Free Echo by Jack McDevitt

performing, I said sure and took Robin along. “Strictly for security purposes,” I told him.
    “Listen, Chase,” he said. “This is not funny.”
    “You don’t want to go?”
    “I’ll go. Sure. But somebody wants you dead.”
    “Actually,” I said, “the package was addressed to Alex.”
    I like amateur theater. Always have. Audree has tried to talk me into joining Seaside, but the prospect of standing on a stage in front of an audience while I try to remember my lines scares me more than anything I can think of. So I always pretend I’m too busy. “Maybe next year.”
    It turned out to be opening night for the show. Audree played the harried beauty of the title. She is pursued by police, who think she killed her husband; by the actual killer, who wrongly believes she knows who he is; and by a crazed former boyfriend who has never been willing to let go.
    At one point she calls her lawyer. Robin commented that it was exactly what people do: Put the lawyer in the maniac’s crosshairs. And, of course, when the lawyer got picked off, at the end of the second act, he reacted with a resigned sigh.
    Eventually, the ex-boyfriend makes off with her eleven-year-old daughter, whose safety he is willing to exchange for the heroine’s virtue. And, as the audience was aware, her life. Ultimately, of course, everything ends well.
    Audree was a bit over-the-top, maybe a trifle screechy when she was being chased around by the nutcase, but otherwise she delivered a good performance. Afterward, we attended a cast party. Robin told me he was tempted to join the Seaside group.
    “I didn’t know you were interested in acting,” I said.
    He glanced around the room. It was filled with attractive women.
     
    We found others who had known Sunset Tuttle. One, a financial advisor who’d visited him hoping to pick up a client, told us yes, he’d seen the tablet. “Kept it in the cabinet, just like you said. I was in there one time. The cabinet door had been left open. When he noticed, he got up and closed it. It was no big deal. But I remember thinking how odd it was to keep a gravestone—that’s what it looked like—in his office. I mentioned it, but he just shrugged it off. Said something to the effect it was an artifact. That he had to keep the cabinet door shut to maintain an even temperature.”
    “That’s nonsense,” Alex said.
    “I thought that, too, but I wasn’t going to argue with the guy. I didn’t care if he kept rocks in his cabinet.”
     
    The OAAA, the Orion Arm Archeological Association, maintains a museum and conference center with attached living quarters for visiting historians and archeologists in the Plaza, adjacent to Korchnoi University in Andiquar. The Plaza also serves as a social center for members of the organization and their guests. Alex had a blown-up picture of the tablet propped against the wall. “There has to be somebody down there who’d recognize this thing,” he said.
    Alex attended meetings periodically. It was a good way to keep in touch with what was happening in the field. Usually, I went along, not because I had a professional knowledge of whatever subject happened to be on the agenda but because my presence fit with the social environment. As long as the conversations appeared casual, there was less chance of alerting anyone to the possibility that something substantive was happening, thereby running the price up.
    So I dressed for the occasion, a white blouse, beige slacks, and a gold necklace Alex had given me for precisely these kinds of events. The necklace featured an ankh , which made me automatically one of the crowd.
    Alex had been granted an honorary membership after the Christopher Sim experience, so we had no trouble gaining entrance. There were seven or eight people present, seated in two groups in the Sakler Room, named of course for the woman who’d found the Inkata ruins on Moridania four hundred years ago. We collected a couple of drinks at the bar and joined