Past Malice Read Online Free PDF Page B

and buns onto Joe until he didn’t have any arms left.
    “She claims she wants to know what it is I do for a living. She’s going to help out a couple of days.” I frowned. Bucky had never been all that interested in archaeology, and I suspected there were other, more personal matters at hand that she would bring up only when she was good and ready.
    “We’ll see how that goes. Anyway, I suspect it’s because she thought it would be nice if we fed her for a week or two. Cheaper than a real vacation.”
    “Way cheaper.” Dian frowned. “Why do you call her Bucky?”
    I fished the other wedge of lime out of my drink and worried it for a while. “She didn’t like her real name when we were kids, so I gave her a new one. Too bad for her; I think I was looking for something that would reinforce what I perceived as her sidekick status.”
    “Does your mother call her that?” Joe asked from behind the pile of food.
    “No, she calls her by her real name.”
    “Which is?” Dian was getting impatient with me.
    “You’d better ask her that.” I grinned. “I wouldn’t want to give away any state secrets.”
    The students exchanged a glance, making faces. “Must be something awful.”
    “I’m not telling. She’ll tell you if she wants to.”
    “Hey, guess who I saw this weekend?” Rob announced.
    “Who’s that?” I said.
    “Alan Crabtree. He’s working at the library again; I think he’s going to go for a degree in library science. He said to say hi.”
    “How’s he doing?”
    “He looks real good. Seems happy. He doesn’t miss the fieldwork at all. Likes air-conditioning in the summer.” Suddenly Rob hopped up and began rooting through a backpack. “Before I forget, Em, I got the flyers photocopied like you asked.”
    “Thanks. We’ll use this bunch, and if we need more, we’ll get the Chandler House people to do more for us.” I looked over the sheet and handed one to Meg. “So what else should I have put?”
    Meg read, nodding. “You’ve got a nice summary of the site and what we’re doing. What about a FAQ?”
    I shrugged. “We can do that on the next batch, I guess. Top Ten Answers to Questions Archaeologists Get Asked. Anyone?”
    They all chimed in, in varying tones of boredom and sarcasm because there were some days it felt like there really were only about a handful of questions we ever got asked.
    “‘No, we didn’t find any gold.’”
    “‘No, we’re not looking for dinosaurs.’”
    “‘No, we don’t get to keep what we find.’”
    “‘No, we probably won’t find any bodies—ah, skeletons, I mean.’”
    Meg smacked Joe in the arm and they all looked at me, the giggling turning nervous and dying away. Everyone in the department remembered what had happened out at another site I’d worked on where there were actual bodies. Meg especially.
    I shook it off. “Nope, not a chance of it. Sorry to disappoint you all. I don’t suppose anyone has another lime, do they? I’ve just about killed this one.”
    It worked; the mood lightened, I got another chunk of lime to torture, and the students finished unloading the cars. They all went around back to start their dinner.
    Just then Brian and Bucky came back from the grocery store. I suppose that it would have been easier to say simply that Bucky and I look a lot alike, but the truth of it was, I just couldn’t see what other people did of our resemblance. Brian Chang and I have been married for almost seven years now, and even though he is a couple of inches taller than I, has dark brown hair that always needs cutting, and is almost always in a good mood, I really felt he and I were more similar looking than me and my sister, though no one else would ever have suggested that resemblance in a thousand years. Iguess it’s just the way that people who have been together for a long time start to rub off on each other.
    I ran over, ostensibly to help with the bags, but it was really to kiss Brian. He tasted saltier than