Free Airtight Case by Beverly Connor

on many Indian burials and have never witnessed anything supernatural.”
    Moore looked over at Lindsay, a frown on his face. “It’s best to leave the dead alone.”
    “You haven’t told me what people have seen at the house.”
    “Some’s seen strange mists.”
    “This is the Smoky Mountains.”
    “You’ve got a point there. I’ll have to give you that. Mostly, people has heard noises—tapping sounds, footsteps with no body attached to them.”
    They drove through a road cut, a profile showing layers of folded rock strata—millions of years of geological history displayed in one slice. Almost like going back in time. That’s what archaeologists do , Lindsay mused to herself, go back in time .
    “Old houses make strange noises,” she said.”
    “They do, but settling sounds are different from what people say they’ve heard. Bad things happen to people who live there.”
    “Like what?”
    “Death. Can’t get any worse than that.”
    “All people die. I doubt if there is a greater number of deaths associated with the house than with other hundred-year-old houses.”
    “It’s not just the house, it’s the whole cove. The house just had the misfortune of being built there.”
    “What do you think it is about the cove?”
    “Ghosts coming out of the fourth dimension.”
    Lindsay was silent a moment. “Fourth dimension? Are you putting me on?”
    “No. It’s all around us. They can see us, but we can’t see them. Heard it on Public Radio. You don’t know about the fourth dimension?”
    “No.”
    “I listen to NPR during lunch sometime. Real interesting, but it can get kind of far out. They had this scientist on the same program talking about chaos theory. Boils down to ‘one thing leads to another.’ They had to have a rocket scientist to figure that out? You know anything about chaos theory?”
    “No.”
    “For a scientist, you don’t know much, do you?”
    Lindsay sighed. “I guess not. I know about bones,” she said in her defense.
    “Bones?”
    “I’m a forensic anthropologist as well as an archaeologist.”
    “Is that right? I’ve never seen you on the Discovery Channel.”
    “We can’t all be in the limelight. Why does Alfred Tidwell think Drew had something to do with his aunt’s death?”
    “Why you asking me?”
    “That was what was in the subpoena.”
    “I never look at them. I just deliver them.”
    “Did you know Mary Tidwell?”
    “Met her once. Crazy old lady. Bought a kid-goat from Jeb Simpson up at Calderwood and wouldn’t pay for it. I was supposed to repossess it. Borrowed my brother’s old truck and went to her place expecting a little goat,” Moore said, gesturing with a hand held above the floor of Lindsay’s SUV.
    “Damn thing was as big as a cow. Never knew they got that big. Had horns that long.” He demonstrated with his hands a size that Lindsay was sure was exaggerated. “Had eyes as red as the devil’s. He stomped, spit, reared like a horse, and then peed on his beard. I couldn’t get back to my truck fast enough, and that old lady cackling at me all the way like it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.” Moore stopped and laughed. “I guess it was.”
    Lindsay laughed with him. “Must have been a Nubian?”
    “No, she was a white woman.”
    “No, a Nubian goat. I think males can get quite large. My vet has a huge one like that.”
    “He was large all right. A regular Billy Goat Gruff.”
    He was looking for a troll under the bridge, Lindsay thought with a smile.
    “I decided right then, I wasn’t gonna repo no more animals.”
    “Do you know if she had a lot of valuables?”
    “You interrogating me?”
    “Yes.”
    He nodded. “Thought so. That’s all right. I might need a forensic person someday. Couldn’t tell if she had anything that might be considered valuable. Might have. She was a hoarder, from the looks of the place. Yard like a junkyard. She didn’t look rich herself, but you never know what some folks hide in their