Renee raised hers, saying, “To the best graduate students a professor could ever hope for.”
Amal smiled and cocked her head, down the hill and through the dark grove, toward the house Renee rented for their crew. “Here’s to hoping this dig lasts for a long time. No long bus rides for me.”
José laughed, saying, “Hear! Hear!”
“‘Hear! Hear!’ What does that mean?” Nasha asked Amal.
“A short way of saying that’s exactly what we want to hear.”
Hank gave the final toast. “To good food. I vote we eat before it all gets cold.”
“Hear! Hear!” Nasha said. Everyone laughed. And, with that, they passed the dishes.
Remi was surprised when Yesmine handed her the plate of brik, saying, “Amal tells me this is a favorite of yours?”
“My memory of it, it’s been years.” Remi took two and passed the dish to Sam, then Lazlo. “Not since I was here with Renee back in college.” She took a bite and closed her eyes, savoring the explosion of flavors and tang of goat cheese. “Even better than I remembered.”
At one point during the dinner, Nasha elbowed Remi, grinning. She apparently had noticed the same thing that Remi had. Osmond spent almost the entire time stealing glances at Amal. It was clear he was smitten with her.
Amal seemed totally unaware of his attention.
Well into their meal, the conversation turned toward the new fragments the graduate students were uncovering. “Unfortunately,” Amal said, “it’s nothing as wonderful as the Sator Square my grandmother found. I’m not that lucky.”
“Nonsense,” Renee said. “If not for you walking into my class that day, then writing your thesis, we’d never have found that subterranean chamber to begin with.”
“You got that right,” Hank said. “LaBelle would still be digging in exactly the wrong spot on the exact opposite side of the archeological park if not for you. It’s a shame that Warren almost ruined it for the rest of us.”
“Speaking of,” José said. “I heard the police don’t think he fell at all.”
Hank lowered his water glass to the table. “Where’d you hear that?”
“One of my friends at the British works,” José said.
Renee glanced at Remi. “I suspected something like this. The police have asked me to come down to the station tomorrow morning. No doubt to tell me it was”—she gave Nasha a quick look, noting she seemed more interested in the brik triangles on her plate than the conversation at the table, Renee lowering her voice anyway—“self-inflicted, would be my guess.”
Remi turned toward Sam. “We’re not letting her go down there by herself.”
“Remi’s right. We’ll go to the police with you.”
“Let me,” Hank said.
“You’re needed here,” Renee told him. “The Fargos have more experience with this sort of thing. Offer accepted.” She gave a tired sigh. “I vote we change the subject. I actually have some good news. The university received an endowment and they intend to funnel some of that money into the archeology department—once everything’s sorted out, that is,” she said with an apologetic smile toward Remi.
They tossed around ideas about where that money would best be put to use. Eventually, the conversation drifted into the happenings at other sites in the archeological park.
Osmond pulled out his phone, accessing a video. “Did any of you see the prank that the Brits pulled off? They hung a plastic skeleton on fishing line in the entrance to the amphitheater . . . Watch.”
Nasha gasped. “Were they scared?”
“Very,” he said, passing the phone to Renee, who held it so she and Lazlo could see it together.
“Brilliant,” Lazlo said.
Renee laughed. “This is great. Where’s Amal? She needs to see this.”
Her mother looked up at them. “I think she was clearing dishes.”
Remi’s gaze wandered toward the olive trees and she was surprised to see a light at the bottom of the hill where none had been just a few minutes before. She nudged Sam with her knee. “I think someone might be in the office.”
Sam looked that direction. “You’re sure it isn’t a reflection?”
“I don’t think so.”
He studied it a moment longer, then stood, holding his hand out to his wife. “After all this great food, I need to stretch my legs. It’s a lovely night for a walk.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” she said.
Lazlo bowed his head to them and launched into a tale of the treasure he hunted for but never found in Laos, drawing everyone’s attention.
But Nasha saw them and followed. “I want to go for a walk.”
“Nasha?” Yesmine called. “Ready to help me with the dessert?”
That did the trick. As she raced back to the table, Sam and Remi strolled through the yard, ducking below the low-growing branches of the olive trees that surrounded it. The laughter and conversation faded as they continued down the slope through the grove, toward the small house rented to the archeologists.
About twenty-five yards away, Sam saw a flash in the window. “Definitely something going on inside there.”
“If everyone’s up at the party . . .”
“My thoughts exactly,” he said, searching the front of the house. The door and windows were shut. Nothing looked disturbed. “Let’s check around back.”
As he and Remi stopped at the corner, he peered around it, then pointed.
The door was open.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Tell your friend a lie. If he keeps it secret, then tell him the truth.
– AFRICAN PROVERB –
Sam drew his gun, moved to the threshold, and motioned for Remi to wait at the door. Whoever was in there wasn’t too worried about being overheard. He entered the kitchen, walked down the hall to the dining room, stopping at the arched entrance to the front of the house that the archeologists used for an office. When he looked around the corner, he saw Amal picking through the books on the shelves. He called her name.
She jumped, turning toward him, her hand flying to her heart. “You scared me.”
“What are you doing?”
“I . . . I wanted to find the missing ledger.”
“Is there anyone here with you?”
“No, of course not.”