Free Findings by Mary Anna Evans Page A

first opportunity, she would be retracing her professional steps, trying to find the precise spot where she dug it up, so she could dig there again.
    Her pulse quickened when she thought of what she might find. Anything. That was the part of archaeology that had ensnared her like a narcotic. She might find more emeralds. She might find golden links of the chain that had held them together. She might find a clue to identify the person who lost them, or who put them in the ground. Or she could find nothing but dirt.
    But first, she would do something that was more immediately and obviously useful. She would meet with the sheriff and dredge up every last memory of her final moments with Douglass and Wally. It would be painful, but it was the least she could do for her dead friends.
    ***
    Emma had bought a new door. Of course, she’d bought a new door. She couldn’t exactly leave the front of her house open to the wind and rain. Faye realized that she must have had the door replaced before the funeral, because Emma was a woman who showed the public her best face. She would not have let half of Micco County walk through a mangled entryway. This meant that Faye had walked blindly through the new door, many times, oblivious to the change.
    Coming upon the new door caught her up short. It was beautiful, with ornate patterns of leaded glass, but it wasn’t the door she’d shuffled through over the years, carrying loads of books or boxes of dirty artifacts. It wasn’t the door where Douglass had met her so many times with a smile and a hug. He would never see this door. She hurried into the house so that she wouldn’t have to look at it.
    Emma led Faye and Joe to the kitchen table, where she and the sheriff and Ross were already nursing huge mugs of coffee. Magda was frowning at the glass of milk in front of her. Coffee had kept her afloat through graduate school and all her years of chasing tenure and then the late-night hours that even tenured professors kept. But coffee taints breast milk, so Magda was stuck drinking cow’s milk for a while longer. Caffeine hunger did not improve her disposition. Cuddling a baby did, but she’d left Rachel with a babysitter so that she could concentrate on the task at hand.
    “I liked Wally,” she said, “but he could be a son-of-a-bitch. Several people at this table have felt like killing him from time to time. Does anybody have a clue who actually did it?”
    The sheriff riffled through the papers in front of him. “It looks like everybody in the restaurant…bar…whatever Liz calls it…was accounted for. I’d say some of those alibis were stronger than others. For example, we’ve got that big table of re-enactors in the back corner. They were all drinking. They all say that nobody left the table for at least half an hour before Wally was killed. I’m not so sure anybody would’ve noticed if one of ’em got up and went to the bathroom, though. As much as they were drinking, I’d be jiggered if there wasn’t a steady stream of guys going to take a piss.”
    “I remember Wayland and Nita were sitting off to themselves,” Joe said. “Doesn’t seem like anybody would’ve been keeping a real close eye on them.”
    Emma, whose head had been bowed over her coffee cup in deep thought, jerked her head up. The sheriff was trying to say “Liz says they never left the bar,” but Emma wasn’t letting him hold the floor.
    “Did you say Wayland? Wayland Curry?”
    “Yes,” the sheriff said, shoving his reading glasses down his nose so that he could focus on Emma. “You know him?”
    “He was the biggest problem employee Douglass ever had. You name it, he did it. Sleeping on the job. Fighting on the job. Faking an injury. Douglass kept giving him chances, until he stole a wad of bills out of the petty cash. Then, after he got fired, the guy had the gall to sue for wrongful termination. He had no case, but Douglass fought hard, anyway, because he felt like the accusation was such a