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was overlooking your spouse's irritating habits.
    Lars woke around one a.m. and squawked. Betty heaved herself out of bed and pulled on a flannel robe. "Your turn next time, buster."
    Beadles got out of bed too. "I'm going to do a perimeter check."
    "That's good. There might be Injuns."
    Beadles slipped into his sheepskin moccasins, went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He removed an open carton of orange juice, drank directly from the spout and put it back. He opened the basement door, turned on the lights and went downstairs where he had a makeshift office: a desk, computer, and table covered with books, papers and artifacts. He sat at the desk and opened the center drawer, reaching far back behind the pens, paper clips, flash drives and post-it notes to a small cloth bag in the rear. He pulled it out, opened it, and shook a quarter-sized gold object into his hand.
    He held the softly gleaming gold medallion between thumb and forefinger. Squiggly lines radiated from a turquoise center. He had discovered the medallion the first day the Azuma Collection had arrived, before anyone else had seen it. Before Liggett and his apes raced over, even before Anatole had unlocked the door.
    Uncatalogued. It had fallen out of a pot filled with beads and shards. One tiny little item. He deserved it for his devotion to his students and the prestige he brought the University. It was otherwise destined to be catalogued and shut away--or perhaps put on display in the university museum--forever to gather dust. No one would miss this one little item out of so vast a collection.
    Don't kid yourself. It's stealing .
    He planned to mount it on a gold chain and give it to Betty on their anniversary. Betty loved her bling. She had twenty grand in jewelry stashed in an ivory-inlaid dowry box. He tossed the medallion up and down in the palm of his hand, feeling its weight. Now that he'd had an opportunity to open up the whole collection he'd found there wasn't much gold. The Azuma were not big on ornamental jewelry.
    It was the squirrely fluting on the arrowheads that convinced him the Azuma were a heretofore undiscovered tribe. He saw the pattern repeated on some of the pottery and woven baskets. No other tribe to his knowledge had ever used it. A squiggly line embossed in gold and worked into stone. How had they done it?
    He turned the disc over. The back was flat and rough. He planned to epoxy a small gold loop on the back through which to run the chain.
    The old floor creaked as Betty comforting Lars came to the head of the stairs.
    "What are you doing?"
    "Just checking on a few things. Go back to bed. I'll be right up."
    She padded away. Beadles slipped the gtold bead back into its pouch and replaced it in the back of his drawer.
    Tomorrow was the department party and he had to get some rest.
    ***

CHAPTER EIGHT
    "Babysitter"
    Beadles rose at six and did three miles on the green streets of Creighton. At thirty-eight, he was determined not to slide into middle-aged professorship like the well-fed burghers who surrounded him. He entered through the kitchen door puffing.
    Betty was giving Lars his breakfast. "My turn. Can you watch Lars while I go to the gym?"
    "Sure. Just let me take a quick shower."
    Beadles showered and dressed in slacks, sandals, and a guayabera he'd purchased in Guatemala. It was a typical early May morning, temperatures in the sixties and expected to hit the mid-seventies. When he returned Lars was strolling the living room hanging onto the furniture and gurgling.
    Beadles retrieved his backpack from the entryway, sat on the sofa and removed a stack of term-end papers. Minutes later Betty breezed through in a Bruce Lee jumpsuit and blew him a kiss.
    "Back by noon. You want anything from the deli?"
    "Bring me a club sandwich."
    "Love you."
    "Love you," Beadles said. He placed the stack of papers on the coffee table while Lars amused himself with a primary-color Lightning McQueen that burped aphorisms. "Life is like