Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

Sylvia Mercer looked on as Diane found a specimen bag and box to ship it in. “What kind of test are you going to do on it?”

“Stable isotope. It’ll be interesting to see if I can find any useful information.”

“It will. I’d think that modern diet wouldn’t lend itself to a test like that.”

Diane finished addressing the package and started for her office. “I’ve got to run. Andie has catalogs of office furniture, curtains and blinds and things. She’ll help you find whatever you need.”

In her office, she locked the vial in her filing cabinet and was putting stamps on the package when she heard Andie go into her office. Diane retrieved the budget figures and the fax information and opened the door between their offices. “I know you just came back from some errands, but I really need you to overnight this package for me.”

Andie stood with her keys still in her hand. “Sure. I’ll do it now.”

“Thanks.” Diane looked at her watch again. It was almost time for the meeting. She wondered if Donald had gone up to the conference room yet.

With file folders in hand, Diane locked her door and walked around the corner to Donald’s office. When knocking brought no response, she turned the knob. It was locked. Few people in the museum had master keys, but she was one of them. She opened his office and walked in, closing the door behind her.

To Diane, Donald’s office did not reflect his personality. His thinking, as well as his work, often seemed disorganized to her ordered sensibilities. But his office was something else, better organized than hers. It didn’t seem like him at all. Framed National Geographic covers decorated his walls, along with shadow boxes displaying rocks and minerals. A faux zebra-skin rug covered the area in front of his desk. Animals carved from a variety of exotic woods stood between books on his shelves. She would never have thought that Donald had decorated it, had she not seen him carefully measure and hang the pictures and place the books and carvings on the shelves.

She remembered when he had come to her with the catalog showing the desk he wanted-one of the few times his interaction with her was cordial. The polished dark walnut desk with the black ebony inlaid top was one of the most expensive pieces of office furniture they were ordering. The choice defied his characteristic argument for thrift. He had wanted that desk, and she’d agreed to purchase it partly because she hoped it would help their future interactions.

Diane wasn’t sure what she was looking for in his office. Some evidence she could confront him with. She didn’t approach his desk or his walnut filing cabinet. She didn’t intend to rifle though his things. Pangs of guilt gnawed at her for venturing without permission this far into his office.

Nothing stood out to point to his guilt. Maybe it wasn’t him. Then who? Not Andie. It could have been Andie, though. Maybe she simply did not remember ordering the duplicate exhibits. No, that was absurd.

Diane assumed that someone ordered the items to make her life difficult. Perhaps she was just paranoid. That thought made her feel better. It would be easier to deal with her own paranoia than with some secret mischief-maker in the museum. Feeling ashamed for her trespass, she turned and put her hand on the doorknob. As she started to turn it, a stack of magazines caught her eye.

On top of the stack was an issue of U.S. News and World Report . The cover photograph was of a mass burial. She picked up the magazine and thumbed through the pages. They opened automatically, as if the magazine had been laid open at that point, to an article about a mass burial site she had excavated in Bosnia. There were no pictures of her, nor was she mentioned in the article, but it was her site. She picked up the other magazines and flipped through them- Newsweek, Time , more U.S. News and World Report s-all had articles about places she’d been.

Only one photograph actually showed her, but she was unrecognizable with the bill of her cap pulled down over her eyes. She and the team always kept a low profile. They avoided mentioning their names for journalists, hid their faces when photographs were taken. No team members went out of their way to make themselves a target. But there were plenty of pictures of open burials in the process of being excavated-skeletonized bodies piled on one another. It made her stomach turn.

So Donald had been reading about her. He knew the places she’d been with her team. How much else did he know? The articles talked about the mass graves, the politics of the region, the United States’ and world response to atrocities, but never any personal details about the field crew. Never anything that the forensics team chose to keep private.

Who knew about the last year in Puerto Barquis? Only the people she’d worked with. Only members of World Accord International. Quite a few people, but all were good at being circumspect. She hadn’t confided in anyone here. Did someone know? Did someone know what “In the Hall of the Mountain King” meant to her? It wasn’t exactly a secret, but to find out, you had to know one of her team-know them well enough for them to trust you.

She returned the magazines to the shelf and looked back over the room, her cheeks burning with anger. She’d a mind to search it, go through his desk drawers, his filing cabinet. But she didn’t. This job was her return to a civilization where tyrants are kept in check. She wasn’t going to become one after she’d spent the past ten years working to bring them to justice.

She shouldn’t have come into his office. First, the mistake she’d made with the bone, and now this. She was getting sloppy. If she couldn’t do a good job for Frank, she shouldn’t have said she would look at the bone. If she couldn’t control her employees without invading their privacy, then she didn’t need to be museum director. She left Donald’s office and locked the door behind her, got on the elevator and rode to the second floor.

As Diane walked down the hallway to the large conference room, she heard murmurs of restless conversation. Turning the corner, she saw the board members standing in the hallway. Half were looking very unhappy. Donald was deep in conversation with Madge Stewart. He looked up when Diane approached, then down at his watch.

“It’s locked,” said Madge, tapping her foot, her springy gray hair bouncing with each tap. Madge had missed the contributors’ party because she had marked it wrong on her calendar, and she blamed Diane. It appeared to Diane that Madge often blamed whomever was available for everything that the vagaries of life made her do.

“I have other meetings. If I ran my restaurants like. .” Craig Amberson was fidgeting with his briefcase. Laura had told Diane he was quitting smoking. He had actually asked the doctor if he could wear two nicotine patches in the beginning.

Kenneth Meyers was working on his Palm Pilot. “Get yourself one of these,” he told Craig. “You can work anywhere.”

Diane looked at her watch. Three minutes late. “I’m sorry. I had some unexpected business to attend to.”

Even Harvey Phelps appeared curt. “Where’s Andie? Doesn’t she have a key?”

“Laura went to look for her, just before you got here, Harvey,” said Mark Grayson, looking at his watch. “Look, Diane, if this is the way you intend to run things. .”

Laura rounded the corner. “Couldn’t find Andie or Diane. . Oh, there you are.”

“Andie’s running some errands,” said Diane. “I have three minutes after eleven. Why is everyone so impatient?”

“Because we’ve been waiting for more than twenty minutes,” said Mark.

“Donald reminded us last night that the meeting was rescheduled for 10:45,” said Laura.