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been replaced by
a fearful sheen in her eyes. “You have to go down there, Anthony.”
    Peet
was taken by her abruptness. “To Mexico? John could be at any
number of sites around Mexico City,
and I’m just talking about the ones that are publically known. There might be
thousands of small, out of the way digs that he could be working in.”
    “If
there’s anyone who can find them all, it’s you.”
    Peet
shook his head. “You overestimate me, Martha.”
    “Do
I? As I recall, my daughter thought pretty highly of your abilities.”
    “There’s
a vast difference between searching for artifacts and searching for a person.”
    “Unless you’re looking for a person searching
for artifacts. You have to go. John could be in serious trouble. What if he took the Effigy
under duress?”
    “All the more reason to let the authorities
find him.”
    “Anthony,
please. That was the FBI looking for him. The FBI !”
    “Martha,
you’re overreacting. I’m sure there’s a perfectly sound explanation to all of
this. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it tonight when he calls.”
    “That’s
just it,” Martha pressed, tears welling in her eyes. “He hasn’t called. And he
hasn’t returned my messages. He always returns my messages.”
    Peet
sighed, running a hand through his hair. “All right. Let
me make a few phone calls first. I’ll contact the INAH. If John’s working on a
dig somewhere, they would know about it.”
    Martha
bristled, her tears hardening to her face. “And if that doesn’t work, Anthony,
you will go down there. You will find John and clear up this whole mess. I
already lost my daughter to your exploits. I’m not about to lose my husband
over your Effigy.”

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Mexico City

 
    Peet
made no arrangements for his return flight when he left KC and her plane at Mexico City’s
non-commercial airstrip. He couldn’t exactly make plans until he knew more
about John’s situation, and who knew how long that would take.
    “That’s
fine,” KC said, inspecting an oil drip beneath the left engine of her plane. “I’ll
be here when you need me. You have my cell?”
    Peet
indicated that he did and twenty minutes later he was driving away in a rented
car. As he maneuvered into Mexico City,
he began to regret his decision to avoid a taxi. Salt Lake City had its traffic, but nothing
like this. Fortunately, the car had a built-in GPS. His first
destination—the Museo Nacional de Antropología.
    As
he left the car in the parking lot, he couldn’t help but recall the day he left
the museum six months ago. He never thought he’d be back so soon. In fact, he
hadn’t been gone long enough for Frederico de Gala Espanoza to forget his face.
The curator recognized him the moment Peet stepped through his office door,
fairly leaping across his gleaming desk to grip Peet’s hand. Frederico grinned
from ear to ear, with just a hint of some expensive cologne defining his
nearness.
    “Please
excuse my surprise, Dr. Peet,” he said in his best English. “I imagined you to
be in the States.”
    “I
was,” Peet admitted, releasing the curator’s smooth, manicured hand. “Until the FBI started asking questions about John.”
    Peet
struggled to withhold the concern from his voice. Turbulence hadn’t been the
only thing that troubled him on KC’s flight. Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de
Antropología e Historia, or INAH, had turned up nothing. There was no record of
John requesting to work at any site around Mexico City or the surrounding states. Peet
contacted a few of John’s closest colleagues, none of whom had been in contact
with him since he left to help with the museum’s Effigy display.
    That’s
when Peet really began to worry.
    The visit from the FBI agents lingered in the back of his
mind, and they were still with him there in Espanoza’s office. Admittedly, Peet
didn’t know much about criminal investigations, but something about the FBI’s
visit to Martha’s