Dressed to Die, page 14
part #3 of Lindsay Chamberlain Archaeology Mystery Series
Lindsay thought for a moment. “Sort of.”
“Well, you know that cute police sketch artist we met in Eddie Peck’s office that time?”
“Yes,” said Lindsay.
“Well, Bobbie and I took him to lunch, and I talked him into doing a sketch of the guy. I couldn’t remember very much at first, but the more I talked to him, the more I remembered.”
Lindsay looked down at the picture and up at Sally. “I don’t recognize him.”
Bobbie held up a hand and grinned. “There’s more. Sally showed me the picture, and I thought I recognized it.” She put a poster on Lindsay’s desk. “I’m auditing a course at the law school-and boy, that was hard to get permission to do-anyway, this was one of the speakers a few weeks ago. It was still on the bulletin board. I’ve been seeing it every day as I leave class.”
Lindsay looked down at the flyer. The pictures did look very similar, from the coat and tie to the professionally styled haircut. Sidney Barrie, UGA Law School alum and member of the firm Easton, Easton, and Shackleforth, was to speak on “Ethics and Corporate Law.”
“It’s worth a try,” Sally said. “The police could talk to him.”
Something was nagging at Lindsay as she examined each of the pictures.
“Lindsay?”
She looked up at Sally and Bobbie. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“We could give his name and this sketch to the police.”
“Sidney, Sid-lawyer,” said Lindsay out loud. “Not yet. Would you allow me to keep this?”
“Sure, but…
“You two really are clever. This may be just what I need to get the artifacts back.” Bobbie and Sally beamed.
“They’re showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Tate Center late this evening,” Sally said. “A bunch of us are dressing up and going. Want to come? You can bring Sinjin.”
“I’ll pass, I think.” Lindsay grinned at them. “But thanks for asking. Be sure to take pictures of yourselves.”
When they had gone, she took out the Atlanta phone directory and looked up the name Kathy Falkner. There wasn’t one. Then Lindsay remembered that Kathy may have recently moved. She dialed information, and there was a listing for a Kathleen Falkner. Lindsay knew she had the right number when the woman answered the phone. She had met Kathy once when she and her parents visited Sinjin, and she recognized her husky voice.
“Kathy, this is Lindsay Chamberlain.”
Kathy said nothing.
“Sinjin’s sister.”
“Yes, I remember you. What do you want?”
“I’m leaving Athens, on the way to Atlanta. I want you to meet me at the coffee shop at Lenox Square in two hours. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes, but why should I do that?”
“Because you lied to the police about Sinjin and, consequently, caused a lot of trouble.”
“I…
“Don’t bother to lie to me. I’m not really in the mood. Meet me. You can ask Sidney Barrie to come if you want.”
“What do you want?” she asked.
“To talk to you,” Lindsay responded.
“You can do that now,” Kathy said.
“No. I’m leaving now. Be there.” Lindsay hung up the phone.
Kathy Falkner was a startlingly beautiful woman with black hair, crystal blue eyes, and flawless skin. It was easy to see why men fell in love with her. It was not so easy to understand why they stayed in love with her. Lindsay eyed her as she positioned herself in the booth. Kathy didn’t look pregnant, but she did look slightly rounder than when they had met before. Sidney Barrie, looking like an ad in GQ, slid in beside her. He watched Kathy adoringly whenever she spoke.
“This is real uncomfortable.” Kathy shifted her position as she sipped a milkshake through a straw. She wore a pink silk shirt over white slacks. A necklace with a single diamond twinkled at her throat. Lindsay also noticed a sizable diamond on her finger.
Sid directed his attention to Lindsay and the adoring look in his eyes changed quickly. “Was this necessary?”
Lindsay thought Kathy was trying to play for sympathy. She wanted to tell her not to bother, that although Sinjin loved her, and Sid obviously did, she, Lindsay, did not. But the thought that Kathy might be carrying her niece or nephew made Lindsay hold her tongue. Instead, she asked her calmly, “Why did you insist on seeing Sinjin at such an early hour of the morning?”
“Didn’t he tell you?” Kathy asked.
“No. He’s still very loyal to you.” Lindsay hoped that would give her a twinge of guilt. “But for whatever reason you wanted to see him, why so early in the morning?”
“Sid and I are getting married. I had fittings all day and I needed to see Sinjin, all right? I know that sounds selfish, but …” She shrugged.
It did, but Lindsay didn’t say so. “Why did you lie to the police?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal. It was the campus police that called, for heaven’s sake. How serious could it be?”
“It was very serious. You caused problems not only for Sinjin but for me as well.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll call them back and tell them I made a mistake.”
“No, you won’t.” Sid laid a hand on Kathy’s arm as if she were about to reach for a phone. “Whatever trouble you and your brother have gotten yourselves into, it doesn’t have anything to do with us. If you want to know why Kathy wanted to see your brother, it was to get him to leave her alone and drop this silly blood-test idea. It’s not his baby. He agreed to drop it. Now, if you persist in harassing us, I’ll have to take action against you, and it won’t be fun.”
“Let me tell you what I think,” said Lindsay, staring him straight in the eyes. “You came to visit me, probably with the same story, hoping I could influence him, or to have me deliver a little threat to him like the one you just made to me.” Lindsay saw his eyes flicker and Kathy look over at him, and knew she had made a hit. “It was on a day when we were unpacking artifacts. You overheard us discussing them and, for whatever reason, decided to steal them.”
“Now, just a minute,” said Sid, leaning forward.
Lindsay raised a hand to stave off any comment. “After all, $125,000 is a lot of money, and you aren’t a partner yet.”
Sid opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars?” Kathy whispered.
“You asked Kathy to call Sinjin and get him away from home, to make sure he had no alibi. You stole the artifacts, then called the police and reported seeing Sinjin’s Jeep parked behind Baldwin.”
Sid gave a nervous laugh. “There’s no proof I was ever there.”
Lindsay whipped out a copy of the sketch and the flyer. “My graduate assistant saw you. She had the police sketch artist do this. She’ll pick you out of a lineup.” A little melodramatic, thought Lindsay, but it had an effect.
“I wasn’t there,” he said.
“My assistant says you were. With her sun-bleached hair and Hershey chocolate eyes, some tend to think her a little southern valley girl. But I assure you, she’s a good witness.”
“In court, this would be thrown out,” began Sid.
Lindsay leaned forward. “You don’t understand, do you? That doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell you from recent personal experience that all that has to happen for your reputation to be damaged is for an article to appear in the paper. `Sidney Barrie, of the law firm Easton, Easton, and Shackleforth, was questioned about the disappearance of valuable artifacts. He denied, etc, etc.’ You know the rest. What would Easton, Easton, and Shackleforth think of that?”
“OK, Kathy can call…”
Lindsay shook her head. “I’m not here to blackmail you. Kathy can make the call or not, according to her conscience. I want the artifacts back. You can ship them to me in care of the Archaeology Department.”
“Look. OK, I came to see you, just to talk to you about your brother. That’s all. You weren’t there, and I left. I don’t know anything about the artifacts. I didn’t take them.”
“How can I believe that, when Kathy here comes up with the improbable explanation that she had fittings all day and could only see Sinjin early in the morning? Then she deliberately lies to the police.”
“I did have fittings, and I didn’t know it was anything serious. I didn’t think it would matter.”
“It mattered a great deal to a lot of people, and unless I get the artifacts back, it’s going to matter to you. You can give them to me or to the police.”
Lindsay gave the waitress money for her salad and drink, grabbed up the copies of the sketch and flyer, and walked out to her Rover. Sid followed her, Kathy close behind.
“Look. You have this all wrong,” he said. “We can’t give them back, because we never took them.”
“You’ve got until tomorrow to either return the artifacts or show me you didn’t do it. And that’s going to be hard, since you’ve lied once and are stopping Kathy from telling the truth.” Lindsay got into her Rover and left them standing in the parking lot. Now she would have to go home and tell Sinjin what she had done. That was going to be hard.
Lindsay looked at her watch when she pulled into the Baldwin parking lot. It was only three o’clock. She remembered what the reporter had asked about other missing artifacts and needed to take a look. Instead of going to her office, she walked across campus to Nancy Hart Hall.
Nancy Hart, named for a Revolutionary War heroine from Georgia, was a small, old Greek revival-style building, constructed in the 1930s of red brick and nestled between two other buildings. Lindsay walked between the two white columns and opened the large double doors. The floor of the entranceway was made from polished local gneiss. The walls were an indescribable blend of light beige, green, and yellow, and hadn’t been painted in years. Large, thick chips of old paint were peeling off the walls and collecting on the floor. The first floor still had a few offices, mainly retired faculty for whom office space couldn’t be located anyplace else on campus. The top floor was empty.
Lindsay took the stairway to the basement. She inserted her key in the padlock that secured the heavy, dirty white wooden door to the artifact room. She had to shake the key in the lock before the shackle would release, then push hard on the old door to get it to open. The room was dark and dusty-smelling, but thankfully, Lindsay didn’t smell any moisture. She hated that the artifacts were stored here. They desperately needed more lab space so students could study them.
She flipped on the light switch. The artifacts, many collected as far back as the thirties, were in boxes on the same type of metal shelves as were used in Baldwin. Against one wall was an old desk that students used when analyzing the items. She walked between the aisles and opened a box. She had been here many times helping her students do research using the artifacts in storage, and she knew what was there and where everything was supposed to be. Right away, in the first box, she found that several bird effigy pipes were missing. She went to another box that should have contained a complicated stamped Swift Creek bowl. It was gone. She went to box after box. Not all were empty; in fact, many boxes had only one or two artifacts missing. It was clear, however, that someone had been systematically stealing them. Lindsay tried to think when she was there last. It wasn’t that long ago. Last quarter? Nothing was missing then. Frank would have to be told. Another scandal. He would hate it. She hated it. Lindsay dusted off her hands and walked toward the door. Before she put a hand on the knob, she heard the sound of a click. She hesitated a moment, then turned the knob and pushed the door. It was locked.
Chapter 12
LINDSAY HEARD QUIET footsteps walking away. “There’s someone in here,” she yelled, banging on the door with her hand and trying to get their attention. The sound of footfalls continued up the stairs.
This isn’t an accident, she thought. Who? Someone guarding the artifacts for themselves. Who? Lindsay dropped her hands to her sides and listened to the silence of the room. She was in no immediate danger. She could eventually attract someone’s attention by banging on the door. Then again, there was nothing down here but Archaeology storage, and she hadn’t told anyone where she was going. Fear rose from her belly and stung her throat. This is silly, she thought. She wouldn’t be locked in here until she died, not in the middle of a campus of thirty thousand people. To her knowledge, it had never happened.
There were no windows, but there were lights. It could be worse, it could be dark. But, despite her determination to stay calm, she felt a growing sense of being trapped underground. OK, this isn’t that bad, she told herself as she concentrated on breathing slowly, keeping panic at bay. Lindsay looked at the ceiling covered with peeling plaster. On the other side of that ceiling was the bottom of the first floor. That gave her an idea. Perhaps someone was in an office. Maybe the broom closet held something she could use to bang on the ceiling. She opened the closet door and turned on the light. An old mop was standing in the corner, along with a bucket filled with cleaning supplies, none of which looked like they had been touched during the past decade. As she put a hand on the mop, she noticed a small door behind the bucket. The crawl space for the building’s wiring and plumbing. Would that lead to the outside? It would perhaps at least lead to another room where the door might not be locked. She moved the bucket and pulled on the door handle. It wouldn’t budge. There was a small keyhole below the knob. She examined the walls for a key hanging on a nail but found none. She looked in the drawers of the old desk. There were pens, pencils, paper clips, Sharpies, White Out, paper, all in disarray, but nothing that looked like a key.
It was an old door with an old lock, and old, cheap locks can sometimes be opened with any key that will fit in the keyhole. On her key chain, the key to her tack room looked to be about the right size. She tried it in the keyhole, but it wouldn’t turn. She rattled it in the lock, turned it again, and heard a click. She pulled the door open, revealing a gaping black hole. Lindsay stared at the darkness a moment, reluctant to move. “This isn’t that bad,” she told herself out loud.
Lindsay had a small flashlight on her key ring. Vowing, after her experience of being lost in the cave, never to be without light again, she had bought several flashlights of all shapes and sizes and had placed them in her Rover, in her office, at home, and on all her key rings. The switch on the tiny flashlight was the type that had to be held down for the light to stay on. She shone it into the darkness. In the few feet illuminated ahead of her, she could see the mass of ancient cables bracketed to the wall of the crawl space, covered with dust and cobwebs. Lindsay tried to orient herself in the building. Which direction led to the outside? The entire crawl space couldn’t be that long. This was not like a cave, she said to herself. Backtracking wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Lindsay was struck with a sudden thought. What if who ever locked her in meant to come back, perhaps with someone else to do her harm? Stupid, she thought. Why would they do that? It would only bring more attention to what they were doing. It would raise the stakes for them tremendously. She shook the thought. She was just scared. However, as a precaution, she turned out the lights in the main room and in the closet. Maybe if they came back, and she wasn’t here, it would all look like a mistake, like they were being paranoid. She took several deep breaths and crawled into the space and closed the little door tight behind her. “Oh, God,” she said softly to herself. “Calm down. This isn’t that bad. I’m not trapped. I can go back out the door anytime and turn on the lights.” The sound of her own voice gave her courage, and she began crawling down the tiny conduit.
Lindsay felt something drop into her hair and frantically brushed it away. Don’t think about what’s in here, she admonished herself. She crawled along the tiny space, shining the small light on the wall. She thought she heard small creatures scampering, but decided it was best to ignore them. Snakes, she thought. She had forgotten about snakes. She was about to shine her light farther ahead when the beam hit another door like the one she had entered. There was no keyhole on her side of the door, but when she tried the knob, it opened. She emerged into a darkened closet similar to the first one, but this one was completely empty. She listened. Silence. Carefully, she tried the knob to the closet door. It wouldn’t turn. It was locked. She pushed hard on the door. It wouldn’t budge. She was afraid to make noise. She closed her eyes, trying to think how many rooms were on this side of the building. The Archaeology storeroom was the first. This room was the second. There should be one more.
Lindsay climbed back into the crawl space, more easily this time, and continued, ignoring the things that might be crawling on her. After twenty feet or so, she came to another door like the first two. She pushed, willing it to be unlocked. It was, and she found herself in another closet. She switched on the light. The closet was stacked with dusty boxes labeled Fredrickson Foundation Archival Files, with dates ranging from 1972 to 1982. She had no idea what the Fredrickson Foundation was, but that was not surprising, the university had hundreds of foundations. She tried the closet door. It was unlocked. Her small light showed the next room to be empty. The only furniture was a desk against one wall, listing to one side from a broken leg. This room had two doors and, unless Lindsay was mistaken, one led to the outside. She walked across the room to the opposite door. It opened onto a patio surrounded by shrubs. She stepped outside, breathing the fresh air into her lungs for several moments before she closed and locked the door behind her.
Lindsay ran her fingers through her hair to get rid of unwanted creatures. She dusted off her jeans and shirt and walked around to the sidewalk in back of Nancy Hart Hall. Classes were changing and students came pouring out of the buildings. She started across campus. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a couple of campus police enter Nancy Hart.
“Dr. Chamberlain.”
Lindsay jumped and turned.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
