More Bitter Than Death: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,36
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.”