Concrete Evidence Read Online Free PDF

engineer,” the man said to Lee, obviously relieved natural order wasn’t in jeopardy.
    “Me?” Lee squeaked out the word like a timid mouse, making it hard for her to keep a straight face. “No. I’m her lackey.”
    They headed back up the stairs, and when they were out of earshot, she said, “Thanks.”
    He grinned. “You owe me. When do I get to collect?”
    She rolled her eyes. “When you’re my boss.”
    His grin widened. “With my connections, two weeks should do it.”
    “With my luck, you’ll be like JT Talon and get the job because you’re somebody’s son.”
    He stopped. “You don’t think he deserved the job?”
    “He was twenty-five—your age—when he became head of the company. You can’t convince me that decision was anything but nepotism.” She opened a cupboard but saw nothing of interest in the decaying wood. “It doesn’t matter, really. By all accounts, JT’s done a great job.” She paused, then added, “I guess I don’t like nepotism because I’m not in a position to benefit from it.”
    “So what now?” he asked, glancing around the kitchen.
    “Aside from taking pictures, we’re here to poke around. I’m looking for anything we can Google to find out more about the house. Names, dates. Scraps of paper left behind the stove. Nobody knows anything about this house.”
    They wandered through the rooms, peeking in closets, looking in drawers. She took pictures, all the while hoping to find something—anything—she could use to ask for access to the tribal archives. All she found was disappointment.
    They were getting ready to leave when one of the plumbers called out, “Yo! Archaeologist-Lady. Got an artifact for you.”
    “Great,” she said. “Just watch. He’s going to show me a rock and claim it must be a tool because it fits in his hand so well.”
    Lee touched her arm. “If I have to demean myself to make you look good again, my price will go up.”
    “Eh. You’re cheap.”
    He laughed. “How can you be so sure?”
    She smiled. “You’re a guy.” She descended the stairs.
    The bearded plumber held something brown and sodden out to her. “Check this out.”
    At first she thought it was a piece of wood, but the way the wet lump disintegrated in her fingers made her examine it more closely. “It’s bone.” A bubble of hope built inside her. This she could use. “Where did you find it?”
    “Beneath the old pump. There’s more down there.”
    She bent over the hole in the floor and saw a pile of friable material poking out of the saturated soil. The bubble expanded, near to bursting. “Lee, can you get my dig kit, please? It’s in the car, the blue backpack.”
    She reached down and touched a visible bone fragment. It could be very old. Being buried below the water table, the preservation would be excellent as long as it wasn’t removed from the wet soil conditions that had preserved it for so long.
    Lee returned. She grabbed her trowel and scraped the sidewall to get a clean view of the drained soil. No sign of a burial pit, but the fluctuating water level could have wiped away evidence of a pit centuries ago.
    “What kind of bone is it?” Lee asked.
    She turned over another clump of soil, popping out a bone. “Could be anything from canine to human. Hand me a ziplock. They’re in the front pocket.”
    “What’s a ziplock?”
    “A plastic bag.”
    “Oh. Thaaat ziplock.”
    The plumbers snickered, and Lee winked at her. She turned back to the pit to hide her smile. He was quick—and funny. There might be more to Lee Scott than her initial assessment of pretty-boy career student.
    She dropped the one-inch segment of bone inside the bag, packed damp soil around it, and turned to the plumbers. “Can you fix the sump without disturbing the bones?”
    “I think so. The new pump is smaller than the old one.”
    “You can dig deeper and try to find an identifiable piece,” Lee said.
    “We don’t have an excavation permit, and this could be a