of the past, no matter how disturbing.
Despite big helpings of positive visualization, it was only thanks to an extra-large latte (no whip) that she was able to get herself to the gym, then to the subway and onto the campus a couple of hours later. The walk across the quad to the Horn Building normally lifted her spirits, especially on an early summer day like this, when the sun warmed the granite dome of the Memorial Library to terra-cotta and students sat on the amphitheater-like plaza steps like flocks of birds sunning themselves. Darn Daniel anyway. He’d managed to take even that small pleasure from her.
Which wasn’t the most mature and logical attitude to take, but she wasn’t feeling mature or logical this morning, thank you very much.
In her tiny but carefully decorated office, Cate dumped the day’s mail on her desk, put her purse in the bottom left drawer, and extracted the paper with its sticky tabs and red corrections from her briefcase. A glance at the calendar told her she had thirty minutes before her first appointment, a woman named Morgan Shaw who wanted to talk about an artifact but who would not tell Anne Walters, the department administrative assistant, a thing more.
Cate gave a mental shrug. Every now and again she got one of these—someone who dug up an arrowhead and figured they’d discovered a Native American burial site, or someone who found something in Uncle Lester’s attic that had to be an ancient treasure. She’d become quite skilled at letting people down gently.
She turned her attention to the mail. Circulars, notices, memorandums from the department head, who knew better than to kill trees by sending memos in hard copy, but insisted on doing so to make himself feel he’d accomplished something. Cate sighed and picked up a glossy brochure giving her final notice of a conference in Big Sur, California.
Then a name caught her eye.
Keynote speaker and featured presenter: Daniel Burke, “the real Indiana Jones.” Dr. Burke will present the keynote speech at Saturday’s luncheon and will also present his latest paper, Silent Voices: Tracing the Trade Routes through Pre-Columbian Pottery, on Friday night. After the presentation, Dr. Burke will sign his new book, an event that will be open to the public.
“Be still my heart.” Bad enough his face invaded her living room. Worse that it had inhabited her dreams. But to barge uninvited into her office, her citadel where only she was in control—that was just too much.
Cate aimed the brochure at the trash can and fired it with a flick of her wrist, where it landed with a swish amid a lot of other things that she didn’t need and no longer cared about.
The digital clock on her desk flipped from 9:29 to 9:30 and Anne Walters leaned in the door. “Dr. Wells? Ms. Shaw is here for her appointment.”
Cate turned her back on the trash can and its obnoxious contents. “Thanks, Anne. Send her in.”
“I’m going to run out for another coffee. Want one?”
Anne knew the location of every espresso bar in a ten-block radius. “You are a goddess. Extra-large, no whip.”
“Back in fifteen.”
Morgan Shaw, tall, blond and professional, came in with a confident stride and a hand outstretched in greeting. When Cate shook it, she got the impression of self-assurance mixed with a whole lot of anticipation. Whatever the woman had to show her, it meant a lot to her.
Ms. Shaw shook back her mane of hair and smiled. “Dr. Wells, thank you for seeing me.”
Cate waved her into the guest chair in front of her desk and settled herself in her own. “Did Anne offer you something to drink?”
“Yes, she did, thanks.”
“No trouble finding us?”
“Not at all. I got very good directions from my sister, Cassandra. I’d like to thank you personally for rescuing her a few months ago.”
Cate grinned with delight. Earlier in the year she had escaped the city and had been four-wheeling through the woods upstate, on her way back from her therapy cliff—the one she climbed when she really needed to clear her head and find her center again. She’d offered a lift to a couple of stranded hikers, and had stayed in touch ever since. “Cass is your sister? Then I’m doubly pleased to meet you. I understand you have an artifact that you wanted to show me,” she prompted. “How did you come by it?”
Morgan leaned over and pulled her leather tote into her lap. “I have an antique shop in Fairfield, Connecticut. I found this in a late-Victorian dresser that was part of the stock I bought along with the shop.” She opened a cardboard container much like the ones the post office used, and extracted a wooden box. “I was hoping you could tell me a little about it.”
Cate pulled the box closer. This was no relic from Uncle Lester’s attic. Weighing no more than her low-profile laptop, the box was so ornately carved that there was no room for a single extra figure on its surface. She tried to separate the images to discover some meaning or clue as to its provenance, but the figures merged into one another, almost seeming to lose themselves before she could fix them in place. There were flowers, a sun and a hawk, what looked like a tree and the wavy lines that in most cultures denoted water. There were animals—a hippo, a lion—and plants. A lotus. Reeds, maybe. There were musical instruments—a lyre, or was it a harp? A flute—or was it a reed next to a crocodile? And among the images were symbols, regular and uniform enough to indicate written language.
“This is amazing.” When Morgan nodded, Cate realized she’d spoken aloud.
“I can’t even tell what kind of wood it is, much less figure out what the carvings mean,” Morgan said. “I thought maybe cherry? Walnut? Not ebony, because it’s kind of reddish-brown.”
“That much I do recognize.” Cate turned the box over to examine its underside. She caught a faint whiff of some kind of spice. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s bubinga, an extremely hard and durable wood from Africa. The person who carved it was obviously a very skilled craftsman.”
“Can you tell how old it is?”
“Other than ‘old’?” Cate, with the box at eye level, smiled over the top of it at her visitor. “I can’t be sure, but at a guess I’d say more than two thousand years. From some of the cuts in the curved lines, here, I’d say they used a hand awl, which might even put it at three thousand years.”
Daniel would know.
Yes, but the likelihood of Daniel seeing this box was nil, wasn’t it?
She lowered the box and ran her fingers along a row of what looked like monkey heads. Or maybe they were irises. The more she looked, the harder it was to tell. “How does it open?”
Morgan lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I was hoping you could tell me. There’s a compartment inside, I know that much, because I ran it through the security check at the train station on the way here and peeked at the monitor. But I have no idea if it contains anything, or how it’s opened.”
Lost Treasures of the World, whispered that treacherous voice in her head. Daniel might have some information.
Cate stifled the voice and glanced at Morgan. “Do you mind if I take some photographs? I could show the pictures to one or two of my colleagues and they might be able to identify the culture that produced these
