LC 02 - Questionable Remains (17 page)

"Well, I wonder why Prescott said you did?"

"Probably knew I was out of town and couldn't deny it.
I've worked with Tucker Prescott occasionally. We have a
mutual dislike for each other. He's a paranoid beggar.
Flunked out of med school and tells everybody it was the
quota system that knocked him out-too many women and
foreigners trying to be doctors these days, a man just doesn't stand a chance, it seems."

"He believes that?"

"I don't think he does, actually. I think he's just trying to
save face, and that's a hot button for a lot of folks. Gets him
sympathy."

"Do you know who identified the bones?" asked Lindsay.

"No, sorry, I don't."

"Sorry you had to call me all the way from England for
nothing," she said.

"It's not for nothing when I get to hear your lovely voice.
How about it? Paris is beautiful this time of year."

"It's tempting, but I'll have to pass." She heard Nigel sigh.

"I'll come to Knoxville sometime and take you out to dinner. Goodnight."

"I'll hold you to it," he said.

Lindsay thought briefly of calling Tucker Prescott at
home and telling him what she thought of his lack of professionalism. But she could imagine his bureaucratic mentality concocting some paranoid reasoning, blaming her. It
was best to ignore him.

Lindsay hung up and tried Derrick's number again. He
didn't answer.

She would talk to Jennifer Darnell, then go to Derrick's
site and forget about Ken Darnell. Lindsay put the gifts back
in the sack and got ready for bed.

Piaquay looked out over the valley at the village of Chilhaxul. It
appeared peaceful. He surveyed the landscape as far as lie could see
from his high mountain perch and saw no sign of the coming
Spaniards. He had left the trail of Calderon days before the
Spaniard was to catch up to Pardo and took the trail to Chilhaxul.
He had expected to arrive before them.

Chilhaxul was located at a bend in the river. From this vantage
it looked much like his village, except for the seven mounds.
Chilhaxul had enemies to the north and west, Piaquay knew.
Evidence of this was the tall wall around the village made from
timber covered with dried clay, guard towers, and a moat connected to the river surrounding all. Inside the wall the houses, the
wall-less shelters, and the plaza were like those in his village. This
would be a town the Spanish would like, for the soil was rich and
corn grew well. Chilhaxul was the main village of at least eight
other lesser villages. It was powerful. It was a good place for
Piaquay to seek allies for his plan.

"Some have said they are turtles because they live inside a hard
shell," said a young man sitting on his haunches, scraping the
shaft of an arrow with a piece of flint.

"No," said another, taking one of his arrows, rolling it in his
hands and looking down the shaft. "They are bears. They are lazy
and have much hair covering their bodies. I've seen them."

"1 believe," said a younger man, sitting cross-legged, watching
his friends, "that they are Uktena or the water cougar. I have
heard their odor is foul and they bring death. They sometimes walk
on four feet and sometimes two."

"They are none of these things." The three young men looked
up to see a stranger in their midst. "I am Tesca, brother of Piaquay
of Calusa." He squatted down beside the youths. "The creatures
you speak of are men. They come from a place where all men are
hairy and wear metal to protect them in war. They stink because
they do not bathe. They are men," he repeated. "They rule because
they have the four footed beasts as servants, or they are the servants of the four footed beasts who rule. I do not know. They care for the beasts and feed them as an apprentice prepares and serves
food to a warrior. The beast in return carries them on its back.
When they fight on the back of the beast, they are invincible. When
they fight on the ground, they are weaker."

"How do you know these things?" said the youth, who was
straightening his new arrows.

"They came to our village, took our women and children, and
said they would kill them unless we gave them much wealth. We
did, but they killed them anyway."

"And you took revenge?" asked one of the youths.

"We're on a war party now."

"You're far from home," said another youth. "Can you not find
them?"

"We can find them. They have to be approached with care. They
have magic that can kill people from a distance." Tesca had the
attention of the youths. They all sat down, cross-legged, to listen to
the stranger. "They have two ways they kill from a distance. They
have invisible warriors that they send to weaken a village. This
sometimes takes many seasons. When a village is weak, they come
and ask for food because they cannot feed themselves, nor can they
hunt animals of the woods. Maybe they have to promise the beasts
food to get them to carry them; I don't know. But when you give
them corn, they also take the women and children. There is another
weapon they use then. It is long and looks like a thick hollow reed.
It's not a reed, though; it's made from something like copper, but
harder and black. This weapon is so heavy, they cannot lift it and
must support it with a stick stuck in the ground." Tesca showed the
braves with gestures how they used the weapon. "When they command it, it vomits fire and smoke, spitting a gizzard stone made of
itself. If this stone hits you, it rips the flesh like the point of an arrow
and must be dug out. You either die or suffer much pain."

"That's a terrible weapon," said one of the youths, in awe.

"It is. But it is a weapon that tires easily and must rest before
it can spit again."

"And you say these are men?" they asked.

"This is Piaquay, who comes from the village of Calusa to the
south of here," announced a brave entering the council house of
the elders of Chilhaxul.

The men who sat in the council house were not unlike the elders
of Piaquay's village in dress and manner. Their language, though
similar, was not Piaquay's, but he understood it and could speak it
after a fashion. Though there were similarities, there were also
many differences between this tribe and Piaquay's as well. The differences were subtle taken by themselves, but taken together they
were such that Piaquay would not have felt at home here. He
ignored any discomfort he felt and walked in the midst of the group.

"I am here to talk about the strangers in our land," he began.

"You know these men?" asked an elder.

"You do not? Do you not remember the man Hernando de
Soto?" asked Piaquay.

"We heard of him. But none from our village saw him. The villages to the east and to the north of here know of him."

"They are the same. Not the same man, but the same tribe."

"Why have you come?" asked the eldest, whose long hair was
silver.

"These men massacred my people, killed my sister, my nephew,
my wife, my infant daughter. I want to avenge their deaths. These
are men who kill women and children as easily as they kill other
men. I want to drive these people from our land back to their
own."

"Why have you come to us?"

"They are coming here. They will ask that you bow to the rule
of their leader, accept their gods, and give them food to eat."

"How do you know they come here?"

"I have a slave with me, a captive. He is one of them but has
lived here many seasons. He knows the villages they visit. We
must drive them out of our land," Piaquay repeated. "I will tell
you what I think we should do."

LINDSAY SAT IN the motel diner, drinking a cup of coffee
with a road map in front of her. She decided to drive to
McMinnville and interview Jennifer Darnell, Ken Darnell's
wife. She debated with herself about calling before she left.
Her polite upbringing told her to call-after all, the woman
had lost a husband. But the emerging detective said to wait
until she was in McMinnville-don't give her much time to
collect her thoughts. Her polite self won out.

She was taking a drink of coffee, and a shadow crossed
her map. She looked up to see a man and a woman standing beside the table, both thin as rails, looking to be in their
late twenties or early thirties. The man had a mustache and
Vandyke beard. His dark hair was long in the back and
shorter on the sides and top. He wore faded jeans and a
green-and-white-striped shirt. His short-sleeved shirt
revealed scratches and bandages on his arms. The woman
had on a pink flowered housedress that buttoned up the
front. Long, thin, light-brown hair wisped about her face,
and bangs hung just past her eyebrows, running into thin
rimmed glasses.

"Lindsay Chamberlain?" said the man.

"Yes."

"My name's Clay Boshay. This here's my sister, Lorinda
Hillard."

Hillard, thought Lindsay. That sounds familiar.

"Do you mind if we sit down and talk to you?" he asked.

"It's about my husband, Blaine," said the woman.

Blaine Hillard, thought Lindsay. That's right. One of the
men killed with Ken Darnell. "Sit down," she said.

"Thanks." Lorinda slid into the booth opposite Lindsay
and her brother slid in after her. She put her purse on the
table and fiddled with the strap as she spoke.

"Martha said you was a real nice lady. Martha-Tucker
Prescott's secretary-she's the cousin of a friend of mine."
At the sound of Prescott's name, Lorinda's brother gave a
derisive snort that his sister ignored. "She said you're inves-
tigatin' Ken Darnell's death."

"Yes," said Lindsay.

"Then I want you to look into Blaine's death, too." She
snapped open her purse. "I can give you a retainer."

Lindsay put a hand on the purse. "I can't take money,"
she said smiling at her.

"You work for free?" asked Clay, clearly not believing it.

"I work for the University of Georgia as a professor. I get
a salary for that, and I also do consulting with the state on
forensic work. I'm not a private detective. I'm looking into
Ken Darnell's death as a favor for a friend."

"Then we want to be your friend," said Clay, "because
there's something fishy about Blaine's death."

Lindsay raised her eyebrows, as did the waitress who
had just come to the table to ask if Clay and Lorinda wanted anything. The two newcomers ordered coffee. Lindsay
ordered a glass of tea and waited for the waitress to leave
before she said anything.

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"Blaine and me was married five years. We got two
babies. Lily's four now and Holden's five. Now, Blaine was
a bit of a dreamer, but he wasn't stupid. He'd not go off caving without telling me or somebody where he'd got to. And
he'd take care of his family."

"How do you mean?" asked Lindsay.

"Blaine had insurance. He worked with Clay at Tooly
Construction Company. We got fifty thousand dollars when
they found his-him. But we found out he'd taken our savings and become a partner in Darnell's sporting goods store.
See, he had this idea of offering tourists wilderness trips in
caves that most of the public don't go in and down wild
rivers, things like that. The Darnells really liked the idea.
Blaine always wanted to be in business for hisself. He was
real excited about. We talked it over, but I didn't know he'd
already done it."

"Anyway," said Clay, "it seems Jennifer Darnell took out
more insurance on Blaine. Something about ..." He looked
down at the floor trying to think of the term.

"Key person insurance?" supplied Lindsay.

"Yeah, that's it. The bitch-pardon my French-got half a
million dollars on Blaine. Now, if he was going to insure his
life for that much, then he'd see that his family got at least
some of it."

The waitress came with the tea and coffee. Again Lindsay
waited until she was gone before she continued. "Wasn't the
insurance company suspicious of having to pay out such a
large sum of money shortly after the policies were taken
out?"

"They tried their best. But, see, that's where she was
smart. It all looked normal." Clay tapped the table with his
finger. "It seems she had the policy on her husband for
about a couple of years and the one on Blaine for a little over
a year. Blaine had made all these plans. They'd even booked
people for the trips. Then him and Ken disappeared, and
they didn't find them for two years. The woman's nothing
if not patient."

"As wife of a partner, don't you have some share in the
business?" asked Lindsay.

Both of them shook their heads. "I can't believe that
Blaine would sign a contract like that, but he did, initialed every page of it. It was notarized and everything," said
Lorinda. "We've seen a lawyer, talked to the sheriff, the
insurance company, everybody we can think of. They all say
it looks suspicious, but there is just no evidence she's done
anything wrong."

"Did the coroner have this information when he pronounced the death accidental?" asked Lindsay.