At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(14)

He spotted a clear space maybe seven inches wide by twelve and, with a cry of triumph, pointed it out.

“Plenty of room,” he said.

She snorted and rose to her full height.

It was like watching the sun rise. Waist-length red-gold hair sheeted around Diana’s shoulders; her bronze-flecked hazel eyes gleamed in her equally bronzed skin. All she needed to complete the image of the goddess Diana was a bow and a quiver of arrows.

She rounded the desk and came at him. “Now confess. You’ve got that cat-that-ate-the-canary look. What gives?”

He backed away, scrabbled for the ladder, and this time ascended without intervention. “A corpse.”

Diana planted her feet on the woven rug near the foot of the ladder and accepted the books as he handed them down. “Go on.”

He hesitated. He hadn’t specifically asked Addie if he could discuss the case with anyone. But Diana had helped him on police cases before—she’d been vetted and signed the paperwork.

“Well?” she said.

“Chicago PD called.” He passed down Life and Death of a Druid Prince. “An interesting case of posing. Now where is the Aldhouse-Green? Ah, here. Just a few more titles and that should do us.”

“Us?” she asked.

“You’re salivating, too.”

Diana placed the books in the one open spot on the table, thus rendering invisible any clue as to the tabletop’s color or construction. She read the titles aloud. “Bog Bodies. Bodies in the Bog. Bodies from the Bog. Am I making a leap here, or do you think we have a bog body?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Aren’t bog victims a little too . . . European for the cornfields of America? Not to mention anachronistic.”

He brushed dust from his hoodie and descended the ladder. “I am operating off memory. But many years ago, I spent a month in Cheshire County with my brother, who was working on a dig with a Cambridge professor. River was very much into the Iron Age then. That gave way to flashier things. Zhou dynasty relics, Moche ornaments. Treasures from Tillya Tepe. He’s fully into his shallow stage now, I would say. A good mind gone astray.” He shook himself. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes, at the time he was fascinated with peat bogs and humble grave goods.”

“River. That’s the name of your studly baby brother? The Indiana Jones guy?” Di picked up a photo from Evan’s desk. “In all our time together, I don’t think you’ve said his name before.”

Evan snatched back the photo of River on horseback with a tribe of Bedouin and replaced it on the desk. “Let’s stay focused. Bog bodies are corpses that have been naturally mummified in peat.”

“You’re saying we have a mummy?”

“Not yet. What we have is a body laid out to look like a bog body. Staved skull, a noose around the neck, partially shaved skull, and stakes driven into the corpse. The big question is why?”

Diana blinked at him. “I’m sorry.”

He froze in the act of opening one of the books. “What? Why are you sorry?”

“About the corpse. I know you wanted to avoid getting pulled into another investigation.”

“Oh. Right. Well.” He opened the book. “It does help pay the rent.”

“And there’s Addie.”

Heat rose in his face. He wondered if he was that much of an open book himself. He bent over the pages and mumbled, “Always happy to help a friend.”

“One of your more endearing qualities,” she said, then gave a small cry. “I almost forgot. A package came for you.”

“I’ll look at it later.”

“It’s an odd package.”

He looked up from the book he was perusing. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you.” She returned to the desk, bent, picked up a white box, and brought it over. “It was sitting on the floor just inside your office.”

“Inside?”

“The janitor must have brought it in.” She set it on a chair. They both stared at it. “Well?” she said.

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

He studied the box, sitting white and innocuous on his chair. Someone had written his name in red marker on the top of the box in a smooth, bold script that suggested confidence. There was no other writing, nothing to indicate where the box had come from or who had delivered it.

“The suspense is killing me,” Diana said.

“You’re impatient this morning.” But he retrieved a box cutter and slit the tape holding the lid on. They peered inside.

“How . . . odd,” Diana said.

Evan lifted out a wooden figure of a man riding a horse. The object was maybe eight inches high and fashioned of small twigs tightly bound together with twine. The artist had painted tiny pebbles to look like eyes and glued them onto the man’s face and the horse’s head. There was no other adornment.

“Do you see how small the rider is?” Diana observed. “Almost as if he has dwarfism. Maybe it’s a gift from one of your students.”

“Gifts from my students tend to come with a name attached in large print, to make sure I give credit where credit is due.” He looked inside the box again to make sure he hadn’t missed a note. “It looks like a toy from a primitive culture. Maybe it’s from someone in the anthropology department.”