Death of a Garage Sale Newbie (22 page)

Arleta studied her for a moment. “I guess I never thought about the existence of God, let alone His mercy. David and I were so busy.” Arleta put a fist on her narrow hip. “Isn’t that funny? To be this old and never to have thought about God.”

Kindra shrugged. “It happens when it needs to happen.”

Arleta nodded. “You might be right. I never felt empty until I lost my David.”

Kindra faced the older woman and rested her palm on her own heart. “I’m no expert or anything. But I think this empty place is where God fits.”

“I’ll have to think about that.” She touched Kindra’s elbow. “Let’s go find Professor Chambers.”

They took the last flight of stairs and entered a hallway with worn, nearly black carpet. Kindra theorized that at one time the carpet had been classified as dark blue, but now it was anyone’s guess. “He’s on the end.” She walked past several gray-blue doors.

“Chambers’s office used to be in Lewis Hall.” Arleta peeked through an open door and glanced up and down the hallway. Kindra suspected that Arleta was making note of the changes since she had been there. “Lewis Hall is quite a unique building. I’ll show it to you if we have time.”

“That sounds like fun,” Kindra said. “Chambers only teaches that one freshman class. Like I said, he’s older than dirt.” She winked at Arleta.

Arleta shook her head and rolled her eyes.

At the end of the windowless hallway, a blue-gray door with the word
Chambers
on the placard was slightly ajar. Kindra tapped and the door swung open.

The man sitting at the desk resembled Einstein having a bad hair day, if that was possible. His hair stood up like Einstein’s, but it was wiry and stringy instead of fuzzy. The office was a conglomerate of books, rocks, bone fragments, and boxes of Bazooka bubble gum. Professor Chambers leaned over a stack of papers, blew a bubble, and popped it. He wore Dockers and a pressed oxford shirt.

When she had taken his class, Kindra’s first impression of him was that there had been some sort of bizarre accident at the plastic surgeon’s office. Chambers’s face was wrinkled and old, but his body was that of a man thirty years younger, not muscular but lean, without a tummy paunch or bent shoulders.

Arleta leaned into the office. “Lyndon?”

The professor raised his head. Dark brown eyes stood out against chalky skin. Recognition spread across his face.

“Well I’ll be. Arleta McQuire.”

Arleta giggled like a teenager. “You remember me.”

“How could I forget David’s lovely bride.”

He turned toward Kindra. “And I remember this one, too. Argued with me about evolution.”

“I always waited until after class.” Kindra brought her heels together and stood up a little straighter, leaning back.
I need not to bounce three times. People are going to start calling me Tigger.
“I didn’t want to disrespect you.”

“You were a pleasure to have in class. I like thinkers.” Lyndon rose to his feet. He grabbed a box of bubble gum off the shelf and offered them some. Both Kindra and Arleta grabbed a piece.

“What on earth brings you two over to the dark side of campus?”

“Actually, Professor Chambers—” Kindra peeled the wrapper off her gum—“we have some questions to ask you about David, about something that happened twenty years ago.”

“Twenty years ago, huh? I still got it up here.” He pointed to his head. “Quiz me.”

“It would have been about five years before David died.” Arleta took a step into the office. “Do you remember what he was working on then? I have the feeling he kept something from me. We think it had to do with the city commission.”

“Twenty years ago. 1986. City commission.” He stood nodding for a moment; then he pulled a leather-bound notebook off his shelf and flipped through it. He touched an entry with his finger. “I was working on the dig in eastern Montana, which would mean that David…” Light flashed in his eyes and then his expression flattened. “David was working on the Indian ruins outside of town.”

“Indians ruins outside of Three Horses? Why don’t I remember that?”

Lyndon gazed at Arleta. “I’ve got some hot water. Would you like a cup of tea, Arleta? How about you, Ms. Hall?”

Arleta put a hand on her hip. “Lyndon, you are stalling.”

“David wanted to protect you.” He leafed through the papers he had been reading. “That’s why he didn’t tell you.”

“He should have known he could share anything with me.”

“This was heartbreaking to him. Twenty years ago, David thought he had found a place where Shoshone may have camped before Three Horses was even a trading center. The Ponderosa pines had cultural scarring on them.”

Before the question had time to form in Kindra’s mind, Arleta answered it. “Some tribes used to peel the bark off of trees where they camped; the cambium layer underneath is sweet and good to eat. It left scars hundreds of years old on the trees and usually meant artifacts were in the surrounding ground.”

Lyndon unwrapped a piece of bubble gum for himself. “You should have been an associate professor yourself, Arleta. Sharp as a tack.”

“I was always happy helping David with his work.”

“That photo in your album. With David and the trees. The one you couldn’t place.” Kindra leaned against the door frame. Professor Chambers’s office smelled like old books.

Arleta nodded.

Lyndon put the gum in his mouth and chewed for a moment. “They were all ready to break ground on the property for the mall, cut down the trees. David had to go before the city commission to prove that the land had historical significance. The findings were just preliminary, but he thought he put together a pretty good argument, at least for stalling development and letting him dig around.”

Chambers shook his head and pressed his lips together. “He was trying to change things in the eleventh hour. There are all kinds of federal regulations protecting areas of historical significance, especially Native American sites. If the site was suspected of having historical importance, they stood to lose a ton of money if they couldn’t build there.” Lyndon pushed a chair out from the wall and motioned for Arleta to sit down. “David was the only one who noticed the trees.”

“That was my David.” Arleta slumped into the chair. “What happened?”

“He lost. The development went through. It devastated him, Arleta. He was getting toward the end of the active part of his career. Every archaeologist wants to have that one big discovery on their résumé.”

Arleta swiveled in the chair. Her hands rested on her flat stomach, and the sparkle had gone out her eyes. “Everything David worked on was important.”

“I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but David began to think that some bribery of city commissioners took place on the part of the developer. He started to ask around.”

“Did he find out anything?”

“All of this was right before he died, so that colors my memory. He was my friend, my good friend.” Chambers chewed his gum. “It seems as though one of the commissioners came to him. He was dying or moving to Florida, I can’t remember, but I do remember that David said something about getting a written confession.”

“Ma’am, you’ve dropped a dress on the floor. Ma’am?”

The twentysomething store clerk leaned over the counter and pointed. Ginger didn’t know it was possible to scrunch up your face like that. Irritation tainted the clerk’s voice. So much for those customer service seminars.

Ginger leaned over to pick up the dress. “I’m sorry.” She expelled a nervous laugh. “I must have been having a hot flash or something.” She knew full well it wasn’t a hot flash. The thought of having to pay full price for something had made her dizzy. As she picked up the dress, she caught a glimpse of the price tag.

“Ma’am, are you all right? You look like you’re about to throw up.”

Her eyes remained glued to the price tag. Her breathing was shallow.

“Do you need to sit down or something?” the girl snapped.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pay full price. She just plain wasn’t that adventurous. “I think I’ll be okay once I put this back on the rack.”

Ginger trudged back to the full price rack and hung up the dress, averting her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at the price tag again. On what planet could she ever bring herself to pay more for a dress than she had paid for the down payment on her first car?

Not on this one, that’s for sure. Sorry, Earl

Maybe what she needed was a latte. Kindra said the drink helped her focus. A few minutes to clear her head and work up the strength to buy that dress might help. Ginger wandered out into the mall toward the coffee shop. After she ordered her drink, she sat in a booth. When she checked her messages, there were none. It was nearly five; Suzanne must have made it to the courthouse by now.

The government employee behind the counter stared at Suzanne. She was a fiftyish woman with a hairstyle similar to the original Betty Crocker and too much rouge on her cheeks. The woman did a head-to-toe inspection of Suzanne. Apparently she had never seen a pregnant lady before.

Suzanne repeated her request. “The transcripts of the city commission meetings aren’t where they were the last time I was here. The ones from twenty years ago.”

Prior to Suzanne interrupting her, the woman had been stamping a pile of papers with insane efficiency. Her slowness in responding to Suzanne suggested that the interruption was an incredible inconvenience. Heaven forbid that a citizen would expect help from a government employee.

The clerk continued to stare at her. All she needed were some old city commission records. This wasn’t a problem that required bringing in Mensa for a consultation. Suzanne touched her stomach. She really needed to sit down. The baby was kicking like a Rockette at Christmastime. Her forehead and cheeks pulsed with fever. Having to stand while Betty Crocker composed an answer only made her feel sicker.

Finally, the clerk opened her mouth to speak. “Records that old have been moved up to the top floor. They are being computerized.”

Oh great, another flight of stairs.
Suzanne consoled herself with the thought that she’d get this done and then go home and catch a nap. Greg had taken the kids to the park, so the house would be quiet.

“It’s just around the corner and up the stairs. The intern will direct you to the file or recording you need.”

Suzanne wobbled out the door, across the marble floor, and past the display that featured Lewis and Clark artifacts. The glass cases were filled with bones and fur and yellow documents. She gripped the railing and pushed herself up the stairs. Yep, that nap was going to feel good.

There was only one office on the fourth floor. Suzanne leaned against the doorway and sighed heavily. A man with a boyish face sat behind a metal desk piled high with papers. He jumped when he saw her.

“Oh, are you lost?”

The man looked like he was twelve. His reading material consisted of a comic book, which only added to the impression that he wasn’t eligible to vote yet. He was probably a college student doing an internship, but the pudgy cheeks and fat fingers made him appear much younger.

“No, I’m not lost.” Suzanne’s forehead burned. He must not get too many people wanting to examine old records. “I’m looking for information on city commission meetings twenty years ago. I don’t know if you have an indexing system or what. I need to find out about the building of the mall, a real estate agent named Jackson, and an archaeology professor named David McQuire.”

The child clerk stood up, scraping his chair across linoleum. “We organize things by years.” He moved toward a computer that rested on a separate waist-high counter. “They hired me to get everything in order up here. If the funding comes through,” he pointed to the rows of file cabinets, “all of this will be put on CDs and logged into a computer so you can access it from our website. Right now, we have written transcripts and recordings.”

The tightening ache in her calves almost overwhelmed her. “Wow, that sounds like an impressive project.”

Apparently happy with her response, the clerk nodded and tapped a few keys on the computer. “I remember seeing something about the mall.” He slipped past her nearly to the end of the file cabinets and opened a drawer. “It seems like it was sometime in the summer of ’86.”