“But the police have ruled the historian’s death an accident.”
“The police are often overworked.”
“And you are not?”
“Not often enough,” I said. “A private investigator can spend more time on a case, work it more thoroughly, perhaps bend a few laws here and there to find answers in places the police are not willing or able to look. Not a bad way to go if you are unsatisfied with the answers you are given.”
“And Jones is unsatisfied.”
“Yes.”
“I think he’s feeling guilty,” she said.
“I agree.”
“But you don’t care about his motives.”
“Not enough to turn down honest work.”
“Honest?”
“Honest enough.”
“You think there might be something to this case?” she asked.
“Jones seems to think so, and that’s enough for me.”
“You’ll take the money and job, of course, because that’s what you do,” she said, looking at me. “But on another level you can’t wait to dig into this case, see what you turn up.”
“One never knows.”
“So what’s your first step?”
“Cash Jones’s check and pay my rent.”
“And then what?”
“Buy some food, maybe even a foot massager for you. Wink, wink.”
She slapped my hand. “Focus.”
“I’ll probably give the mummy a visit. You know, immerse myself in the case and all that. Want to come?”
She shuddered. “I’ve always hated that thing.”
“That ‘thing’ is a murdered man,” I said.
She suddenly turned to me.
“I knew it!” she said excitedly.
“Knew what?”
“This isn’t just about the historian.”
I crossed my arms and grinned. “It’s not?”
“No.”
“So tell me what it’s about.”
She was facing me, excited. “You’re going to figure out who this mummy was.”
“Go on.”
“Even more, you’re going to find his killer, or die trying, because that’s the way you are. You help those in need, even if they’re hundred-year-old mummies.”
“Mummies need justice too,” I said.
She looked at me for perhaps twenty seconds, and, although I could have been wrong, there seemed to be real love in her eyes. Who could blame her.
“Yes,” she said finally, laying her head on my shoulder. “They certainly do.”
We sat like that for ten minutes, enjoying each other’s silence, enjoying the parade of humanity, enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the ocean. I noticed men looking at Cindy’s pretty face, somehow seeing beyond the blue gunk to the real beauty beneath. But then they got a look at me and moved on.
We were walking back to my place along the boardwalk, hand-in-hand. The sun was hot on my neck and a nearby seagull, balancing precariously on a low brick wall, was working on a tightly crumpled Subway wrapper. Maybe it was on the Jared diet.
“Someone vandalized my office,” Cindy suddenly said.
The words had the same effect as a punch to the solar plexus. I stopped walking and faced her.
“Vandalized how?”
“Trashed my lecture hall. Turned over anything they could get their hands on. Graffitied everything.”
“Are the campus police on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Any leads?”
“Creationists.”
“Creationists?”
“Or anti-Darwinists,” she said. To her students, Cindy was known as Professor Darwin. And, yes, she was the great great granddaughter of the infamous Charles, his bloodline living to this day, which says a little something about surviving and fitness and all that. She continued, “They spray-painted crosses and fishes on the walls and chalk boards. Even left me a message on my computer screen.”
“What Would Jesus Do?”
“No,” she said. “‘Darwin is burning in hell, and so will you.’”
“Not if he has his great great granddaughter’s penchant for sunscreen.”
“Not funny. I’m scared. This wasn’t your typical prank. I’ve dealt with those my entire life.” She took in some air, looked down at her half-filled water bottle. “There was a lot of anger involved in this attack. A lot. You could see it, feel it.”
“You want me to look into it?”
We started walking again. She slipped her hands around my right bicep, her fingertips not quite able to touch. She was beautiful and petite and I wanted to hug her but I was afraid of getting blue stuff on my white tank top.
“Yeah,” she said. “They scared me.”
They scared her. I involuntarily tightened my hand into a fist. My bicep swelled before her thunderstruck eyes. I could feel the hair on my neck standing up. Hackles.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ll look into it.”
Chapter Five
It was late and I was drinking alone on my balcony, feet up on the railing, gazing out across the empty black expanse that was the Pacific Ocean. The night air was cold, laced heavily with salt brine. The moon tonight was hidden behind a heavy layer of stratus clouds. A 12-pack of Bud Light was sitting on the balcony between my feet like an obedient dog.
Good doggy.
It was the first beer I had bought in six months. Hell, the first I had tasted in six months.
And it tasted heavenly.
Too heavenly.
I was in trouble.
Twenty-one years ago my mother had been murdered. As a ten-year-old boy, I had found her dead in her bedroom in a pool of her own blood. Her throat had been slashed and she had been raped. Her murderer was never found. A cold case, if ever there was one.
Six months ago my father handed over a packet of forgotten photographs of my mother, taken on the last day that she was alive on this earth. Other than being of obvious sentimental interest to me, the photos contained the one and only clue to her murder. At least, I hoped.
