Dead Secret (17 page)

Diane gave him the card Charlotte Hawkins had given her.

Garnett dropped the card into an evidence envelope and put it in his coat pocket. “I’ll look into it. Diane, we are trying to keep it quiet that the crime lab was burglarized. We don’t want any defense lawyers getting the idea that evidence has been compromised. When David called it in he had the good sense to say it was the museum that was broken into. We need to find out what happened as soon as we can. I’m handling this one myself.”

“If you don’t need me anymore, I’ll be going,” said Emery. “I want to solve this too. I don’t like this happening on my watch. I know a few people I can talk to about who might be for hire.”

Emery stood up, looked around as if searching for something he’d forgotten, then left the lab by way of the elevator. Diane thought she noticed that his shoulders slumped. This was a blow. He had recommended the security system they had.

“I assume he’s been been checked out,” said David.

“He will be. We aren’t leaving anyone out.” Garnett smiled, and David smiled back at him.

“Is there any news about the stabbings at the funeral?” Diane asked.

Garnett shook his head. “It’s hard to believe, but no one saw a thing.”

“David, did the Odells provide you with anything useful?”

“The Odells?” asked Garnett.

“My neighbors,” Diane explained.

“The Addams Family,” said David.

“They attend all funerals of any interest,” said Diane. “And take notes.”

Chapter 27

Garnett looked from Diane to David, wondering, no doubt, if they were pulling his leg.

“Did the Odells see anything suspicious?” Garnett asked finally.

“Not at the funeral itself,” said David. “But at the grave there were several people who did not possess the solemnity that they should have. And there was one person who moved around a lot—going from one side of the gathering to the other. At first they thought he might be a reporter. They said he couldn’t have been a mourner. He was too mobile, and his long black raincoat was not of good quality—it didn’t hang right or something.”

Diane smiled, trying to imagine what went on in the Odells’ minds.

“I asked them to describe the person. All I could get was male, medium height, dark hair, and several inches taller than Mavis Hatfield. Veda Odell did notice that he wore a ring with a bloodred stone, and one of his fingers looked like it had something wrong with it. She couldn’t see what. She said they were never too near him.”

“Who is Mavis Hatfield, and how tall is she?” asked Garnett.

“One of the mourners,” said David. “And she’s five-foot-three. I told the detective on the case that the perp might have been standing next to her, so maybe he could interview her to see if she saw something.” Diane could tell from the position of David’s eyebrows that he didn’t believe the detective would follow through.

“How much weight should I give this?” asked Garnett.

“I’m not sure,” said Diane. “They are familiar with how people act at funerals, and they go there to watch, so they would notice things out of the ordinary in that respect. That’s all I can say. . . .”

“Oh, they did say that they would never use that funeral home,” David said, grinning.

“Why?” asked Diane.

“They said they didn’t do a good job embalming and the casket wasn’t sealed right. Seems they got a whiff of an unpleasant odor.”

Diane laughed. “God, what people.”

“Odell, did you say? I believe one of my detectives tried to interview them because their name was in the guest book. He didn’t get very far.”

“I guess he didn’t have David’s savoir faire,” said Diane.

David scowled at her.

Garnett rose from the table. His tailored suit hung well on his lean body. Diane didn’t think she had ever seen him when he wasn’t well dressed. He smoothed his hair with a hand.

“At least we have a start. I’m not sure it will lead anywhere, but it’s more than we had. I was beginning to think whoever stabbed you and Seger was a ghost.”

When Garnett left, Diane turned to David. “So the Odells liked you?” David rolled his eyes. “I told you they were weird folks,” she said.

David shook his head. “Weird is when Druids and Wiccans come to the museum to demand a box of bones. Weird is enjoying hanging on the end of a rope over a hundred-foot precipice. These folks are several steps beyond weird. I’m telling you, you need to move away from there. Go stay with Frank. If you can’t do that, you can stay with me.”

“You propositioning the boss?” Jin had come through the doorway carrying a plastic garbage bag, which he set in the corner.

“I’m trying to get her to move away from her freaky neighbors,” said David.

Jin’s face lit up. “You tell her about your visit?” He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

“I was about to. Seriously, Diane. These people are disturbed.”

“I saw Veda Odell this morning. She said she showed you their collections. They seemed to have taken to you.”

David looked somber. “You don’t know how that disturbs me to hear that.” Jin laughed, and David shot him a stern look. “Do you know what they collect?” he said.

“No, and I’m not sure I want to,” said Diane.

“Go on, tell her,” said Jin.

“The more innocuous of their collections is mourning jewelry—rings, lockets, brooches that people wore in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to commemorate dead loved ones. Most of them have the deceased’s hair in little compartments. Some of the hair-work jewelry has scenes made from bits of hair. Most of it is actually very good. They had a lock of woven hair that was supposed to have belonged to one of the Hapsburgs—Empress Elizabeth, I think they said.”

“Tell her about the other stuff,” urged Jin, leaning forward on his forearms and grinning at Diane. “You’re not going to believe this, Boss.”

“The jewelry was kind of nice, and I made the mistake of showing an interest. That’s when they brought out their other collection.”

“Dare I ask?” said Diane.

“They have a collection of daguerreotypes of dead children.”

Diane opened her mouth and shut it again. “What?” she said finally.

“Can you believe it?” said Jin.

“Dead children?” repeated Diane. “Who would take pictures of dead children? You mean like autopsy photos, funeral shots?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more.

“As nearly as I can understand it, it was the rage in the eighteen hundreds to photograph the dead—mostly children, but adults too. They would frame the photos in these velvet-lined gold-and-leather frames. Sometimes they would set the dead up in fancy chairs like they were alive. The Odells had a whole collection of them. I can’t tell you how depressed I was when I left.”

“You didn’t tell her the worst part,” said Jin.

“They had albums of their own children’s funerals. Seven of them, and they all died in the fifties before the age of ten. I’m telling you, Diane, someone needs to investigate these people.”

“My landlady mentioned something about their children once. How did they die; did you ask?”

“Some hereditary illness, they said, but jeez, you’d have thought they would have stopped after, say”—he made an exaggerated shrug with his shoulders—“four.”

“That was the forties and fifties,” said Diane. “I imagine birth control wasn’t as good.”

“Neither was forensics,” said David.

“Maybe all this death stuff is just their way of dealing with grief,” said Jin. “You know, like making death commonplace so it looks like their children’s dying was just a common part of life. Supposing they didn’t help their children into the afterlife; it must have hurt big-time to lose so many. That’d make you go crazy. Maybe that’s their way of being close to them.”

“I still think Diane ought to move,” said David.

Diane shook her head. That was a little more than she wanted to know about her neighbors. She had thought they were odd before. Now they were downright creepy. “Okay, let’s change the subject. David, you said the bodies were piling up. Fill me in.”

“Jin and Neva worked a crime scene yesterday—two men found drowned in a quarry lake north of here just at the county line. One was a scuba diver. It’s Sheriff Canfield’s jurisdiction, and he thinks the diver got tangled up underwater in some brush and old fishing line. The other guy tried to help him, fell in and drowned too. Some fishermen found both of them. We don’t have the medical examiner’s report. We’re calling the scuba diver Scuba Doe and the other guy Quarry Doe.”

Jin jumped up, went to his desk and came back with a folder. “I have photographs and drawings. Like David said, Sheriff Canfield thinks it was an accident.”

Diane pulled the papers over to her. “What do you think?” She stopped, wrinkled her nose and looked up.

“What is that smell?” Her gaze shifted to the garbage bag that Jin had put in the corner..

“You’re not going to like this, Boss,” said Jin, looking like he clearly didn’t want to say anything more. Unusual for Jin.

“Give it to me,” she said.

“It’s one of the bodies.”

She raised her eyebrows and looked over at the bag. “One of the drowning victims?”

“No. One of the bodies that David said is piling up. Do you remember Deputy Singer, that guy who was so mad because he had to wait for us to come out of the cave?”

Diane cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. That’s not him, is it?” Jin laughed. “You’re going to wish it was. Some Boy Scouts out in the woods in Lumpkin County came across some bones—well, not completely bones. They still had some flesh on them—looks like a couple of months’ decomposition, maybe. Anyway, they called Sheriff Burns, who sent Deputy Singer. He gathered up the bones and stuffed them in that garbage bag and brought them to the daytime reception desk an hour ago.”

Jin laced his fingers together, apparently waiting for her to react. Diane stared at him for a long moment, hoping that this was some joke of Jin’s.

“He
stuffed
them in the garbage bag?” she said slowly.

“I told you that you weren’t going to like it, Boss.” He and David exchanged glances. David looked as if he were stifling a chuckle.

“I don’t suppose Deputy Singer has had a single course in crime scene protocol?” said Diane.

“Probably thinks they’re a waste of his valuable time. It only took him a few minutes to gather them up. Think of how much time he saved,” Jin said sarcastically.

Diane put her head in her hands, then looked up. “I’ll call Sheriff Burns and tell him to get the deputy to take you and . . . ” Diane looked around the lab area. “Where is Neva?”

“Mike’s getting out of the hospital today,” said David. “She’s gone to get him settled in at home.”

“Is she doing okay?”

Jin nodded. “Since her house was trashed? Yes,” he said. “But she’s been running on anger. The detectives think it was some teenagers in the neighborhood that she had a run-in with, but they can’t prove it. We’ve accounted for all the prints. Whoever it was wore gloves.”

Diane shook her head. “The MO doesn’t sound like teenagers,” she said. “It was too deliberate.”

“I agree,” said David. He stroked the fringe of dark hair he still had around the sides and back of his head. Diane wondered if he read somewhere that massaging the head made hair grow. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “we don’t have much to give the detectives. We know the route he took through the house breaking things. We know he came in and left through the back door. He left the front door open, probably so his vandalism would be found, if not by Neva, then by someone noticing the open door. We know the paint was bought at Kmart, but we couldn’t trace who bought it. The perp wore rubber gloves that left a powder residue. And we know it’s someone who is really pissed off at Neva.”

“Powder residue?” asked Diane.

“Not the same kind as in your lab break-in. Gloves are from a different company,” said Jin. “But that’s not to say it couldn’t be the same guy.”

Diane chewed her lower lip. “Too bad, though. I’d like to connect some of these things.” She sighed. “No one in the neighborhood saw anything, I suppose?”

“No,” said David.

Diane sat in silence for a moment, organizing her thoughts on how to proceed. “Okay. Jin,” she said, “when Neva returns, I want you and her to go work the crime scene in the woods. I’ll call Sheriff Burns and ask him to tell Deputy Singer to take you to where the body was found.”

“Deputy Singer’s going to like that,” said Jin.

“I’m sure he will,” said Diane, hoping that Jin and Neva could somehow salvage the crime scene in the woods that Deputy Singer had messed up. “And, Jin, be careful.”

“Always, Boss.”

“And put that sack in my isolation closet.”

“Sure.” He grabbed the sack and made for her lab.

In Diane’s osteology lab she had two small rooms sealed off from the rest of the lab for the purpose of keeping and cleaning bones that still had flesh. They were so small that Diane referred to them as her closets. One room had a dermestarium similar to the one in the faunal lab, a old chest-type freezer converted to house a colony of dermestid beetles—the insects that stripped bones of flesh. The faunal lab used their beetles to clean animal skeletons for the reference collection and museum display; Diane used her colony for cleaning human bones. She preferred dermestid beetles and hydrogen peroxide, rather than boiling, which made a greasier bone.

Diane used one room to keep contaminated remains isolated from the rest of the building and the other to keep the insects confined. Nothing could be more devastating to a museum than to have dermestids get loose. They loved to eat all the things that museum collections were made of. The isolation room also had a sink for washing the finished bones in hot water to kill any beetles hiding in cracks or openings. Diane didn’t usually clean bones that had a lot of flesh still attached, like Caver Doe, or decomposing bodies. She let the medical examiner’s assistant clean those. She cleaned up only bones that were almost completely skeletonized. She guessed that the bones in Jin’s garbage bag were of that type.

Diane turned her attention to the folder that Jin had given her for the quarry bodies. She looked at each of the photographs in turn and placed them on the table along with Jin’s drawings and notes of the scene.

Jin returned from the isolation room and sat down. “Sorry, Boss. I should have put the bones away immediately.”

“That’s all right. Tell me about these guys.” She gestured at the array of photographs.

Jin pointed to one of the photographs. Diane picked it up and examined the scene. It showed a body dressed in jeans and a T-shirt lying facedown in the water next to a log. It was labeled QUARRY DOE.

“The fishermen first found the body of just one man,” said Jin. “When Sheriff Canfield came, they found the scuba diver in the water caught under the brush. The sheriff speculated that the first man slipped and fell trying to help the scuba diver.”

“Who’s the ME on this?” she asked.

“Rosewood’s ME,” said David. “Rankin.”

“What does he say about them?”

David looked to Jin. “He hasn’t finished the autopsies, but at the scene he said they’d been dead about three or four days. The skin, hair and nails were loose, and the bodies were that greenish-black-purple color they get. He was talking like he agreed with Sheriff Canfield that it was an accident.”

Diane looked at the photograph labeled SCUBA DOE. The scuba diver’s black-and-yellow suit barely showed through the tangle of branches that covered him.

“What do you think, Jin?”

“I have questions. Like where’s the other diver?”

“Other diver?”