Diane heard Izzy working in the nearby room, probably where the most recent intruders had entered. She didn’t like two crime scenes—the attack on Marcella, and the recent deadly trespass—intertwined with each other. It confused things trying to distinguish one crime scene from the other. Jonas Briggs, her good friend, chess partner, and archaeology curator, wouldn’t be quite so daunted. Archaeologists are accustomed to working sites that are one on top of the other and that leave the archaeologists to make sense of the layers.
Jonas Briggs, she thought. He was probably the one having dinner with Marcella. They were good friends. He may have found her. That would make Jonas a suspect to Hanks. Diane fished her cell from her pocket.
Chapter 5
Diane started to key Jonas Briggs’ number, but stopped and retraced her steps to the living room. Neva was rolling up the film of the boot print and sliding it into a tube.
“Neva, you said the policeman didn’t know who found Marcella. Is that right?”
Neva looked up and nodded. “That’s what he said. The two policemen are with David, searching the woods for evidence. You could call him.”
“I didn’t know David was here. I didn’t see his car,” said Diane.
“He arrived a little bit ago. It was getting crowded near the house, so he parked on down the drive,” said Neva. She gestured out the window in the direction of the driveway. “Did you find something?” Neva put away the film tube and picked up the case with the electrostatic lifting device.
“No, I just thought of something. Jonas might have been the one who discovered Marcella,” began Diane.
Neva opened her mouth in surprise, wrinkled her brow, and looked in the direction of the dining room. “She was having someone for dinner. And they were . . . It could be Jonas. I didn’t think about that.”
“I’ll call him,” said Diane.
She punched in the number of his cell. No answer. She tried his home. No answer there either. She called his cell again and left a message asking him to call her.
“No luck?” Neva, still with the anxious expression on her face, stood with the electrostatic device under her arm.
“He may be at the hospital,” said Diane. “His cell may be turned off. I left him a message.”
“Of course,” said Neva. “That’s where he would be.”
Diane didn’t know why she was so worried, but she was. She called David’s cell.
“Hey, Diane. Hear you’ve had one of your usual evenings out,” he said.
“It has been interesting. Found anything?”
“Shell casings. Maybe we’ll get lucky with them. One of the policemen tells me there’s an old road back behind the house. That’s probably where they parked. We’ll be looking there next.”
“Do you know who found Marcella Payden?” asked Diane.
“No. When the call came I recognized the address. I did some computer work for her out here,” he said. “Hooked up a scanner system for her. Nice lady.”
“I’m probably just being paranoid,” Diane said, “but it bothered me the way Hanks seems sure the attack and the theft were unrelated incidents. They may be, but we don’t know. It was as if he already has a suspect for her attacker. If Jonas found her, Hanks might have him at the head of the list of suspects. Jonas is so far removed from things like crime. I hate to think of him going through an interrogation.”
Neva held the lifting device close to her chest, staring at Diane in alarm. Everyone at the museum and the crime lab was very fond of Jonas Briggs. He had come to work for the museum after he retired from the faculty at Bartrum. With his white hair, bushy white eyebrows, toothbrush mustache, and crystal blue eyes, he was everyone’s grandfather, or mentor, or maybe wizard.
“Jonas is pretty tough,” said David. “You know that.”
“In academics,” said Diane.
“In city council meetings. Hell, you know they are all scared of him.”
Diane laughed. “You’re right. All this is just speculation anyway. I have no idea whom she was planning to have dinner with.”
“Speaking of food, maybe we can have some breakfast after this,” David said.
“Good idea—Waffle House?”
Neva was nodding. She loved their pecan waffles.
Diane called the hospital to check on the condition of Marcella Payden. She got only the words “critical but stable” from them because she was not on the list of people authorized to receive information about the patient. But that didn’t matter. Diane was just looking for the word alive, and she got that.