A Rumor of Bones: A Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery

by Beverly Connor

  "According to the schedule ..."

  "Damn the schedule! I'm telling you, Frank, if you would listen, they are going to advance the schedule."

  "They have not told me ..."

  "I'm telling you, dammit. I'm telling you ... why do I bother, you are so pig headed. You think you know every damn thing!"

  Frank spotted Lindsay and turned away from Ned. "How did it go?" he asked with that earnest expression in his hazel eyes that often made Lindsay's heart beat faster.

  "Marsha didn't come by?" she asked.

  'No"

  "The remains didn't belong to the Pruitt child."

  "Could you tell anything about the death from the bones?"

  She shook her head, telling him nothing about her finds. Instead, she took a deep breath and told him about the suggestion she made to the sheriff about using Derrick's crew to excavate the crime scene.

  "You did what!" Ned's voice was so loud Lindsay was sure it carried over the site. "I don't believe this. I don't believe this. We are never going to get this site dug. If you two can't focus your attention on this site, you should just turn it over to me."

  "Ned," said Lindsay, "These people need our help. The crime scene is small. It won't take that long."

  "Then why don't you do it?" Ned retorted.

  "That's enough, Ned," said Frank.

  "No, it's not enough. We have a tight schedule."

  Frank's voice was very calm, but Lindsay could see him clinching his jaw.

  "The schedule is under control. I don't want to discuss this anymore"

  "This is an important site," said Ned, unwilling to let go.

  "We all agree," said Frank.

  "I believe it is a very important site," Ned repeated.

  "I know your theories about this site, and I believe they have merit. We will get the site excavated. Now let's drop this."

  Ned hesitated a moment, torn between continuing the argument or accepting the bone of professional recognition that Frank had thrown him. Finally, he left the flotation dock with a nod.

  "You are a good diplomat," she said to Frank.

  "I have my moments. However, about loaning the crew, you should have talked to me first"

  "It was kind of in the emotion of the moment. Are you going to fire me?" she teased.

  "Oh, come on. I suppose I deserve this, after volunteering you"

  "That's true," Lindsay said.

  "I'll talk to Derrick about excavating the crime scene, and we'll come up with a plan."

  "Good. Well, since I'm not being fired, I'll make plans for opening up the new burials."

  Frank frowned. He seemed to hesitate before speaking. "I had a strange call from the Archaeology Department head about Coosa Valley Power Company's part of the excavation contract. He said one of the directors of the company tried to cancel the contract. He said they wanted to withdraw permission for us to be on the land and for us to get off the site. Impossible, of course, but curious."

  "That's odd. I wonder what that is about."

  Frank shook his head. "Historical recovery is written into the law, and we have a contract" Frank ran a hand through his hair. "You know, between that and Ned..."

  "Do you want me to talk to Ned, maybe smooth things over?" Lindsay asked.

  "He's not your problem. I'll handle it." Frank smiled. "Maybe I'll drown him in the river."

  Lindsay returned his smile. "By the way, the sheriff is sending a patrol by here at night to watch for pothunters."

  Frank nodded, "Good, maybe that's one worry off my shoulders."

  Lindsay stood with Jane over the dark stain in the earth that was designated as burials 22 and 23. She took her trowel and drew a line around one lobe and the rounded point of the heart-shaped stain, making an oval. "This one is the first; we'll label it number 22." Again, she drew an oval with her trowel, this time around the other lobe of the "heart" and inside the boundaries of the first oval. "This one intrudes inside the first; we'll call it 23. Twenty-three will probably be on top, but you may have to dig them both simultaneously. Get Sally to help."

  "Couldn't it be the other way around?" Jane asked. "Couldn't 23 be the first and 22 the intrusion? How can you tell which is first?"

  "I can't, but this one, 22, has an east/west orientation, which is the predominant burial direction so far at this site. Twenty-three is northwest/southeast, an uncommon direction here. I'm assuming one anomaly goes with another, and that the burial with the less common direction is the intrusion."

  "Makes sense to me," Jane agreed.

  "I may be completely wrong. We'll find out shortly."

  Lindsay left Jane and was headed toward Burial 24 when she saw Frank and Deputy Littleton walking across the site in her direction. A sick feeling rose in her stomach.

  "Howdy, Dr. Chamberlain," greeted the deputy.

  "Call me Lindsay, please," she said.

  He smiled and nodded. "Sure thing."

  "Can you go into town with the deputy?" asked Frank. "There's another couple who have a missing daughter. They think the bones may be hers"

  Lindsay sighed with resignation. "All right. I've put Jane and Sally on burials 22 and 23. I'll hold off on 24"

  Frank nodded his agreement and headed toward the flotation dock. Lindsay turned to Andy Littleton. "What do you know about this couple?"

  "They're from the next county. Their little girl, Amy Lynn Hastings, went missing about three years ago. She was about the same age as little Peggy when she disappeared."

  "I need to get my tools. It won't take a second. I'll meet you at your car."

  The sheriff was behind his desk when Lindsay and the deputy arrived. It looked like a replay of the previous day with the Pruitts. A man and woman sat clinging to each other, looking scared and full of dread. The man and the sheriff rose as she entered, and the sheriff introduced Lindsay to Anne and Guy Hastings.

  Sheriff Duggan handed her a large envelope. "These are some x-rays taken of Amy about six months before she disappeared."

  "She fell from a tree," explained Anne Hastings. "She had no broken bones, but we had her x-rayed anyway, just in case. They were taken of her shoulder and right arm and her head"

  "They will help a great deal;' said Lindsay.

  "And this is a photograph of her." The expression in the sheriff's eyes was intense, like a communication, as he handed Lindsay the envelope, so she opened it and pulled out the picture. It was a little blonde pixie-looking girl with a heart-shaped face, a small, pointed chin, and a slight overbite. Lindsay felt her stomach lurch as she looked at the mother, who was asking her a question.

  "How long will it take?"

  "Several hours," she said. "Can you tell me something about her disappearance? What month did she disappear, for instance?"

  "It was the end of summer, the 25th of August. We had gone camping at Olika. She had Pepper with her."

  "Pepper?" asked Lindsay.

  "Her dog, a cocker spaniel. They both disappeared." Anne began to cry softly.

  "All that's in the police report," said her husband. "Can't you read it there?"

  "Of course." Lindsay had heard what she wanted to know.

  "I can tell you what she was wearing," Anne offered.

  "I'll read the report," Lindsay smiled at her. She did not want to tell her that the remains were not found with clothes. Anne Hastings nodded, but her husband was not fooled by Lindsay's evasion. He understood and put his arm around his wife, while avoiding her eyes.

  "Look," Lindsay said, "the garden club built a beautiful park a block from here. It is a peaceful place to wait."

  "I'll send the deputy to find you wherever you are," said the sheriff.

  They agreed, and Guy Hastings led his wife out of the sheriff's department.

  "There's a good chance it's her," the sheriff commented as he led Lindsay to the back room.

  "It certainly doesn't look good"

  "You said it would take several hours?"

  "If I don't find anything th
at definitely rules out an identification, like with Peggy Pruitt, it will take a while. It takes a lot more information to say the bones do belong to a specific person."

  The tub of bones was on the table, as before. Lindsay sighed, put on her gloves, and began laying the bones out again.

  "I don't suppose you have a light table I can use for the x-rays?" she asked.

  "We don't, but I sent Ricky out ... Here he and Ray come now" Two deputies came in carrying a glasstop drafting table between them.

  "This will do fine," said Lindsay as the deputies scrambled around unwinding the cord and plugging it in. Lindsay turned on the light and set the x-rays on the glass top. On the table she arranged her calipers, magnifying lenses, and report forms. She sat at the light table and began the meticulous measurements of the images on the x-rays.

  After several hours, Lindsay walked around the room to stretch. She had made all the measurements and observations at least three times.

  "Are you finished?" She looked up to see the sheriff. "The Hastings came back an hour ago."

  "Yes. I'm finished." She handed him a page. The measurements for both the hones and the x-rays were listed next to the description of what was measured. He glanced at each entry-identical all down the list.

  "It is her, then," he said.

  "Yes. The report is here." She handed it to the sheriff.

  The sheriff shook his head. "I'll tell the parents. Andy'll take you back to the site. Thanks. I'm sorry you had to come back to do this."

  As before, the main crew had left by the time Lindsay got back to the site. She did not feel like talking to anyone, so she went to her tent, turned on her radio to a classical station, took off her shoes, and lay down on her bed with a mystery novel she had been trying to find time to read.

  "Lindsay?"

  She looked up from her reading and saw Frank's silhouette outside her tent.

  "Yes"

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm just tired."

  Frank stepped into her tent. "It was that couple's little girl then?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry," he said, sitting down at the foot of her bed.

  "It had to be somebody's child," she said.

  "Let me buy you dinner," he offered.

  "I'm not really hungry. How did things go today?"

  He picked up one of her bare feet and began to knead the sole. "Fine. No problems. That feel good?"

  "Yes. Is this a new service to keep the crew in shape?"

  "No. This is just for you" He put down her foot and picked up the other one and massaged it. His hands were warm. "Lindsay, you need to eat. Come with me. I found a great place to get chicken fingers and margaritas. I'll buy"

  "Chicken fingers and margaritas. You know my weakness" She reclaimed her foot and swung her legs to the floor. "I need to talk to Derrick about excavating the crime scene first."

  "I've already talked to him."

  "How did he take it?"

  "Well, he actually seemed interested."

  "Good. Let me clean up. I'll meet you in about 20 minutes."

  "Sure, take your time."

  The shower was a wooden outdoor structure that the supervising crew had built for themselves. Lindsay stepped in and pulled the cord, drenching herself with cool water from the reservoir. It washed away more than the day's accumulation of sweat and dust, and Lindsay stepped out feeling that her sad mood had been rinsed away as well.

  Frank took her to a restaurant were she had a margarita with beer-battered fried chicken fingers and spuds. "I guess I was hungry after all," she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

  "I'll say," Frank told her in mock seriousness. "I was afraid you would eat mine, too. How do you keep such a slender figure and eat like a horse?"

  "You work us to death" Lindsay smiled at him.

  "I have to, so I can keep Ned off my back." When he smiled, he had a boyish face, which was enhanced by the lock of black hair that kept falling over his eyes. "I thought we could go to a movie," he said.

  "A movie? Sounds like you have the evening all planned."

  "You can use a diversion. I know it was hard to examine those bones, then have to meet the parents. I should have been more sensitive."

  "That little girl was really hurt before she died. She must have been terrified. I don't understand how people can do such things. What kind of society are we that we're producing so many monsters?"

  "I don't know," Frank said.

  "The bastard even killed her little dog. Probably in front of her."

  Frank reached out and took Lindsay's hand. "Try to clear your mind of it now. Your part is over. Come on, I'm taking you to a nice little light-hearted movie."

  At first glance the town of Merry Claymoore looked as if it had stayed in the fifties. Brick stores, crammed together so close they looked like one long building, made up the business district. A single main street, called Main Street, ran through the center of town. Diagonal parking spaces and parking meters lined the two-laned street.

  Even a second look didn't indicate that Merry Claymoore was approaching the millennium. The hardware store still carried wash basins, old-fashioned looking stove pipes, water pitchers, and an assortment of faded cardboard packaging containing miscellaneous tools that the proprietors had not given up on eventually selling. Even the dress shops and shoe store seemed to cater to a clientele that preferred older styles.

  The drug store beside the hardware store was perhaps the favorite spot of the site crew. It had a soda fountain with ice cream sundaes, malts, cherry cokes, and an assortment of pies and served BLTs and egg sandwiches.

  Downtown also boasted Mickey Lawson's portrait studio, a flower shop, an antique store, and several vacant buildings. The only business reflecting the current decade was the video store with movie posters plastering its tall glass windows. Most of the people who lived in Merry Claymoore shopped in the new mall fifteen miles away near the town of Cullins.

  The theater was strategically situated beside the drug store. Lindsay read the marquee: Young Frankenstein.

  "You're kidding? Isn't this an old movie?"

  "1974. Directed by Mel Brooks, starring Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle. It's absolutely hilarious. Have you seen it?"

  "No.

  "Great. The Cinema Plex at the mall gets all the new movies. This theater shows only oldies. This month they're doing nothing but Mel Brooks. They have a huge screen, plush seats, carpeting, everything but usherettes in those little red uniforms with gold braids. You'll love it." He took her hand and led her up to the ticket booth.

  Lindsay laughed at Frank's enthusiasm and tried to push all thoughts of Amy Lynn Hastings from her mind and enjoy her date. Occasionally, in the darkened theater, she glanced at Frank's profile as he laughed out loud and wondered what had happened with their first try at romance.

  Coming out of the movie, they met Jane and Alan, from the site.

  "Hey, didn't see you guys in the theater," Jane said.

  "Great movie. Marty Feldman made a great Igor," said Alan.

  As they walked to their cars, Alan and Frank did a fair imitation of "Putting on the Ritz." When Lindsay and Jane finished laughing, Lindsay asked Jane about the excavations.

  "How did 22 and 23 go today?"

  "I'm half finished with each of them. You were right. Twenty-three intrudes into 22. Twenty-three is a lot more shallow, too. Twenty-two is flexed, and the bones are in bad condition. Twenty-three is extended. Those bones are in great condition. I wish they were all like that. I don't see how there could be such a difference in burials that close together."

  "Depends on how the water drains through the soil and such," said Lindsay. "Could be that the bones in the other half of 23 are in as bad condition as 22."

  "I'll know tomorrow," said Jane.

  "Come on," complained Alan. "No site business tonight. We're still out on the town, what there is of it. So far, besides the movie, the biggest attractions are watching some local amateur magici
an at the summer school fair and cruising McDonald's. Want to go have a Big Mac and fries with us?"

  "No, you guys enjoy yourselves, I think we'll head on back," said Lindsay, waving them on.

  "Come have a glass of wine at my place." Frank took Lindsay's hand in his.

  "Just one. Then I'd like to turn in."

  "I can work with that."

  "I'm sorry I got you involved in identifying those bones," Frank said as they entered his house.

  "It's all right. I'm not a hothouse rose, you know"

  "I know. You're tough when you want to be °"

  "How are you doing with Thomas?" asked Lindsay. "Derrick told me about the area you let him have"

  "He's not so bad. A little over enthusiastic at times. He could make a halfway good archaeologist. Ned hates him."

  "Well, to be honest, you did sort of promise Thomas's father to give him significant assignments. I can kind of understand Ned's disapproval." They sat down on the sofa.

  "So can I. Assigning Thomas to a feature now and then is a small price to pay for the funding his father contributes. I'm not compromising the dig in any way. Thomas still has to do his share of shovel shaving." Frank squeezed her hand. "I'm glad you are here."

  He rose and took a bottle of wine from an old sideboard standing against the wall and poured two glasses, handing one to Lindsay. She smiled when she saw that it was really one of the plastic variety that could be bought at any grocery store.

  Frank grinned, too. "I couldn't bring my good crystal around this rowdy bunch," he said. "Let's forget about archaeology for the rest of the evening."

  The sudden loud knock on the door brought a curse to his lips.

  He walked over and jerked open the door. Hurricane Thomas blew in, carrying an armload of books. "I have this great idea," he said, ignoring Lindsay, the low lights, and the wine glasses.

  Lindsay rose and smiled at Frank. "I'll take your car back to the site. You can come in the van with the crew." She left Frank glaring at Thomas.

  There was no moon, so as Lindsay drove away from the lights of Merry Claymoore, the night became so dark and clear that the sky was thick with stars. Lindsay could see the slash of the Milky Way across the night sky. She rolled down her window and let the cool night air blow on her face. It was a pleasant end to a nice evening. Only one other car was on the road. She didn't really notice it until it was close behind her, shining its bright lights into her car. Lindsay tapped on her brakes, warning it to back off. It dropped back for a moment, then sped up again, following close to her bumper. She slowed down, hoping it would pass. The car slowed, too, maintaining the close distance. Lindsay reached down and took the car phone out of its cradle. The turn-off to the site was just ahead. She put down the phone and gripped the wheel, then sped up until she came to the dirt road that led to the site and turned off, creating a cloud of dust in her wake. The car drove on by, staying on the paved road. Lindsay breathed a sigh of relief.