Airtight Case (30 page)

“Marina dated the clay pipes at the site between 1730 and 1820,” said Lindsay. “The Gallowses held the property from 1831 to 1869. I know that the building techniques on the oldest side of the log cabin dated from the 1700s—so any stones with dates that fall in the times of the clay pipes were contemporaries of the people who were the first occupants. Josh Gallows bought the land from Clarence Foute, so I assume that Clarence’s relatives might have lived there before him.”

“So, do you know if any of Clarence Foute’s people are buried here?” Lewis asked Elder Moore.

“I don’t believe so. You trying to find out who owned the land before the Gallows family?”

“Yes,” said Lindsay. “Do you know?”

“I can’t say as I do. I always heard that was a bad place. Some say poor Mrs. Gallows killed her children.”

“Do you think she did?” asked Lewis.

“Don’t know. Doesn’t seem like her neighbors would have stood for it—or let her be buried here at the church,” he said.

“Do you know any stories connected to the Gallows place?” she asked.

“No. I don’t pay much attention to stories.”

“Have you ever heard older people mention a Cherry or an Eda Mae?”

“I went to school with an Etta May Ramsey. Her family was from Kansas, but I suppose you mean back in the 1700s. No . . . Wait. I do remember my granny saying something being ‘as sharp as Eda Mae’s tongue.’ You mean that kind of thing?”

Lindsay nodded. “Yes, exactly. Do you know who she was talking about?”

“No. That’s just something she said, like Raw Head and Bloody Bones.”

“May we take a look at all the old gravestones?” asked Lindsay. “We won’t harm anything.”

“Just so long as you don’t dig ’em up.”

“No. We won’t do that.”

“Some of the old graves don’t have headstones no more. They’re just marked with rocks. Don’t know who’s there, exactly. Just old church members. Don’t do any of those rubbings, either. They damage the stones.”

“No, we won’t. Thank you for allowing us to look at the graves.”

Lindsay and Lewis watched as Elder Moore walked along the edge of the cemetery back to the church.

“These are hard to read, but maybe we can find something.” Lindsay took out a pad and pen to write down names and dates.

“You did that very well, Lindsay. I’m impressed.”

Lindsay had kneeled near a stone, trying to read the writing. “What?”

“Talking with him. I was about to get worried for a moment.”

“These are religious people, Lewis. What did you think he was going to do?”

Lewis squatted down to help look at the stone. “I don’t know. He just seemed very suspicious of us. But you handled it well. He wasn’t interested in my relatives.”

“That’s because you’re from New York. He doesn’t know anybody in New York. He was suspicious. For all he knew, we were here to dig up some graves. He was actually being very nice. He was trying to find a reason to trust us, looking for some common ground, trying to place us in his context. The same thing as us looking at someone’s vita. Does this look like Ezra Heaton?”

Lewis traced the indentations with the tips of his fingers. “I think so. You know Timon Moore’s brother?”

Lindsay turned her head toward him and grinned. “He’s the process server who came to serve Drew. The one I told you about. He drove across Feature 3 and Claire made off with his truck.”

Lewis laughed. “I remember. Small world.”

“Here in the mountains it is.”

“You think his brother told him about serving Drew Van Horne with papers?”

“I would think they’d find us a popular topic of conversation. On the other hand, maybe there’s some confidentiality code of ethics among process servers. Then again, I imagine their religious differences are a more hot topic of conversation between them.”

“Why do you say that? They’re both Baptists, aren’t they? Didn’t I hear him say his brother goes to . . . what . . . Kingswell Baptist?”

“Broach is Baptist, Timon is Primitive Baptist. They don’t hold the same beliefs by a long shot.” She stood up, brushing her hands together. “I’m not sure we’re going to find out as much as I’d hoped from these graves. Most of the stones are unreadable.”

“Are there other cemeteries in the area with graves this old?” Lewis asked.

“The survey found none in the immediate area. There are old ones in the Smoky Mountain Park, but they’re connected with settlements there. The survey doesn’t say where in the cove the Foutes lived, or any of the other families, for that matter. This cove has really gone unnoticed. I think it would be fun to survey the entire cove, not just the Gallows farmstead.”

Lindsay and Lewis went from stone to stone, writing down as many names and dates as they could make out from the years of weathering. Before driving away, Lindsay stopped and thanked Elder Moore and asked him if there were any other old cemeteries in the cove. He knew of none.

“Let’s stop and eat before we go back to the site,” Lewis said, “or does Mrs. Laurens make lunch as well?”

“Nope. We’re on our own at lunch. We usually fix ourselves a sandwich, grab an apple.” Lindsay drove in the direction of the diner.

“Did we learn anything this morning?” asked Lewis.

“I don’t know. Nothing I saw on the stones struck me. I wonder if there are other private cemeteries in the cove, similar to the one at the Gallows farmstead. I’ll ask Drew if the survey team found any other homesteads. I’ll be a little surprised if they didn’t. Hope Foute’s diary mentioned several families.”

They stopped at Ellie’s Diner and ate a quick lunch. Lindsay looked over the list of names from the gravestones as they ate. Still, nothing stood out. Something, though, tugged at the back of her mind. Lewis paid for the meal and they climbed into Lindsay’s Explorer.

“I may have wasted our time,” she said, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m not sure what I thought . . .”

She looked at the blue-green digital display as the tape player activated. Just as the engine started, a tape began to play—
Every Breath You Take
, by the Police. Lindsay stared at the tape player, unmoving. When Sting came to the words “I’ll be watching you,” she hit the eject button.

“I don’t remember that being on when we stopped.” Lewis looked at the dash and over at Lindsay. “Lindsay, are you all right? Lindsay?”

She didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the tape, half out of the tape slot, like someone sticking his tongue out at her. She felt Lewis shake her shoulder.

“Lindsay, are you all right?”

“They did this.” Her words came out a tearful whimper.

“Who?”

“I don’t know who. If I knew, I would . . . I don’t know who.”

“Are you saying this isn’t your tape? Someone put this here while we were eating? Could it be a prank?”

A prank. That’s what she thought about the torn page. Who would do such a thing? Claire? She had been acting a little strange the last day or two. It was subtle, but something had changed in the new rapport they shared. Trent? He was gone. Wasn’t he? She thought of the whiff of marijuana at the party. Could that have been Trent? What would he be doing lurking around?

She was overcome with nausea. “I’m going to be sick.”

She opened her door, jumped out of her truck and leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the vehicle, trying to breathe normally.

“Here.” Lewis handed her a glass of water. She hadn’t noticed that he had gone inside. He had left her alone and gone inside.

“Thanks.” Her hand shook as she took a sip.

Lewis scanned the parking lot, the woods, the highway. “I don’t see anyone,” he said.

After a minute, the nausea passed and she climbed back into the driver’s seat. Lewis returned the glass to the diner and got back in.

“You want to go to the sheriff’s office?”

“Yes. Maybe there are prints on the tape.”

“I can drive if you want.”

“No. I can drive.” She started the engine and put it in reverse. “You know what really makes me mad? I like that song. When we were competing, Derrick choreographed a dance to it. It was fun, and we won. I have good memories about it. Damn them, damn them to hell. It wasn’t enough for them to take away all my memories for a time, now they’re corrupting the ones I have.”

She backed out of the parking place and headed toward Kelley’s Chase. Lewis sat in silence as she drove, his brow knitted in a worried frown.

“I wonder why they’re doing this,” he said when they were almost to the sheriff’s office.

“What do you mean?”

“Why frighten you and not try and not . . . finish what they started? This exposes them. Someone could have seen them in the parking lot at the diner, or ripping the page from the library book.”

Lindsay slowed down. “I should have asked at the diner.”

“I asked when I went to get the water. No one saw anything,” said Lewis.

Lindsay pulled up to the sheriff’s office and delivered the tape in a sandwich baggie she found in her trash bag.

“You say someone put this in your SUV while you were in Ellie’s?”

“Yes. And no one there saw anything.”

“It may be just a prank, but I’ll have it fingerprinted. Maybe something will turn up. In the meantime, do you think anyone you work with could be doing this?”

Lindsay shrugged, reluctant to accuse. She wished she had an answer. She wished he had an answer.

“Perhaps this Drew woman?” suggested the sheriff.

“We’ll see if anyone left the site,” said Lewis. Neither mentioned Trent. To mention Trent would be to mention his drugs, and that was a can of worms both of them wanted to stay closed.

“I don’t have enough deputies to give you protection,” said the sheriff.

“We’ll be having people from the army come to the site tomorrow,” said Lewis. “I’ll see that she gets protection.”

“I’ll see what I can do with this. Don’t get your hopes up.”

On the way out, Lindsay saw a partial headline in the newspaper. Nigel had identified his two hikers. Perhaps she should go home and allow Nigel to examine the bones. That might be best. Maybe that’s what they wanted, why they were scaring her and not trying to kill her. Maybe if she went home, she’d be safe.

Lindsay started to let Lewis drive back. She felt defeated, tired, and depressed. But she climbed into the driver’s side—more from force of habit.

“You can’t let them win,” said Lewis.

“They are winning.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“You’ve spoken with Drew. Do you think she could be involved?” Lindsay asked.

“I don’t know. Then again, I’m not a particularly good judge of murderer personality types. Do you think she may be behind this, to get you to stop investigating the Tidwell thing?”

Lewis looked tired, too, Lindsay noticed. He ran his fingers through his windblown black hair to get it out of his face. Was he worried, too?

“Or, maybe they don’t want me to clear her. Or, it may be something else—Trent or Claire getting even for whatever, and just using what happened to me because they know they can scare me with it. Claire’s away from the site today.”

Lewis raised his eyebrows. “So she is. I’ll talk with her when we get back.”

“I’ll talk with her. You’d probably just make her break down in tears. Do you know Drew’s husband?”

“No. Drew hasn’t said much about him. Why?”

“I don’t know. He called this morning, and I answered the phone. I didn’t like him.”

“Any particular reason?”

“No, not really. He just seemed self-important. I was just thinking. Maybe I should go back to Georgia. You can get Nigel to examine the bones. Get Kerwin to come up here. Historical archaeology is his field, anyway.”

“The people are coming tomorrow. You can do it. Didn’t your mother teach you to get back on your horse after you fall off?”

Lindsay looked over at him, made a face, and started the Explorer.

The crew were still working at the site. When Lindsay stopped to let Lewis out, she counted heads—they were all there, except Claire. Even Marina, who usually worked in the tent on the artifacts, was helping out with the preparations.

She drove up to the house and parked her SUV. As she got out, seeing the crew’s cars, she had an idea. She went to each one and touched the hood to see if any were warm. They were all cold, even Bill and Sharon’s, who had driven from their motel early that morning—all except Adam’s. His had a faint lingering warmth. Adam was one of the last persons she would suspect of a prank, or worse. It very well could have been innocent, probably was. There wasn’t a law against leaving the site. She could ask him. And say what: Adam, I couldn’t help noticing that your engine was warm—where’ve you been? Lose any tapes?”

She walked up the steps and into the house. Passing the closed door to the guys’ room, she realized the house was empty; everyone was at the site. She made a sharp turn and tried the doorknob, then went in.

Chapter 26

Two Ghosts

THE ROOM WAS a mess. Four mattresses were arranged like the last four petals of a flower, using the four walls as headboards. The bedclothes were rumpled. One mattress, Byron’s, Lindsay guessed from the Grateful Dead T-shirt visible on top, had clothes heaped on it in a tangled pile. Each mattress had a suitcase or duffel bag nearby. There were few other possessions in the room. Like Lindsay, everyone kept their valuables locked in their vehicles.

She went to Byron’s mattress first. She took the ballpoint pen clipped to her T-shirt and gently rifled through the pile on the bed. She resisted the temptation to go through his pockets. She had to draw the line somewhere. She moved to each piece of luggage, going through its contents by lifting items with the pen, trying to leave things as she found them, feeling extremely ashamed of herself. Occasionally, she peeked out the one window that wasn’t boarded up to see if anyone was coming.

She found nothing. What did she expect? She wasn’t sure what she was even looking for—something incriminating, suggestive, what? Who had tapes? None that she remembered. When they had music it came from CDs on Powell’s player, which he kept locked in his trunk. Lindsay sighed and turned to leave the room. She gasped.

Someone was standing in the doorway. An explanation quivered on her lips when she recognized the man with honey-colored long hair she had seen on the porch. Behind him stood the woman she had seen in the mirror. A scream stuck in her throat, choking her. She started to sink to her knees, and the couple vanished.