Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  Chapter 15

  "I KNOW YOU don't believe me," Luke said. "I don't blame you. The sheriff doesn't believe me either."

  "You just found her lying there? Could you tell how long she might have been there?"

  Luke shook his head, still staring at the floor. "Not long. She was still ... uh ... there was still smoke."

  "Why were you out there?" asked Lindsay.

  Luke pursed his lips. "I don't know. She asked me to come."

  "She gave you no indication why?"

  Luke shook his head. "She said she had a surprise and that she would correct her mistake."

  "You don't know what she meant?"

  "I challenged the grade she gave me on a paper. I figured it was that."

  "You didn't think it odd that she wanted to meet you way out there in the woods to change a grade?" asked Lindsay.

  "Well, sort of, but I just thought it was, well, you know-"

  "You thought she would change your grade in exchange for some sexual favor?" asked Sinjin.

  "It seemed that way," answered Luke. Luke had quit looking at the floor, and he now fixed his eyes on the scalloped molding in the gazebo. Lindsay wasn't sure if that meant he was not telling the truth, or if he was embarrassed.

  "Had she ever given you any indication before of those kinds of intentions?" asked Lindsay.

  "No. Not really. I mean, she was friendly, but she was that way with everybody. I never took it personally before."

  "How did she ask it? I mean did she just say meet me at the lake at midnight?"

  "She didn't actually say it in person. She left a note for me"

  "Do you have the note?"

  He shook his head.

  "What did you do after you found her?" Lindsay asked.

  He put his hands to his face. They were shaking. He seemed to have tears in his eyes. "What could I do? She was dead. I just left."

  "Why didn't you call the police?" asked Lindsay.

  "I was afraid. I didn't want to be involved. She was past any help."

  "But what about her family? Didn't you think they'd want to know what happened to her?"

  "I thought they would find her. It was her property. Her car was there. We had departmental picnics there. It wasn't like it was in the middle of nowhere."

  "Do you mind if I have one of those cigarettes?" asked Sinjin.

  "What? No. Go ahead. They're my sister's. She comes out here to smoke sometimes."

  Sinjin took a cigarette from the pack and a match from the box. He flicked the match with his thumbnail and it ignited with a hiss. Sinjin lit the cigarette and put the flaming match in the ashtray. Lindsay was surprised. She didn't know Sinjin smoked. Luke watched the ashtray as the match turned to a thin piece of charcoal and burned out.

  "But when they didn't find her-" began Lindsay.

  "What? Oh." Luke looked at her and shrugged. "I didn't understand it."

  "You didn't go back and look?" she asked.

  "No! No, I couldn't. God, no, I couldn't. I just thoughtI don't know what I thought. I just wanted to forget it."

  "Is that why you quit school?" Lindsay asked. Luke nodded.

  Sinjin put out the cigarette. "Not my brand," he muttered.

  "Did you make the anonymous call to Will Patterson?" asked Lindsay.

  Luke shook his head. "I don't know who he is."

  "What do you think?" Lindsay asked as Sinjin drove out of the Ferrises' drive and onto the street.

  "He's lying," said Sinjin.

  "Why do you think so?" she asked.

  Sinjin shrugged. "He's not a good liar. He couldn't look at either one of us. Surely you saw that. Where do you want to eat?"

  "There's a place in Five Points where we can get a sandwich, or there's a little Mexican place down the street, if you prefer. I wonder why he didn't just report it?" asked Lindsay.

  "How about Mexican? He was afraid they would blame him, because he's a firebug. Probably set things on fire as a kid. May still do it occasionally."

  "How do you know that?" Lindsay asked.

  "The gazebo burned down. There's no electricity in it," said Sinjin.

  "Couldn't it have been struck by lightning?" she asked.

  "Could have. But lightning more often hits the tallest object. It would've probably hit one of the pines. I didn't see any evidence of it. I think he set it on fire."

  "That's kind of a jump. Going from a burned gazebo to him setting things on fire."

  "He likes fire. Did you see his eyes when I lit the match?" Sinjin asked.

  "Is that why you lit the cigarette? I didn't think you smoked."

  "I don't, and yes, that's why. I wanted to see his face. I've seen that look before. He's fascinated by fire."

  Lindsay groaned. "I feel bad for Liza and her family."

  Sinjin pulled in the parking lot of the restaurant. They ordered their food and took it to one of the outside tables.

  "A strange thing happened today as I was leaving the police station," Lindsay said. "A policeman asked me if I knew why Gloria Rankin was coming to see me. She was the student hit and killed by the bus that Luke Ferris was driving."

  "That is odd," said Sinjin. "A coincidence?"

  "I don't know," Lindsay answered.

  "Did you know her?"

  "No, I didn't."

  "Do you think her death was an accident?"

  "The police think it was," she said.

  "Yeah, but the police think you and I are the Bonnie and Clyde of the archaeology world. I have another angle on the artifacts," Sinjin said over his beef burrito. "But it isn't good, either."

  "What's that?" asked Lindsay.

  "I talked to Dad again. Steven and Anne are pitching a fit about Dad sending the artifacts to you in the first place."

  "Maggie's Steven and Anne?" asked Lindsay. "Dad's cousins?"

  "Yes. The ones who are always putting a price tag on everything. They seem to think the artifacts are part of the family inheritance, and because they were found behind the house their mother lives in, they want their share of them."

  "They could only profit from the artifacts if they were sold to collectors," Lindsay said, trying to take a bite of taco without spilling the filling out the end.

  "That wouldn't bother them. Dad reminded them that he owns the house and property where Maggie lives. He thinks that shut them up, but I don't know."

  "They're what, Dad's age? I can't imagine them driving down here, breaking into the storage room, and stealing the artifacts. I don't think they even know where I work," Lindsay said.

  "Their kids might have come-with enough incentive," said Sinjin. "I agree, it's a long shot. But-" He shrugged. "I just thought I'd throw it out."

  "Poor Dad."

  "He wanted to come down and help," Sinjin said.

  "You told him everything is all right, didn't you?" said Lindsay.

  "Yeah. I told him I'd stick around until it's solved."

  "When do you have to be back to work, or on duty, or whatever?" Lindsay asked.

  "I've got another two weeks, provided there are no major forest fires. And there probably won't be. Fall is the big season for fires-after the summer has dried everything out."

  "I'm glad you're staying. I hope you're not too bored."

  "That's one thing about you, baby sister, life around you isn't boring."

  Lindsay went to the library to look for Kerwin's article. The bound volume containing the Historical Archaeology journals from 1994 and 1995 was not in its place, nor was it on any of the library tables, the sorting shelf, or in the copy room. Journals didn't leave the library for more than one night, and then only in the hands of faculty members who had broad library privileges. Unless it had been stolen, it had to be in the library. She asked a staff member if it was checked out.

  "Journals aren't usually checked out," the student worker told her.

  "I can't find it anywhere. Could a faculty member have it?"

  "It's not in the computer, but it could have been
done by hand. It's probably in a carrel. I'll put a search on it."

  Lindsay left the library and walked to her office, won dering who on campus might subscribe to the journal. Probably not the classical archaeologists. She'd ask Derrick to fax the article to her again. This time, she'd stand over the fax machine until it came in. But Derrick didn't answer when she called him, and she hung up without leaving a message. She sighed and walked out into the lab. Robin was working with the bones.

  "Amy hasn't come by my office," Lindsay said.

  "She quit," said Robin, punching numbers into her calculator. "Getting married."

  Lindsay sat down and helped Robin sort through the animal bones. She went through several boxes almost automatically. All the mysteries in her life at the moment were swimming around in her head, frantically trying to arrange themselves into some order she could understand. She couldn't even decide which event went with which mystery. After a while she stood up. She needed to talk with Eddie Peck.

  "I hope I've helped some," she said to Robin. "I have something I must do now."

  "Yeah, thanks, Dr. Chamberlain. You've helped a lot. Dr. Bienvenido got a time extension on the analysis."

  "Would you like me to find another student to help you?"

  "Brandon said he would like to. Is that all right?" Robin asked.

  "Sure. Have him go to Kate or Edwina and get the paperwork filled out so I can pay him."

  Lindsay went into her office, closed the door, and called the medical examiner, Eddie Peck, who always seemed to know the details about the cases of the people he autopsied.

  "Yo, Lindsay," he said, "been reading about you."

  "You and everyone else in the Southeast," she said.

  "Not that bad, is it?"

  "Mostly embarrassing," she said.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Maybe nothing. I have a question that's none of my business to ask."

  "Okay, shoot," he said.

  "I found out that the student Gloria Rankin was on her way to see me when she was hit by the bus. She was enrolled in the Classics Department, so she may have simply wanted to see me about some archaeology question. But that strikes me as odd, since it was Luke Ferris's bus that hit her, and Luke's the brother of one of my students-and he's been arrested for the murder of Shirley Foster. I don't know what any of this has to do with anything. But I wanted to ask you if there was anything unusual or suspicious about Gloria Rankin's accident that you could tell me."

  "Whew, let me see. All that's interesting-and could mean nothing, as you say. There weren't many witnesses. It happened during classes and it was raining, not hard, but enough that not many people were outside. One guy observed the accident from the parking lot next to the Psychology Building, and a couple saw it from across the street as they were coming out of Baldwin. All said the driver couldn't have prevented hitting her. The guy in the parking lot said she almost jumped in front of the bus. The couple at Baldwin didn't see her until she was knocked down in the street. Just before that, they said she was standing on the curb. The bus was virtually empty, and no passengers saw anything."

  "That seems pretty straightforward." Lindsay was disappointed, but she didn't know why.

  "There's one other thing," Eddie said. "She had a bruise on her back that was a bit of a puzzle. She had massive bruising on her torso, as you can imagine, from the impact of the bus, but that was mostly on her side. And she had some scrapes and bruising resulting from her contact with the surface of the street, of course. But this troublesome bruise was small and round, about a centimeter in diameter, off to itself in the lower lumbar region. I thought she might have landed on a rock or something. That's not much, but I did wonder about it."

  "What happened after she was hit?" asked Lindsay.

  "Ferris stopped the bus and ran to her. So did the witnesses. She was alive but pretty bad off. They all did what they could. The female witness had a cell phone in her purse. She called the ambulance. They got Miss Rankin to the hospital within the golden hour, but she had too many internal injuries."

  "That's so sad."

  "Yes, it is. I get a lot of sad cases."

  "I don't see how you do it. I appreciate the information."

  "It wasn't much. Most of it was in the papers. You hang in there. I've found that most everything blows over."

  "Thanks. I hope so."

  Lindsay left her office and walked across the street to where the accident had happened. There were marks on the street in dark paint: an X about ten feet from the corner on Jackson Street where, Lindsay presumed, Gloria had been hit, a line where the bus had stopped,and another X where she had lain in the street.

  Running parallel to the sidewalk was a wall that held back the embankment and tapered to ground level. The highest point of the wall was waist high. The embankment was landscaped with shrubs and trees. Lindsay climbed onto the wall and looked among the shrubs. She didn't know what she was looking for, but it occurred to her that it was a place to hide. She saw nothing, no disturbance in the ground, no broken flora. This is silly, she thought. Not everything's sinister. Accidents do happen-in fact, had happened before at this very spot. She was about to leave when she looked up and saw it. She wasn't sure it was what she was looking for, but it was an anomaly nonetheless. An umbrella hung from a branch in one of the trees. Lindsay took it down without touching any metal or plastic parts. The name etched into the handle read Rankin.

  "Perhaps an unnecessary precaution," Lindsay told the policeman as he examined the baggies she had placed over the handle and tip of the umbrella. "But it was strange to find it hanging in the tree."

  "It's best to be careful," he said. "Why were you looking there in the first place?"

  Lindsay shrugged. "I've been overly suspicious of everything lately. When you said she came to see me, well-"

  "So you looked in the trees?" he said.

  "It occurred to me that she may have been pushed. If that were true, the person who pushed her might have been hiding among the shrubs. It's pretty thick there, and the wall could provide cover. I just happened to look up and see it."

  The policeman smiled as though he thought that was funny. "Thank you for bringing this by and being careful with it, but if you suspected something, you really should have let us handle it."

  "You're right, of course, but I assumed the police had already examined the area, and I just needed to satisfy my curiosity."

  Lindsay had turned to leave when she heard her name. She recognized the voice and wished she could pretend that she hadn't heard. She turned back and faced Detective Kaufman.

  "Yes? What can I do for you?" she asked.

  "I'll walk you to your car," he said.

  Lindsay's Rover was parked just outside the door, so they didn't go far. She stood by her door and waited.

  "We got a call from your brother's alibi. Seems she thought we were joking when we called her the other day. Changed her story."

  "Shouldn't you be talking to my brother, to tell him?"

  "I believe he was called," he said.

  "I'm glad to hear it. It's a terrible thing to be accused of something you didn't do," Lindsay said.

  "I tried to get a search warrant for your place," he said. Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "Seems you have friends in high places. I couldn't get one."

  "Detective Kaufman, I assure you, I'm not well connected. If you couldn't get a warrant, it's because you didn't have grounds for one." They stared at each other for a moment. Lindsay felt that if she broke her gaze, she'd lose, but what exactly, she didn't know. "I can't figure out why you are focusing on me. There's nothing to connect me with the thefts," she said at last.

  "I usually find that where there's smoke, there's fire, and I smell a lot of smoke."

  "No, Detective Kaufman. Sometimes there's only a smoke-making machine. That's one of the problems when your metaphors are cliches, you get caught in thinking patterns that blind you to alternative solutions."

  He didn't speak for
a moment but seemed to study her face. Probably fancied that he could look at a person and tell if they were lying, she thought. "Give me an alternative solution," he said.

  "I'd like to, but I don't have one. I've gone over and over who knew about the artifacts-" She stopped, realizing that she had done the same thing. She had overlooked one other person, simply because he didn't fall within her definition of suspects. Associate Dean Ellis Einer could have known about the artifacts, couldn't he? He was there when the skeleton fell from the crate. Frank may have told him.

  "You thought of something?" He looked at her through narrowed eyes.

  "Yes, but there's nothing linking him but circumstances."

  "Tell me who you suspect," he said.

  Lindsay shook her head. "No. I won't put anyone else in the position I'm in until I have more to go on."

  "Don't go off investigating on your own," he said.

  "Does this mean you are willing to entertain the notion that I may not be guilty?"

  "I might entertain the notion. That doesn't mean you aren't my prime suspect."

  Lindsay thought that sounded rather melodramatic. She opened the door to her Rover. "Fine, just as long as you're still looking elsewhere." She got in, closed the door, and started the engine. Kaufman turned and walked back into the Public Safety Building. Lindsay wondered what had set him so doggedly on her trail.

  "No, Lindsay. No. Forget that. We have enough trouble without you trying to accuse an associate dean of theft."

  "Look, Frank, we have talked with everyone who was here when the artifacts were unpacked. I didn't think of him, because he was here the following day. But he knew about them, didn't he?"

  "I didn't talk to him about the artifacts. We talked about extra space for the department. That's all, so drop it. You know what he thinks about storing artifacts in university space. You think I'd casually tell him we got a shipment of unprovenanced artifacts and are storing them here? Unless you told him, he didn't know."

  "It's a thought."

  "Forget it. Concentrate on where we're going to find the money for new computers."

  "So, Reed and Trey have talked to you?"

  "Yes, and I can't believe that Trey convinced him. They said that you and Stevie are willing to donate money from your budgets."