LITMIR.BIZ

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we go in your car or mine?” she asked, ignoring the question.

      “Mine, definitely,” he said with a disparaging glance at hers. “I like having room for my head.”

      “The seat lets down.”

      “I can’t drive lying on my back.”

      “Nick!”

      “Come on.” He led her to the big sedan he’d rented and helped her inside. “Direct me. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven here.”

      “Not so long,” she replied. “You didn’t leave until you quit the FBI. That’s only been about four years ago.”

      “It seems like forever sometimes.”

      “I guess Houston is a lot different.”

      “Only when it floods. Otherwise, it’s a lot of concrete and steel and pavement. Just like every other city. It’s Washington with a drawl.”

      She laughed softly. “I suppose most cities are alike. I haven’t traveled much. And when I do, it’s to places that seem pretty primitive by modern standards.”

      “To digs, I gather?”

      “That’s right. I went out to the Custer battlefield in Montana a few years ago to help archaeologists and other anthropologists identify some remains. Then I had a stint in Arizona with some Hohokam ruins and once I flew down to Georgia where they were excavating an eighteenth-century cabin.”

      “How exciting.”

      “Not to you,” she conceded. “But it’s life and breath to me. I want to investigate aboriginal sites in Australia and explore some of the Greek and Roman ruins they’re just beginning to excavate. I want to go to Machu Picchu in Peru and to the Maya and Toltec and Olmec ruins in Mexico and Central America.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “I want to go to Africa and to China… Oh, Nick, there’s a world of mysteries out there just waiting to be solved!”

      He glanced at her. “You sound like a detective.”

      “I am, sort of,” she argued. “I look for clues in the past, and you look for them in the present. It’s still all investigation, you know.”

      He turned his attention back to the road. “I suppose. It depends on your point of view.”

      She studied him briefly. “You aren’t smoking. Helen said you’d quit.”

      “Five weeks now,” he replied. “I only had the jitters once Lassiter asked us all to give it up, to help him. Tess made him quit,” he said with a grin. “Imagine, old Nail Eater being led around by a woman.”

      “I doubt she’s leading him around. He probably loves her and wants to make her happy. He’ll live longer if he doesn’t smoke.”

      “We’re all going to die eventually,” he reminded her. “Some of us might do it a little quicker, but we don’t have much choice.”

      “The law of entropy.”

      He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

      “That’s what scientists call it—the law of entropy. It means that everything grows old and dies.”

      “As long as we’re scientific about it,” he said mockingly.

      She adjusted her glasses, pushing them back up on her nose. “No need to be sarcastic. Turn here.” She pointed.

      He drove into the parking lot and pulled into a space marked Visitors. “Why here?”

      “You don’t have a sticker that permits you to park here,” she reminded him. “If you park in a student’s spot, you’ll be towed. I know you wouldn’t like that.”

      “It’s not my car,” he reminded her.

      “You rented it. You’d have to liberate it.”

      “I love the way you use words,” he chuckled as he got out of the car and helped her out.

      “Nice manners,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

      “You opened the door for me back when I broke my leg in your senior year of school. Drove me back and forth to work every day, too, on your way.”

      “Wasn’t I sweet?” she asked wistfully. “Ah, those good old days.”

      “You were less irritating then.”

      “So were you,” she tossed back. She cocked her head and studied him. “Footloose Nick,” she murmured. “I suppose you’ll end up in a shoot-out with spies somewhere and they’ll mount you on a wall or something.”

      He grinned. “Lovely thought. How kind of you.”

      She gave up. “My office is on the second floor.”

      She led him into the big brick building, past the admissions office and up the staircase that led to the history and sociology departments.

      “I’m down the hall. The historians have this wing. The sociology department here is rather small, although we offer some interesting courses.”

      “Anthropology is sociology,” he remarked. “I took one course of it in college myself. Sociology and law go hand in hand, did you know?”

      “Sure!” she said, unlocking her office. “That’s the biology lab down the hall. They’re only up here temporarily while their facilities are being remodeled. They have snakes in there,” she said with a shiver.

      A primal scream echoed down the hall with its high ceilings. “Is that one of them?” he asked.

      “Snakes don’t scream,” she muttered. “No, that’s Pal.”

      “Who? Or should I say what?”

      “Pal’s a what, all right. He’s the missing link. That’s what we call him up here. Australopithecus insidious.”

      “Greek.”

      “Latin,” she corrected. “Pidgin Latin. What I mean, is that Pal is too smart to be a monkey. We have to lock him up. He likes to rip up textbooks. And if you ever leave your keys lying around when he’s on the loose, you’ll never see them again.”

      “Isn’t he caged?”

      “Usually. He picks the lock.” She laughed. “The last time he got out, the administrator and several members of the board of trustees were having a catered meeting in the conference room. Pal got in there and started pelting everybody with melon balls and rolls.”

      “I’ll bet that went over well with the guests.”

      “Guest,” she corrected. “It was a senator from Maryland. We never did get that funding we needed for a new research project.”

      “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Out of idle curiosity, what were you going to research?”

      Her eyes brightened. “Primate social behavior.”

      He burst out laughing. “It seems to me that you’re doing enough of that without funding.”

      “That’s exactly what our president said. Here.” She opened the door to a Spartan office with a desk, a chair, and a bookcase jammed full of reference books. On her desk were stacks of paper and a college handbook. “Like most everyone else here, I’m a faculty advisor. In my spare time, I teach anthropology.”

      He stood looking down at her with open curiosity. “You were always a brain. I used to feel threatened by you sometimes. No matter what I knew, you seemed to know more.”

      “Brains can be a curse when you’re a young girl,” she replied with faint bitterness. “But they last a lot longer than a voluptuous figure and a pretty face,” she added.

      “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he mused. “Except that you need feeding

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