Airtight Case (22 page)

Elaine handed Lindsay an envelope. “This was left for you at the desk. They didn’t see who left it. It was just lying in the chair when Afton came back from the bathroom.”

The envelope wasn’t sealed. Instead, the flap was tucked inside. Lindsay opened it and took out a page torn from a book. She stared a moment, then dropped it.

Elaine watched it flutter to the floor as Lindsay doubled over, holding her mouth to muffle a scream.

Chapter 19

A Little Poe

“LINDSAY, ARE YOU all right?”

Elaine bent over to pick up the paper, but Lindsay put a hand on her arm. “No. Please. I need to find out if there are any prints on it.”

“Prints?”

Lindsay straightened up. Her hands shook as she picked up the paper by a small corner and dropped it on the table.

“Fingerprints,” she whispered.

Elaine looked at the paper that had been ripped out of a book—the title page to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Premature Burial.”

“What does that mean?” Elaine’s puzzled expression was mixed with concern.

“Please, will you call the sheriff for me?”

“Yes, of course.”

Elaine hurried out to use the phone behind the main desk of the library. When she returned, Lindsay gave her the brief version of what had happened to her.

“Oh, my God,” exclaimed Elaine. “Oh, my God. Is it one of those stalkers?”

“I don’t know.”

As they waited, Elaine fetched Lindsay a glass of cool water and sat with her. Neither of them said much until the sheriff arrived. When he strode through the door, Elaine seemed as relieved as Lindsay.

Lindsay reminded him of their previous conversation, and this time he wrote down the names of the investigators in Georgia and Tennessee who were working on her case.

“Have you had anything else happen?” asked the sheriff.

“Just the episode with the truck.”

“Our truck?” asked Elaine. “This maniac stole our truck?”

“Could be,” said the sheriff.

“Well, you have to catch him.”

Afton stuck her head in the door. “Sheriff, the page was torn out of one of our books.” Her throaty voice was vibrant with indignation. “You want that I should bag it or something?”

“I’ll come take care of it, Afton. Thanks. Don’t let anybody touch it. I need to know everyone who’s been in the library today. How about you make me a list of the names of everyone you can remember . . . anyone who might have checked a book in or out, or anything else you can think of.”

“Miss Chamberlain,” said the sheriff, “could anyone at the site have done this as a joke?”

Lindsay almost laughed with relief. The notion was like a life preserver. “Yes, that’s possible. That’s probably what it is.”

“You seem sure.” He looked skeptical as he stuck his pen and notebook in his shirt pocket.

“It’s not uncommon for the crew to play practical jokes on one another. Sheriff, if it’s all right with you, I’ll talk to them about it.”

No good having the sheriff find out about Trent and what he’d been up to. Like Dillon said the evening before, that’s the last kind of attention they needed. In fact, thought Lindsay, Trent was a likely suspect for this, the way he had eyed her at the last crew meeting, the way he seemed out of control. The fight with Dillon probably exacerbated whatever state he was in. She wouldn’t put it past Claire, either. Lindsay willed this culprit to be different from the ones who had buried her. More than anything, she wanted that episode in her life to be over.

“I’m agreeable to that, for the time being,” the sheriff said. “I’ll let you know if we come up with prints, or anything else that might be helpful.” He put the torn page and the envelope it came in into an evidence bag and went out to talk with Afton.

“We can meet tomorrow and continue with the documents,” suggested Elaine.

“That would probably be better. How about after lunch tomorrow?”

“Great. In the meantime, I’ll ask about other descendants of Hope Foute who might be in possession of more of her diary.”

Lindsay drove back to the house, constantly checking in the rearview mirror.
It was just a tasteless joke
, she told herself.
Probably Trent. Possibly Claire
.

When she arrived in the house, everyone was already eating and all abuzz with news about the coffins. In one week, Dr. Alex Jarman, an atmospheric specialist from NASA, Dr. Guy Posnansky from the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, who was handling the gamma ray technology, and Dr. Juliana Skyler, a specialist in nondestructive evaluation, would arrive with their teams—bringing with them an army reserve unit. It didn’t surprise Lindsay that Francisco Lewis would be arriving also. It would be like him to come and wring out every ounce of publicity he could. Actually, she welcomed his coming. She welcomed a yard full of military people milling around. She could stop worrying. The sick fear would finally go away. She would be safe.

“Dare I ask where . . . what’s his name . . . Trent is?” she whispered to Marina.

“Out the door, thank God.”

“How’s Claire taking it?”

“Not bad. When Dr. Lewis called Drew, we all got happy again. Aren’t we easy to please? It only takes a visit from NASA.”

“Okay, listen up people.” Drew tapped her glass with her spoon. “We’re going to have to rearrange ourselves a little. The science teams are bringing their own accommodations. They’ll be setting up in the cornfield, near the creek. Lewis will be staying with us. Claire and I are graciously giving up our room to him. We’re moving in with you, Lindsay. You’ll be happy to know that Mr. Laurens finished you a door today.” Lindsay forced a smile. “They’re going to be fencing off the main part of the site. I’d like to get Structure 4 finished before then.”

* * *

The area just outside of Lindsay’s round room was a space more or less comparable in size to the reception hall below it. It might at one time have been a sitting room off the round room. That was where Mr. Laurens hung the door, so that the curtain separating it from the bedroom was still there. What she had now was a very large bedroom. Lindsay didn’t care. She opened and closed the door, locked it, opened it again and closed it. It was a good door, and it locked. The military were coming to the site, and she had a door. Life was good.

“Trying out the door?”

Claire was standing in her own doorway, adjacent to Lindsay’s.

“Yes. Just basking in the luxury of it.”

“I looked up your vita.”

Lindsay met Claire’s unblinking gaze. She had made it sound like an admission of something. Lindsay said nothing.

“I didn’t know you were so widely published in so many areas.”

That was definitely an admission of something.

“The thing I particularly like about archaeology,” Lindsay said carefully, “is that it encompasses so many disciplines.” Lindsay continued to examine the lock on her door, not looking at Claire, as if meeting her eyes too many times would break her sudden spell of civility.

“These are the topics I’m interested in.” Claire shoved some papers into Lindsay’s hand. She left, bouncing down the stairs before Lindsay had a chance to say anything else.

So, bribery works. Life was getting better. She looked at the folded sheets of paper and the printout of topics: comparison of farmstead excavation with historic documentation; comparisons of artifact patterns among structures; intra-site trade networks; mountain farmsteads versus hunting domiciles of the nineteenth century. Under each topic, she had made a brief outline and listed a partial bibliography. Not a bad list, none of burning appeal to Lindsay, but possibly interesting. She’d make some preliminary notes on each and share them with Claire.

Drew didn’t waste much time moving herself and Claire into Lindsay’s bedroom. Claire tried to bring the table for her laptop, but Drew wanted to leave it for Lewis. Like Lindsay, Claire put her mattress near an outlet and put her computer on the floor. Drew took Powell and Dillon to town and came back with a bed for Lewis. He would be the only one in the house whose mattress sat on a bed frame and not the floor.

“You going to order flowers, too?” asked Marina, peeking into the room while Drew was making up the bed with a new bedspread.

“You know, Mrs. Laurens has a flower bed. I could ask her to bring some.”

Marina rolled her eyes at Lindsay and poked her finger down her throat out of Drew’s range of vision. Lindsay tried not to laugh.

“Lindsay, I’m glad you’re here. Does Lewis smoke?”

Lindsay was tempted to say that he smoked a special Turkish blend and she could find out the number of his tobacconist in New York if Drew liked.

“No, he doesn’t smoke.”

“I understand people call him Cisco,” said Drew.

“Some do.” Lindsay smiled.

“And you call him Lewis?”

“Yes.”

“What should I call him?”

“Whatever you like. They call him Francisco in the department.”

“Francisco. I like that.”

“Drew, I’d like to ask Dr. McBride to sit in on the analysis of the remains. I think it would be good PR, and it would be nice to have a local in on it . . .”

Drew nodded absently, surveying the room. “In case some issues arise about examining the dead. That’s a good idea.”

“A bowl of mints would be nice,” Lindsay muttered.

“What?” Drew pulled her gaze away from the room and looked at Lindsay.

“Also, you have to inform the coroner. Have you done that?”

“Francisco said he would call the state archaeologist and ask him to arrange all the paperwork. What do you think of irises? They’re Tennessee’s state flower. They would look nice here in his room, don’t you think?”

Lindsay went back into her room before she broke out laughing. Claire was typing away on her laptop.

“Is this guy that big a deal?” asked Claire.

“To some he is. He’s great at getting grants. UGA loves him for that. He brings in a lot of good PR, gets UGA’s name out there on the cutting edge of a lot of projects.”

“Byron said he mostly publishes in popular magazines.”

“That’s not true. He does publish in the popular media, but he’s also well published in juried journals. He likes being well known in both spheres—the public and among his peers.”

“Why?”

Lindsay sat cross-legged on her bed. Odd, this was the first civilized conversation she had had with Claire since she arrived. Claire was being true to her word.

“Lewis likes to be a star.”

Claire lowered her voice. “It looks like Drew’s going to give him the star treatment.”

Lindsay smiled. “It does seem that way.”

“Is he hard to get along with?”

Not as hard as you
, Lindsay thought so loudly she almost said it. “No. Not really. He’s very personable. He’d make a good politician. You working on a paper?”

Lindsay was surprised Claire had jumped into the task so soon. That meant she’d have to jump into it sooner than she had planned.

“I’ve been working on one about trade networks among mountain settlers.”

“Do you have anything I can read?”

Belatedly, Lindsay realized that was a good opening for a retort on Claire’s part. But she didn’t take it. The woman was trying. She handed Lindsay a folder with a printout of about thirty pages of copyedited manuscript. Lindsay stretched out on the bed and began reading, praying that it was good. Claire had already done quite a bit of literature review for the article. It must be one she’d already been working on.

Lindsay was surprised to find that it was a good paper. It needed work, but it was a good foundation. She told her, relieved for a chance to give her a genuine compliment.

“You write well.”

“Yes, I do. My grades were always good in composition. If you don’t mind, don’t say anything about this. Everyone will accuse me of having you do all the work, and that’s not the way it’s going to be.”

“No problem. You wrote some of the survey reports, didn’t you? I recognize your style.”

“Yes. I can do the work. I just freeze up on tests. I always have, and you can’t get through graduate school if you can’t take tests.”

“You got through undergraduate school.”

“It was hard. I took as many courses as I could that relied mostly on papers.”

“There aren’t that many that don’t have tests. Obviously, you can get through them. You couldn’t have gotten into a graduate program in the first place, had you not had a pretty good GPA.” Claire simply shrugged. “With several articles in good journals under your belt and having been the site director of this dig, if you want to go back, you can.”

“I don’t know. I hate jumping through hoops.”

“Don’t.”

Claire looked up from her keyboard at Lindsay. “That’s what graduate school is all about.”

“A big part of getting through graduate school is learning how to be a student. It’s a learnable behavior.”

“I’ll bet it was easy for you.” Claire was coming close to dropping into insulting mode.

Lindsay wasn’t sure how to answer her without making Claire jealous. Graduate school wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard, either. “I grew up in an academic environment, so it held few unknowns for me.”

“My parents didn’t think that either I or my brother should have an education greater than theirs.”

Lindsay kept her eyes on Claire’s article and tried not to show her surprise that Claire would share what must have been a private detail of her life with her. With that kind of background, school must have been very hard for her. Claire wouldn’t welcome sympathy. Lindsay kept her mouth shut.

“What does Lewis look like?” Claire asked.

“Kind of Italian looking—hawkish nose, dark hair, dark eyes.”

“Damn. Backup disk full. Do you have any blank disks?”

“I have everything on the hard disk.”

“You mean you don’t make backups?”

“Sometimes.”

Claire shook her head. “One of these days, you’re going to lose something.”

“That’s what people keep telling me. It just seems like a hard disk is more reliable than those tiny things.”

Claire shook her head and rose from her sitting position. She bent over, stretching her cramped muscles. “Maybe Miss Gatekeeper left the storeroom open so I can get some.”