Date: Sat, May 18,14:54
From: 'Claude Mueller'
To: 'Erin Riggs'
Dear Ms. Riggs:
Thank you for forwarding me a copy of your master's thesis. I was intrigued with your theories on the religious significance of bird imagery in La Tene period Celtic artifacts. I just acquired a third century B.C.E. La Tene battle helmet with a bronze mechanical raven perched on top (see attached JPG). I look forward to discussing it with you.
In addition to the helmet, I have several other new items to show you. I will be passing through Oregon en route to Hong Kong, staying at the Silver Fork Bay Resort tomorrow. I am arriving late in the evening and leaving the following day. This is short notice, and I understand if you cannot make it, but I went ahead and arranged an e- ticket for the SeaTac-Portland shuttle for you tomorrow. A limo will be waiting in Portland to take you to the coast. We can examine the pieces together Monday morning, and then have lunch, if time permits.
I hope you do not find me presumptuous. Please come. I look forward to meeting you in person, since I continue to have the strangest feeling that I know you already.
I trust the same economic arrangement as before will be acceptable. JPGs of the items that I want you to examine are attached.
Sincerely yours,
Claude Mueller
Quicksilver Foundation
Erin leaped out of her chair and hopped for joy. The walls of the studio apartments in the Kinsdale Arms were too thin to permit herself howls of triumph, so she pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle the howls into ecstatic squeaking noises. She reread the e-mail on the screen again and again, just to make sure it still said the same thing.
This job was going to save her sorry butt, and in the nick of time, too. She was probably knocking the rotten ceiling plaster onto the head of her cantankerous downstairs neighbor with her jumping, but she didn't care. Maybe the great Whoever had decided she'd had enough piss-poor luck lately, and it was time to give her a breather.
Edna demanded an explanation for this unseemly excitement with a disapproving meow. Erin picked her up, but she cuddled the finicky cat too tightly. Edna leaped out of her arms with a disgusted
Erin spun around in a goofy dance step. Her luck was finally turning. Her eyes fell on the cross-stitch that hung over her computer, which read: 'You Shape Your Own Reality Every Day.' For the first time in months, it didn't make her feel as if someone were asking her, in the snootiest of tones, '
She'd stitched the damned thing four months ago, right after getting fired from her job. She had been so angry, she could barely see straight, and the project had been an effort to channel all that negative, destructive energy into a positive direction. She'd written it off as a failed experiment, though. Especially since every time she looked at the thing she wanted to rip it off the wall and hurl it across the room.
Oh, well. It was the effort that counted. And she had to at least try to think positively. With Dad in jail, Mom crumbling in on herself, and Cindy acting out, she couldn't afford one instant of self-pity.
She printed out Mueller's e-mail and the e-ticket itinerary attached to it. First class. How lovely. Not that she would've minded economy. A Greyhound bus would've been fine. Hell, she'd have cheerfully agreed to hitchhike down to Silver Fork, but being pampered was such a balm to her bruised ego. She glanced around the water-stained walls of the dismal studio apartment, the single window that looked out at a sooty, blank brick wall, and sighed.
First things first. She grabbed her organizer, riffled through it until she found today's To Do list, and added:
'Hello, this is Erin Riggs, leaving a message for Kelly. I won't be able to make it in to Winger, Drexler & Lowe on Monday. I have a last-minute business trip tomorrow. I'm caught up on all the current case transcriptions, so all they'll need is someone to cover their phones. Of course, I'll be back in on Tuesday. Thanks, and have a nice weekend.'
She forcibly suppressed her guilt about missing a day's work with no notice as she hung up the phone. Her fee for one of these consulting jobs equaled almost two weeks' pay from the temp agency at thirteen bucks an hour. And wasn't that what temping was all about? Less commitment from both parties, right? Right. Like one of those relationships where you were free to see other people. Not that she was an expert on those. Or any other kind of relationship, for that matter.
The easy-come, easy-go temp concept was hard to get used to. She liked to fling herself into her work and give two hundred percent. Which was why it had hurt so badly when they had fired her from the job she'd gotten out of grad school. She'd been the assistant curator for the growing Celtic antiquities collection at the Huppert Institute.
She had worked her butt off for them, and she'd done an excellent job, but Lydia, her boss, had trumped up an excuse to get rid of her during the media furor surrounding Dad's trial. She claimed that Erin was too distracted by her personal problems to do her job, but it was clear that she considered Erin a liability for the museum's image. Bad for future funding. 'Unappetizing' had been the word Lydia had used, the day she'd fired her. Which, coincidentally, had been the same day that a pack of bloodthirsty journalists had followed Erin to work, demanding to know how she felt about the videos.
Those celebrated X-rated videos of her father and his mistress, which had been used to blackmail him into corruption and murder. The videos which, God alone knew how or why, were now available on the Internet for all to enjoy.
Erin tried to shove the memory away, using her shopworn sanity-saving mantras:
To hell with Lydia, and with Dad, too, for getting them into this sordid, public mess. Her anger felt like poison running through her body, making her guilty and sick. Dad was paying the highest price he could for what he'd done. Being sour and pissy wouldn't change things, and she had no time to mope. Busy was better.
That phrase was another sanity saver. The best of the lot. It was dorky and uncool, but she was already a lost cause when it came to cool. Look up
She sharpened a pencil and crossed off
She hung up, her belly fluttering with anxiety as she gathered together Mom's checkbook, bank statements, her calculator, and the stack of unopened mail that she'd collected from beneath the mail slot on her last visit home. Throwing away junk mail cut the pile down to half, but many of the remaining envelopes had
She arranged them neatly in piles. Unpaid property taxes, due months ago. Threatening letters from collection agencies. Past due mortgage payments. Past due phone bills. Medical bills. Credit card bills, big ones. A letter from the bursar's office of Endicott Falls College, 'regretting the necessity of withdrawing Cynthia Riggs's scholarship, based on poor academic performance.' That one made Erin close her eyes and press her hand against her mouth.
Moving right along. No point in dwelling on it Organization was calming. It put things in perspective. She piled collection agency letters in one pile, past due notices in another, and made three columns in her notebook:
