"Interesting," Eddie said. "I'd like to see it. Only works with teeth, I suppose."
"And rocks," answered Lindsay.
"Well, what is it, Dr. Chamberlain?" asked Eddie. "What killed this woman?"
Lindsay shook her head. "I don't know. The fire's troublesome. The bones are burned where the skin is the thinnest, that's not surprising.... I don't know, there is something that bothers me. The pattern, I suppose."
Eddie shrugged. "Fires can burn hot and just burn out. I've seen it. Fire is a strange animal. The killer could have tried to get rid of the body by burning it, and when that failed ... buried her."
"But from the pattern, the back was burned just like the front. If the fire was built by piling debris on top of the body and lighting it, as is common, the back of the body wouldn't have been burned."
"You have a point," said Eddie. "Maybe there will be something in the tissue samples that will be enlightening."
"By the way, you guys know who I can get to drill me a well?" Lindsay asked. "Mine went dry on me."
"That happened to Dr. Cassidine just last week," Eddie said. "Expensive. You need to move to the city so you'll have city water."
"Yeah," said Sally, "with all the additives."
"My cousin drills wells," said John Booth. "You want me to put in a good word for you?"
"Would you do that? Is he reasonable?"
"No. He's the orneriest man I ever met, but he knows how to drill wells."
Instead of going back to her office, Lindsay drove to the library. She circled the crowded parking lot twice before she found a space in the adjacent key lot.
Even if the trees weren't budding out, Lindsay would have known it was spring because most of the dogs accompanying the students were puppies. She stooped to pet an adolescent chocolate Lab tied to a bicycle rack waiting for his master. He licked her hand and wagged his tail.
"I hope they'll be back soon, sweetie," she said, rubbing his ears.
Some of the largest oak trees on campus lined the quadrangle in front of the library. Several students were stretched out on the grass in their shade. North Campus was the oldest part of campus, its age reflected in the white-columned Greek revival buildings. One could start on the north side of campus, abutting against downtown Athens, and, walking southward, view a chronology of architecture from 1785, when the University of Georgia was founded, to the present. Middle Campus incorporated the dark red brick buildings of the thirties and fifties and looked very somber. The walk would finish with a brand-new structure that manyunkindly, Lindsay thought-referred to as the "Purina Building" because of the conspicuous checkerboard pattern of its brickwork. Lindsay preferred the old part of campus.
She left the puppy straining at his leash and went into the library. It was crowded with students in an assortment of attire ranging from the black head-to-toe Goth look to ragged retro-hippie to casual yuppie. Lindsay had thought multicolored hair was on the wane, but as she walked up to the third floor, she passed a male and female with moussed and spiked lime green and mauve hair, respectively, sporting matching dog collars and nose rings. The young woman was explaining to her companion why aluminum sulfide can't be recrystallized from water.
The Hargrett Library was the home of the rare book and manuscript collection, the Georgia Room, and the university archives, as well as files of newspaper clippings that mentioned anything or anyone connected with the university. By the desk, a campus policeman was talking to an archivist.
"Perhaps you simply misplaced it," suggested the policeman.
Lindsay glanced at the look on the archivist's face, which stated more clearly than words that she was an archivist and therefore had not misplaced the item, that she never misplaced items, and, moreover, that it was her business to label and index items so that they could always be found. Lindsay smiled and walked past them to the filing cabinets. She quickly found the section she sought and looked under Athens, UGA, Foster, Shirley. She pulled out a file about half an inch thick and took it to a table.
Many of the clippings were about various exhibits and awards for Shirley Foster's work. One from the Athens Observer dated seven years ago was a Close-Up interview about an exhibit of her fabric designs at the university. There was the typical row of three black-and-white photographs the Observer took of the interviewee: Shirley smiling, head turned slightly to the right; Shirley grinning, showing white, even teeth; Shirley laughing-puckish, delighted, joyful. She had been an attractive woman: shoulder-length dark hair worn in a frizzy halo around a fair face, dark, deep-set eyes, dark eyebrows, and the large mouth of a singer.
Lindsay skimmed the article. Shirley told the interviewer that she hadn't wanted to become a designer in the beginning, that her original interests had been in history and archaeology. The interviewer had asked her why she hadn't pursued archaeology. "In this country," Shirley had responded, "archaeology is considered to be part of anthropology. I believe in the European tradition-where archaeology belongs in the history department. Archaeologists here tend not to understand the historical context of what they study but treat each site as a separate phenomenon." Lindsay raised her eyebrows and wondered if the sheriff should put the archaeologists of North America on the list of suspects. She continued reading.
How did you get from archaeology to textiles?
"I've always liked art and creating things. My grandmother taught me sewing and needlework. I don't know, really. I think reading about specimens of Greek cloth dating from the seventh century B.C. tickled my fancy. Fabric that old-it was interesting. I began to notice how many illustrations of weaving and spinning were on vases, tapestries, friezes. Look at faerie tales and myths-Penelope, for instance, weaving her tapestry and taking out the threads every night. And the story of Rumpelstiltskin. The story was about a girl who could spin so well, she could spin straw into gold. Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on a spinning wheel's spindle. What that told me is that all through history, spinning and weaving were very important. Women spent all their spare time doing it. It was as economically important as agriculture. And no one was working on it, at least there were very few scholars."
So, you wanted to become one of the veryfew experts?
"I wanted to know more about it. We often think of our distant ancestors dressed in drab colors or in animal skins of one sort or another. But if you realize that they were dressed in very colorful cloths of indigo blues, vivid yellows, brilliant reds with names like dragon's bloodhow could anyone not be fascinated by that? It was a more colorful world than our images have allowed us to see, a more colorful world than many historians have painted for us."
Tell us about your family. Were they important in your career choices?
"They were very important. Not in the specific choices, but both of my parents are well educated and love reading and the arts. My father has all the classics in his library and he encouraged me and my brother to read all of them. His favorite is Dickens. He named our house Bleak House. I think that is as great a gift as any parent can give their child."
Do you do the same for your children?
"Of course...."
The article finished with a description of the fabric designs in the exhibit and with Shirley saying she would like to see a section of the museum devoted to cloth and the various instruments used through the ages to make it.
Lindsay replaced the clipping and looked for articles that mentioned Shirley's disappearance. There were many. The articles in the Athens Banner Herald and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that Shirley Foster had disappeared four years ago this past month. When she failed to show up at her parents' dinner party, they and her husband had called the police.
One of the last persons to see her was her secretary, Norma Henderson, who said she had waved good-bye to Dr. Foster as she went out the office door at 9:00 in the morning. Nothing seemed wrong. Dr. Foster said as she left that she was going first to Rabun County, then to a party in the evening. The police never discovered where in Rabun Coun
ty she was going. Related newspaper stories over the next several weeks said that she had disappeared without a trace, and neither she nor her car had been found, nor had any of her credit cards turned up. There had been no sus pects in her disappearance. The police suggested the possibility that she may have been abducted by a stranger somewhere in the mountains.
Lindsay made copies of the articles and left the library, then wondered to herself as she climbed into her Rover why she had bothered looking up anything on Shirley Foster. As soon as she finished with the bones, her part in the case would be over.
Lindsay drove home to meet Edgar Dante, John Booth's cousin. He looked enough like Booth to be his brother, except for the lighter shade of skin color, a thin moustache, and amazing green eyes. He brought with him a drilling machine, a truck loaded with pipe, another cousin, and two other helpers.
"Know where you want it?" he asked.
"I don't suppose there's any way you can tell where there's water?" she said.
Edgar grinned.
"Do you have a suggestion?" Lindsay looked at the land close to her house for a good place, which was hard, not knowing what a good place for a well looked like.
Edgar Dante also studied the terrain around her house, finally pointing to a spot. "I'd start there, if it was my well."
"Start?"
"I can't guarantee we'll hit water. I made that clear on the phone."
"Yes, you did."
"It's eight dollars a foot for the first hole. If it's a dry hole, the next one is six dollars a foot. I'm giving you a discount 'cause you know John."
"I appreciate it. How deep do you think the water will be?"
"Can't tell. Probably deeper than your other one. Is it drilled or bored?"
"Bored. It's thirty feet."
"If it's as little as thirty feet you're going to have yourself a real deal. But I wouldn't count on it. I dug a well for a guy about five miles from here." He pointed in the direction of her gate. "It was a hundred feet. That's not too bad, but it don't say nothing about your well. You never know what the rock formation is doing under the ground, which way it's going to go. I've got enough rods for a thousand feet." Lindsay winced as she multiplied. "We probably won't go that deep. Probably start another hole before we go that deep. I'll tell you if I think it's a dry hole. I won't go just running up the bill on you, even if you are a friend of John's."
Lindsay smiled weakly and watched as they connected the equipment and began to drill. At a little over a hundred feet they paused, inspected the bits of ground rock and dirt coming from the drilling, discussed among themselves, shook their heads, and continued drilling. At a hundred and fifty feet and no water, Lindsay began to get nervous. She bit her lower lip as she watched them work, glad now that she had accepted the consulting job from Will Patterson. She had just acquired the land next to hers, though it was mostly deep gullies and thick woods, because it was the source of the stream that ran through her property. The income from the Patterson job was to help restore her savings to good health. But now-
The sound of the drilling was so loud she didn't hear the truck drive up and was surprised to feel someone lay a hand on her shoulder.
"Well gone dry? Sony, didn't mean to startle you."
"Leigh-no, I'm sorry, I forgot you were coming today. And yes. It went dry."
"Lot of people building houses in the area, lowering the water table," he said.
"I irrigated the back pasture from the old well, too. I'm sure with the dry weather and everything else, it just put too much drain on it. I think the noise may have Mandrake a little upset," she added.
Leigh Bradley was Lindsay's vet, here to give her horse, Mandrake, his annual physical and round of shots. Lindsay had been suspicious of Leigh when she first saw him. He wore cowboy boots and a western shirt, giving her the feeling that he might be the kind of guy who has the attitude that you have to show a horse who's boss in order to control it. In Lindsay's eyes, this attitude did not make for a good vet and could ruin a good horse. She'd seen her mother send several vets with such an attitude packing. Over half of them wore cowboy boots. It didn't help that he was good-looking, either. Men that good-looking are often spoiled. Leigh, however, had discredited all of Lindsay's prejudices. He knew how to deal with horses gently, and he was very good with Mandrake.
"This is Brooke Einer," he said, introducing a petite, brown-eyed blonde in black jeans and a pink blouse covered by a black denim jacket. "She's interning with us."
"Hi," Brooke said, holding out her hand. "Leigh tells me you have a beautiful horse."
"I think so," said Lindsay, shaking Brooke's hand. She started to lead them to the stable when Edgar Dante came over to her.
"We're down another hundred feet. We're going to break for lunch now." Lindsay saw the men bring out brown bags and Thermoses. "Okay if we eat here?"
"Of course," Lindsay told him. "Can you stop the drilling while you eat? My vet's here to examine my horse and the noise has him a little upset."
"Sure, we can do that," said Dante.
She led Leigh and Brooke to the stable where she had put up Mandrake while the drilling was going on. The stable was her father's portion of her birthday present. He had sent a check to help her build it. It was larger than her house, with three stalls on either side of a wide throughway and a loft on one end for hay. One stall was a tack room, another was a small bedroom in case she needed to stay with her horse some nights. The other three were for visitors. Occasionally, Susan or another friend brought a horse over and they rode together.
"He is beautiful," said Brooke, stroking his nose.
Mandrake pawed the floor of his stall and moved his head up and down. Lindsay went into the stall, talked to him in a low voice, stroking his black velvet neck gently. She clipped a lead to his halter and led him out.
"He does seem a little edgy," said Leigh, brushing the horse's nose with his hand and rubbing his neck before feeling his legs.
"He doesn't like being put up, either," said Lindsay.
Leigh deftly examined Mandrake, explaining to Brooke what he was doing and why.
"He's fit, as always," pronounced Leigh. "Brooke, if you'll get the vaccines, we'll finish up." Brooke went to the truck and brought back the shots for Mandrake, who stamped his hooves and gave a long whinny. "Don't like what's coming, do you, boy?"
"Should I get the twitch?" asked Brooke.
"No," said Leigh.
"My uncle's a vet, and he says that with an unruly horse you have to make it clear who's the boss, especially with stallions."
Lindsay looked at Brooke's feet. Running shoes.
"I'll tell you who's boss: Dr. Chamberlain here, and if she finds us twitching her horse there'll be hell to pay." Leigh measured the dosage into the syringe and gave Mandrake his shots. "There, that wasn't so bad," he said, rubbing the spot. "Mandrake never gets unruly. Do you, boy?" He patted his neck. "He's the best-trained horse I've ever seen. You want to show Brooke how he does on his imaginary longe?"
Lindsay led Mandrake outside to the paddock area and unhooked his lead. She held out her arm as though she were holding a longe line attached to Mandrake's halter and clicked her tongue. He began trotting in a circle around Lindsay as she turned so that she always faced him. "Canter," she said in a low voice. Mandrake sped up into a canter for a turn around Lindsay. "Change," she said, and he changed leads, from his right to his left, and cantered one more time around before she gave him the command to stop.
"That's amazing," said Brooke.
"Yep," Leigh said. "As you can see, Mandrake is not an unruly horse. With all due respect to your uncle, you never need to show a horse who's boss. It's all in knowing how to interact with them. Some people can, and some people can't."
Lindsay was surprised at the sharp edge to Leigh's voice. Apparently, he was fed up with Brooke and her uncle. Lindsay would be surprised if Brooke was offered a position at Leigh's clinic when she graduated.
They drove away, and Lindsay r
eturned Mandrake to his stall just as the well drillers started up again. They were at 300 feet and still drilling. She stood and listened to them talk about such and such a well where they had to go 600 feet. She wanted to groan. At 320 feet, they struck another vein of granite, and gray rock dust bubbled up from the ground with mud from the water they used in the drilling process. At 350 feet, she paced. At 360, she stopped and watched, holding her breath as they put on another rod.
Chapter 3
AT 370 FEET water came gushing out of the ground like a geyser, wetting all of them. Lindsay let out her breath in a big sigh of relief and watched them take a bucket and stopwatch and measure the flow. Dante came over to Lindsay, grinning.
"Good news is you've got about thirty gallons a minute. That's more than the pump will handle, so water pressure should never be a problem."
"Don't tell me there's bad news," she said.
He held out a glass jar with rust-colored water. "You need to have it analyzed. It looks like you have an iron problem. It's common all through this part of the country. I can give you the number of a place that installs water filters."
Lindsay took the jar and stared at the water. "That deep, you'd think it would be pure," she said.
"It's good water. Just has some minerals that need to be filtered out. Right now, we'll put a sleeve down to the rock and drop the pump and wiring down the well-" He stopped and listened to one of his men who had yelled something to him. "Looks like the water level is up to forty feet," he said. "That's some pressure behind it. That's good. We'll drop the pump about 150 feet."
Somewhere, Lindsay thought, the water level for that aquifer is a mere forty feet under the surface. She wondered where that was.
Lindsay went inside and looked up the address of the place on campus where she could get her water analyzed. When Dante finished, he knocked on her door with the bill.
"You can pay it in two installments, if you want," he said.
Lindsay glanced over the bill: 370 feet of drilling, water pump, wiring, sleeve, and labor. She took a deep breath and wrote out a check for $2,100.
Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel Page 3