Airtight Case (8 page)

“If one of his employees committed murder?”

“Or stole something. I don’t really think she killed anyone. Even the authorities say it was a heart attack. The woman was old, with a history of heart disease and two previous heart attacks. Keith is worried mainly about the accusation of theft.”

“And you told him, ‘No problem, one of my faculty members is a detective.’”

“That, and that he would be getting an expert at the department’s expense. They have made use of your talents there, haven’t they?”

“Yes, as the village idiot. Look, Lewis, they don’t want me here. They don’t like me, and I’ve had more restful times in faculty meetings.”

As Lindsay talked, she watched the conversation, or at least one side of it, going on between Marina on the front porch and someone in the shadows. Marina gestured with some intensity. The person stepped for a moment into the sunlight. It was a woman Lindsay didn’t recognize, possibly the elusive Drew. Whoever it was stepped back out of sight again.

“I know you love the Smokies,” Lewis was saying in her ear.

“Yes, I do, and I can enjoy them without working here. I just called to tell you I’m quitting.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. Just as a favor to me, find out if there is anything to the accusations. You don’t have to do any real detective work. Just talk to the sheriff and a few people. You’re good at that, and you know those law enforcement types.”

From her rearview mirror, Lindsay saw Broach Moore in the distance, ambling toward the house, his hands in his pockets.

“I’ll give it a week, and if I’m not having fun, I’m leaving this place.”

“I knew I could count on you. What quality of work are they doing?”

“I don’t like to critique another archaeologist’s work.”

“What do you mean? You do that all the time. I just read a letter by you in
American Antiquity
. . .”

“That was different. I wasn’t spying on them.”

“York is hearing some rumors about that site.”

“If it’s important to him, tell him to get his butt down here and take a look for himself.”

“He can’t. Is Drew doing a fair job?”

“It’s not being excavated the way I’d do it, but it’s not bad . . . yet. I’d fire a couple of people and sit the site director down and have a talk with her. By the way, I’ve never met Drew. She’s been conspicuously absent . . . avoiding a process server.”

“Indeed? Can you find out about that?” Lindsay didn’t need to ignore the question, for Lewis continued on as if she had agreed. “The site’s had a frequent turnover of staff from the very beginning.”

“I’m not surprised.”

She watched Moore crossing the bridge. He stopped and looked over the side at the water below. He seemed reluctant to cross. Maybe he was looking for a troll, she thought.

“The site director is one of the most unpleasant people I’ve ever worked with.”

“You’re good with unpleasant people. Is there anything you need?”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. “I’d like to read the proposal and look at the historical documents.”

“They won’t let you? Do you want me to call—”

“No. I’ll work it out. As I said, I’m only giving it a week.”

“Fair enough. Call if you need anything.”

“Sure.”

Lindsay put the phone back in its cradle and got out of the Explorer. The sound of the door closing brought Marina’s head around. She saw Moore on the bridge and pushed whoever she was talking to farther into the shadows. It had to be Drew. Lindsay stepped in front of Moore, blocking his path.

“I assume that you still need a ride to town.” Lindsay reopened the driver’s-side door and started to get in.

“I need my truck.”

“Then, you don’t need a ride to town?” She started to get back out.

“Yes—wait—yes. You’ll take me?”

“Hop in.”

He climbed in and settled into the seat. Lindsay “started the engine before he had a chance to change his mind, or catch site of anyone on the porch.

“I’m going to report my truck stolen.”

“I doubt it’s been stolen.” Lindsay drove out of the gravel parking area and over the bridge. “It’s probably parked somewhere where it can’t do any more damage. And before you say it was only rocks and holes, it wasn’t. That’s like saying the original Declaration of Independence is only paper. You may not understand it or care, but we get information from what we’re finding in those holes. The kind of rocks those are and how they are placed, plus their shapes and sizes, tell us how foundations were built here a hundred years ago, the size of the structures, and if the materials were hauled in, quarried nearby, or were simply found at the site. And rocks aren’t the only thing. Just under the surface there are bones, dish sherds, and the remains of farm implements.”

“I’ll bet you’re a lot of fun at a party. Look, lady, you’re right. I don’t appreciate what you all are doing. I appreciate my truck. It cost me $35,000.”

Having recently had to purchase a new vehicle herself, Lindsay was sympathetic, but not enough to stop trying to press her point home.

“And that may have been a cemetery you drove over. You may have broken irreplaceable headstones with inscriptions.”

Moore looked at Lindsay wide-eyed. “A cemetery. Oh, damn.” He shook his head back and forth. “Oh damn. What the hell are you all doing digging in a cemetery?”

“We’re identifying all the features of the farmstead that used to be here. And I don’t know that it was a cemetery. It may have been.”

“You going to disturb the dead?”

Lindsay regretted saying anything. She only wanted to make him understand the impact of his behavior, and now she may have simply made it worse.

“I just said it might be. I don’t know. If we find gravestones, we’ll probably leave it alone.”

“You’d better. Living in Gallows House and digging up the dead to boot . . . I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. No, sirree, that’s just asking for trouble.”

“What about the house?”

“It’s haunted. Everybody knows that. That’s why Cal Strickland can’t sell it. How long you say you been here?”

“Just a few days.”

“Maybe you ain’t heard or seen nothing yet, but I’ll guarantee you, before the month’s out, something’ll happen that’ll make you wish you was someplace else.”

I wish that already, thought Lindsay. The single-lane dirt road leading from Knave’s Seat Cove was shaded by the dense crowns of old hardwoods. After a mile it widened to two lanes and the heavy forest thinned out to a sparser woods. She drove on about five miles before the dirt road intersected with Highway 129.

“I’m taking you to Kelley’s Chase.”

“That’s fine. There’s a diner on the way owned by my cousin. I’ll borrow her car. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“Why do people say the Gallows House is haunted?”

Lindsay liked the ride into Kelley’s Chase. She enjoyed looking at the peaceful, cool waters of the Little Tennessee River running alongside the highway and the mountains rising from the bank on the other side. It reminded her of the poem
Hiawatha
.

“Because it is. You watch the road and not the scenery.”

“Have you ever seen anything?”

“In the house? Not me. I won’t go near the place, leastwise at night. Didn’t want to today.”

“How do you know it’s haunted?”

“Everybody knows. People’s seen things in that cove for over a hundred years.”

“The house is about a hundred years old. Are you saying the ghosts predate the house?”

“I’m saying it’s a bad place.”

“How do you think it got that way?”

“Some people say the cove’s an Indian burial ground.”

“I’ve worked on many Indian burials and have never witnessed anything supernatural.”

Moore looked over at Lindsay, a frown on his face. “It’s best to leave the dead alone.”

“You haven’t told me what people have seen at the house.”

“Some’s seen strange mists.”

“This is the Smoky Mountains.”

“You’ve got a point there. I’ll have to give you that. Mostly, people has heard noises—tapping sounds, footsteps with no body attached to them.”

They drove through a road cut, a profile showing layers of folded rock strata—millions of years of geological history displayed in one slice. Almost like going back in time.
That’s what archaeologists do
, Lindsay mused to herself,
go back in time
.

“Old houses make strange noises,” she said.”

“They do, but settling sounds are different from what people say they’ve heard. Bad things happen to people who live there.”

“Like what?”

“Death. Can’t get any worse than that.”

“All people die. I doubt if there is a greater number of deaths associated with the house than with other hundred-year-old houses.”

“It’s not just the house, it’s the whole cove. The house just had the misfortune of being built there.”

“What do you think it is about the cove?”

“Ghosts coming out of the fourth dimension.”

Lindsay was silent a moment. “Fourth dimension? Are you putting me on?”

“No. It’s all around us. They can see us, but we can’t see them. Heard it on Public Radio. You don’t know about the fourth dimension?”

“No.”

“I listen to NPR during lunch sometime. Real interesting, but it can get kind of far out. They had this scientist on the same program talking about chaos theory. Boils down to ‘one thing leads to another.’ They had to have a rocket scientist to figure that out? You know anything about chaos theory?”

“No.”

“For a scientist, you don’t know much, do you?”

Lindsay sighed. “I guess not. I know about bones,” she said in her defense.

“Bones?”

“I’m a forensic anthropologist as well as an archaeologist.”

“Is that right? I’ve never seen you on the Discovery Channel.”

“We can’t all be in the limelight. Why does Alfred Tidwell think Drew had something to do with his aunt’s death?”

“Why you asking me?”

“That was what was in the subpoena.”

“I never look at them. I just deliver them.”

“Did you know Mary Tidwell?”

“Met her once. Crazy old lady. Bought a kid-goat from Jeb Simpson up at Calderwood and wouldn’t pay for it. I was supposed to repossess it. Borrowed my brother’s old truck and went to her place expecting a little goat,” Moore said, gesturing with a hand held above the floor of Lindsay’s SUV.

“Damn thing was as big as a cow. Never knew they got that big. Had horns that long.” He demonstrated with his hands a size that Lindsay was sure was exaggerated. “Had eyes as red as the devil’s. He stomped, spit, reared like a horse, and then peed on his beard. I couldn’t get back to my truck fast enough, and that old lady cackling at me all the way like it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.” Moore stopped and laughed. “I guess it was.”

Lindsay laughed with him. “Must have been a Nubian?”

“No, she was a white woman.”

“No, a Nubian goat. I think males can get quite large. My vet has a huge one like that.”

“He was large all right. A regular Billy Goat Gruff.”

He was looking for a troll under the bridge, Lindsay thought with a smile.

“I decided right then, I wasn’t gonna repo no more animals.”

“Do you know if she had a lot of valuables?”

“You interrogating me?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Thought so. That’s all right. I might need a forensic person someday. Couldn’t tell if she had anything that might be considered valuable. Might have. She was a hoarder, from the looks of the place. Yard like a junkyard. She didn’t look rich herself, but you never know what some folks hide in their mattresses.”

“Is the sheriff in this county a good person to talk to?”

“Can be. You investigating her death?”

Lindsay thought a minute, unsure of how she was going to explain her interest. “Anytime serious accusations are made against an archaeologist, it’s looked into.”

“You guys have some kind of union for that kind of thing?”

“Not exactly. I’m just interested in the truth.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The site employs a lot of people.”

“I gotcha. You working for the people who’s paying the money?”

“No . . . look . . .”

He waved a hand. “That’s all right. I understand. I tell you what. You tell this Drew Van Horne to come out of hiding, and I’m sure all this will be straightened out.”

“If I see her, I’ll give her your message. Is that the diner ahead?”

“Ellie’s Diner. That’s it.”

Lindsay pulled into the parking lot, and Moore opened the door. Before he got out, he handed her a card.

“You tell whoever took my truck to make an anonymous call to this number and tell me where it is. If there’s no damage, we’ll call it even.”

Lindsay watched his short stocky figure go into the diner, and drove back to the site.

* * *

She looked at the big old Victorian farmhouse that the locals called Gallows House as if for the first time. The structure appeared both worn and substantial. It had been white at one time, but most of the paint had peeled away, leaving silver gray wood with uneven, curled, gray-white patches, like it had been a snake shedding its skin. The wraparound porch, along with the trees, kept the front and right side of the house in deep shade, making a perfect environment for a greenish mildew to grow on the walls. The rooms on the front left corner, two stories and attic, were round-shaped with a peaked roof, so that the house had the vague look of a castle. It looked haunted. Lindsay wondered if most old picturesque houses had similar reputations.

She mounted the porch and entered the front door. Mrs. Laurens, the site cook, had started dinner. The aroma of baked bread and roast beef wafted from the kitchen. Lindsay’s stomach growled.

“You took him back to town?” Claire stood at the bottom of the stairs, hands on hips, glaring at Lindsay.

“I’m glad she did. He was about to come into the house.”

Lindsay turned toward the voice coming from the dining room. She was finally going to meet the elusive Drew Van Horne.

Chapter 9

Drew Van Horne

DREW VAN HORNE was sitting at the dining room table with her feet propped on one of the chairs. With neat, cropped blonde hair, her crisp new L. L. Bean shorts and shirt, and sunglasses tucked in the pocket of her leather vest, she looked less like an archaeologist and more like a tourist interested in archaeology. Only her well-worn work boots and tan skin gave any indication of outdoor work.