Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  "The next installment due next month?" she asked, half expecting him to say no, tomorrow.

  "Next month will be fine. I'd see about getting a filtering system before you run the water though your pipes, if I were you," Dante said.

  Before going to campus Lindsay dropped off her water sample to be analyzed. Then she drove to South Campus where new, modern multicolored brick buildings were popping up like dandelions after a rain. She stopped at the Ramsey P.E. Center to shower and change her clothes.

  When she arrived at Baldwin Hall, home of the Archaeology Department, Lindsay encountered Reed Cavanaugh and Kenneth Kerwin, two Archaeology faculty members in the faculty break room. She poured herself a cup of coffee. Reed was nursing his own cup, and Kerwin was reading the latest volume of the Journal of Historical Archaeology.

  "Been reading about you in the paper," said Reed. "Looks like we're in for several more weeks of speculation about Shirley Foster." From his expression, Lindsay felt as though he would like for her to come sit down and tell him about the case. Reed was not a person who acted out of idle curiosity, and she realized that he had probably known Shirley Foster. In fact, probably several of the faculty had known her.

  "I imagine there was a lot of publicity when she disappeared," said Lindsay.

  "Oh, you can't imagine it. It made it scary for a lot of the girls on campus at that time, too."

  "Did you know her?" asked Lindsay. She took a sip of coffee. As usual it was awful.

  Reed nodded. "Nice lady. I liked her."

  "She didn't have a very good opinion of archaeologists here in the U.S.," Lindsay said.

  Reed laughed. "You must have been reading one of her interviews. I remember one in the Observer." He chuckled. "Shirley was just tweaking our noses. She was like that." He laughed again, shaking his gray head. "We never minded, though. She was a very playful girl."

  "How about you, Kenneth? Did you know her?"

  Kenneth Kerwin waited until he finished reading a paragraph before he looked over the top of the journal. "Not really. Academically, of course. She was interested in textiles, and she occasionally asked me questions about old mill sites in Georgia. She was a good scholar. A loss for the university." He went back to his reading.

  "What can you tell us?" Reed asked Lindsay.

  "Nothing, I'm afraid," she answered.

  "Well, can you confirm what's in the newspaper?" he asked. "It said she had been burned in a curious manner. That wasn't the way she died, was it?" Reed looked as though he wanted Lindsay to tell him, "No, she really died peacefully in her bed."

  "There was some burning. The sheriff believes it was an attempt to dispose of the body. It's an exaggeration to call it curious." The only "curious" elements were the intensity of the heat, the burn pattern, and the careful burial. Not a lot, but it nagged her just the same.

  "What killed her?" asked Reed.

  "Will you people please!" Kerwin said. "Reed, we did know the woman, for heaven's sake. It's bad enough that Lindsay spends her time doing this. Don't encourage her to bring in the grisly details to us." He got up from the sofa and left the room with his journal.

  Lindsay and Reed watched Kerwin's retreating back. "Exactly what did you ever do to him?" Reed asked.

  "Oh, I kind of gave him a hard time about the way he handled the media during the Ferguson business," said Lindsay.

  Reed chuckled. Lindsay got up and poured her coffee in the sink. "Who made this stuff?"

  "I did. Don't you like it?"

  "It's awful." Lindsay started out the door.

  "Don't forget the faculty meeting next week. You know what's up, don't you?"

  Lindsay turned and leaned against the door frame. "No, what?"

  "Administration wants to merge Anthropology and Archaeology."

  "Why?" Lindsay asked.

  "They say efficiency, but who knows? It's something political. This coffee is awful." He poured out his cup and left the break room with Lindsay.

  As Lindsay was going past the departmental office, Edwina, one of the secretaries, called out to her.

  "Yes?" Lindsay asked.

  "You got a phone call first thing this morning. Some woman. Said it was important but wouldn't leave a name."

  "Did she say what it was about?" asked Lindsay.

  "No. Just that she would call back."

  "Thank you, Edwina."

  Lindsay walked down the series of hallways and stairways to her office in the basement. She sat down in her chair and turned on her computer. As it was booting up, she thought about the possibility of merging with Anthropology, a huge department with over twenty faculty members. Positions would be eliminated. That meant the dean probably had plans to downsize Archaeology. Downsize, what a word. Lindsay sighed. She was the third to last person hired and had no tenure. She could guess who would be the first to go-not the tenured faculty. She would have to watch her step and not get into any arguments with the dean's favorite, Kenneth Kerwin. She would have to keep a low profile these days. She couldn't afford to lose her job.

  Toward the end of the day, Lindsay called to get the report on her water analysis.

  "Yeah, hard water," the voice on the other end told her. "You have both iron algae and iron mineral. I imagine it must be dyeing all your whites a rusty color."

  "Not yet," Lindsay said. "It's a new well."

  "That'll be good then, you can get a filtration system before the stuff contaminates your pipes too much. I'll send the report to you."

  Lindsay thanked him and called the number Edgar Dante had given her. They invited her to come by their office on her way home. The slender, brunette saleswoman at Crystal Clear Water, Inc. shook her head sympathetically when Lindsay told her what minerals she had in her new water supply. After giving Lindsay a sales pitch, the woman armed her with a load of brochures and a list of a few people in town who had the system that she could call for testimonials. That evening, Lindsay called several people and decided to have the system installed. She didn't have much of a choice. She was tired of lugging water home in plastic containers and showering at the Ramsey Center, and the water apparently wasn't going to clear up. Every time she tried the spigot on the well, the water ran an ugly brown-red color.

  By the end of the week, Lindsay had a new twelve-footby-twelve-foot well house, a system of chemical, charcoal, and brine filtering tanks, a set of instructions on how to maintain them, and pure water. She also had an enormous bill that the company graciously financed, telling her the payment booklet would arrive in the mail shortly.

  Now, she thought, sitting at her desk in her office, I'll just have to figure out how to pay for all this. She was relieved when the phone rang and took her out of the depressing thoughts of her finances.

  "Dr. Chamberlain, John Booth here. I've finished cleaning the bones. Anytime you want to come down, I'll be here."

  "Thanks. I'll come this afternoon."

  "Cousin Edgar take care of you okay?"

  "Just fine. I've got an abundance of crystal-clear water."

  The detritus left on bones is important in discovering cause of death, but Lindsay still preferred clean white bones to examine. The bones of the woman whose x-rays identified her as Shirley Pryor Foster, Ph.D., lay on the shiny metal table in the autopsy room and had, for the most part, a pristine glow like polished ivory. Booth, who was the only one assisting Lindsay that morning, had done a good job. Lindsay acknowledged her satisfaction with a nod as she examined the bones as if for the first time.

  Shirley Foster, forty-year-old full professor in both the Art and History departments, was five feet, eight inches tall. She had taken ballet for several years and practiced diligently, as indicated by the large attachments for her calf, thigh, and hip muscles. She probably quit because she was plagued by pain from stress fractures in her feet. She had the beginnings of arthritis in her hands, but it was mild, perhaps even unnoticeable to her except in cold weather. The blow to her face resulting in the LeFort fractures was hard enough t
o have caused brain damage; however, her bones were thinner than normal and probably broke with a lesser force. She was completely ambidextrous, something Lindsay rarely saw. Even people who can use both hands well usually favor one over the other. Shirley Foster's pelvic girdle gave no indication that she had ever delivered a child.

  Lindsay looked at the polished cross section of a tooth under a dissecting microscope, paying particular attention to the cementum, the bony layers surrounding the root of the tooth. She saw indications that Shirley Foster was undernourished for a time in her life. The lack of proper nutrition was also suggested by the slightly thinner cortex of her long bones. Lindsay thought about the capped teeth and wondered if Shirley had been bulimic as a teenager or young adult.

  "This arrived today." John Booth showed her a large white envelope.

  "What is it?" she asked. Booth opened it and took out a set of x-rays and a letter. Lindsay recognized the x-rays as Shirley Foster's teeth. She read over the letter that Booth held in front of her. "Ah, it's the dentist who capped her teeth. He is from New Jersey. I thought so. He thought she was bulimic as well. Attach these to the report."

  Lindsay began a careful examination of each of Shirley Foster's bones, looking for any mark or nick that might indicate how she was killed. She found nothing.

  "I'm finished. You can release her bones for burial if the coroner approves it," she told Booth. He nodded. "Unless something shows up in the tissue samples, we may not be able to tell how she died."

  Lindsay finished her report in Eddie Peck's office before she went back to campus. She was relieved to be finished. Even though Shirley Foster disappeared before Lindsay came to work for the university, there was something haunting about examining the bones of a fellow faculty member.

  Lindsay's usual parking space behind Baldwin Hall was taken by a shiny black Jeep loaded with wooden crates. All the other spaces in the small lot were full, so she had to park in the lot for the Psychology Building across the street. She took a copy of the Red and Black, the campus newspaper, from the rack on the way into the building. Across the front page the large black headline read: "Another Student Killed on Corner of Jackson and Baldwin Streets." It was the second student killed there in as many years. Students were so prone to step out into the street without looking, as if being on campus put them in a state of grace, immune to realities such as sudden death. And unfortunately, too many cars traveled too fast on both of those streets.

  According to the article, Gloria Rankin, a twenty-sevenyear-old Ph.D. student in the Classics Department with a master's in chemistry from the University of Chicago, was dead on arrival at Clarke General after being hit by the North/South Campus bus. She was a beautiful woman, straight nose, slender, oval face, and blonde hair-and so young. There was also a photograph of the scene, but Lindsay didn't look at it. She tucked the paper under her arm and shook her head as she walked to her office in the basement of Baldwin.

  "I guess you heard about that girl," Sally said, nodding toward Lindsay's newspaper.

  "Yes, I just read it. Did you know her?"

  "No, but I know the driver of the bus, Luke Ferris. He's Liza's older brother."

  "You're kidding," said Lindsay, "Liza's brother? Isn't he the guy who sometimes works for Frank and Kerwin sorting artifacts?"

  "Yeah. He's terribly upset. There are no charges against him. It wasn't his fault, but he quit his job and Liza thinks he'll probably drop out of school this quarter."

  "That's so sad. The parents-all of them-must be just grief-stricken."

  "The Ferrises are beside themselves. And for it to have happened to Luke ... he's a real sensitive guy. He's been treated for depression before. I guess this will really push him over the edge," Sally said.

  Lindsay shook her head again. "It seems unfair that one simple mistake could require such a high price."

  "I know. When I think of the number of times I've crossed streets on campus without looking-"

  "Well, don't do it anymore." Lindsay's gaze rested on the tall, rectangular wooden crates stacked against the wall by her office. "What's that?"

  "This really gorgeous guy's bringing them in."

  Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "That must be his Jeep in my parking space. Who is he?"

  "He didn't say. He just asked when you'd be back and started bringing them in," said Sally.

  "These crates are old." Lindsay walked over to the closest one and brushed the faded stenciling with the tips of her fingers. "OOF-6/35, is that what it says?"

  "Looks like it," said Sally. "What does it mean?"

  "I don't know. The other crates don't seem to have any markings-" Lindsay began when a tall, lean man in his mid-thirties, dressed in tight-fitting jeans and a plaid shirt, came in carrying another of the mysterious wooden crates on his shoulder. He set it down gently beside the others and turned to Lindsay. He had short brown hair, blue eyes, and a day-old beard.

  "Sinjin," said Lindsay, going to him, hesitating only a moment before she hugged him.

  "Hello, baby sister," he said, kissing her cheek.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were coming? Can you stay?" She searched his face and found no expression she could read.

  "You didn't get a call from Dad?"

  "Maybe it's on my voice mail. I've been away from my office." Sally edged closer to Lindsay and her brother. "Oh, this is Sally Flynn, my graduate assistant. Sally, this is Sinjin Chamberlain, my brother." Sally stuck out her hand, and Sinjin took it briefly, smiled, and nodded his head.

  "So, what's in the crates?" asked Sally.

  Sinjin turned to Lindsay. "Dad asked me to bring them to you. They were found in one of Papaw's outbuildings. Apparently been there since the thirties."

  "Wow," said Sally.

  "You're kidding," said Lindsay. "No one knew they were there?"

  "You remember that jungle of kudzu behind Papaw's workshop? There's a shed in the midst of it. No one has been in it in years, apparently forgot it was there. Greataunt Maggie, in a fit of yard-work fever, found the building and the contents. Dad opened one of the crates, found some clay pots, and thought you ought to have them."

  "So, you've been visiting Mom and Dad?" Lindsay felt a pang of disappointment that her father had probably sent him. She had hoped the visit was Sinjin's own idea.

  "I was there a couple of days," he said.

  "You can stay a few days here, can't you?"

  "I don't know. Maybe overnight, if you have room."

  "If she doesn't, I do," Sally volunteered. Sinjin looked at her briefly, eyebrows raised, and back at Lindsay. "Well, I have some things to do," said Sally. "I'll just slink back over to my corner and do them."

  Lindsay laughed as Sally retreated to her space in the faunal lab. "I just finished my guest room. I'd love to have you stay."

  "All right. I do have some business in Atlanta," he said, looking around at the archaeology lab.

  "Let me show you the place." She grabbed his arm and pointed at the floor. "This building was once a gymnasium. You can still see the markings on the floor if you look hard enough." Sinjin looked briefly at the dust-covered wooden floor that had lost its shine ages ago, then followed Lindsay to a set of floor-to-ceiling oaken drawers covering two opposite walls of the lab. The brass pulls made them look like giant card catalogs in an old library.

  "The artifacts we're currently working with are stored here." They were large flat drawers, three feet long, two feet wide, and four inches deep. Anything deeper would have been wasted space-artifacts could not be stacked on top of one another. Lindsay pulled out a drawer halfway. The bottom was entirely covered with large sherds-pieces of broken clay pottery.

  White butcher paper covered all the tables in the lab. Two students sat at one of the tables gluing pieces of sherds into a whole pot. The glued pieces were held together by clothespins while the glue dried and were kept upright by being embedded in sand.

  "These are broken pots from a house floor at the Jasper Creek site. That's the one-"


  "Dad told me about your adventures at that site. How's your leg?"

  "Fine. No permanent damage," she said, patting it as if to verify its soundness. The truth was, it still hurt some when she stood on it for a long time. "They're fitting the pieces of the pots back together. Each piece of sherd has been mapped to the exact spot it was found. After they finish piecing them together we'll be able to tell from the scatter pattern if the pots were resting on a shelf or on the floor prior to their breakage."

  "Is that important to know?" he asked.

  "Perhaps not by itself, but the little bits and pieces of information accumulate, and after a while we know quite a lot. If we find similar artifacts in a similar household arrangement in another site several hundred miles away, for example, we know that the two peoples were probably related in some manner."

  Sinjin looked over the jigsaw puzzle of sherds lying on the white paper. "Do you have to find a special kind of person to do this?"

  "Yeah," said one of the students who was gluing the pieces together. "A half-wit."

  Lindsay smiled and led her brother to a room at the end of the laboratory. "This is our faunal reference collection." The room was furnished with rows of metal shelves containing hundreds of identical shoeboxes. Sally sat at a corner desk reading a stack of papers.

  "Each box contains bones of some animal," said Lindsay. She pulled down a box and opened it, revealing the white paper-thin bones of a bird. "We try to get an adult male and female as well as several sub-adults of the same species. We use them to compare with animal bones recovered from a dig, to be sure of our identification."

  "You must be right at home among all these bones," he said, looking at the many boxes. "Where do you get them?"

  "Oh, some are from zoos when an animal dies. Many are roadkill." She replaced the box on the shelf.

  Sinjin looked at Lindsay. "My sister collects roadkill?"

  "Only if it's not been too flattened," Lindsay replied. Sinjin laughed out loud and Lindsay grinned at him. "Yeah, well, you got to do what you got to do."

  "How do you ..." Sinjin searched for the right word. "You know, extract the bones?"