Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel (43 page)

"It's quite a coincidence that I start having all these troubles when you show up here after my job. I hope you see
how that would make me suspicious."

"Is that what you think? Is that what they think?" Gerri
gestured toward the door.

"I'm asking. I imagine others will, too," Lindsay said.

"I know I can sometimes be a bitch, but I would never
deal in artifacts. Never. I'll admit to maybe using your bad
luck just a little. I mean, I guess Brian talked to you, but I
didn't instigate any of it."

Lindsay stared at her, arms folded. "If you did, I'll find
out about it."

"I didn't. Look, I didn't come down here to gloat or anything. I came to offer you work."

Lindsay smiled. "When you have work to offer, we can
talk. Until then, Pancho, this won't be over until it's over."
Lindsay opened the door for her. The students were still
waiting outside. Lindsay smiled and winked at them as
Gem passed.

"Sinjin's taking me to lunch," Sally told her after the
students went back to their work. "Why don't you come
with us?"

"Thanks, but no. I'm not hungry, and I have a few things
to do."

"All the students are on your side."

"That means a lot to me." Lindsay wanted to hug Sally.

"Gerri's such a jerk," Sally said.

"She's certainly a woman who's not afraid of going after
what she wants, that's for sure."

Lindsay sat at her desk and keyed into her word processor all the information she had learned from Gloria
Rankin's thesis relevant to Shirley Foster's death. She
printed out two copies and addressed two envelopes: one to
Sheriff Irene Varnadore and one to Medical Examiner
Eddie Peck. Next, she reached for the phone to dial Will
Patterson's office. If she could make him consider the possibility that Shirley's death was an accident, it might take
his mind off Tom Foster and Luke Ferris, at least long
enough for the authorities to find the murderer. It struck
her, as her hand rested on the phone, that this method of
murder didn't seem like something the volatile Tom Foster
would do. She could see Tom shooting Shirley or strangling her but not anything as melodramatic as reenacting an
ancient myth.

The murderer was someone who really hated Shirley
Foster, like Medea and Nesus hated their enemies. This was
someone with a different mindset from the suspects Lindsay knew. Even if Irene Vamadore were jealous of Shirley,
Lindsay couldn't see Irene doing this. And what connection
could Irene have had with Gloria Rankin? Maybe it was an
accident, after all. Maybe Gloria wasn't murdered and neither was Shirley. But who buried Shirley and why? Tom
Foster? Had he found her dead and decided to just not
report the body so that he could use her money? That was
possible. It made more sense. Tom loved Shirley and would
have buried her carefully, but he seemed genuinely surprised when Lindsay found the bones. Could he have been
acting? Lindsay dialed Will's office.

"Patterson. What can I do for you?"

"Will, this is Lindsay Chamberlain."

"Lindsay. Need some more information?"

"Yes, something a little different this time. Do you know
if Shirley Foster knew Gloria Rankin?"

"Gloria Rankin? Where have I heard that name before?"

"She was the student hit and killed by a bus a couple of
weeks ago."

"That's right, by that kid, Luke Ferris. Why do you want
to know if Shirley knew her?"

"I've come across information suggesting that perhaps
Shirley's death was an accident. Can I come by and talk
with you, say in fifteen minutes?"

"Sure. I'm in my office all day today. An accident?
Yeah, please come by."

Lindsay took the letters to the main office to be picked
up by the postman, and set out for downtown Athens by
way of the sidewalk on Jackson Street. Downtown was
only a few blocks from Baldwin Hall, an easy walk. The
day was clear and cool, and flowers were blooming all over
campus. Walking would give her a chance to think, to wade
through all the permutations of possible events in Shirley
Foster's last days and try to weed some of them out. Lindsay ignored the hordes of students changing classes and
waiting for and leaving buses. She could just as easily have
been alone.

She passed Personnel Services and grimaced. She might
soon be using their services to look for a job unless she
could think of a way to get hers back. And despite telling
Frank and her students that she would fight for it, she knew
it was virtually impossible to change a decision by the
administration. Someone would have to admit they were
wrong. Unless she could remove the cloud from her name,
she would have a hard time finding another job as good as
the one she had here. Maybe she could hire Will to follow
Einer. Perhaps Einer would lead them to the artifacts-if
they hadn't already been sold on the black market. She
hadn't really investigated the illegal collector's market. That
would be an enormous undertaking. It all seemed impossible. However, Will could find out for her what information
the campus police had about the missing artifacts; that would be a start. Surely, Kaufman had collected some information. Of course he had-why else had he been killed?

The wind gusted and Lindsay pulled the front of her
denim jacket together. She glanced across the street back at
the old building where the Georgia Museum of Art used to
be housed. The people at the museum must have some
information on the thefts that occurred there a couple of
years ago. She made a mental note to talk with them after
she talked to Will.

"Hey, babe, need a ride?" Lindsay arched her eyebrow
and turned, ready to give a sharp retort to the guy in the car
that had pulled up beside her. When she saw it was Chris
Pryor, she grinned. "Sorry, couldn't resist," he said. "I just
went to your office looking for you."

"I'm on my way to an appointment."

"I have a surprise for you," he said.

"What?" She leaned over to talk through the open
window of his car. Chris was dressed in jeans and a navy
blue heavy T-shirt and smelled like Safari. He definitely
was better away from his parents. Lindsay imagined that
had probably been true of Shirley as well.

"If you could make a wish right now," he said, "what
would you wish for-besides world peace and an end to
hunger?"

"That's easy, the artifacts."

"I love this. I have always wanted to grant a beautiful
woman her heart's desire. But I'm warning you, it's going
to cost you at least a month of dates."

"You're kidding! You found them? I don't believe it.
Where?"

Traffic was backing up in the street behind Chris's car.
Someone beeped a horn for him to move on.

"I'm blocking traffic," he said. "Get in and I'll tell you
all about it."

She got in the car. Chris frowned. "Unfortunately, you were right about Einer, and I have to confess, I didn't really
believe you."

"You found them at his house?" asked Lindsay.

"No." Chris pulled away from the curb and turned the
corner toward Thomas Street. "By the way, I left a message
for an Officer Sharon Meyers of the campus police to meet
us. They said she's working on the case. Is that all right?"

"Yes. Sure. Where are the artifacts?"

Chris sighed. "I hope they're at my glass factory. If they
aren't, I'll have called the police and got your hopes up for
nothing."

"Your factory?" Lindsay asked. "I don't understand."

Chris headed out North Avenue. "After we talked last
night, I called Brooke Einer, Ellis's daughter. She just got
her vet degree. We used to date. We're still pretty good
friends. I thought I'd just kind of ask about her father and
antiques, that kind of thing, nothing too heavy. I remembered that a week or so ago she had asked if she could store
some boxes in the old glass factory. She knew I didn't use it
very much. I store everything in my gallery downtown, and
I only use the old factory when I'm doing some glassblowing or etching. I told her sure. I thought she was moving her
things, you know, getting her own apartment or something.
Anyway, last night when I asked her about it, she said it had
really been for her father. She had given him the key."

"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."

"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.