Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  "That's another thing." Sally tapped her straw against her glass. "How do you know the bones were on you all's land that long? I mean, couldn't someone-say, ten years agohave sneaked those crates in there?"

  "I don't know." Lindsay sipped her drink and closed her eyes, thinking about Frank's and Ellis Einer's expressions. "It's someone else's problem now."

  "So you won't get to examine the bones?" Sally asked.

  Bruno brought the salads, and Lindsay took a few moments to push the red cabbage to the edge of her plate before she answered. "No. Since the bones came from my family's property, it wouldn't be proper for me to examine them."

  "Who do you think will?" Sinjin asked.

  Lindsay shrugged. "There are several good people they can get."

  "The police didn't ask as many questions as I thought they would," Sally said.

  "The reporter made up for it." Lindsay stared out across the dining area to a far corner.

  "What?" asked Sally, turning in her seat, following Lindsay's gaze. "Isn't that those people from yesterday?"

  "The Pryors." Lindsay bent her head over her salad.

  "I hope they don't come over and ask you to change the report," Sally said. "I can't believe they sent an associate dean to pressure you."

  "I think they were simply dealing with their grief. Some people do it in strange ways. I doubt I'll hear from them again." She grinned at Sinjin. "Tell Sally about your job."

  "Yes," agreed Sally. "Lindsay said you jump into fires."

  Sinjin made a face at Lindsay. "That appears to be her impression.... Uh-oh," he said. "The young guy from the Pryors' table got up, and it looks like he's making a beeline for us."

  Lindsay took a bite of salad as Chris Pryor approached, hoping he wouldn't expect her to talk with her mouth full of lettuce.

  "I'm very sorry to disturb you, Dr. Chamberlain. My parents insisted."

  "We're trying to have a peaceful meal," said Sinjin.

  "I know, I'm sorry. I'll leave before your main course arrives. I was wondering if I could make an appointment to speak with you?" He took a seat in the empty chair across from Sally, between Lindsay and Sinjin.

  "Have a seat," said Sinjin.

  "I have nothing more to do with the case," Lindsay said. "And as for changing the report..."

  Chris waved a hand. "Forget the report. I'm sure Tom Foster will spill the beans about the adoptions to my parents sooner or later. My parents love my sister. They will never accept anything bad about her. They'll end up blaming Tom for everything bad, and they will never believe the bulimia. This is not about the report." The waitress came with her tray, hesitating at the new arrival, and Chris stood up.

  "He was just leaving," Sinjin told her.

  "My parents heard that you're a good detective. They want you to work with Will Patterson."

  Lindsay shook her head. "This is an active case. I really can't get involved."

  "But you do work on murder investigations. Could I at least come talk with you?"

  "It won't do you any good."

  "I can at least tell my parents I tried." He pressed his lips into a tight line.

  "Very well," Lindsay agreed. "Can you be at my office by 7:30 in the morning?"

  "Seven-thirty?" He took a deep breath. "Yes, thank you very much."

  "You're a pushover, Lindsay," Sinjin said, watching Chris Pryor walk back to his table.

  Lindsay was up early, but Sinjin was already gone. More business in Atlanta, she assumed. She wished she had gotten to know Kathy better. Maybe if I had been closer to himshe shook her head. It didn't do to speculate. Her thoughts turned to Chris Pryor.

  She had just arrived at her office parking lot when Chris pulled in beside her.

  "You'll get a ticket," she said as she got out of her Rover.

  "It won't matter," he said, following her into the basement lab and to her office, where he continued their conversation. "As I said last night, my parents want me to persuade you to try to find out who killed Shirley."

  "Will Patterson is the detective. I only identify bones."

  "They've heard people talk about you. I think they're sorry they made a bad impression on you the other day, but they wouldn't admit that for anything."

  "I don't harbor any ill will, but I couldn't investigate this case anyway, while it's active."

  "I understand that. Mainly, I had to come here because Mom and Dad asked me to. Sometimes they won't be denied." He gave Lindsay a charming crooked smile.

  "Why did Shirley go to such great lengths to make them believe she was pregnant?"

  "It was her compromise. She pretending to be the perfect daughter, then doing what she wanted. It was a game, really."

  "But you knew."

  He nodded. "We were close. She was my big sister. I don't suppose you allow smoking in here?" He put a hand inside his jacket.

  "No."

  "I thought not." He pulled out his hand. "I believe all the buildings on campus are smoke-free zones, aren't they? I don't smoke much, just occasionally. Shirley smoked occasionally, too. We kept it from our parents." He shook his head. "Adults we may be, but we hid our smoking from them. They would have disapproved-even though Dad smokes a pipe." He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, as though he were about to confide something to Lindsay. "They'll keep after you and after you until they get their way." He smiled a tight, humorless smile and straightened up. "They aren't really mean people. They won't try to get you fired or anything if you don't do what they want, but they will ask their friends at the university to talk to you. You know, apply a little pressure from above-and they'll keep doing it until you give in."

  "Have they tried working with the sheriff of Dover County? She's handling the case," said Lindsay.

  Chris shook his head. "Irene Varnadore wants to make sure that anyone but Tom Foster takes the blame. My parents want to make sure that he is blamed."

  "Do you think Tom killed her?"

  "I don't like to think so-he's Jeffery and Monica's dad and he got me started in my business-but I do. Their marriage was never that good, and Tom was a jealous man. I think he was tired and wanted out."

  "Divorce is easier."

  "Not with the prenuptial agreement Dad had drawn up when Tom and Shirley married."

  "I thought your parents liked Tom Foster in the beginning."

  "They did, but that doesn't make any difference where money is concerned."

  "Was your sister wealthy?"

  "Yes, she was. My grandmother left her a sizable fortune."

  "And you?"

  "She left me some in a trust that periodically dribbles out some spending money. Mom and Dad thought it best that way. I won't starve, and I will always be comfortable."

  "Do you work?"

  Chris smiled, then grinned. "Point well taken. As a matter of fact, I do. I have a shop on Clayton Street. Glass Imagerie. It's a takeoff on ..."

  "I get the allusion."

  "Shirl thought it was clever."

  "Glass Imagerie is an art gallery for glass sculpture, isn't it?" said Lindsay.

  "Yes, mostly glass. I have some nice things. I hold classes, too. I also manage some local artists and occasionally locate paintings and sculpture for buyers. I found the friezes for the new bank downtown. They're from an old Greek revival building torn down in New York. Garish building, the kind Ayn Rand hated in The Fountainhead. The friezes look good on this building here, though."

  "I've seen some of your glasswork in the window. They're quite lovely."

  "I do okay, even without my trust fund."

  "You think your brother-in-law killed your sister. Are there any other suspects?"

  "I thought you weren't interested."

  Lindsay smiled. "I'm curious."

  "Everyone liked Shirl. I don't know of anyone who hated her enough to kill her. I can't think of anyone besides Tom Foster with a motive."

  "Do you remember the last time you saw her?"

  Chris's eyes were suddenly shiny
with a film of tears.

  "Yes. It was the day before she disappeared. We were going over the plans for Dad's sixtieth birthday party. It was going to be the next week. Nothing too big, just a few people at the botanical gardens. Shirl was good at organizing things."

  "What about the missing hundred thousand dollars?"

  Chris sat bolt upright in his chair.

  "What?"

  "You didn't know about it?"

  "No.

  "That's what is missing from her account. With that much money in her possession, even a stranger could have killed her for it," Lindsay pointed out.

  "Yes. I see. You're right. But so would her husband. What was she doing with that much money, I wonder?"

  "You have no idea?" Chris shook his head. "Do your parents know about the missing money?"

  "No. They certainly would have said something. Come talk to them, please."

  "What good would it do?"

  "Perhaps none. Perhaps you could at least consult with Will Patterson. You know, give him some good ideas. Or you can tell them to their face why you can't take the case."

  Lindsay relented. "All right. I'll have to check my calendar."

  "Fine." Chris drew a map to the Pryors' home. "Thanks. Call me when you can come and I'll meet you out there."

  Chris had left by 8:15. Lindsay had no idea why she had agreed to go to the Pryors' home, except that she was curious-about the burning pattern on the bones, about the missing money, about Shirley Foster herself, about a lot of things. Lindsay doubted it was a stranger who killed her-she was buried on her husband's family's property. A stranger would have just dumped her body or put it in a shallow grave. A stranger might not care whether the body was found or not. Whoever killed Shirley Foster didn't want her body foundat least, not right away. Who had dug the deep grave in the woods and placed her so carefully in it? And who, Lindsay wondered, called in the anonymous tip to Will Patterson about the body being buried on the Foster farm?

  Lindsay was jerked out of her thoughts by the sound of the phone. From the long ring, she knew it was from somewhere on campus.

  "Lindsay, Frank here. The police are sending someone over to get the rest of the artifacts. Can you pack them up?"

  "Sure. What are they going to do with them?"

  "Harold van Deevers from the University of Kentucky wants them sent to his office. The authorities have agreed to allow him to receive them."

  Lindsay made a face. "All right. When will they be coming to pick them up?"

  "In a couple of hours."

  "Very well." She hung up the phone. "I imagine Harold van Deevers is getting a great charge out of this," she said aloud as she retrieved the key from her drawer.

  The dark storage room had the characteristic dusty smell of old artifacts. The shelves were filled with boxes containing bags of dirt taken from grid squares inside the structures of the Jasper Creek site, all waiting to be sorted or to undergo chemical flotation. All the small things that had accumulated on the floor of the house structures-bone, sherds, daub, rock, charcoal-would be classified, labeled, and stored for later analysis. Now, they sat waiting for students to get to them. Sometimes it took years. Lindsay coughed and turned on the light. She didn't even notice all the boxes from the Jasper Creek site sitting neatly on the shelves, because the new shelves at the far end were more conspicuous. They were completely empty.

  Chapter 8

  LINDSAY STOOD STARING at the empty shelves, willing the artifacts to reappear. Maybe someone had just moved them, she thought. To where? She locked the storage room and walked back through the darkened lab. It was quiet. She turned on the lights, which brightened the space but did nothing to dispel her uneasy feeling. The huge sets of artifact drawers, silent keepers of the treasures, loomed tall over the worktables. Portions of pottery stood in their sandboxes, looking like ancient ruins in miniature, surrounded by hundreds of sherds to be fitted into place. Boxes of half-sorted animal bones waited on another table for students to come and identify, weigh, and measure them-a process that would eventually determine the MNI from the site and provide a good estimate of the amount of meat protein the inhabitants consumed. Someone had brought several site reports and stacked them next to the boxes of bones. Lindsay absently ran her thumb over the edges, flipping through the pages as she looked around the room for anything out of place.

  The next table contained boxes and boxes of black chert debris in the process of being measured and categorized-a tedious time-consuming task. The resulting data would reveal which stages of flint toolmaking occurred where the debris was found. These broken bits of rock, bone, and pots yielded far more information of much greater value to archaeologists than the artifacts that were missing, but on the collector's market they were worth less than nothing. To looters, they were objects to be thrown aside, forever separating them from their location-and destroying their value to the body of historical knowledge. Lindsay closed her eyes. Papaw wasn't a looter, she thought. He couldn't have been.

  She opened her eyes and looked under all the tables, thinking that maybe someone had, for some unknown reason, packed the artifacts away and stored them there. Nothing. She unlocked the faunal lab. Nothing but the metal shelves and shoeboxes. She looked in Sally's lab space. The box of old wrapping material was shoved under Sally's desk. She took it to her office and locked it in the closet, not that anyone would want to steal brittle old newsprint.

  "Damn," she said as she dialed Sally's number. "Sally, do you know if anyone moved the Kentucky artifacts to another location?"

  "No. Why?" There was a long pause. "Jeez, are they gone?"

  "I'm afraid so," said Lindsay.

  "Oh, no. Who?"

  "I have no idea. Maybe someone just moved them. I'll give Frank a call." Lindsay hung up the phone and dialed Frank's office phone.

  "Frank, did you ask someone to move the Kentucky artifacts?" she asked.

  "No. Why`? They aren't missing, are they?"

  "They aren't on the shelves."

  There was a long pause that was beginning to become uncomfortably familiar.

  "Have you talked to any of the students?"

  "I called Sally. She doesn't know anything."

  "Damn."

  "Yeah."

  "Who do you think?" he said. "I hope not one of the students."

  "No. I can't believe it was any of them. We'd better call the police. They'll be able to tell if the door was forced or anything."

  The same campus policemen who had come the previous day answered the call regarding the missing artifacts. Fortunately, the reporter wasn't with them this time. They took the theft seriously, but not with the same concern they did when the computers in the Political Science Department were stolen-until Frank gave an estimate of their value to collectors.

  One of the policemen whistled. "Did the student workers know their value?"

  "Not the exact value," said Lindsay. "They knew the artifacts had value to collectors, but they work with artifacts all the time."

  Lindsay made a list of who was present when the artifacts were unpacked and gave it to the police. "I know all of these students," she said. She saw the skeptical look in their eyes, the look that said people are capable of doing all sorts of things you would never think they would do. "I do know them," she reiterated. "None are thieves."

  "But they may have seen someone," said one of the policemen.

  "Yes, they may have seen someone," she agreed. "We took pictures of each artifact. Brandon should have them. I'll ask when he returns."

  "Could you and Dr. Carter make a list of the missing items, including the value of each, and provide a picture?" they asked.

  "Sure," answered Frank and Lindsay together.

  The police examined the door and found nothing that suggested forced entry. "We'll send someone over to check for prints, but don't get your hopes up about that." They put up crime-scene tape, blocking the door to the storage room.

  As the students came in and took up their work
in the lab, Lindsay asked them about the artifacts. Did they know if they had been moved? Had they seen anyone they didn't know hanging around?

  "The police are interviewing everyone who works here," she said. "Please try to remember anyone at all who may have been down here."

  "Maybe it was the person who killed the fellow in the crate," one of them suggested.

  "He may have died over sixty years ago," said Lindsay.

  "Maybe we should tell the police to check the retirement homes," said another.

  "Seriously," said Bobbie, a graduate student who had just come in and set down her backpack. "What if the missing artifacts were in some family's folklore? You know, like stories of great-grandfathers tossing the family silver down a well. Only, in this case, it was a big hidden cache of artifacts, and when they surfaced, some family member came to claim them." Lindsay looked at Bobbie for a moment, pondering her suggestion. Bobbie's interests lay in family lore-that was her mindset, and it was an intriguing idea, if a little farfetched. "Why don't you call your family," Bobbie continued, "and see if they told anyone about the find?"

  "I will. That's a good idea. Very creative. Thanks, all of you." Lindsay felt a pang of guilt as she looked at the earnest faces of her students-that they should come under this cloud of her family's making. Where, she wondered for the thousandth time, had her grandfather gotten the artifacts? "I'm really sorry, guys, for all this ..."-she threw up her hands-". . . this mess."

  "That's all right, Dr. Chamberlain. It's kind of interesting," a student said.

  "Yeah," said another. "You're always involved in inter esting things."

  Great, thought Lindsay, she had developed a reputation for the sensational. She went back to her office and sat down at her desk to think. The artifacts had been stolen; no one had moved them. She hated to admit it. The phone signaled the distinctive two-ring pattern of an off-campus call.

  "Lindsay Chamberlain," she said into the receiver as Brandon entered her office and handed her an envelope.

  "Lindsay, this is Harold van Deevers. How are you?"

  She made a face into the receiver as she took the envelope from Brandon's hand. "The pictures," he mouthed to her, then he waved and went out the door.