Chapters 17, 18 and 19 Summary

Chapter 17, "The Third Metacarpal" Following the conclusion of the Lepodise case, Mma Ramotswe returns her attention to the objects found in Charlie Gotso's van. She takes them to the office of a neighbor, pathologist Dr. Gulubane and, after a disagreeable encounter with a disrespectful nurse, asks him for information about their origin. He identifies one object as the bone of a child's finger, the third metacarpal, and tells her that because there is still a bit of relatively fresh flesh on it, it cannot have been removed from the child too long ago. He also suggests that the child (whom he estimates to be about eight or nine) might still be alive. That night, over dinner, Mma Ramotswe tells the increasingly uneasy Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni what she found out, and formulates a plan to safely find out what, and...