Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel

by Beverly Connor

  "Einer stored the artifacts at your factory?" Lindsay was having trouble seeing how all the parts fit together.

  "I asked myself, Why in the world would he want to use my space, when he has so much to choose from on campus, unless he thought campus was too hot?"

  "Is his daughter in it with him, do you think?"

  Chris shook his head. "I don't think so. To tell you the truth, I don't think he would trust her. I like Brooke, but she's a bit of a gossip."

  Lindsay had to agree with that. "She wouldn't tell her father that you asked her about the space, would she?"

  "I don't know. That would be short notice to move everything, though."

  "I was thinking of Detective Kaufman. His death, I believe, had something to do with the artifact theft."

  "I didn't think of that. Okay, here's what we'll do. We can see the parking area from the road. If anyone's there, we'll just drive by. Otherwise, we'll go in and wait for the police."

  Chris's old glass factory was about five miles out of town. He explained to Lindsay on the way that the factory used to belong to Tom Foster. Shirley and Tom had given it to him as a Christmas gift during better times, after Tom had built his new plant.

  "Nice gift," Lindsay commented.

  "I'll say. I renovated it for my use. I'm planning some more work on it. I'm doing well enough to hire someone to run my gallery downtown, and I can get back to making glass sculpture, which is what I really like best."

  The factory was a windowless cement-block building with a metal roof. From the front, Lindsay could see only one door. Just around the corner, on the right side of the building, Chris told her, was a larger garage door leading to the storage room. "That's where the artifacts are, if they're there," he said. There was no sign of anyone in the parking lot, so he drove up to the front entrance.

  "I gave Brooke my key to the storage room," he said as he unlocked the front door. "It has a separate lock, and I'm not sure I have another key. We may have to break in."

  They walked into a small entrance that probably had once been a reception area. Now it was an empty room with brown paneled walls and a green carpet with brighter color in the places where the furniture had sat.

  Chris led Lindsay through a door and switched on the light. This room was an office with an oak desk in one corner and a large tan leather sofa along one wall. An oval glass-topped coffee table sat in front of the sofa. The light wood-grain paneling was of a more expensive style than that covering the walls of the reception area. The floor was done in emerald green and black tiles, with a design that looked almost like gemstones.

  "Nice office," Lindsay said.

  Chris tried the door to the storage room. It was locked. He opened a couple of drawers in the desk. "I may have some extra keys somewhere," he said. "I'll go look. Make yourself at home. There's a bathroom in the corner." He left by the door opposite the one they had entered.

  Lindsay sat down on the leather sofa, then rose and walked around the office restlessly. There was a picture on the wall next to the desk. It was of Chris and Shirley standing in front of their parents' house. They favored each other. There was a phone on the desk. She thought she had better call Will Patterson and tell him she would be late. She picked up the receiver. There was no dial tone. She put the phone back in its cradle, exhaled impatiently, and looked at the photograph again. They were both smiling, looking happy. Chris must have been, what, about twentysix or twenty-seven when it was taken? Nice, old white house, she thought. Bleak House, their father had named it. Lindsay wasn't much of a Dickens fan. His stories were too bleak. She smiled to herself. She had liked A Tale of Two Cities. Bleak House. One of the characters in Bleak House died of spontaneous combustion. Creepy coincidence.

  Like an old movie showing in her mind, she saw Stewart Pryor come into his den when she and Sinjin had visited them, wearing his smoking jacket. Lindsay told him it was beautiful. "It is, isn't it. Shirley made it," he said. "She wove the fabric herself. She made several for me-different ones for special occasions." He patted his pockets and found them empty. He walked to the mantel, took several matches from a crystal jar, and slipped them into his jacket pocket. The movie switched reels and Fred MacMurray was giving Edward G. Robinson yet another match from his pocket, asking why he didn't carry his own. "I tried that," Robinson said, "and the damn things kept exploding in my pocket." Then Lindsay heard Stewart Pryor say, "Shirley made me a beautiful Christmas jacket. Dyed it herself to get a special color of red. It was on display at the museum. Some damn fool lost it."

  Lindsay heard a gasp, then realized that it was her own voice. She spun around and came face to face with Chris. His charming smile was gone. "I was with Will when you called. I knew you were on your way to figuring it out when you called and asked if Shirley knew Gloria Rankin."

  Chapter 26

  "THE POLICE AREN'T coming, are they?" Lindsay said.

  Chris laughed. "No."

  "You're a really good liar," she said, willing her eyes to look at him and not at the door she wanted to run to.

  "Yes, I am. For a lie to be convincing, you have to add a little truth here and there to give it credibility."

  Bolt, said something in Lindsay's brain, and she ran for the door they had entered. She made it, but it was locked. She turned around, ready to defend herself, but he hadn't moved. He didn't need to. He knew she couldn't get out.

  "That's why it was so hard to find out who killed Shirley. She wasn't the target, was she?" Lindsay remembered the police dragging Shirley's car from the lake, and the soggy disintegrating gift box that was in the trunk. "Shirley must have been returning her father's smoking jacket, the red Christmas one, dyed with dragon's blood. But it was cold waiting for Will at the lake that night, and she put it on. You had intended to kill your father."

  "At least toast him a little," Chris said. His calm demeanor frightened Lindsay all the more.

  "What had you planned? That he would be sitting in front of the fireplace sometime during the Christmas season, maybe talking to Shirley, and suddenly a spark from the fire, his pipe, or maybe a spilled drink, and he'd spontaneously combust?"

  "That was the plan. A little ill-conceived, I know. I wanted him to die like Mr. Crook in Bleak House. It seemed fitting."

  "You must hate your father."

  "Of course I hate him. He made me miserable all my life, and Shirley, too. We could never do anything to suit him. He just wouldn't leave me alone."

  "But you killed Shirley instead, by mistake."

  Chris wavered visibly. "Yes. That was the last thing I wanted. I loved my sister."

  "But you were willing to allow her to watch her father go up in flames?"

  "No, I didn't intend it that way. Shirl was supposed to be out of town during the two weeks before Christmas. I was going to arrange for him to get the jacket back while she was out of town. She wouldn't have been there. Anyway, I was never sure I would go through with it. I liked the irony and the justice of it. I liked carrying it out to the extent of treating the jacket, and having that magic coat in a box was like some secret power."

  "Using his own petroleum products in the formula," said Lindsay. "I imagine that was satisfying, too."

  "And handy," he said.

  "You buried Shirley, didn't you?" Lindsay said.

  "Yes. The hardest thing I ever did." His eyes seemed to mist over, but it may have been the light.

  "And took the money?"

  "Yes. That was easy." He seemed to recover. He looked confident again.

  Shirley was his weak spot. Maybe there was a way she could use it.

  "How did you find her?"

  "I knew she was meeting Will. She confided in me-we were close. I discovered the box was missing from the office here. She must have found it and taken it. She probably figured I'd picked it up from the museum and forgotten to take it home. It scared me at first, but then I thought, what irony-Shirley would deliver the magic jacket for me. I wouldn't even be connected. And I could always
steal it again before Dad wore it if I had second thoughts. Then she didn't return from the lake. I went out there, but I was too late. I never dreamed Shirl would put it on. You're right. It must have been cold out there by the lake and she had forgotten her own jacket." He was silent for several moments, staring past Lindsay back to that moment by the lake. He blinked, then turned his attention back to Lindsay.

  She searched for something else to say to keep him talking. "Luke Ferris will probably go to jail for her murder, and he tried to save her."

  "Life's tough sometimes."

  Lindsay glanced at the coffee table and noticed the handcuffs. When she looked back at him, Chris held a gun.

  "So," said Lindsay, "you left Will's office and came looking for me. Lucky for you I walked."

  "If I hadn't run across you, I'd have waited near his office and enticed you away with promise of the artifacts."

  Lindsay glanced at the storage room door. "The whole story about Brooke Einer was a ruse to get me out here. The artifacts aren't there."

  "Oh, they're there."

  Lindsay looked back, open-mouthed. "You took them?"

  Chris smiled a pleased-with-himself smile. "I'm afraid so."

  "Einer had nothing to do with them?"

  "Oh, yes. We have a nice little business together. I have the contacts; he has the access." He picked up the handcuffs and opened them.

  "Put these on. You can cuff yourself in front. But put them on tight. I don't want you slipping out of them."

  "I'll just knock you out and do it myself, if you don't. I know you probably won't believe me, but I like you and I hate doing this. I even had this fantasy-well, I won't tell you about it. It was nothing kinky or anything like that, just nice."

  Lindsay put the handcuffs on her wrists. "What are you going to do to me?"

  "First, I want you to write a letter. I'll let you compose it in your own style."

  "A suicide note?"

  "No, it's a letter to a prospective antiquities buyer. I have a letter for you to use as a model." He fished in the pocket of his jeans. "I must have left it in the car."

  Lindsay needed to stall for time, time to think of an escape plan. She should be getting good at it by now. No one knew where they were, but Will was expecting her. Maybe by some miracle he'd get suspicious because Chris left in a rush-he must have-when she called. When she didn't show up, maybe he'd start thinking. Thinking what? That the two things were connected? A long shot, but she needed hope almost as much as she needed a good plan. Unless Will was in on it, too. That thought made her sick.

  "So, Einer is in on it. Who else? It won't hurt to satisfy my curiosity."

  "No, it won't. Just me and Einer."

  "Not any of my students?"

  "No."

  "And not Will Patterson?"

  Chris shook his head. "No, not Will."

  "Did you lock me in the basement of Nancy Hart?"

  "No. Einer did that. That was a close call. It scared him. He was coming to move boxes of artifacts, and there you were in the room. Now, I'm going to my car, and I'll be back in a jiffy. You'll be safe in here. There's nothing for you to get into, and the doors will be locked. Don't try to use the phone. I disconnected it a minute ago."

  He left Lindsay in the room alone. As soon as the door was shut, she flew over to the desk and opened the drawers, looking for anything. There was nothing in the top drawer but antique and art catalogs and some packages of salt and pepper from a takeout place. She tried another drawer. Nothing whatsoever of use. She opened the bottom drawer and found a squirt gun. Why couldn't it have been a real one? She also found a wig, camisole, white lace garter belt, and hose.

  "What?" she murmured. Then she got it. Dr. Frank N. Furter, of course. Chris was the one who attacked Sally. Lindsay dropped the items as if they were snakes. Her handcuffs clanked against the drawer. Handcuffs. They were probably Kaufman's. She thought she might throw up.

  The rattle of the doorknob made her slam the drawer shut and sit up in the chair. When Chris entered, she realized how hard she had been wishing it was someone else. He handed her a letter and a pen, opened one of the drawers of the desk, pulled out a blank piece of paper, and laid it in front of her.

  "Write one similar to this one."

  "What does it say?"

  "It says you know of this gentleman's interest in acquiring rare Indian artifacts, and you have some to sell. List enclosed. Address it to Palmer Brewster."

  "One of your business associates?"

  Chris chuckled. "Hardly. I wouldn't name one of my own contacts. No, he's more of a competitor. Your letter will identify him to the authorities at the same time that it implicates you in the illicit trade. Kind of clever, don't you think?"

  "Brilliant," Lindsay said sarcastically. "Then what are you going to do?"

  "Just one step at a time. Take all the time you need. I probably would." The expression on his face was sympa thetic. Lindsay wanted to slap him. His gaze shifted to the bottom drawer. Part of the wig was sticking out of it. "I see you've been going through the drawers."

  "You're the one who attacked my graduate assistant."

  "I was at the Tate Center with a friend-Brooke, if you want to know. I saw your student, and I wanted to send you a message you would take seriously."

  "These are Detective Kaufman's handcuffs, I assume. He came to see you with a box of artifacts, didn't he? That's what that call to you was about the night he was killed. He checked the artifact box out of the property room, probably just wanted your advice. Did he see something he shouldn't have?"

  "That getup, actually." Chris pointed the gun at the drawer. "He was working on the assault case, too. He put two and two together rather quickly-I'm an art dealer with a silly costume who sells to collectors, someone in a silly costume threatened your student to stop your investigation into stolen artifacts. Dad was always trying to get me to think quickly and act decisively. That's what I did. I shot Kaufman. I had to."

  Keep him talking, thought Lindsay. Please, let somebody be looking for me. "And you put my letter opener in the gunshot wound. Are you the one who stole the letter opener from my office?"

  "Yes. I saw it. It had your name on it. Einer thought it was a good idea to try and blame the theft of the artifacts on you and your brother. The Classics Department and the library would notice their missing antiquities sooner or later, so would the Archaeology Department. You were a made-to-order suspect. You had access; you were in all the right places."

  "Gloria figured it out and was coming to tell me. That was a chancy thing, pushing her in front of a bus with her umbrella," Lindsay said.

  "You did have it all put together, didn't you? I didn't set out to be a serial killer, but it does get easier. Now, if your curiosity is satisfied, you had better get to writing."

  "One more thing. Why, after all the years of living with your parents, did you feel you had to kill your father? You were on your own, you had your own business. You were doing okay, weren't you? I know you borrowed money, but..."

  "Yeah, I was doing better than okay. But you're right, it was the loan. Can't you figure it out?"

  "I know your dad was trying to buy your loan."

  Chris waved his hand, encouraging her. "And? Go on."

  Lindsay remembered Stewart Pryor bragging about how he could manage money. "If he bought out your loan, he could foreclose and become the owner of your business," Lindsay said. "And he would find out about your trade in antiquities. You've been laundering your illegal income through your gallery."

  Chris's voice was cold and somber. "Damn, you are good. I knew you had all the pieces." Then he exhaled, his shoulders slumped, and his mood changed. "He couldn't leave me alone. I had my own business, and he just wouldn't let me be. He and Mom were such control freaks. Einer and I had a good thing going. I was having to work hard borrowing money to cover for the fact that I had plenty. I like nice things. If I bought a nice car or something, I had to listen to a lecture from Mom and Dad about m
anaging my money and my responsibility to my creditors. But I was handling everything. Dad had this hair up his butt about taking over my loan. He would have had his hands all over my business, and I couldn't have that. He'd find out, and worse than that, Shirley would find out. I had the money, but if I went ahead and paid off the loan from Mom, there would be questions about where I got the cash. In my business, I can't have questions." He turned to go. "Write the letter."

  "You don't have to kill me." Lindsay tried hard not to let her voice crack. "If you were with Will when I called, he must have told you that I said Shirley's death could have been an accident. You can move the artifacts, and it would all be my word against yours." She wanted to say she wouldn't tell, but he wouldn't believe her.

  "Nice try, but no. Mom and Dad would always look at me funny, wondering if I killed Shirley. I can't have that. They can't ever know. Since she's been gone, Dad's stopped nagging me. Both of them have been depending on me. I'm not going back to the way things were-to worse than they were. I can't do that."

  "Then do me a favor."

  "What's that?" He was getting impatient. Lindsay didn't want that.

  "Write an anonymous letter to my brother. Tell him the truth about me being dead. Please don't leave him wondering."

  He stopped dead still, silent for several seconds. Lindsay could see his indecision, if she just knew how to keep it going. Why hadn't she become a psychologist?

  "I will." He turned and left Lindsay alone to write the letter.

  When the door was closed, she searched the drawers again. Nothing helpful. She had a germ of an idea about the squirt gun. She took it and a couple of packages of salt to the bathroom and filled the toy with hot water, put the salt in, shook it, and put it in her jacket pocket.

  She tried soaping her hands and slipping the handcuffs off. But they wouldn't come off, no matter how she tried bending her thumbs or pulling on the cuffs. She stopped and listened. She heard Chris knocking around in the adjoining room where she guessed he worked with the glass, and wondered what he was doing. She gave the bathroom a quick look as she was drying her hands. Nothing useful there.