Airtight Case (41 page)

“I smelled a ham baking this morning,” said Byron. “Those reserve guys will have it picked to the bone, unless we hurry.”

“Thanks for your support, guys. I really appreciate it.”

“You just remember it if an application to graduate school comes across your desk,” said Adam.

Lindsay laughed. “I will, indeed.”

The guys broke for lunch and Lindsay proceeded to the artifact tent where Marina was absorbed in cataloging artifacts.

“Hi, Marina. Lunch is being served up.”

“Oh, that ham, I’ll bet. I’d better go get some.”

“I’d like to borrow the Polaroid. We have one, don’t we?”

“Sure. It’s always useful to have an on-the-spot photo.” Marina slipped off her stool and retrieved the camera from an overhead cabinet.

“My thoughts exactly. I’m going to have some really fancy photos of the bones, but I’d like to have some to take up to bed with me tonight to look at. They have x-rays of the cemetery coffin, by the way. Come by the tent and look at them after lunch.”

“Really? Who’s in it, do you know?” Marina handed her the camera.

Lindsay shook her head. “Male, maybe. He’s in an inner wooden coffin, unlike the one from the trash pit. Elaine McBride is trying to acquire some other volumes of Hope Foute’s diary. I’m hoping they’ll contain information we need.”

“The diaries, the cabin, and the coffins. This is going to be so neat when it’s written up. Lindsay, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Lewis mentioned that you do facial reconstructions—drawings mostly.” Lindsay nodded. “I’d like to acquire that skill. You think when you’re free, you can show me how? Maybe let me work with you on the skulls here?”

“Sure. With your talent, you’ll pick it up easily. It’s a matter of following the structure of the bones. There are a few tricks, like knowing how long to make the nose.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want to know.”

“I’ll let you know when I do the sketches. Oh, looks like we may get some tissue samples with the second coffin.”

“I’m not sure I want to see that.”

“It’ll be like a mummy.”

“That would be better.”

“We’ll probably find some bits of clothing, buttons or something from the cemetery coffin.”

Lindsay walked with Marina back to the compound. When they parted, Lindsay snagged Luke and shoved the camera into his hands. “Don’t let him see you taking a picture. I’m going up to the house to call the hospital.”

“Better hurry, before I have second thoughts about this.”

Lindsay took him at his word and hurried off. As she approached the house, she heard hammering toward the rear. She cut around to the back and found Mr. Laurens constructing a device that looked like it was going to be a box, about a foot and a half square.

“That for me?”

Mr. Laurens grinned, showing missing premolars. “You the one getting the tiny sandbox?”

“Yep, that’s me. Thanks for making it.”

“It’s what you all pay me for. I’ve got you a bag of sand to go in it, too. Didn’t buy any little buckets, though.” He laughed. Someone opened the door, and the aroma of food wafted past them. “Lord, don’t that smell good?”

Lindsay agreed. She must tell Mrs. Laurens what a good job she was doing. On the way in the back door she met someone coming out with a container of food to take to the site.

“Hand me that clean apron on the rack there," Mrs. Laurens’ voice came from the kitchen. “I’ve done spilled gravy all over this one.”

Lindsay took a full-length apron from the rack and picked up a jacket with it that had dropped to the floor. She reached to hang it up, when she noticed that one of the jackets on the rack was one she’d seen Mike Gentry wearing in the cool mountain mornings. She took the apron into the kitchen.

“Oh, is that you, Lindsay? I thought it was Jimmy coming in. Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Laurens took off her soiled apron, tucked it in a corner, and tied the other one around her.

“I wanted to tell you how good the food is. I know this isn’t exactly what you signed up for.”

“No, but it’s always good to rise to a challenge. I’m just glad we’ve fixed enough for all those people.”

Lindsay slipped back to the coatrack and in one swift movement pulled the jacket off the peg, rolled it up, and tucked it under her arm.

Chapter 34

The Guy Likes Gold

LINDSAY WALKED AS calmly as she could through the kitchen with Mike Gentry’s jacket tucked under her arm. When she reached the dining room, her intention to dash through to the downstairs bathroom was checked. Two of Mrs. Laurens’ daughters were busy at the dining room table organizing the food to be taken to the site.

She could hardly make a mad dash past them without at least arousing their curiosity. She muttered something she hoped was a compliment on the food as she walked past them to the far side, finally making it to the reception hall and across to the bathroom. The door was locked.

“Just a minute,” someone called out.

Lindsay didn’t wait around. She bolted up the stairs and locked herself in her room. Her hands shook as she unzipped the right front pocket of the jacket. Not much there for her effort—Gentry’s car keys and a cheap folding knife. She opened the knife and looked at the blade. It was dull.

Once when she was sitting by a campfire with her uncle and her grandfather deep in the Kentucky woods, eating the fish they’d caught and fried, her uncle told her, “You can judge a man by how he keeps his knife. A dull knife says something about a man.”

She never understood what exactly, but then she was only five at the time. She still didn’t know what it meant. She folded the knife and picked up the keys. Dodge, it said on the key ring. Unfortunately, it didn’t say green truck.

The left pocket contained a paper clip, spray breath freshener, five gold dollars, and a gold piece of eight. The inside pocket was empty. No, it had something in the very corner. She dug down and brought it out. A tooth, or rather, a temporary cap made of gold—a molar.

The guy likes gold.

That was it. Not much for the mad dash she’d made. She started to put the items back in his pockets, when it hit her—the piece of eight, pirate treasure. Hadn’t Mrs. Laurens mentioned that Mary Susan Tidwell had a gold treasure coin? Mrs. Laurens had made a rubbing of it as a child. Lindsay grabbed a piece of paper and rummaged through her things for a pencil.

For a second she considered making a mold. How long would that take? Four minutes for each side. No, better not risk him finding the jacket missing. A rubbing would have to do.

A number three pencil with a broken tip was in the side pocket of her suitcase. She unfolded Gentry’s knife and did a hurried sharpening of the pencil. It
was
a dull knife. When she had some lead, she did a quick rubbing of both sides of the coin and hid the paper under her mattress.

Putting all the items back in their proper place, she checked the bed to make sure she hadn’t left anything. She rolled up the jacket and pulled her own sweat jacket from her suitcase and put it over the one she’d purloined—just in case she ran into anyone. Out of habit, she looked out her window.

“Oh, shit,” she swore out loud. A crowd of Mrs. Laurens’ staff were walking across the parking lot from the site. Mike Gentry was among them.

Lindsay raced out of her room and down the stairs. She barely slowed down going through the dining room and kitchen to the mudroom. She hardly heard the footfalls on the wooden outside steps above the pounding of her heart in her ears. She hung the jacket on its peg at the same moment she heard the doorknob turn. She didn’t look back as she made it through the door into the kitchen just as the back door opened.

“What you rushing around about, Lindsay?”

She jumped at the sound of Mrs. Laurens’ voice.

“I’m looking for the phone book. Have you seen it?”

“It wouldn’t be in here, I don’t think, unless one of you all moved it.”

She heard them talking in the mudroom, ready to come into the kitchen. She was safe now, but she couldn’t face him. He’d probably be able to read her thoughts.

“I may have overlooked it in the living room. I’ll go back and have another look.”

She collapsed on the sofa, her cheeks burning and stomach hurting.
Calm down. So what if he had caught you? You could just say it dropped and you picked it up. No big deal. There were lots of people around. This was nothing. You’ve done more daring deeds than this little escapade. The phone book—Luke’s waiting
.

The phone book was where it should be, under the phone. Lindsay had gone over in her mind the question of who to call: the detectives in Athens, hoping they’d have the nurse listed as a witness, the sheriff in Mac’s Crossing, the hospital? The sheriff. She picked up the phone book and started to flip through the pages. What was she thinking? The number wouldn’t be in here, only local numbers. She’d have to call information. The unexpected appearance of Eric Van Horne had taught her not to use the phone in the house. She went out to the privacy of her SUV.

Lindsay had to explain who she was and what she wanted to three different people before she got the name of the hospital nurse—Mary Carp. A call to the hospital revealed that Mary Carp would not be on duty this evening, but would be tomorrow.

She was making progress. Mike Gentry was the link between Mary Susan Tidwell, Eric Van Horne, and the attack on her—tenuous links with gossamer threads, but links nonetheless. She felt she almost had the thing solved. On the way back she met Luke on the bridge.

“I was coming to look for you.” He held out a snapshot of himself standing next to one of the servicemen. Just behind them setting a tray of rolls down was Mike Gentry, frowning at the camera.

“Clever ruse, to get someone else to take the picture.”

“It’s not easy to take surreptitious photographs with an instant camera. It’s not like it has a telephoto lens. Did you get the nurse’s name?”

Lindsay gave him a piece of paper containing the information. “I thought maybe you could go tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll go. But you stick with someone you know and trust. Don’t go off alone.”

“There’s no place here I can be alone.”

“You have a knack for getting into trouble. You don’t promise me, I won’t go.”

“I promise. Believe me, I don’t want anything to happen to me. I’ll be working all day. I’ve got bodies piling up, and I haven’t finished the first one yet.”

Phil McBride was already in the tent looking over the data forms when she arrived. “You fill all these out on each of the bodies?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a lot of measuring. I had no idea. I’d always thought you needed tissue to understand anything about a body. I thought once you get down to the bones, there’s little you can discover.”

“You do get more information from a fleshed-out body. But there’s quite a bit you can get from bones. Some things, like handedness, I’m not sure how you could get, except from bones.”

“I do thank you for this experience. It’s fascinating work. I got ahold of Elaine. She’s meeting with the people tomorrow. Drew gave me a range of prices that the diaries might be worth. Rather high, I thought, but I have a feeling that Lewis is going to pitch in to buy them. At least he hinted at it.”

“Once he gets involved in something, his curiosity takes over. He wants to know about these people as much as we do.”

Lindsay and McBride sat on stools on each side of the table. Starting with the skull, she examined each bone and recorded her observations. McBride actually made the task longer, as she explained everything to him, but she was glad for the company. By the end of the day, she was halfway through the remains. She looked up to see Lewis coming in the tent.

“How are you progressing?” He leaned over the table next to her to get a close-up look.

“Moving right along. How about the other coffin?”

“Jarman’s going to wait until tomorrow to try for the air extraction. He and Peter’ve been looking at the x-rays, making a plan of attack. Peter’s very nervous.”

“How about our skeleton in the trash pit?” Lindsay stopped for a moment to take off her latex gloves and tuck back a strand of hair that kept falling in front of her face.

“Kelsey and her crew are having a great time. They’ve uncovered a belt buckle that’s made them excited. They’re happy as clams.”

After McBride left for home, Lindsay confided her suspicions about Mike Gentry to Lewis, and she told him about Luke’s trip planned for the next day.

“You really think Gentry’s the one who tried to kill you?” Lewis’s brow was wrinkled.

Lindsay was disappointed he didn’t immediately accept her suspicions. “At the least, he may be the one who tried to claim me at the hospital.”

“But you don’t recognize him?”

“No, but right after the incident happened, I told John about the man who pretended to be my fiancé and tried to take me out of the hospital. Later, after I could no longer remember that episode, John told me the description I had given him of the man. I just have this feeling.” She looked down at the wooden floor of the tent. “I also went through the pockets of his jacket.”

“You did what? Why? Isn’t that illegal?”

“I don’t think so. It’s nosy and pretty awful, I’ll admit, but I did find a gold piece of eight that could be part of Miss Tidwell’s estate.”

Lewis shook his head in confusion. “A piece of eight? I haven’t heard anything about that.”

“It’s information I got from Mrs. Laurens. She told me Miss Tidwell owned one.”

“Pieces of eight are not exactly rare. We have a few thousand of them.”

“Lewis, I know all my connections are weak at this point, but we’ll know something tomorrow.”

* * *

Lindsay went to bed with a giddy feeling that everything could be solved by this time tomorrow. If the nurse identified Mike Gentry as the one who tried to claim her from the hospital, then the dominoes would start to fall. She would be free and life would be good again.

Morning came quickly and she was out of bed as soon as her eyes snapped open. Lewis wasn’t even up yet. She took a quick shower, dressed, and bounded downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Laurens was organizing breakfast.