Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel (24 page)

"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."

"Yes," said Lindsay. "I really think it might be a good
idea to chip in. You know, create a little social cohesion in
the department."

"Maybe. I don't like attracting attention by spending a lot of money right now."

"Do you get the Journal of Historical Archaeology?"
Lindsay asked.

"No, but it's in the departmental library."

"The issue I'm looking for is missing."

"I'm sure Kenneth subscribes to it," Frank said.

Lindsay thought it wise not to tell Frank about any suspicion she might have of Kerwin, especially in view of the
suspicions she had just raised about Einer. Frank admonished her once more as she went out the door not to involve
Einer. Lindsay said nothing, and she could see by the look
on Frank's face that he was uneasy.

Lindsay passed Kenneth Kerwin's door. It was cracked
open, but he wasn't there. She looked up and down the hallway and into the main office. No one was in sight. She
slipped into his office and stood there for a moment. The
uneasy feeling of standing with her back to the door made
her move aside, almost behind the door. She scanned his
desk and his shelves and saw what she was looking for.
There were two identical volumes of the missing journal
side by side. She took one copy from the shelf and moved
the books closer together to cover the gap just as she heard
Kerwin's voice in the main office.

Lindsay held her breath. She could hear her heartbeat in
her ears. She stood still for a moment, then eased herself
farther behind the door and listened. She could hear him
talking to Frank. He was still angry over the vote. It
sounded as though Frank was trying to leave the main
office, so that meant Kerwin would be facing the door. He
would see her if she left. Damn. She looked briefly over his
office. There was no closet in which to secret herself, no
window to climb out-not that either of those options
would work anyway. She stood motionless, barely breathing. Abruptly, their arguing stopped, and Kerwin came
marching into his office. Lindsay's heart stopped. She clutched the journal behind her back. Just as suddenly, he
marched out again, and Lindsay could hear him following
Frank down the hall and, presumably, into the men's room.
Lindsay wasted no time. She slipped out the door and
almost ran down to her office by the back way.

She closed the door and sat down at her desk, breathing
hard, not from exertion but fright. What in the world was I
thinking? she asked herself. That has got to be the most
appalling bit of behavior I've carried out in a long timesecretly going into a fellow faculty member's office and
absconding with a piece of personal property. The fact that
one of the copies probably belonged to the department was
a minor technicality.

She opened the journal to Kerwin's article. It was not
long, a simple analysis of the importance of the Rayburn
Mill site to the creation of several present-day communities. There was a map showing the location of the site and
nearby communities within a ten-mile radius. An accompanying aerial photograph showed the remnants of the
ancient connecting roadbeds. It was interesting-Kerwin
was not a sloppy researcher.

The site was on a river. The old roads led to each community like the spokes of a wheel. The former relationships of the communities to one another and to the old
textile mill were lost to current memory. The old roads
grown over and new ones leading elsewhere indicated
shifted patterns of economic focus. There was a footnote
citing Shirley Foster as the source of information on the
way textiles produced at the mill were used and of their
importance to European textile manufacturing. The citation was referenced as a personal communication. There
was nothing odd or unusual about that. Researchers often
cite information received in conversations and correspondence with colleagues. Kerwin never denied knowing or
even working with Shirley Foster on a professional basis. What, Lindsay wondered, did Kerwin not want her to see?

The only reason she was suspicious of him was because
of the photograph in which he seemed to be looking adoringly at Shirley. That could be nothing, or it could be that
he simply thought her to be a beautiful woman, which she
was. The fact that he seemed to be hiding the journal could
have been an unfortunate coincidence. And what did it
matter anyway? She had more pressing concerns-like her
exhausted finances. She opened her drawer to look for the
bottle of Turns she had bought that morning.

Lindsay put the journal and the Turns in her briefcase
and saw her checkbook lying inside. She took it out and
thumbed through the checks. She knew buying the parcel
of land would make things tight for a while, especially in
view of the work she was doing to renovate her cabin. But
owning the source of the stream was a good investment.

She had left a cushion in her savings account for emergencies, but she hadn't expected the $10,000 emergency
that her well going dry had presented. Now there was the
other half of the bill for the well, the monthly payments for
the filtration system and the payments for her original
parcel of land, not to mention Mandrake's upkeep. And
there were the payments for the Rover. At the time she
bought it, she could well afford an expensive automobile,
but now-she reached for the phone and called the Ford
dealer a few miles from where she lived.

"Well, hey, Miss Chamberlain. You going to let me talk
you into trading that old Land Rover for a new Explorer?"

"Yes."

"What?"

Lindsay smiled. He clearly was making a joke and
didn't expect that. "It will have to be a used Explorer. I
want to lower my monthly payments substantially."

"Tell me what you want, and I'll get on the computer
right away."

Lindsay gave him a list of things she would like to have
but emphasized the importance of keeping the cost down.

"No problem," he said. "You have a color you particularly like?"

"Oh, if a green one comes along, like the Rover, I'd like
that. But right now, I'd accept one with just the primer."

He laughed. "I'll give you a call in a couple of days."

Lindsay hung up the phone. She felt better. She gathered
up her purse and briefcase and walked outside to her Rover.
She would go home and go through her grandfather's
papers and visit with her brother.

Lindsay pulled onto the road and started to turn down
the highway toward her home but instead turned in the
opposite direction. There were still a few hours of light left,
and she decided to visit the Rayburn site.