Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

  “She just bought a big-screen TV that she loves. Did they get it?” asked Paloma.

  “No. It’s in her bedroom,” said Diane.

  “That’s a relief. Could you take that to her office as well?” she asked.

  “Certainly,” said Diane. “I’ll see if the police will keep an eye on the house too.”

  “Thank you-for everything,” said Paloma.

  Diane stood for a moment after the call and looked at the computer equipment, then at the television in the bedroom. None of this was taken. Did they not have time? They seemed to have cleaned out only a hutch and an old desk in the living room. That was odd.

  “Diane,” called Neva from the lower floor, “can you come down here? I’ve found something strange.”

  Chapter 6

  Downstairs in Marcella’s living room Neva was standing over the desk with a magnifying glass in her hand. She had removed the middle drawer and set it upside down on the top of the desk.

  “What you got?” asked Diane.

  “I’m not sure,” said Neva. “The drawer doesn’t have a handle or knob, so I thought there might be prints under the bottom rim where you have to grab to pull the drawer out, and, well, what I found is just really weird. I don’t think it’s important-I mean, it’s old. It looks old. It’s just really strange.”

  Diane looked down at the desk to see what had Neva all tongue-tied. The back of the desk drawer was raw unvarnished wood discolored with age. Nothing noteworthy about it except there was small handwriting in one of the corners.

  Neva gave her the magnifying glass and Diane moved the desk lamp to view the writing. It was in a small, clear hand, a combination of cursive and printing, composed into simple declarative sentences and phrases. It was odd, poignant, and a little chilling.

  They want to make me disappear. I don’t know what to do. There is no one I can trust, no one to call for help. If I disappear, they have taken me. To where, I don’t know. I’m afraid. Please look for me if I disappear. Please. MAG

  “Well,” said Diane, straightening up. “What do you make of that?”

  “I have no idea,” said Neva. “Is it a joke? Is it Marcella’s handwriting?”

  “No,” said Diane. “I’ve seen hers, and it’s nothing like this.”

  “Then what? Where did the desk come from, I wonder? Did she buy it in some antiques shop, get it at Goodwill, a family heirloom?” asked Neva.

  “That’s something we can ask when we can talk with Marcella,” said Diane.

  “I wonder how old the message is?” said Neva. “Is someone in trouble? I suppose if they are, it’s too late to help them now. It looks to me like it was written a long time ago.”

  “It does to me too, but we’ll let David take a look at it. I’ll get Korey to have a look too.”

  Korey Jordan was Diane’s head conservator at the museum. She frequently called upon him for various jobs where his expertise would be useful.

  “Questioned Documents might have some insight,” said Neva. “Couldn’t they?”

  “Yes,” said Diane, “but I doubt this has anything to do with what happened to Marcella. It looks too old-a kid may have done this years ago as some kind of play. We can’t devote many resources to it.”

  “I know, but, well, it’s spooky,” said Neva.

  “It is. How about the other drawers?” she asked. “Anything on them?”

  Neva shook her head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know.”

  “You might want to look at the back of the desk too,” said Diane. “Maybe something is written there. People often tape notes on the back of furniture.”

  “I will. Maybe Jonas knows were the desk came from. It’s kind of shabby compared to the rest of her furniture. Maybe it is some childhood piece she’s never been able to part with-you know, fond memories. But that message is not quite the stuff fond memories are made of,” observed Neva.

  “Could’ve just been a game,” said Diane. “I used to stuff secret spy messages in my dolls that some people might have found creepy if they read them.”

  “I heard about that,” said Neva, smiling.

  Diane smiled back at her. “Marcella’s daughter called. Her name’s Paloma Tsosie. She’s coming in from Arizona. She may know something about the desk.”

  “Tsosie?” said Neva. “I’ve never heard of that name before. What is it, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. There’s a picture of her and her family upstairs. Her husband looks American Indian. Could be a Navajo or Zuni name, maybe. Anyway, I’m going to put them up in a hotel, but she’s going to want to see the house. I’d like there not to be a bloodstain on the floor. Call the cleaners when you finish.”

  “Sure,” said Neva.

  “Mrs. Tsosie is allowing me to take Marcella’s work to her museum office, so I’m going to pack it up. Do we have boxes in the van or do I need to go get some?”

  “We have a few in the van. They need to be put together,” said Neva.

  “I’ll pack up her work…,” began Diane.

  “Not her whole office?” exclaimed Neva. She had seen the overflowing shelves.

  “No. Just her computer and the pottery she was working on. I don’t think I could tackle all those books.”

  Diane left Neva with the enigmatic desk and went out to the van to find the packing boxes and foam peanuts they kept for occasions when they needed to transport fragile objects. She carried them up to Marcella’s workroom and surveyed the task. Even without packing all the books and journals, the job looked daunting.

  A little searching in the office revealed more boxes of various sizes stored under the tables. She located a linen closet outside the bathroom and took several pillowcases and towels.

  Diane carefully packed many of the loose sherds in the various smaller boxes and labeled them. There were seven whole pots, some reconstructed from sherds and some never broken. She wrapped them in towels and packed each in a separate box.

  She gathered only the paperwork on the tables, ignoring all the papers stuffed in the bookcases, and packed it in a single box. She started to leave the microscope because it would be more easily replaced, but it was small, so she packed it and the slides amid a cushion of towels.

  Then there was the mask. It would be harder to pack. She experimented first by gently testing to see if the pieces were glued fast. They were. Diane wrapped the larger reconstructed piece in a pillowcase and packed it in the middle of the peanuts. She did the same to the smaller section of glued-together sherds.

  The single sherds, presumably more pieces to the puzzle yet to be fitted together, lay on the table next to the mask. They presented a bit of a challenge because she thought she might need to keep the integrity of their position in respect to one another. When she began to pick them up, she discovered that each one was outlined on the paper underneath. She put the paper with the pottery pieces in place in a box and filled the box with folded towels over the sherds. There were four boxes she had to pack this way to accommodate all the single sherds in this set. It was in one of the transfers that she noticed another page under the paper holding the sherds. It contained drawings Marcella had made of the mask. From the drawings it appeared not to be a mask at all, but the front of a pitcher of some kind. An odd pitcher. Water, or whatever liquid it might have held, would have been poured out through the eyes. Not practical. It must have been simply an art piece, or as archaeologists often categorized puzzling things, a vessel meant for religious ritual. Interesting. Diane had never seen anything like it.

  She was taping the last box closed when David and Izzy came in. David Goldstein was a good friend of Diane’s. She had known and worked with him for many years and they shared a common tragedy. While they were working as human rights investigators in South America, many of their friends were massacred. It had made her and David close. Other than Frank, the man Diane lived with, David was the man she trusted most. He was in his forties, balding except for a fringe of dark hair around his head. He had d
ark eyes and an interesting, paranoid view of the world.

  Izzy Wallace had been a policeman on the Rosewood police force and a good friend of Frank’s. He hadn’t liked Diane much at first, but with the unexpected death of his son came a change in his priorities. Observing how Diane and her team collected evidence that actually put criminals behind bars, he decided he wanted to join their team. Neva said he was learning forensics very quickly. Diane noticed he did seem, if not happier, more involved and satisfied with life.

  “What are you doing?” David asked.

  “I’m taking Marcella Payden’s work to her office in the museum. David, I need you to pack up her computer equipment. And, Izzy, would you mind figuring out a way to pack up her television?”

  “Her TV?” said Izzy. “You’re taking her TV? Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” said David. “Diane’s powers would let her come into your house and take things away if she wished. Besides, the crime lab could use a large-screen, high-definition television.”

  “Seriously,” said Izzy, frowning at David.

  “I spoke with her daughter,” said Diane. “She asked that we take Marcella’s work, her computer, and the TV to her office in the museum for safekeeping because of the break-in.”

  “Just checking,” said Izzy.

  “What have you found?” Diane asked them, making a fruitless effort to dust off particles of Styrofoam peanuts that clung to her clothes.

  “I found several bullet casings,” said David. “The road in back of the house is paved, even though it’s a pretty old road-no tire marks. I did trace their getaway through the woods and collected some fiber evidence. That’s about it. One odd thing. I found two broken pottery sherds on the road. Looked kind of archaeological. I collected them. I don’t know if they’re connected to our suspects, but since Marcella is an archaeologist…” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Diane raised her eyebrows. “I wonder if they were looking for Indian artifacts? If they were, I don’t think they made it to this room.”

  David shrugged again. “Maybe that was what they were after, but… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. That many guys for some Indian pottery? Is it that valuable?”

  “I don’t know either,” said Diane. “Some is, I think. But you’re right. It doesn’t feel quite right. What about you, Izzy? Find anything?”

  “I took a couple of casts of shoe prints outside in the dirt. Like David, I found fibers where they rolled around on the ground. I found lots of sequins.” He grinned. “You must have rolled all the way down to the bottom of the bank.”

  Diane smiled. “I did. Good work. What’s your sense of what’s going on?” she asked Izzy. “Do you think the attack on Marcella and the break-in early this morning are two separate events or part of the same crime?”

  “I don’t know,” said Izzy. “Like David said, it feels strange, but hell, guys will break in to steal just about anything these days. I’m thinking they would’ve been interested in the electronics up here. But maybe they didn’t get this far. I’m with you on the problem of how they knew the house would be empty-maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they knew that just one little old lady lived here. Maybe they saw activity here earlier and her being carried away.” Izzy shrugged. “There’s also the problem of there being no sign of forced entry. Did she leave her doors unlocked? Did she let the attacker in and he left without locking the door behind him? I know some people leave their doors unlocked, but usually not older women living alone away from neighbors, like this house is.”

  “I agree,” said David. “Too many questions and not enough information for answers.”

  “Besides,” said Izzy, “it’s Hanks’ job to figure this stuff out.”

  Izzy had told Diane that some of the Rosewood detectives thought she insinuated herself too many times in their cases. Diane thought it was an unfair accusation. She never interfered in cases unless she was brought in by the detectives themselves. Or in some cases, the perpetrators made sure she was involved.

  Since Izzy joined her team, he had become her conscience in that regard-trying to make sure the Rosewood detectives had a good impression of Diane and the crime lab. She started to tell him that the county sheriff didn’t have any problems with how she did her job, but her cell rang. She looked at the display. It was Garnett, Rosewood’s chief of detectives. Diane answered.

  “Hey, Diane. Just giving you a heads-up. Hanks is bringing Jonas Briggs down here for questioning. Thought you might want to observe.”

  Chapter 7

  Diane, still in the change of clothes she kept in her car for emergencies and still with Styrofoam packing peanuts clinging to her, stood in the observation room looking with some apprehension at Jonas Briggs on the other side of the glass in the police interrogation room. Douglas Garnett was standing next to her.

  Garnett was his usual well-dressed self: dark charcoal suit, crisp white shirt, and light blue silk tie. He was a tall man, fiftyish with thick, graying, well-styled hair and dark eyes. He hadn’t called Diane because he was personally concerned for Jonas Briggs; his concern fell more under the heading of protecting the museum from bad publicity and political repercussions. The crime lab, a really big jewel in Rosewood’s somewhat thorny crown, was housed in the museum building. Garnett and the mayor knew if anything bad happened to the museum because of the crime lab, Diane would move the crime lab out. And having the museum house the lab worked out so well for the city that it was worth the little extra political trouble to watch out for the museum’s welfare. Plus, Garnett owed Diane for pulling him out of hot water. And Diane did have a personal interest in the welfare of Jonas Briggs.

  Jonas was sitting there alone, his forearms resting on the table. He was dressed in a light denim jacket, white shirt, and Dockers. He looked worried, but Diane guessed he was worried about his friend Marcella, not the circumstances he found himself in at the moment. Garnett told her that Jonas had waived his right to council. She didn’t think it was a good idea, but Garnett’s help stopped at allowing Diane to talk to Jonas before Hanks did.

  Diane’s fears had been correct. Jonas had discovered Marcella Payden, which made him an automatic person of interest.

  Diane heard the rattle of the door and Detective Hanks walked into the interrogation room. He didn’t look particularly threatening, with his arm immobilized and his neck in a brace because of his broken collarbone.

  Jonas raised his eyebrows at Hanks but didn’t mention Hanks’ condition. He waited for Detective Hanks to speak.

  “How well do you know Marcella Payden?” asked Hanks.

  “Very well. She is a fellow archaeologist and a friend. I know her family,” replied Jonas.

  “Did the two of you get along?” Hanks asked.

  “Of course,” Jonas said.

  “Were the two of you dating?” asked Hanks.

  “Dating? That sounds like such a young term. We went places together and had a good time. Is that what the young do on dates these days? There is an element of romance that goes along with dating, so I guess you could say we were dating,” said Jonas.

  “Were you intimate?” asked Hanks.

  “Now, young man, that’s a very private question. However, I will answer. No.”

  “Did that make you frustrated?” asked Hanks.

  Diane felt uncomfortable for Jonas. She wanted to bang on the window and tell Hanks to be more respectful.

  Garnett must have felt her frustration. He leaned toward her and said, “He has to ask these questions.”

  Diane nodded. But she didn’t have to like it.

  Jonas chuckled. “Do I look like I’m nineteen? What kind of question is that?”

  “You may have wanted to go faster in the relationship than Dr. Payden,” said Hanks. “Take it to the next level.”

  Jonas shook his head. “Next level? Where do you young people come up with these phrases? And go faster? Son, at my age, I’m happy just to go at all. You know, you haven’t analyzed your target audience in
forming your assumptions and questions. You’re targeting a different age group from mine.”

  “Did you and Dr. Payden have a lot of arguments?” Hanks asked.

  Diane had a desire to pound on the window again. These are trick questions, she wanted to shout.

  “A lot of arguments? As in getting mad at each other? No.”

  “What if I told you I had witnesses who heard you and Dr. Payden arguing heatedly just two days ago?”

  Diane watched Jonas raise his bushy eyebrows and frown. “Then I would say you had a witness who couldn’t tell the difference between spirited scholarly discourse and arguing,” said Jonas.

  “Is that what you call it, ‘spirited scholarly discourse’?” asked Hanks.

  “Yes,” said Jonas.

  “What did Dr. Payden call it?”

  “Marcella called it spirited scholarly intercourse,” said Jonas.

  Diane smiled.

  “Intercourse?” said Hanks.

  “Yes. Communication between individuals, organizations, or nations,” said Jonas. “You’ll find it’s the first definition in the dictionary. It’s kind of overshadowed by the second definition. Marcella likes the surprise aspect of using the first definition.”

  “I see,” said Hanks. “What was the argument about?”

  “Let’s see. I believe the topic of discourse was the definition of archaeology and how it relates to the proper subject matter of archaeology,” said Jonas.

  “That seems pretty basic. Are you telling me you couldn’t even agree on a definition of your own subject matter?” said Hanks.

  “It’s an academic thing,” said Jonas.

  Diane could see he was getting annoyed with Hanks.

  “It’s a common issue with all us archaeologists, one that will never be resolved because we will never completely agree. However, if you think this or any discussion I’ve had with Dr. Payden in any way would drive me to attack her, you’re just being plain silly. Marcella loves academic discussions of all kinds.” Jonas looked at his watch. “I’ll have to leave soon to pick up her daughter at the airport. She and her husband are flying in from Arizona today.”