Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

“Yes,” said Diane. “I don’t talk about it much.”

  Kathy nodded as if she understood. “What did you think of us?” she asked, suddenly.

  “The three of you are very sad, especially Wendy and Marsha. They have turned very much inward. The whole time the three of you were here, you were the only one who seemed to be aware of your surroundings.”

  “Yes, we are different,” she said. “You noticed that?”

  “Yes, I noticed it. What I don’t understand is why the three of you came here today. Did Marsha actually expect to have me say that what I found really wasn’t true? Does she honestly think there is a chance Ryan Dance could get out of jail based on my findings about his sister’s death?”

  “Yes. Both of them think that. Marsha got some pretty mean calls that upset her after the article came out. And her daughter Samantha moved out. She is beside herself about that. But she never paid any attention to the poor girl. What did she expect? She wanted her family nearby, but out of her way. She never used to be so self-absorbed. Honestly, that’s true. She was just the nicest person. Ellie Rose was a nice girl too. Always cheerful, always had something sweet to say. Her death tried my faith. It did. I think it tried Marsha’s and Wendy’s too.”

  “Samantha moved out?” said Diane. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She is eighteen. And, frankly, I think it’s a good thing. She was being smothered in that house. You were there. Could you live there?”

  No, Diane couldn’t have, but she didn’t say it. Instead she gave Kathy a prod. “Is there something you wanted to say to me?”

  “I wanted to ask you: Are you sure, are you really sure, that Stacy Dance was murdered?”

  “The Gainesville police will be receiving all the new evidence soon and they will decide how to proceed and what to divulge. So I can’t go into any specifics. However, I can tell you I have no doubts whatsoever, and neither does our medical examiner, that Stacy was murdered. And we both have had a lot of experience in what we do.”

  Kathy Nicholson’s eyes teared up. Diane reached for a tissue and handed it to her.

  “Are you afraid Marsha Carruthers or her husband might have done something to Stacy?” asked Diane.

  Kathy was quiet for several moments. “I would never say that. Never,” she said at last.

  “But you might worry about it?” said Diane.

  Kathy said nothing.

  “Is there anything you know that bothers you? Anything you’ve seen?” asked Diane.

  “It’s just the anger. We drove up here together. It was just terrible. Wendy drove and Marsha sat in the front seat. I sat in the back. We discussed strategy. It was all so-so frenetic. Marsha was so angry. I think it was equating the manner of Ellie Rose’s death to Stacy’s that got to her. Wendy called the police and they told her what Stacy was supposed to have died from. For some reason, Marsha was angry with you in particular. I think it was the things you said to her. I suppose she saw you as trying to rob her of her grief. It’s all she thinks she has.”

  “I’m sorry I upset her,” said Diane.

  “Wendy looked you up on the Web and discovered you are the director of the museum,” said Kathy. “We all thought you had deceived us about who you are.”

  “She didn’t find the other positions I hold?” said Diane.

  “No. I think the first item she found was the museum and she stopped there. It had your picture. That was the only listing we knew for sure was you. You aren’t the only Diane Fallon in the world.”

  “That’s true,” said Diane, smiling.

  “We didn’t quite understand why you would have anything to do with a crime investigation. Frankly, I thought you and the gentleman with you were frauds. I thought you had lied to me.”

  “Didn’t you look up the name of my osteology lab-the one on the card?” said Diane.

  “We didn’t think of it. When we found you, we thought that was it; we had found you out. None of us know very much about computers, really. I know everyone does these days, but we don’t. Wendy used Marsha’s husband’s computer. She knew how to use Google. I always thought it was simply a very large number,” she said.

  Diane smiled. “I take it you don’t follow the stock market either,” said Diane.

  “No,” she said, and almost smiled. “I was amazed at all the information on your Web site. All the things about the museum. Wendy found the museum board of directors and discovered that both her husband and father-in-law, Everett, were on a couple of charity boards with two of the members. Wendy will make good on her threat to have them make calls about you. Her father-in-law is a type A personality, if you know what I mean. He’ll pressure the board members to do something about you if Wendy asks him.”

  “Wendy will be sorely disappointed,” said Diane. “It isn’t a governing board. It’s an advisory board.”

  “Oh, she will be disappointed,” said Kathy.

  “Tell me, why is Wendy so involved in Marsha’s life?” asked Diane.

  “Same reason I am. We are neighbors and friends. We go to the same church. We got caught up in trying to help Marsha with her grieving process and were kind of pulled into it. Over the years it became our life. It’s not this bad all the time. We go though long periods of normal. Then something happens and Marsha will start drinking. It’s gotten a lot worse since Stacy Dance spoke to her. And when you and that man-Kingsley-came into our lives and that newspaper article came out.”

  “I’m sorry our visit had that effect,” said Diane. “Has Marsha been to grief counseling?”

  “Yes. It hasn’t worked-or it will work for a while until something happens,” said Kathy.

  “What triggers her relapses?” asked Diane.

  “Lots of things. My husband’s cancer and death were one thing. Wendy’s husband is head of the oncology department at the hospital, so all of them were there for us during the process. When Samantha reached the same age Ellie Rose was when she died, it set Marsha off. As I said, Stacy’s visit upset her. Sometimes a report in the news about some teenage girl who died would be enough to upset her again.”

  “You said they think you are here to talk me into recanting my findings. Why do they think that?” asked Diane.

  “When we went outside to get in the car, I commented that maybe if we had been friendlier we might have gotten somewhere. Marsha turned on me and started to yell. She’s been doing that more frequently. It made me mad and I almost told her that maybe I would be the one to recant my story. I came that close.” Kathy stopped and took a deep breath.

  “I wouldn’t,” she continued. “I saw what I saw. But I was so angry that she’d turn on me after everything. I made up my mind I wasn’t going to ride back with them. I have a friend here in Rosewood, and I can spend the night with her and we can go shopping together tomorrow.” Kathy wrapped her jacket closer to her as if she were cold.

  “Wendy said she thought I was right,” Kathy continued, “and if I came in to speak with you alone, I might get somewhere, or at least find out what you were really up to. I agreed. I just wanted to get away from them. Wendy is real good with Marsha. I’m not. Marsha agreed that it might be a good idea too, and she apologized to me for the things she said. But, you know, I’m tired. I’m tired of living in her world.”

  “What will you tell them?” said Diane.

  “I’ll tell them about your qualifications-about the human rights work,” she said. “And that you said again that you aren’t trying to get Ryan Dance out of prison. That’s what Marsha is really concerned about.”

  “I’ll repeat, just for clarity, the finding that Stacy Dance was murdered is not in any way related to Ryan Dance. Suspicious circumstances aren’t proof of anything. Even if you were to recant your story about seeing Ryan Dance that day, it would have no effect on his status. There was too much physical evidence implicating him.”

  “But sometimes evidence is thrown out. People get released, even though everyone knows they are guilty,” said Kathy.

  �
��Very rarely,” said Diane. “I haven’t read the transcripts of the trial and I’m not a lawyer, but from what I understand, the police had probable cause to search Ryan’s car, even without your testimony, so the incriminating evidence that convicted him would have been found anyway. The only way I can see him getting out of prison is if he really is innocent and the police happen to find indisputable evidence that identifies the real guilty party. I don’t see that happening. If Marsha needs comforting on that point, have her talk to the district attorney or a defense lawyer. I’ll bet you have one in the neighborhood.”

  Kathy gave Diane a faint smile and nodded. “That’s what I’ll tell them.”

  She gathered herself together and stood. Diane stood with her.

  “But you do seem to know about Ryan Dance’s case,” she said.

  “A little. But not for any other purpose than to understand where Stacy Dance was coming from,” said Diane. “Much like Marsha’s obsession, Stacy had her own obsession involving Ellie Rose’s death and her brother’s conviction. Something Stacy did may have gotten her killed, but it may be coincidental to her investigation. We just don’t know.”

  Kathy Nicholson nodded and Diane walked her through Andie’s office to the door and let her out. The woman had been forthcoming, but Diane was suspicious of her as much as she was of Diane. What if the three of them had killed Stacy? she thought. What if she and Wendy had been so sucked into Marsha’s world that they had formed a kind of vigilante cabal? The thought made Diane shiver. Other than the profound sadness, the three of them looked so normal.

  Chapter 32

  All in all, Diane had a good ending to a not altogether pleasant workday. After Kathy Nicholson left, Andie came back from the meeting with the curators and gave Diane her report. Diane told Andie to write it up and she could present it to the board.

  Frank called and said he would be late coming home, probably very late. Diane grabbed an apple and cold drink from her refrigerator and called it dinner. She sat down on the couch in the sitting room off her office, put on a CD of classical music, and cleared her mind of anything to do with murder or death before she left the museum.

  Diane drove out to Marcella’s house before she went home. When she arrived there, Marcella’s yard was lit up. David had brought the lights they used for night work. Why, she wondered, were they working at night?

  A police car was parked in the drive. A patrolman sauntered up to her car.

  “I hope there’s not another problem,” said Diane, getting out of her SUV.

  “No, ma’am. David Goldstein asked a couple of us to come down and stand guard. He didn’t want a repeat of the other night,” he said.

  “Good move. How is Patrolman Daughtry doing?” asked Diane. “His leg healing up?”

  “Leg’s doing good. Got in a bit of a dustup over his gun. I guess you heard,” he said. “I don’t think it will amount to much. He’s off work now with his leg up, watching football reruns, so I guess he’s doing great. You really think those punks will come back here?”

  “I don’t know. It was pretty stupid of them to come the first time,” said Diane.

  “You’re right about that. Can’t account for stupid. We’ll keep a lookout. We got a little drive we can circle that takes us around to the back where they came in the first time. They try to park there again, we’ll get them.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” said Diane. She went around back and spotted David standing at a plane table tripod looking at aerial maps. Hector and Scott were making a grid of Marcella’s yard with string and stakes.

  “Are you camping here?” said Diane.

  David gave her a look somewhere between a grin and a frown. “Looks like it. It was Scott’s idea. He and Hector are all over the experiment thing. We’ll probably be able to write a paper entitled ‘The Best One Hundred Ways to Find a Buried Body in the Woods.’ Seriously though, they did come up with some good ideas.”

  “Why not start in the morning?” she said, looking out over the lit yard at the busy Spearman twins.

  David followed her gaze. “I see why Jin hired the two of them. They work very efficiently together.” He looked back at Diane. “We started right after I spoke with you. It gets dark so early these days, Scott thought it would be a good idea to work after dark setting up grid lines so we can start taking samples in the morning. So far it seems to be going well.” He grinned. “They haven’t started singing ‘Kum Ba Yah’ yet. That’s a plus.”

  “Wait until bedtime,” said Diane. She looked around the yard. “Where are your tents?”

  “Marcella’s daughter and her husband came by the house. They told us to just bed down in our sleeping bags in her mother’s living room. They are very nice people,” he said.

  “They are. Did she say how Marcella is?” asked Diane.

  “Doing better, tires easily. She said she seems to have clarity of thought. I think Paloma was more worried about that than anything else,” he said. “Neva is coming tomorrow to help. I think she said Mike will come too. That will be good.”

  “That’s right-Mike is due back from Africa,” said Diane.

  Mike Seger was the museum’s geology curator. He also worked for a pharmaceutical firm, collecting extremophiles from around the world, a job that allowed him to bring unique specimens back to the museum’s rock collection.

  “Due back tonight,” said David. “This grid part isn’t going to take as long as I was afraid it would. However, running the samples will take some time. Do you really expect to find bodies?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s a gut feeling. The bone came from somewhere,” said Diane.

  “A lot of strange stuff going on around here,” said David. “Somebody was crazy for yard ornaments. We’ve found a ton of them just lying around. Lots of gargoyles. Apparently they haven’t kept away the evil spirits,” he said.

  “They aren’t on guard,” said Diane, smiling and looking up at the roofline of the house.

  “I suppose that explains it,” said David. He gestured toward the porch where Daughtry fell through the rotten boards. “The policeman said Daughtry was suspended for a couple of days. The chief of police wasn’t upset that he dropped his gun, but that he didn’t report it. I personally think they’re being a little tough on him. But it does look like Ray-Ray What’s-his-name was shot with Daughtry’s gun.”

  “Does Hanks know anything more about that?” asked Diane.

  “If he does, he’s not talking. I think information primarily goes one way with him. He’s really trying hard to keep control of the case,” said David.

  “I’m not taking it away from him,” said Diane. David grinned. “Don’t you dare say, ‘Not yet.’ ”

  “Hanks did tell me he got a list of places that employ day laborers, and he’s questioning people Ray-Ray worked with,” said David. “I don’t know if he’s found out anything of value. What I wonder is why they shot Ray-Ray. Maybe he was just a day laborer in the burglary. Maybe he wasn’t needed when it was finished.”

  “Could be,” said Diane.

  “Or maybe they just shot him because his name was Ray-Ray and they got tired of saying it over and over again. Who would name their child Ray-Ray?” David threw up his hands.

  “Have you been able to separate any of the footprints connected with Marcella’s attack from the later ones that were left when we were attacked?”

  “I have several prints on top of one another. I think most of the secondary prints were from the paramedics and Jonas Briggs. Izzy collected the shoe prints of the paramedics, so we have those, and I got Jonas to give me his. I’ve got the computer working on separating the images. I don’t hold out a lot of hope. There’s a lot of smearing. So far, the boot prints I told you about earlier are the only ones we’ve found that are clear enough to match with a specific shoe-if we find the shoe.”

  “Where is Neva on her search of the courthouse records?” said Diane.

  “I don’t know. She had to go out on a couple of murde
rs over in Jackson County. She’s working on the courthouse project between jobs,” he said.

  “What do you have here?” Diane gestured toward the map.

  “Aerial maps taken in the area over the years. I’m looking for some common points we can mark with stakes. We’re going to do an overlay when we get the data on the chemical makeup of the soil and see what ground features correlate with what chemical characteristics. Too bad we don’t have any infrared photos.”

  “It looks like you have everything under control,” she said.

  “It’s coming along. Hope we don’t have any more surprise intruders,” he said. “I got backup just in case. A couple of patrolmen wanted to earn overtime for the holidays coming up. It’s all working out for everyone,” David said.

  “I met one of them coming in. They seem to have a plan for securing the property,” said Diane.

  “I walked them over the area when they got here,” David told her.

  It seemed to Diane that everything was going well here. If she hurried, she could make it home before it got too late to call Kingsley to fill him in on the latest about the three women from Gainesville. It would be interesting to see if he was as suspicious as she was about them.

  “I’ll be going,” she said. “Call if you need me for anything.”

  “Will do.” He grinned. “By the way, one of the things Paloma wanted was a copy of our research design for her mother. Seems Marcella is very excited about it. I never knew we had so many people around who are data wonks like I am.”

  “Yes, it’s a scary thought, isn’t it?” she said. “Who would have imagined-”

  Diane was cut short by a loud cry coming out of the darkness.

  Chapter 33

  David and Diane jerked around and stared into the dark in the direction the cry came from.

  “David! Help me! It’s Hector, help! Oh jeez, help!”

  Scott was perhaps two hundred feet from them. The lighting hadn’t quite illuminated that far and all that was visible of him was a dim reflection of light from his lab suit and his face. He was kneeling on the ground in heavy undergrowth.