Death of a Lovable Geek Read online

  The body of a young man lay on the tarp, dark streaks of blood smeared all over his khaki shorts, his Hawaiian shirt, and the tarp itself. He lay on his stomach with his head turned to the right and his right hand raised as if he had been trying to suck his thumb. His left arm extended behind the body and down, palm up. His face was waxen, but even so I recognized him immediately.

  It was Froggy Quale.

  I forced myself not to touch him, grab him up and start CPR or something, because it was obvious that he had been dead a long time. The arms and legs looked stiff, as if rigor had already come and partly gone.

  Fighting back the urge to scream, “Why?” toward the skies, I looked around and tried to think what I should do next. Run inside and call the police? No, undoubtedly Christine was doing that. Stay right here? I probably should. Cover him up? No, you’re not supposed to touch anything.

  On closer inspection, I realized that the tarp had only recently been pulled back. I could clearly see that the dew-dotted part of the tarp, but was absent from a wedge-shaped area next to the body. It seemed logical to assume that Christine had pulled the tarp back, made her gruesome discovery, screamed, and ran.

  On top of the drystone wall, a sheet of notebook paper, folded and tucked envelope style, lay dry and untouched by the dew. After raising five kids, I know a note when I see one. Paper folded exactly like that used to fall out of my kids’ book bags by the dozees. I still wonder how they got any school work done. In my experience, a particularly treasured note might stay in a book bag or tucked into a math book for months. The temptation to pick it up and read it was strong, but I resisted.

  Froggy wasn’t his real name, of course. I tried to remember what he’d told me his real name was. Dylan. That was it. Dylan Quale. He was our pollen and spore expert at the dig. Why they called him Froggy was obvious. He looked like a frog. He had a round face, a wide, thin mouth, and wide-set eyes accentuated by big, round horn-rimmed glasses. His straight brown hair covered his ears and made him look as if he didn’t have any ears. If I had been his mother I would have advised a different haircut.

  Why would anyone kill a harmless kid like Froggy? The others at the dig, mostly college students, generally regarded him as a geek. A nice geek, but a bit of an outsider. Robbery. That’s the only reason that came to mind.

  I spotted something written on the palm of his left hand. I knew better than to touch the body, but by kneeling at the edge of the tarp and leaning over, I was able to see. It reminded me of the way my kids used to write important things like phone numbers and school assignments on their hands, never thinking that it would soon rub off.

  It looked like “alloi.” I leaned a little farther and tried to move his thumb. It was cold and stiff. There was a lowercase “h” in front of the “a,” and I decided the “i” might be an “l.” “halloi” or “hallol.” It meant nothing to me.

  Something was wrong about his shirt, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The shirt was red with white tropical hibiscus all over it. Not the sort of thing I’d seen Froggy wearing at the dig site, but then I hadn’t seen much of his wardrobe. I’d only met him four days ago.

  Maisie Sinclair, William’s wife, rounded the corner of the east wing. Maisie, with her pleasantly weathered face and unruly hair, was our hostess, chief cook, housekeeper, you name it. She gazed across the lawn, wiped her hands on her apron, and tramped across the grass toward me. When she was close enough to peer over the stone wall, she recoiled sharply. “Oh, my Lord!” Her fist flew to her mouth. “D’ye ken who it is?”

  “Dylan Quale. From the dig.”

  “John needs t’be told.”

  “Should I go in and find him?”

  “Nae, the police told me—I did the callin’ because Christine’s gone daft—they told me to let no one else come out here, and anyone who was already out here had to stay ’til they get here.”

  “Very well.”

  “He’s young. No more than a lad,” Maisie said, still not looking straight at the face.

  “He graduated from college last spring,” I said. “That would make him about twenty-one.”

  William Sinclair, in a tweed jacket and blue shirt, open at the neck, had donned Wellington boots for the trek across the wet grass. He groaned and hid his mouth with both hands when he saw the body.

  “The police told me not to let anybody leave the house,” Maisie told him.

  “Isn’t that one o’ the lads from the dig?” William asked, ignoring Maisie’s comment.

  I confirmed that it was. “This tarp,” I said, “is li.”

  “It’s like all blue tarps,” William said. “They’re everywhere. There’s one in the car park by the kitchen door right noo.”

  Saying that she needed to see to the other guests who were by now in the dining room waiting for breakfast, Maisie headed back to the house. A few minutes later the first police car, siren blaring, wheeled into the parking area. Behind it was a white emergency van. Two uniformed officers in lime-yellow vests and checkerboard caps ran across the lawn ahead of two paramedics bringing stretcher and gear.

  The paramedics did a quick check and one said, “Don’t move him. Doctor’ll be along in a minute.”

  I would have liked to dash back to my room for something more appropriate than my pink robe and satin slippers, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask. William and I stood back while the officers drove stakes and rolled out yellow crime scene tape.

  Two men in tweed jackets approached. One, a rugged, gray-haired man, proved to be the doctor. He went immediately to the body and pronounced it dead. The other, a short, bald man with sunglasses, greeted William. They shook hands.

  “Nasty business, eh?”

  “Oh aye,” said William.

  The short man adopted a deferential posture, head forward, and stepped back. I gathered, by their stances, that he and William knew each other. They stood side by side, facing the body. The new man heaved himself over the wall, walked around the tarp, and signaled to one of the uniformed officers. With a snap of his forefinger in front of his eye, he indicated it was time for them to start taking pictures.

  William introduced me. “Mrs. Lamb, this is Chief Inspector Coates. Duncan Coates.”

  “Are you the one who found him?” Coates asked. His demeanor changed completely as he addressed me. All I could think of was what my grandmother used to call a “bantie rooster,” meaning a little man who struts to create an illusion of great size.

  I explained that it was Christine who had made the discovery. “My apologies for not being properly dressed.” I drew in my robe and tightened the tie belt. I was showing more cleavage than I normally expose strangers to.

  “No problem.” Chief Inspector Coates averted his eyes and nodded toward the body. “Any idea who it might be?”

  “It’s Dylan Quale,” I said. “He works—worked—at the archaeological dig down by the road. Have you seen it?”

  “John Sinclair’s excavation?” Coates asked.

  William and I nodded.

  “I haven’t been by there recently, but it’s the same one he’s been working on for several years, aye?”

  William affirmed that it was and said, “I’ve seen this lad around there, I ken, but I dinnae ever actually meet him. Not that I recall. Mrs. Lamb can probably tell you more.”

  “The kids called him Froggy,” I said. “He was a recent graduate of Worcester University but he was going on for a doctorate there. Quite a remarkable young man. He was only about twenty-one, but he was already considered somewhat of an authority on spore and pollen identification. That’s why John asked him to join the dig this season.”

  jJ{gnt size="2">Coates’s neck and jaw muscles tightened. “What does pollen have to do with this dig? You mean like tree pollen?”

  “Yes. Or any kind of pollen. Or spores, like from ferns and mosses, you know. We examine the soil at different depths as we dig down to earlier and older material.” I used my hand like a trowel to illustrate. “Froggy cou
ld look at a soil sample under a microscope and tell you what kinds of plants were around at the time that soil was laid down.”

  “You work at the dig, too?”

  “Yes. I’m the oldest member of the team. Most of them are college kids, you know. Most are from Worcester University, because that’s where John Sinclair teaches. Dr. Sinclair invited me to join them after I had consulted him several times about some matters of Scottish history. I teach ancient and medieval history in the U.S.”

  Chief Inspector Coates reached into his inner jacket pocket but drew his hand out empty, as if he’d planned to write that down, then thought better of it. He nodded toward the body. “Did he get along with the other kids? Any conflicts?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure, but I don’t think so. I’ve only been here a few days so I don’t know any of them that well, but I think he got along with the others. It’s just that they …”

  “They what?”

  “Most of them thought he was a bit of a nerd, I think. They liked him okay but he wasn’t considered cool.”

  “Did he have any special friends?”

  My voice caught in the back of my throat. I may have been the closest thing he had to a friend, myself. And I’d only known him three days. I shook my mind away from my memories of the afternoon we’d spent together with his microscopes and specimens.

  “He had a roommate. Van Nguyen. He and Van had a room at a farmhouse between here and the dig site.”

  Coates’s hand moved back to his inner pocket. He pulled out a notepad and wrote the name. I had to help him with the spelling of Nguyen.

  “Oh, aye. They took a room at the MacBanes’, dinnae they?” William said to me, then turned to Coates. “The MacBanes have a couple of extra rooms to let. Bed-and-breakfast, like. I’ve seen the lads walking over there in the evening.”

  “Do all the kids from the dig stay at bed-and-breakfasts hereabouts?” Coates asked.

  “Nae, most of them stay at a camp they pitched beside the road, doon there.” William pointed roughly to the southeast, but from our vantage point, the castle blocked the view of the fields and road between here and the dig site. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be goin’ over there to talk to them, so you’ll see the camp for yourself. Bit of a mess, it is.”

  “Van and Froggy stayed at the MacBane house because Van is the media man for the dig,” I said. “He makes the slide shows, presentations, does all the photography, and keeps the computers running. Most of Froggy’s work involved the microscopes and fixing and staining specimens. Both he and Van needed a regular room to keep their equipment out of the weather.”

  “We’ll be needing to set up an incident room close by, sir,” said Coates. “Do you have a small room we could use? If not, we can bring a mobile unit round and park it. I suppose we could put it at the back of your parking area.” xalk/p>

  William looked toward the castle. After a minute, he said, “The bottom level of the round tower isnae being used. We’ve stored some old furniture in it, but we could move it.”

  William and Chief Inspector Coates drifted into a lengthy analysis of what the police required, and the round tower’s access to electricity and water. I asked if I could leave.

  “Stop by the incident room when we get it set up and give us your formal statement,” Coates told me, by way of dismissal.

  * * * * *

  My room, which I had cautioned Lettie not to call “my cell,” had one long window that overlooked a sheep pasture. The window was set in a granite wall so thick that an armchair placed in front of it was completely contained within its alcove.

  I stood at my window for a long time, remembering Froggy.

  Two days ago we had sat together in the finds shack, a shed that housed artifacts and whatever equipment we couldn’t allow to get wet. Froggy had set up a plywood bench with a binocular microscope and a regular microscope plugged in to a power strip that also fed a scary mare’s nest of other cords.

  Froggy let me look at mushroom spores through the binocular scope. He showed me some dormant fern spores, and some others that he had germinated in a Petri dish by keeping them moist for a few days. These, he called fern gametophytes. The spores, he explained, came out of those dots you find on the undersides of fern leaves. If they germinate, they produce eggs and sperm which can beget a new fern.

  Through the microscope, Froggy had taken a photo of a perfectly heart-shaped fern gametophyte, a patchwork of tiny green cells magnified 40 times. He had pointed out some specific cells with names I could no longer remember, then grabbed a pen and wrote across the bottom of the photo. “To Dotsy. Love, Dylan.”

  He had handed it to me with a wide grin and said, “Will you be my Valentine?”

  I turned from the window and spotted a book on my bedside table. Picking up the book, I drew out that same photo. Then I sat on the side of my bed and let the tears roll.

  There was a knock at my door, and I assumed it was Lettie but I was wrong. Amelia Lipscomb, another castle guest, said, “May I come in?” Amelia radiated a sensuous beauty even in the morning. Had we been in the same generation, I could have been jealous of her, but since we weren’t, I was merely envious.

  “Is it really Dylan Quale?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid so. Do you know him?” I blew my nose into a tissue.

  Amelia ignored my question and went on. “Is it suicide?”

  “No. It was murder.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m sorry, Amelia, but I’ve promised not to talk about it until everyone has given statements to the police. How did you know him?”

  Amelia scanned the room with the practiced eye of a news reporter. “I don’t know him but I know his mother.”

  My heart thumped against my ribs. His mother. Someone had to tell his parents. “Have you called her?”

  “The police have to do that,” Amelia saideight=

  “Right.”

  Amelia was a reporter for a TV station in the south of England. Brighton, I thought they had said, on the north coast of the English Channel. Amelia, with her full, sultry lips and great cheekbones, might well be assumed to be simply another pretty talking head, but she wasn’t. According to her husband, Brian, she was a tiger after the truth. Brian had told me about Amelia’s exposé of a medical director who had “harvested” himself a secret stockpile of transplantable children’s organs without bothering to get parents’ permission. She had single-handedly solved the mysterious disappearance of the loose-lipped husband of a Sussex inquiry judge. It turned out that the couple sometimes indulged in politically unwise personal activities.

  She had a mildly irritating habit of pursing her lips between sentences. This morning she wore a green shirt with jeans and gold hoop earrings. Always a solid-color top. It occurred to me that I had yet to see her in anything other than a solid color above the waist, and that a TV reporter, to be ever ready to go before the camera, might shy away from camera-hostile patterns.

  Amelia’s gaze settled on the fern gametophyte photo I had left on the bed. She sidled over and picked it up. “How odd. What is this?”

  It felt, to me, like an invasion of my privacy and the hair on the back of my neck bristled. “It’s a picture Dylan took with his microscope. He gave it to me a couple of days ago.” I could think of no reasonable way to avoid telling her, and actually there was no reason not to tell her except that I resented her asking.

  “Love, Dylan,” she read. She laid the photo back on the bed and pursed her mouth twice. “Did Dylan and John Sinclair get along all right?”

  What an odd question, I thought. Out of the clear blue. “Sure. As far as I know.”

  Amelia must have noticed the puzzlement on my face. “Sorry,” she said, “it’s just that Dylan’s mother told me he’d been paid rather handsomely to attend this dig. I wondered if he got a grant, himself, or if John got a grant for him. Money for this sort of thing is tight, you know.”

  I glanced pointedly at the door.

 
; “I’d better let you go downstairs before Maisie stops serving breakfast,” Amelia said, took the hint, and left.

  I grabbed my blood sugar monitor and did a quick forearm test. Amelia was right. I did need to get some breakfast. At the basin beside my nightstand, I washed my face and breathed in the sweet cottony scent of my face towel. It took several splashes of cold water to lessen the redness around my eyes to the point where I thought makeup could handle the rest.

  Another knock on the door. This time it really was Lettie. “Oh, Dotsy, it must have been awful for you. Did you know that boy?”

  I told her about Froggy and she listened.

  “I saw Christine, poor thing, she was hysterical,” Lettie said. “Maisie was hustling her upstairs as I was going into the dining room.”

  “Who else was at breakfast?” I asked.

  “Tony Marsh was there and so were Amelia and Brian Lipscomb. Fallon Sinclair was there, but not John. She said he wasn’t feeling well and she told Tony he’d have to t. P

  “How did you find out about Dylan?”

  “Maisie came in after she got Christine settled down upstairs and she told us. She said the police had told her not to tell anybody anything, but they also told her not to let anybody leave the house so she had to tell us a little something, you know, so we’d understand why.”

  I heard another knock at the door. It was William Sinclair, still slogging about in his Wellies. “The police need to look through all our cars,” he said apologetically. “They asked me to collect car keys and to tell you it’s all right if you go out and watch them.”

  While Lettie slipped into her room next door for the keys to her rental car, I said, “Has John been told yet?”

  “Aye, I went up to his room and told him.” William lowered his eyes and coughed self-consciously. Lettie emerged from her room and handed him her keys.