by Dana Cameron
Police sources, in the early stages of the investigation, state that they have not ruled out the possibility of a connection to Mr. Whiting’s business—
Whoa! I thought. It was her father’s Dumpster? My skin crawled and I looked around me apprehensively. At just that moment, Dean Avery came around the corner, heading back to the site. I froze, hoping that the breeze wouldn’t rattle the newspaper, even though I wasn’t entirely certain why I didn’t want him to see me. He didn’t look down the street to where my bench was, and I watched him walk directly to the site.
I turned back to the article, but things were still very sketchy. No details were being released from the autopsy pending conclusive results, etc., but the cause of Julia’s death had been suffocation. The only thing that had been positively ruled out was suicide; her wallet was missing, suggesting the possibility of a mugging.
The lack of details was infuriating. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have paid so much attention to the death of a stranger, but I wanted to help Jane. It was only the last paragraph, a plea for information on behalf of the police, that gave me anything substantial to think about:
Miss Whiting was believed to have left her work on the Church Street archaeological site at five o’clock the evening before her death: she did not return to it. Saturday, she is reported to have visited her parents at Green Cross Road and told them that she intended to visit the Grub and Cabbage Pub. She was seen leaving the public house, but her whereabouts from then until the time of her death are unknown. She was last seen wearing black jeans and a red jumper. Anyone with information should contact Detective Chief Inspector Rhodes at Hewett Street—
I folded up the newspaper quickly and stuffed it into my back pocket. I’d been away from the site too long already, but I dawdled heading back. It seemed impossible that this was just an accident, a chance mugging; there were just too many connections close to home. And suffocation? That was by no means an impersonal mugger. Julia had died, practically on her own doorstep, metaphysically speaking, and that must be where the police were going to focus their efforts. I thought briefly about contacting Dave Stannard, but dismissed that idea quickly: he hated when I got involved in these sorts of investigations. Besides, the sheriff of a small Maine county would have no influence with the police here.
The other thing that kept me from walking quickly back to the site was the thought of all the sudden connections there to Julia. But wait—what if the intended victim had been Jane, and not Julia? Given their similarities of appearance and manner, mightn’t it be possible that the murderer had mistaken student for professor?
I shivered, slowed even more, then finally stopped. Given the disappearance of Trevor and the photographs of Julia in the darkroom—and, I had to admit, the impenetrable wall between Greg and Jane—it was just possible that there were some undercurrents that wouldn’t bear too much scrutiny. But that was exactly what I had to do: explore those possibilities. And the best way to do that, I decided, was to start with the crew. At the pub. That evening.
I glanced at my watch: I had been gone for almost an hour. Jane would be in a state, I decided; she wasn’t looking very well when I left. I had at first thought I would sidle over to my work area and stash the newspaper in my backpack. No sense dragging unpleasant reminders into the maelstrom of the working day, I reasoned.
But then I saw something peculiar happen. A Jaguar roared past the site, then suddenly stopped and reversed, back up the street to the site, almost as quickly as it had passed. A short, slight man got out and homed in on Jane like a heat-seeking missile. He began shouting almost as soon as he reached the gate, and soon she was shouting too.
I didn’t recognize him, and since the rest of the crew was sitting aside having their morning tea-break, they were not aware of what was going on. Greg was working on his notes by the wall. Jane looked uncharacteristically scared. I pulled my coat over the top of the newspaper to conceal it, and hurried over.
The man was short, compact, and trembling with energy, every angry bit of which was directed at Jane. His gray hair was in a crew cut and had a bristly look that suggested a cock’s comb. His voice was harsh, his accent unschooled, and I caught only the end of the sentence:
“—All your fault, and I hold you personally responsible for what’s happened!”
“As if anything I said or did would ever make that kind of impression on her!” Jane was nearly pleading. “She had a mind of her own!” She seemed to be trying to convince herself as well.
“Don’t underestimate yourself, you bloody woman!” He mimicked a girl’s voice cruelly. “Jane said this, Jane said that! That’s all we ever heard, when she bothered to come home. If she bothered to come home. No, no, Dr. Compton, taking out your hostility against me on her, that’s despicable! Why couldn’t you have left her alone, you bloody…murderer!”
The stranger—who I now suspected was Julia’s father, George Whiting—was in a state of angry shock. Grief had left his face a blank canvas for the rage that was there now, but apparently he wasn’t the sort to keep his thoughts to himself, and he wasn’t the sort to grieve quietly. His short, jerky movements suggested physical power that was barely—and perhaps unwillingly—restrained: he looked as though he had started at the bottom of his trade and pushed himself through to the top, purely through iron will and wiry muscle.
Jane too was pale as chalk, and remembering what she’d said about Julia in the gym, and worse, what Greg had said about her relationship with “the Julias in the world,” it was no wonder she was shaken by what Mr. Whiting had just told her. I’d only heard the end of the conversation and wondered what might have prefaced that.
Stammering and trembling violently, Jane seemed unable to master herself and that’s when I decided she needed some help. I decided to make being an American work for me for a change. I barged right in.
“Hi, uh, Jane? I got those pictures you wanted? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, or anything, but I figured you’d want them right away.”
I don’t think either of them heard me approach and I startled both of them past recognizing any of the inane words I said. They both stared at me uncomprehendingly. Suddenly aware that they were not alone, that the shell that their emotion had created around them had shattered and the rest of the world was seeping back into that space, each reacted differently.
George Whiting seemed to shut down, get smaller, recede into his own body. The emotion that had made him seem larger than he was interrupted. The emotion I saw in his eyes was gone, or at least shuttered up, no longer visible to the outside observer; all that was left now was the anger of feeling one has been made foolish, having deep emotions suddenly exposed. This wasn’t much more attractive than what I’d seen before, but at least it was aimed at me and not Jane. Part of me felt guilty about intruding like this—the man must be in unspeakable pain at the sudden loss of his daughter—but Jane looked as though she was ready to collapse, and she was my main concern.
“Do you mind?” He turned on me and I almost stepped backward, the force of his personality and words was so strong. I decided immediately that I didn’t ever want to cross this man. “This is a private conversation.”
Shouting on the open street in the middle of town on a crowded work site doesn’t fit my definition of “private,” I thought. George Whiting must have had the same thought, for instantly he flushed to the color of a fire engine, an alarming display of passion, and turned to Jane once again.
“Don’t you ever imagine this is over,” he said in a low voice that hummed with power, his pointing finger within an inch of Jane’s nose. “Don’t you even dream it.”
He waited a beat for the message to sink in, and then turned and marched off toward his car with a stiff-necked, stiff-legged gait that might have been comical had anyone else tried to imitate it, but as executed by George Whiting, it spelled out a danger signal as clear as any display of fangs or claws in the animal kingdom. He got into the brand-new bottle-green Jaguar and roar
ed off.
I thought about how rough the construction trade could be, how some of my friends had been asked by the contractors who hired them—out of federal or state regulation, usually—to ignore certain objects discovered when a site was tested prior to building. Had been asked to deemphasize things that would have held up work. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and that was just on my insulated side of things—everyone was always telling stories about the mob, or even just shady practices, trimming the quality of materiel, etc., never mind pulling strings in local government. So there was a lot to look into, perhaps, when it came to George Whiting. And my friend Kam, Brian’s boss and one-time roommate, was always pointing out to me that “only criminals and politicians drive Jags.” When I asked him about his own XJR—surely he was not a criminal, just a chemist?—he corrected me gently. “I would never dream of driving one in London. I’d as soon wear a pair of green wellies in town. But in America, well, everyone wants to be an outlaw, don’t they? That’s different.”
Obviously, Mr. Whiting didn’t share Kam’s advanced theories of aesthetics.
I turned back to Jane, who was not watching George Whiting’s departure, as I had been, but was staring at me, white-faced and trembling.
“What have I done? Oh, God, Emma—” And with that, for the second time that day, she burst into tears.
Oh no.
Not at all knowing what the proper British etiquette might be in such a situation, I decided to fall back on what I knew would be appropriate at home. I hugged Jane despite the fact that I’m not a huggy person; I rather suspected that if I’d been through the day Jane had been having, I’d probably not mind someone at least trying to comfort me. And as we stood there for what seemed like a long time, Jane’s sobs grew steadily more harsh, not lessening, as they might have. I wondered how long it had been since she’d let herself have a good long cry. I also began to wonder about Whiting’s accusations and Jane’s reactions to them: What would have happened if I hadn’t shown up? It was particularly worrying in the light of Greg’s description of Jane feeling hunted, pursued by turks younger than herself. Jane had once upon a time, three days ago, mentioned to Andrew how much she would do to protect her position and reputation. And now, as much as I didn’t like to think about it while my friend was wracked with sobs, I had to consider, seriously, the question of just how far Jane might have gone to do just that.
Chapter 10
BY LUNCHTIME, HOWEVER, IT WAS AS IF NOTHING AT all had happened during the tea-break. After two minutes of crying, Jane had abruptly pulled away from me, and in a strangled, annoyed voice, explained that she needed to use the loo. I stood there stupidly for about ten minutes, fully expecting she’d come back and explain what had happened with George Whiting, and only then realized that wasn’t going to happen when I saw her across the site, quite composed, helping Bonnie with her notes. Then I felt angry, waiting for her like an idiot. I ate the sandwich I’d bought in the cafe that morning, sourly watching Jane eat the one I’d bought for her, since she’d been too distraught to think about preparation earlier.
And when I went over to Jane, determined to ask her if I might have a quiet word with her, she looked at me straight in the eye and said that yes, she’d be delighted, only she was quite busy at the moment, could I possibly—
I said, “Yes, of course,” more abruptly than I meant, but far more politely than I wanted, turned on my heel, and didn’t quite stomp over to where my work was waiting for me, much neglected that morning and now a perfect diversion for me. I was just trying to sort out how I could possibly be sympathetic to Jane and still want to shake her—and in what proportions—when thankfully, the dirt began to speak to me.
It is precisely that kind of quiet moment, when things outside you recede and things in the ground start to make a little more sense than they had just bare minutes before, that is the very reason you put up with the all the dirt and trouble of doing the work. I fell into that easy rhythm of scraping at the soil—it all seemed to come out perfectly level now, I would have bet there was no more than a centimeter’s variation across the entire unit—and observing what I had exposed; writing my notes was painlessly simple, the words came readily and precisely. I also knew that I would remember the moment perfectly, years from now. It was the sort of thing I’d come to England for, since directing my own projects, although having a different sort of thrill, didn’t often allow me to do my own digging. These moments were precious.
There were very few stones now, so it was the change in the sound of the trowel on the ground that alerted me that something was happening. The soil had become darker and more humic, looser and softer, so I wondered if I hadn’t encountered the disintegrated shroud or the rotting wood of a coffin. I would have to watch for coffin hardware and the remains of wood; if Beatrice had been buried in a shroud, I might find straight pins as well. I took a few preliminary photographs, even though there was really nothing to see yet: it was still only evident through touch and sound.
When I looked up again, I glanced at my watch and was faintly surprised to see that it was most of the way through the after-lunch break. Although it wasn’t unusual for me to get so wrapped up in my work, most of the crew was already gone, and I noticed that Jane had not bothered to remind me to stop; she was positioned as far from me as she could be without actually leaving the site. Well, good, I thought, slamming my pencil down, I didn’t want to eat lunch with her anyway. But then I noticed that she and Greg seemed to be more comfortable with each other again; something had been repaired since that morning while I was otherwise occupied, perhaps only minutes before, because I saw Greg reach over and squeeze Jane’s hand briefly from his seat on the ground, as good as a declaration to anyone.
And then, typically, Trevor chose that particular moment to reappear. After an absence from his work of nearly three days, the chunky pain in the backside walked with uncharacteristic haste to his work area and settled in without a word. I wasn’t terribly close by—he had been positioned in an area to minimize damage through neglect or incompetence, after all, and I was right at the heart of things. But even from where I was, I could see the other significant, noticeable difference in Trevor that perhaps had been the real reason he’d waited until most of the crew had cleared out during a break. Even from my distance, I could see a very clean, very new, very white bandage across his nose. Where had he been to get that? And what else had happened in the meantime?
Not even bothering to be discreet, I watched the little drama between him and Greg unfold. At first, Jane caught at Greg’s hand, not wanting him to speak to Trevor, but he gently disengaged himself and went over to the student. Although I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I could imagine very plainly what was going on between them. Their actions were very clear, and I filled in the dialogue for myself.
Greg gestured. Where the hell have you been?
Trevor kept his head down to his work and didn’t meet Greg’s eyes. Nowhere.
And what the hell have you been up to? Greg gestured at Trevor’s face. What happened here?
Trevor shrugged. Fell down the stairs. Tripped over the cat.
After only a moment or two of this fruitless interview, Greg’s shoulders heaved in a great sigh. Trevor kept his head down, focusing on his notes in an uncharacteristically studious fashion. Finally, Greg gave up and walked away.
The other students returned from the pub, filing back in small groups, and it was Trevor’s failure to rise to their collective bait that decided me that something besides the broken nose had profoundly changed the heretofore loudmouthed student—possibly something to do with Julia. I decided that I might try finding out a little more about what had happened to Trevor later on this evening.
Once the other members of the crew were back to work, always a little bit less energetically than at the beginning of the day, somewhat slowed by beer and the idea that there was only the merest splinter of the day left to work, Jane came over to my area. I now saw definite traces of
something showing up in the grave shaft and was optimistic that it was an undisturbed burial. I gave her a perfunctory report and we discussed my progress in a businesslike fashion: two professionals who might only just have met, considering the changing soil, the possibility of hardware. Then Jane colored briefly, looked away, and said hurriedly:
“About this morning. Sorry you got drawn into that. Bit of a nuisance, really—”
Bit of a nuisance? “Jane, that was George Whiting, wasn’t it? He was talking about his daughter Julia, right? What did he say to you before I got there? He was purple!”
I thought she wasn’t going to answer for a moment; she was watching as tools were collected for the night. Her face was a study in noncommunication. “It’s still a bit too fresh to me. But you’re a good friend, Emma. You’ve been really splendid through all this. I just need some time to sort this all out. A little time, is all. Let me buy you a drink tonight, and then we can talk more—all right?”
I didn’t think that the pub was the best place for a private discussion, but I was going to hold Jane to her promise. With relief, I said, “Sure. That’d be fine.”
But as work finished, it became immediately clear that Trevor, still quite unlike himself, wasn’t going to be a part of the evening pub session. “Where you going, then?” asked Bonnie, who was one of the few people still willing to speak to him on a social basis. The others, emboldened by his downcast manner and bandage, had done nothing more than direct a few caustic cracks in his direction.
“Nowhere,” he said. “Piss off.”
“You needn’t get your nose out of joint,” she said huffily, then laughed at her own unintentional joke.