After dinner, curled up on the couch with coffee, Diane told him the details of her visit with the sheriff. She liked cuddling next to Frank, except when she talked about her crime scene work. Somehow, cuddling and gruesomeness at the same time offended her sensibilities. Instead, she tucked her legs under her and leaned sideways against the back of the couch, facing him.
“Leland Conrad does not seem to know anything about modern technology,” said Diane. “Really, he doesn’t. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so strange. Rendell County isn’t that far away.”
Frank looked amused. “A lot of folks are intimidated by new technology, either because they fear they won’t be able to understand it or, like some of the people in Rendell County, they are afraid that it brings with it a window into all manner of wickedness.”
Diane visualized the population of Rendell County looking into the screen of a computer or cell phone and being greeted by a scene straight from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. She made a face and sipped her coffee.
“They’re not necessarily wrong. On occasion, technology does bring problems. But it’s not good for someone in Conrad’s position to disdain professional tools and help.” Frank took a drink of his coffee and set the cup down on the coffee table. “Hot,” he murmured. “But like Leland Conrad said, it’s his county. Besides, I’m sure it will all change sooner or later. They’re just lagging behind.”
“I think his son, Travis, convinced him to let the GBI work the crime scene, but I’ll bet he moved the bodies before they got there,” said Diane. “I have a feeling this is a cunning killer, and I’m not sure the sheriff is up to catching him. He warned me off, but I can’t just drop it.”
“You may have to. How are you going to investigate when you are persona non grata over there? True, it’s illegal for him to forbid you to come into the county, but he can really make your life difficult if you do,” said Frank.
“I’m thinking that his son, Travis Conrad, might be more amenable to talking with me, if I approach him just right.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Frank. “That would put him at odds with both his father and his superior.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I have evidence that Sheriff Conrad couldn’t take with him. He would have if he could. He asked for the negatives,” said Diane.
Diane ran her analysis of the photographs by him. “I wish I’d paid more attention to the cigar box when I was there,” she said.
“When I’m out somewhere, I see bright little auras surrounding objects that are about to become important, don’t you?” he said, grinning at her.
Diane gently punched his shoulder. “Unfortunately, that isn’t one of my superpowers,” she said.
“You have more information than I realized,” he said, “between what you found in the photographs and what your crime scene crew was able to reveal.” He picked up his coffee again and took a tentative sip. “It must be a relief that no blood was found on the knife or the rain gear.”
“It was, I confess.” Diane looked at her cup of coffee. “Is this a different mix?”
Frank’s eyes sparkled as he smiled at her. “I was wondering if you were going to notice. It’s a mixture of chocolate-raspberry and mocha. You like it?”
“Yes, I do. What’s not to like?” Frank was a constant experimenter in mixing varieties of coffee for unique tastes. “This one is a keeper. I hope you remember how you mixed it,” she said.
“I thought you would like it. When we finish our coffee, why don’t we stop all the crime talk and turn in? I have to get up a little earlier tomorrow morning, and I’d like to do more tonight than talk about murder.”
“That’s an offer I can’t refuse,” she said, smiling at him and drinking her coffee a little faster.
Diane had just arrived in her museum office when Andie came rushing in.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, taking off a light sweater and hanging it on a hat rack in the corner of her office.
Today she wore an emerald green jersey dress with a wide black belt. Andie was definitely changing her fashion sense.
Diane looked at the porcelain grandfather clock that sat against the wall in the part of the office Andie had furnished like a pretty cottage-style sitting room.
“You’re not late,” Diane said.
“I mean, I’m usually early, and today I’m on time. That’s late,” she said.
“On time is good,” said Diane. “You look great. I like your dress.”
“Do you? Thanks.” Andie sat down behind her desk and blushed.
Diane sat down on one of the overstuffed chairs and waited for Andie to say something. Clearly, something was on the tip of her tongue and wanting out.
“I met the greatest guy,” Andie said. “He was visiting the museum yesterday with one of the tours.”
“Is that why you were—weren’t early?” said Diane.
“We were out late, just walking and talking,” said Andie. “We went to Atlanta. He had tickets to the Fox Theatre. We saw Chicago.”
“How did he get tickets on such short notice?” asked Diane.
“He already had them. He was supposed to go with his cousin, but the cousin had to back out at the last minute.”
Diane nodded. “What’s his name?” she asked.
“William Dugal. He’s great-looking, interesting, funny. Perfect,” said Andie.
“Where’s he from?” Diane winced inwardly. She sounded as if she were interrogating Andie.
“Atlanta, right now. He’s been in the military and has traveled around quite a bit,” she said. “He’s interested in museum work. He’s been thinking about going to the university and studying museology.”
“I can see you’re quite taken with him,” said Diane.
“Too soon, isn’t it? I mean, to be so . . . so . . . you know so . . . interested,” said Andie—a bit breathlessly, Diane thought.
“Not too soon to be interested,” said Diane.
“He’s not the kind of guy I usually date,” said Andie. “Most of the guys I go out with are not serious . . . you know . . . about their future. And they’re kind of crazy, like me. You know what I mean—different drummer, and all that. This guy’s more sophisticated . . . more, well . . . more manly.” Andie turned a deep red. “I don’t mean we’ve . . . Not yet. I just mean he’s just more . . .”
“Andie, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this tongue-tied before,” said Diane.
“That’s how I feel. Tongue-tied. He’s so well traveled, and I’ve hardly been out of Georgia,” said Andie. “I’ve never been out of the country.”
“Some would say Atlanta qualifies as being out of the country,” said Diane, smiling.
Andie smiled too. “I just want to make a good impression. With the other guys I’ve dated, it didn’t matter. They would just have to take me as I am.”
“Wanting people to take you for who you are is not a bad attitude to have,” said Diane.
“Maybe. I have to say, I’m glad Kendel isn’t here. She’s so much more worldly than I am,” said Andie.
Diane laughed. “You’re just fine. You get quite a bit of the taste of the world just working here. He obviously thinks you’re very interesting.”
“He likes to listen. A lot of guys aren’t like that. They are all about themselves. He enjoyed hearing about my webcam project with the schools,” said Andie. “We’re having lunch here in the restaurant today.”
“Perhaps I can meet him,” said Diane, getting up from the chair.
She patted Andie on the shoulder and went to her office. She worked on the budget for the upcoming board meeting in a few days. It was after noon when she finished. Andie came in and said she was going to lunch. She nervously smoothed her dress and fluffed her hair.
“You look great,” said Diane.
“Thanks, I hope so,” she said, fingering her curls again. “There’s a guy here to see you.”
“Who is it?” asked Diane.
“Deputy Travis Conrad,” said Andie.
“Shall I tell him you can meet with him?”
“Yes, definitely,” said Diane. This might work out well, she thought.
Andie showed Travis into the office. He was in his deputy uniform and carried his hat in his hand. Diane gestured to a leather chair in front of her desk and he sat down, holding his hat in his lap.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard. We had another killing—just like the Barres.”
Chapter 18
Diane sat stunned. “Another murder?” she said. “Like the Barres?” She leaned forward in her chair. “You mean . . .”
“Joe and Ella Watson. Older couple, about the same age as the Barres. They lived alone,” Deputy Conrad said, nodding to her unfinished question. “They were found this morning, sitting in their dining room with their throats cut. It happened sometime last night.”
“Do you know the time of night?” Diane asked.
Travis rubbed his hands on his thighs in a nervous gesture. “No. We know very little. That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Sheriff Conrad wants my help?” Diane had a hard time believing it.
“No. Daddy don’t know I’m here. See . . .” He stopped and made a face, as if he had a sudden flash of pain. “I want to solve this,” he said, finally. “I’m talking about me solving it. I told you I want to run for sheriff. If I can solve this, Daddy and everyone else will see I’m the right man for the job. You see?”
Diane nodded. She could imagine his father still treating him like a kid. Travis had a good- looking, boyish face that he’d probably had since high school. The kind of face that aged slowly. She also imagined that the people in his county thought of him still as Sheriff Conrad’s boy.
“Trouble is,” Travis continued, “I don’t know how to collect evidence. I know, if we do manage to stumble across the killer, we’ll have to take him to court with evidence to convict him. I know how to interview folks—witnesses, you know. And I know how to collect fingerprints. But I know there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about, like trace evidence. I also know I can learn and I’m willing, which is a lot more than can be said for some folks who want to be sheriff.”
“How do you think your father will feel about my helping?” asked Diane.
“That’s the thing,” said Travis, making a face again. “I don’t plan on telling him.”
Diane raised her eyebrows, wondering how he was going to pull that off.
“I know this sounds downright selfish,” he said, “but I was hoping you would help me, but not take credit.”
“I personally don’t care who gets credit,” said Diane. “I just want the killer caught. I’ll help, but I’m not sure what you want me to do. I can’t very well work the crime scene without your father knowing about it. You could share with me what the GBI has found and we could go over it.”
“That’s another thing. He changed his mind about calling in the GBI. His commissioner friends talked him out of it. They think, and Daddy agrees with them, that if we call in outside help, we’ll look like we can’t manage our own business. And Daddy . . . well, he don’t want to admit that his method of solving crimes all these years is not good enough for something like what we got now. But, like I said, we haven’t ever had anything like this before.”
He stopped for a moment and stared at the fountain on Diane’s desk. He looked up and chuckled. “I found this book on Amazon. Now, don’t laugh. Well, I guess you’ll have to laugh. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crime Scene Investigations. It seemed to call out my name. I think I’m going to need a little more, though.”
Diane grinned broadly. “Okay. What I can do is give you a crime scene kit and show you how to use the items in it. But what about the crime scene now? Is someone looking after it?”
“Daddy’s up there with Dr. Linden. He’s a friend Daddy called in to do the autopsy on Roy and Ozella. I’m sorry. I couldn’t convince him to get that woman you recommended for it. Dr. Linden’s been retired for about ten years, but him and Daddy’s good fishing buddies, and Daddy trusts his judgment. Linden was a family doctor for many years before he retired—he was our family doc. Before that, he had some experience with autopsies in the army. Like I said, Daddy trusts him.”
“What exactly are they afraid of in your county?” asked Diane.
“The whole county’s not like the county commissioners and my daddy. It’s just a few like them, but they happen to be in charge of the government. Lots of folks in the county have computers, iPods, and BlackBerrys. All that stuff. Especially the people that travel out of the county because of their jobs. Of course, we don’t have cell service, so some of their gadgets don’t work when they get back home to Rendell County. I hear lots of complaints about it, particularly from the younger folks.”
Travis shifted his weight in his seat. “But as to why Daddy and them are so dead set against accepting help? I’m not sure. Progress, partly. But they also don’t trust that you folks know what you’re doing. Take those finger bones, for example.”
“What about them?” said Diane. She knew she probably wouldn’t like what was coming.
“Dr. Linden said they belonged to a child, that they were too small for an adult. He put them beside his own hand and showed Daddy. Besides that, he said, they are really old. He said the marks you showed Daddy on the bones came from weathering. He’d just been on a dig—you know, archaeology stuff. That’s what he’s been doing now that he’s retired. He said they found bones that looked just like that and they had been in the ground hundreds of years. He told Daddy you probably made a mistake about the skull, since it was raining and dark and all, that kids have large heads, and you probably thought it was an adult.”
Diane was right: She didn’t like what she heard. She knitted her brow together and stared at Travis.
“Hey, I’m with you,” Travis said. “That’s why I came here to get your help. Dr. Linden, he’s a good doctor; at least, he was. When he was still in practice, he wasn’t bashful about sending you to a specialist in Atlanta if he thought you needed one. But I don’t think he knows what he’s doing here.”
“So, your father’s let Slick Massey off the hook?” said Diane.
“Not completely. Daddy got Slick to tell him where he dumped the bones. He says he threw them in the river. Daddy put him in jail overnight for illegally disposing of a body—or something like that.”
“Why did he dump the bones in the river, and why did he chase me?” asked Diane.
“He’s holding to his story about why he chased you. He’s saying you were in an accident in front of his house and he was trying to help. He said he dumped the bones because he was scared,” said Travis.
“Even if your father thinks the bones are from a child, what is he going to do about it?” asked Diane.
“Well, because of what Doc Linden said, Daddy thinks they are so old that Slick couldn’t have had anything to do with it. So I guess nothing,” said Travis. “Right now, we’ve got our hands full with the murders. I told Daddy I was going to go get the things we needed to do the crime scene stuff ourselves. He probably thinks I’m in some ‘Crime Solving R Us’ store in Atlanta right now.”
Travis fished out a digital camera from the pocket of his pants. “I did what you did at the Barre place. I took these pictures of the Watson murder scene.”
Diane took the camera and removed the memory card.
“Let’s go have a look at what you have here, and I’ll show you what I discovered at the Barre crime scene,” said Diane, rising from her chair.
Chapter 19
Diane led the deputy from the office wing of the museum to the lobby to take the elevator up to the third floor. The lobby was buzzing with activity, a sight she was always relieved to see. Keeping the number of visitors to the museum high was a major concern that affected every decision she made. With no visitors, there would be no museum, no teaching of natural history, and no repository of artifacts.
When one of the docents saw Diane, she came hurrying over from a small g
roup of Japanese tourists who stood smiling and waving at her. Diane smiled and returned the wave.
“Dr. Fallon,” said Emily, “the Maeda family’s here from Japan. They won the free trip to the museum. You know, the contest in the newspapers.”
“They get newspapers from Georgia in Japan?” said Diane.
“Who knew?” said Emily. “Anyway, they were wondering if they could have their picture made with you.”
“Of course,” said Diane.
She asked Travis to wait a moment while she had her picture taken with the family.
“Take your time, ma’am,” he said. “I like watching all these people. This is a real interesting place you have here.”
“Music to my ears,” she said as she went with Emily over to the family.
Emily introduced her to the Maedas. They were a fairly large family, consisting of father and mother, one middle school-aged boy, two teenage girls, and an adult daughter with a husband and grandchild—all enthusiastic about their vacation plans. They were vacationing in the United States, touring museums and national parks in an RV. After RiverTrail, they were visiting the Smoky Mountains, and from there they were traveling to Washington, DC, and New York.
“Very nice museum,” the father said. “Big building. Room to grow.”
“Thank you,” said Diane. “All of us work very hard on our museum and love to see it enjoyed.”
As she spoke with the family, Diane caught a glimpse of Andie talking to a visitor. She was hoping to see the guy Andie was with, but the view of him was blocked by the visitor they were having the conversation with. Diane did catch a glimpse of take-out bags he was holding by his side. Apparently they were going for a picnic.
Diane didn’t let her attention linger, but remained focused on the guest family. She answered all their questions, posed for a photograph with the mammoth from the Pleistocene room as a backdrop, and told Emily to make sure the restaurant knew they were guests of the museum.
“Thank you for visiting us,” she told them as Emily was about to guide them to the restaurant.
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