about that.
“Good, I made you laugh. For some women that would have made them cry,” said Jonas.
Diane laughed again at the thought of what she must have looked like up there talking to the curators.
“I have another suggestion,” said Jonas.
“Shoot,” said Diane.
“If it wouldn’t offend your sensibilities, I could hint that we may have a serious pest infestation that has gotten out of control and you’ll be using some highly toxic chemicals to rid the museum of them. If I can start some gossip in that direction, maybe that will keep their minds occupied. We all know when those pesky dermestids get out, they can reek havoc in a museum,” said Jonas.
Diane nodded. “That’s a good idea. I’ll tell you what’s really going on when it’s over,” she said. “Have a good vacation. I’ll see you next week.”
Diane left Jonas at the foot of the stairwell and climbed up to the third floor. She met David in the crime lab.
“Have you heard from Jin?”
“He’s in the GBI lab in Atlanta. They’re replicating, reproducing or whatever it is they do with DNA.”
“That’s a relief. You told him about the possible danger?”
“Yes. He’ll be careful. He’s going to be staying the night in Atlanta anyway.”
“Do you have everything you need?”
“I told Garnett about your suspicions of Emery. He was skeptical, but he’s bringing his men to search the building tonight.” David paused and put a hand on Diane’s shoulder. “We are going to figure all this out,” he said. “We know a lot. We’ve just got to put it together the right way.”
“I know.” Diane put her hand over his. “I just feel like I’ve forgotten something. You know that feeling?”
“Yeah, I have it too. Something’s nagging at me and I can’t remember what it was. It’s like an idea that passes through your head too quickly to grasp and aggravates your synapses.”
She heard the phone ringing, and Neva answered it. She’d sent the receptionists home and put the museum guards on the crime lab. She trusted her handpicked museum guards more than the crime lab guards that Rosewood hired. And she wanted the museum searched and empty by the time Lane Emery’s men arrived the following evening. She fully expected either Emory or the two kidnappers to try and steal evidence from the crime lab.
“Diane, it’s Sheriff Burns,” Neva called out. “He has some information on Flora Martin.”
Chapter 40
Diane settled in her chair and picked up the phone.
“Sheriff Burns? What have you got?”
“First off, I’ve talked to all my people. Nobody’s given out any information, general or otherwise, about the cases. I went to see Deputy Singer. He’s covered in this rash. Your guy said it was urti something.”
“Urticaria,” said Diane.
“That’s it.” The sheriff laughed. “I shouldn’t laugh at the poor fellow, but it’s some kind of strange justice. Singer likes to scare the ladies by putting bugs on their desk and such. Anyhow, he knows nothing that’s been going on, and he can’t talk about anything but himself at the moment.”
“I’m sorry he’s so miserable,” said Diane. But she agreed with the sheriff: It looked like karmic justice had bitten him in the ass.
“But the reason I called,” said Sheriff Burns, “is that I’ve been investigating Flora Martin’s murder. Finding out her great-grandson was Donnie Martin, another victim, has been a big help. I talked to Donnie’s girlfriend. Up until about a week ago, he’d been in prison for the past three years. Been in some kind of trouble all his life-burglary, bar fights, you name it. His one virtue was that he loved his great-grandma. She visited him every visiting day, and when he got out, he was going to live with her.”
“I suppose everybody has some soft spot,” said Diane, wishing that the sheriff would hurry and get to the point.
“Maybe. That was his only saving grace. By the time he got out, his great-grandmother, Flora Martin, had already gone missing.”
“Why didn’t he report it?” asked Diane.
“It turns out, he did. But he was still a prisoner at the time, and Flora lived way over in Gilmer County, and the sheriff there didn’t take it real seriously. He said he looked for her. Told me he thought she knew Donnie was getting out soon and moved away. Frankly. . Well, I won’t say anything about a fellow sheriff. The point is, Donnie’s girlfriend said she got a big envelope in the mail before he was released. Inside it was a smaller envelope addressed to Donnie and one to her. Hers was a letter from Flora Martin asking her to keep Donnie’s letter safe until he got out. Which is what she did. He read it and told his girlfriend that he had a family inheritance after all. Wouldn’t tell her what it was and kept his letter close to him all the time. We found no sign of it among his things.”
Diane perked up. So Flora Martin’s-formerly Jane Doe’s-great-grandson expected to come into money. “Did you get a look at their house?” she asked.
“By the time I got there somebody had ransacked it and the landlord had thrown everything out on the street.”
Diane was disappointed. “That’s too bad.”
“There were some old diaries, but they were ruined. Got rained on. I had a look; the pages were sopping wet and muddy and stuck together and the ink had run.”
“Where are they now?”
“My deputy put them in a sack. I’ll see what she did with them. But they were ruined.”
“We have people at the museum who specialize in bringing ruined items back to life. My conservator can dry out and clean the diaries and separate the pages.”
“Can he unrun the blurred ink?”
“The conservation lab and the crime lab have an ESDA.”
“What’s that?”
“Electrostatic detection apparatus. We can read what was indented on the page.”
“I think I saw something like that on TV. I’ll see what Sally did with them. That’s about all I’ve found out.”
“That’s a lot, Sheriff. Thanks for calling.”
“Sure thing. Tell me, is Singer going to get over that urti-whatever?”
“It can last a long time, and it can come back in spots and itch. It’s a nuisance, but he’ll be fine.”
“I think he’s going to rethink his attitude on bugs from now on. My secretary’s baking him a bug-shaped cake. She’s kind of looking forward to getting even.”
“Oh, how old was Flora, exactly?” Diane had estimated the bones as putting her between seventy and eighty.
“She was seventy-seven.”
“Do you know where she lived when she was a little girl?”
“No idea. I’ll see if I can dig that up.”
“Thanks.”
Diane sat thinking about what the sheriff had told her and did some figuring on her notepad. It seemed pretty evident to her that when Flora Martin was fourteen years old in 1942 she saw something, and whatever it was had to do with the submerged Plymouth. That was why her great-grandson Donnie was at the quarry with a scuba diver looking for it. Considering how things turned out, Diane guessed that Flora’s knowledge of what happened was the family inheritance, and it seemed likely that blackmail was how Donnie was going to collect that inheritance-unless there was something valuable at the bottom of the lake, he got it, and it was taken from him when he was killed.
Before Diane left her office, she called Mike’s number. She was about to hang up when he answered, out of
