Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel (4 page)

"Not exactly what I'd call a typical shallow grave,
either," said the deputy.

"It took somebody a while and a lot of work to dig this
hole," said Lindsay. "And they rested her hands across her
stomach. This was carefully done."

"I agree." Sheriff Vamadore nodded. "It doesn't quite fit
with the rashness of trying to burn the body."

Lindsay looked at her and immediately regretted it, for
she did not want to show the surprised look on her face. If
the sheriff noticed, she said nothing.

Lindsay pointed to the grave wall. "You can take a cast
of these marks. It looks like they were made by a pointed
shovel. There are some thin gouges here and there, like the
shovel had a burr or a weld mark on it. Liza and Brandon
will give you a diagram of the pit's cross-section."

"Anything else you found?" asked the sheriff.

"There's a partially melted plastic zipper on the pelvis.
Her shoes are still intact. There are fragments of hose
around the shoes and some material left clinging to the left
and right tibiae. We found a metal hair clasp near the skull
that's in good condition. I'm puzzled by the burn pattern."

"What do you make of it?"

"I don't know, maybe nothing. But if you are trying to
burn a body by piling it with brush-" She shook her head.
"That kind of fire doesn't get that hot as a rule. Look at the
tips of her fingers."

"You don't think she could have been tortured?" The
sheriff looked at Lindsay.

"I don't know."

Lindsay conducted her examination in the autopsy room of
Clarke General Hospital with Eddie Peck, the medical
examiner for Clarke County. The diener, John Booth, had
laid out the bones on the table and now stood a few feet
away with his arms folded, his dark face solemn. Lindsay
had met him before, and not for the first time did he remind
her of some mythical person waiting to ferry the dead
across the River Styx.

Most of the bones were still held together by hard, yellowed cartilage. In places, there were traces of burned flesh. The voice recorder clicked on as Lindsay recited the
preliminary information about the remains.

"Was she a ballet dancer?" asked Eddie, after carefully
removing the shoes from her skeletal feet.

Lindsay looked briefly at the healed fractures in the
second and third phalanxes on her right foot. "Looks like it,
doesn't it?"

"The third phalanx on her left foot has had a fracture,
too," he said. "My girlfriend's into ballet. Drop-dead gorgeous girl, ugliest feet you've ever seen."

Lindsay went back to the skull. "The roots of the teeth
show signs of stress and Shirley Foster had at least one
abscess that required surgery. The teeth are capped, all of
them," she said.

"The car wreck?" Eddie asked.

Lindsay looked at the skull x-ray of Shirley Foster and
shook her head. "They were capped before the accident. I'd
like to see her dental report."

"I've got it right here, but there is no mention of the capping being done. Must have had it done somewhere else,"
Eddie said.

"They're old," said Lindsay. "I'll bet she used a dentist
where she went to college."

Lindsay turned the skull carefully in her gloved hand,
looking for signs of trauma other than the LeFort fractures.
She found none.

The door opened and Sally came rushing in, out of
breath. "Sorry I'm late," she said.

"That's all right. We just started." Lindsay looked at her
red-rimmed eyes. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I guess. Just as I was about to leave, I checked
my e-mail and there was a Dear Jane message from Brian.
He wants to date other people-in particular, Gem Chapman. You remember Gerri, don't you, the redhead with the
attitude? I just don't get it. I thought he couldn't stand her."

"I'm sorry, Sally," said Lindsay.

"He e-mailed me-e-mail, for heaven's sake. Oh, Lord,
is that thing recording me?"

"I can fix you up with a great guy," Eddie said.

"No thanks, Eddie," sniffed Sally. "I'm through with
men. Gerri, of all people; she's such a jerk."

Eddie took skin and soil samples from the pelvis, ribs,
and vertebrae, bagged and labeled them, and placed them
in a box. "There's an IUD in the pelvic cavity," he said and
proceeded to bag it as well.

"The olecranon of the left and right ulna, the margins of
the spine on each scapula, and the dorsal surfaces of the
third and fourth ribs are all charred black and yellow,"
Lindsay said to the recorder. "The dorsal surfaces of the
first, second, third, fourth, and fifth metacarpals on each
hand are mottled yellow and gray as are the corresponding
phalanxes. Distal phalanxes five and three on the left hand
and five, two, and one on the right hand are missing. The
others are charred gray and white. It's interesting that the
innominate bones show little indication of burning."

"I wonder why?" commented Eddie.

"I'd like to look at the bones cleaned," she said after
Eddie had taken all the samples he wanted.

"Sure. Booth'll have them cleaned by next week."

Lindsay looked at the diener briefly and he nodded at
her. "I'd like to see some cross sections of her long bones,"
she said. "We can do that after they're cleaned. I'd also like
to see a cross section of her canine teeth."

"We can do that," Eddie said. "It'll take a couple of
weeks."

"I have a method of mounting the tooth in plastic resin
and making a polished cross section. It works very well and
takes half a day. Sally can do it."

"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
County 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.