Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  "Dr. Chamberlain?" asked a male voice on the other end.

  "Yes."

  "This is Gerald Ramirez of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution."

  Lindsay closed her eyes and rubbed them with her fingertips. "What can I do for you?" she asked.

  "We would like your comments on the missing artifacts that your grandfather had stored away on his property."

  "I don't know anything about them," said Lindsay, wishing she had some clever words that would send the media somewhere else.

  "The police seem to think your brother took them," the reporter said.

  "That would be silly, since he drove them down from Kentucky," said Lindsay.

  "The police believe that he didn't know their value at that time," persisted the reporter.

  "Does that make sense to you? He grew up around artifacts," Lindsay answered.

  "One report suggested that your family may have been involved in the black-marketing of artifacts."

  "If that were true, no one would be questioning whether or not my brother knew their value before he got here. And, furthermore, it would be much easier to deal with them where they were found than to haul them down here across two states and cause all this trouble."

  "Did you know the value of the artifacts?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know the identity of the person whose body was found in one of the crates?"

  "No. I don't have a clue."

  "Have you asked any member of your family about the skeleton?"

  "Not yet. I'm sure the Kentucky authorities will ask them. The shed where the crates were found had been covered in kudzu since the thirties. None of us knew it was there."

  "Why didn't you report the artifacts to the Kentucky authorities as soon as you found them?"

  "I wasn't completely sure they were from Kentucky. That had to be established."

  "But you thought they were?"

  "Yes, from the ceramics. Ceramics are not my speciality. I would have verified their origin before I sent them anywhere. Markings on one of the crates indicated they probably were from Georgia."

  "Has the Archaeology Department had any other artifacts stolen?" asked the reporter.

  "No," she said, then realized that she didn't know. "Not to my knowledge." That was a good question. It hadn't occurred to her to look. Most of the really valuable artifacts that used to be housed in Baldwin were now stored in the basement of Nancy Hart Hall.

  "Thank you, Dr. Chamberlain, for answering my questions," said the reporter.

  "Sure." She hung up the phone, but her hand stayed on the receiver, as though a deep thought paralyzed her. Frank wanted her to keep a low profile, but people were asking questions, and staying still wouldn't make her any less of a target than being on the move. She opened her desk drawer, took out the two vials of dirt samples from the crate, and wrote "Chamberlain" on the glass with a black Sharpie. She put the vials in the pocket of her jeans. As she opened her door to leave, Sally and Liza Ferris were standing in the doorway. Sally had her hand raised, poised to knock. Liza was sobbing.

  Chapter 11

  "DR. CHAMBERLAIN," LIZA said, "you've got to help Luke. He didn't kill Shirley Foster, I know he didn't."

  Lindsay sat back down at her desk and gestured for them to come in. Sally closed the door behind her. "Liza, I'm not sure what I can do." Liza's eyes were red and swollen; her nose looked red and irritated.

  "He didn't do it." She looked Lindsay in the eye. "You know what it's like to have a brother falsely accused." It almost sounded like an accusation. Liza was pulling out all the stops to help her brother. Lindsay supposed that she would, too.

  "Why did they arrest him?" asked Lindsay.

  Liza held her hands in her lap and stared a moment at the shredded tissue she held there. "They found a key of some sort and traced it back to him, and when they talked to him, he sort of admitted he had been the last one to see Shirley Foster alive." She looked up at Lindsay. "Oh, I don't know all the details. He won't talk to us, and the sheriff won't tell us anything."

  "Does he have a lawyer?"

  "Yes, but he needs someone to find out who really did it. He didn't do it, I know he didn't." Tears rolled down her cheeks. "This is killing us. All of us."

  "Where is he now?" asked Lindsay.

  Liza's face lifted. "You'll help, then?"

  "As I said, I'm not sure what I can do, but perhaps he'll talk to me," said Lindsay.

  "He's at home. Not his apartment, but with Mom and Dad. They had to mortgage the house to get him out."

  "I'll start by talking to him, and see."

  "Oh, thanks, Dr. Chamberlain. I know you can clear him."

  Lindsay was not so sure. Nor was she sure she should even get involved, but Liza looked so desperate. And Lindsay's obstinate streak was telling her to do the opposite of what everybody else was telling her. Lindsay stood. "I'll give you a call later, and we can set up an appointment to meet with Luke. Right now I have to run a few errands."

  There were two palynology labs at the Riverbend research facility, one operated by the Geology Department and the other by Archaeology. Some in the administration found two palynology labs redundant, but not Lindsay. The geology lab examined sedimentary core samples for clues to the age of rock and its oil potential. The clues they looked for were in the form of fossil pollen and spores, requiring the use of acids to dissolve the rock, leaving the pollen to be examined under a microscope.

  The archaeology lab used the same method-a series of acid baths to reduce soil samples to pollen, but their interests lay along a human time scale, not a geologic one, a difference of thousands of years versus millions. Archaeologists could reconstruct the prehistoric diet, learn what plants were in cultivation, and identify prehistoric food crops and food storage pits.

  Different time scales, different functions, and different acid solutions-reason enough for two separate labs. The geology lab used as much as a 70 percent concentration of hydrofluoric acid, the archaeology lab 5 percent, which was dangerous enough. Hydrofluoric acid was an acid Lindsay respected. A burn over just 10 percent of the body meant death. Even washed off the skin, fluoride ions ate away flesh and bone. Inhaled, fluorine gas mixes with moisture in the lungs, turning into hydrofluoric acid and destroying the lungs. Odd to think that anything mixed with water could become lethal.

  Lindsay parked her Rover at the Riverbend labs and went straight to Stevie Saturnin's palynology lab, a fifteenby-twenty-foot room equipped with a fume hood, a centrifuge, an emergency shower, several sinks, and a desk. One wall was lined with cabinets filled with chemicals to do the work of finding pollen in a dirt sample: potassium hydroxide to dissolve humic acids, acetolysis to dissolve cellulose, hydrochloric acid to dissolve carbonates, nitric acid to dissolve pyrite, and, of course, hydrofluoric acid to dissolve silicates. In the end, the dirt would be gone and the polymer sheath of the pollen grains, vulnerable only to oxidation, would be left.

  Stevie was sitting at a desk and Mason, her technician, was about to turn on the fume hood and don his rubber gloves when Lindsay walked in.

  "Hi," said Stevie. "Some faculty meeting."

  "I hope we don't have many more of those," Lindsay replied.

  "What can I do for you?" Stevie asked, smiling at her. One on one, Stevie was more personable.

  Lindsay reached into the pocket of her jeans and brought out one of the vials. "I was wondering if you would process this for me?"

  Mason walked over to look at the vial. His hair had been cut since Lindsay last saw him. His close-cropped hair revealed plainly the silver ring in his earlobe.

  "Not much dirt," he muttered. "I can process it with the batch I'm doing now. I can have it ready by tomorrow. Will that be all right?"

  "That would be great," Lindsay said.

  "I'll do a pollen count tomorrow then," said Stevie.

  "Thanks," Lindsay told them.

  "No problem," said Stevie.

  Lindsay noted that neither Stevie nor Mason had aske
d her where the sample came from or why she wanted it processed. Mason simply smiled and took the vial to the fume hood. I must really be getting a reputation, thought Lindsay. She walked down the hall to the geology lab and peeped in to see if there was anyone she knew. Jaleel was there talking to the technician, his feet on his desk.

  "Well, Lindsay, been reading about you," Jaleel said, his white teeth showing broad against his black face.

  "Me, too," she said, hoping he'd drop the subject.

  "Looks pretty bad, but I've been telling folks you'll come out on top."

  The technician, a husky blond fellow Lindsay didn't know, looked uncomfortable.

  "Thanks for your vote of confidence," she said.

  "I saved the newspaper picture of all you guys standing over that skeleton looking surprised. Got it on my door. That's the damnedest thing," he said, "Opening up that crate and having a body fall out. I tell you, you people in Archaeology are always into something."

  "We have a reputation to keep up," Lindsay said. "It's hard and time consuming, but it's our job."

  Jaleel tilted his head back and laughed. "What brings you here?"

  Lindsay pulled out the other vial. "Can you tell me where this dirt came from?"

  "Does a bear do it in the woods?" He laughed. He took the sample from her hand. "Not a lot here, but I may be able to. What is it? Or should I ask?" he said, grinning.

  "I'm just trying to come out on top," she said, and he laughed again.

  "I'll look at it when I get back to the department and give you a call."

  "Thanks."

  "Anything I can do to help," he said, winking at Lindsay.

  Sally and Bobbie were waiting in her office. Both had big grins on their faces.

  "We are so clever," said Sally, her brown eyes sparkling. "You aren't going to believe it."

  Lindsay sat down at her desk. "Surprise me, please."

  Sally took a drawing from a folder and pushed it toward Lindsay. "You remember I told you that some guy came to see you the day we unpacked the crates of artifacts?"

  Lindsay thought for a moment. "Sort of."

  "Well, you know that cute police sketch artist we met in Eddie Peck's office that time?"

  "Yes," said Lindsay.

  "Well, Bobbie and I took him to lunch, and I talked him into doing a sketch of the guy. I couldn't remember very much at first, but the more I talked to him, the more I remembered."

  Lindsay looked down at the picture and up at Sally. "I don't recognize him."

  Bobbie held up a hand and grinned. "There's more. Sally showed me the picture, and I thought I recognized it." She put a poster on Lindsay's desk. "I'm auditing a course at the law school-and boy, that was hard to get permission to do-anyway, this was one of the speakers a few weeks ago. It was still on the bulletin board. I've been seeing it every day as I leave class."

  Lindsay looked down at the flyer. The pictures did look very similar, from the coat and tie to the professionally styled haircut. Sidney Barrie, UGA Law School alum and member of the firm Easton, Easton, and Shackleforth, was to speak on "Ethics and Corporate Law."

  "It's worth a try," Sally said. "The police could talk to him."

  Something was nagging at Lindsay as she examined each of the pictures.

  "Lindsay?"

  She looked up at Sally and Bobbie. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

  "We could give his name and this sketch to the police."

  "Sidney, Sid-lawyer," said Lindsay out loud. "Not yet. Would you allow me to keep this?"

  "Sure, but. . .

  "You two really are clever. This may be just what I need to get the artifacts back." Bobbie and Sally beamed.

  "They're showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Tate Center late this evening," Sally said. "A bunch of us are dressing up and going. Want to come? You can bring Sinjin."

  "I'll pass, I think." Lindsay grinned at them. "But thanks for asking. Be sure to take pictures of yourselves."

  When they had gone, she took out the Atlanta phone directory and looked up the name Kathy Falkner. There wasn't one. Then Lindsay remembered that Kathy may have recently moved. She dialed information, and there was a listing for a Kathleen Falkner. Lindsay knew she had the right number when the woman answered the phone. She had met Kathy once when she and her parents visited Sinjin, and she recognized her husky voice.

  "Kathy, this is Lindsay Chamberlain."

  Kathy said nothing.

  "Sinjin's sister."

  "Yes, I remember you. What do you want?"

  "I'm leaving Athens, on the way to Atlanta. I want you to meet me at the coffee shop at Lenox Square in two hours. Do you know where that is?"

  "Yes, but why should I do that?"

  "Because you lied to the police about Sinjin and, consequently, caused a lot of trouble."

  "I...

  "Don't bother to lie to me. I'm not really in the mood. Meet me. You can ask Sidney Barrie to come if you want."

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "To talk to you," Lindsay responded.

  "You can do that now," Kathy said.

  "No. I'm leaving now. Be there." Lindsay hung up the phone.

  Kathy Falkner was a startlingly beautiful woman with black hair, crystal blue eyes, and flawless skin. It was easy to see why men fell in love with her. It was not so easy to understand why they stayed in love with her. Lindsay eyed her as she positioned herself in the booth. Kathy didn't look pregnant, but she did look slightly rounder than when they had met before. Sidney Barrie, looking like an ad in GQ, slid in beside her. He watched Kathy adoringly whenever she spoke.

  "This is real uncomfortable." Kathy shifted her position as she sipped a milkshake through a straw. She wore a pink silk shirt over white slacks. A necklace with a single diamond twinkled at her throat. Lindsay also noticed a sizable diamond on her finger.

  Sid directed his attention to Lindsay and the adoring look in his eyes changed quickly. "Was this necessary?"

  Lindsay thought Kathy was trying to play for sympathy. She wanted to tell her not to bother, that although Sinjin loved her, and Sid obviously did, she, Lindsay, did not. But the thought that Kathy might be carrying her niece or nephew made Lindsay hold her tongue. Instead, she asked her calmly, "Why did you insist on seeing Sinjin at such an early hour of the morning?"

  "Didn't he tell you?" Kathy asked.

  "No. He's still very loyal to you." Lindsay hoped that would give her a twinge of guilt. "But for whatever reason you wanted to see him, why so early in the morning?"

  "Sid and I are getting married. I had fittings all day and I needed to see Sinjin, all right? I know that sounds selfish, but ..." She shrugged.

  It did, but Lindsay didn't say so. "Why did you lie to the police?"

  "I didn't think it was a big deal. It was the campus police that called, for heaven's sake. How serious could it be?"

  "It was very serious. You caused problems not only for Sinjin but for me as well."

  "Look, I'm sorry. I'll call them back and tell them I made a mistake."

  "No, you won't." Sid laid a hand on Kathy's arm as if she were about to reach for a phone. "Whatever trouble you and your brother have gotten yourselves into, it doesn't have anything to do with us. If you want to know why Kathy wanted to see your brother, it was to get him to leave her alone and drop this silly blood-test idea. It's not his baby. He agreed to drop it. Now, if you persist in harassing us, I'll have to take action against you, and it won't be fun."

  "Let me tell you what I think," said Lindsay, staring him straight in the eyes. "You came to visit me, probably with the same story, hoping I could influence him, or to have me deliver a little threat to him like the one you just made to me." Lindsay saw his eyes flicker and Kathy look over at him, and knew she had made a hit. "It was on a day when we were unpacking artifacts. You overheard us discussing them and, for whatever reason, decided to steal them."

  "Now, just a minute," said Sid, leaning forward.

  Lindsay r
aised a hand to stave off any comment. "After all, $125,000 is a lot of money, and you aren't a partner yet."

  Sid opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  "A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars?" Kathy whispered.

  "You asked Kathy to call Sinjin and get him away from home, to make sure he had no alibi. You stole the artifacts, then called the police and reported seeing Sinjin's Jeep parked behind Baldwin."

  Sid gave a nervous laugh. "There's no proof I was ever there."

  Lindsay whipped out a copy of the sketch and the flyer. "My graduate assistant saw you. She had the police sketch artist do this. She'll pick you out of a lineup." A little melodramatic, thought Lindsay, but it had an effect.

  "I wasn't there," he said.

  "My assistant says you were. With her sun-bleached hair and Hershey chocolate eyes, some tend to think her a little southern valley girl. But I assure you, she's a good witness."

  "In court, this would be thrown out," began Sid.

  Lindsay leaned forward. "You don't understand, do you? That doesn't matter. I'm here to tell you from recent personal experience that all that has to happen for your reputation to be damaged is for an article to appear in the paper. `Sidney Barrie, of the law firm Easton, Easton, and Shackleforth, was questioned about the disappearance of valuable artifacts. He denied, etc, etc.' You know the rest. What would Easton, Easton, and Shackleforth think of that?"

  "OK, Kathy can call..."

  Lindsay shook her head. "I'm not here to blackmail you. Kathy can make the call or not, according to her conscience. I want the artifacts back. You can ship them to me in care of the Archaeology Department."

  "Look. OK, I came to see you, just to talk to you about your brother. That's all. You weren't there, and I left. I don't know anything about the artifacts. I didn't take them."