Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel (6 page)

"Don't forget the faculty meeting next week. You know
what's up, don't you?"

Lindsay turned and leaned against the door frame. "No,
what?"

"Administration wants to merge Anthropology and
Archaeology."

"Why?" Lindsay asked.

"They say efficiency, but who knows? It's something
political. This coffee is awful." He poured out his cup and
left the break room with Lindsay.

As Lindsay was going past the departmental office,
Edwina, one of the secretaries, called out to her.

"Yes?" Lindsay asked.

"You got a phone call first thing this morning. Some
woman. Said it was important but wouldn't leave a name."

"Did she say what it was about?" asked Lindsay.

"No. Just that she would call back."

"Thank you, Edwina."

Lindsay walked down the series of hallways and stairways to her office in the basement. She sat down in her
chair and turned on her computer. As it was booting up, she
thought about the possibility of merging with Anthropology, a huge department with over twenty faculty members.
Positions would be eliminated. That meant the dean probably had plans to downsize Archaeology. Downsize, what a
word. Lindsay sighed. She was the third to last person hired
and had no tenure. She could guess who would be the first to go-not the tenured faculty. She would have to watch
her step and not get into any arguments with the dean's
favorite, Kenneth Kerwin. She would have to keep a low
profile these days. She couldn't afford to lose her job.

Toward the end of the day, Lindsay called to get the
report on her water analysis.

"Yeah, hard water," the voice on the other end told her.
"You have both iron algae and iron mineral. I imagine it
must be dyeing all your whites a rusty color."

"Not yet," Lindsay said. "It's a new well."

"That'll be good then, you can get a filtration system
before the stuff contaminates your pipes too much. I'll send
the report to you."

Lindsay thanked him and called the number Edgar
Dante had given her. They invited her to come by their
office on her way home. The slender, brunette saleswoman
at Crystal Clear Water, Inc. shook her head sympathetically
when Lindsay told her what minerals she had in her new
water supply. After giving Lindsay a sales pitch, the
woman armed her with a load of brochures and a list of a
few people in town who had the system that she could call
for testimonials. That evening, Lindsay called several
people and decided to have the system installed. She didn't
have much of a choice. She was tired of lugging water
home in plastic containers and showering at the Ramsey
Center, and the water apparently wasn't going to clear up.
Every time she tried the spigot on the well, the water ran an
ugly brown-red color.

By the end of the week, Lindsay had a new twelve-footby-twelve-foot well house, a system of chemical, charcoal,
and brine filtering tanks, a set of instructions on how to
maintain them, and pure water. She also had an enormous
bill that the company graciously financed, telling her the
payment booklet would arrive in the mail shortly.

Now, she thought, sitting at her desk in her office, I'll just have to figure out how to pay for all this. She was
relieved when the phone rang and took her out of the
depressing thoughts of her finances.

"Dr. Chamberlain, John Booth here. I've finished cleaning
the bones. Anytime you want to come down, I'll be here."

"Thanks. I'll come this afternoon."

"Cousin Edgar take care of you okay?"

"Just fine. I've got an abundance of crystal-clear water."

The detritus left on bones is important in discovering cause
of death, but Lindsay still preferred clean white bones to
examine. The bones of the woman whose x-rays identified
her as Shirley Pryor Foster, Ph.D., lay on the shiny metal
table in the autopsy room and had, for the most part, a pristine glow like polished ivory. Booth, who was the only one
assisting Lindsay that morning, had done a good job. Lindsay acknowledged her satisfaction with a nod as she examined the bones as if for the first time.

Shirley Foster, forty-year-old full professor in both the
Art and History departments, was five feet, eight inches tall.
She had taken ballet for several years and practiced diligently, as indicated by the large attachments for her calf,
thigh, and hip muscles. She probably quit because she was
plagued by pain from stress fractures in her feet. She had the
beginnings of arthritis in her hands, but it was mild, perhaps
even unnoticeable to her except in cold weather. The blow
to her face resulting in the LeFort fractures was hard enough
to have caused brain damage; however, her bones were thinner than normal and probably broke with a lesser force. She
was completely ambidextrous, something Lindsay rarely
saw. Even people who can use both hands well usually favor
one over the other. Shirley Foster's pelvic girdle gave no
indication that she had ever delivered a child.

Lindsay looked at the polished cross section of a tooth
under a dissecting microscope, paying particular attention to the cementum, the bony layers surrounding the root of
the tooth. She saw indications that Shirley Foster was
undernourished for a time in her life. The lack of proper
nutrition was also suggested by the slightly thinner cortex
of her long bones. Lindsay thought about the capped teeth
and wondered if Shirley had been bulimic as a teenager or
young adult.

"This arrived today." John Booth showed her a large
white envelope.

"What is it?" she asked. Booth opened it and took out a
set of x-rays and a letter. Lindsay recognized the x-rays as
Shirley Foster's teeth. She read over the letter that Booth
held in front of her. "Ah, it's the dentist who capped her
teeth. He is from New Jersey. I thought so. He thought she
was bulimic as well. Attach these to the report."

Lindsay began a careful examination of each of Shirley
Foster's bones, looking for any mark or nick that might
indicate how she was killed. She found nothing.

"I'm finished. You can release her bones for burial if the
coroner approves it," she told Booth. He nodded. "Unless
something shows up in the tissue samples, we may not be
able to tell how she died."

Lindsay finished her report in Eddie Peck's office before
she went back to campus. She was relieved to be finished.
Even though Shirley Foster disappeared before Lindsay
came to work for the university, there was something haunting about examining the bones of a fellow faculty member.

Lindsay's usual parking space behind Baldwin Hall was
taken by a shiny black Jeep loaded with wooden crates. All
the other spaces in the small lot were full, so she had to park
in the lot for the Psychology Building across the street. She
took a copy of the Red and Black, the campus newspaper,
from the rack on the way into the building. Across the front
page the large black headline read: "Another Student Killed on Corner of Jackson and Baldwin Streets." It was the
second student killed there in as many years. Students were
so prone to step out into the street without looking, as if
being on campus put them in a state of grace, immune to
realities such as sudden death. And unfortunately, too many
cars traveled too fast on both of those streets.

According to the article, Gloria Rankin, a twenty-sevenyear-old Ph.D. student in the Classics Department with a
master's in chemistry from the University of Chicago, was
dead on arrival at Clarke General after being hit by the
North/South Campus bus. She was a beautiful woman,
straight nose, slender, oval face, and blonde hair-and so
young. There was also a photograph of the scene, but Lindsay didn't look at it. She tucked the paper under her arm
and shook her head as she walked to her office in the basement of Baldwin.

"I guess you heard about that girl," Sally said, nodding
toward Lindsay's newspaper.

"Yes, I just read it. Did you know her?"

"No, but I know the driver of the bus, Luke Ferris. He's
Liza's older brother."

"You're kidding," said Lindsay, "Liza's brother? Isn't
he the guy who sometimes works for Frank and Kerwin
sorting artifacts?"

"Yeah. He's terribly upset. There are no charges against
him. It wasn't his fault, but he quit his job and Liza thinks
he'll probably drop out of school this quarter."

"That's so sad. The parents-all of them-must be just
grief-stricken."

"The Ferrises are beside themselves. And for it to have
happened to Luke ... he's a real sensitive guy. He's been
treated for depression before. I guess this will really push
him over the edge," Sally said.

Lindsay shook her head again. "It seems unfair that one
simple mistake could require such a high price."

"I know. When I think of the number of times I've
crossed streets on campus without looking-"

"Well, don't do it anymore." Lindsay's gaze rested on
the tall, rectangular wooden crates stacked against the wall
by her office. "What's that?"

"This really gorgeous guy's bringing them in."

Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "That must be his Jeep in
my parking space. Who is he?"

"He didn't say. He just asked when you'd be back and
started bringing them in," said Sally.

"These crates are old." Lindsay walked over to the closest one and brushed the faded stenciling with the tips of her
fingers. "OOF-6/35, is that what it says?"

"Looks like it," said Sally. "What does it mean?"

"I don't know. The other crates don't seem to have any
markings-" Lindsay began when a tall, lean man in his
mid-thirties, dressed in tight-fitting jeans and a plaid shirt,
came in carrying another of the mysterious wooden crates
on his shoulder. He set it down gently beside the others and
turned to Lindsay. He had short brown hair, blue eyes, and
a day-old beard.

"Sinjin," said Lindsay, going to him, hesitating only a
moment before she hugged him.

"Hello, baby sister," he said, kissing her cheek.

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming? Can you
stay?" She searched his face and found no expression she
could read.

"You didn't get a call from Dad?"

"Maybe it's on my voice mail. I've been away from my
office." Sally edged closer to Lindsay and her brother. "Oh,
this is Sally Flynn, my graduate assistant. Sally, this is
Sinjin Chamberlain, my brother." Sally stuck out her hand,
and Sinjin took it briefly, smiled, and nodded his head.

"So, what's in the crates?" asked Sally.

Sinjin turned to Lindsay. "Dad asked me to bring them to you. They were found in one of Papaw's outbuildings.
Apparently been there since the thirties."

"Wow," said Sally.

"You're kidding," said Lindsay. "No one knew they
were there?"

"You remember that jungle of kudzu behind Papaw's
workshop? There's a shed in the midst of it. No one has
been in it in years, apparently forgot it was there. Greataunt Maggie, in a fit of yard-work fever, found the building
and the contents. Dad opened one of the crates, found some
clay pots, and thought you ought to have them."

"So, you've been visiting Mom and Dad?" Lindsay felt
a pang of disappointment that her father had probably sent
him. She had hoped the visit was Sinjin's own idea.

"I was there a couple of days," he said.

"You can stay a few days here, can't you?"

"I don't know. Maybe overnight, if you have room."

"If she doesn't, I do," Sally volunteered. Sinjin looked
at her briefly, eyebrows raised, and back at Lindsay. "Well,
I have some things to do," said Sally. "I'll just slink back
over to my corner and do them."

Lindsay laughed as Sally retreated to her space in the
faunal lab. "I just finished my guest room. I'd love to have
you stay."

"All right. I do have some business in Atlanta," he said,
looking around at the archaeology lab.

"Let me show you the place." She grabbed his arm and
pointed at the floor. "This building was once a gymnasium.
You can still see the markings on the floor if you look hard
enough." Sinjin looked briefly at the dust-covered wooden
floor that had lost its shine ages ago, then followed Lindsay
to a set of floor-to-ceiling oaken drawers covering two
opposite walls of the lab. The brass pulls made them look
like giant card catalogs in an old library.

"The artifacts we're currently working with are stored
here." They were large flat drawers, three feet long, two
feet wide, and four inches deep. Anything deeper would
have been wasted space-artifacts could not be stacked on
top of one another. Lindsay pulled out a drawer halfway.
The bottom was entirely covered with large sherds-pieces
of broken clay pottery.

White butcher paper covered all the tables in the lab.
Two students sat at one of the tables gluing pieces of sherds
into a whole pot. The glued pieces were held together by
clothespins while the glue dried and were kept upright by
being embedded in sand.

"These are broken pots from a house floor at the Jasper
Creek site. That's the one-"

"Dad told me about your adventures at that site. How's
your leg?"

"Fine. No permanent damage," she said, patting it as if
to verify its soundness. The truth was, it still hurt some
when she stood on it for a long time. "They're fitting the
pieces of the pots back together. Each piece of sherd has
been mapped to the exact spot it was found. After they
finish piecing them together we'll be able to tell from the
scatter pattern if the pots were resting on a shelf or on the
floor prior to their breakage."

"Is that important to know?" he asked.

"Perhaps not by itself, but the little bits and pieces of
information accumulate, and after a while we know quite a
lot. If we find similar artifacts in a similar household
arrangement in another site several hundred miles away, for
example, we know that the two peoples were probably
related in some manner."