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“Hooked up a scanner system for her. Nice lady.”
    “I’m probably just being paranoid,” Diane said, “but it bothered me the way Hanks seems sure the attack and the theft were unrelated incidents. They may be, but we don’t know. It was as if he already has a suspect for her attacker. If Jonas found her, Hanks might have him at the head of the list of suspects. Jonas is so far removed from things like crime. I hate to think of him going through an interrogation.”
    Neva held the lifting device close to her chest, staring at Diane in alarm. Everyone at the museum and the crime lab was very fond of Jonas Briggs. He had come to work for the museum after he retired from the faculty at Bartrum. With his white hair, bushy white eyebrows, toothbrush mustache, and crystal blue eyes, he was everyone’s grandfather, or mentor, or maybe wizard.
    “Jonas is pretty tough,” said David. “You know that.”
    “In academics,” said Diane.
    “In city council meetings. Hell, you know they are all scared of him.”
    Diane laughed. “You’re right. All this is just speculation anyway. I have no idea whom she was planning to have dinner with.”
    “Speaking of food, maybe we can have some breakfast after this,” David said.
    “Good idea—Waffle House?”
    Neva was nodding. She loved their pecan waffles.
    Diane called the hospital to check on the condition of Marcella Payden. She got only the words “critical but stable” from them because she was not on the list of people authorized to receive information about the patient. But that didn’t matter. Diane was just looking for the word alive , and she got that.
    Diane went up the stairs to look over the rest of the house. The first room she entered was the bedroom. It was a simple bedroom with a double bed made from cherry wood and covered with a plain tan chenille bedspread. A dresser stood on one wall. It held a comb, brush, perfume, and lotion. A chest of drawers opposite the bed had a large-screen TV on top. A stuffed chair sat by the window with a floor lamp beside it. Marcella’s nightstand had a picture of a young family. She had a married daughter. Diane guessed it was a picture of the daughter and her family.
    The bedroom was neat and uncluttered. The adjacent room was a different matter. It was a study in clutter. Long library tables flanked by bookcases lined three of the walls. Additional bookcases stood on each side of the door. All were overflowing with books, journals, and papers. More books were stacked on the floor, in corners, and on chairs.
    On the table to her left sat a computer, printer, and scanner—probably the one David installed. Scattered across the table near the computer were printouts of potsherds she had scanned, many annotated in her own handwriting.
    The wall above the table and every available wall space were covered in an amazing collection of maps: satellite maps of canyons, deserts, and terrains with oxbow rivers, topographical maps, road maps, and maps of archaeological sites showing postholes and other ground features. Many of the maps had numerous red dots scattered across them in clusters. After a moment Diane realized each dot probably represented a location where a potsherd had been found. As in crime scene investigation, the location of items reveals much.
    The table on the opposite wall had several reconstructed pots and boxes of sherds. One box looked as if it might be part of the reference collection Marcella was creating for the museum. At one end of the table, relatively clear of clutter, were a microscope and a box of slides.
    But the star of the room was on the center table. In a box of sand stood a face being reconstructed from broken pieces of ceramic pottery. Diane walked over to it. The piece appeared ancient to her eyes. It had the look of tempered American Indian ceramic. Its dark tan surface was sprinkled with white inclusions of the tempering material. But Diane had never seen any Indian artifact like this—a