The election continued to take a back seat to everything else happening. There was the Friday meeting with the town ladies- just two days away-and Dean knew he should be gathering thoughts and notes but his mind was too scattered to construct a coherent speech. His bike awaited, but when he divided the hundred promised miles a week by seven, the number was daunting. He decided to move on to problem number two and find out something about the tiny bone he'd discovered. Cynthia was on the office phone to New Jersey, doing "wedding things," as she described them. A quick search of the Montrose phone book surprisingly found a listing that seemed to be what he was seeking. It was an independent lab and when Cynthia took a bathroom break and freed the phone, he telephoned. A male voice answered and after Dean explained about the bone, he was told to bring it over. After a jotted message to his wife who was back on the wire, Dean was on his way. Thirty five miles later he found the address, a private home on the side street of a quiet neighborhood.
A bookish man with glasses, wearing a white lab coat, opened the door to the small house. After introductions, Dean was led to a laboratory in the rear of the building. The man took one peek at the bone and identified it as a left-hand pinkie.
"It's human, unless there's some large primates in your neck of the woods."
"No tests needed?"
"Do you want me to run tests?" Dean shook his head. "How about I explain in boring scientific jargon for thirty minutes or so at a couple of hundred bucks an hour? A DNA test would start around five hundred bucks. With the DNA you could tell whose finger it was, if you happened to have the rest of the guy's body or a few squirts of his liquids."
Dean smiled. "And it would still be a pinkie?"
"Yup."
"You keep saying 'guy.' Any reason?"
"Force of habit. It could be either. Women have 'em too, you know."
"How about the age?"
"His age? That's easy. Full-grown adult. The age of the bone? Now that would cost you some bucks, and not give you a precise answer for your money. Do you want a ballpark?"
"Sure."
"Years. Ten, twenty, fifty. Not centuries. It depends on where it was found. Lot' of things affect it-temperature, humidity-that sort of thing. Inside, out in the elements." He sniffed it. "It doesn't smell as if it was cleaned or preserved. Maybe just wiped off."
"Not by me. It was found in a mine." The man just nodded but didn't comment further.