A Rumor of Bones: A Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery (2 page)

"Nope," replied Derrick. "Not a one." He looked
out over the site and squinted as if trying to see Lindsay's vision of conquistadors.

"I haven't seen any battle wounds on any of the
burials," Lindsay said, "but I haven't examined them
thoroughly. If they see the village, maybe they will be
friendly, maybe they won't be carrying disease." She
sighed. "What's up for you today? Tearing up any
new ground?"

"Don't know. I guess it depends who won today's
battle-Frank's deliberate approach, or Ned's batout-of-hell methodology."

The morning light was coming fast. She could now
make out the stakes and string that formed a grid over
the places on the ground they had identified as structures.

"It must be hard, caught between them as you and
your crew are"

Derrick shifted the shovel to his shoulder. "I just do
what Frank tells me. He's the principal investigator."

"You know, if you..."

Derrick put a finger on her lips. "I sense a lecture
coming on, something about me finishing my degree.
I'll get around to it sooner or later." He smiled,
winked, and walked over toward his crew, who were
looking for artifacts in the back-dirt pile.

Lindsay shifted her attention to the five graves
from which she had just removed the protective black plastic coverings, squatting beside the nearest. The
dim light barely revealed the skeleton flexed in a tight
fetal position. She looked up at the sky. These would
have to be finished today, for the weatherman had predicted rain.

The vans came rattling into the graveled parking
area and stopped under the trees. Lindsay and the rest
of the professional archaeology crew, except for
Frank, lived at the site. It was a Spartan lifestyle,
living in tents and bathing under a homemade shower,
but Lindsay enjoyed it. Kind of like the Swiss Family
Robinson, she thought. The field school students were
another matter. They were archaeology students from
the University of Georgia, and they were working at
the site to earn college credit. Their numbers varied
from fifteen to twenty throughout the summer. It was
impractical to house and feed that many students at
the site, so they were housed in a large, old Victorian
structure in Merry Claymoore that Frank had rented
for them.

For the duration of the dig, Frank had rented a
small house for himself next door to the field
students-close enough to keep an eye on them, but
far enough for his own privacy. Ned Meyers actually
supervised the male students at the house, and
Michelle Peterson supervised the females upstairs.

Ned jumped out of the driver's side of the first van
as it rolled to a stop and charged across the site in
chunky, short strides, swinging his arms like a power
walker. His round, whiskered face was already red
from the effort. Lindsay didn't bother wondering
what had set him off this time; he approached everything like a mad bull.

He went directly to Derrick and his crew. "All
right, we are going to open up Section Three today,"
he announced before he had reached his destination.

"Is that what Frank wants to do?" Derrick replied.

Ned's words, delivered in short staccato bursts,
contrasted with Derrick's slower drawl. "Frank is not
here, and I am in charge in his absence"

"Where is Frank?" Derrick asked.

"He was detained by the sheriff. I don't know how
long he'll be."

"But he's coming?" Derrick leaned on his shovel,
relaxed and immovable.

"Sooner or later." Ned waved an arm over the site
as if to indicate the amount of work to be done. "But
we can't wait on him to start"

"No, but we can finish up here in a couple of days.
We only lack smoothing the area beyond Structure 4
and mapping the artifacts so we can take them up, and
I'm sure Frank will be here soon. He's probably talking to the sheriff about those pothunters we ran off the
other night."

Ned squared himself in front of Derrick, battle
ready, a bantam rooster against the taller, broader
Derrick. "Dammit, I'm in charge. Do what I tell you."

"It's supposed to rain. We don't want to open up
new ground today."

"It is not going to rain." Ned lifted his chin, daring
Derrick to disagree.

"We are wasting time." Derrick turned to Brian.
"You and Jim finish up behind structure 4. Alan and I
will map" He turned back to Ned. "The Boy Scouts
are coming in a few days. You'll have all the crew you
need to uncover Section 3"

"We need to have a serious meeting during lunch
about your insubordination," Ned angrily muttered at
him. He turned and walked away, studying his clipboard.

"Insubordination?" Brian asked.

"Forget it," Derrick said. "Let's get to work."

Lindsay and her burial crew watched the scene
calmly as they divvied paint brushes, dental picks,
and tongue depressors: tools they used in excavating
the fragile bones of the burials. "Do we have to go
through this every day?" Sally whispered to Lindsay.
"What is Ned's problem?"

Lindsay smiled at Sally and shrugged. "A need for
control, I suppose. We're fortunate he isn't interested
in burials." She turned to Jane. "We have to get these
burials finished and out before it rains. Do you think
you, Sally, and Carrie can do it?"

"Five burials? I don't know. Maybe. They're all
nearly finished, aren't they?"

"Yes. Just to be sure, get some of the field students
to help. When you finish, ask Derrick or Michelle if
they need any help."

Tall, willowy Michelle walked up to them, grinning. "Well, there's a hard decision. Do they work
with gorgeous Derrick, moving all that heavy dirt, or
with me, digging out grid squares in a structure. Personally, I'd work with Derrick."

They all grinned.

"You know," said Jane, "we do seem to have an
unusual number of great looking guys this season.
Brian, Jim, and Alan aren't too bad either."

They all looked toward the objects of their admiration, who were already taking off their shirts in prepa ration for the hot summer sun that would be beating
down on them too soon. Brian and Jim began the task
of shaving the uncovered ground surface smooth with
sharpened square-bladed shovels. Derrick and Alan
sorted the mapping equipment.

"All right, girls," said Lindsay after a moment. "Let's
finish the burials. There is plenty of time to gawk during
lunch. Seriously, Michelle, do you need any help?"

"I'm not shorthanded. I have most of the field students, and we're going at a pretty good clip."

"Okay, then," Lindsay said to her crew. "When you
finish here, help Derrick finish up his section. Maybe
that'll make Ned happy."

Lindsay was preparing to help Jane finish burial 21
when she looked up and saw Frank walking toward
her. His forehead was creased into a frown.

"Ned said you were meeting with the sheriff," she
greeted him. "Was it about the pothunters?"

Frank shook his head. "More serious than that. I
have a favor to ask" He paused. "A hunter found a
human skeleton just outside of town."

"Are they sure it's human?" Lindsay asked.

"Yes. It looks like it may be the remains of a local
child who's been missing for over a year. The coroner
is out of town, and the parents are waiting in the sheriff's office. I told Sheriff Duggan you have experience
with this kind of thing and I would send you. See what
you can do. Marsha will be here soon to take you"

Lindsay's fingers tightened on the trowel she carried in her right hand. "You should've asked me first."

The furrows in Frank's brow deepened. He ran a
hand through his dark hair. "I didn't think you'd
mind. Lindsay, some of the townspeople don't like us being here. If we're helpful, it will be easier on all of
us."

"We?"

"You know this is something you can do in your
sleep. Just ID the bones and come on back."

Lindsay looked down at her T-shirt, cut-offs, bare
legs, and work boots and sighed. "All right, I'll
change clothes and get my things."

She didn't tell Frank how hard it had been for her
the last time she had to identify the bones of children,
standing in a California vineyard while diggers
uncovered those bones lying forlornly in shallow
graves with their little red or white tennis shoes and
tiny, tattered clothes. He didn't understand what it
was like, looking into the faces of parents, their eyes
conveying the hope that their baby was not here but
somewhere else-alive somewhere else-and yet at
the same time longing for their ordeal to be over. So if
this was their child, they could finally know and take
him home and bury him.

She particularly remembered one mother whose
eyes were permanently swollen from months of
crying. She insisted on showing Lindsay a picture of
her son. She seemed afraid that Lindsay wouldn't
understand that the bones she identified as his had
belonged to a living person, a loved person, her son.
Lindsay had looked at the studio picture of an eightyear-old boy dressed in a suit, smiling into the
camera-healthy and well cared for-and wished she
had had some comfort for the mother.

Lindsay walked to her tent to change clothes and
then to face more grief-stricken parents and pitiful
little bones.

In fresh blue jeans and a white cotton blouse, her
long brown hair combed and fastened into a pony tail,
Lindsay slid a backpack containing her tools over her
shoulder and waited while Marsha Latimore's white
Lincoln pulled up in the parking lot.

Marsha was wealthy and well-connected in Merry
Claymoore. The less-than-well-dressed excavation
crews often invited small town suspicion. As a
member of the garden club and president of the local
historical society, Marsha was useful, or so Frank
seemed to think, in keeping them on the good side of
the townspeople. Lindsay put her pack in the back
seat, climbed into the passenger side, and closed the
car door a little too hard. She glanced over at Marsha
and briefly noted the pale yellow sundress trimmed in
daisies. Lindsay wondered how much hair spray it
took to keep Marsha's helmet of bleached blonde hair
so perfectly still.

"Thank you for doing this, Lindsay," said Marsha.
Her manicured hands gripped the steering wheel so
tightly her knuckles turned white as she wheeled the
Lincoln around in the parking lot and headed back to
town. A frown creased her perfectly made-up face.

"This is a real sad case," she said. "Sarah and Mike
Pruitt's little girl, Peggy, disappeared a year and a half
ago. She'd just turned six ... I'd helped Sarah with
her birthday party. We had a clown, and Sarah's
cousin performed some of his magic tricks ... it was
real nice. All the children had such a good time."

Lindsay wanted to say something comforting, but
everything she thought of sounded trivial. After a
moment, she asked, "Do they have dental records or
x-rays?"

"I don't know"

"I need a good picture of her. If they have one
made by a studio, that would be good."

"I'm sure they do. Sarah's cousin Mickey has the
portrait studio in town."

They rode in silence for over a mile before Marsha
ventured conversation again.

"Frank told me there was some trouble at the site
the other night."

"Pothunters, most likely."

"Pothunters?"

"They're collectors who vandalize burials looking
for Indian artifacts, mainly clay pots or nice point
caches. Pots in burials are usually found intact, so
they are valuable to collectors."

"That's terrible."

"Every site I have ever worked on has had trouble
with them. These were a little unique, however. They
wore Halloween masks."

"Halloween masks?"

"Yes, apparently, they docked a boat and came up
through the woods. Jane and I saw them first. They
ran when we yelled for Derrick and Brian. We all
chased them, but they got away in their boat. I don't
think they'll be back"

"Weren't you scared?"

"A little, but like I said, pothunters are a common
problem."

"Yes, but the masks. They might have been.. .well
something different from collectors."

"Maybe, but they ran away in a hurry. Derrick can
look very formidable when he wants to"

"Derrick is a handsome young man."

"Most women think so."

"Do you know him well?"

"We've been friends for a long time. We went to
graduate school together," Lindsay replied, wondering what Marsha was fishing for.

"I understand you've known Frank a long time,
too."

Ah, thought Lindsay, of course. My relationship
with Frank. "Yes. We have worked other sites together." Lindsay left it at that, and silence settled
uncomfortably between them.

They passed an ornate entranceway with liontopped pillars and heavy wrought iron gates emblazoned with a large flowery T. Marsha nodded her
head toward the gates.

"That's Tylerwynd. Isabel Tyler is what passes for
the town matriarch. She thinks she still lives in the
past when her family owned the town and everyone
worked for them. Sarah Pruitt, the mother of the missing girl, is Isabel's husband's niece. He's dead now,
and Isabel has disinherited Sarah. I suppose Isabel
doesn't want her own children to share the family
inheritance with any of her husband's family."

"Sounds like a disagreeable woman"

"She is. She's certainly a strange woman"

They arrived at the sheriff's department, and
Marsha led Lindsay through the reception area. A
young-looking couple sat huddled together, holding
each other's hands. They looked up expectantly at
Lindsay and Marsha. Another man, about the same
age as the couple, stood behind them with his hands
on both their shoulders.

The sheriff stood and held out his hand to Lindsay.

"I'm Sheriff Greg Duggan. Marsha tells me you're a
forensics expert" He looked skeptical. "Somehow I
pictured you as a much older person"