Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train (6 page)

She told him about her train trip and about Sierra picking her up in the van, but omitted any mention of the death on the train or the guilt still nagging at her. Without these her description sounded, to her own ears, like fiction. Nothing she said sounded the least bit like the journey she’d actually taken. Her memory was of a frightened man, of wheels clacking through her dreams, of a body flying past a window, of the heel of her boot smashing glass, of a body sprawled on the slope beneath the tracks. Instead she was telling Henry that the most traumatic part of the journey was arriving to find no Paul waiting for her.

She looked away and spotted several dig participants  hanging around the buffet table. “I noticed a big bowl of fruit over there. I want an orange. Can I bring you men anything?” Dessert, as in most Turkish meals, was fruit. Lacy had been in the country long enough to become used to the absence of cakes and pies. She grabbed an orange and stood a little back from the table as she peeled it. Those standing nearby, most of them college age, were checking her out while trying not to stare, but their conversation had dwindled to a feeble pretense.

Glancing around at the other picnic tables, she decided the dig participants gravitated toward their own kind at mealtime, because a couple of the tables were filled with men in Turkish garb and women wearing head shawls. These, she figured, were the paid participants Paul was referring to when he’d mentioned meeting payroll. Other tables held only young people in Western dress—college kids, unpaid, working for course credit.

She introduced herself and held out one hand, sticky with orange juice, then drew it back, apologizing, and wiped it on her pants. Grinning sheepishly, she altered her gesture to a wave.

One by one, the kids introduced themselves. Two had Turkish names and accents but the others sounded American. The last American girl to give her name was Madison Ledbetter, and Lacy recognized her as the little mop-top whose hair Süleyman had nearly incinerated. Madison asked, “What are they saying over there? About Max Sebring?”

“Henry Jones just got back from the hospital and he really hasn’t said much yet that you don’t already know.” Lacy felt hesitant to tell them anything about Max’s death. The information should come from Bob Mueller or Paul, not from her.

“Oh, come on. We
know
he just got back from the hospital. We watched him drive up. But we don’t know anything else. They haven’t said jack to us since the ambulance left this morning.” Madison turned to the others for back-up.

“Well, you know that Mr. Sebring is dead.”

“Not really. We weren’t even sure of that,” Madison said.

“He looked dead,” another said.

“But the ambulance pulled out with its sirens on. I thought they only did that if there was a reason to hurry.”

“He didn’t look sick.”

“And he wasn’t that old, either. I mean not
really
old.”

“The doctor couldn’t give Henry a definite cause of death,” Lacy said. She stopped herself before she went any further and steered the conversation to the reason she was here and the fact that she, too, was associated with a college, albeit in the role of instructor rather than student.

As Lacy returned to her table she saw that Sierra had taken Lacy’s seat opposite Paul. But the seat on Paul’s right was vacant so she headed for it. Sierra glanced toward her then reached across the table, placing her hand over Paul’s. Undaunted, Lacy made deliberate eye contact with Sierra, took the empty seat and said, “The kids I was talking to over there want to know more about Max Sebring. They feel like they’re out of the loop because no one has told them anything.” She didn’t know what to call them. Kids? Workers? Students? None of those sounded right. They might be kids, but sensitive about being referred to as such. And how did she know if they were all students? Workers sounded like “hired hands,” which didn’t exactly fit, either. Oh well, she’d ask Paul later.

“Lacy’s right.” Paul slipped his hand from beneath Sierra’s and picked up his canned drink. “We’ve told them nothing but we need to. Bob? You or me? Time for a meeting?”

“I’ll do it.” Mueller got up and headed toward the clearing at the edge of the excavated area.

“I don’t know what we were thinking,” Paul said. “All wrapped up in our own thoughts, I guess.”

“And not thinking too clearly, either,” Sierra glanced at Paul’s hand, still wrapped around his Coke can. Her gaze flicked quickly to Lacy, then away. “After all, neither of us got much sleep last night.”

Oh, God.
The remark caught Lacy by surprise. Her heart felt as if it might pop up through her throat. Sierra’s message: Back off. He’s mine. Lacy felt a flush rise to her cheeks but she ventured a look at Paul anyway. His face looked like her own felt. She decided one thing then and there.
Paul may be with Sierra or not. He may have the interest in me that I thought he had, or he may not. But one thing’s for damn sure. He’s not going to have both of us. If he’s with Sierra, I’ll look at his pottery and then I’m out of here!

* * *

The picnic tables emptied and all the dig participants followed their leaders back to the work area, some sitting on the edges of excavated spots, some on the grass. Bob Mueller raised one arm for their attention and relayed the news Henry had brought back from the hospital. They had questions. “What about our funding?” “Did he have a family?” “Did it look like there’d been a struggle?” “If our funding is cut off, when do we leave?” “Will we still get our twelve hours’ credit?”

A deep voice said, “What about our pay? We’re not all volunteers, you know.” This question came from a thick-chested man with a large camera around his neck and a ball cap that read, “NBC News.”

Paul joined Lacy, standing at the back of the group. He leaned over and whispered, “That’s Todd, our photographer.” His breath on her neck felt like a caress.

Chapter Six

Lacy took in the whole scene standing a few yards back from the excavation, which was again busy with well-fed workers.  What a change. Less than twenty-four hours ago she’d been in Istanbul, and the day before that her plan had been to wrap up her summer’s work and fly back to Virginia. Back to Wythe University and her apartment and into the groove she had worn in the pavement between the two. Every day. Drive to work, unlock office, organize notes, deliver lectures, collect papers, drive home, microwave frozen dinner, read papers, read papers, read papers. The prospect of this summer in Turkey had kept her sane through the monotony of the school year never dreaming she’d wind up on an archaeological dig with Paul Hannah. Or that she’d see a man killed on a train. Or that she’d be standing here now, trying to calm the troubled waters of her mind and deal sensibly with the fact that two men named Max Sebring had died in central Turkey at virtually the same time. Correction: One man she’d been told was Max Sebring and another with a trench coat bearing his name.

She looked at Paul, his wide-brim canvas hat shading his face, standing in a trench on the north side of the excavation where, he’d told her, the Neolithic level was laid bare. Sierra was nowhere in sight, for the moment at least. The photographer stood at the top of the hill Mueller and Lacy had climbed earlier. He appeared to be shooting a video of the river valley to the south. Lacy wondered why video was necessary given the fact that nothing in camera range would be moving. It seemed to her as if a simple photo or two would better serve to record the scene. The man flipped his camcorder screen closed and started down the hill, then turned and looked back again, as though expecting something.

Paul held up a sherd and waved Lacy over. “Found another one!”

Lacy took the small piece of pottery in her hand. One surface of the cream-colored clay had been burnished by rubbing, and a streak of brown-red pigment swept across one side. “Red ochre,” she said. If this was all Paul was finding, she was wasting her time here.

“You better put that hat on your head, sweetheart,” came a deep voice from behind her. “It won’t do you any good hanging down your back.”

Lacy turned to locate the source of that advice. It was the photographer, still toting his camcorder in one hand.

“Todd Majewski.” With a rather somber tip of his head, he extended his free hand to Lacy. Todd was a true redhead. His face was a bright pink and his hands and arms were covered with freckles. He looked more like a Viking or a Scot than a Majewski. “If you’re a real blonde, and I’ll bet you are because hair that color doesn’t come from a bottle, you can’t take chances with the sun out here. It’ll fool you. A couple of weeks ago they almost had to send me to the hospital with sun poisoning. I had blisters, I was throwing up, chills and fever, and I’m still not a pretty sight.” He lifted his cap and showed her the patches of unpigmented skin on his forehead.

Paul said, “Thanks for sharing, Todd. Fortunately, we’ve already had our lunch.” Then turned to Lacy and added his own warning. “Seriously, Lacy. He’s right. We usually have a nice breeze out here so it can fool you. You may not feel like you’re getting too much sun but you are.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” At the moment sunstroke was the least of her concerns.

* * *

Paul gave Lacy a trowel and set her to work on a wall in his section of the dig. He showed her how to use the trowel and how to watch for changes in soil. Lacy felt nervous about scraping into virgin ground and making decisions about what to remove and what to leave. She had no problem seeing more color variations than even Paul could see, but her eyes were not yet trained to see what was important and what wasn’t. As the afternoon wore on, she found herself drinking more water than usual, probably because of the sun plus a drying breeze. She felt relief when the sun sank low and the shadow of a clump of almond trees stretched across her workspace. She had removed several buckets of dirt, but had yet to lay bare even the tiniest bit of pottery or anything else possibly created by the hand of man. In spite of the sun block, she felt a glow on her exposed skin.

One by one, workers dropped by and introduced themselves, sitting on their haunches at the edge of the hole she was slowly enlarging. Lacy invariably steered the conversation around to two questions: How well did you know Max Sebring, and did you hear or see anything odd last night? A couple of the workers had heard noises, like someone walking around outside the tents. One put the time at about two a.m. Several had heard animals, probably dogs, yip or howl or clunk around in the kitchen area, possibly turning over a pot, but none had been curious enough to get up and look out of their own tent. They had all been here long enough to get used to the night noises. Even the sound of someone walking past their tent wasn’t considered a cause for alarm, according to the little mop-top, Madison, because people often got up in the night to go to the latrine which, Lacy heard, consisted of a port-a-potty well away from the dig and the tents, but it was permissible to simply slip off over the hill, an option that appealed particularly to the men.

The light began to fade and the dinner gong rang. Lacy followed the others as they stashed their equipment in a small shed and gravitated toward the main tent drawn as if by an invisible magnet. They washed up at one of two large earthenware crocks outside the entrance. This tent was several times the size of any other and held enough tables and chairs to seat everyone. Around the walls inside, a fringe of recent finds rested on the ground and on folding tables. Lacy wandered over to a table covered with potsherds someone had grouped into five piles. She picked up a couple showing traces of paint and found grey, black, and brown. Some showed reddish brown, but she couldn’t identify the pigment visually since most of the samples appeared to have been fired. Something felt odd about the grouping, but Lacy couldn’t figure out what it was.

Süleyman had set up a buffet table along one side of the tent with hot casseroles, baked vegetables, and fruits. Lacy filled a plate and took a seat at the table where Paul and Bob Mueller were already sitting, nothing left on their plates but apple cores and orange peels. Henry Jones joined them.

“Why are you still here?” Paul asked. “I thought you’d left for the airport.”

“Change of plans.” Henry slapped a knife full of butter across his flatbread. “There’s another man from the Sebring Foundation already in Ankara. I didn’t know that. He was there to study the artifacts in the museum but the office decided to let him go home with the body and keep me here. We’ve got some loose ends they want me to tie up.” The loose ends, he told them, had mostly to do with funds Max had wired to a Turkish bank and a couple of items Max had purchased but not yet picked up.

Lacy wondered if Max’s purchases involved any more rugs. The man was a big spender because handmade silk rugs did not come cheap. But then he was rich, wasn’t he? Rich enough to have his own foundation to fund things like this dig. Who would inherit all his money? Max’s family consisted only of a comatose father and a disabled wife.

Paul stood up. “Sorry I have to leave, but tonight’s my night to lecture. Bob and I take turns. Lacy, I’ll see you when I finish.” With that, he threaded his way through the tables to one side of the tent. There was a general shuffling as workers turned their chairs around to face him.

“Paul’s a good speaker,” Henry whispered in her ear. Twisting his mouth to one side, he added, “The kids think Bob’s boring. They love it on nights when it’s Paul’s turn.”

Lacy glanced across the table to Bob, hoping he hadn’t overheard that. He’d turned his chair to face away from them. He couldn’t have heard.

Paul raised an arm for attention. “I’d like to introduce a friend of mine, Lacy Glass. We worked in Egypt together and I asked her here to look at our painted pottery. Lacy is the world’s foremost expert on pigments and dyes. I lured her away from the work she was doing in Istanbul on carpets, tiles and … whatever. Lacy? Stand up, please.”

Feeling warm blood rising to her face, Lacy stood.

Paul waved her up. “Come here, Lacy. I want to show them something.”

What the hell?
Not, “I want to show
you
something,” but “I want to show
them
something.”

Paul took her hand. “Lacy can do the weirdest things with her shoulders. She’s double jointed. Show them, Lacy.”

“What?”
How dare he? She wasn’t a circus freak.
She had no time to formulate the response Paul deserved, briefly considered a knee to his privates, but said, “I only perform for money. Big money.” The audience laughed.

“How much?” Paul got a funny look on his face as if he knew he’d said the wrong thing. When Lacy didn’t answer, he squeezed her shoulder and added, “Nevermind. Maybe later.”

The workers roared. They took it to mean she would perform her contortions for Paul alone—later, in private. She slunk back to her seat, praying she wouldn’t trip over a chair on the way. Her cheeks burned. Where was Sierra? She glanced over her shoulder. Aha. There she was. Sierra sat at a table near the spot from which Paul was speaking. Her lips were clamped shut so tightly they had vanished altogether.

Henry tried to talk to her when she returned to her seat, but couldn’t do so without disturbing Paul’s lecture on Neolithic flint. “Let go outside. Do you mind missing some of this?”

“Not at all.”

In the dark, Henry steered her around the edges of the excavation with a hand on her elbow. They headed toward the parking lot. Paul’s lecturing voice faded, soon replaced by the night sounds of crickets and distant dogs baying at the moon. The glow from the big tent now hidden behind other tents, Lacy could see tiny points of light in the distance from open fires between them and the jagged line that far-off mountains traced against a star-speckled sky. The scene before her looked, she imagined, as it would have thousands of years ago.

“As I was trying to tell you,” Henry said, “Max opened a bank account in Adana to keep the dig running and also for his own personal use. When he found something he wanted to buy, he could write a check without worrying about international monetary crap. At tax time, he always sent me to meet with the Foundation’s accountant and figure out what was personal and what wasn’t.”

“Had you been with him long?”

“Twenty years.” Henry paused and repeated, “Twen-ty years. Hard to believe. I started working for him right after college.”

“Paul says Max had no family to speak of, but he was married, wasn’t he? They had no children?”

“Actually they did have two children, but both of them were killed.” Henry stopped walking and turned to her, as if gauging whether she wanted to hear the story. As if it might be a long story. He hitched up his jeans, which had worked their way down below the mound of his belly.

“Killed? What happened?”

“Max and Nina had two kids, Rachel and George. George was a couple of years older than Rachel. He’d just finished his undergraduate work at Tufts and was planning to start graduate school in engineering when a friend with a small plane flew him to Rachel’s school and picked her up. They were flying home for spring break.” He paused a few seconds. “Something happened. Whether it was engine failure or pilot error or what, they never found out, but the plane went down and all three were killed.”

They both paused a moment. Henry glanced quickly toward her then away, the whites of his eyes reflecting the light from a bulb mounted at the corner of the parking area.

“Of course, Max and Nina never got over it. Nina was a nice woman. I always liked her.” His voice drifted off as if he was remembering her as she used to be. “But actually she wasn’t the strongest person in the world, you know? Emotionally, I mean. Clingy. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“She had a sort of breakdown when Rachel got suspended from high school for smoking pot. Nina went to pieces. ‘Oh, my poor baby! She’ll never get into college!’” Henry pitched his voice high his hands on the sides of his head. “Anyway, Rachel did get into a good college and everything was cool. Then the plane crash.

“Both children. Gone in an instant. It’s understandable they wouldn’t get over a thing like that.”

Lacy glanced toward him. Against the background of stars, his profile looked regal, as if it belonged on an ancient coin.

“Max kept going, kept up his work with the Foundation and the museum, but sometimes it was like he was just putting one foot in front of the other. Nina went downhill fast, got hooked on tranquilizers and painkillers, quit eating, and finally took to her bed. She never leaves her bedroom now. They’re calling it Alzheimer’s but that’s just a handy name, I think.”

“She has people taking care of her?”

“Round the clock. Has for years.” He paused and looked toward a hill to the west.

Lacy wondered if that was the Four Bars Hill where they all went to make phone calls.

“Actually, that’s not completely true. That she never leaves her bedroom. Max got a call the other day from Nina’s nurse. She said Nina’s been getting up in the middle of the night, wandering around that big mansion, looking for her children. She’ll go to their bedrooms and knock on their doors. Says she’s trying to wake them up. Max told her doctor to drop by the house and see if she needs a change in her meds.”

“How long ago did this happen?”