A Rumor of Bones: A Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery

by Beverly Connor

  "Adam?"

  "Adam Bancroft. He has a studio between Flint Rock and Cullins. He likes to experiment a lot, and I'll tell you, it's cost him business. Around here, people don't want anything unusual. They just want a good picture of themselves."

  "It sounds like your business is better than his."

  "It is. I suppose he thinks I stole his customers, but you've got to give people what they want. We should get some good pictures from these. I'll have the proofs in a couple of days"

  "Thank you"

  Lindsay left the studio and found Derrick waiting outside for her. "I had Thomas drop me off. Thought you might need some muscle if you were going to do much detective work"

  Lindsay laughed at his feigned Bronx accent. "I'm not doing anything dangerous, Derrick, but you're welcome to come with me"

  Derrick climbed into the passenger side of the jeep Lindsay was driving. "I'll ride shotgun," he said.

  "Look in the glove compartment for a map. We need to head in the direction of Flint Rock and Cullins."

  "No problem. The quarry I believe is the source for the black flint the Indians used in making points is in Flint Rock, so I've been out there"

  "We need to find a phone book anyway, because I need to look up an address"

  "Stop at the store up the road, and I'll get us a couple of cold drinks while you look up the address."

  Adam Bancroft's studio was a refurbished barn a mile off the main road. No one was at the reception desk when Lindsay and Derrick entered. They waited, looking at the pictures lining the walls. These photographs were quite different from Mickey Lawson's. Some were landscapes, some were candid wedding portraits, others were of people at the bus station. All possessed a startling presence, as if each had a story to tell. Lindsay and Derrick were struck by a photograph of a girl in a wedding dress. The apprehension on her face was a powerful testament to her misgivings.

  "I didn't even show her that proof," a man behind them said. "I always wondered if she ever got divorced.

  Lindsay and Derrick turned to see a tall, slender man with shoulder-length black hair streaked with gray. He wore jeans and a T-shirt with Georgia O' Keefe's painting of a horse skull and a white flower on the front.

  "I'm Adam Bancroft." He stretched out his hand to Lindsay and Derrick.

  "I'm Lindsay Chamberlain, and this is Derrick Bellamy. We're archaeologists at the Jasper Creek site."

  His jaw dropped open. "You're kidding! That's amazing."

  Lindsay was a little taken aback by his reaction. He seemed truly surprised that they were archaeologists.

  "Yes. I was asked by the sheriff to identify some bones found in the woods. Perhaps you have read about it in the papers."

  "Yeah, those three little girls. I read about it. My daughter wanted to come down for a visit and bring her five-year-old. I told her to stay away until this is solved. So you identified the hones. I'm amazed."

  "Besides x-rays, I used photographs. Marylou Ridley's photograph was an old school picture. Her school said your studio was the one they used. For the final report, I'd like to get some detailed information about the pictures-negative size and focal length-and I was wondering if you have them."

  "Probably not. I don't keep detailed records now. I'm sure I wouldn't keep any around for... what... ten years`?"

  "Twelve. It's not critical. I just like to put as much information as I can in the report."

  "I probably did have that information once. Mickey Lawson worked for me then. I usually sent him on all the school commissions. He drove me crazy with the detailed data he kept on each photograph. I tried to teach him that you have to feel a good shot. Anyway, I burned all his records when he left."

  "That's too bad. But, as I said, it isn't critical." Lindsay turned to the photographs again. "Your style is a lot different from his."

  "Yeah. People seem to like his better, but it would be hard for me to go back to doing more traditional photography. Not that it would do me much good. When he opened his studio, his grandmother, Isabel Tyler, talked a lot of my customers into going with him. But it forced me to carve out a new niche for myself."

  "I think you're an artist."

  "Thanks. So do 1, actually- "Can I show you something?" He led them into his studio. It was cluttered, unlike the neat studio of Mickey Lawson. Adam went back to the dark room and came out with several eight-by-tens. He laid them on a table, and this time Lindsay's jaw dropped. They were of her and Derrick dancing. "That's why I was so surprised you are archaeologists. You dance so well. Not that archaeologists can't dance, but I thought you were both professional dancers. Obviously, I was at the Locomotion the other night."

  Lindsay picked one up. They had just done a lift and she was doing a body slide down the front of Derrick. It was a side view, and they were looking into each other's eyes. It was a very sensual picture. She picked up the others. The motion in each of them could almost be seen: the whirl of Lindsay's dress, the spins, the lifts, the touches. There was also a passion in them that shocked Lindsay.

  "I'm glad you came by. I was about to call the sheriff and ask who you were. I would like to send some of these off and needed to get a release."

  "These are beautiful." said Derrick. "May we have copies?"

  "Sure. I'm trying some things with the developing. I'll make you a set when I'm satisfied and bring them to you"

  "Who's this?" asked Derrick.

  Lindsay and Adam looked at the photograph. It was one showing the audience in the background. A face stood out from the rest. It had a sinister leer that made Lindsay shiver.

  "Patrick Tyler," said Adam. "Isabel Tyler's grandson by her daughter Ruth. Creepy little beggar, isn't he? I couldn't decide whether to crop this picture or not. It gives the whole scene a different mood"

  "He kept after me to dance with him while you were dancing with Dee. The sheriff had to run him off."

  "You didn't tell me that." said Derrick.

  "There wasn't much to tell. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and the sheriff shooed him away. He seemed to threaten him with his grandmother."

  "That would do it," laughed Adam. "By the way, could I come to the site and take a few pictures of the crew working?"

  "I don't see why not," said Lindsay. "We'll have to ask the principal investigator first, but I don't foresee a problem."

  Lindsay and Derrick signed the model release forms and left Adam's studio.

  "Some pictures," Derrick said on the way back to the site.

  "He's a good photographer. Too bad the people around here can't see that. His photographs make Mickey Lawson's seem so ordinary."

  "I agree," said Derrick, "but Lawson is right. Most people just want a flattering picture of themselves."

  "Mickey Lawson photographed all three girls," Lindsay said abruptly.

  "Probably. What are you going to do now?"

  "Take the information to the sheriff and drop the whole thing. I've reached the limit of my detecting ability."

  "Good"

  Lindsay sat in the sheriff's office while he finished a phone conversation. She looked around his office for the first time. His desk and chairs were ordinary and worn, the kind one might find in any sheriff's office. Decorating his walls were illustrations of various weapons, many medieval. On the wall behind him was a pair of dueling pistols under a glass covering.

  "Dee and I had a good time the other night," he said when he hung up the phone.

  Lindsay directed her gaze at him and smiled. "We did, too."

  "What can I do for you?" he asked.

  "I don't quite know where to begin. I know I should have come to you first, but ... well, I didn't."

  "Lindsay, so far you have been a direct person. Just tell me what you did."

  "I woke up the other night with an idea I had to follow through on. It was the way the clothes were folded and the way they were buried exactly four feet from two of the graves. It reminded me of my visit to Mickey Lawson's studio. It was so neat, and he had all
the measurements and angles marked on the floor so carefully. Several people had mentioned his fanaticism about detail. And then there were the pictures of the girls. I realized that a photographer would have access to children of that age."

  Lindsay stopped and took a breath. The sheriff said nothing, his face unreadable.

  "I called to find out who took the pictures of Amy Hastings and Marylou Ridley. I said it was to get the official camera readings for my report. I was discreet, and I didn't say anything that wasn't in the newspapers." Lindsay told him in detail of her detective work and her visit to Adam Bancroft's studio. "I just wanted to give you the information. I don't intend to do any more detective work."

  The sheriff sat quietly for several moments. "You should have come to me first."

  "I know. But I felt I needed a little more than speculation. Even now it is circumstantial. Not much more than a feeling."

  "What you were doing was potentially dangerous. Someone who has murdered several times would have no qualms about doing it again."

  "That's essentially what Derrick said. That's why he went with me "

  "Derrick was more levelheaded than you were. Nevertheless, he should have stopped you, and you should have come to me. I am not a man to shirk my responsibilities."

  "I didn't think you would. I just thought I needed more to back up my suspicions."

  Finally, after a moment, he smiled at her. "Well, you did a competent job of it anyway. I agree it is a good lead, and I have very few. I don't have a thing to link Bobby Whitaker. And frankly, I can't see him taking the time to fold the clothes."

  Lindsay smiled with relief and rose to leave.

  "Take care and come to me if you again feel the need to be a detective." The sheriff rose and walked her to her car.

  Derrick and his crew were back at the site. Lindsay was back in charge of the burials, and all was normal again. The scout troops were still there, so removal of the overburden was going quickly. Ned hadn't had an outburst in several days. In fact, he and Frank went together to the university to pick up some supplies. The crew had exposed another large section of the site and were shovel-shaving the ground. Derrick's sharpened flat shovels worked like razor blades, shaving a smooth surface and exposing the underlying patterns. Another house structure, two smaller structures that looked like outbuildings, and five more burials were discovered.

  Everything was perfect again, except for Ronald Moody, a scout who thought it was uproariously funny to play "Picking Up Bones" over and over again on his boom box. He took no threats seriously, having decided that archaeologists are mainly pacifists.

  No rain was predicted for the next five days, and Lindsay was sitting in the middle of the site with her clipboard, deciding how many burials to open up. Thomas came over and asked her to look at something he had discovered. He was calm. Frank was finally having an influence on his unbridled enthusiasm.

  She walked over to the section that Frank and Derrick had given him to dig, and he showed her two stains on the ground. One was about ten feet long and eight feet wide. The stain beside it was smaller. Both were oriented in the same direction, east/west.

  "The smaller one looks like a burial," said Lindsay. "I'm not sure about the larger one-maybe a trash pit, but they wouldn't have buried someone next to where they dumped the trash."

  "It is outside the village boundary. Maybe the person was an outcast"

  "Start digging, and we'll see. This will be Burial 31, and we'll call the larger stain..." Lindsay looked at her clipboard, "...Feature 29"

  Both looked up to see Derrick marching over to Ronald, the boom box scout.

  "What do you think Derrick is going to do?" asked Thomas wistfully.

  "Kill him. It's what I'd do," Lindsay replied.

  Whatever Derrick said fell on deaf ears, for he went away with Ronald laughing behind him.

  "Derrick is going to do something, isn't he?" Thomas declared.

  "I hope so"

  The next morning the site crew started at the usual time. They were removing the black plastic from the features when a wail came from the scout camp.

  "My radio! Someone stole my radio!"

  The lament drifted from the field to the site. It seemed that in the dead of night someone had spirited away Ronald's boom box.

  After a thorough search of the scouts' campsite, helped by only one or two people, the whereabouts of Ronald's boom box remained a mystery. He made his way over to the site, grumbling and threatening to call the sheriff.

  "Who was it?" he demanded, standing in the middle of the site with his hands on his hips. "I know it was one of you"

  No one confessed.

  The sun was coming over the horizon, and daylight was breaking over the site. Everyone was busy at their assigned tasks when suddenly Brian shouted, "There it is! Isn't that it?"

  He pointed to the top of a tree. The crew gravitated over to him and looked up. There-way out on a thin limb-the boom box was hanging by a rope.

  "Oh, no! Who did that? Whoever did it, go and get it down, now!"

  "That's a long way up," Derrick said in a matter-offact tone. "I expect you will have to climb up yourself."

  Lindsay looked at him. He was dressed in his usual cutoffs, work boots, and no shirt, but today he also wore mirrored aviator sunglasses and a camouflage bandanna tied around his head like a headband.

  Lindsay sidled up to him and whispered, "Are we Rambo today?"

  He grinned.

  Ronald stood at the base of the tall tree, looking up at the dangling radio. "Look, somebody put it up there, and they are going to have to climb up and get it!"

  Frank and Ned arrived about that time and asked what was going on.

  "Well, sir," replied Derrick in a clipped military tone, "we have the kid's radio-tape player hanging in that tree. I don't recommend anyone climb up and retrieve it. Too dangerous. I suggest we shoot it down."

  "Shoot it down?" exclaimed Ronald. "Shoot it down! That will break it!"

  "Why is it up in the tree?" Ned asked.

  "We assume," Thomas said, "that someone did it because he was playing the same song all day long yesterday."

  "The way I see it," Derrick continued, "we can either have some of the crew hold a blanket to catch it or get a few of the extra mattresses from the laboratory. I suggest the mattresses. The radio could hit someone when it falls. However, we do have the hardhats we wear to the quarry."

  "The mattresses," Frank said.

  "Right," Derrick agreed.

  "What! You're going to break it!" cried Ronald again.

  "Maybe not," Derrick said. "Let's see. The radio is hanging about 75 feet from the ground. It is starting at velocity zero and falling at a rate of 32 feet per second squared, which means it will hit the ground roughly in 2.2 seconds at the speed of 70 feet per second. I can live with that. We'll use three mattresses. It will probably bounce off, but the mattresses will absorb the primary shock. The secondary shock won't be nearly as great."

  "You did this!" Ronald shouted. "You have this all figured out!"

  "No, son," Derrick said. "I'm just good at math"

  Frank turned his back a moment to suppress a smile. Even Ned looked amused. Frank ordered Thomas, Jim, and Alan to get the mattresses from the lab.

  Derrick turned to Ronald, pulled his sunglasses down so he could look over the rim, and said, "I'll be back." He turned and walked toward his tent.

  Derrick returned with his bow and several arrows tipped with large, steel hunting arrowheads. Thomas, Alan, and Jim placed the mattresses where Derrick ordered, and they all stood back.

  "You can't do this. If it breaks, you're going to have to pay for it."

  "Not I," Derrick said as he put an arrow in the bow and aimed. The first arrow whizzed by, barely missing the radio.

  "You're going to hit it!" Ronald cried.

  The second arrow flew about six inches above the radio.

  "Need to practice," Derrick commented.

  The third hit t
he rope, and the radio fell, bouncing on the mattresses and off to the side. Brian and Alan rushed for it, almost falling on it. Brian stood up with the prize, walked over to Ronald, and handed it to him.

  "This better not be broken." Ronald turned it on, and music flowed from the speakers. He tried a couple of other stations and several controls. It worked perfectly. "You're sure lucky," he told Derrick.

  "No, son. You are lucky."

  After a light-hearted workday, the supervisors and some of the professional crew went to dinner together that evening.

  "I can't believe the thing still worked after a fall from that height," said Michelle.

  Derrick and his cohorts in crime grinned wickedly. "That was an illusion," Derrick said. "His radio was never up in the tree. That was a broken radio I picked up at the Potter's House last evening. His radio was hidden under the mattresses. Brian and Alan made the switch."

  "I don't believe it," Jane laughed. "You certainly had us going, not to mention Ronald. What did you do with his tape, by the way?"

  "It's safely hidden away"

  "How did you get the dummy radio up in the tree?" Lindsay asked.

  "A magician can't give away all his secrets." Derrick grinned. "I have to keep my audience fascinated with me."

  "Well, Derrick," said Michelle, "I like your headband and sunglasses." She slid closer to Derrick and put a hand on his arm. "I think you could fulfill a lot of fantasies with your military persona."

  "Yeah, Derrick," said Sally. "When will you give us a break and take some of us out? I haven't noticed you dating anybody while you've been here"

  "He and Lindsay were pretty hot on the dance floor the other night," Jane said.

  "Yeah, but that wasn't a date," Michelle said. "That's just something they do."

  Lindsay felt an unexpected stab of anger toward Michelle and started to say something when Frank sat down by her. He looked upset.

  "What's up?" Derrick asked.

  "I just came from a meeting with the power company about our contract. There is this prig-an attorney for the company-who has something against us digging at the site."

  "I thought that was taken care of," Lindsay said.

  "I did, too. We have a contract. We have the historical recovery laws in our favor. I don't know what his problem is. It's puzzling. He sits there with his mouth all puckered up like a butt hole and expresses a completely irrational opinion." Frank stopped and took a drink of Lindsay's beer. "Now he's accusing us of being into drugs."