Skeleton Dance

'Oh, you know what I mean. He'd radioed for help, so you can't call it suicide in the usual sense, but I think it was a lot closer to self-destruction than to an accident. I think Ely just plain self-destructed.'

''Dites-leur que je suis desole,'” he repeated thoughtfully. “Pru, isn't it possible that was a kind of confession, that he was admitting to having faked those bones himself?'

'No, I don't.” she said stiffly.

'So what was he apologizing for?'

'It could have been for a lot of things, Gideon. How much do you know about his life? He had a retarded grown daughter that he left in an institution back in the States, did you know about that? He always felt guilty about her. He had a divorced wife back there too. Who knows what else? But I think he was just saying he was sorry for getting himself and the institute involved in the whole damn mess, that's all.'

'That's certainly possible, but isn't it also possible he was admitting—'

'No, it isn't.” She straightened up in her chair and squared her shoulders. “It wasn't Ely, Gideon, definitely not Ely.'

'Why ‘definitely not'?'

'Gideon,’ she said, leaning forward, “I am not going to get into it, okay? Don't push me, okay? Just take my word for it, he wouldn't have done it. Ely Carpenter was a really, really neat guy until this happened to him.'

'Sorry,” Gideon said meekly.

Pru sat back, suddenly sheepish. Her jaw muscles, which had bunched up, relaxed. “Yeah, me too. I didn't mean to come on so strong, but I really had a lot of respect for the man.” She faltered, then went on. “In fact there was a time—oh, hell, you'll find this out anyway—when the two of us . . . when I came that close to marrying Ely, or did you already know that?'

'No, I didn't know it.'

Not that he could claim to be bowled over at the news. Pru's cheerful, brawny amiability had always been attractive to men, and it seemed to work the other way around too, but never for very long. Ever since he'd known her she'd been in and out of affairs, uniformly brief, and rarely associated with any visible trauma. “Why didn't you, or am I getting too personal?'

'Oh, I don't know, I don't really remember—oh, wait a minute, yes I do. He was already married at the time, that must have been it. Later, after he got divorced, I guess I just never got around to it again.'

'Well, I didn't mean to—'

'Listen, it's not just that I had a thing for him, trust me. He was a first-rate archaeologist too; he really was. I hate the way his reputation's been raked over the coals over that stupid Tayac thing, I hate it. He'd never in a million years have pulled a dumb stunt like that.'

'But apparently he did fall for it,” Gideon said gently.

Pru puffed her cheeks and blew out a mouthful of air. “Yeah, that he did, he surely did.'

'Okay, if not Carpenter, who then?'

She shook her head. “No. Uh-uh. Look, haven't I given you all kinds of goodies? Isn't that enough? Go bug someone else.'

'Pru, help me out, will you? I have to start somewhere. If you say it's a guess, that's what I'll treat it as, unless it leads somewhere definitive on its own.'

She took her feet off the drawer and leaned forward, looking her one-time professor in the eye, her elbows on the arms of her chair. “Let's say it was the other way around—let's say I was sitting here asking you to rat on one of your colleagues, and all you had to go on was a guess—no proof, no real evidence, just a hunch— would you do it?'

'So it is one of your colleagues?” Gideon said.

'God, are you pushy. Look, don't get tricky with me, just answer the question. Would you do it?'

'Yes.'

'Bullshit'

'All right, no,” Gideon admitted, “I don't suppose I would.” But even with Pru's unwillingness to answer, she'd told him something, or he thought she had. Colleague. Fellow-archaeologist, fellow- scholar at the institute. Pru didn't go along with the Bousquet-as-perpetrator idea. She had somebody else in mind.

'Suppose, my eye. You know you wouldn't.” She returned her feet to the drawer and leaned back again. “Okay, then, enough of that. Anything else I can help you with?'

'Yes, do you happen to know what museum those four metapodials were taken from? I'd love to go have a look at them. All I've seen are photos.'

'Sure, but you don't have to go to any museum. They're right here.'

'The original cave lynx bones? With the holes?'

'Yes, what are you so surprised about? The museum didn't want any more to do with them, so we hung onto them. They're under lock and key—important historical artifacts. Ask Jacques or Michel to show you.'

'Will do. I'm off to see Michel next.'

'And for your records, the museum they came from is the Musee Thibault. It's just a hole in the wall, run by one of the local antiquarian societies, but it's been around forever. It's in La Quinze, a few kliks north of here, on the way to Perigueux.'

'Thanks,” Gideon said, writing it down. “Jacques couldn't remember.'