Diane hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment, thinking she needed to try to get in touch with Jonas Briggs again.
Chapter 26
Jonas Briggs, the museum’s archaeologist, came to Diane after retiring from Rosewood’s Bartrum University. When the museum first opened, Diane offered office space and lab space to Bartrum faculty members if they would curate collections in their field of expertise. In the beginning, the department heads and faculty were resistant to the idea, thinking that RiverTrail would be a dinky nonacademic museum. They sent nontenured and retired faculty to her in order to clear space in their own buildings for tenured professors.
The resources at the museum and the quality of the collections proved that the department heads and tenured professors had miscalculated, and curatorship at RiverTrail became a prime posting. Discovering its initial mistake, the archaeology department at Bartrum tried to replace Jonas with a tenured faculty member, but Diane diplomatically explained to them that it wouldn’t be possible. Jonas had become critically involved in too many important exhibits and research projects. To cut off further forays from the Bartrum archaeology department, she hired Jonas as permanent curator for the museum’s archaeology collection. Since then, Diane and Jonas had become good friends and occasional chess partners.
Jonas was currently in Arizona with Marcella Payden, a fellow archaeologist, surveying newly discovered Anasazi sites. Diane dialed his cell number, expecting that he was probably still out of range, and was surprised and disappointed when he answered. She was dreading telling him the news.
“Diane, nice to hear from you. I see on my phone that I have several missed calls from you. We just now got back to a place with service. It’s a little shack of a diner out in the middle of nowhere, but they have a tower out back. Did you get the projectile points from Roy Barre?”
“Yes,” she said, “we have them.”
“I hope it wasn’t any trouble for you to go fetch them,” he said.
Diane almost laughed.
“I have some. .” Diane hardly knew what to call it-bad, sad, tragic, horrific-it was all of those and more. “I have some bad news,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Has something happened?”
“Roy and Ozella Barre were murdered in their home,” she said.
There was only silence on the other end. It went on for so long that Diane thought perhaps the signal disappeared somewhere between Georgia and Arizona and she was going to have to deliver the dreadful message again.
“Murdered?” he whispered. “Oh, no, not the Barres. That can’t be. Who would do such a thing?”
“We don’t know. About forty-eight hours later another older couple in Rendell County was murdered the same way,” she told him.
“A serial killer?” he said.
“It seems like it,” Diane said.
“But you don’t believe it,” he said.
“I don’t believe anything. I don’t have enough evidence,” she said.
“Just a minute. Here’s Marcella with a cold drink,” he said.
Diane could hear him telling Marcella the news, and her startled reaction. “I don’t know,” Diane heard him say to Marcella. “She hasn’t said yet.
“Do you know when the services will be?” he asked Diane.
“No. I don’t even know if the sheriff has released the bodies,” said Diane.
“Are you investigating?” he asked.
“Yes, but I’m not supposed to be,” she said.
“Not supposed to be? What does that mean?” said Jonas.
“I’ve been run out of Rendell County,” she said.
“What? By whom?” he asked.
“The sheriff,” she said.
“Leland Conrad.”
Diane heard a derisive harrumph.
“What has he got against you?” he asked.
“There is a very long story that goes with this and no time to tell it,” said Diane. “Let’s just say I irritate him.”
“Good. Someone should. But you are looking into it?” he asked.
“The Barre children have asked me to investigate, and I will. But it has to be done carefully. It is an open investigation and the sheriff is the lawful authority,” she said. “However much I wish he were not.”
“Is there anything I can do?” he said.
“In your visits with Roy Barre, is there anything he said. . anything about someone he was afraid of, someone who didn’t like him? Did he allude to any secrets he possessed? Did he have any valuables? Is there anything that you can think back on that now looks suspicious?”
“Well,” he said, “let me think.” He paused. “I saw him several times while we were negotiating. I call it negotiating. He mainly wanted someone who was an expert on points to talk to. He’d already decided he wanted to donate the points to the museum. He and his wife are-were-real nice people. Ozella’s a great cook.” He paused again. “Damn, this isn’t helping you one bit.”
“I’m sorry I had to dump this on you,” said Diane.
“What else could you do? It’s a hard thing to be the bearer of bad news,” he said.
“Did Roy or Ozella strike you as having secrets? The kind that people would kill for?” asked Diane.
“I didn’t get that impression at all. Rendell County is the sort of place where everybody knows everybody and their secrets,” Jonas said.
“I got that impression too,” said Diane.
“Roy and his wife didn’t like Leland Conrad. I do know that. There was a lot of dustup between their churches. A lot of animosity about Roy deciding to let a phone company put a tower on his land. Silly stuff, I thought. I guess you heard about Conrad’s church. They call it Baptist, but Roy and Ozella said it seemed more like a cult to them. The Barres didn’t like Conrad’s group calling themselves Baptists.”
“Was there a lot of anger from Sheriff Conrad’s church toward them?” asked Diane.
“You mean, would they kill over their differences? There’s a lot of historical precedent for such things, but I wouldn’t think that would be true here. I didn’t get the feeling it was that bad,” he said.
“The other couple killed were members of the Barres’ church,” said Diane.
“You don’t say. Well, that does look suspicious, doesn’t it? I don’t know then. I wouldn’t have thought it, but who knows?” He paused for a long moment. “You know, I just can’t see murder being committed over a cell tower, or even their religion. I went to the Waffle House up there a couple of times with Roy, and heard some lively debate there with some people from other churches at times, but nothing that would lead to murder. It was more like, how literally should the ‘taking up of serpents’ be taken?”
“Does Leland Conrad’s church handle snakes?” asked Diane, wrinkling her face.
“No. Some of the others in the county do, though. One brought a snake to a county commission meeting. Roy said that was a hoot,” said Jonas. “I’ve found most of the people up there to be nice folks-even the members of Conrad’s church. It’s mostly the leaders of the church that Roy had issues with. And those issues were mainly about the use of his land-the cell tower, and the development proposal.”
“What development proposal?” said Diane.
“Some developers looking to buy a section of land from him for later development. Some people in Rendell County would like to attract tourists in the winter-sort of like Helen. Have shops, skiing, that sort of thing. Roy was all for it, but so were a lot of other people.”
“Did Roy receive any threats over it?” she asked.
“He never mentioned it. I can’t imagine that killing Roy and Ozella would stop it. His kids might up and sell
