Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel Read online

  Praise for

  DRESSED TO DIE

  "Dressed to Die grabs the reader's attention from the very first page and never lets go until the last paragraph on the last page. Highly recommended."

  -The Bookwatch

  "This book will keep you guessing until the very end."

  -Herald-Whig, Quincy, 111.

  "The plot is serpentine, the solution ingenious, the academic politics vicious, and Lindsay's appealing. This entertaining mystery is as chock-full of engrossing anthropological and archaeological detail as a newly discovered burial mound."

  -Publishers Weekly

  "Delightful."

  -Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville

  "Nail-biting suspense.

  -State Journal, Frankfort, Ky.

  "A multi-dimensional mystery that deserves comparison with Patricia Cornwell.

  -Booklist

  Other books by Beverly Connor in the Lindsay Chamberlain Series:

  A Rumor of Bones

  Questionable Remains

  Skeleton Crew

  Airtight Case

  DRESSED

  TO DIE

  A LINDSAY CHAMBERLAIN NOVEL

  BEVERLY (ONNOR

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Charles Connor, Diane Trap, Judy Iakovou, Takis Iakovou, and Harriette Austin, for your untiring support and invaluable criticism.

  Thank you, Barbara Gerrard, for answering my questions about Arabian horses.

  And thanks to you, too, Robbie.

  North Campus

  To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things

  Author's Note

  Although this book is set on the campus of the University of Georgia, I have repopulated the university with my own characters-none of whom bear any resemblance to anyone living or dead. If they do, it's a complete coincidence.

  Those of you acquainted with the campus will note that I've added a building. Nancy Hart was indeed a Revolutionary War heroine from Georgia, but there is no building on campus bearing her name. Most of Lindsay's campus is the same as the real one, but I did make small changes here and there.

  The archaeology lab is no longer in Baldwin Hall and the description of the Archaeology Department is how it appeared before the current renovations. Also, I have split Archaeology and Anthropology into two departments. At the university they are one.

  Georgia has 159 counties, and not one of them is named Dover.

  DRESSED

  TO DID

  Chapter 1

  "WHY DO YOU believe she's buried here?" Lindsay Chamberlain asked, pushing a strand of wind-whipped hair from her face and shivering in the early morning April air.

  Private detective Will Patterson, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt and oblivious to the gusty air, gave a slight shrug. His tanned, lined face showed no expression. "Anonymous call. Makes sense. The land belongs to the husband's family. Her folks believe the husband killed her. They may be right. It's not easy to get rid of a body ... and not be seen doing it." He looked around and gestured with a nod. "This place'd be safe."

  Lindsay had to strain to hear his husky, low voice over the wind that blew through the trees. Patterson took one more drag on his cigarette, dropped it, and ground it into the gravel drive.

  Lindsay and the private detective were standing with the sheriff and two deputies at an abandoned two-story farmhouse that was weathered to a silver gray. Lindsay looked up at a shuttered window to the attic.

  "We've searched the house," Will Patterson answered her unasked and, in fact, unthought, question.

  Lindsay was trying to imagine this as a family home. It looked haunted. Her gaze fell on a rusted red farm tractor that sat in a ruined heap in front of a falling-down barn, the only outbuilding that remained.

  "The place has been tied up in an inheritance mess for years," said the sheriff, following Lindsay's gaze. Sheriff Irene Varnadore was a woman about six inches shorter than Lindsay's five-foot-eleven height, with short-cropped graying hair and a face showing the effects of years of exposure to the sun. She had said little since Lindsay arrived, only acknowledging her with a nod.

  "Those pines are overdue for harvesting," said one of the deputies to no one in particular. "The family fighting's costing them plenty. Pine beetles are already spreading." He shook his head and pointed to several trees with dead, rust-colored needles.

  "Do you really think you can find anything?" the sheriff asked.

  "How many acres?" Lindsay looked out over the meadow to the stand of tall pine trees the deputy had been observing.

  "A hundred and fifty," the sheriff answered.

  Lindsay raised her eyebrows and looked at Patterson. He took out a pack of cigarettes and started to tear it open, changed his mind, and put it back in his pocket. "It's a long shot. I know. But the person who called said Shirley's body is here-somewhere here on the property. Thought you, being an archaeologist, might be able to find her."

  "This person didn't happen to give you any indication where?" the sheriff asked.

  "No. Just said she was buried here on the Foster place."

  "Humph," snorted the sheriff and looked back at Lindsay, who hadn't yet answered her question.

  "She disappeared four years ago?" Lindsay asked, and they nodded. "How much did she weigh?"

  "What?" asked the sheriff.

  "Her weight," repeated Lindsay. "What was it?" She could feel the subtle beginnings of a headache and didn't want to be here looking for a body that could be buried anywhere on the 150 acres or, more probably, was somewhere else entirely.

  The sheriff made a gesture with her hands that said she had no idea and what did that have to do with anything anyway.

  "About a hundred and fifteen pounds," said Will Patterson. "Her husband was big and strong enough to carry her over his shoulder." He looked at Sheriff Varnadore as he talked.

  "Dead bodies are hard to carry, even for a strong man," Lindsay said. "She will probably be close to a place a vehicle could be driven."

  "If she's here at all," said the sheriff, staring hard at Will. "We don't know she's even dead."

  "Shirt wouldn't walk out on her parents and certainly not on her children," Patterson said. "You know that, Irene."

  "I don't know what she'd do."

  "We'll start looking in places accessible to vehicles. If we don't find a grave, then we can do a grid search of the entire farm," Lindsay said as she turned toward the sound of automobiles. Two cars were turning onto the gravel drive. In the first was Sally, her graduate assistant. She pulled a departmental Jeep in beside Lindsay's Rover. The second car, a Mercedes hardtop convertible, pulled up beside her.

  Sally got out of the Jeep carrying a backpack and a camera. A large-boned, barrel-chested man, his dark blond hair disheveled and his fair skin flushed with anger, got out of the Mercedes at the same time, eyed her, and yelled.

  "Damn you! Get out of here!"

  Sally, wide-eyed, jumped back into her Jeep, slapped her hand on the door locks, and waited. Lindsay rushed over to the man, followed by the others.

  "And who're you?" he asked Lindsay.

  "I'm Dr. Lindsay Chamberlain, and that's my assistant you just yelled at."

  "I thought she was a reporter," he said.

  "Don't be such a bully, Tom," said Patterson.

  "I should've known you'd be behind this, Patterson. You know as well as I do, Shirt's not dead."

  "Look, Tom," interrupted the sheriff. "I'm real sorry about this. Will's got himself a court order." She held it out to him, but Tom Foster waved it away.

  "Go on and do what you have to do, but this is the end of it," he said
to Will Patterson. "Tell her folks that this is the end of it."

  Sally got out of the Jeep, retrieved a straight-edged shovel from the rear, and eased her way to Lindsay, all the time giving Tom Foster a reproving stare. Lindsay motioned for Patterson.

  "Who is he?" she asked.

  "That's Tom Foster. Shirley Foster's husband," he answered without taking his eyes off him.

  "Why is the victim's husband here?" Lindsay whispered.

  Patterson shrugged. "My guess is Irene called him."

  Lindsay watched Tom Foster and the sheriff talking. It was not difficult to see whose side the sheriff was on. Lindsay didn't like having the main suspect here as she searched.

  Patterson nodded his head at Foster and the sheriff. "He won't do anything rash," he said. "You and your assistant will be safe. He's not a fool."

  Still, thought Lindsay, this was not a good idea. She was about to speak when an old farm truck drove up. What now? she thought. A young man with brown hair got out and walked toward them. Lindsay guessed him to be in his late twenties.

  "Chris, what are you doing here?" Sheriff Varnadore asked, her narrowed eyes glaring at Will Patterson.

  "Dad wanted one of the family to be here," he said. "She's my sister."

  "We don't know she's here," said the sheriff.

  "She isn't." Tom Foster spat out the words to Will Patterson.

  "She may not be," said Will. "But we'd all be derelict in our duty if we didn't look, after being told she is here."

  "Yeah, sure, Will." Tom pointed his finger at Patterson and stabbed the air, punctuating his words. "I don't believe for a second you got an anonymous call."

  "Why don't we start?" said Lindsay.

  "Lead the way," said Sheriff Varnadore.

  Will Patterson briefly introduced Chris Pryor, the missing woman's brother, to Lindsay. His dark brown eyes were set deep in his lean face. He acknowledged her with a nod, muttering that he hoped she could find his sister.

  "I'll try," Lindsay said, but gave as little credibility to a vague anonymous call as did the sheriff.

  From her vantage point the farm appeared to Lindsay to be half open land and half woods. Someone dumping a body would look for concealment, even on his own land. He-or she-wouldn't want a family member or anyone else to catch them in the act of burying a body. Ruts from an overgrown roadbed led off the main driveway. Lindsay took her straight-edged shovel and backpack and followed the old trail. The others followed her.

  She led the strange parade to the stand of beetle-infested pines the deputy had previously pointed out. She turned and looked back at the house and drive. The others stopped and turned, too, looking in unison. If Lindsay's headache had not been getting worse, and if this were not such a grim search, she would have laughed.

  The entrance to the house site was still clearly visible, so she proceeded down the narrow road, watching for old wounds on trees or broken branches that might mean a vehicle had passed. She saw nothing, but after four years the signs would be subtle. The wind died down and the air grew warmer, as did the bickering between the private detective, the sheriff, and the husband. Lindsay ignored her entourage as she and Sally scrutinized the ground for signs of disturbance.

  When Lindsay was twelve, her mother's horse, Starr, died. Starr was thirty-old for a horse. She simply collapsed in a creekbed one day. The sandy bottom acted like quicksand-caught her and wouldn't let go. Lindsay held Starr's head to keep it above water while her mother, her older brother, home from college for his twenty-first birthday, and the vet dug in the sandy bottom, trying desperately to free the horse that was too weak to free herself.

  "It's time," Lindsay's mother had said finally.

  "Maybe if we ... ," her brother began, but Lindsay's mother shook her head.

  Lindsay remembered the effort of holding back the tears as the vet administered the overdose. Her mother took her place and held Starr's head during the last minutes, speaking calming words in the horse's ear. It was over soon. Starr died peacefully. Her brother dragged her out of the creek with his truck, and the county brought a bulldozer to dig a hole big enough to bury her. The next day Lindsay went to the stream to mourn privately and was surprised to see that a small pool had formed in the creek where Starr had died.

  The struggling horse had dug out the bottom of the creekbed enough to slow the water, and debris had caught in a narrow spot downstream, backing up the creek even farther. A casual observer would have only noticed the pool. Someone familiar with the movement of water might have wondered why it had pooled at that spot. Lindsay had smiled through her tears. The pool was like a small memorial to Starr. Nothing passed without nature taking notice.

  No one could have dug a grave and buried the body of Shirley Foster and not leave some trace. The trick was to watch for the signs-small anomalies that would be accounted for if the body was really there.

  They traversed the last old roadbeds that crisscrossed the land, taking detours in every place that looked as if it might be good for concealment. Lindsay told them what to look for-depressions, mounds, vegetation out of placebut only the deputies seemed interested. Will Patterson was more concerned with observing Tom Foster than looking for the grave. The sheriff showed practically no interest at all. Chris Pryor walked with his hands in his pockets, looking into the woods, squinting his eyes, as if that would make his sister's grave stand out from its surroundings.

  "This must be hard on him," Sally whispered to Lindsay.

  "I imagine," she answered.

  Will Patterson took out his pack of cigarettes again, tore them open, and bounced the top on his hand, causing one to peek out the top. "Do you mind?" Foster yelled. "The woods are dry. I don't want you burning them down." Will put the pack back in his pocket.

  The pine forest had given way to more lush hardwoods as the roadbed terminated at a lake. Lindsay stopped, unconsciously rubbing her head, and watched the breeze make ripples on the surface of the water.

  "I guess it's time to do another search pattern," she said to Sally.

  "There's nothing here," the sheriff observed. "We're wasting our time."

  "I agree," said Tom Foster. "I have a business to run. I can't be tramping around out here all day."

  "You are free to go at any time," said Will Patterson. "You shouldn't be here anyway."

  "Now you look here-"

  "Look, Sheriff," said Chris, "why are you so eager to leave?"

  "Just what do you mean by that, Chris?" Sheriff Varnadore asked.

  "He means," said Will, "that we haven't nearly covered the property and you are ready to give up. It looks suspicious."

  "Here's something," called a deputy, and they all went over. He had swept away forest litter from the surface of a sizable depression. "Look at this," he said, pointing to a smaller depression in the center.

  "That looks like something," said the sheriff. She directed the two deputies to start digging.

  Lindsay looked at the depression the deputy had cleared. It was at the bottom of a small rise. What looked to be a narrow path led to it and out the other side, down toward the lake.

  Lindsay shook her head. "I think that was made by erosion," she began, and the deputies stopped.

  The sheriff looked up at her. "This is the classic shallow grave site. Small depression within a larger one-small one being made when the victim's intestines decompose." Irene Varnadore smiled, clearly wanting Lindsay to understand that she knew how to do this as well as Lindsay.

  "Irene!" shouted Will Patterson.

  The sheriff glanced at Chris and Tom. "Oh, sorry, I'm not used to having family around."

  "I think," Lindsay said, "that the larger depression was actually eroded out by runoff. The depression in the center is where a small tree died, rotted out. The depression is too deep-Mrs. Foster was a slim woman."

  "I don't see any evidence of the tree," the sheriff said.

  "I'm sure it washed away long ago," answered Lindsay.

  "Well, I guess we'll fi
nd out," said the sheriff, and she ordered the deputies to continue. They dipped their pointed shovels into the ground and began as if digging a hole.

  "Slow down," said Lindsay. "If there is bone, you'll damage it. Let me and Sally do the excavation."

  The deputies looked up at the sheriff and she nodded for them to continue. Lindsay looked at the shovelfuls of hard compact soil and let the matter go. She turned to Sally.

  "Do you have some aspirin?" she whispered. Sally dug into her pack and came out with a bottle of buffered aspirin and gave Lindsay a couple along with a drink from her canteen.

  "There ain't nothing here," grumbled a deputy after a while.

  "Wait," said the other one. "I've hit something."

  Lindsay didn't even cringe as he reached into the soil and pulled. Nor was she surprised at the rotting tree root in his hand. "Damn," he said, "thought I had something."

  "I told you," Sheriff Varnadore said to Will Patterson. "Shirl's not here. This is just a waste of time."

  "No," said Lindsay softly. "I told you she wasn't here. " She made a slight gesture toward the ground. "We haven't nearly searched the property. Do you want me to continue?"

  "Yes," said Patterson.

  "By all means," added Tom Foster. "I don't want Will saying we didn't do a proper search. Then I want this over."

  "Dammit, Tom, Shirl was your wife, for God's sake!" Chris surprised everyone with his outburst. He said more quietly, "Don't you understand what this has done to our family, to Dad ... Mom-and me? Nothing's the same, nothing-" He turned and walked into the woods.

  Everyone stood quietly for a moment staring at the ground or out into the woods where Chris was leaning against a tree. Lindsay wanted to be anyplace else. During their quarreling her gaze had rested on a small, young, dead hardwood tree several yards away. It showed no signs of disease or attack from insects. She wasn't sure why she noticed it at all, but she walked over to it. Beside the dead tree was a long, almost imperceptible, shallow depression. Beside the depression was a small mound with three young trees growing in a row, straight, tall, budding with green leaves.