after you visit your folks?"

"You bet. I told Pop I'd work in the store for a couple of weeks, give him a break; but then I'll
head up your way before I check in at CalTech." Her family lived in Phoenix, where her father owned
a small variety store. They had lived in Chicago until Casey was ten or eleven, when her mother became
asthmatic. Casey hated Phoenix; she was doomed for a sojourn in hell, she had said morosely when she made
her plans.

I picked up the phone and dialed my mother's number.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Skeletons by Kate Wilhelm
Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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