A number three pencil with a broken tip was in the side pocket of her suitcase. She unfolded Gentry’s knife and did a hurried sharpening of the pencil. It was a dull knife. When she had some lead, she did a quick rubbing of both sides of the coin and hid the paper under her mattress.
Putting all the items back in their proper place, she checked the bed to make sure she hadn’t left anything. She rolled up the jacket and pulled her own sweat jacket from her suitcase and put it over the one she’d purloined—just in case she ran into anyone. Out of habit, she looked out her window.
“Oh, shit,” she swore out loud. A crowd of Mrs. Laurens’ staff were walking across the parking lot from the site. Mike Gentry was among them.
Lindsay raced out of her room and down the stairs. She barely slowed down going through the dining room and kitchen to the mudroom. She hardly heard the footfalls on the wooden outside steps above the pounding of her heart in her ears. She hung the jacket on its peg at the same moment she heard the doorknob turn. She didn’t look back as she made it through the door into the kitchen just as the back door opened.
“What you rushing around about, Lindsay?”
She jumped at the sound of Mrs. Laurens’ voice.
“I’m looking for the phone book. Have you seen it?”
“It wouldn’t be in here, I don’t think, unless one of you all moved it.”
She heard them talking in the mudroom, ready to come into the kitchen. She was safe now, but she couldn’t face him. He’d probably be able to read her thoughts.
“I may have overlooked it in the living room. I’ll go back and have another look.”
She collapsed on the sofa, her cheeks burning and stomach hurting. Calm down. So what if he had caught you? You could just say it dropped and you picked it up. No big deal. There were lots of people around. This was nothing. You’ve done more daring deeds than this little escapade. The phone book—Luke’s waiting.
The phone book was where it should be, under the phone. Lindsay had gone over in her mind the question of who to call: the detectives in Athens, hoping they’d have the nurse listed as a witness, the sheriff in Mac’s Crossing, the hospital? The sheriff. She picked up the phone book and started to flip through the pages. What was she thinking? The number wouldn’t be in here, only local numbers. She’d have to call information. The unexpected appearance of Eric Van Horne had taught her not to use the phone in the house. She went out to the privacy of her SUV.
Lindsay had to explain who she was and what she wanted to three different people before she got the name of the hospital nurse—Mary Carp. A call to the hospital revealed that Mary Carp would not be on duty this evening, but would be tomorrow.
She was making progress. Mike Gentry was the link between Mary Susan Tidwell, Eric Van Horne, and the attack on her—tenuous links with gossamer threads, but links nonetheless. She felt she almost had the thing solved. On the way back she met Luke on the bridge.
“I was coming to look for you.” He held out a snapshot of himself standing next to one of the servicemen. Just behind them setting a tray of rolls down was Mike Gentry, frowning at the camera.
“Clever ruse, to get someone else to take the picture.”
“It’s not easy to take surreptitious photographs with an instant camera. It’s not like it has a telephoto lens. Did you get the nurse’s name?”
Lindsay gave him a piece of paper containing the information. “I thought maybe you could go tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll go. But you stick with someone you know and trust. Don’t go off alone.”
“There’s no place here I can be alone.”
“You have a knack for getting into trouble. You don’t promise me, I won’t go.”
“I promise. Believe me, I don’t want anything to happen to me. I’ll be working all day. I’ve got bodies piling up, and I haven’t finished the first one yet.”
Phil McBride was already in the tent looking over the data forms when she arrived. “You fill all these out on each of the bodies?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a lot of measuring. I had no idea. I’d always thought you needed tissue to understand anything about a body. I thought once you get down to the bones, there’s little you can discover.”
“You do get more information from a fleshed-out body. But there’s quite a bit you can get from bones. Some things, like handedness, I’m not sure how you could get, except from bones.”
“I do thank you for this experience. It’s fascinating work. I got ahold of Elaine. She’s meeting with the people tomorrow. Drew gave me a range of prices that the diaries might be worth. Rather high, I thought, but I have a feeling that Lewis is going to pitch in to buy them. At least he hinted at it.”
“Once he gets involved in something, his curiosity takes over. He wants to know about these people as much as we do.”
Lindsay and McBride sat on stools on each side of the table. Starting with the skull, she examined each bone and recorded her observations. McBride actually made the task longer, as she explained everything to him, but she was glad for the company. By the end of the day, she was halfway through the remains. She looked up to see Lewis coming in the tent.
“How are you progressing?” He leaned over the table next to her to get a close-up look.
“Moving right along. How about the other coffin?”
“Jarman’s going to wait until tomorrow to try for the air extraction. He and Peter’ve been looking at the x-rays, making a plan of attack. Peter’s very nervous.”
“How about our skeleton in the trash pit?” Lindsay stopped for a moment to take off her latex gloves and tuck back a strand of hair that kept falling in front of her face.
“Kelsey and her crew are having a great time. They’ve uncovered a belt buckle that’s made them excited. They’re happy as clams.”
After McBride left for home, Lindsay confided her suspicions about Mike Gentry to Lewis, and she told him about Luke’s trip planned for the next day.
“You really think Gentry’s the one who tried to kill you?” Lewis’s brow was wrinkled.
Lindsay was disappointed he didn’t immediately accept her suspicions. “At the least, he may be the one who tried to claim me at the hospital.”
“But you don’t recognize him?”
“No, but right after the incident happened, I told John about the man who pretended to be my fiancé and tried to take me out of the hospital. Later, after I could no longer remember that episode, John told me the description I had given him of the man. I just have this feeling.” She looked down at the wooden floor of the tent. “I also went through the pockets of his jacket.”
“You did what? Why? Isn’t that illegal?”
“I don’t think so. It’s nosy and pretty awful, I’ll admit, but I did find a gold piece of eight that could be part of Miss Tidwell’s estate.”
Lewis shook his head in confusion. “A piece of eight? I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“It’s information I got from Mrs. Laurens. She told me Miss Tidwell owned one.”
“Pieces of eight are not exactly rare. We have a few thousand of them.”
“Lewis, I know all my connections are weak at this point, but we’ll know something tomorrow.”
* * *
Lindsay went to bed with a giddy feeling that everything could be solved by this time tomorrow. If the nurse identified Mike Gentry as the one who tried to claim her from the hospital, then the dominoes would start to fall. She would be free and life would be good again.
Morning came quickly and she was out of bed as soon as her eyes snapped open. Lewis wasn’t even up yet. She took a quick shower, dressed, and bounded downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Laurens was organizing breakfast.
The aroma of sausage made her mouth water. Eating in the mess tent with a hundred others didn’t hold any appeal this morning. She took a biscuit and sausage from the waiting trays and a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator and sat on the front porch, looki
ng out over the pond to the site, lit up like a county fair. It only lacked a Ferris wheel in the background. People were already moving around like ants, but then they probably never slept. Someone always had to stand guard.
“You’re up early.” Luke Youngdeer squatted beside Lindsay’s wicker chair.
“It’s a good day.”
“You’re counting on this identification, aren’t you?” He took her hand and squeezed it.
“If I can turn him over to the sheriff with a positive ID, he’ll roll over on the others.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. He’s not the type to go down alone.”
“You know this, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Lindsay, I believe you’ll solve this thing, but don’t be disappointed if this isn’t the path.”
“It will be. Eat breakfast before you go. It’s not that long a drive, about eighty miles, and it’s very early yet.”
* * *
Lindsay absorbed herself in finishing her analysis of the bones from the coffin and tried not to let her mind wander to Luke’s mission. Other than the calcium deposits, there weren’t any remarkable pathologies on TPB 1, as the trash pit coffin burial was designated. TPB1 was right-handed. Her handedness showed clearly in her glenoid fossa, even at so young an age. She must have worked hard at something that required repeated reaching. If her work had been hard, it didn’t show up in her spine, which appeared normal for a person her age—no signs at all of wear.
She had just written the last entry of her analysis when Lewis came to tell her and McBride that Jarman and Peter were ready to extract the antique air. The two of them hurried to the other tent, already filled with people.
There was no room near the pit for any of the archaeology crew. Alex Jarman and Peter Willis were in the pit, and a host of technicians were around it, monitoring equipment and operating the various instruments and valves involved in the process. The archaeology crew had to stand toward the back of the tent. Lindsay strained to hear over the noise of the machines and the focused chatter of technicians.
“I guess one person can’t do this job,” whispered Byron to no one in particular.
Occasionally, Lindsay got a glimpse of Jarman’s red hair when his head cleared the pit as he went about the duties of supervising the complex procedure.
“Okay,” Jarman said. There was a hum and a sound like a loud dentist’s drill.
Lindsay held her breath with the others but didn’t know exactly what she was holding it for or for how long.
“Okay,” she heard Jarman say again. The sound of the drill stopped and the sound of the vacuum pump increased.
“It’s holding a vacuum,” said Peter.
Lindsay took that to be good. She craned to see inside the pit, but all she could see was tubing leading to the pit, the bald spot on Peter’s crown, and Jarman’s thick shock of red hair.
“What do you think, guys? Did we get it?” Alex Jarman stood up, and from the smile on his face, he knew they did.
The activity of the technicians didn’t decrease after the acquisition of the air sample. They were still just as busy. Jarman explained that while the rest of the coffin was being excavated, they would pump chilled argon gas into the coffin to replace the air that was taken and to preserve the remains. Then Juliana Skyler would test the soundness of the coffin to be lifted out of the pit.
With the main show over, Lindsay left the tent and stood at the chain-link fence, her fingers curled over the wires as she watched the road for any sign of Luke. He had left at seven. It was conservatively about two hours each way. Giving him a generous one hour to get the task done, he should be back by twelve. She looked at her watch. It was 10:14. She turned and went to her bones.
While Lindsay had been watching the air extraction procedure, Mr. Laurens had delivered the sandbox. It was sitting on a table against the wall of the tent. A small bag of sand sat on the floor under the table. She started to fill the box, but the photographer showed up to complete the photographs of the bones.
McBride came back from the cemetery tent as she and the photographer finished setting up a shot on a special table for that purpose.
“Will you make your sketch from these photos?” McBride gestured toward the skull sitting on the donut ring.
Lindsay checked her watch again—10:20. “What? Yes. I usually start the sketch on a light table, then fill in the shading after I have a basic face.”
“I read a book about that once.” The photographer lined up the shot for a profile. “I forget the name. But it was about sketching and sculpting faces from skulls. You do that?” As he moved the tripod to the 45 degree mark Lindsay had made on the table, the aroma of cigarettes and body odor wafted past.
“Sometimes,” she answered. “I’m going to make sketches of these.”
“Funny about the skeleton under that first coffin. You think he was alive when they dropped it on him?”
“We’ll probably never know.” Lindsay shuddered at the thought. “I think that’s all the shots I need of the skull. We’ll get some of the postcranial skeleton, and that’ll be it for this set of remains.”
“I heard someone say you’re going to glue that fellow together. How long will that take?”
Lindsay was starting to get a headache.
Why is the photographer being so annoying?
She was growing tired listening to his running questions as he snapped his pictures.
He’s just curious and asking perfectly natural questions.
She realized as she looked at her watch again that she was counting on the nurse to identify Mike Gentry, counting on Luke returning with news that would make her nightmare come to an end. She was starting to resent any other thoughts that interfered with that one goal.
Dammit. Relax.
“I want to get close-ups of these calcium deposits.” She indicated the area to the photographer.
“You really think this poor kid was suffocated in that coffin? I’ve read about kidnap victims buried alive. That’s about the cruelest thing I can think of.”
Lindsay had to agree.
“You ready for another one?” Erin, grinning proudly, entered the tent carrying a tray of boxes. “Bill and Kelsey are coming with more—where do you want them?”
“On the table next to the sandbox.”
Erin set the tray on the table. Kelsey, smelling like hot perfume, came in behind her. Her hair, like Erin’s, was stuck to her head in damp locks, and her T-shirt was hiked up in front and tucked under the bottom of her bra. She had rolled up the sleeves to her shoulders.
“Whew, it’s hot inside the tent down in the ditch. You won’t believe the stuff we’ve found.” She set her tray down next to Erin’s. “If you like, we can arrange the boxes like the grid.”
“That would be great. We’re almost finished here. What did you find?”
Bill arrived with boxes of long bones. Shattered, but distinguishable. Kelsey picked up several boxes and brought them to the examination table.
“I asked Dr. Lewis to join us.” Kelsey almost giggled with delight, and it was catching. McBride was about to laugh, and Lindsay felt like she could crack a smile. She tried to look in the boxes, but Kelsey put her hands over them.
“Okay, what’d you guys find?” Lewis strode into the tent mopping his damp forehead with a red bandanna, which he then stuffed in his back pocket. Sharon hurried in behind him, slipped her arm around her husband’s waist and kissed his cheek. “What’d you all find, honey?”
“First.” Kelsey held up a brass belt buckle. “We found it near what might have been his midsection, only displaced a couple of feet. If you look real close, you can see the initials W. K.”
“Which happen to be my initials.” Bill took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail.
“Yeah, he’s got a covetous eye on it. We’re going to have to search his luggage when he leaves here.” Kelsey set the oval buckle on the table.
“Erin found
this,” she continued, gently taking out what appeared to be a knife with an antler handle. She set it beside the buckle on a cotton cushion.
The photographer whistled. “Now, I like that.”
“The blade’s about gone,” said Bill, “but look at that handle.”
Lindsay stroked the carved antler. “It’s in very good condition. We’re lucky it isn’t smashed.”
“Okay, I found this next thing,” said Bill.
Kelsey pulled out a wad of cotton with a six-inch V-shaped metal object on it and placed it beside the others.
“It’s a compass,” said Lindsay. “A hinged compass.”
Kelsey nodded enthusiastically. “I think the guy may have been an engineer or some kind of surveyor. We figure it’s a guy, because these were guy things back then.”
Lewis bent down and scrutinized the compass. “I like this. Now, if we can just figure out what he was doing under the lead coffin.”
“We’ve come up with several creative scenarios while we’ve been digging,” said Kelsey, “but none that are sensible. So tell me, what do you think of our little excavation?”
“I think it’s as interesting as the coffin burials,” said Lewis, and Lindsay agreed.
“So do I,” said McBride. “I particularly like the compass. It would be kind of like finding my bones with the metal parts of my stethoscope. You’d know something about me.”
“Or me with a camera,” added the photographer. “A man is known by his tools. We can photograph these here where we did the skull.”
“Okay,” agreed Lindsay. “Someone got a quarter for a reference size?”
The photographer patted his pockets. “Alex took all my bills and my change last night for beer.”
“What did you say? Alex took your bills?” Lindsay frowned.
The photographer looked at her, puzzled. “It’s just a figure of speech. He didn’t steal them. I gave them to him for beer.”
“I didn’t hear what you said,” Lindsay said with a faint laugh.
What can I say—something about what you said made my brain itch? They’d know for sure I’ve gone nuts. What was it, though?
It was one of those thoughts that flashed lightning fast through her brain, too fast to see, too fast to catch. She mentally shrugged. Maybe it would come back around and slow down.
Airtight Case Page 33
