One Grave Less (24 page)

“Perhaps not,” said Lynn. “There is nothing I can point to that would require Garnett to keep the case open. Nothing. Good shoes and a tight skirt aren’t enough.”

Lynn looked as if she were considering something. “Did Madge use a lot of makeup?” she asked.

Diane didn’t know. She thought back to the board meetings. Certainly she wore makeup, but she didn’t think it was a great amount.

“Normal amount,” said Diane.

“She had on what would be normal for evening wear,” said Lynn. “She also had on false eyelashes, nicely done.”

“What are you saying?” asked Diane.

“David, come here for a moment, please,” said Lynn. Her words came out like honey.

David came around the table to Lynn and she moved closer to the chair.

“If we were together at the trail and we wanted to cross the chain, how would you handle it?”

David stepped over the back of the chair, then reached over and picked up Lynn like a bride across a threshold, and set her down on the other side. He took her hand as if to guide her down a slope.

Lynn grinned at him and slowly reclaimed her hand. “I was just thinking that she may have been with someone. A man. There are many women who would ruin a good pair of shoes for the right man. I’m not one of them, but a lot would, especially if they didn’t date much and found the attentions of a man flattering. Did she date a lot or have a special friend?”

“Not that I’m aware,” said Diane. “I don’t think she was ever married.”

“It’s just a thought,” said Lynn, righting the chair and pushing it under the table. “I’m meeting someone at the restaurant. Can I leave by the museum side?”

“Yes,” said Diane. “Take the elevator on the Dinosaur Overlook. Thanks, Lynn.”

“I’m just real sorry about this. I know she was a friend and board member. It’s a tragedy.”

She started for the door and turned.

“Oh, Madge had a pregnancy at least once in her lifetime,” she said.

Maria stared at Ric Johnson’s back as he disappeared into the shadows of the next hut. She searched her mind to recall the story she had read in the
Chronicle of Higher Education
. The details tumbled out of her brain in bits and pieces. It was about an anthropology student. Kyle Manning, she thought—not Ric Johnson—from the University of Chicago. Married with children. Two of them, she thought. He was on a field trip with other students when he disappeared. The boat they were riding in capsized on the Amazon River. That was five years ago. His body was never found. Until now.

What was he doing here? Not anthropology. Where did he expect to publish his work? Under Ric Johnson? Did his Ric alias have credentials? Had he simply run away from all his responsibilities to a place where he felt he had none? Maria thought that was probably what happened. A rather mundane solution to a mystery. Better, however, than having drowned. To be fair, she had no idea what his side of the story was.

Maria looked at the hammock of knotted rope woven with grass. She knelt down to Rosetta’s eye level.

“I think it would be a good idea to sleep in the truck,” she said.

“Is something wrong?” The little girl looked worried.

Maria would have liked to protect her from all worry, protect her from any thoughts of danger. Have her think the trip from here on out would be easy and safe. But in their present circumstances, that was hardly realistic. She had decided earlier on to be as honest with Rosetta as she could.

“Maybe. I really don’t know. But the man isn’t who he says he is,” she said.

“Neither are we,” said Rosetta.

Maria smiled, almost laughing. “You’re right. Sometimes there’s a good reason to conceal who you are and sometimes there’s a bad reason. I don’t know what kind of reason he has.”

“Who is he?” asked Rosetta.

Maria glanced at the hut he disappeared into, then looked back at Rosetta and spoke softly—easy to do with her still-sore throat.

“He was a student at a university in the United States. I saw a newspaper article telling about how he disappeared several years ago and was thought to be dead. He’s changed his name. Maybe it’s nothing to concern us, but I would like to sleep behind locked doors.”

Rosetta nodded and grabbed Maria around the neck and hugged her.

“I don’t like him either,” she whispered. “He looks at us funny.”

“We are an odd pair, two girls alone in the jungle in a beat-up pickup. He may be as suspicious of us as we are of him.”

“Maybe,” said Rosetta. “He’s not happy like the people here.”

Maria looked outside at the children running around playing, the adults working and talking. Rosetta was right—they were a happy group. Perhaps Ric simply had the weight of his past life on him. Perhaps he regretted not telling someone that he had not died, and now five years had passed and he probably thought it was too late.

The two of them walked outside. They watched the people, mostly naked, painted red. Maria wondered if the paint worked as a bug repellant.

Maria and Rosetta wandered over to the women preparing food. Their offer to help was met with laughter. An older woman was roasting wild boar on a skewer over a fire, another was frying grubs in a well-worn, dinted metal pan. Two young girls, Maria guessed they were about twelve, were peeling and cutting up fruit and an assortment of plants. It looked like a feast after the little food they had been eating.

Some of the younger children tried to get Rosetta to play with them, but she clung to Maria. Maria knew she was probably just pretending to be shy. Neither of them wanted to become separated. Their lives felt precarious, like they would have to flee at anytime and needed to stay prepared, stay together.

It didn’t take long for the women to finish preparing the meal. The boar had already been roasting before she and Rosetta had arrived. They had only to cook the other food. The tribe was small, not more than twenty people. They all fit in the largest hut, sitting in a circle on the floor. The planks in the floor were rough-hewn and spaced an inch or more apart. They had been coated with something that made them smooth.

The food was piled on wooden platterlike planks in the middle of the circle. A couple of young women passed servings around on wooden or metal plates. The housewares were a mixture of local handmade utensils and items that came from the outside, from the modern world. A woman gave Maria food on a wooden plate for her and Rosetta. Maria watched her host, Ric/Kyle, to see when to eat. He nodded at her and took a bite of the roasted meat with his hands. Maria and Rosetta followed. It wasn’t too bad. The meat was a little tough but tasted good. The grubs were crisp and the fruit succulent. The two of them ate slowly.

A bowl of hot drink was handed to them. It had a strong fruit and herb aroma. Maria saw Rosetta snake a finger into the liquid and put it in her mouth. Maria lifted the bowl to her own mouth and started to drink. Ric turned from saying something to the woman sitting by him and watched the two of them. Rosetta was holding Maria’s arm and she suddenly squeezed, digging her fingernails into Maria’s skin. Maria pretended to take a drink and set the bowl down. She put an arm around Rosetta, pulled her close, kissed the top of her head, and squeezed her arm gently.

Maria ate more food and periodically picked up the bowl and pretended to drink, as did Rosetta. She looked around at the members of the tribe as they ate. None had a bowl of the same drink. They laughed and talked to one another. The children tended to run around, eating from anyone’s plate. The young men who had ridden in her truck were apparently telling the story. She couldn’t understand the language, but the hand gestures were pretty clear. It looked like a more exciting adventure than it was.

Maria picked a time when Ric wasn’t looking at the two of them and deftly and quickly poured the drink through the cracks in the floor. She finished her meal and sat watching the others. It was getting dark and they would be going to bed.

“Rosetta and I are going to sleep in the truck,” said Maria to Ric. “We’ve had a hard time and she feels comfortable in the truck. But I appreciate the offer of the hammock.”

“You must be tired of sleeping in the cramped truck. You’re pretty tall,” he said.

Maria grinned. “You’d be surprised how comfortable it is,” she said. She put her hand to her mouth and yawned. “I think, on this great meal, we are going to turn in. Tell the cooks that their food was great and we appreciate them and you sharing with us.”

Ric smiled. “I’ll see you in the morning, then,” he said.

Maria carried Rosetta to the truck, mainly so they could talk without being overheard.

“What was in the drink?” asked Maria.

“
Sorri
, I think she called it,” said Rosetta.

The “she,” Maria guessed, being the woman who taught Rosetta about plants and herbs.

“Something like that. Maybe
Saaro
. It puts you to sleep. It can kill you.”

Maria took a breath and held it. So they weren’t safe. Ric or the others would be expecting them to drop into a deep sleep. That’s why he had wanted them in the hammock and vulnerable.

They reached the truck, climbed in, and locked the doors. Maria didn’t lean against the doors or the window. Rosetta slept with her head on her lap. Maria put the gun where she could reach it in a hurry. She tried to stay awake.

Maria dreamed of
West Side Story
. She awoke to the sound of someone singing “Maria.”

“Did you say something?” she asked Rosetta.

Rosetta sat wide-eyed and pointed to the driver’s-side window. Ric was there with a rifle pointed at them.

Diane studied her own navy leather sandals, thinking about what Lynn Webber had said about Madge Stewart and her shoes. She looked up at the group.

“What do you think?” she asked anyone who might want to answer.

Izzy was the first. He had slimmed down considerably since she first met him—not from becoming health conscious, but from losing a child. Food just hadn’t been important anymore. Diane understood. Like her, he had been slowly climbing out of depression after he lost his almost grown son in a meth lab explosion. A lab that none of the more than thirty partying students from Bartram University who died there knew was in the basement. It was one of Rosewood’s biggest tragedies, touching in one way or another everyone who lived there.

Izzy credited his recovery with the change from being a policeman to being a crime scene specialist, focusing on collecting the evidence that convicted criminals. Diane thought it probably had a lot to do with the friendships among the lab team. She had put together a good group and she was proud of them.

If she wasn’t able to solve her problems in a timely manner, the museum directorship wouldn’t be the only job she would be in danger of losing. She would also lose her job as head of the crime lab. The lab couldn’t afford to have a director with damaged credibility.

“I’m having a problem with the shoes thing,” said Izzy.

“Dr. Webber told a good story . . . but really? The Stewart woman could have just hiked up her skirt and stepped over the chain and walked down the embankment. It wasn’t steep and her heels weren’t that high. Are you gals really that obsessed with shoes? Maybe Webber is. I can see that, but what about you, Neva?”

“Hey,” she said, “you saying I’m not in her league?”

Izzy turned to David. “Is that what I said?”

David nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, I meant . . . look, the woman dresses up for a crime scene.”

Neva smiled at him. “When I was nine I got these white shoes for Easter. Mama told me not to get them dirty. After church I went outside and completely forgot about my shoes—and my dress. I got them both filthy,” said Neva. “Kids forget things like not getting their shoes dirty.”

“Madge Stewart wasn’t a kid,” said Izzy.

“Sometimes she was,” said Neva. “Look, I’m giving you ammunition for your argument.”

Diane knew Neva was right. Diane’s big complaint about Madge Stewart was the way her friends—like Vanessa and Laura—had babied her. Hiding in the closet eavesdropping, for heaven’s sake, then running to Vanessa like she was tattling. How childish was that?

“But she was an adult,” said David, “and whenever I saw her she was always well dressed.”

“The woman was, well, I mean, she was on the museum board. Was she, what’s the word?” said Izzy. “Was she mentally challenged? You’re talking like she was.”

“No, she wasn’t,” said Diane. “But her personality never got out of the stage where she believed everyone would always think she was cute, no matter what she did.”

“She was an artist,” said Neva. “We talked a few times. She liked my work.”

“An artist? Really?” said Izzy. “Do I know her work?”

Diane and Neva smiled. “Maybe,” said Neva. “She illustrated children’s books. Her preferred style was pointillism and she used bright colors. I liked her work.”

“Pointillism?” said Izzy.

“Dots of paint,” said David. “Seurat.”

“Not ringing a bell,” said Izzy. “I’ll Google it.”

Diane had the feeling that none of them wanted to talk about Madge Stewart’s death. She didn’t either. And it wasn’t up to them to solve it. It was up to Garnett. She was satisfied to leave it to him—sort of. However, Lynn’s story, as Izzy called it, did leave her wondering. Why did Madge go down to the edge of the lake?

“Do you have a tox report?” Diane asked.

“Not yet,” said Neva. “Lynn hasn’t sent any samples over. She may send them to the GBI or another lab because of our closeness to Madge.”

“How about her clothes?” said Diane.

“Same,” said David. “The only thing we did was work the scene. As Lynn said, the scene was pretty well trampled. I found where her heels went into the edge of the bank before she fell in, but I haven’t found any trace evidence whatsoever. I practically vacuumed the boulder. I looked for prints, but it was weathered sandstone. But that was just being thorough. It’s not a surface to hold prints. I also looked at the metal posts the chain was threaded through. I didn’t find anything.”