At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(82)

“Are you talking about the funeral industrial complex?” asked a young woman in the back.

“Excellent question,” Evan said. “Why don’t you do a little digging and share your answer on Thursday?”

The student groaned.

The door to the classroom opened, and Diana peered in. Evan closed his book with a solid thump and told the students they were dismissed. He felt cheered as he watched Diana approach his desk. Nothing like a visit from a goddess to liven up a discussion of death on a blustery day.

The students streamed out, breaking around Diana as if she were Moses wielding a staff instead of mere faculty holding aloft a messenger bag. She waited until the surge passed, then made her way to Evan’s desk. She picked up a miniature replica of a Japanese haniwa, a funerary figure from the Kofun era.

“I’ve never understood your obsession with death,” she said.

The same complaint he’d once made to Addie. “It starts with the fact that greater minds than mine pay me to teach this class,” he said. “If they want me to talk about death, I’m happy to oblige.”

“But it’s morbid.”

“Says the woman who spent the summers of her youth digging up Roman bodies.”

“And look at me now.”

“Gladly.” He pretended to leer.

She looked down her nose at him with what he’d come to think of as quintessential Diana. A look that mingled exasperation with mild amusement. She replaced the haniwa on his desk. “Are you curious why I’m here?”

“Desperately.”

“Addie has been trying to reach you. She left a message on my phone that ran something along the lines of, Why doesn’t that idiot ever carry his damn phone? I knew immediately she meant you. She also said it was urgent and something about getting the campus police involved. And that the four thirty meeting at the police station has been delayed, but she still wants your profile ASAP. So.” Diana beamed. “I figured I’d better find you before the cops did.”

“She must have learned something,” he said. Perhaps that his theories about the killer were all wet. He shrugged on his coat and tucked the haniwa in an inside pocket.

“I’ll walk you out,” Diana said. “I have something to give you, actually. And I’ve accepted a lunch invitation. You want to guess with whom?”

“Prince William. Or, no, surely Harry. He’s more your style. And I’m shocked. Do you not see a man’s marriage as an impediment to a casual fling?”

“You are amusing, Professor, but not in the way you might think.”

“Amusement of any kind is better than the alternative.”

He picked up a manila folder holding his students’ homework, and they walked out of the room together and into the crowded hallway.

“Okay,” he said to Diana. “I wave the white flag. Who asked you to lunch?”

“Our dear runologist, Rhinehart. Although he insists that I call him Ralph.”

“Wait.” Evan stopped walking.

Behind him, a student yelped as he course corrected to veer around the professor. Diana steered Evan toward the wall, out of the foot traffic.

Evan stared up at her. “Rhinehart called you?”

“Yes.”

“To go to lunch?”

“It happens from time to time,” Diana said. “I’m considered mildly entertaining.”

“But Rhinehart is working for the other side. He thinks the murderer is a neo-Nazi ásatrú. He also thinks a sun cross is a swastika. Plus, he threatened me.”

Her eyes turned to slits. “He did?”

Evan had a sudden image of Diana with an ax, bent on defending his honor. “Don’t do anything hasty. It was a mildish threat. He just wants the case for himself. Probably thinks it will help him sell books.”

Her smile was thin. “This is going to be even more fun than I thought.”

Evan flattened himself against the brick as the stream of students turned into a roaring river. “Where does fun come into having lunch with a Satanist? He could turn your spaghetti into worms or something.”

“This keeps getting better.”

“Besides,” he said above the noise. “Lunching with Rhinehart would be like eating with the enemy. Is this how you pay me back for taking the time to fill you in on the case?”

“I’ll be doing classic HUMINT. You can thank me later.”

“You’re practicing human intelligence? That’s nice for a change.”

Another one of those quintessential Diana looks. “That was beneath you, Professor. I’ll get Rhinehart to tell me everything he knows.”

“At least it will be a short conversation. And what does Rhinehart think he’ll get out of it?”

“Aside from the pleasure of my company, you mean?”

“Aside from that.”

“The answers. He plans to pick my brain for everything you know, then pretend he came up with it himself. Now, enough of that. I have something for you.” She reached into her messenger bag and whipped out a piece of paper. “Here’s the map you asked for. The English bog bodies.”

He tucked the manila folder under his arm and accepted the paper. He’d forgotten all about it. Diana had drawn a map of the British Isles and penciled in small dots, clustered mainly in the central part of England, with a few outliers.