Lovely in Her Bones (13 page)

“I reckon I ought to get preliminary statements from everybody tonight,” Pilot Barnes remarked. “While it’s still fresh in their minds.”

Milo shrugged. “Why not? I doubt if they’ll be asleep yet.”

“Why don’t we start with you, to pass the time while we’re walking? You found the body, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I had just come back from Laurel Cove, from setting up the new monitor in the motel room. Mrs. Lerche had just arrived, and she asked me to take
her up to the site, where Alex was working. Apparently he wanted to see me about something, too.”

“Oh? What about?” Pilot’s voice had lost its casual tone.

“I don’t know; he was dead when I got there. I don’t think it had any bearing on this, though. It was probably something about the project. A measurement he wanted taken, or some data looked up.”

Pilot shrugged. That seemed logical to him, too. “Why would somebody have wanted to kill this fellow?” he asked.

“I don’t think it was personal,” said Milo. “I think somebody wanted the strip-mining company to get the land, and that they killed Alex because he might have proved the Indians’ claim, which would give them the land.”

“Somebody who favored the strip miners,” mused Pilot. “Such as Bevel Harkness?”

“He’s on the top of my list,” said Milo.

    Pilot Barnes looked around the Sunday school room at the sleeping bags and cooking utensils. His eyes came to rest on Victor, snoring peacefully against the wall.

“Is there someplace private I can go to talk to folks?” he asked in a pained voice.

“How about the sanctuary?” asked Jake.

Pilot thought this over for a few moments, without being able to come up with a better idea. “Well,” he said at last, “it might encourage them to tell me the truth.”

Pilot thought it looked like an ordinary little country church—seating capacity maybe seventy-five, too poor for stained glass, upright piano, and varnished pine pulpit in front of homemade velvet curtains, which concealed nothing but a whitewashed wall. No holy of holies here. He’d wondered if the Cullowhees
were footwashers or snake handlers, but seeing the sanctuary he reckoned not.

He ushered Mrs. Lerche gently to the front pew and pulled up the piano bench for himself. “Now, ma’am, I know it’s awful to be put through this in your time of sorrow, but you must understand that I have to do it.”

Tessa nodded. “I won’t be much help,” she said in a voice of quiet composure. “I just got here, and I’m afraid I know very little about the project.” In the same unemotional tone, she gave him a sketch of her day, ending when Milo had come out of the tent and led her back to the church, telling her that Alex was dead. “It seems very strange that he should be dead,” she said in a puzzled voice.

“I expect it does, ma’am,” said Pilot politely. “Do you have any idea as to who would want to kill him?”

Tessa turned to him wide-eyed. “Why, no. Not if some local person did it. They might perhaps have misunderstood about his work.”

The deputy sensed that he was being invited to pursue the matter. He obliged. “And if it
wasn’t
a local?”

“I did think that perhaps Mary Clare …,” Tessa murmured, twisting her rings.

“Mary Clare? The graduate assistant?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing to interest you, Sheriff,” said Tessa with a gentle smile. “It’s just that the poor thing had sort of a schoolgirl crush on my husband, as students will often do.”

There had to be more to it than that. Pilot waited.

“And I think she misunderstood my husband’s … encouragement of her work. I’m afraid she became rather silly about it, and he was forced to hurt her feelings. It was all very embarrassing for him.”

Pilot grunted. He had waded through all the flowers in Tessa’s explanation, and had concluded that the professor was fooling around with his assistant. In his book, that made two suspects with good
motives: the girlfriend and the wife. “I’ll look into it,” he said noncommittally.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” murmured Tessa, but she sounded pleased.

    Pilot decided that at this point Duncan Johnson would interview someone besides the girlfriend. That way he could have a little hearsay to contribute to the conversation. People often said more when they had something to refute. He could have chosen any of the others to question next; the fact that he picked Victor was sheer spite. The sight of him snoring like a hog through a murder investigation made Pilot Barnes long to kick him; he settled for a rude awakening and some less-than-polite questioning.

“I don’t know who killed him,” Victor sulked. “He wasn’t a very nice man.”

“Wasn’t he?” asked Pilot genially.

Victor, detecting a sympathetic listener, told his version of the Peking man incident. In revised form, Victor was now convinced that he had made a slip of the tongue in a technical matter, and that Lerche had chosen to misinterpret his mistake, and to publicly humiliate him for it.

The deputy was puzzled. “What does it matter which pile of bones you saw in the museum?” he asked.

Victor smiled bitterly. “I assure you that anthropologists are perfectly capable of pitching fits over matters even more trivial than that.”

“Well, did he put anybody else’s back up thataway?”

“Not that I recall,” said Victor, implying that he had a mind above such things.

“There’s always his personal life to consider,” said Pilot carefully. “That business about his graduate student.”

“Wasn’t
it awful?” Victor nodded. “I wasn’t here
when The Wife showed up, but I imagine that it was quite a scene. Elizabeth and Jake seemed most uncomfortable.”

“Oh, you were out?”

“Yes. After that dreadful incident with Dr. Lerche, I had the most piercing migraine. The very air seemed to oppress me. Naturally, I went outside for a while in an attempt to lessen the agony. It’s merciful I wasn’t present for that scene between Mrs. Lerche and Mary Clare, because it would have been very bad for my nerves.”

“How do you know there was a scene between them if you weren’t around?” asked Pilot.

“When I came back in—”

“What time was that?”

Victor looked pained. “One doesn’t clock-watch on a dig. Nine-thirty or so, I expect. Well past dark. Anyway, when I came in, there was a strained atmosphere, as if everyone had just been at each other’s throats.”

“What were you doing wandering around in the dark till nine-thirty?” Pilot made the question an expression of friendly interest rather than an accusation.

“It’s obvious that you’ve never had a migraine,” said Victor with dark satisfaction. “Light hurts one’s eyes. I was just walking about in the dark waiting for the pounding to subside. Of course, I would have been better off lying down, but they were not going to turn off the lights in the common room. No one has any concern for my feelings.”

“Did you happen to go up to the cemetery?”

Victor hesitated. “Well … perhaps in that direction,” he admitted. “But I didn’t see anything.”

“How close did you get?”

“I may have just glimpsed the tent light shining through the trees. I didn’t see any movement.”

“Was that when you just started out or just before you came back in?”

“Somewhere in the middle, I guess.”

Pilot Barnes sighed. Any hope of fixing the time of death had better not be pinned on this tomfool witness. He thanked him, and sent for Mary Clare.

Mary Clare did not wait to be questioned. “Have you made an arrest yet?” she demanded.

Pilot Barnes blinked. “You have anybody in mind?”

“There’s some idiot loose in these hills bashing people on the head, buddy, and you’d better find him.”

“You oughtn’t to let it frighten you,” said Pilot soothingly.

“Frighten me? I wish they’d tried to get me instead of Alex! I’d have left ’em laying on the ground!” Her voice softened. “I don’t think Alex was much of a fighter. I wish I’da walked that way tonight.”

“Walked that way? Were you out tonight?”

“I went for a walk. Why?”

Pilot grimaced. “Seems like the whole world was out walking the woods tonight.”

“Oh,” said Mary Clare, suddenly comprehending. “You’re thinking about alibis.”

“Have to.”

“Well, I didn’t kill Alex. Had no reason to.”

“I understand there was a little misunderstanding between the two of you. Something about a schoolgirl crush.”

He expected to get a rise out of her with that phrase, but she recognized the wording as Tessa’s, and only said: “I told you Alex wasn’t much of a fighter.”

Pilot continued with a few routine questions about where Mary Clare was and when, but the emotional outburst he was hoping for didn’t come.

“Will I be able to leave?” Mary Clare asked when he had finished.

“Where were you planning to go?”

“Alex asked me to go and do some research at MacDowell College, and I’d like to follow through on it. This project was important to him.”

Pilot nodded. “That’s within the state. I don’t see why not. Just let us know where you can be reached in case we need you.”

“I’ll be back,” said Mary Clare.

    “Adair. A-D-A-I-R,” said Jake.

“And what is your position?”

“I’m an undergrad, which means that I do the pick-and-shovel work in exchange for the experience.”

“Did you get along with Dr. Lerche?”

“Oh, sure. I didn’t have much to do with him, anyway. Mary Clare was the site manager.”

“And where were you tonight?”

“From supper on, I was in the church, trying to read a book.”

“So you didn’t go out in the woods?”

“No. Not until Milo found the body and sent me up there to guard it. I didn’t see or hear anyone around then.”

“I bet you saw and heard a lot at the church, though,” said Pilot slyly. “About the time Mrs. Lerche arrived and met the girlfriend.”

Jake shrugged. “There wasn’t much to it.”

“Don’t you find it odd that the site manager is being sent off to do research someplace else?”

“Not if that’s what needed doing,” Jake replied calmly. “Milo could site-manage. I could do it myself.”

“Do you have any opinions on who would go after your boss with a tomahawk?”

“Oh, sure. Some local in favor of the strip-mining deal who wanted to make the Cullowhees look bad. I see racial overtones, don’t you?”

Pilot Barnes shook his head. “I see a long case,” he
sighed, “with the sheriff gone, and me supposed to put up hay tomorrow. Why me, Lord?”

    “Are you sure he was murdered?” asked Elizabeth, wide-eyed.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Pilot patiently. “People don’t generally sneak up and hit themselves on the back of the head with a tomahawk.”

“I guess not.” She nodded. “By the way, do you know Wesley Rountree?”

This was a name none of the others had mentioned. A new lead, thought Pilot. “Is he one of the people connected with this project?” he asked.

“Oh, no. He’s the sheriff of Chandler Grove, Georgia, where my cousins live. I just thought you might know him, since you’re in law enforcement too.”

“No, ma’am,” said the deputy, forgoing the desire to tell her that he was not acquainted with Wyatt Earp or Buford Pusser either. “Now could you give me a statement about what happened tonight?”

Elizabeth told him about her evening, describing the encounter between Mary Clare and Tessa Lerche as tactfully as she could. She had not left the church since supper, she said, and she had no information relevant to the incident.

“Actually, I’m not an anthropologist,” she admitted. “I came on this dig because I thought it sounded interesting.”

“Who invited you?”

“Um … Milo Gordon. He’s my brother’s roommate, and …”

“I see,” said Pilot Barnes. And he did.

    The next morning at nine, Dr. Putnam found Pilot Barnes going through a pile of papers on Duncan Johnson’s desk. He halted his search periodically to
take gulps of coffee from a mug on the top of the filing cabinet.

“What did you lose?” asked Dr. Putnam. “Not evidence, I hope.”

“Nope. I’m hunting the address of that sheriff’s convention at the beach.”

“I thought you’d be wanting to wash your hands of this case, Pilot.”

The deputy shrugged. A certain kind of person always made that joke sooner or later. He said, “I just think he ought to be told. If he still wants me to handle it, that’s fine.”

“Well, I figured you’d want to get in touch with him, so I hurried through your autopsy first thing. Can’t sleep of a morning anyway anymore.”

“What did you find?”

“Oh, it was just what it looked like. Somebody bashed his head in with that ridiculous tomahawk, and that’s exactly what killed him. I’ll give you a typed-up version in two-dollar words this afternoon. This one doesn’t need to go to the state lab, though, so you go right on ahead with the investigation. Did the tomahawk tell you anything?”

“The handle was rough bark, which doesn’t take fingerprints. There was a paper seal on the bottom saying Made in Taiwan. They sell them at Cherokee for four bucks.”

Dr. Putnam shook his head. “All I can say is, when it comes my time to go, I hope I don’t die in a
silly
way.” He snorted. “Dyed chicken feathers and plastic string!”

Pilot Barnes, who had found the number of the sheriff’s hotel and was busy dialing it, did not reply. Dr. Putnam had nothing further to report on the Lerche case, but he wouldn’t have missed the forthcoming conversation for the world. He settled down in the straight chair and began to leaf through Duncan Johnson’s current copy of
Field and Stream.

“Official police call for Sheriff Duncan Johnson,”
said Pilot Barnes in his most matter-of-fact tone. He drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited for the harassed receptionist to sort through one hundred sheriffs’ messages for the whereabouts of Sheriff Johnson. “Yeah. I’m still here. He—what? Okay. When do you think that’ll be? Well, ask him to call his office.” He hung up the phone with more force than necessary.

Dr. Putnam, who was helping himself to coffee, raised his eyebrows expectantly.

The deputy scowled. “He went deep-sea fishing with the guys from Buncombe County. They’re staying overnight on the boat.”