Past Malice Read online

  “Hey, Sugar!” I called, once inside the house. “Brian? Bucky?”

  There was no answer, either from my husband or my sister. The red light on the answering machine was blinking and when I hit the play button, I heard my trainer’s voice. “Good evening, Dr. Fielding. While you told me that you wouldn’t be in for a few weeks, I would like to remind you that Krav Maga requires practice as well as mental preparation. I trust you are at least thinking through your moves during your break, and if you would like to join me for a session, here in the real world, I would be delighted to see you.”

  I frowned: Fat chance, Nolan. I already felt defensive enough on my own, at the moment, without more of the Israeli army’s fighting techniques. I flung my case onto the table and promptly made myself a G and T with two lime wedges, and then found my way out to the front porch and the swing. It was practically the only part of the house that wasn’t under construction or covered in power tools, sawdust, and dropcloths. Or graduate students, for that matter.

  The cold condensation on the glass felt good against my forehead and after a healthy sip, I bit into the extra piece of lime; the sharp citrus bite helped clean out the bad taste the evening’s events had left in my mouth; I pitched the lime skin over the porch railing—it might go well with squirrel—and rocked gently back and forth on the swing, letting myself relax and staring at nothing in particular in the field across the street from us. There were sturdy green stalks more than a yard tall coming up in the neat rows of furrows, and I realized the corn would need a lot more rain if it was going to make it through the season.

  That was one of the things that I liked about Lawton, Massachusetts, where our soon-to-be-a-dream house was located. Wedged in between Stone Harbor and Boxham-by-Sea, it had most of their good qualities with few of the drawbacks. Although it was within commuting distance to Brian’s work as a chemist at a pharmaceutical lab in Cambridge and mine at Caldwell College in southern Maine, it was still largely a matter of a central downtown and outlying farms, which gave it a country feel. It had been created as a town in the late eighteenth century, made up of former chunks of its two neighboring towns, but because it had only the tiniest of waterfronts, it was still quite rural. While they fought over tourist trade and waterfront attractions, people lived in Lawton at a slower pace, with just the first signs of gentrification starting to show. Brian and I only hoped that the fields that surrounded us would continue to provide fresh produce for the chic restaurants in those two towns, had for the ships in their harbors during the seagoing days, and wouldn’t start to sprout condominiums or deluxe McMansions in the faux colonial style. Selfish, perhaps, but in spite of that hope, it was the long history of change with incoming waves of immigrants, from twelve thousand years ago to the present, that drew us to the area. Despite the increasing crowdedness downtown, it still felt as though there was room for everyone and everything, Vietnamese groceries next to the 1930s Federalist-style post office next to an eighteenth-century storefront housing a German deli that replaced a dry-goods store in the 1890s. Maybe that was an idealized notion—and heaven knew that the towns weren’t without their strife, even ugliness at times—but I had hopes for the place, and what was the point of living somewhere if you didn’t believe it would grow into your ideal?

  It was really nice to be so removed from everything, listening to the early night noises begin to pick up, smelling clean dirt that I hadn’t dug myself. And after what I’d heard about Perry, I was glad to be well away from people. Quasi might be a terror to the local fauna, but I wasn’t so particularly fond of my own species at the moment.

  Who’d want to run down poor Perry Taylor? Thank God she wasn’t badly hurt, a broken arm and some bad bruises, but still…. I couldn’t imagine what it would take for someone to intentionally point a pickup truck at a young woman and drive toward her with every intention of harming her, maybe even killing her. But I couldn’t believe it was a drunk driver, not from what Justin had told us. It seemed to me that drunks were more likely to hurt someone out of some misjudgment, rather than actually aiming for you.

  At that moment I heard car horns honking; the students were coming home to roost and it was time for me to put aside such morbid brooding. I waved and smiled, but inside, I sighed. Rather than have my crew drive down from Maine every day, about an hour each way, I had suggested that they camp out in the back part of our house. I didn’t resent saving them the time—there’s nothing like the grinding misery of a long drive after a hard day’s work before you get to a shower and a beer and dinner—but I did rather regret giving up my privacy after work. It was my chance to unwind, forget about the day, to let my hair down, literally and figuratively. They’d all been grateful and good about taking short showers and keeping the crowded conditions as tidy as possible, so I couldn’t really complain. They also seemed to be having a lot of fun.

  Maybe it was just that I felt unable to get into the slumber party atmosphere that they were able to foster. I felt like I was like the mother who hears the kids’ voices fade away and die into suspicious silence every time she goes into the party room to see how everyone is doing. Ugh.

  I sauntered off the porch and across the drive to where they were unloading their gear.

  “Hey, Emma! Good weekend?” Meg said. I could only tell it was Meg Garrity because I could just make out the platinum blonde spikes of her hair over the two big brown grocery bags she was carrying in addition to a bulging duffel bag with a broken zipper. “You had the meeting tonight?”

  I took one of the bags from her and walked her into the back house, which was serving as a bunkhouse for the next couple of weeks. “Yep. Not everyone’s convinced of the necessity of our work, but that’s getting smoothed over. And the end…the end was a little more exciting than I think anyone expected.”

  I told her about Perry having been hurt. She frowned.

  “Perry? Is she the older lady with the scary smile and the too-tight clown curls?”

  “No, and a little charity please, if you don’t mind. That’s Fee you’re thinking of. Perry’s younger, a little preppy, brown hair always in the headband. I think you met a couple of times.”

  Meg grimaced as she set down her burdens. “Right. She was the one who said she thought the archaeology would be more interesting. More than just holes in the ground.”

  “That’s the one. Well, Justin told us that she was out checking her mailbox before she was supposed to come in for the meeting and this truck came bearing down on her. At first, I guess she thought the driver was just pulling over to ask for directions—she lives in a big old place way out past the farmstand—but then she realized that the truck was speeding up and not slowing down. She got out of the way just in time, escaped with a broken arm and bruises.”

  “Shit.” Meg stared. “Did she get the plates, see the driver, anything?”

  “No, it was too quick. She only thinks it was a dark-colored pickup. Maybe an SUV, maybe blue.”

  “That’s not much. Must have been a drunk driver?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I didn’t tell Meg about the discussion of the graffiti and the vandalism at the Tapley House. Without further proof, I had to assume that these were still coincidental. “Everyone else coming in?”

  “Yep, just sorting out the various bags of clean laundry and whose junk food is whose. We stopped by the state liquor store on the way down—too bad they don’t sell beer, it would save a stop—but we picked up some clear and some brown.” Meg pulled out a large pour-size bottle of gin and another of bourbon and set them on the counter.

  “That should last us the rest of the dig,” I observed. “Not too much partying going on.” Again I felt a pang of disappointment; everything seemed so tame, which was fine, but I couldn’t shake the notion that I was an inhibition.

  “No, not that kind of crew, this time,” Meg agreed. “Everyone’s pretty mellow. It’s nice, for a change.”

  I was surprised to hear her say that. “How’s Neal doing? Everything goin
g okay up at the lab?” Meg and Neal Fenn had been living together since they’d met at the dig on Penitence Point a couple of years ago.

  Meg smirked. “Just ducky. He’s eating his heart out, stuck doing analysis up at Caldwell when the rest of us are digging. Especially when the weather is so nice.”

  “Well, that’s a part of the job too,” I said, not feeling a bit sympathetic. “You don’t just get to dig up the goodies, you have to study them, or people will get the wrong impression. Think we’re just greedy.” I looked at Meg. “But you did encourage him, I hope, tell him he’s on the road to his degree, all the hard picky work will pay off, etc.?”

  “Nope. I rubbed his nose in it. Told him how gorgeous the site is, how all the contexts were perfect, and how we were finding the most amazing stuff.”

  “We haven’t gotten far below the nineteenth-century levels yet,” I reminded her, “but if you like whiteware, we have tons of really nice transfer print. That brick feature looks promising, though; it may be a foundation. But I suspect you didn’t mention the ogling tourists, the cold scrutiny of the historical society members, and the crabby neighbors, right?”

  Again, Meg made a sour face and shook her head. She unloaded another bag. “No. He wants to experience the field, he should be in the field.”

  “I can’t wait until you start work on your thesis. It will be payback time for Neal, then.”

  “Who says we’ll be together that long?” She tossed her head so that her rows of silver earrings clattered, but Meg’s breeziness indicated to me that she said so, or believed so, and nothing was going to change that. The others came in, depositing backpacks and bundles of food on the floor.

  I’d worked with them all before and had to admit, I had it pretty good as far as crews went, on this project. Dian had been at Penitence Point with me as well, and was almost ready to start her dissertation work next year. A little taller than Meg, and all dark curls and curves, Dian, although a fair student and a very nice person, always made me imagine that all she ever thought about was sex. She had a permanent grin that was half lazy leer and half cat-that-ate-the-cream. It was unnerving at times.

  The two guys working with me were a little more innocuous than Meg’s aggression or Dian’s lasciviousness. Rob was a compact and jovial little gorilla whose on-again, off-again relationship with Dian didn’t seem to worry either of them too much. Joe was tall, fair skinned, and vague, a dreamy first year whose black hair and eyebrows were the most definite thing about him. They followed us into the back house and dumped down their clean laundry and groceries onto the floor with all the carelessness of youth.

  I looked around at the room in the little house where they were sleeping, instantly made less tidy by the mere presence of the students. “I’m sorry you’re all out here in the boonies. I’d let you into the house to sleep but—”

  “But you haven’t got a floor in the dining room, and the living room is full of the stuff from the dining room, and your sister’s in the spare room.” Dian patted my arm. “Don’t keep sweating it, Emma, we don’t perceive it as some kind of political statement, with management sleeping in the big house and labor in the outbuildings.”

  I tried unsuccessfully to suppress a grin. “But Dian, that’s actually how I meant it.”

  Meg waved my worries away. “We’re fine. No bugs, no rain, fifteen minutes to work, no problem. We’re going to get the grill started. Can we cook you anything?”

  We had an old stone barbecue with a chimney out back. “No thanks, Meg. I think I’ll wait for Brian and my sister to get home.”

  “So we’re actually going to get to meet her?” Rob took a beer from the cooler and opened it. “What’s your sister like? Do you guys look alike?”

  “No, not at all. Bucky’s a lot younger than I am, almost eight years.” I was at a loss to describe her politely. “She’s…more compact and athletically built.”

  “Shorter and flatter,” translated Dian.

  “Well, maybe a bit, five-five or so. I guess our faces aren’t too different—my nose is way cuter, though, if anyone asks, and she’s got that stubborn chin on her. Same hair and skin color, and freckles—neither one of us can be out in the sun without scorching—but her hair is short, it was shorter than Meg’s at one point, but now it’s down to her ears. It still looks a trifle rad, but Mother is delighted.”

  “And she’s spending her vacation here because…?” Meg was piling packages of ground meat, hot dogs, condiments, and buns onto Joe until he didn’t have any arms left.

  “She claims she wants to know what it is I do for a living. She’s going to help out a couple of days.” I frowned. Bucky had never been all that interested in archaeology, and I suspected there were other, more personal matters at hand that she would bring up only when she was good and ready.

  “We’ll see how that goes. Anyway, I suspect it’s because she thought it would be nice if we fed her for a week or two. Cheaper than a real vacation.”

  “Way cheaper.” Dian frowned. “Why do you call her Bucky?”

  I fished the other wedge of lime out of my drink and worried it for a while. “She didn’t like her real name when we were kids, so I gave her a new one. Too bad for her; I think I was looking for something that would reinforce what I perceived as her sidekick status.”

  “Does your mother call her that?” Joe asked from behind the pile of food.

  “No, she calls her by her real name.”

  “Which is?” Dian was getting impatient with me.

  “You’d better ask her that.” I grinned. “I wouldn’t want to give away any state secrets.”

  The students exchanged a glance, making faces. “Must be something awful.”

  “I’m not telling. She’ll tell you if she wants to.”

  “Hey, guess who I saw this weekend?” Rob announced.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “Alan Crabtree. He’s working at the library again; I think he’s going to go for a degree in library science. He said to say hi.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He looks real good. Seems happy. He doesn’t miss the fieldwork at all. Likes air-conditioning in the summer.” Suddenly Rob hopped up and began rooting through a backpack. “Before I forget, Em, I got the flyers photocopied like you asked.”

  “Thanks. We’ll use this bunch, and if we need more, we’ll get the Chandler House people to do more for us.” I looked over the sheet and handed one to Meg. “So what else should I have put?”

  Meg read, nodding. “You’ve got a nice summary of the site and what we’re doing. What about a FAQ?”

  I shrugged. “We can do that on the next batch, I guess. Top Ten Answers to Questions Archaeologists Get Asked. Anyone?”

  They all chimed in, in varying tones of boredom and sarcasm because there were some days it felt like there really were only about a handful of questions we ever got asked.

  “‘No, we didn’t find any gold.’”

  “‘No, we’re not looking for dinosaurs.’”

  “‘No, we don’t get to keep what we find.’”

  “‘No, we probably won’t find any bodies—ah, skeletons, I mean.’”

  Meg smacked Joe in the arm and they all looked at me, the giggling turning nervous and dying away. Everyone in the department remembered what had happened out at another site I’d worked on where there were actual bodies. Meg especially.

  I shook it off. “Nope, not a chance of it. Sorry to disappoint you all. I don’t suppose anyone has another lime, do they? I’ve just about killed this one.”

  It worked; the mood lightened, I got another chunk of lime to torture, and the students finished unloading the cars. They all went around back to start their dinner.

  Just then Brian and Bucky came back from the grocery store. I suppose that it would have been easier to say simply that Bucky and I look a lot alike, but the truth of it was, I just couldn’t see what other people did of our resemblance. Brian Chang and I have been married for almost seven
years now, and even though he is a couple of inches taller than I, has dark brown hair that always needs cutting, and is almost always in a good mood, I really felt he and I were more similar looking than me and my sister, though no one else would ever have suggested that resemblance in a thousand years. I guess it’s just the way that people who have been together for a long time start to rub off on each other.

  I ran over, ostensibly to help with the bags, but it was really to kiss Brian. He tasted saltier than usual. I kissed him again, trying to figure out what it was.

  “Hey sweetie, where you been?”

  He knew what I meant. “We got pizza down by the supermarket.”

  That’s what I tasted: sausage. “And you didn’t wait for me?”

  “We didn’t know how long you’d be.” Bucky dug a couple of plastic-handled shopping bags out of the back of the pickup.

  “Still.” I grabbed a couple of bags, and we walked up to the house.

  “Next time,” Brian said. He looked down at the side steps. “Bogus. Squirrel tartare.”

  “I know. Quasi left it as a booby-trap for me.”

  “You don’t understand him. He’s just a big muffin,” Bucky said, closing the kitchen door with her foot.

  “You can say that, you and Brian are the only ones who can get near him.” I began unloading the groceries onto the counter, handing things to Bucky to put in the fridge. “When God was making nasty, scary animals, he came up with Quasi, but decided that cat was too damned mean. So then he came up with the Tasmanian Devil and thought it was much sweeter.”

  Bucky frowned, trying to make room amid the leftovers. “Naw. He’s just a little, you know, territorial.”

  “Did you bring your stethoscope with you? I’d love it if you could check him out.” Quasi and I had opposing ideas about going to the vet but had come to a compromise in the past year when he’d grown beyond even Brian’s ability to wrestle him into a carrier: I wouldn’t make him go to the vet and he wouldn’t try to tear my spleen out. We settled on having Bucky check him out and give him his shots when she came up to visit. “I know you’re on vacation and all….”