Dressed to Die, page 19
part #3 of Lindsay Chamberlain Archaeology Mystery Series
The whole site was surrounded by woods. A river flowed by the place where the factory once stood. There were no boats on it now, but during the time of the mill’s operation, the river was the route for taking the mill’s wares to the coast for shipment to markets around the world. Across the river, thick woods now grew. The site that, according to Kerwin’s article, had once been a bustling focus of commerce was now a peaceful place in the process of being reclaimed by nature.
Lindsay didn’t know what she hoped to accomplish by coming here-find some clue to Kerwin’s behavior? What? Did she need to find a clue to Kerwin’s behavior? She shrugged and walked around the place, visualizing what it was like when it was alive. She could make out one of the old roadbeds through the woods. There was something about old roadbeds that seemed to last forever: the faint dip in the ground, the slightly shorter trees, the bare remnants of the road’s sides-like a ghostly avenue superimposed over the woods. She smiled and stepped back onto a place where there was no ground. She fell into darkness.
Chapter 16
LINDSAY LANDED ON her feet, jarring her entire frame, and collapsed to the ground. For a moment the breath was knocked out of her and she gasped involuntarily, trying to get her lungs working again. In the next moment a wave of pain went up through her bones. When the pain left and she caught her breath, she stood up on shaky legs and looked around her. She was surrounded by dirt walls.
“Oh, damn, not again,” she cried and looked up through a round hole at sky and tree canopies. “The well. Damn, I forgot about the well.” Why, she thought, hadn’t they filled it in? “Damn.”
She stood on the dry well bottom of soft earth and forest litter and tested her legs. She felt her arms. She seemed to be all right. She had landed on her feet, and her skeleton had absorbed the shock of the fall. Had she landed on her side, she might have been seriously injured.
How to fall correctly was one of the things her mother taught her. “You will fall off your horse sooner or later,” she had told her. “Try to land on your feet. If you are going over headfirst, you need to break your fall with your hands, so don’t have your reins wrapped around them.”
Once, on the rare occasion of her mother teaching a riding class, she was giving the same instruction to a little boy. The boy’s father overheard her and came marching over. “Don’t teach him to fall!” he had shouted at her. “That’s teaching him to fail!” Her mother looked at the man for several moments, raking her gaze over him from head to foot before she spoke. “That’s the stupidest philosophy I’ve ever heard. Falling isn’t a failure. It’s obeying the laws of gravity when you get thrown off balance. Are you going to explain your school of thought to the horse?”
Her mother, however, had given her no instructions on getting out of a well. “I don’t suppose anybody’s up there?” Lindsay shouted. Her question was met with silence.
The old well was less than twenty feet deep. If the dirt walls weren’t too soft, she could climb out. Lindsay felt the sides with her fingertips. The walls felt like sandpaper-hard earth. It probably wouldn’t cave in on her, but it might be hard to get hand- and footholds. About four feet from the top, she saw a root growing from the wall. That could be good. She fished in her pockets and only came up with a quarter. She had left her keys in the Rover, and her pocketknife was in her purse.
“I’m going to have to start wearing a tool belt everywhere,” she said aloud. Damn, she hadn’t told a soul where she was going.
She took the quarter and began scraping a toehold. The earth was hard, not impossible, but it would be slow going. She dug toeholds up the side of the wall as far as she could reach, aiming for the root.
Lindsay thrust a toe into one of the holes she had scraped out and began to climb, alternately using the gouges for fingers and toes. This isn’t that hard, she thought. I’m becoming really good at escaping from holes in the ground. As she climbed, she scraped out more handholds. Her arms and hands were becoming exhausted.
The earth was softer nearer the top, and the digging went faster-so did the climbing. She was almost to the root when one of the holds crumbled under her weight, pulling her off balance. She grabbed for the root as she started to fall, holding on to it like a rope, dangling from the side of the well. She hung there for a moment before the root started pulling out of the wall like a thread unraveling from a sweater. Suddenly, she was back at the bottom of the well, holding a long piece of root in her hand. The action had loosened the soil, and now there was a deep gash down the side of the well.
Lindsay examined the loose dirt, wondering if there was a danger of the well caving in. She felt her heart pound as fear took hold of it. The light overhead was growing dim as the sun began its descent. It wouldn’t be long before she had no light. Already, it was growing darker in the well. She toyed for a moment with the idea of throwing the end of the root up and seeing if she could snag something, an idea immediately abandoned as stupid.
It was not until Lindsay determined that the gash had made her original path too unstable and she should just start again that she realized she no longer had her quarter-not a great tool, but the only one she had. Lindsay was determined she was not going to spend the night in the well, even if she had to use her fingernails to claw her way to the top.
The quarter wasn’t visible and Lindsay searched the ground, feeling through the leaves and pine straw with her hands. Her fingers stung as bits of stems pricked them as she hunted. Something hard scraped her flesh, and she drew back her hand. Blood oozed from a thin scrape across the tips of her fingers. She dug through the leaves for the offending object. It was a railroad spike. She grinned, forgetting about her scraped fingers in the joy of finding such a useful tool.
Lindsay went back to work again, digging toeholds with the spike. The work went faster. She climbed, dug more holds, and occasionally stuck the spike in the side of the well and pulled herself up. She was almost to the top when a hand appeared in front of her face.
“Can I help you?”
Lindsay was startled for a moment and stared at the hand. It was a woman’s hand. She followed it up and looked into the face of Sheriff Irene Varnadore. Lindsay gratefully took her hand, and the sheriff pulled as Lindsay levered herself up and out of the well.
“Thanks,” she said, leaning over, breathing heavily.
The sheriff shrugged. “You were almost out. How did you get in?”
“Stupidity and carelessness,” said Lindsay, brushing the caked dirt from her clothes as best she could.
Irene Varnadore didn’t look like a sheriff, dressed as she was in plum slacks and pink blouse. Law enforcement duds were remarkably defeminizing.
“Are you hurt?” Irene asked.
“I don’t think so. Just dirty, exhausted, and humiliated.”
Irene looked at her cut hand. “You need to wash that,” she said, adding almost hesitantly, “I just made a pot of beef stew. Would you like to come to my place and clean up and have dinner?”
“That sounds good. Yes, I would.” Then it came to her to wonder about her good fortune. “How did you come to be here?”
“I live in that house a mile back. You must have passed it. I saw a vehicle drive by. There’s nothing down here but this old place. At first I thought it was just kids looking for a place to park, then there was something about the Rover that seemed familiar. I thought I’d check it out.”
“I’m grateful you did.”
Irene shrugged again. “I really didn’t do anything.”
“It’s a comfort to know that somebody noticed me passing by.”
Lindsay climbed into her Rover and followed the sheriff to her house, a modem-looking modular design with gray siding and a steep, slanted roof with dormer windows on the upper floor.
Inside, the look was southwestern, with geometric motif rugs on pine floors, wood and leather sofa and chairs, cactus, and driftwood accessories. The house was uncluttered and clean. Lindsay left her shoes at the door.
“There’s a bathroom down that hall and to the right. Towels and washcloths are in the wicker cabinet.”
Lindsay followed her directions into an old-fashioned bath with a pedestaled lavatory, claw-footed tub, and a brass towel stand. She chose a matching rose-colored towel and washcloth from the cabinet and washed her face and arms, dusted off her clothes, and cleaned her cut fingers. She fished in her purse for a brush and ran it through her tangled hair. She found a sponge in the cabinet and cleaned the bathroom of the dirt she had brought in. She thought she should call Sinjin and tell him she would be late but remembered he was out with Sally.
Lindsay followed the sounds and found Irene setting a tureen of beef stew on the dining table set with silver, china bowls, and iced tea. This room looked older than the rest of the house. The wood in the flooring was a larger cut than in the other floors and was fitted with wooden pegs. The brick in the fireplace was old, with a newer walnut mantel holding an assortment of photographs.
“Go ahead and sit down,” said Irene. “I’ll just get the cornbread.” She left and returned shortly with round steaming bread on a plate.
“Were you expecting company?” asked Lindsay, suddenly feeling like she was taking someone’s seat.
“Jesse-he’s a highway patrolman I see-we had a date to eat and watch a couple of movies. Nothing much. There’s a pileup halfway between here and Atlanta, and he had to go. I heard about it on the scanner,” she added.
“It was nice of you to ask me in.” Lindsay spread the napkin in her lap. They ate the first few bites in silence. The beef was tender, and the vegetables were cut in large chunks. “This is so good,” said Lindsay.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe. The bread, too,” Irene told her.
“This looks like an old part of the house-“
“It is,” said Irene. “My grandparents bought it in the thirties. It was old then. They built onto it. Didn’t follow the original design, though.”
“I wonder if this was the mill manager’s house,” Lindsay mused. “Was this part of the old textile mill?”
“I don’t know. Could be, I guess.”
“Archaeologists tried to find the manager’s house and couldn’t. It’d be interesting if it was here all along, just changed with the times.”
“I heard Luke Ferris asked you for help.” Irene didn’t seem displeased, just curious.
“Yes, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do,” Lindsay said.
“Did he tell you his story? You don’t need to answer, I can tell by the look on your face he did.” Irene shook her head.
Lindsay tried to look noncommittal and thought she probably failed. “It’s just that I know his sister, and him, too, a little. I just can’t imagine it.”
“People do funny things. His story’s weak all the way around. Whatever I thought of Shirt, I don’t believe for a minute she planned a rendezvous with him.”
“It seems unlikely, but things like that do happen,” said Lindsay.
“Maybe. But Shirt’s great love was Will Patterson. She might cheat on her husband but not on him.”
“You all used to be friends, didn’t you?”
Irene nodded. “Sort of. When we were in high school I felt honored that she chose me as her friend. But I was just a sidekick. Shirl was the main attraction. At the time I thought some of her starshine would rub off on me. It didn’t. I’ll bet you were popular in school.”
“Not especially,” responded Lindsay.
“What, you weren’t a cheerleader, prom queen?”
Lindsay shook her head. “Not even close. I didn’t even have a date for the junior prom. Most of my extracurricular activities centered around horses. My mother raises and trains Arabians. I did a lot of horse show stuff. That and tagging after my grandfather on digs.”
“I went to the proms, but Shirl always got me the dates. I think I resented her for that.”
“Weren’t you relieved to graduate and find out the world isn’t like high school?”
“In a way. But when you keep the same circle of friends, it’s hard to break the typecasting. I even dated Will myself for a while, after Shirl started seeing Tom. Didn’t work out.”
“Why didn’t Shirley just marry Will in the first place?” Lindsay asked.
“She should have. Her parents had her life laid out for her on a blueprint, and she just went along. I guess I did feel sorry for her some-and for Chris, too. Their parents treated him like the original screwup. His father was furious over his opening that little shop instead of going to work for him. I think Stewart Pryor has dynastic delusions or something.”
Irene took another bite of cornbread and a sip of tea. “Getting into law enforcement was the best thing that ever happened to me. That and Granny leaving me this house and property. Mom and Dad tried to get me to give it to my brother and his wife. They told me that, since he had a family, this’d be a great place for their grandchildren to grow up. They had it all figured out. Buster would pay me something every month. Like I’d ever see a penny. Earleen actually came over to measure the windows for drapes.”
“They must’ve been surprised when you refused,” said Lindsay.
Irene grinned. “You’d have thought I was the most selfish bitch alive.” She stopped smiling. “I wasn’t going to be second best anymore. Like you said, life’s not high school. I told Mom and Dad that I wanted a family, and if Buster and Earleen couldn’t house their family, they should stop having kids. I said that in front of Earleen, too.” Irene smiled again. She was attractive when she smiled. Lindsay thought the coroner was right, that perhaps she just wasn’t at her best around Tom Foster. “You dating anybody?” she asked Lindsay abruptly.
Lindsay shook her head. “Not now. He didn’t like my detective work. But I miss him,” she added.
“This guy I’m seeing is nice. I kind of hope something comes of it. I’d still like to have a family. I saw where that actress Adrienne Barbeau had twins at fifty. That kind of gives me hope.”
“I imagine it was very hard on her.”
“I suppose so. You ever want kids?”
“Yeah, I do. Right now, I’d even settle for a niece or nephew.”
“You have brothers and sisters, then?” asked Irene.
“I have a brother. He’s visiting me now. He’s a nice guy „
“What’s he do?”
“He’s a smokejumper,” Lindsay said with pride.
“Really? I got a cousin who’s a hotshot. Name’s Zeke Varnadore. Ask your brother if he knows him. It’s a pretty tight community of people, I understand.”
“I’ll ask him. I hate to admit it, but I don’t know a lot about what he does. What’s a hotshot?”
“Ground crew who fight the fires. Similar to smokejumpers, but they don’t get to the fire by parachute.” Irene seemed pleased to tell her. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Sinjin Chamberlain.”
“Sinjin? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.”
“Short for St. John,” Lindsay told her.
“St. John. I like that. It’s better than Buster.” They both laughed.
Lindsay finished her stew and the last of her cornbread. “This was great. I thought I was going to be in that well all night.”
“What were you doing at the old mill?”
Lindsay shrugged. “It was a fellow faculty member’s dig. I read his report, and something about it bothered me. I came out to see if I could figure out what.” If Irene thought that was an odd explanation, she didn’t say so. Lindsay wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. It was an odd explanation.
The phone rang and Irene got up to answer it. She came back and sat down. “That was one of my deputies. I’ve had them dragging the lake for Shirl’s car, and they just found it. Would you like to go with me and have a look?”
The lakeside site was lit with large spotlights that shone off a low fog hovering over the water. As Lindsay and Irene approached through the woods, the car was emerging from the fog, pulled by a large tow truck with a winch. The first thought Lindsay had when she saw the car was what a shame someone had pushed it into the lake. It was a dark blue Jaguar and had water pouring out of every crack and opening. A deputy started to open the door.
“Wait,” Irene told him. She peered in the window. Lindsay followed her.
There wasn’t anything on either the front or back seat. The keys were in the ignition. It looked like the gearshift was in neutral.
Irene carefully opened the driver’s side door and took the keys. “Let’s have a look in the trunk,” she said.
The trunk was full of water, but it was leaking out quickly. Other than what might have been a soggy, flat cardboard gift box, the trunk was empty.
“What do you think happened to the money?” asked Lindsay as Irene drove her back to her Rover.
“Right now, I’m assuming Luke Ferris squirreled it away somewhere. We haven’t found any hidden assets. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t spent it or maybe has it hidden, trying to figure out how to launder it.”
“How does one go about laundering money, anyway?” asked Lindsay.
“Put it through some legitimate business, falsify receipts. It’s best if you have a cash business. I knew a guy who stole fifty thousand from his employer. He took up painting with watercolors and went to craft fairs, selling his pictures. His cousin ratted on him. He said the paintings were so bad, no one could possibly be buying them.”
They both laughed.
“Luke Ferris has no way to launder any money,” Lindsay said.
“Granted, he may not know how. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have it stashed away somewhere. He could be afraid to spend it.”
