by Dana Cameron
“How about a lift to the bus stop?” Professor Markham asked.
Again with the looking after me, I thought. Maybe it’s a Southern thing. Em, maybe the man’s being nice to you and you’re too fried to appreciate it, I chastised myself. “No thank you, Tony. I’ve got to go home first, then the bus. I need the fresh air anyway.”
“Fair enough. See you Monday?”
“Sure thing.”
Time was getting close, so I practically ran out of the building and trotted down the path that led to the apartment complex, steadily gaining speed as the campus blurred into the background, my briefcase thumping awkwardly against my legs as I accelerated. Even with a prepacked bag and a world-class sprint, I was just barely able to make it down to the stop as the bus pulled up.
After sucking some air into my oxygen-starved lungs, and cursing Amtrak for eternally taunting me with the promise of regular service connecting Portland and Boston, I stashed my bags in the overhead rack and began to think furiously as the landscape tore by.
Where had that map come from? And, never mind how Tichnor came to have it, how did a copy of it show up in that file when I clearly hadn’t put it there?
Although the puzzle of where that map came from in the first place was eating at me, the fact that there was some connection between Tichnor and my life apart from the dig was really starting to bother me. It didn’t matter that he was dead; it was the fact that the connections between him and my life kept piling up, first with Pauline, then with the department’s phone number, and now with another copy of that map in the department itself. Why should this link exist? Apart from me and the students, there was no human connection. No one from the department had even been by to visit me at the site, except Tony.
He called the day I’d stumbled over the body, I remembered. Coming out to the site, going to the sheriff’s department with me after the incident with Grahame Tichnor, sending the flowers to Pauline’s memorial. And then warning me about Rick. He really was going all out, trying to take me under his wing. Except he probably didn’t really know, and I’d have to be careful about telling him, that I wasn’t the sort of chick to be gathered under someone else’s protective wing. Just a big stubborn streak, I guess. I like doing things on my own. Probably just one more thing I’d inherited from Oscar.
I watched the fields and suburbs go by, letting my thoughts wander as they would through my tired brain.
It was funny, although Tony reminded me a little of Oscar, I couldn’t imagine Oscar suggesting I leave a site as important, as fragile, as Fort Providence opened to the elements for a whole Maine winter, never in a million years. The idea was ludicrous. Even if the site wasn’t so significant, no archaeologist would do it. Usually we conspired to get in as much fieldwork as possible, if necessary, to the detriment of students and home life.
I frowned. So why the hell had Tony suggested that?
No one from the department had been to the site except Tony…
Oscar had always told me to pay attention to the exceptions in a situation, for they’d tell one at least as much as the rule. Tony had been there at every turn, every juncture, with me. Tony had been in the map room when I discovered the photocopied map, the one that I knew I’d never seen before. What about the telephone number at Tichnor’s house? Could that have something to do with Tony, rather than me? When I’d asked if anyone unusual had called for me, Chuck had told me that everyone who’d called had left a message. I thought about the piles of looted artifacts at Tichnor’s house, the day I saw the number and the map. My jaw dropped as an even more dire connection came to mind.
The artifacts from Pauline’s house. The ones found under Tichnor’s bed. Dave Stannard was right; there was a chance that Tichnor would have recognized the value of some of them, but probably not the Venus figurine. The sheriff had pointed out that the number of people familiar with such things around here was bound to be small.
Tony would have recognized the Venus in a heartbeat.
For a moment I couldn’t focus, couldn’t believe what I was thinking. There was no logical connection, surely? Coincidences, just the same as the others…What could Tony Markham have to do with Tichnor, they didn’t know each other…
Me. They both knew me.
Well, let’s not be dramatic, I curbed myself. That doesn’t mean anything, and this was starting to sound really crazy. Any couple of people in a circle of acquaintances, no matter how it was formed, were bound to have things in common. I mean, look, I said to myself, they both had interests in archaeology, though admittedly from rather different angles. There were probably lots of similarities. You could even say the same thing about the students, for heaven’s sake…
I continued to list the possible connections anyway. They both lived in Maine, both were men, had both been to the site on occasion, both—
Had even been on the site on the same day.
A tingling wave of adrenaline raced through me as I recalled the day I had encountered Tichnor. Tony had been there later. In fact, it dawned on me, he had practically insisted on accompanying me to the sheriff’s office when I made my first complaint about Tichnor. It couldn’t be possible that they had known each other back then?
I let myself think about that for a moment, tasting the idea. It was the only thing that suggested that I wasn’t the only connection that Tichnor had with the department. It might explain the telephone number, even if it still didn’t tell me where that cursed map had come from. I patted my briefcase, reassuring myself that it was still there. When I got home, I was going to look at that map very carefully indeed.
But what about Tony? What interest could he have in Tichnor, if he was in fact the connection?
Tony hadn’t become interested in me or my work until I’d begun out at Penitence Point.
Could he be connected to Tichnor’s death in some way? That question tore at me and led me to the next logical, horrible step: If my suspicions about Tony knowing Tichnor were correct, did that also mean that Tony knew something about Pauline’s murder?
Chapter 17
AS IF REFLECTING THE ABRUPT JOLT IN MY THOUGHTS, the bus jerked to a halt at Boston’s South Station; for once it was on time. Wearily I gathered up my pack and briefcase and followed the ant line of passengers into the main station, trying not to get swept away by the throngs of commuters attempting to get home or away for the weekend. As I negotiated the crowds down into the subway, I forced my mind away from my as yet unfounded but profoundly disturbing speculation.
The subway station was almost as sticky as it was outside; the air-conditioning was broken. I sweated my way into the crush on the car, air-conditioned in name only, and let my mind go blank until I got off for my stop in Somerville. As I walked up the sidewalk, I could see that a little mud had dried onto our gnome, making him look as though he’d gone for a long, dusty run. I brushed off a little of the mud, and some of his paint flaked off along with it. Alas, poor gnome, I thought. Gnome just winked back at me, a new, clean, white spot on his red hat.
I had barely made it into through the door when Brian swarmed all over me, kissing me repeatedly and sloppily. In spite of my stale, bus-sweaty state, I responded eagerly though I was scarcely able to keep balanced in the process; my husband’s enthusiasm made him the better lever. He had just started nibbling my neck, and was on the verge of heading further south when a murmur of protest was heard.
“For God’s sake, man, at least close the door!” Kam insisted. “There may be small, easily impressionable children in the street who will be startled and confused by this unseemly display, as well as people on their way to eat dinner. They have no desire to see you mauling your wife.” He closed the door and gave me a prim buss on the cheek, by way of example. He stepped back and eyed me in commiseration. “You look like you could use a drink. Did you stop for bread?”
My smile faded as I remembered why I had been distracted away from the errand. “No, I’m sorry, I, I completely flaked out. I…”
“No need to get broken up about it, I’ll just run down to the corner.” Kam started, then reached into his trousers pocket for his beeper. He looked a little sheepish, but recovered quickly, and turned to Brian. “I’ve got an errand. I’ll be about an hour and I’ll bring the bread on my way back. If you finish up in the kitchen, we can eat when I get back.”
Brian did a passable scrape and bow. “Anything else, sir, while I’m at it?” he asked sarcastically.
Kam appeared to consider. “Get Em a drink. Draw her a bath while you’re at it.”
“Yeah, I like the sound of that,” I said. “Two husbands to wait on me!”
“You can get your own bath,” Brian said to me. “Kam, you can get stuffed. I bet you arranged to get beeped to get out of cooking dinner.”
“Sixty minutes,” Kam said, then headed down the street to his Jaguar with uncharacteristic speed.
Brian and I played grab-ass up the stairs and I headed straight for the shower. Turning the water on as hot as I could stand, I stood, willing my reluctant muscles to unknot. As I toweled off, less icky but no less unruffled, I heard a glassy clink and looked up. Brian set a glass of dark liquor on the wide edge of the sink and settled himself on the toilet to watch me dry off.
“You really look wiped,” he said, looking at my reddened face with some anxiety. “How’d it go today?”
I thought about telling him what happened in the storage room. I wanted to say, “Well, the meeting went rather well, all things considered, but I think I just decided that Professor Markham killed Grahame Tichnor.”
But the fact that I had only the slimmest of evidence and absolutely no clue as to why the two would even know each other kept me from blurting that out. I knew I was exhausted, I knew that I was desperate to think I was doing something useful in the hunt for the reason for Pauline’s murder. But I wasn’t ready yet to expose my tender theories to the harsh light of day, and to be honest, I needed a moment or two of my particular brand of reality before I could submerge myself further in my suspicions about Tony.
“Earth to Emma, come in, Emma.” Brian was waving his hand in front of my vacantly staring eyes.
I batted his hand away irritatedly and immediately regretted the action and my annoyance. My tolerance levels were hideously low, but Brian, of all people, didn’t deserve to suffer because of it.
“Sorry, sweetie, I took a little trip there. I am feeling burned out.” I took a sip of the Maker’s Mark and sighed as it burned its way down my throat; I was starting feel cleansed inside and out. Start with reality, then work your way into fantasyland, I told myself. “In a nutshell: There was a little noise about the bequest and my alleged connection with Pauline’s death. I told Kellerman I would not consider taking a leave. Then I told Dean Belcher the same thing. At the faculty department they tried to saddle me with a bunch more crap, but I told them to take a leap.”
“You did?” Brian asked with incredulous glee.
I nodded and took another sip. “I am bloody but unbowed, exhausted but triumphant. Mostly.” As I finished dressing, I perfunctorily answered Brian’s questions, then we went to the kitchen.
“I really don’t want to talk about me anymore,” I announced, sucking on an ice cube and spitting it back into my glass. “What are we having, anyway?” I peered under a pot lid and smacked my lips. I was starving. “Oh boy! Dinty Moore!”
“That beef stew has never seen the inside of a can!” Brian said indignantly, flicking me on the tail with a snapped finger.
“Ow!” I protested. “Hey!”
“Those potatoes, carrots, celery, and mushrooms were lovingly handpicked by me at the market not three hours ago! There’s a full cup of decent red wine in there and it’s been cooking for nearly an hour,” he continued. “So Dinty me no Dintys.”
I rubbed my backside and frowned; I now had a very good idea of what his students thought of him during his teaching assistant days. “For your information, I like Dinty!”
“Well, you’ll like this too,” he said huffily, “and this way my intestines won’t be ravaged by whatever unnamed bacteria kamikazed into the vats in Detroit, or wherever that stuff is extruded.” He stirred the pot briefly and tasted the stew, then re-covered the pot, satisfied. “So, look, tell me—”
“Nope, I said no more about me and I meant it,” I interrupted. “I want to hear about your world. What’s your schedule for the rest of the month?”
Brian looked a little put off, but pulled up a stool and stole a sip of my drink. “Back out to California Monday, for two more weeks of meetings and presentations. Then that should be it. With any luck, things will quiet down after that. But I mean it, Em, I need to know—”
We both heard a knock on the front door. I jumped down to get it. “It’s Kam, time to eat, time to eat—” I chanted, as I went to let him in.
It was Kam all right, but I was a little surprised to see Marty right behind him. “Hey, girl! You two are starting to get pretty cozy, aren’t you?” I said, giving her a hug.
“You could say that,” Kam said, then all but ran into the kitchen with the bread.
“I’ll kill the man,” Marty said, staring down the hallway. “I swear, Emma, if he wasn’t so damned good-looking—” She reached up to adjust her earring in a rather exaggerated fashion.
Since Marty did everything in a rather exaggerated fashion, it took me a minute to catch on, but when I did, I noticed something truly shocking. “Mariam Asefi, what the hell is that on your hand?”
“You mean Mr. Mole?” she asked blithely, waving her right hand, not the one I was so interested in. “You’ve seen him a thousand times, dearie. Is there any vino to be had?”
I dragged her down the hall. “Kam, what have you done?” I demanded, excitedly shaking Brian’s shoulder and pointing so he could see too; reluctantly he put the bread down.
“Oh, you mean the other hand?” she asked.
I looked her askance, head cocked. Damn the woman, she was every bit as coy as Kam!
“That is a four-carat, moss-green, emerald engagement ring. Do you like it?” She held up her hand and waggled her fingers briskly, absently, without turning from her search for a glass. “Aha! There you are,” she said, filling a glass from the sideboard. “That’s more like it. I can’t stand those airline snacks, I feel like I’m coated in grease for a week afterward. Slàinte, everyone!” she toasted us and settled in to eating.
I was speechless. The best I could manage was a wordless whoop as I threw myself on Marty, who finally put down her wineglass to hug me back.
Brian was exuberant. “When did this happen, you smug bastard?” he asked his friend.
“Damned if I know.” Kam was playing it cool as well. “She just showed up with the thing one day and started talking about registering at Shreve’s—”
Perhaps a little too cool: Kam was halted in his tall tale by a purely poisonous look from Marty, who released me, turned back to the table, and folded her manicured hands expectantly.
“As difficult as it was to get this on my hand, I assure you that it comes off much more easily,” she pointed out to her fiancé. “Sayonara, you know? Not to be high-maintenance or anything, darling.”
Kam gave a small, decorative cough and backpedaled with practiced determination. “I suddenly realized that I couldn’t go on any longer without the knowledge that the dawn star in the firmament of my life was truly my own, so I feverishly pressed this insignificant token of my eternal devotion on her before her last trip to New York. Better?” He looked questioningly at Marty, who was now beaming.
She filled in some of the blanks. “He proposed at that long light on Commonwealth Avenue, by the Public Gardens. Two weeks ago now.”
“You proposed in the car?” I asked incredulously. “At a red light?”
“Power locks: I was afraid she’d bolt,” he explained. “I’ll make up the romance to her on the honeymoon. Besides, the inside of the Jag is a lot more romantic than the back of the science building at
Coolidge.”
He made a disapproving face at Brian, who didn’t notice. He was cutting up the loaf of bread, intent on getting dinner under way.
And speaking of romantic, I suddenly recalled the ornate silver cigarette case Kam had been playing with during his visit to the dorm. I made a note to steal it and look for inscriptions at the first possible moment.
“Romance is overrated,” Brian said, munching away. “Nothing to it; you ask, she says yes, you get on with your life. But I would have thought that you would have learned something from my example. Wives are a lot of trouble, especially the independent types.”
Then Brian suddenly noticed that he was on the receiving end of a couple of very icy stares. “On the other hand, the challenge is half the fun. C’mon,” he offered, before he found himself in more trouble, “this calls for a bottle of something with bubbles. Let’s run down the street. I’ll give you some pointers while Girl Net gets all the details straight.”
“I’ll be interested to hear what he thinks he knows,” I said to Kam. “Scat, you two. Hurry back.”
Dinner was fun and full of improbable plan making. Kam was all for a quiet wedding with a larger party for friends, after the New Year; Marty wanted six hundred for a sit-down dinner with wandering minstrels and peacocks in Moorea.
“I don’t think peacocks are native to the South Pacific, dearest,” Kam interjected.
“You would deny me on my big day?” She pouted.
Things carried on until far later than usual, and it was nearly one A.M. before we chased them out and wearily cleaned up. I noticed that Brian was putting on the teakettle.
“Hey, sweetie, I’m just going to crawl into bed—”
I was surprised when he sat down at the kitchen table and pushed a chair out for me too.
“I know you’re tired,” he said without looking at me. “And I’ve tried to be patient. But there’s some pretty weird stuff going on with you that you’re not telling me about, and I need to know. Right now.”
I looked at him in amazement; I still hadn’t said a word about Tony. “How the hell could you know—?”