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sources,” he said.
    “David, you’re going to have to learn to unplug yourself sometime,” said Diane.
    He gave her a half smile. “Like you do? What are you doing here this late? Why aren’t you getting fitted for a wedding dress or something? What actually happened here anyway, and what is this stuff?” He gestured to the screen. Then paused. “Was it really Simone?”
    Diane nodded. “Yes. I don’t know what she was doing here. And I’m not sure what all these items mean. Have you heard from Simone anytime recently?”
    David shook his head. “She flew home to her family shortly after . . . after we all came home. I haven’t heard from her since. But I’m not the best at keeping in touch.”
    “Nor am I,” said Diane.
    “But she said something,” said David.
    “She said, ‘It was one of us.’ That was all,” said Diane. “I don’t know what it refers to, or who exactly us includes.”
    “I’ll contact her employers and her family tomorrow,” said Garnett. “Perhaps they can shed some light on what she was doing here, and whether she was carrying around this bag of voodoo trinkets. I know you don’t know what this collection of things means, but can you identify the individual items?”
    “The feathers, I believe, are from a macaw,” said Diane. “The beak is from a toucan. I don’t know what kind of monkey is represented by the paws. The teeth are canines from a predator, but I don’t know the species. I don’t know what animals the talons were taken from. But we will know tomorrow after we process.”
    “What about the bag?” said Garnett. “Looks kind of nativelike.”
    “I’m not familiar with the design,” said Diane. “But we can identify it.”
    Garnett rose. “I’ll talk with you tomorrow, then,” he said. “I think it would be a good idea if, officially, you let Neva, Izzy, or Jin work on the evidence, since you and David know this Simone woman.”
    “Please let us know what you find out about her,” said Diane. “She was a friend and she came here for a reason.”
    A growing unease that started with a chill in her spine was now resting in the pit of Diane’s stomach.
    “I’ll keep in touch,” he said.
    It sounded noncommittal, but Diane knew he would keep her in the loop.
    “Right now, I’m treating this like a theft gone wrong,” he said. “That’s what it looks like.”
    Diane knew that Garnett sensed there was something more to this. But he was going to take the easy way with the press. Not let them speculate. In a way, that was good. The idea that it was an attempted theft was not good. But she couldn’t think of a better story. Garnett left, probably to go home.
    Diane was far from that pleasure yet. She had to tell Vanessa Van Ross about the damage to the new special exhibit; that it probably would not be ready to receive the artifacts from Mexico on schedule; and that the Mexican officials were going to worry about the safety of their cultural treasures when they heard what had happened.
    Vanessa Van Ross was a tall, elderly woman who was the real power behind the museum. People called Diane the queen because of the extraordinary powers the museum covenant granted her as director. But she liked to tell them she was only the viceroy. Vanessa was the queen. And now she had to tell the queen that something bad had happened in the kingdom.
    “We’ll meet tomorrow,” Diane told her crime scene team. “Neva, would you put the evidence in the vault?”
    Neva nodded. “This is all very strange.”
    “Yes,” agreed Diane. “I’d like to find out what it’s about as soon as we can.”
    She left them talking amongst themselves and went to her osteology office. David followed her.
    “There is only one it we all have in common,” he said.
    Diane glanced at the lone-wolf watercolor hanging on the wall in her mostly bare osteology office.
    “Yes,” she said.
    She knew what she had in common with Simone: the massacre. They each lost someone close to