thirties?”
“Or bound facsimiles. That’s why getting everything online is an ongoing process.” He seemed pleased that I was impressed. Then he said, “I’ve been trying to think where I’ve seen you before.”
Poor guy. That was the best line he could come up with? Carson, out of the grad student’s view but directly in mine, rolled his eyes. “Maybe around campus?” I suggested, because it might not be so funny if he’d somehow seen me on the news from Minneapolis.
“Oh, I figured it out,” said Elbows. “Here, look.”
He laid a book on the table. I caught a glance at the cover before he opened it. Female Pioneers in Archaeology. He turned to a grainy black-and-white picture of a tall, slim woman in a desert setting. She wore jodhpurs, riding boots, a dark jacket, and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. The caption underneath said Professor Ivy Goodnight, Thebes, Egypt, 1932.
I didn’t quite gasp, but only because I stopped myself. I knew every inch of that photo from the family albums at home. The Goodnight lineage isn’t lacking for pioneers who don’t make the history books. Magical contributions to society are either secret or rationalized. But Aunt Ivy had managed to do something marvelous by normal standards as well as secret, supernatural ones.
I slid the book closer. “This is my great-aunt. Do we really look that much alike?”
Carson leaned over my shoulder to look, his breath tickling my ear. “It’s a strong resemblance.”
Elbows shrugged. “Compare enough representations of pharaohs, you start to see family traits. Bone structure, supraorbital process, zygomatic arches …” He trailed off into awkward silence, his gaze sliding away from Carson’s. “Not that I was staring. Dr. Goodnight features in the archives because of her work, and … Er, well, I’ll let you get down to business, then.”
He scurried off, which unfortunately made him look even more rabbity than before. I winced in sympathy and turned on Carson. “You want to be a little less cranky with the guy helping us out?” I asked. “There’s a saying about flies and honey.”
Carson pulled the top book off the stack and sat down with it. “I don’t trust anyone that helpful. And he’s got no reason to be so interested in your zygomatic arches.”
“It means cheekbones.” But I blushed anyway. “Medical examiners talk the same way.”
“He was way too interested in all of you.” Maybe he was being protective (and maybe I got stupid girly flutters at the thought), but more likely it was plain old suspicion.
I slid into a chair across the corner from him. “Not everyone is working an angle, you know.”
“No.” He didn’t lift his eyes from the index of the book in front of him. “I don’t know.”
That? Was really, really sad.
You would think that with what I do—talking to the dead, solving murders—I would be more cynical. But in bringing them justice, or at least rest, I was adding to the ledger of good in the universe. And I knew how many people were striving to do the same.
I pulled the book with Aunt Ivy’s picture closer and turned the page to a photograph of her working on the excavation of the massive stone pharaoh I’d seen downstairs. Aunt Ivy had always been my hero because of how she’d made her mark in two worlds, but I hadn’t realized until that moment how much it would mean to me to be in her old stomping ground.
Hang on. I was about to have a moment of brilliance dulled only by the fact I was a moron for not having thought of it a lot sooner.
“Carson,” I said, sliding the book toward him, “I know how to get more information on Oosterhouse, and maybe this Jackal of his.”
He studied Ivy and the excavation and put the pieces together quickly. “You think there might be a remnant of your aunt attached to the statue downstairs?”
“Yeah.” I made sure my voice was low and Elbows was nowhere near. “The problem is, I didn’t feel anything when I was there before. Which means that I’m going to have to get my hands on the thing.”
He followed my meaning there, too. “So you need to worry about an alarm.”
“Maybe, maybe not. No one could steal that without heavy-lifting equipment. I’m more worried about security cameras. I’m sure someone would have something to say about my copping a feel on the pharaoh.”
Carson tapped his thumbs on the table, looking around as if searching for something to MacGyver into a solution. “Okay,” he said after a moment.