He checked his watch. Eleven-fifteen. Damn, not much time. Two o’clock would roll around before he knew it.
The lovely symmetrical frame house came into view. He hurried on. At the back screen door he lifted the lid of the old milk box. The key dangled inside on a small brass hook.
He put the key in the door, but it was already unlocked. He opened and closed the door behind him.
Ansley rushed out from the living room, where she’d been waiting. “Darling.” She threw her arms around his neck.
“Where’d you park your car?” Samson asked.
“In the barn, out of sight. Now, is that a romantic thing to say?”
He squeezed her tight.“I’ll show you my romantic side in other ways, sweet thing.”
14
The County of Albemarle wasted little money on the offices of the sheriff’s department. Presumably they saw fit to waste the taxpayers’ money in other ways. Rick Shaw felt fortunate that he and his field staff had bulletproof vests and new cars at regular intervals. The walls, once painted 1950s grade-school-green, had at least graduated to real-estate-white. So much for improvements. Spring hadn’t really sprung. Rick was grateful. Every spring the incidence of drunkenness, domestic violence, and general silliness rose. Cynthia Cooper attributed it to spring fever. Rick attributed it to the inherent vile qualities of the human animal.
“Now, see here, Sheriff, is this really necessary?” Oliver Zeve’s lips narrowed to a slit. A note of authority and class superiority slithered into his deep voice.
Rick, long accustomed to people of higher social position trying to browbeat him, politely but firmly said,“Yes.”
During this discussion Deputy Cooper marched back and forth, occasionally catching Rick’s eye. She knew her boss really wanted to pick up the director of Monticello by the seat of his tailored pants and toss him out the front door. Rick’s expression changed when he spoke to Kimball Haynes. “Mr. Haynes, have you found anything else?”
“I’m pretty sure that the body was buried before the fire. There’s no ash or cinder below the line where we discovered him—uh, the corpse.”
“Couldn’t the fire have been set to cover the evidence?” Rick doodled on his desk pad.
“Actually, Sheriff, that would have jeopardized the murderer if the murderer lived at Cabin Four or worked on the estate. You see, these fires were woefully common. Once the fire burned itself out and people could walk in the ruins, they would shovel up the cold ash and scrape the ground back down to the hard earth underneath.”
“Why?” The sheriff stopped doodling and made notes.
“Courtesy more than anything. Every time it rained, whoever had lived in the cabin would smell that smoke and ash. Also, what if after the fire they used the opportunity to enlarge the cabin or to make some improvement? You’d want to start on a good, flat surface… .”
“True.”
“Burning the cabin would only have served the purpose of making it appear the victim had died in the fire. Given the obvious status of the victim, that would be peculiar, wouldn’t it? Why would a well-to-do white man be in a slave’s cabin fire? Unless he was asleep and died of smoke inhalation, and you know what that would mean,” Kimball offered.
Oliver’s temper flared. “Kimball, I vigorously protest this specious line of reasoning. This is all conjecture. Very imaginative and certainly makes a good story but has little to do with the facts at hand. Namely, a skeleton, presumably almost two hundred years old, is found underneath the hearth. Spinning theories doesn’t get us anywhere. We need facts.”
Rick nodded gravely, then stung quickly.“That’s exactly why the remains must go to the lab in Washington.”
Caught, Oliver fought back.“As director of Monticello, I protest the removal of any object, animate or inanimate, human or otherwise, found on the grounds of Mr. Jefferson’s home.”
Kimball, exasperated, couldn’t restrain his barbed humor. “Oliver, what are we going to do with a skeleton?”
“Give it a decent burial,” Oliver replied through clenched teeth.
“Mr. Zeve, your protest is duly noted, but these remains are going to Washington and hopefully they’ll be able to give us some boundaries concerning time, if nothing else, sex, and race,” the sheriff stated flatly.
“We know it’s a man.” Oliver crossed his arms over his chest.
“What if it’s a woman in a man’s clothing? What if a slave had stolen an expensive vest—”
“Waistcoat,” Oliver corrected him.
“Well, what if? What if she wanted to make a dress out of it or something? Now, I am not in the habit of theorizing, and I can’t accept anything until I have a lab report. Do I think the skeleton is that of a male? Yes, I do. The pelvis in a male skeleton is smaller than that in a female. I’ve seen enough of them to know that. But as for the rest of it—I don’t know much.”
“Then may I ask you to please not theorize about the possibility of the victim’s dying by smoke inhalation? Let’s wait on that too.”
“Oliver, that was my, uh, moment of imagination.” Kimball shouldered the blame since Oliver wanted to assign it. “Miscegenation is an old word and an ugly word, but it would have been the word and the law at the time. I understand your squeamishness.”
“Squeamish?”
“Okay, wrong word. It’s a delicate issue. But I return to my original scenario, and being an archaeologist, I have some authority here. In the process of preparing the burned cabin for a new building, the killer would run the very real risk that a spade would turn up the corpse. That is one strong reason against a fire having been set to cover up the evidence. The other, far more convincing data is that the layer of charred earth—again, scraped back as best they could—was roughly two feet above the corpse, allowing for the slight difference between the actual floor of the cabin and the floor of the hearth.”
“Is there any record of this cabin burning?” Rick listened to the slow glide as the soft lead crossed the white page. He found it a consoling sound.
“If the murder occurred in 1803, as it would appear, Jefferson was in his first term as president. We have no record in his own hand of such an event, and he was a compulsive record-keeper. He’d even count out beans, nails—just compulsive. So, if he were home at the time, or visiting home from Washington, we can be certain he would have made a note of it. I’m sorry to say that the overseer lacked Mr. Jefferson’s meticulous habits,” Kimball replied.
“Unless the overseer was in on it and wanted no attention called to the cabin.” Rick stopped writing.
An edge crept into Oliver’s tone. “I guess after years on the job you would naturally think like that, Sheriff.”
“Mr. Zeve, I understand that at this moment we seem to be in an adversarial position. In as plain a language as I can find: A man was murdered and it was covered up, forgive the pun, for nigh onto two hundred years. I am not the expert that you are on the end of the eighteenth century, the beginning of the nineteenth, but I would hazard a guess that our forefathers were more civilized and less prone to violence than we are today. I would especially think this is true of anyone who would have worked at Monticello, or visited the estate. So, whoever killed our victim had a powerful motive.”
15
In the parking lot the cool, clammy evening air caused Kimball to shudder. Oliver added to his discomfort.
“You weren’t helpful in there.” Oliver tried to sound more disappointed than angry.
“Usually you and I work easily together. Your position is far more political than mine, Oliver, and I appreciate that. It’s not enough for you to be an outstanding scholar on Thomas Jefferson, you’ve got to play footsie with the people who write the checks, the National Historic Trust in D.C., and the descendants of the man. I’m sure I’ve left out other pressures.”