Dead on the Fourth of July (David Dean Mysteries)

"Do you know how old the guy is?"

"It's difficult to tell, but we think he died in the 1960's."

"Oh." She sounded disappointed.

"Is that a problem, dear?" Cynthia asked

"They were old cigarettes-not like Patsy smokes," she said and then added quickly, "gotta go." There was a hurried "I love you," not an easy thing for her to say, then a dial tone.

While the brief conversation was welcome, it left a party's-over void when it ended. The Deans shared a subdued silence as they boarded the Jeep to pick up their guest at the Beaumont.

"Martha called them 'old cigarettes,' Cynthia said. "Why would she say that?"

"All that stuff looked 'old' to her-the bones, the clothing, everything. They'd been in the mine for forty years."

"No, I think it's more. Maybe she called the cigarettes 'old' because the packaging looked unfamiliar."

"I'm not sure all packaging wouldn't look unfamiliar to a girl her age. Unless you smoke, you don't pay attention to cigarettes. Used to be, you saw ads all over the place. Now, unless you're looking at smokes in a store, who knows what the packages look like?"

"Her mother smokes. She said so. I think she said 'old' for some other reason. I just don't know what it might be."

Dean wondered, too, and then remembered. Like the bone, the package of cigarettes was missing.