Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  "The only thing I've ever heard him talk about with my dad is politics. They are of like minds. I've been to his home for dinner, and he does have antique furniture in his house. But you mentioned antiquities. You mean like Greek or Chinese vases?"

  "Something like that. Or Native American artifacts?"

  "No, I haven't seen anything like that in his house or heard him express any interest. Except I know he's complained to Dad about the amount of space the university uses to store Indian artifacts."

  "Yeah, we've heard that, too."

  Chris smiled. "I don't think he likes things like that. He's more of a hard-science kind of guy, I think. If you don't mind my asking, just why do you want to know these things? Thinking of buying him a gift?"

  Lindsay shook her head. "Hardly. He, well ... look, I know he's your friend."

  "He's Mom and Dad's friend. Like I said, he's a science guy. I'm an art guy. I've never figured why they put Arts and Sciences together in the same college. They should be separate-a College of Arts and a College of Sciences."

  "And a College of Humanities?"

  "Yeah, that, too. Keep all those science people from complaining about all us arts and humanities people. So, what's the story on your interest in Einer?"

  "Have you read the papers lately?"

  "What about, in particular?"

  "About me."

  "Yes, I've seen a few articles," he said. "Must be tough."

  "Especially since I haven't yet received my contract renewal for next year."

  "Because of the articles? Most of the stuff I've read is just speculation."

  "There are a lot of changes going on involving my department, and that's part of the reason for the delay. But the accusations-or speculations-haven't done my prospects any good at all."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Where does Ellis figure into this?"

  The waitress brought their food and Lindsay waited until she left before she continued. "He's the one accusing me."

  Chris raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

  "He says it's because he thinks I'm spending money beyond my means. I believe it's to throw the trail off himself or someone else he is trying to protect."

  "I find that hard to believe." Chris didn't look cross or cool, but sympathetic-and skeptical.

  "Everyone finds it hard to believe, but there is no other reason for him to cast blame on me. The police are looking only at me. If I don't get to the bottom of this, no one will, and I'll be the one to suffer. The artifacts haven't shown up anywhere, except those that were planted to cast suspicion on me. I'm hoping they're hidden somewhere until they can be moved. Let's suppose for a moment that Einer is behind the thefts. Do you know if he has a place he might store stolen antiquities-a mini-warehouse, a summer house? How about a basement?"

  Chris shook his head. "I don't know the answer to that. He does have a basement, but his wife and daughter live in the house. They would run across a cache of stolen goods, don't you think? Unless you believe they're in on it with him."

  He thought she was paranoid. Lindsay shook her head. "No. I doubt it. I know I'm grasping at straws, but the artifacts are somewhere. For a while they were stored on campus."

  "Perhaps they still are. There are a lot of possibilities on campus, and the university owns property all over the state. If it's true and Ellis is the one, then he conceivably could have access to any number of storage sites anywhere in the state of Georgia."

  Lindsay sighed. "You're right. I didn't think of that. I suppose it's hopeless."

  Chris reached across the table and took her hand. "Nothing's hopeless. I tell you what, Mom and Dad are playing bridge over at his house tomorrow evening. I'll tag along and have a look around. He does have a garage apartment they sometimes rent out to students."

  Lindsay shook her head. "No. If I'm right and Einer is the one, then he may also be a murderer."

  "What?" He let go of her hand.

  "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

  "Since you have, what are you talking about?"

  "Did you read about the campus policeman who was murdered?"

  "Yes."

  "He was looking for the artifacts, and he was the one Einer was telling that I was a suspect. I believe his death had something to do with the missing artifacts."

  "I don't believe Einer would do that. He's a bit disagreeable, but murder?"

  "I know. I have a hard time visualizing it, too, but if it is true, you don't need to be caught snooping around."

  Chris smiled. "He won't do anything while my parents are there."

  "You're making fun of me."

  "A little."

  "I know I must sound like a paranoid lunatic."

  He smiled, looked away, then back at her, still smiling, as if she were funny instead of crazy. "A very charming paranoid lunatic. Seriously. I see your reasoning. It's just that I can't believe he'd commit murder." Chris took her hand again and rubbed a thumb across the back of it. "I'll do what I can. After all, I owe you."

  "For what?"

  "I'm sorry for putting the idea in my folks' heads about hiring another forensic expert. In view of what's going on in your life right now, you don't need your credibility questioned any further."

  "No, you were right about a second opinion. Anything that will give them some peace. And you don't owe me anything."

  Chris squeezed her hand gently and let it go. They ate and talked about the exhibition Chris was putting together. "It's called `Me and My Sister.' It will be mostly my work and hers. I thought it might help Mom and Dad, and me, too. Shirley gave me a lot of support and believed in me when no one else did. I'm doing well, and I owe much of it to her and her faith in me."

  After dinner, Chris walked Lindsay to her Explorer, parked two cars down from his. "Maybe we can do this again," he said.

  "Maybe we can. You've been very nice about this," said Lindsay.

  Like Irene, Chris was very different away from the people who pushed his buttons. He looked at Lindsay for a moment, then kissed her cheek.

  Back in her office with the door closed, Lindsay laid her head on her arms on her desk. She was almost never sleepy during the day but now felt like she could sleep through the whole mess and not wake up until it was over. The sudden ringing of the phone made her jump. She picked up the receiver as if it were a snake.

  "Lindsay, this is Anne."

  Lindsay rubbed her forehead. "What do you want, Anne?"

  "Steven and I have proof."

  "Proof of what?"

  "Proof that the Indian relics belong to us. Your father, Edward, gave us the proof. I don't think he knew it, though." She had a slight chuckle in her voice.

  "What's your proof?"

  "When your father opened one of the crates, he found Dad's knife. It had his name carved on the bone handle as pretty as you please. Your dad gave it to Mom. We just now found out about it."

  Lindsay sat up straight. "Knife?"

  "His big hunting knife."

  "How big?"

  "What?"

  "Was it as long as, say, a ruler?"

  "Yes. What does that have to do with anything? You aren't going to sidetrack me, Lindsay."

  As Anne spoke, Lindsay opened her desk drawer and pulled out the Kentucky newspaper and spread it open on her desk. She looked closely at a stain that she'd seen on it the first time she looked through the paper, but hadn't paid much conscious attention to. She had thought it was a smudge. Now she saw the pattern of the stain, two dark shapes side by side. The left shape was more or less rectangular, the right shape was like an arrowhead, and the bottom edge of each faded away. It was a pattern she'd seen before, the pattern made when someone takes a bloody knife in his hand and wipes the blade with a cloth, or in this case, a newspaper. An arrowhead on the right indicates the person held the knife in the right hand; an arrowhead on the left means the knife was held in the left. This stain had been made by a person holding the paper in the right hand and the knife in the left. This was a left-h
anded person.

  Uncle Billy's knife was in the crate, Uncle Billy was left-handed. She wondered if that particular newspaper, the one with Creasey's false obituary, was used on purpose, as a clue, or perhaps as irony. Oh, Anne, she thought.

  "You listening to me, Lindsay?"

  "Yes, I'm sorry, Anne. I was just surprised."

  "We thought you would be." Anne sounded very satisfied. "He's right here. You talk to him, he'll tell you."

  "Who?" asked Lindsay. "Dad?"

  "No, Lindsay Chamberlain. Dodd ... Malcolm Dodd. He's the rest of the proof. Are you listening?"

  The gravelly voice of an old man came on the phone. "Miss Chamberlain?" he said.

  "Yes. Are you the Malcolm Dodd who brought Henry Creasey out of the mine after the explosion?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I am. That was a long time ago. I'm eighty-five now; I was about twenty or twenty-one at the time. How'd you know about that?"

  "I've been reading about it in old newspapers."

  "That was a bad thing. A lot of good men was killed in that explosion."

  "Did you know Henry Creasey well?" asked Lindsay.

  "Not real well. Him and his people kept to themselves mostly. I worked with him on some things. That's what Steven and Anne want me to talk to you about."

  Lindsay relaxed in her chair as he began his story.

  "That was back during the Great Depression. Everybody was poor then. Me and my brothers went squirrel hunting every Sunday when we wasn't working in the mines. Mama would go out with my sisters and pick wild plants. There's plenty of wild food you can eat." Lindsay heard someone urging him on in the background. "I'm getting to it," he said to them.

  "Take your time," Lindsay said.

  "Thank you, ma'am. Anyways, we was poor, but Creasey and his people was what you called dirt poor. Henry told me that he used to eat a handful of clay every morning before he come to work in the mines so's his stomach wouldn't hurt from hunger. We'd sell anything back then. Me and Willard-that's my brother-used to go to where the drunks hung out and we'd collect their bottles. We'd sell 'em to the bootleggers for a nickel a bottle, sometimes the same bottle over and over. Henry found out about how to look for Indian relics. You'd go to where there was an Indian burial ground, take a rod and push it into the ground. It had a certain feel when it hit some bone or a pot, then we'd dig it up."

  "I'm familiar with the practice," Lindsay said.

  "Well, he found that there'd be people who'd pay pretty good money for these relics. So, that's what we'd do on Sundays, me and Henry, when we wasn't in the mines." Dodd stopped talking a moment.

  "Go on, tell her," Lindsay heard Steven say.

  "Well, we found out it was a lot less work if we let the archaeologists dig the stuff up first, and then, well, we'd, uh, take it from them. I had a hard time with that, so I didn't go with him much, but Henry got real good at it. He gathered a whole lot of relics and hid them in the played out part of the mine we was workin'. He was going to sell the lot of them when the accident happened and he got bad hurt."

  "How did the explosion happen?"

  "I don't know. Henry said it was Lonnie Cross what did it, but I knowed Lonnie and he wouldn't do nothing like that. Some said it was Henry did it, but I don't know. He got hurt hisself, and he knowed about dynamite; that was his job."

  "The newspaper said he died."

  "I know it said that, but they was wrong. He didn't. He may have put it in the papers hisself. He was always dodging something. I saw him when he was mostly mended. He said he got work with the CCC down in Macon, Georgia, to the place where archaeologists was diggin'. He was going to meet somebody who was going to buy his relics for a lot of money."

  "Do you know who that person was?"

  "He told me it was Billy MacRae. He said Billy had a brother-in-law who was an archaeologist and they'd pay good money to get the relics back. The idea was that Henry would sell them to Billy and Billy would sell them to the archaeologist. They'd both make money off it. Henry thought it was funny, selling the relics back to the people he'd stole them from in the first place."

  "So, Henry Creasey met Billy MacRae in Macon?"

  "I reckoned that he did. I didn't hear from him again after that."

  Lindsay heard shuffling noises, like the phone was being transferred to someone else. "You heard him, Lindsay," said Steven. "You heard him say that our father bought those Indian treasures."

  "I also heard him say that he was going to sell them to his brother-in-law-which was Papaw," Lindsay said.

  "If he'd done that, your papaw would've put them in the university, wouldn't he? No, Daddy bought the relics and stored them in the shed where they stayed for these sixtyodd years. Those are our Indian treasures, Lindsay Chamberlain, and me and Anne want them or the money."

  "Well it's a moot point at the moment, Steven, because I don't know where they are. When they turn up you can take your proofs to the state and deal with them. The artifacts aren't mine to turn over to you."

  "This is proof, Lindsay. Daddy's knife was there with them. You heard Malcom Dodd's testimony. That's proof."

  Lindsay sighed. "It might be, Steven, but I'm not the one you need to talk to. I have no authority over them whatsoever. Go to your lawyer and ask him to take it up with the state."

  "Then you admit it's proof," Steven persisted.

  "It's proof of something," Lindsay said. She heard the telephone change hands again.

  "Maybe we'll take it to the newspapers," said Anne. "Get public opinion on our side. It's a good story. They'll print it."

  "Anne," said Lindsay, "have you forgotten about the skeleton found with the artifacts?"

  "What about it?" she said.

  "You don't think the newspapers'll be interested in that?"

  "Just one of the burials. That's what the newspapers say."

  "What?"

  "I have it right here. It says that maybe the skeleton is an Indian burial that was wrapped in old clothes to protect the bones."

  Lindsay groaned. That was the story Sinjin gave Maggie. She must have given it to a reporter. "It's not an Indian burial."

  "So you say. It's right here in the newspaper."

  "How did you find Malcolm Dodd?" Lindsay asked.

  "Me and Steven took out an ad in the papers. You asked Steven if he knew anyone by the name of Creasey, and we figured it was important. We asked if anybody knowed a Creasey or a MacRae back during the depression that had something to do with Indian relics. There'd be something in it for them if they came forward. Mr. Dodd answered. You aren't the only smart member of the family, Lindsay Chamberlain."

  Lindsay smiled. "No, apparently not. That was very clever, Anne."

  Lindsay could almost see Anne's satisfied countenance as she hung up the phone. Lindsay drummed her fingers on her desk. "Well, Papaw, I suppose that's it," she said to the photograph of her grandfather. "I've done my best. If Steven and Anne go to the newspapers, at least it may come out that you wanted to buy back the artifacts for the university."

  Lindsay replaced the Kentucky newspaper in the box with the other old papers in which the artifacts had been wrapped and taped the box closed. She wrote a note to the authorities in Kentucky where the skeleton was shipped, explaining where the newspapers came from and that they might hold evidence related to the identity of the skeleton. They will just have to figure it out, she thought to herself.

  She made a label and took the box up to the main office and asked the secretaries to let it go out with the next mail. Then she went home, putting the skeleton out of her mind and concentrating on where the artifacts might be located.

  She drove home the back way. It was more scenic than the main route and there were fewer cars on the road. It took longer, but she preferred it. Asking Chris about Einer was a long shot. She wasn't sure she had learned anything useful from the meeting, at least nothing she hadn't already known about him. She knew he wouldn't keep the artifacts on his property. If he had them and they were still in town
, they were probably somewhere on campus. However, as Chris had pointed out, the university owned a lot of buildings all over the state. The artifacts could be sitting in any one of them, labeled with something like Fredrickson Foundation. Or he could have sold them to a private collector, in which case she would probably never discover their location.

  What a mess Creasey created all those years ago. What a mess her grandfather had left her with. Were the stolen artifacts connected with the death of Kaufman'? And what was Kaufman doing with her letter opener? It should have been in the property room along with the box of artifacts. The box of artifacts-Lindsay wondered if it was missing also. The police would know, but they wouldn't tell her. What would Kaufman have been doing with them? Could he have been in on it? Lindsay wondered, not for the first time. That would be an avenue of investigation she would just have to set aside for a while. Now that Kaufman was dead, she couldn't accuse him and expect any cooperation from the police.

  Sinjin was at home when she arrived. "I thought you were going out with Sally," she said, settling on the couch and kicking off her shoes.

  "I took her home early so she could study for a test."

  "You got my message, didn't you?"

  "Yes. How did your dinner with Chris go?"

  "It was nice. I didn't find out any information, but I had a good time. He's really a nice guy."

  "Sally told me about your conversation with that guy Einer. It's all over the department."

  "I'm sure it is. I thought he needed shaking up."

  "From what I hear, you did a good job of that."

  "Well, I still haven't solved anything, but maybe he'll get nervous and do something rash."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," said Sinjin. "Something rash might be something dangerous."

  "I got another call from Anne and Steven today," Lindsay said, changing the subject. She related the conversation to him. "It looks like your hypothesis was correct. Billy did it with a knife in the cornfield. He probably lured Creasey down to Macon to meet with him with the promise of buying the artifacts. Since Lonnie was his half brother and they didn't have the same name, Creasey probably wasn't suspicious. Maybe they got in a fight or maybe Billy just took his revenge. Anyway, it's done. I sent the newspapers to the authorities in Kentucky. They have all the evidence I have, if they choose to pursue it."