Lindsay couldn't shake the dark feeling she'd gotten from Will. Would he get to thinking about how Shirley died and go out and kill someone, possibly the wrong person? Perhaps Will killed her and wanted Lindsay to discover it. She rejected that idea as quickly as she had thought of it. Far too melodramatic. What would have happened if the notes hadn't gotten switched? Would Will have been the one to see her burst into flames? Would he have handled the situation better and extinguished the flames before they killed her? Lindsay had a vision of Will taking Shirley into his arms and holding on to her as the two of them went up in flames, eternally commingled. Lindsay shook her head: what an absurd thought.
But who killed Shirley? Lindsay had no idea. Maybe it was Luke Ferris, but he was arrested only because he was there. Lila Poole was there. Could she have been involved in Shirley's death? That was a thought. Both Luke and Mrs. Poole had the same story. The sheriff thought Luke threw something at Shirley. Perhaps Mrs. Poole did.
She's an elderly woman. What would she be doing lobbing flames at Shirley Foster? Perhaps someone else was there. A relative of Mrs. Poole? Luke didn't see Mrs. Poole, so perhaps he didn't see the other person, either.
What would be Mrs. Poole's motive?
Something to do with the land?
What?
Blank.
Mrs. Poole seemed sincere. So did everyone else. Maybe there was a third person that neither Luke nor Mrs. Poole saw.
First, find out how it was done, Lindsay thought. Maybe the how will lead to the who. Maybe she was going about it all wrong. Maybe she should look at the question from the opposite end. If she were going to cause someone to burst into flames, how would she go about doing it? Lindsay was jarred from her thoughts by a gentle tap on her door, and when she looked up she saw Trey standing in the doorway.
"Come in," she said. Trey closed the door behind him and sat down.
"I hope I'm not disturbing anything," he said. "You looked deep in thought."
"They were thoughts I don't mind being brought out of," she said.
"I understand that feeling. Frank changed the Archaeology Club meeting. Clerisse won't be giving her talk about the LaBelle. Seems we get to hear Francisco Lewis instead."
Lindsay frowned. "Do you know him?" she asked.
Trey shook his head. "Just by reputation, and that's kind of a mixed bag. Actually, I don't think he's that bad. Just likes to be a star. Good at getting himself in the media. Some of the faculty think he might be good for the department."
Lindsay looked doubtful. "I don't know him either. As for being good for the department, I don't know. Sometimes good media makes bad science."
Trey shrugged. "I suppose all of us nontenured faculty will have to stick together," he said.
"What do Per and Stevie think?" asked Lindsay.
"They're worried. Me, too. It isn't good that none of us have gotten our renewal letter."
"Georgia has a coastline. It's logical to have an underwater archaeologist. You should be safe. I think, however, that I'm going to be redundant."
"I've heard some rumors," admitted Trey, "but that's all they are."
"Maybe, but I can hear the vultures flapping their wings. All these problems I'm having aren't helping."
"Reed thinks you'll land on your feet," said Trey.
Lindsay smiled and thought about the well. "Maybe, but where will I land on my feet?"
"Would you still like to go dancing?"
"Maybe just dinner," Lindsay said. "I'm not in much of a dancing mood these days."
"By the way, I've heard about your dancing. I hear you're pretty fantastic."
"A friend and I used to enter contests now and then."
"I'm kind of your basic dancer," said Trey.
"I can do that, too."
"How's the hunt for the lost artifacts coming?" he asked.
"Not well. I have a few very weak suspects. Right now, I'm the best suspect the campus police have."
"This must be hard on you," said Trey.
"I'll figure something out."
When Trey left, their date was up in the air, like every other aspect of Lindsay's life at the moment. She could tell that Trey was as worried as she that their contract renewals for the next year had not come down from the dean's office. She knew that Trey had just bought a house and a boat he was outfitting for archaeological use. Although Lindsay understood politics very well, it still amazed her that it was never enough just to do your job well in order to keep it. To her, it seemed that should be the only requirement.
All the students had gone home for the day. Sally hadn't been in. She and Sinjin had gone to Macon together to search for information about Hank Roy Creasey and hadn't yet returned. Lindsay closed up her office and the lab, climbed into her Rover, and headed home. She turned on the radio to WUGA, the campus public radio station, and listened to Bach, trying to keep thoughts of death and missing artifacts out of her head for a while.
As she passed the Ford dealership, she noticed it was still open, and she drove up to the door, meeting Jake on his way out.
"Hey, great. You caught me just in time. Here it is over here." He led Lindsay to a forest green Explorer with tan leather seats and a moon roof. "Nice, huh?"
"It's beautiful," said Lindsay.
Jake put down his briefcase and dug inside for some papers. "I worked up some numbers to show you." He handed her a piece of paper. "This includes the Rover as a trade-in and a $500 down payment. What do you think?"
The payments were far lower than what she had now. She was tempted to hug him. Even though this and the second payment on the well drilling would finish off her savings, her monthly bills would be a lot less. "This looks good."
"Great. Why don't you take it home, drive it around a little, and we'll sign the papers tomorrow." He handed her the keys.
Lindsay took them, unloaded her Rover, and drove the Explorer home. She collected her mail at the box near her gate, laid it on the seat, and drove the long, winding drive to her cabin.
She sat down at the kitchen table to relax, enjoy a glass of Cherry Coke over ice, and go through her mail. Buried among the sales catalogs and junk mail was the payment booklet for the loan to finance her new water filtration system. The system had better last a long time, she told herself, looking at the crystal-clear cubes of ice glittering like diamonds. She saved the best for last-a large envelope from Derrick. Inside were a letter and copies of several newspaper articles. She looked at his handwriting and thought about him. His letter said he couldn't find a reference for Hank Roy Creasey, but he did find three articles mentioning a Henry Ray Creasey, which he thought was close enough to warrant a look.
One of the articles was a police blotter with a short mention of a seventeen-year-old Henry Ray Creasey arrested for stealing a car and wrecking it. The second article was an obituary like the one Lindsay had already seen, but this one had a photograph. It wasn't a good photograph, and it lost a lot in the copying, but the man in the photo looked remarkably like the Hank Roy Creasey in the picture from her grandfather's files. The third article was about the explo sion in the mine. It was from a different newspaper than the article Lindsay had found in the crate. It said that Creasey, after being severely injured, was carried to safety by a man named Malcolm Dodd. Creasey was not expected to live. The article went on to say that it was believed the mine was blown up intentionally and, apparently, prematurely. It was believed that the perpetrator himself was caught in the explosion. The suspected saboteur was a man named Lonnie Cross.
There was a fourth article, dated two years prior to the mining accident. It was about the looting of important archaeological sites and mentioned several collections that had been stolen. It said nothing about any suspects or if any of the artifacts had been found, nor did it mention what kind of artifacts had been stolen. During one of the robberies, an archaeology student working late at the lab where the artifacts were stored had been hit over the head with a heavy object and had died several days later from her injuries. H
er name was Rebecca Warfield.
There weren't many female archaeologists back then, thought Lindsay. She must have been an interesting person. Probably had fought hard to get into a field dominated by men and died before really getting to practice her profession-died at the hands of looters.
Lindsay rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and sighed. There was too much death in her life right now. She changed clothes and went out to the stable to Mandrake. Caring for him gave her a sense of peace: moving the brush across his coat, talking to him, having him nod his head up and down as if he understood everything she said to him. When she was riding, nothing existed except her and her horse. She took the bridle from its peg in her tack room. It was dusk, but there was still a little while left before dark. She put the bit in Mandrake's mouth and the bridle over his head. She didn't saddle him but led him away from the stable and out of his pasture before she grabbed a handful of mane and jumped on his back.
Ellen Chamberlain's method of teaching Lindsay to ride was to teach her to ride bareback first. Lindsay had been able to gallop bareback down a trail, jumping over logs and small streams, before she ever rode with a saddle.
She rode Mandrake at a walk to the back pasture where a large expanse of grassy ground stretched before them. He was alert and spirited, his ears listening for her command. She urged him forward with a gentle squeeze of her legs and he took off across the pasture. She felt his strong muscles, and for all she knew, she could be flying in the air if it weren't for the sound of galloping hoofbeats on the ground. There was only the power of the horse and her. The absence of distressing thoughts calmed her.
As they neared the other side of the pasture, she tugged the reins gently and Mandrake began to slow. They entered the woods at a canter. Lindsay rode him along a trail to the front pasture, the highest point on her property, and stopped to look around at the treetops of her woods in the valley below her. She loved this place-its seclusion, its smells, the wild animals, the abundance of everything she found peaceful and good in life.
She walked Mandrake back to the stable, passing ancient fence posts and terracing from years past, built by WPA workers during the Great Depression in the 1930s to control erosion-perhaps some of the same workers who helped excavate the Indian site in Macon with her grandfather. She brushed down Mandrake, checked his hooves for stones, and made sure he was cooled down before giving him his food and water.
She undressed and took a quick shower. The telephone was ringing as she stepped out onto the mat, and she ran into her bedroom and grabbed the phone before the answering machine picked up.
Chapter 21
"LINDSAY?" SAID THE voice on the other end. "Lindsay, is that you?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"This is Anne."
Lindsay frowned. "Anne. Hi." She tried to sound glad to hear from her father's cousin.
"I won't beat around the bush. I'm calling about the Indian relics."
"Yes?"
"We've been hearing up here that you and your brother sold them. Me, Steven, and others I won't name think you had no right. The relics belong to the family."
"First, neither Sinjin nor I have sold any artifacts. It's bad enough to hear those accusations from strangers. I don't like hearing them from family. Second, they do not belong to the family. When they are found, it will be between the State of Kentucky and the Native Americans in the area to decide ownership."
The line was silent a moment. "That's about what Steven said you'd say," Anne said.
"I'm glad he understands," Lindsay said.
"I'm not saying he agrees. Those Indian relics are the property of the people whose land they were found on. I know what your daddy says about him owning the land, but the fact is, Mother has lived there for years and she has rights."
"Anne, the artifacts were only stored there, possibly illegally. They were not dug up there. They were probably dug up several places around the state of Kentucky."
"So you say."
Lindsay sighed. "Anne, I don't really know what to say to you. I don't have the artifacts. If I did have them, I would hand them over to the University of Kentucky to sort out. That's all there is to it."
"A half-million dollars is a lot of money. You can't tell me you would just hand that over. I think you and St. John's sold them. We'll be watching."
"A half-million dollars!" exclaimed Lindsay. "What are you talking about? The artifacts aren't worth nearly that much."
"That's not what the papers say."
"Well, the papers are wrong. This is really getting out of hand." Damn, Lindsay thought, with stories like that, all the sites around will have to double their security. There will be pothunters coming out of the woodwork. "Anne, what did you hope to accomplish by calling me?"
"I wanted to reason with you. Get you to share."
"There's nothing to share. Does Maggie know you're calling?"
"Now, don't you go worrying Mother with all of this. She's not been well."
In other words, no, thought Lindsay, Maggie doesn't know. "She's gotten ill since I talked to her last?" said Lindsay. "I'll have to give her a get well call."
"Now, don't you be worrying her."
"Anne, I call and talk to your mother regularly. She'll think something's wrong if I don't call. She knows I'll call if she's not feeling well."
"She doesn't want anyone to know," said Anne.
"Look, Anne, I'm sorry to be having this conversation with you, especially since we haven't spoken in a while. I wish you would believe me about the artifacts, but since you don't, I can't help it." Lindsay thought she heard someone talking in the background, coaching Anne. Probably Steven, she thought.
"Our daddy talked about a stash of Indian treasure, Steven remembers. You don't know that it don't belong to Daddy."
Lindsay was silent a moment, trying to think of the right way to word her question so as not to scare Anne off. "Oh, Anne, come on," she said. "That's hard to believe. You've never mentioned anything about a cache of artifacts before."
"It's true."
Lindsay heard some shuffling, then another voice came over the phone. "Don't you be calling us a liar, Lindsay Chamberlain."
"Hello, Steven." Lindsay didn't mention that they rang her specifically to call her a liar. "I'm not saying you're lying, just that I've never heard anything about your father having any stash of artifacts."
"Well, he did. You forget, Dad worked on digs, too, back in the thirties. He talked about the Indian treasure sometime in the late forties when times were hard for us. He said if they got too hard, he knew about a stash of Indian treasure he could sell," Steven said.
"How do you know these are the same ones?"
"Don't be ridiculous. How many stashes of Indian treasure do you think there are in the family?"
"Does Maggie know about them?"
"Stop bringing Mom into this. No, she doesn't. Dad never talked to her about money."
"Do you know any people named Creasey? Hank Roy Creasey or Henry Ray Creasey?"
"No, never heard of them."
"You ever hear of a Lonnie Cross?" asked Lindsay.
"What? Lonnie Cross? You talking about my uncle Lonnie?"
"I guess. Who exactly was he?" Lindsay asked.
"He was Dad's youngest brother, actually half-brother. Dad's daddy got killed, and Mamaw married one of the Cross boys. Lonnie got killed himself in a mine cave-in. Why? He got something to do with this?"
"I saw his name in a newspaper article that the artifacts were wrapped in. I wondered if he was related."
"See? See? I told you. That's proof. Don't you go destroying that piece of paper, Lindsay Chamberlain. Me and Anne heard you say you have it."
Lindsay visualized the two of them with their faces together on each side of the receiver. "I won't. I'll send you a copy if you like," she told him.
"Yes, you do that," he said.
"Look, Steven," began Lindsay.
"I think I ought to tell you," interrupted Ste
ven, "Anne and me are talking to a lawyer."
"Fine," Lindsay said, rubbing her forehead. "I think that's the best thing for all of us. We'll let an objective third party sort it out."
"I was hoping we could come to an agreement. Keep it in the family like," he said.
"I'll tell you what I told Anne. I don't have the artifacts, and I don't know where they are, and if I did, they'd be sent off to the University of Kentucky."
"We're talking about a lot of money. That would mean a lot to our grandchildren," Steven said.
Don't do this to me, Lindsay thought. Don't act like I'm cheating my-she wrinkled her brow-my second cousins once removed out of an education. Lindsay decided to plead helplessness. "It's out of my hands now. If the artifacts are found, they won't even come back to me. You and your lawyer will have to take it up with the authorities."
"We'll do that. And we'll be watching to see if you come into any money."
Don't hold your breath, thought Lindsay as she said good-bye to Steven.
"I wish I'd blown the darn things up," she said aloud. That thought stuck in her mind: blown the darn things up. She shivered and realized she was still wet from her shower. As she dried off, that thought returned: blown the darn things up. It reminded her of the explosion at the mine where Henry Ray Creasey was supposed to have died. Lonnie Cross died in the same cave-in. Lonnie Cross was the half-brother of Billy MacRae, her great-aunt Maggie's husband. Anne and Steven MacRae's uncle, thought Lindsay. She had never heard anyone in her family mention this, but all families tend to hide their skeletons.
Lindsay's grandfather gave Billy MacRae a job at Ocmulgee in the thirties. Okay, she thought. That's a chain of clues. Hank Roy, Henry Ray. Hank is a nickname for Henry. Henry Ray, Hank Roy. Same initials: H. R. What if Hank Roy Creasey and Henry Ray Creasey were the same person? What if Henry Ray Creasey didn't die in the explosion but survived with a badly broken right leg? What if he changed his name and came to work on a dig with her grandfather?
She put on a nightgown and robe and sat on the bed thinking. What was it she was trying to come up with? What was that sudden cognition that a minute before had zipped through her brain too fast for her to catch it? Maybe the artifacts were supposed to be in the mine? Hidden? She shook her head. It had left her, if there had been anything there in the first place. But she was close, she felt it. Keep the chain going, she thought. First, establish that Hank Roy Creasey and Henry Ray Creasey were the same person.
Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel Page 25
