straight-A student. She graduated from high school when
she was sixteen. She worked hard." His lips quivered as he
spoke about his daughter. "Shirley never gave her mother
and me a minute's trouble. She was a good girl."
"We didn't starve her," said Mrs. Pryor. "You make us
sound like bad parents."
"I didn't say you starved her. I-"
"You as much as did," said Evelyn.
"I said there were signs that she did not receive the
amount of nourishment she needed for proper bone growth.
This could have been due to some condition that caused her
not to absorb nutrients, or from not eating proper food, or
any number of things. I said as much in my report. I also
noted that all her teeth were capped. I simply stated that
there is a possibility that she was bulimic."
"You are saying Shirley had some mental disorder," said
her father.
"No, I-"
"There was nothing wrong with her, nothing. She
worked hard, always did. There is nothing wrong with that."
"There is an attachment from her dentist with the original report. He put in her records that he capped her teeth
because of substantive erosion of the enamel. He recorded
that the erosion was consistent with the presence of stomach acid associated with frequent vomiting."
"She capped her teeth because she was thinking of
becoming a ballerina," said her mother. "She was a wonderful dancer. You can't fault her wanting to look her best."
"I don't fault her. Mr. and Mrs. Pryor, you must know
that I can't change my report because you ask. I have to
report what I observed."
"You were wrong about Monica and Jeffery."
"I know this must be hard for you-"
"You don't know anything." Evelyn Pryor's words came out in a hiss. She leaned toward Lindsay, her dark eyes glittering. "Our daughter was a perfect child. She always did
what Stewart and I wanted and never disappointed us once."
She relaxed back in her chair. "Our mistake was insisting
she marry Tom Foster, and I will regret that until the day I
die. We thought he was a good man. He owned a good business; he came from a family with roots here. His grandmother and my mother were at Winthrop together. We were
wrong about Tom, and now she's dead." She took a lacetrimmed handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes.
"We are grateful to you for finding her so that we can
bury her, but you have to change that report. I don't want
people talking about Shirley like she was crazy," Stewart
Pryor said, taking his wife's hand.
"I'm sorry, I really am, but there's nothing more that I
can do for you," said Lindsay.
"We'll see about that," said Pryor. They both stood, gave
Lindsay a curt nod, and left.
Sally was entertaining Sinjin with tales from their digs
when Lindsay came out of her office.
"That looked serious. They don't want you to be a detective, do they?" Sally asked.
"No, I think they are just working through their grief."
She looked at Sinjin sitting on the corner of one of the mysterious crates waiting to be unpacked. "I don't suppose Dad
gave you any of Papaw's papers to go with this cargo?"
"Nope."
Sally was grinning like she had news she was dying to
tell. "I just figured out that OOF might be Ocmulgee Old
Fields. And 6/35 might be June 1935. Your grandfather did
work in Macon in the thirties, didn't he?"
"Yes, very clever, Sally," Lindsay said. "In the morning, we'll open the crates and see what's in them. How
about getting some of the honors students to help unpack
and catalog."
"Sure. Where are we going to put them?"
Lindsay looked around the lab. That was a good question. Space was at a premium, and there were several
administrators on North Campus, home to a bastion of
bureaucrats, who believed a university is no place to house
"dirt and old garbage," as one of them put it.
"Clear a space in the storage room and put up those
metal shelves stacked in the corner. We'll shelve them temporarily until we can catalog them. If the contents turn out
to be from Ocmulgee, I'll contact
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