More Bitter Than Death (10 page)

“And your room, nothing else was touched,” I said.

“No, Emma, nothing else was touched. In my room, that is. I guess you all haven’t heard about the book room.”

“What about the book room?” Lissa demanded.

“One of the poster exhibits was broken into. A bunch of the stuff was taken, some of it was broken.” She gave me a significant look. “Also last night.”

“Which one was it? Was it only one?”

Again, Bea took the defensive with me. “It was the one on the Florida underwater project.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, and Lissa nodded. “Why would anyone mess with that? Wasn’t it mostly reproductions? All the stuff that was taken was fake; the only real things—the broken fragments—were left behind.”

“What do you call the reproductions?” Bea asked. “Everything made by humans is—”

“I know, everything manufactured or altered is an artifact,” I said, barely able to suppress my annoyance—she had no capacity for sticking to the important points. “I mean old artifacts, things that were made a long time ago, archaeologically recovered.”

“Well, there was nothing else taken or bothered. Except for my stuff. I’m trying to find Brad to let him know what’s going on.”

“What’s he going to do about it?” Lissa said.

“He’s got to help me find them. It’s his fault; I wouldn’t have brought them if he hadn’t organized the roundtable again. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She bustled off, and Carla and I exchanged glances.

Lissa made a face. “Ooh, Brad! The great-big-pieces-of-crap thief found me! Oooh!”

“We seem to be suffering a logic shortage around here,” I agreed.

“Oh, don’t worry about her. Her rubbish will show up, it always does. She’d lose her head if it wasn’t stitched on by some well-meaning but ill-inspired medical student.”

“You think so?” I said.

Lissa shrugged. “She’s got the brains of refrigerator mold and she’s always blaming it on someone else. Her brain only serves to keep her soft little skull from collapsing altogether. Don’t worry about her. She just drives me crazy, latching on to me all the time. I’m too polite to blow her off.”

“Ha!” Carla said.

“What about the underwater exhibit?” I asked. “Who’d mess with that?”

“I saw that exhibit yesterday.” She shook her head and her hair fell back perfectly into place. “Emma, chill out: it’s
Bea.
There were fragments in there already, so I doubt anything was really broken, or taken, even. Probably they were pulling it to show someone, or something. Maybe it was a practical joke, who knows?”

I shot her a warning look, but Carla didn’t respond to Lissa’s pointed remark. Worse than that, she had made no mention of the surprise I’d left for her this morning. Worrying.

“We’ll catch up at the business meeting tonight?” Carla said.

“Sure,” I said, thinking about the announcement that was going to floor everyone. “What are you going to see before then?”

“I’ve got to read over my paper. I might stop in to hear the feminist theory papers, if I have time. How about you?”

“There’s a megasession on battlefield archaeology that I’m catching. And yours of course.”

“Carla? You’re coming to mine?” I wanted to see whether she thought she could nail me with her practical joke then.

“Nope, it conflicts with the one I really want to see. On human remains.”

I nodded. “But if you’re that interested, I’ll send you a copy, but don’t worry about just being polite.”

“That’s one thing she’s never been worried about,” Lissa announced. “Come on, Carla. Let’s go get our dried-out tuna sandwiches, bruised apples, and warm sodas.”

I stopped by the message board on my way to lunch and saw there was the usual array of invitations to meet for job interviews at contract companies, the reminders about the various specialty group meetings and cocktail parties, and, now that we were into the first official day of papers, the first crop of notes for my colleagues were thumbtacked to the too-small bulletin board. Pieces of hotel stationery, small pieces of wire-bound notebook paper, their torn edges lacy, and even a few cocktail napkins, their pen marks bleeding through, fluttered festively as I approached. I checked for notes for me—funny how it always made me feel so particularly wanted to see one of these unofficial missives waiting for me—and found two, neither of which were from Scott. One was the one I was expecting, reminding me that I’d promised to meet with a colleague from Rhode Island to talk about doing a guest lecture for his class on colonial artifacts. The other was in an unfamiliar hand—not that that was anything unusual—and I flipped it up to read what it was about. It was from a potential student wanting the chance to talk with me about coming to Caldwell to join my program. But
it was the note that was next to mine that really caught my attention. When I pocketed my notes—I was by now immune to the temptation to leave them on the board, to show how very in demand I was—another fell down, having been supported only by virtue of having been wedged behind mine. I couldn’t help reading it as I picked it up: “I’ll see you tonight, after the reception and business meeting. Don’t make me come looking for you again.”

Wow—strong words. It was unsigned and it was addressed to Dr. Garrison.

As I replaced it, I noticed that it had been pierced through three times. I did a little analysis of the arrangement of the notes: Okay, say it was posted before mine—that was one. Someone came along and used its tack to hold both mine and his up—or had Garrison read it and replaced it for some reason? That would be two. I had no idea why it should be pierced a third time, and tiredly realized that I needed to stop doing taphonomic studies of the bulletin board. When you start attempting to identify just how and in what order the notes were placed on the board, it’s more than time to take a break.

Just about the moment that I put the note back, a flood of people exited the rooms where the one o’clock sessions were held, all of them heading toward the restaurants and the boxed-lunch concession. Just a few steps ahead of them, I hurried toward the coffee shop, and with a bit of luck that had nothing to do with the affection that Eleni had developed for me at breakfast time, got the last deuce in the corner, an ideal spot for people-watching while still keeping my own back covered. Although I was actually getting to eat earlier than I usually would, I was ravenous and already exhausted. Again, the conference effect came into play, and I was convinced that the low pressure from the storm presumably still raging outside wasn’t doing anything to help it. I ordered a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake, watching
Eleni’s enormous sigh of despair as she observed the line, full of impatient, hungry academics forming outside the coffee shop.

Noreen was at the head of the line, and I kept my head down, hoping she wouldn’t ask to share my table. Not that I was expecting a conciliatory overture, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to invite her. If she wanted the seat, she could do the asking.

But the gods of restaurant seating smiled on me for once, and a stool at the counter was freed up almost as soon as she started into the coffee shop. I could have sworn that a look of relief crossed her face as she seized it, probably mirroring my own.

Eleni scuffed over with my shake. “You mind sharing the table with another customer? You don’t have to, but…”

“I don’t mind,” I said, happy to repay the restaurant gods for not being visited by Noreen.

The new guy from the artifact roundtable came over. “Thanks for sharing.”

“No problem…” I searched my memory for his name—we’d just been introduced at the Grope and I still had to resort to his name tag; he was that forgettable. “Mr. Widmark. No one will ever get to eat, otherwise.”

He sat down. “Call me Will.” Any hopes I had of having a quiet lunch were dashed. Widmark was a talker. Worse than that, it seemed as though he had brushed his teeth with crushed garlic and week-old sushi that morning, because he had the worst breath of anyone I’d met in a long time. That was the most outstanding thing about him. He was built like a pregnant lollipop stick, brown hair badly cut, brown eyes, completely unremarkable features, and nondescript plastic-framed glasses.

“I’m pretty new to these things. Seems pretty ordinary, though,” he said. He suddenly straightened his spine, seeming to grow in height, as he craned to get a look at someone.
He didn’t appear to recognize whomever it was, however, as he relaxed into his chair with a slump.

“I suppose. I get the impression that archaeology conferences are a little low-tech, compared to some.” I tried to ease myself back in my chair as surreptitiously as I could to escape the range of his bottom-of-the-komodo-dragon’s-cage breath. “You know, other professions.”

“Oh?” he said sharply.

“Well, like high-tech, or bio-chem,” I said. “The ones my husband goes to are a lot flashier than these—more celebrity speakers, more giveaways, more high-tech presentations.”

For some reason, Widmark seemed to relax a little. “Yeah, I suppose now that you mention it, the engineering events I’ve been to were a little more…uh…”

“Upscale?”

He nodded as he flipped through the menu. Again, he bobbed up, looked around, then settled back down. “Thanks for not making me say it. As I mentioned before, we’ve just acquired a small contract archaeology company, Northeastern Consulting. I’ve always been fascinated by archaeology, so I volunteered to get the lay of the land.”

“Oh.” Seemed a little strange to me; why would they send one of the bigwigs over if they were going to acquire someone who’d be coming to these anyway? Who knew, with business, these days.

“So, I take it this isn’t your first conference?” He put his menu down.

I laughed. “I started coming to these when I was fifteen. That’s about twenty years worth of them now.”

“Well, I guess I just got lucky.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been trying to get familiar with some of the bigger names around here, and it sounds like you’d be the person to tell me whether I’m on the right track.”

I chewed on my straw, trying not to get drawn into this.
“Uh, well, I guess it depends on what you’re trying to figure out. If there’s a specialty, for example, like a certain kind of artifact or a time period, you’re going to find that they’re different folks you need to talk to.”

“What about a geographical area? We’re going to be expanding in the Midwest, Michigan to Minnesota, down to Iowa and Missouri. Who’d be good to meet who knows those areas?”

“Oh, well, you’re actually better off going to one of the central-area meetings then. Right up your geographical alley. They’re scheduled in three months—”

“Oh, we’ll get some people there, of course, it’s just that I’ll be away and I wanted to try and make the most of the opportunity here. Anyway, I also heard that Duncan Thayer would be a good person to talk to. Is he here?”

I knew it was coming, but just the sound of his name made me go stiff as a plank. “Yes, he’s here. You can’t miss him, big guy, used to have lots of red hair, getting a little thick around the middle, I guess. Still, some people age better than others—”

“Right. Recently he’s worked on the New Hampshire-Vermont border, is that right? And New York State, before that?”

“I guess. You’d have to ask him. He’s giving a paper this afternoon, but I don’t know what on.”

“Okay, I’ll check it out. Is there anyone else who specializes in that geographical area, particularly with artifact expertise? As I understand it, we’re going to need a lab supervisor, and I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if there’s anyone in the area who’s looking.”

“Trust me, all you have to do is put up a notice and they’ll come flocking to you.” What was with this guy, that he had nothing better to do but come out to a conference and blunder around like this? Oh God, a hobby for his financially comfortable middle age, I realized. The archaeology section
would be his pet, heaven help them all. “And besides, if you’re acquiring—was it Northeastern Consulting you said? I’m not familiar with them.”

“Oh, it’s a very small operation in Vermont—I think there were only ever three permanent hires and they relied heavily on seasonal recruiting. Lots of department-of-public-works work. Do you know Jake Sherman?”

I shook my head, wishing there hadn’t been so much of the name to exhale. Mr. Widmark needed to discover Listerine and possibly the name of a good dentist. I was surprised that his own eyes weren’t watering.

“Well, no matter, we’re going to be expanding considerably anyway. And you’ll hear all about us then. We’ve got a lot of very big—”

Fortunately, Eleni came rushing over with my cheeseburger, interrupting Widmark and his paean to his very big plans. She dumped it on the table so hard that it nearly slid off the plate into my lap, and dashed off before I could even ask for any water. I retrieved a couple of stray French fries and pushed the burger back onto the plate. Widmark handed me the catsup before I could ask for it.

“Thanks. I hope you don’t mind if I start.”

“Please, go ahead.”

I started eating as fast as I could. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy, it was that every time he breathed, you could see the veneer on the table begin to peel up.

Eleni ran over and took his order for an omelet; I took the opportunity to ask for a cup of coffee. It was going to be a long afternoon, and I wanted to stay on top of things. Eleni grunted and ran off, and I figured I had about a fifty-fifty chance that she’d heard me.

“So who else should I talk to?”

I gave him a few more names, then suggested he go to the receptions and university parties, which would be held throughout the weekend.

He nodded. “Okay, I’ll do that. So are you going to Dr. Thayer’s paper today?”

“Um, probably not. I’ve got one of my own to present, and I think there’s a conflict.” I didn’t tell him that I thought the conflict was one that had more to with my never wanting to see Duncan again unless it was to see him one last time, as he slid into quicksand with his anvil collection.

“What time is your paper? Maybe I’ll stop by and see that.”

Man, this guy was like dog poop on a boot tread. “It’s at two-thirty. In fact, I should be off to look over my notes as soon as I can get my coffee and ask for the check.”