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Roger’s offer to stay in one of the staff tents. But it was one of the RVs that held my attention.
    I decided the time was right to do a little probing. “I’m surprised that Paul would allow things to be presented that weren’t true. He’s such a stickler for accuracy.”
    â€œPaul Thompson?” Daria gave me an odd look. “Do you know him?”
    â€œA little,” I said, adopting a coy expression that I hoped would lead to further confidences.
    She continued, but not along the lines I had hoped for. “Have you ever seen him dig? Most of his finds come from the spoil pile.”
    â€œUm . . . that’s what?”
    â€œSorry, technical lingo. Spoil pile is the dirt and debris that is excavated. We go through it to check for small items like bits of pottery or glass or even bone that’s missed while we dig.”
    â€œAh, gotcha.”
    â€œAnyway, a more incompetent choice for head of the company than Paul I can’t imagine. Yes, I’m biased—I was up for the job, and the board gave it to him, instead—but seriously, if you want to photograph proper archaeology, stay away from Paul.”
    I pursed my lips. Daria’s comment about the spoil pile was an insult, pure and simple—it implied that Paul wasn’t paying enough attention to what he was digging. “It’s never easy when someone else gets a job instead of you, but surely the board must have felt he was qualified for it.”
    â€œThere’s qualified, and then there’s qualified,” Daria said opaquely, nodding over toward the line of trailers. “He may swank around and think he’s a god of the archaeological world, but the truth is that it’s us diggers who really know what’s going on. Take Dennis Smythe-Lowe, for instance. He’s had his hands in the dirt since he was a kid, and worked for CMA almost as long as I have, and yet the powers that be passed us both by when they hired Paul to head up the company. It’s politics, nothing but politics.”
    Now, that was interesting. There was obviously no love lost between Daria and Paul. . . . I tucked that fact away, and looked interested. “Is Dennis the man who looks like Indiana Jones had a love child with a hippie?”
    Daria laughed. “That’s him. He’s the salt of the earth, and a damned good archaeologist. Just don’t get him going about the Stone Age, or he’ll spend all day teaching you how to map flints.”
    â€œMap? Like draw?”
    â€œNo, in this case it means to chip away at a flint until you have a pointed end that can be used as a tool or weapon.”
    â€œGotcha.” I dredged up a morsel of information I’d seen during my planning phase for this trip. “One thing I’m confused about—you called yourself a digger, but I thought diggers were the grad students and unpaid volunteers who did the grunt work, not the proper archaeologists.”
    â€œWell, it’s a bit of both, really,” she said with a bob of her head. “The term digger does generally refer to the nonprofessionals, but sometimes we archaeologists also refer to ourselves as diggers.”
    â€œAs a way of being one of the common folk?” I asked lightly.
    â€œThat and because it’s what we all do,” she said, her eyes back on the group of TV folk.
    I watched them with her for a moment before commenting, “I’ve seen a TV show about some people who salt sites in order to fool people. You don’t think that Roger . . . ?”
    â€œNo, I can’t accuse Roger of doing that.” Daria gave a little shrug. “Not that I think he wouldn’t if it had occurred to him, but luckily, his mind doesn’t usually run to deviousness like that. Hey, isn’t that the baron’s brother? I heard he broke his leg falling off a cliff in Turkey. If that’s him, then I shall certainly volunteer