Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  "Let's try here," said Lindsay, and she and Sally had cleared away the forest litter before the others noticed that they were digging.

  "You've found something?" asked Patterson, coming over, followed by the others.

  "I don't see anything," said Tom Foster. "I thought you said there would be a depression."

  "There is," said Lindsay, outlining what she thought was the edge with the blade of her shovel. Taking her trowel, she knelt and dug down into soft earth in the center of the depression.

  She and Sally then took shallow shovelfuls of dirt, just skimming the surface. Lindsay dug outward until the earth hardened. "This is definitely an edge separating soft fill from compact undisturbed soil. Stay away from the edge," she told Sally. "We can excavate that with a trowel later and it may give an indication of the type of tool used to dig the hole." Sally nodded. It was not unlike excavation techniques she had used at archaeological sites.

  "Is it her grave?" asked Chris in a low voice.

  "It's a pit that's been dug and filled in. That's all I know now," said Lindsay. They dug down a foot and the ground was still soft. They continued, alternately using their flatnosed shovels to take shallow scoops of dirt and their trowels to dig deeper, carefully looking for bone. They found nothing. It was a slow process.

  "It's an empty hole," said Tom Foster. "I told you she's not dead. You know that, Will Patterson. You know where she is. This is some plan the two of you cooked up together."

  "I have something," said Sally.

  They all stopped and looked into the hole.

  "Probably a dog or cow," said the sheriff.

  Lindsay's head throbbed as she leaned over the pit and dug away the dirt with a wooden tongue depressor, revealing a dome-shaped object.

  "A human skull," said Lindsay.

  "Oh, God," said Chris, dropping to his knees, peering into the grave.

  "Shirl," whispered Will. "Is it her?"

  "I don't know," said Lindsay. "I just know it's human."

  Sally started to dig around the bone. Lindsay put a hand on her arm. "We have to stop now. The sheriff has to notify the coroner."

  "Call the coroner," Sheriff Varnadore told one of the deputies. She turned to the other one. "Go ahead and dig her up." The deputy took his shovel and positioned it above the grave, ready to dig.

  "It would be better if you allow us to excavate the remains," said Lindsay. "You may lose a lot of evidence digging like that."

  "I reckon I know how to do my job. Enough time has been wasted. We need to get this done. We can't wait around here while you dig with that Popsicle stick."

  "If that's Shirl, you'll not be digging her up like a dead cow. I won't have it." Tom Foster, ashen faced, spoke for the first time since Lindsay announced the bones were human. Sheriff Varnadore looked as if she had been slapped in the face. Tom Foster turned to Lindsay. "Go ahead. Do it right."

  "I have to wait for permission from the coroner." Lindsay's voice was gentle, and for the first time that morning, she felt sorry for Tom Foster.

  Chapter 2

  "SHOULDN'T WE WEAR a mask, you know, for the smell?" Liza, a hazel-eyed, dark-haired graduate student, was dressed in khaki shorts, T-shirt, and sun visor. She stood with her nose wrinkled at an odor that was not yet manifest.

  "You can. I have some in the truck, but if you're interested in forensic work, it's better to get used to the smell. This won't be as bad as a body that's partially fleshed out," Lindsay told her and smiled.

  "That's a comfort," said Brandon, another of her students, dressed similarly to Liza but without the visor.

  "Sally and I will do the excavating. Brandon, you and Liza do the sifting."

  Brandon quickly set up the screen used to sift and separate objects from the fill dirt. Earlier, before the students had arrived, Lindsay had set out stakes and string, making a grid of the crime scene. She and Sally walked down the narrow path to the grave. Lindsay had already inspected a swath of ground for evidence and designated it as a safe path. She and Sally sat down on the ground by the grave and laid out their trowels, wooden tongue depressors, spoons, brushes, and dental picks. Beginning at the bone they could see, they began the careful task of removing the soil to expose the bone they couldn't see.

  When the coroner arrived, he sent Tom Foster, Chris Pryor, and Will Patterson home. Lindsay had met him at a local symposium and liked him. He was a good-natured elderly man with fine white hair and, though creased with age, the pink skin of a baby. The change of atmosphere from the bickering of that morning was welcome. Sheriff Varnadore, deprived of people to argue with, hung back and watched until a couple more deputies showed up, one with a metal detector. The sheriff and her four deputies began a ground search of the area extending about two hundred feet from the grave site. Her search pattern was less methodical than Lindsay would have done and Varnadore did not lay out a grid to guide the search, but Lindsay knew better than to try to tell her how to do her job.

  Lindsay and her crew excavated the skull first, gradually shaving the dirt away with the flat wooden tongue depressors. She preferred wood to metal spoons or grapefruit knives for the delicate work-when the dirt was soft enough-for it lessened the chance of damaging the bone.

  "How did you find the grave?" asked Sally. "I didn't see anything that looked like a disturbance."

  Lindsay shrugged. "I don't know. I just wondered what killed that tree. It didn't show signs of insects or disease. Root damage seemed the most probable. That's when I noticed the slight mound with the row of saplings-they looked strong and healthy. Then I saw the depression alongside the mound."

  "Well, I'm impressed," Sally said.

  "It's not an uncommon arrangement. I've seen it before. The digger damages the roots of a tree too young to recover. The dirt he takes out of the hole won't all fit back in, so he leaves a small mound beside the grave. Seedlings grow in the mound and are noticeably healthy because they are fed by the decaying body. Simple as that."

  "Yeah, but it's a big forest," Sally said, "and everything looked alike to me."

  Lindsay brushed the loose dirt from the skull. It stood out a mottled cream color against the dark forest soil, stripped of all remnants of skin and hair.

  Sally touched the smooth dome of the forehead. "It looks female."

  Lindsay nodded in agreement. "What else?"

  "Looks like a healed fracture," said Sally, pointing to a line on the face. Brandon and Liza had made their way down the path and looked into the grave over Sally's shoulder.

  "What kind?" Lindsay asked, watching Sally wrinkle her brow at the skull.

  "Let's see. Is it a LeFort?"

  "What type?"

  Sally traced the fracture line across the orbits and down the cheeks. "The whole face was broken. Is that a type three?"

  "Yes. Anything else?"

  "I don't see-wait, the nose is broken, too." Sally looked up at Lindsay and grinned. "It's a combinationtypes two and three."

  "That's right."

  "Showoff," said Brandon, grinning. He filled another bucket of dirt and took it to the screen.

  "She took a hard blow," the coroner said, motioning for the sheriff to come over. The sheriff disregarded Lindsay's path, walking over unexamined ground, and stepped over the string to the edge of the burial. "Irene, was Shirl in the hospital for any extended period?"

  Sheriff Varnadore sat on her haunches beside the grave, knocking clumps of dirt from the edge into the hole, and squinted at the skull. "Let's see ... yes ... she had a wreck in that little car of hers about six years ago. Had her jaws wired shut. Is it her, then? Is it Shirl?"

  "Maybe," said the coroner. "Won't know until Lindsay does a thorough analysis."

  The sheriff stood, still looking down into the grave. Lindsay watched her as she turned and walked back to continue the search with the metal detector.

  "Irene is a good officer," he said. Lindsay looked from the sheriff back to the coroner's liquid blue eyes. "Some people just aren't their best wh
en they're around certain other people," he continued in a low voice.

  "You mean Tom Foster," said Lindsay, carefully removing dirt from the first cervical vertebra.

  "Yes. I delivered all of them-Tom, Irene, Will, and Shirt, too. I used to be the GP here. They all went to school together, went on to college at UGA, except Shirl; she went to Princeton. At one time they were all friends. Tom and Will played football together. Then ... well ... life comes along." He sighed and shook his head. A sudden breeze lifted his thin hair. Lindsay moved a stray strand of her own hair from her face and continued her work.

  Lindsay and her crew excavated until late in the afternoon. She and Sally had the entire upper skeleton uncovered. A musky smell of decay rose from the grave. Sally put her hand over her nose for a moment, then let it drop to her side. Liza and Brandon hung back while leaning forward, craning to see the remains. "Look at this," Lindsay said. The coroner and the sheriff came over and looked into the grave at the bones of the rib cage that Lindsay indicated.

  "It looks like the thorax has been burned," he said.

  "Tried to burn the body to get rid of it," the sheriff said, coming up behind him and removing her gloves. "Wouldn't be the first time someone found out how hard it is to burn a body." Sheriff Irene Varnadore stared at the skeleton for several moments. "I guess it must be Shirl. I didn't really think she was dead." She looked over at Lindsay and asked, "Did you know her?"

  "No. Why do you ask?" Lindsay said.

  "I just thought since you both worked at UGA-" replied the sheriff.

  "I didn't know she worked there. What did she do?"

  "She taught art. Textile design. Supposed to be pretty good-"

  Liza gasped. "That's Dr. Shirley Foster? I know her. I mean, my brother was her graduate assistant. My parents had her over for dinner once." She started sinking to the ground and Brandon caught her by the arm. Lindsay jumped up and helped her walk over to a rock and sit down. The coroner came over and told her to bend over and keep her head down. "I'm sorry, Dr. Chamberlain," she sobbed. "I didn't know her that well. It's just that I'd met her."

  "I understand," said Lindsay. "It's all right. Why don't you let Brandon take you home? You can help us finish up in the morning."

  Liza rose with Brandon's help. "What time do you want us here tomorrow, Dr. Chamberlain?" he asked.

  "Early ... as soon as it's light."

  Light came too early for Lindsay. She had stayed at the crime scene working late, only going home to her renovated cabin in the woods for a short sleep. Adding to her discomfort, she'd only been able to take a Spartan sponge bath when she got home. When she turned on the shower, it had sputtered and dripped and stopped. She went outside with a flashlight to inspect the well. She pushed the tin roofing atop the low wall of cement blocks around the well, expecting to find that she needed a new water pump. Instead, she discovered she needed a new well. This one was dry. She went back into the cabin, melted some ice in the microwave, gave herself a bath, and went to sleep.

  As the sun was just showing itself though the trees, Lindsay was uncovering the grave and beginning work on the bones. The deputies who had guarded the crime scene through the night seemed grateful to have someone to talk to. They were especially grateful to Lindsay for stopping at Dunkin' Donuts on the way out of Athens and bringing them a box of fresh doughnuts and a couple of Styrofoam cups of hot coffee. Sitting up with the dead was not a pleasant task. Sally arrived, followed shortly by Brandon and Liza.

  "I'm really sorry, Dr. Chamberlain," Liza said.

  "It's all right. I know it was a shock to think this may have been someone you knew."

  "In class it all seems so-so mysterious and, I guess, fun. You kind of forget it's a person."

  "I know."

  Lindsay and Sally had excavated the entire skeleton by midday. The others joined her as Lindsay stood looking down at their work, fascinated by the remains of death and repulsed by the odor it brought. In this particular case the odor rose from the putrid remains in the pelvic girdle. The full skeleton lay extended in the grave. The tops of the ribs were blackened. The finger bones were mottled a yellowgray color and had a network of tiny cracks. The tips of the fingers were burned gray or were missing.

  "Strange," Lindsay said, shaking her head. "The bone indicates the fire was hot where she is burned on the tips of her fingers, but the bone on the face and legs is hardly burned at all. But what I find just as strange is the careful way she's buried. She was a tall woman, and whoever buried her dug a hole long enough for her to fit. In disposing of a body after a murder, the perpetrator usually does not dig a big enough hole and ends up bending the legs, or quickly digging a place for them to fit, so the hole looks like a keyhole or something odd."

  "Not exactly what I'd call a typical shallow grave, either," said the deputy.

  "It took somebody a while and a lot of work to dig this hole," said Lindsay. "And they rested her hands across her stomach. This was carefully done."

  "I agree." Sheriff Vamadore nodded. "It doesn't quite fit with the rashness of trying to burn the body."

  Lindsay looked at her and immediately regretted it, for she did not want to show the surprised look on her face. If the sheriff noticed, she said nothing.

  Lindsay pointed to the grave wall. "You can take a cast of these marks. It looks like they were made by a pointed shovel. There are some thin gouges here and there, like the shovel had a burr or a weld mark on it. Liza and Brandon will give you a diagram of the pit's cross-section."

  "Anything else you found?" asked the sheriff.

  "There's a partially melted plastic zipper on the pelvis. Her shoes are still intact. There are fragments of hose around the shoes and some material left clinging to the left and right tibiae. We found a metal hair clasp near the skull that's in good condition. I'm puzzled by the burn pattern."

  "What do you make of it?"

  "I don't know, maybe nothing. But if you are trying to burn a body by piling it with brush-" She shook her head. "That kind of fire doesn't get that hot as a rule. Look at the tips of her fingers."

  "You don't think she could have been tortured?" The sheriff looked at Lindsay.

  "I don't know."

  Lindsay conducted her examination in the autopsy room of Clarke General Hospital with Eddie Peck, the medical examiner for Clarke County. The diener, John Booth, had laid out the bones on the table and now stood a few feet away with his arms folded, his dark face solemn. Lindsay had met him before, and not for the first time did he remind her of some mythical person waiting to ferry the dead across the River Styx.

  Most of the bones were still held together by hard, yellowed cartilage. In places, there were traces of burned flesh. The voice recorder clicked on as Lindsay recited the preliminary information about the remains.

  "Was she a ballet dancer?" asked Eddie, after carefully removing the shoes from her skeletal feet.

  Lindsay looked briefly at the healed fractures in the second and third phalanxes on her right foot. "Looks like it, doesn't it?"

  "The third phalanx on her left foot has had a fracture, too," he said. "My girlfriend's into ballet. Drop-dead gorgeous girl, ugliest feet you've ever seen."

  Lindsay went back to the skull. "The roots of the teeth show signs of stress and Shirley Foster had at least one abscess that required surgery. The teeth are capped, all of them," she said.

  "The car wreck?" Eddie asked.

  Lindsay looked at the skull x-ray of Shirley Foster and shook her head. "They were capped before the accident. I'd like to see her dental report."

  "I've got it right here, but there is no mention of the capping being done. Must have had it done somewhere else," Eddie said.

  "They're old," said Lindsay. "I'll bet she used a dentist where she went to college."

  Lindsay turned the skull carefully in her gloved hand, looking for signs of trauma other than the LeFort fractures. She found none.

  The door opened and Sally came rushing in, out of breath. "Sorry I'
m late," she said.

  "That's all right. We just started." Lindsay looked at her red-rimmed eyes. "Are you OK?"

  "Yeah, I guess. Just as I was about to leave, I checked my e-mail and there was a Dear Jane message from Brian. He wants to date other people-in particular, Gem Chapman. You remember Gerri, don't you, the redhead with the attitude? I just don't get it. I thought he couldn't stand her."

  "I'm sorry, Sally," said Lindsay.

  "He e-mailed me-e-mail, for heaven's sake. Oh, Lord, is that thing recording me?"

  "I can fix you up with a great guy," Eddie said.

  "No thanks, Eddie," sniffed Sally. "I'm through with men. Gerri, of all people; she's such a jerk."

  Eddie took skin and soil samples from the pelvis, ribs, and vertebrae, bagged and labeled them, and placed them in a box. "There's an IUD in the pelvic cavity," he said and proceeded to bag it as well.

  "The olecranon of the left and right ulna, the margins of the spine on each scapula, and the dorsal surfaces of the third and fourth ribs are all charred black and yellow," Lindsay said to the recorder. "The dorsal surfaces of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth metacarpals on each hand are mottled yellow and gray as are the corresponding phalanxes. Distal phalanxes five and three on the left hand and five, two, and one on the right hand are missing. The others are charred gray and white. It's interesting that the innominate bones show little indication of burning."

  "I wonder why?" commented Eddie.

  "I'd like to look at the bones cleaned," she said after Eddie had taken all the samples he wanted.

  "Sure. Booth'll have them cleaned by next week."

  Lindsay looked at the diener briefly and he nodded at her. "I'd like to see some cross sections of her long bones," she said. "We can do that after they're cleaned. I'd also like to see a cross section of her canine teeth."

  "We can do that," Eddie said. "It'll take a couple of weeks."

  "I have a method of mounting the tooth in plastic resin and making a polished cross section. It works very well and takes half a day. Sally can do it."