Relics Page 15

  The two doddering old ladies stood on the doorstep and faced the rest of them down. Mary Alice said, “Daddy wrote his will a long time ago. Edwina and I are perfectly happy with the way the land was divvied up. It is time for you bunch of babies to grow up.” Then she turned to her oldest daughter and to Edwina’s—both of them well into their sixties by this time—and said, “Do you think it’s possible for you two girls to whip up a batch of tea cakes for this crowd?” And they did.

  CJM: You know, that story sounds familiar. I’ve been reviewing an old will that divided up a big piece of property upriver from here. I’ll show you—it’s right here in my briefcase…well, no, it’s not. I’ve got a pretty piece of a broken plate I picked up last week, though, and a couple of pens that don’t work, but no will. Isn’t that always the way? I must have left it on my desk. I don’t remember the family’s name, but it wasn’t something down-home like Lester. It was a high-falutin’ name that made me think of British royalty or something. But never fear. Give me a little time and I’ll find it. You were talking about the old feud?

  Amanda-Lynne Lavelle: Those days are long over, I’m happy to say. These days, it’s hard to understand why anyone would care about that patch of land—

  (Mrs. Lavelle is interrupted by Mrs. Montrose, who is awakened by a fit of coughing.)

  Kiki Montrose: Could you get me some water, please?

  Amanda-Lynne Lavelle: Oh, certainly, sweetheart. Let me help you sit up, first. Maybe that will help.

  CJM: I appreciate your time, and I don’t want to overstay my welcome.

  Kiki Montrose: Oh, please don’t rush off on my account. I’ll be fine. (Another coughing spell says otherwise.)

  Amanda-Lynne Lavelle: I’m sorry…. Kiki needs me now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Faye bolted her breakfast that Wednesday morning so that she could catch Raleigh before her work crew arrived. She wanted to get Ronya started early that morning, so Faye needed to get approval for her work plan—and for something else.

  Raleigh fiddled with the plastic bag holding the ground-up remnants of the potsherd that Jorge had crushed. The professor lifted one hand and watched the tiny bits of fired pottery sift from one side of the bag to the other, running downhill like sand through an hourglass. Faye wondered if he’d forgotten that she’d asked him a question.

  “So you’d like approval to run thermoluminescence testing on this…glorified dirt. Well, it won’t come cheap,” he said, proving that he was, on occasion, listening to her when she spoke. “You say there’s some soil mixed in with the remnants of the potsherd? How will the lab distinguish the sample from its associated debris?”

  “I feel sure they can use a microscope to distinguished crushed clay from dirt. I plan to speak with the analyst about the lab’s preferred method of separating debris from artifacts, but I need your approval on the request form before anybody at the lab will give me the time of day.”

  Raleigh opened his file drawer and removed a laboratory request form. “I’ll file the form and talk to the analyst. You have fieldwork to do. What is your work plan? And whom do you propose to use for field technicians, since you couldn’t manage to get along with the men who worked quite well under my direction?”

  “Elliott has returned to work. Joe never left. And I’ve found one Sujosa who is willing to work.” Faye handed him the personnel form.

  “And your work plan?” Raleigh asked.

  It would not be wise to suggest that she planned to expend days of paid labor sifting through the spoil piles he’d left behind, looking for important artifacts that she suspected he’d overlooked. “I’ve received permission from Amanda-Lynne Lavelle to dig on the site of the original Lester homestead. From all accounts, the Lesters were among the first Sujosa settlers to come to this area.”

  He opened his mouth and she brazenly interrupted him before he could chastise her for abandoning his dig. “You’ve already excavated the areas behind Hanahan’s Grocery most likely to show evidence of human activity.” She mentally added, “because there wasn’t any human activity there before 1940,” but she kept that damning fact to herself. “For the next few days, I’ll split my crew’s time between completing your work behind the grocery, and surveying a sampling grid on Mrs. Lavelle’s land.”

  “I’ll want a full report on your week’s activities at the Friday evening meeting. That gives you three days to accomplish something. I want you to understand that shutting down the archaeological portion of the project is within the realm of possibility.”

  Faye had been prepared for him to browbeat her. She had been prepared for him to criticize her work plan—the one that was, unlike his, actually based on logic and research. She had not been prepared for this.

  “But archaeology is a critical component of the research. If we uncover the Lester homestead—”

  “But you may not uncover anything. I wonder if you are aware of how I have built my career. I work in museums, carefully studying artifacts, and cataloging them in every detail. I build a case for their provenance through meticulous library research. It’s not exciting, glamorous work, like your brand of archaeology, but it’s a damn sight less wasteful. Not to mention that it avoids the danger of destroying irreplaceable information that exists every time you turn over a trowelful of soil. It is my position that excavation should be reserved for cases in which the project goals can be served in no other way. Our other scientists are making progress. I’ve seen no sign that you will be able to match them.”

  “I’ve only had two days.”

  “I’ve had a month, and I have found nothing worth pursuing.” Raleigh filled out the request form and slid it, along with Faye’s crushed potsherd, into a manila envelope and tossed the envelope into his out-box.

  ***

  During her brief residence in the Sujosa settlement, Faye had been reminded time and again that Alabama geology differed from Florida geology in an important way: it was three-dimensional. The Florida islands where Faye had accumulated her professional experience were as flat as the paper her maps were printed on, but parts of Amanda Lynne Lavelle’s land might as well have been vertical. She knew that the crumbly sands and clays that blanketed the area surrounding the Sujosa settlement were highly susceptible to erosion—Great Tiger Bluff was ample evidence of that—and erosion gullies marred Amanda-Lynne’s land all along the creek that tumbled toward the Broad River. As she stood—with the owner’s permission—overlooking the area just south of DeWayne’s mound, she realized that implementing a field survey for this site was going to be a bear.

  The uphill side of the erosion gullies ended in the familiar tangle of winter-killed kudzu vines. Kudzu was as pernicious as a plant species could be, but it had apparently served its intended purpose here. It might have smothered any plant within its reach, but it had held the soil in place, just as the government had hoped when it sent the Civilian Conservation Corps across the South planting the Oriental vine now known as “the green cancer.”

  Leaving her team earlier that morning to continue the work at Raleigh’s site, Faye had spent several hours walking the area south and east of Lester’s Hill with Amanda-Lynne. Struggling with both gullies and kudzu, they had tried and failed to find the old Lester homesite. Unfortunately, Amanda-Lynne just couldn’t be sure where her daddy had said it was.

  “I remember that there were a few bricks lying around, but that was a long time ago. I do know that we couldn’t see the river from the homesite, but we could see the creek.”

  It wasn’t much information, but it was better than nothing, and Faye laid her plans accordingly. Faye dropped Amanda-Lynne off at her house so that she could get ready for her job at the Alcaskaki diner. Then Faye brought Elliott and Joe up to the new site, leaving Ronya, who had adapted to her new job like a duck to water, to continue the backfilling.

  She’d set Elliott and Joe to work clearing out a manageable chunk of the kudzu-protected land within sight of the creek. Wh
en they finished, they would use the surveyor’s benchmark she’d found beside the roadbed as a reference point to establish precise locations for the shovel test probes that would give her a feel for the level and intensity of human activity in the area. Meanwhile, Faye planned to walk every square inch of the eroded creek bank, searching the surface for exposed artifacts and cultural remains uncovered by rainwater runoff. The results of her walking survey and the test probes would help her to decide where and whether to begin full-scale excavations.

  The hacking sound of two machetes slashing at recalcitrant vines was softened by the sibilant rush of water below her. In almost two hours of combing the bank, she’d found only a single Madison point lying near the bottom of an erosion channel. It had been discarded centuries before the Sujosa arrived in Alabama, and rushing water had forced it out of the archaeological context that might have told her more, but it was attractive to the eye and to the touch. If she didn’t uncover anything else more interesting, she could always use it for show-and-tell at Raleigh’s Friday meeting.

  Faye checked her watch. She had left Ronya alone at Raleigh’s site long enough. It was time to drive back and see how she was doing.

  As Faye approached in the truck, she saw Ronya wave a trowel in her direction and then return to screening soil. The woman was a dogged worker. She had listened carefully earlier that morning when Faye had shown her how to use the screen apparatus and how to bag and document anything she found. Now, less than a full workday later, Ronya had made a noticeable dent in the pile of backdirt beside her.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “I found a silver dime, dated 1954, and some pull tabs from those old-fashioned soda cans, but that’s it.”

  “That’s okay. Joe and Elliott haven’t turned over the first grain of dirt yet, so you’re ahead of them. Let me see your field notebook and your sample bags.”

  Faye flipped through Ronya’s detailed field notes, then approved her redundantly labeled artifacts—each of them placed in a bag with a form relating the details of its discovery, cross-referenced with the corresponding page in her field notes. No bumbling fool would be separating these artifacts from their provenance. It would take out-and-out sabotage to render Ronya’s work unusable. Or another house fire, whispered her paranoid side.

  “The work’s going fast today, because this soil’s nice and dry,” Ronya said. “When I get to that clayey soil,” she pointed to a reddish pile, “we’ll probably have to wash it through the screens with a hose. We’d better cover up the spoil piles when we leave for the evening. If they get rained on, it’ll take forever to get this job done.”

  “Bless your soul for thinking ahead.”

  Faye heard the sound of a passing vehicle, and looked up to see the truck belonging to the fire marshal pulling into the church parking lot. A familiar figure disembarked. Eager to hear what Adam might have learned about the fire, Faye headed toward him. He raised a hand and beckoned her to sit beside him on a bench on the little church’s porch.

  “Did you find Carmen’s briefcase?” she asked before she bothered to sit down.

  “Not yet.”

  Faye reached into her own case and pulled out the copy of Carmen’s field notes that she’d made.

  “Here’s a copy of some of Carmen’s notes. The originals were in the briefcase.”

  He took the binder and said, “Preliminary lab results are in, and I’m damned if I’ve ever seen anything like them.”

  He handed a stack of faxes to Faye. Most of the laboratory findings were marked “BDL,” which the handy key at the bottom of each page said was an abbreviation for “below detection limits.”

  Faye wasn’t terribly experienced at reading lab reports but Adam had simplified matters considerably by highlighting everything not marked “BDL” with a yellow marker. Then he’d made a big bold “X” over most of the highlighted compounds, justifying each elimination with marginal notes that said things like “This compound’s not volatile enough to be an accelerant,” or “Common combustion product of polyurethane foam,” or “Common cleaning residue.” The numbers that remained told a story.

  “They detected accelerants in the samples you took from the floorboards under Carmen’s bed. Does that prove arson?”

  Adam laughed and Faye knew that she was wrong, because he wasn’t the kind of person to be amused by proof of a crime. “You do a good job of reading the numbers, but give another thought to what they mean. Why did I take the floorboard sample?”

  “The kerosene heater.”

  “Right. And every compound we found in the floor sample is either found in kerosene or in one of its combustion products. The heater and its fuel are definitely the cause of our fire.”

  Faye felt foolish. Merely finding an accelerant didn’t prove arson. Kerosene was an accelerant, but it was also a perfectly innocent heating fuel. “Then why do these results upset you so?”

  “The results from the pillow sample are strange. I’ve seen every one of those compounds before in samples collected from a foam pillow. But some of the numbers are too high. I can’t see any connection with the fire, because the chemicals that are out of whack aren’t flammable enough to use for arson. But I can’t explain them.”

  “Well, even if they weren’t used to start the fire, we’ve still got to find out what they are and why they’re there,” said Faye. “Carmen’s family is having a memorial service for her today in Miami. I try not to think about how they must be suffering, but I can’t help it.”

  Adam nodded and riffled through the multi-page lab report. “Thank God for chemists. Their reports are long and confusing, and they usually manage to muddy up everything I think I’ve learned about a case. But ask them a question and they’re like bloodhounds trying to sniff out a trail of—” He closed his eyes and jabbed a finger at a page of the report. Squinting down at the spot on the page where his finger had landed, he read, “—like bloodhounds trying to sniff out a trail of 1,1,1-trichloroethane. That’s 1,1,1-TCA for us ordinary mortals. They found some of it in Carmen’s pillow, along with—” his finger traced down the column of polysyllabic words, “—perchloroethylene, ethyl chloride, trichloroethylene, vinyl chloride, and a couple of dichloroethylenes. Also, formaldehyde and some urethanes.”

  Faye wrinkled her nose. “On her pillow? Sweet dreams. Where did it all come from?”

  “Brace yourself. According to my chemist, all that stuff could be in the pillow you slept on last night. The urethanes are easy to explain when you realize that most pillows are made of polyurethane foam. Formaldehyde is released when kerosene burns—”

  “That’s a no-brainer. We know there was burning kerosene in the room.”

  “Yep.” Adam flipped to the back of the report where there was a section labeled Data Interpretation and pointed to a paragraph labeled Textile Treatments. “And it says here that formaldehyde can be found in permanent press fabrics.”

  “Like the pillowcase.”

  “Yep. And the vinyl pillow cover underneath it could have decomposed into all those other things that have ‘chloro-’ and ‘chloride’ in their names. Or they could just be residuals from the last time the pillow was laundered.”

  Faye, who had been planning to rid her pillow of toxins by taking it to the cleaners, felt queasy. She must have looked queasy, too, because Adam said, “How do you think the people at the dry cleaners get the grease stains out of your favorite sweater? Soap and water won’t do it, but a dab of 1,1,1-TCA or perchloroethylene—affectionately known as ‘perk’—will work miracles. Some of the other nasty-sounding stuff on this list is helpful, too. Formaldehyde is used to fireproof fabrics. And some of the chlorinated compounds are used in medicine. Perk is an old general anesthetic. So is ethyl chloride.”

  “I’m on information overload here.”

  “Yeah, me too, and it’s all the dog’s fault.”

  Faye was opening her mouth to ask what dog when light dawned. “Oh, you mean Samso
n, the wonder dog. If he hadn’t been sniffing around the pillow—”

  “—I would never have taken this sample. He was acting funny, because he could smell all the chemicals in that pillow, but he wouldn’t alert, because none of them were accelerants that he’d been trained to identify. If Samson had left well enough alone, I’d already be working on a report saying that the kerosene heater malfunctioned and lit poor Carmen’s bedclothes. Do you know how long it takes a burning bed to reach a temperature hot enough to ignite everything in the room?”

  Faye didn’t speak, so he answered himself, “A hundred and twenty seconds. Two minutes after a candle—or a kerosene heater—gets knocked over onto your bedspread, everything flammable in your bedroom is on fire. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Except that scenario doesn’t gee-haw with your hunch that Carmen wouldn’t have moved the heater. It also doesn’t explain the absence of her briefcase. And this stuff in her pillow worries me to death.”

  Faye tried to think how she’d handle a situation like this in her own work. What if she dug into soil that just didn’t look right, as if it had been brought in from somewhere else, maybe to fill a hole? She would take a background sample of soil that hadn’t been tampered with, and she’d compare them.

  “Do you still have my pillow, or Laurel’s? Could you run the same tests on one of our pillows and see if those chemicals are there?”

  “Consider it done.” He didn’t bother to hide his admiration. “That’s why I like talking these things over with you, Faye. You think like a scientist.”

  Adam could hardly have said anything more likely to earn himself a warm spot in Faye’s heart.