“Tomorrow,” I said, kissing her cheek. “And I’ll do all the paddling.”
She laughed and, now reprieved, I made a joke of near disaster. I transferred my knapsack from the car to the canoe and put on my moccasins for luck. I’d been extraordinarily tempted by a pair of embroidered moosehide slippers that night in the museum archives and had needed all my will power and professional pride to leave them in their protective packet.
By the time I got to the Donaldsons’, the light was fading. I tied the canoe to some scrub and walked quietly toward the meadow with my knapsack slung over my shoulder. I can’t describe to you my state of alertness that night. I seemed to hear every insect, every bird, the breaking of every twig, the bending of every blade of grass. Up at the top of the hill, the Donaldsons’ house was lit up against the lacy darkness of the partially leafed-out trees and the radiant pink and lavender sky. It’s really a very nice location, but after Eva’s death, Andrew had not kept the place up as well. The gaps between the trees along the road were gradually being filled in with a hedge of saplings, shrubs, and vines. I was screened by this growth as I approached the work site where the lane was scraped down a good foot or more and piles of earth were heaped along the sides. They had roughly doubled the track, ripping out some of the young trees and cutting several feet into the meadow. I had just about reached this open area when I heard footsteps.
I practically fell into the only shelter available, a little cluster of maple saplings, poison ivy, and bittersweet. A man was walking along the meadow on the other side of the scrub and I was sure it was Andrew. I lowered myself into the vines and grass and waited. He seemed to be checking the work that had been done, tapping the ground here and there with a shovel, but I didn’t dare raise my head for confirmation.
What if he saw me? What to say? Perhaps I should have been tempted by the museum’s polished Algonquin war club instead of those moccasins, but actual physical violence, however satisfactory in the abstract, was out of my plan, perhaps beyond my capacity. Instead, I crouched silently for interminable, mosquito-filled minutes until his footsteps faded.
Once he was gone, I moved quickly in the semidarkness. Weeks before, I had picked out a cluster of large trees. As I approached them, I selected the most substantial heap of bulldozed earth on the meadow side. Taking #2456 from my knapsack, I packed the cranium with soil, then gently fitted it into the raw earth. This delicate operation was probably hampered as much as helped by my professional expertise. It was ten minutes by my watch before I felt it looked right, the skull noticeable but half buried in the sand, clay, and rocks, and another five before I had erased the softly rounded prints of my moccasins.
When I got home, I offered to run to the convenience store for some of Jane’s favorite ice cream. The pint of pistachio was cold against my arm as I dialed Andrew’s number and listened to it ring. “Who is it?” he cried. For the first time, I responded. I laughed out loud and set down the receiver.
The discovery was in the local paper the next night. I’d half expected to be called at work. It wouldn’t have been the first time, for with the density of artifacts in our area, I’ve run programs for construction companies on the importance of reporting bones and relics. In turn, we try not to hold up work too long while we recover artifacts and map the site. However, the grader operator was a crime buff, not an archaeology buff. She saw the skull, remembered the Donaldson investigation, and called the police.
“It’s just a tragedy,” Chloe Feingold told me that evening. For once, I was hanging on her every word. “Of course, poor Andrew is nearly hysterical.” For some reason, he was always one of her favorites.
“Surely they don’t think he had anything to do with it!” I said.
“Well, of course not!” Chloe said. “But he hasn’t helped himself. He keeps saying, ‘It can’t be Eva,’ ‘It isn’t Eva,’ putting the idea in their heads, you know. But you can’t imagine his state of mind!”
Actually, I could.
“We’ve recommended our lawyer. You know Hugh Boyd, don’t you? He wants that skull examined right away.”
“Surely the coroner...” I began.
“Hugh says it looks old, and I’m just sure it is. Why Andrew had to mention Eva at all is totally beyond me,” Chloe said.
“She must always be in his mind,” I said.
“Of course,” Chloe said impatiently, “but it can’t be Eva, it just can’t be, and the sooner they get you to date the remains, the better. It’s important that we all rally behind Andrew.”
The dean said something similar to me when he learned that I’d been asked to examine the skull. That was after the police had dug around the road without success; after Andrew, behaving badly, had retreated into shock and mental anguish, and after Hugh Boyd had told all and sundry that his client was being subjected to duress. Though I let Andrew stew as long as possible, I eventually had to give my opinion.
We assembled in a small conference room in the county jail, Hugh Boyd, Andrew, me, and the investigating officers. As the seating worked out, Andrew and I were across from each other at the institutional gray metal conference table, an optimal arrangement. This was the sort of single combat I’d envisioned, and I was pleased to see that Andrew had lost his tanned aura of fitness. He looked like the gaunt acolyte of some obscure and fanatical religion, and though he greeted me warmly, I sensed that his nerve was failing. Mine, as you’ll see, was in perfect condition.
I laid the carefully repackaged skull on the table and opened my briefcase for my notes. I moved very slowly and deliberately; I had waited in secret for this moment for nearly three years. I think the secrecy is worth emphasizing, for how much of achievement is anticipation, and how much of anticipation is the pleasure of sharing our hopes with others?
Andrew winced at the sight of the skull, and I felt myself smile involuntarily before I cleared my throat and began reading. In essence, I said that the skull was very old and its presence, somewhat anomalous. I speculated briefly about trade routes and the diffusion of Archaic civilization. My lectures are considered first-rate and my introductory classes are always filled early.
“The key thing,” said Hugh Boyd, ignoring Eva’s disappearance, Andrew’s guilt, and my revenge, “is that, as we’ve maintained all along, the bones could not possibly be those of Eva Donaldson. That being the case, there is absolutely no reason to continue questioning my client.”
When the investigating officer had reservations about this, I raised my professional concerns: the possibility of more bones, even artifacts. I suggested a modest excavation trench. “If we concentrate on the meadow, we won’t need to hold up the road work at all,” I said.
“No,” said Andrew, very loudly and angrily.
I feigned the greatest surprise. “Surely, it would be the best possible thing for you, as well as for certain lucky selected graduate students.”
“No,” Andrew said. “I won’t have the meadow disturbed any further. It was Eva’s meadow; she wanted it in flowers.” For a moment, I thought he might attempt tears. “I don’t know why you even raised the subject. All you were asked to do was to estimate the age of the—” he flapped his hand toward the packet “—the remains.”
Hugh Boyd made soothing noises, but the lieutenant was clearly interested.
“Of course,” I said, “my apologies for even suggesting it, but I’m sure Eva would have wanted this cleared up.”
“How do you know what Eva would have wanted?” Andrew demanded. I think right then that he began belatedly to suspect me.
“I know the dean is concerned,” I continued, “and with your tenure reviews coming up...” I left this phrase dangling. “Suspicion,” I added, “suspicion can have such a negative effect. You can hardly imagine,” I told Boyd and the lieutenant.