Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel (41 page)

"You sure? What's it about?"

"It's kind of a primitive picaresque story about a tribe
from about eighty thousand years ago. They have fire, but
they have to keep it going, because they don't know how to
make it. When it's put out in an attack, three members of
the tribe set off to steal fire from a more advanced tribe. It's
about the adventures they have hunting for fire. You know,
they learn about life from their adventures, that kind of
thing. I think you'll get a kick out of it."

"It sounds like your kind of movie," he said, returning
with two bowls of popcorn.

Lindsay smiled, her legs crossed under her and her popcorn in her lap, and watched the movie. About halfway
through the show, Lindsay looked at her brother.

"Sinjin, if you wanted to make someone burst into
flames, how would you do it?"

"I thought we were going to forget about that for a while."

"The movie reminded me of it. You know: quest for fire.
Aren't there chemicals besides napalm that would cause
the same effect as the witnesses described?"

"Yes, there are, but if they're used, they leave traces of
residue. Why don't you wait for the complete chemical
analysis of the remains?"

"The Pryors are having another forensics expert analyze
the bones. My reputation is being attacked from all sides. I
need to do this."

"Why are they having someone else look at them?"

"They don't like some of my findings, I suppose."

"Surely a second opinion's not a big deal?"

"No. Another expert should find the same things I found."

"There are other things you can use," said Sinjin, "and
some of them are pretty mean. But the problem is, you need
something more than a kitchen to mix the chemicals."

"We have a university with labs all over campus," Lindsay said. "Do you always have to have an outside ignition
source to set them off?"

"Pretty much, but the source can be subtle. Something
organic."

"Really? People are organic, you know," Lindsay reminded him.

"But you'd still have to throw the substance on them.
I don't know of anything that would work the way the witnesses said. They were mistaken. Now let's watch the
movie."

They watched in silence a while, Lindsay forgetting
about her problems.

"Was it really like that eighty thousand years ago?"
Sinjin asked.

"Could've been. Shirley Foster wrote in an article that
there was more color in ancient history than we portray. Of
course, eighty thousand years ago was way before textiles."

"Jeez, Lindsay, give it a rest," he said.

"Yeah, you're right." They fell silent again and watched
the movie.

"Does she go through the whole movie naked?" Sinjin
asked, gesturing at a young woman on the screen.

"Pretty much." Lindsay grinned. An image flashed
through her mind, from somewhere in the depth of her subconscious, she supposed, but didn't know exactly where.
"Why was Hercules tearing off his clothes?" she asked.

"Hercules? Did I miss something?"

"You know, in the statue. Why was he tearing off his
clothes?"

"What statue?"

"You know, it shows a bearded, muscular Hercules in a
ragged tunic trying to get it off."

"I have no idea," Sinjin said. "Why are you asking?"

"Wasn't it poisoned or something?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Sinjin.

"I seem to remember something about Hercules' cloak
being poisoned with, what was it, dragon's blood or something?"

"Where are we going with this?" Sinjin asked.

"Blood. Dragon's blood," Lindsay said almost to herself.

"Do I need to call a doctor?"

Lindsay threw a piece of popcorn at him. "In an article
Shirley Foster wrote, she mentioned a dye named dragon's
blood." She reached for the phone book on the end table,
looked up a number, and dialed.

"Kenneth, this is Lindsay."

"What do you want?" he said.

"I have a question."

"Go to the library. Do you know how long I spent with
the sheriff because of you?"

"Come on, Kenneth, you'll be getting rid of me soon
enough. Indulge me."

"True," he said. Lindsay thought he sounded happy.
"What's your question?"

"Do you know what dragon's blood is?"

"Are we talking about realgar?" Kerwin asked.

"I don't know, are we? Is it an ancient red dye?"

"Yes," he said.

"What is it, exactly?"

"It's a compound of arsenic."

"Arsenic?"

"Yes. Why do you want to know?"

"I was just reading about dyes."

"This isn't about Shirley Foster, is it? Is this some kind
of trick?" Kerwin said, his voice full of suspicion.

Kenneth Kerwin's voice sounded sinister when he was
wary. Lindsay imagined him grabbing Shirley and kissing
her. She thought of the song Will Patterson said described
Shirley. "She's frequently kind and suddenly cruel." Lindsay bet Shirley would have laughed at Kerwin rather than
becoming angry. Did he follow her to the Foster farm, hide
in the woods, and become infuriated when he saw what he
thought to be an assignation with a much younger man?
And then what? Take the napalm or whatever he just happened to have in his trunk and throw it on her? Or take
gasoline and throw it on her, then somehow ignite it? But
Lindsay could not see Kerwin lurking in the woods and
doing all that. Also, this was a premeditated murder, not a
spur of the moment one.

"No," Lindsay said, "It's not a trick. I just wanted to know. Was Hercules' cloak poisoned with dragon's blood?"

"No. The blood of a centaur, if memory serves. Now
please call the library if you have any more questions."

She hung up the phone and turned to Sinjin. "Dragon's
blood is an arsenic-based red dye used in prehistoric textiles," she said. "Shirley probably used it, because she was
into re-creating old dyes and fabrics by original processes."

"And?"

"And the medical examiner said there was arsenic in her
remains."

"At least now you're making some sense," Sinjin
agreed, "but that only means she was wearing fabric she
made. So, what does that have to do with anything?"

"Could Shirley's death have been an accident? Could
the dye in her clothes have ignited somehow?"

"Arsenic doesn't have the properties that the witness
described," he said. "I can see maybe the arsenic becoming
absorbed through her skin and killing her eventually, if she
wore the clothes all the time, but the arsenic wouldn't catch
on fire."

"Maybe if it were mixed with something or..." Lindsay
threw up her hands. "I don't know. I feel so close. Edward
G. Robinson said I'm close and I should have it figured out
by now."

Sinjin turned down the volume on the television. "Just
when did he say this?"

"In a dream."

"Edward G. Robinson came to you in a dream and told
you that you're close to solving the death of the Foster
woman?"

"No, he didn't come to me in a dream. I dreamed about
him, and he said that I have all the pieces and I should have
solved it by now-or something like that."

"And you put some kind of faith in this?"

"Not in that. In the brain. It likes to organize facts. It puts like concepts together and often stores them in the
same place. That's why sometimes when you go to bed
with a problem, you find the solution in the morning.
Anyway, while it's working on things, those things sometimes come out in dreams. It's simply the brain organizing
things. At least my brain works that way, and I doubt if my
brain is unique."

"Oh, I think your brain probably is very unique."

Lindsay stood. "I'm going to get a beer. You want one?"

"Sure."

She started toward the kitchen. "You know, maybe
someone treated her clothes to make them so they would
catch fire, or maybe she was trying out a new dye. I'll have
to find out how Hercules was killed."

"I guess then you need to look for someone who knows
mythology and is a chemist."

Lindsay walked into the kitchen and came back out
almost immediately, staring at Sinjin wide-eyed.

"What?" he asked.

"Gloria Rankin, the girl hit by the bus, who was coming
to see me the day she died, was a classicist and a chemist."

"THAT'S SOME COINCIDENCE," Sinjin said after a
moment.

Lindsay came back and sat down opposite him, leaned
forward, and placed her hands on her knees. "That was
where I saw the statue of Hercules tearing off his clothes. It
was in Park Hall, where Gloria Rankin had an office. There
were some journal articles with them, one of them authored
by Gloria Rankin." Lindsay tried to remember the title. "I
think it was a review of Trachiniae by Sophocles. Isn't that
about Hercules?"

Sinjin shrugged. "Look, I agree it's interesting that she
has a background in chemistry and mythology. But I'm not
sure how this ties in with Shirley Foster's death. You think
this Rankin girl was coming to confess?"

"Maybe. Or maybe she knew who did it."

"But why come to you so long after the death? Why
didn't she go to the authorities when it happened?" Sinjin
asked.

"Maybe she didn't know what she knew until the body
was found and the newspaper reported that the body was
partially burned. I don't know, something about the
description must have clicked with her. This doesn't look
good for Luke Ferris," Lindsay said. "He was driving the
bus that hit Gloria. He was with Shirley when she died.
Maybe he got the idea from Gloria's article of a way to start a spectacular fire. Maybe Gloria remembered his interest
and was coming to tell me."

"Still, why you and not the authorities?" Sinjin asked.

"Maybe Gloria wasn't sure. Maybe Luke was a boyfriend and she didn't want to get him into trouble if it was
nothing, and she decided to check it out with me first."
Lindsay shook her head. "But he was on a regular route
with the bus. I don't know how he could time it so that he
arrived at the place she was crossing the street at just the
right moment."

"You have another problem, too," Sinjin said. "I don't
know of a process to treat fabric that would give the results
reported by the witnesses to Shirley's death, and you still
have the problem of how it could have been ignited. Neither
Shirley Foster nor her clothing spontaneously combusted."

Lindsay stood up again. "I don't know. Maybe I could
talk to her office mate again ..." She started into the
kitchen again, then paused. "When I was in Gloria's office,
I saw her thesis on the shelf. It had a very catchy title.
Something like The Source of Medea's Sorcery."

"Isn't that the chick who killed her kids to get even with
her husband? What does that have to do with this?"

"She did something else, too." She put her hand to her
head as if she could massage the information out. "You
know, I never really liked the classics all that much, and
now I wish I'd paid more attention." Lindsay looked at
Sinjin, half a smile on her lips. "She gave her rival a cloak
that caught fire when she put it on."

Sinjin cocked an eyebrow. "Okay, I'll admit, that's interesting. It's more than interesting-but Medea and Hercules
are just myths."

"Myths often have some basis in fact. The important
thing here is the subject of Gloria Rankin's thesis, the
source of Medea's sorcery. I think Gloria figured it out. Her
master's was in chemistry, and she combined that with her interest in the classics." Lindsay folded her arms. "I'll bet
there is some connection between Gloria's murder and
Shirley's. I'll bet it was the same person. I need to find out
what her thesis said." She looked at her watch. "Too late to
get to the library. I'll go first thing tomorrow and check out
her thesis. Wait, no. I'll have to go to Park Hall. As I recall
her master's was from the University of Chicago. Our
library won't have her thesis."

"There still has to be a way to ignite the clothes," Sinjin
said. "You know, Lindsay, as nice as this all sounds, it
seems like you're working your way to some elaborate
murder weapon. Why not just shoot her-unless the goal
was to watch the conflagration that resulted and her death
was just the by-product? Luke Ferris was a firebug, and I
still think he had something to do with it."

"Maybe. And maybe it was an accident. Maybe Shirley
had been trying out new dyeing techniques and stumbled
onto something deadly by accident." Sinjin was shaking
his head as she spoke, but once Lindsay got her train of
thought traveling at full steam, it had a lot of inertia behind
it. "Maybe Shirley was trying to make Medea's cloak.
That would be something a textile historian with an interest in the classics might like to experiment with. Maybe
she just grabbed the wrong jacket that night." Lindsay hesitated a moment.

"You don't even know what the myth of Medea is,"
Sinjin pointed out. "You need to verify that before you start
building a scenario around it."

"There's Luke's dream," she said.

"Not a dream again."

"I told you, sometimes dreams are just the brain organizing itself. Luke's been having a recurring dream about hitting Gloria with the bus. When he gets out to see about her,
he is Hercules trying to lift the bus off her." Sinjin raised
his eyebrows. "Yes," Lindsay said. "Another coincidence. His therapist believes he's trying to deal with the guilt of
not being able to save her-which does make sense and
may be part of it. Brains put like concepts together. Hercules is strong and could save her, but why him and not
Batman or a Power Ranger?"

"Okay, why?" Sinjin asked. "'Cause Batman's the
coolest."

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "The medical examiner said that
Gloria didn't die immediately. Luke reached her first. What
if she spoke to him and mentioned the name Hercules?"

"And that's why he dreams of Hercules and not
Batman? Maybe, but this is getting to be a stretch."