LC 02 - Questionable Remains

by Beverly Connor

  "Sometimes, if you don't find anything, it's still like finding something," said Lindsay, and Marilee gave her a sideways glance filled with such skepticism that Lindsay repressed a laugh. "You see, when you find a burial that looks like an Indian burial, it's usually near a village. If it's near a village, you'll find a whole lot of pieces of broken pottery and arrowheads. But there's nothing here."

  "Maybe Mr. Moore got it all," offered Marilee.

  "Who is he?" asked Lindsay.

  "He lived here 'fore we did."

  "No, probably not. Most people don't recognize pieces of clay pottery. It looks just like dirt sometimes. I think this means that there is no village here and this is a lone burial. Which is interesting." Lindsay was mostly talking to herself; she doubted Marilee understood what she was talking about.

  "They got no trash here," said Marilee, and Lindsay glanced at her.

  "That's right. That is very smart of you."

  Marilee grinned.

  They did not finish unearthing the Lamberts' unexpected tenant that day, so Lindsay covered the bones with a sheet of plastic and went home after asking the Lamberts to not allow the dog to run free until the bones had been removed. When she arrived back at her house, she told Susan to ignore her, that she was not really there, and she slept in her own guest room.

  Lindsay returned to the Lambert farm at sunrise and had been working two hours when Mike arrived. They finished about four o'clock that afternoon. Lindsay swept the bones clean, and Mike took photographs. He was slow but thorough, taking shots of the full skeleton and close-ups of the skull, hands, feet, and torso.

  The skeleton was extended, arms lying out to the side. It looked embossed into the ground. The Lamberts had come out to look at the finished work.

  "I called our pastor," said Grace Lambert, a gracious woman who fit her name and who, Lindsay noticed, had the bone structure of a Native American. "If you rebury him, he said we could do it in the church cemetery. Poor fellow can't stay out in the field."

  "There's other Indians buried in the cemetery," offered Joshua. "A lot of people around here are part Indian."

  "Mike said that the fellow was wearing earrings," said Miles Lambert. "Are you sure it's a guy?"

  "Yes," said Lindsay, and she pointed out some of the features: the coarse brow ridge, square jaw, the shape of the pelvis. "What is interesting," she said, "is his race. I think he is European. I'll know more when I measure the bones."

  Something on the edge of Lindsay's mind had been nagging her about the skeleton. She stared at it as she talked to the Lamberts. It was the right hand. The middle and distal phalanxes were under the proximal ones, and they were reversed so that their distal ends were now facing the proximal direction. The hand had been curled into a fist when the man was buried.

  Lindsay took a tongue depressor, knelt down beside the skeleton, and began digging around the bones of the hand.

  "Hand me that dental pick," she said to Mike.

  "Found something else?" asked Mike.

  "I don't know." Lindsay worked as the others peered over her shoulder. "Would someone give me a tissue?"

  A white tissue appeared over her shoulder and Lindsay spread it on the ground. After some meticulous work with the burial tools she lifted an encrusted object from the ground and laid it on the tissue.

  "What is it?" they asked.

  "It's green," said Mike. "More copper?"

  "Yes," Lindsay answered, staring hard at the piece, teasing it with the pick. "And it has something attached to it that has been preserved by the oxidized metal."

  The object was mainly a mass of green oxidized copper with four thin extensions at ninety degrees to one another. It was attached to what looked like wood carved into small spheres or beads.

  "A rosary," Lindsay said with surprise. "I think it's a rosary."

  "My goodness," said Grace Lambert. "The fellow was a Christian."

  "What do you reckon he was doing in them earrings?" asked twelve-year-old Joshua Lambert.

  Roberto Raphael Lacayo squinted as he looked out over the ocean at the speck he had been observing for the last two days, wondering if he was hallucinating or if it could be a ship. Oddly, he felt the taste of red wine in his mouth; odd because he had not tasted wine for how long? Twenty years? Twenty-five years? Who knew anymore? He unconsciously fingered the copper ornaments in his earlobes and looked down at his deerhide clothing and tattooed arms. Only his hirsute appearance gave a clue that his origin was not here in this alien wilderness, but across the ocean. Roberto remembered the day he had left Spain: Cristina crying and laughing at the same time. His mouth twitched into a slight smile. She was an adventurer, too, and she would have come with him if she had been allowed. His mouth turned down again. She had probably married. Her children would be grown now. Cristina would have grandchildren. Roberto couldn't imagine it; she was still so young in his mind-young, but faceless. He couldn't remember what she looked like. He had expected to go home rich, marry Cristina, and be a powerful man. But instead.... He sighed and dug in his doeskin pouch. He pulled out his prayer beads and began to whisper as the salt water lapped at his feet. "Ave Marie, gratia plena, Dominus tecum . . . "

  The ship-Roberto now could see that it was a ship-was heading along the coast, northward. Estupido, estupido, he thought. No hay oro aqui. He could tell them, "There is no gold here," but they would not believe him. They could take him home. He felt his ears again; the lobes were permanently stretched. So much about him was different. But he still wanted to go home. He began walking northward. There were only a few safe harbors where a ship could anchor.

  Lindsay packed the bones and gave them to Mike with directions as to where at the University of Georgia to deliver them for further analysis. Now she would drive home, get a good night's sleep, and make another start tomorrow on her vacation. She was getting into her Land Rover when the Lamberts approached.

  "Please stay for dinner," Grace asked.

  "Thank you," said Lindsay, "but I need to shower and change.... She looked down at her clothes.

  "We have a guest room," interrupted Grace. "You have your luggage. You could stay the night and leave from here."

  "I couldn't impose-"

  "You wouldn't be imposing," said her husband, putting an arm around his wife's shoulders. "We would be honored if you would stay."

  The trip to the Lambert farm had been an interesting diversion, and Lindsay was looking forward to resuming her vacation plans, but there was an urgency in their request that caused her to consent. Besides, she was tired. Excavation was hard work.

  Marilee jumped up and down when she heard that Lindsay was staying. After Lindsay took a shower and changed, the irrepressible five-year-old took her on a tour of her bedroom, which shouldn't have taken long in a ten-by-ten room. But Marilee was a collector: rocks, leaves, various kinds of teeth, bird nests, dolls, and just things she found, all nicely categorized and neatly placed on shelves in her room.

  Lindsay named the teeth for her. She had a tooth from a cow, a horse, a dog, a raccoon. As Lindsay identified each one, Marilee asked, "How do you know that?" and Lindsay showed her the identifying characteristics of each. Marilee listened, wide-eyed, soaking up the information.

  "Is this your brother's?" asked Lindsay, holding a small square box containing a deciduous human molar on a piece of cotton.

  Marilee nodded. "He traded it to me for this rusty thing I found."

  Lindsay smiled and set the box down. Interesting, she thought. Joshua's molar had a rare extra cusp.

  "What is this?" Lindsay picked up a deep red-brown piece of weathered wood leaning against the wall next to Marilee's shelves.

  "It's a piece of wood from a ship," Marilee said proudly. "I found it on the beach. See the holes? Daddy said they had wooden pegs instead of nails to hold the ship together. It's real real old."

  "I'm impressed," said Lindsay. Marilee beamed.

  "I'm glad you're staying tonight," she said.

  Lind
say took hold of Marilee's hand and walked with her to the dining room. Dinner was pot roast with potatoes and carrots, green beans, squash, and cheesecake for dessert. The setting was elegant white china and silver on an offwhite lace tablecloth. The buffet, hutch, and chairs were of polished cherry. On the wall hung a Norman Rockwell print of Thanksgiving dinner, which Lindsay imagined matched this dining room on holidays. The Lamberts were going out of their way to make Lindsay's stay enjoyable, but it was always a little uncomfortable for her to be in the home of strangers, even ones as nice as the Lamberts.

  They passed each dish of food around the table, and Lindsay helped herself to some of everything. Grace filled Marilee's plate, but Lindsay could see she wanted to do it herself. "That's not the calf, is it?" she asked as her mother cut up her meat. "Joshua said we were having it for supper."

  "Joshua, why do you tell her such things?" said Grace, frowning at him. "No, it's not the calf. That's buried and gone."

  "Calf?" asked Lindsay.

  "When we were on vacation," young Joshua volunteered energetically, "one of Mr. Steven's calves got loose and got its head hung up in a hole in our shed and died. Boy, what a stink when we got back."

  Lindsay was sorry she had asked.

  "No talk about the calf at the dinner table," said Miles.

  Joshua laughed. Marilee clearly did not think the episode funny at all.

  Marilee and Joshua chattered throughout the meal, and Lindsay commented to their parents on how smart they were.

  "Both our children are smart," said Miles with pride. "Joshua is a straight-A student, and the teachers are already planning an accelerated program for Marilee. They sure didn't get their brains from me." He smiled at his wife. "I hardly made above Cs. It must have come from Grace."

  "We got lucky with the kids," added Grace. "Maybe they got it from my brother. He was the smart one in the family. He was good at figuring things out."

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  "It's time for you kids to go to bed," said Miles.

  "It's early," Joshua protested.

  "Then you can play in your room," said his father. "Marilee, it's your bedtime."

  Marilee shook her head and pointed to Lindsay. "I want to show her my books."

  "Now, Marilee. Dr. Chamberlain is our guest," said Grace.

  "I don't mind, really," Lindsay said.

  "Show her just a few. I'll make a fresh pot of coffee," Grace told Lindsay. Marilee went happily off to get ready for bed.

  Marilee had quite a collection of books. Lindsay picked up one about collecting seashells and rocks; the one beside it was about Native Americans. Another one was about what different people, like teachers, policemen, nurses, and doctors, do at their place of work. "These are good books," Lindsay told her.

  "Kelley gave me a lot of them. She always brings me a book when she comes to visit."

  "Kelley?"

  "She's my cousin."

  "Would you like me to read you a story?" asked Lindsay.

  "I'll read," Marilee said, confidently.

  Marilee took the book about Native Americans and crawled up on her bed. Lindsay sat beside her. Marilee read, pointing to each word and pronouncing it clearly and deliberately. Lindsay was surprised and pleased that the book was as accurate as it was simple.

  "You read very well," she told Marilee.

  "I like to read," she said, smiling up at Lindsay.

  "I'd better let you get to bed."

  Marilee shook her head. "More."

  "I think your mother made coffee "

  "Just one more page, please?"

  Lindsay relented and listened to just one more page, which turned into two pages, after which Lindsay tucked her in and turned out the light.

  Miles and Grace Lambert waited for Lindsay in the sitting room. Miles sat uncomfortably on the white and gold brocade sofa, his hands gripping the seat as though he were not in that room by choice. Grace poured coffee from a silver coffeepot that was part of a silver service sitting on the cherry coffee table. A large manila envelope lay next to the tray. Grace handed a white bone china cup and saucer to Lindsay.

  Lindsay took a sip of coffee as she sat in a wingback chair that matched the sofa.

  "We're glad you stayed," Grace said. "It's been a treat for Marilee. She's always bubbling with questions, and we can't always answer them."

  "She has quite a collection of things."

  "She's a little pack rat all right," said her father. "Did she show you the piece of wood from the shipwreck?" He seemed as proud as Marilee.

  "Yes. She said she found it on the beach," said Lindsay.

  He nodded his head. "We took our vacation back in April. Went to Florida-bad timing, too many young people." He shook his head. "But we had fun, didn't we, Grace?"

  "It's the first trip we'd been on since our honeymoon. We took the kids to the beach and Disney World. Then we came back ..." She didn't finish her sentence, but took a sip of coffee.

  As they made light conversation, Grace eyed her husband the way one does when they want someone to bring up an agreed upon subject. Miles set down his cup and took a breath. Lindsay quietly sipped her coffee.

  "Dr. Lindsay," he began. "We-my wife and I-have a question. We understand that you can tell an awful lot about what happened to a dead person from just looking at their bones."

  "Sometimes," Lindsay said cautiously.

  "Grace's brother, Ken, died and-"

  "No, he was killed, murdered," interrupted Grace, leaning forward. "I believe I know who did it, but I can't get anybody to listen to me."

  Chapter 3

  LINDSAY DIDN'T KNOW what she had expected to hear from the Lamberts, but it wasn't this. She stared at Grace a moment, but before she had a chance to speak, Grace began telling her about her brother. She handed Lindsay a photograph in a silver frame of a thin, lanky young man with handsome features leaning casually against a restored Mustang convertible. He had brown, almost blond, hair falling onto his forehead. As Lindsay looked at the picture, Grace told her how much she adored him, how good he was to her, how much he loved life.

  Lindsay had observed that people seem to feel that if they could only make her understand how much a person was loved-that they were a real person and not a statistic-she would understand how important it was to do her best and make no mistakes when she examined their bones. Above all, she would treat them with dignity. Grace wanted Lindsay to know her brother as she knew him.

  Miles, however, did not seem to share Grace's opinion of Ken's good nature. When Lindsay cast glances at him during Grace's narration, he had his head down or stared out the window lest he be called on to verify his brother-inlaw's virtues-or so Lindsay suspected.

  "The last time I saw him," Grace continued, "was the first week in January a couple of years ago. He and his wife, Jennifer, went to Colorado to visit her folks at Christmas. We drove up to Tennessee to see them right after they got home. He'd had a bad skiing accident out there. He broke his ankle and a couple of ribs, bruised up his face real bad. He looked terrible." Grace bit her lower lip.

  "He was doing that-I can't remember what you call itsome kind of daredevil skiing, where you go straight down a mountainside. Had a fall. It's a wonder he didn't kill himself then," said Miles. Lindsay could see he was having a hard time keeping quiet about his brother-in-law. She also saw that Miles believed Grace's brother's death was his own fault, and it was only for his wife's sake that he was going along with asking for Lindsay's help.

  "How did he die?" Lindsay asked, still being cautious.

  "Ken was a caver," answered Miles. "He had a caving accident."

  "Ken was a good caver. He was safety conscious. He took care of the people who went caving with him," Grace said.

  "Caving is dangerous," insisted Miles. "Even the best cavers have accidents. Caves are unpredictable."

  Grace looked at her husband with no malice. "Miles thinks I'm wrong," she said. "That I'm too grieved. But I know my brother."
r />   "We need to just tell her what we know," said Miles. His wife nodded and looked to him to tell the story.

  Miles went on. "Grace is right: Ken knew caves, around here and all over in Tennessee and Kentucky, too. But he would sometimes go off caving with friends and not tell anybody where they'd gone. They might've taken off to Atlantic City or California as far as anybody knew."

  "Ken was always a little wild," said Grace, "full of life. He liked to see and do things."

  "Two years ago, Ken and a couple of friends went off like that, not telling anybody, and just didn't come back. Nobody knew where they were. The sheriff thought they'd left town. His buddies were just as likely to up and take off as Ken was."

  "He had a business," said Grace. "He wouldn't have left his business. Ken was serious about that."

  "That's true," said Miles. "He sold sporting equipment, expensive stuff. Did pretty good. He was in it with his wife. It was her money that started it."

  "It was her that killed him," said Grace. "She got a ton of insurance money. Extra for accidental death."

  "How was he finally found?" asked Lindsay.

  "Some other cavers in Tennessee found him," Miles said. "Just this past May. We'd not been back a month from our vacation. The cavers just happened on his remains, his and his friends'. I understand it was a pretty hard cave to explore, one of the most dangerous. That's why it took so long to find them. The cave is on private property, and hardly anybody goes there. Apparently a cave-in of some sort trapped them." Miles took Grace's hand. "They died there."

  "Jennifer arranged it. I know she did."

  "Is his wife a caver?" asked Lindsay.

  Grace stared at her a moment, puzzled at the question. "No, I-"

  "It would be hard to arrange a cave-in so that you wouldn't get caught in it, too, and so that the authorities wouldn't find evidence," said Lindsay.

  "There was some talk of Jennifer having an affair with some guy," offered Miles. "Grace thinks that the two of them killed Ken and his buddies in the cave, then somehow removed the evidence."

  His wife nodded. "When they were found, they were nothing but bones. We were thinking that maybe you might be able to see something from the bones that the authorities missed."