Airtight Case (27 page)

“Meanwhile, the Cherokee in north Georgia and Tennessee had been peacefully farming their own farmsteads. They wrote their own constitution and started Cherokee language newspapers. Many were better educated than the white settlers. But this didn’t stop the state of Georgia from confiscating their lands when gold was found, nor did the Supreme Court decision protecting Cherokee sovereignty stop Andrew Jackson from ordering the army to forcibly remove them to a reserve in Oklahoma in 1838. The confiscated land was quickly sold to settlers.”

“The Trail of Tears,” commented Lewis.

Lindsay nodded. “Almost two-fifths died of exhaustion, exposure, and starvation. A few managed to escape into the Smoky Mountains, becoming the Eastern Band. John’s a member of the Eastern band.”

“How is John? I imagine his construction company’s been receiving a lot of business since he built the cofferdam around the shipwreck.”

“It has. In fact, he’s got more work than he can get to. I feel guilty that he had to come haul me out of the woods.”

“Lindsay, we are all very grateful that he did. When you hear of someone missing under those circumstances . . . well, the outcome is not usually good. You know that. All the archaeology faculty, even Kenneth Kerwin, was deeply worried.”

Lindsay tried to smile. Lewis was getting too close to her open wounds. How was she going to keep the fear tucked away safely inside if people insisted on wanting to talk about it? “Kenneth?” she replied, trying to sound like that was funny.

“Of course, now he’s aggravated you’re working in his territory—a historical site. He wonders why I didn’t send him.”

“Did you tell him you didn’t want an archaeologist as much as a detective?”

Lewis chuckled. “I can just see him dealing with some of the people you have described to me on this site. We’d probably be up here hauling him out of jail. I can see the headlines now: Archaeologist Goes Berserk, Trowels Entire Crew to Death.”

Lindsay tried to laugh with him. “I guess we’d better get back. I think Drew had Mrs. Laurens fix a big meal in your honor. She’s a great cook, and she made a red velvet cake.”

“That’s fine with me. We can go out to dinner anytime. What’s this?” Lewis stared at a page in the scrapbook.

Lindsay laughed and the black cloud drifting over her dispersed into the forest. “Poems scratched on the floor of the Gallows cabin loft. Elaine McBride and I are trying to track them down. Marina thinks there’s a good chance they are contemporary with the earliest part of the house.”

“What do you think they mean?”

“They could be children’s rhymes. You know how dark those can be.”

“Interesting. I wonder who would write them on the floor? I appreciate your history lesson, even though it was a little biased.”

“Biased? What do you mean?”

“I detected a slight bias in favor of the Indians.”

“Lewis, I’m shocked you would accuse me of being anything but objective where history is concerned. That’s . . . What in the world is going on now?” In the distance, Lindsay saw the field crew crossing the bridge in the midst of a heated argument with a stranger.

Chapter 23

You Digging Up Bodies?

“JUST TELL ME, is it true that you’re going to dig up bodies from a cemetery?”

The questioner was a young man in jeans, T-shirt, and a long-sleeved shirt worn as a jacket. His brown hair was tousled by the wind. In his hand he had a pen poised over a pad of paper. Adam was poised to yell at him for encroaching on his personal space. Drew was asking him to leave. Lindsay’s first thought was to wonder if Claire was going to steal his car. She looked at his black pickup truck and almost flew over to grab him by his shirt front.

“Where did you get that truck? Does it belong to the McBrides?”

“What? No. It’s mine. What are you doing? Let me go.” He was beginning to look a little wild-eyed, and tried to pull away, but Lindsay held fast, aided by the adrenaline pumping through her body.

“Not until you tell me what you were doing Tuesday at 8:30 A.M.”

“Tuesday? Tuesday . . . I don’t know . . . I was at the newspaper office. What’s this about?”

“Do you know a truck was stolen from the McBrides?”

“No. Who are they? Who are you?”

Lindsay looked again at the truck. It was a small black Toyota, not the truck that had passed her, not the McBrides’ truck. Lindsay loosened her grasp, and he pulled away.

“You people are crazy.” He almost ran across the bridge to his truck.

“That was a strange approach, but effective,” said Adam.

Lindsay glanced over at Lewis. He stared at her, as did all the others, with open amazement on his face.

“The McBrides’ truck was stolen. For a moment I thought that was it.”

“Did you develop some kind of bond with them?” asked Kelsey.

Lindsay looked at Kelsey, realizing suddenly that her behavior must have seemed bizarre. “They’re nice people.”

“They must’ve been,” said Kelsey.

“What did that reporter want?” asked Lewis.

“Someone told him about the lead coffins,” said Drew. “He wouldn’t say who.”

“He had a bad slant to his questions,” said Joel, “like we’re grave robbers or something.”

“We need to have some discussion about how to deal with the media,” said Lewis. “I’ll write an article for the local paper.”

“I like Lindsay’s approach,” said Byron.

Lewis took a suitcase from the trunk of his car and started toward the house with the others. He stopped at the steps and looked up. “Nice place. A lot nicer than some of the places I’ve stayed on digs.”

“It comes with ghosts,” said Powell.

“Yes,” agreed his brother, Dillon, “we hear them knocking about occasionally. Mostly at night.”

“They were very active when we first got here,” said Kelsey. “But they’ve sort of calmed down. Used to us, I suppose.”

“They’ve been real quiet since Trent left,” said Adam.

“Ghosts. This should be interesting,” Lewis said.

“Your room is upstairs,” Drew told him.

As they ascended to the second floor, Lewis leaned over and whispered in Lindsay’s ear. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

“Not particularly.”

Lindsay hurried to her room and gathered up her clothes and towel. She was surprised to discover that the bathroom was empty.

A warm shower—it had been a while since she’d had anything other than a cold one. The warm water was a comfort. She wanted to stay. She’d like to have a bath and just lie back in the tub and soak. But she hurried through the shower, to give the others a turn. Kelsey was waiting at the door when she opened it.

“It’s about time.” Kelsey brushed past her into the bathroom.

“Sorry, I thought I was hurrying.”

Dinner was the most civil it had ever been. Claire ate in silence. From the corner of her eye, Lindsay noticed Claire stealing occasional glances at her. She wondered if she had committed some offense, real or imagined, against her.

It was Lewis who did most of the talking, explaining in detail what was to happen when the NASA team arrived. Lewis was good at rekindling people’s spirits. Soon, everyone was talking, asking questions, speculating about the coffins and the site. Lewis held his own. The brief history lesson Lindsay had given him had taken hold so well that you’d think Tennessee history was his specialty. Lewis could go a long way with a little data.

“So, Lindsay, what was that thing with the reporter about?” asked Powell.

Lindsay had managed to avoid the question all the way through dinner. She thought she was home free when Mrs. Laurens had cut the red velvet cake.

“I almost had a collision yesterday with a reckless driver in a black pickup. It turned out the truck was stolen from the McBrides. I thought it might have been the reporter.” Had that sounded innocent enough? No. They all stared as if there had to be more. “My SUV is brand-new.”

“Ah,” said Bill, “you’re one of those people who park in the farthest parking space just so you don’t get dinged, I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, it was a chance to manhandle him,” said Byron. “Did you see his face? Good job.”

Lindsay had to laugh. She
had
seen his face, and his wide-eyed, openmouthed expression of dire surprise and bewilderment was indeed funny.

The meal ended with Lewis telling the crew to refer all questions about the coffins to him. Most of the crew drifted along with Drew and Lewis to the living room. Lindsay went to her room, expecting to be alone. Claire was upstairs in the hallway. Lindsay had the impression she had come from Lewis’s room. She shrugged it off. Perhaps Claire forgot something when she moved, or maybe she had just imagined it.

“You aren’t downstairs with the others?” asked Lindsay.

Claire shook her head. “There’s a lot of stuff I need to be doing up here.”

“Me, too.”

“You and Lewis seem to know each other real well.” Claire followed Lindsay into their room.

“He’s my division head.”

“Division?”

“When he came to the University of Georgia, he combined the Departments of Anthropology and Archaeology into a division. Sort of made us all one department, but not exactly. Each has a separate chair. He’s head of the whole thing.”

“Why not put them all together in one department?”

“Archaeology and anthropology have different needs and concerns, and the anthropology faculty outnumber us. We archaeologists don’t want to get outvoted every time we have a conflict in our interests.”

“There’s a lot of politics in universities.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

Lindsay wished for the first time that they had a television set. She would like to watch TV. She would like to occupy her mind with something every moment, no matter how trivial.

“He acts like he’s your friend.”

Lindsay thought that was an odd way of putting it. “I suppose he is, most of the time. I didn’t think we would get along when I first heard he was coming to UGA, but things have worked out, so far.”

“What were the two of you doing in the woods?”

Another peculiar question. “Discussing the ship display and the wax figures he was talking about.” Lindsay hated to lie, but what choice was there? I can’t just say, “
Gee, Claire, we were talking about your and Drew’s possible homicidal tendencies.
” “He wanted to see the photo album with the pictures of the cabin.”

Lindsay knew that must have hurt, since Claire was the one who had alienated the McBrides from the archaeology project. She had a strong urge to sit Claire down and ask her why she acted the way she did—explain to her that she was her own worst enemy. But why break the peaceful bliss she had achieved? She pulled out a novel instead. Claire got out her papers and computer and was soon pecking away at the keyboard.

“Where do you come down on the ghost thing?” Lindsay asked after a while.

Claire looked up from her work. For a moment Lindsay thought she looked like she might cry.

“Here, or in theory?”

“Both.”

“I think there could be ghosts. I don’t disbelieve in them. I kind of think this place is haunted. There’ve been a lot of noises that can’t be accounted for. Sharon doesn’t want to admit it now, but four or five months ago she was in the house alone upstairs. She told Kelsey later that she had heard voices—no words, just voices. She thought some of the crew had come back to the house and she went down to look. No one was there. Even Mrs. Laurens and her husband hadn’t arrived yet. That’s really why she moved to a hotel when her husband got here.”

“She denies it now?”

“Not really denies it, just laughs it off, as if it was really a joke.”

“Has anyone seen any ghosts?” Lindsay completely understood why Sharon might be reticent. No way was she going to admit to seeing anything out of the ordinary.

“No, not that I know of. You see anything?” Claire asked.

Lindsay smiled and shook her head.

Claire went back to typing on her laptop, Lindsay to her reading. Occasionally, they heard laughter drifting up from the floor below—Lewis charming the crowd, no doubt.

“Do you believe that Rosellen Gallows killed her children?” asked Claire. “Some of the people in town think that’s who haunts these woods. Rosellen or her babies.”

Lindsay thought a moment. “No, not really. Infant mortality was so high, it’s not really suspicious, like it would be today, that all her children died.”

“If you were looking for something suspicious, what would you look for?”

“I’d first go through Hope Foute’s diary more closely to see if there is a clue there. I’d look in the church cemetery to see how many other families lost several of their children. I’d try to discover if there was an epidemic of any kind around that time. If I could, I’d look at the bodies.”

“You think people are going to protest us excavating the coffins?”

“A good chance. Nobody but us archaeologists likes to dig up their ancestors.”

“I’d like to watch you examine the bones. I’ve never really had a chance to work with bones.”

“Sure. You’re entitled. You’re the site director.”

Claire focused her attention back on her work. “I think that’s being taken away from me. The site doesn’t need Drew, Dr. Lewis, and me.”

“It does need a site director. Don’t bow out. Lewis may be handling the coffins, but there’s still the whole site that needs to be excavated, and Lewis doesn’t want to be in charge of that. He’s here for the glamour stuff. Besides, Drew told me that Lewis may get funding for some extras, like excavating the outhouse, or whatever.”
What am I saying? I must be crazy, trying to talk Claire out of giving up, rather than buying a tank of gas for her car.

“It sounds like they’re having fun down there,” said Claire after a burst of raucous laughter drifted up from downstairs.

“Who’s playing the guitar?” Lindsay asked. “I haven’t heard that before.”

“It’s one of the Adonis twins—Powell or Dillon . . . the one with short hair . . . showing off. He used to drag that thing out every evening.”

Until you put a damper on things, I’ll bet
. Lindsay listened to him play. “Dillon is the one with the short hair.”