Read Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel for Free Online

"You
need to have it analyzed. It looks like you have an iron problem. It's common all through this part of the country. I can
give you the number of a place that installs water filters."
    Lindsay took the jar and stared at the water. "That deep,
you'd think it would be pure," she said.
    "It's good water. Just has some minerals that need to be
filtered out. Right now, we'll put a sleeve down to the rock
and drop the pump and wiring down the well-" He
stopped and listened to one of his men who had yelled
something to him. "Looks like the water level is up to forty
feet," he said. "That's some pressure behind it. That's good.
We'll drop the pump about 150 feet."
    Somewhere, Lindsay thought, the water level for that
aquifer is a mere forty feet under the surface. She wondered
where that was.

    Lindsay went inside and looked up the address of the
place on campus where she could get her water analyzed.
When Dante finished, he knocked on her door with the bill.
    "You can pay it in two installments, if you want," he said.
    Lindsay glanced over the bill: 370 feet of drilling, water
pump, wiring, sleeve, and labor. She took a deep breath and
wrote out a check for $2,100.
    "The next installment due next month?" she asked, half
expecting him to say no, tomorrow.
    "Next month will be fine. I'd see about getting a filtering system before you run the water though your pipes, if I
were you," Dante said.
    Before going to campus Lindsay dropped off her water
sample to be analyzed. Then she drove to South Campus
where new, modern multicolored brick buildings were popping up like dandelions after a rain. She stopped at the
Ramsey P.E. Center to shower and change her clothes.
    When she arrived at Baldwin Hall, home of the Archaeology Department, Lindsay encountered Reed Cavanaugh
and Kenneth Kerwin, two Archaeology faculty members in
the faculty break room. She poured herself a cup of coffee.
Reed was nursing his own cup, and Kerwin was reading the
latest volume of the Journal of Historical Archaeology.
    "Been reading about you in the paper," said Reed. "Looks
like we're in for several more weeks of speculation about
Shirley Foster." From his expression, Lindsay felt as though
he would like for her to come sit down and tell him about the
case. Reed was not a person who acted out of idle curiosity,
and she realized that he had probably known Shirley Foster.
In fact, probably several of the faculty had known her.
    "I imagine there was a lot of publicity when she disappeared," said Lindsay.
    "Oh, you can't imagine it. It made it scary for a lot of the
girls on campus at that time, too."

    "Did you know her?" asked Lindsay. She took a sip of
coffee. As usual it was awful.
    Reed nodded. "Nice lady. I liked her."
    "She didn't have a very good opinion of archaeologists
here in the U.S.," Lindsay said.
    Reed laughed. "You must have been reading one of her
interviews. I remember one in the Observer." He chuckled.
"Shirley was just tweaking our noses. She was like that."
He laughed again, shaking his gray head. "We never
minded, though. She was a very playful girl."
    "How about you, Kenneth? Did you know her?"
    Kenneth Kerwin waited until he finished reading a paragraph before he looked over the top of the journal. "Not
really. Academically, of course. She was interested in textiles, and she occasionally asked me questions about old
mill sites in Georgia. She was a good scholar. A loss for the
university." He went back to his reading.
    "What can you tell us?" Reed asked Lindsay.
    "Nothing, I'm afraid," she answered.
    "Well, can you confirm what's in the newspaper?" he
asked. "It said she had been burned in a curious manner.
That wasn't the way she died, was it?" Reed looked as
though he wanted Lindsay to tell him, "No, she really died
peacefully in her bed."
    "There was some burning. The sheriff believes it was an
attempt to dispose of the body. It's an exaggeration to call it
curious." The only "curious"