Phoebe sat back, looking around the office which was as bare of personal effects as her little house. She didn’t collect things anymore. There was a mandala on the wall that one of the Bird Clan of the Cherokee people had made for her, and a blowgun that a sixth-grader’s father had made. She smiled, looking at it. People were always surprised when they were told that the Cherokee people had used blowguns in the past to hunt with. Usually they were more surprised to find that Cherokee people lived in houses and didn’t wear warbonnets and loincloths and paint, unless they were portraying the historical Trail of Tears in the annual pageant, “Unto These Hills,” on the not-too-distant Quallah Indian Reservation near Cherokee, North Carolina. People had some strange ideas about Native Americans.
THE PHONE RANG while Phoebe was trying to force herself to answer her e-mail. She picked it up absently. “Chenocetah Cherokee Museum,” she announced pleasantly.
“Is this Miss Keller?” a man’s voice asked.
“Yes,” she replied, ignoring her computer screen. The man sounded disturbed. “What can I do for you?”
There was a hesitation. “You can arrange to have a site dated by organic material, can’t you? Don’t you have a small foundation budget to help with that sort of thing?”
“Well, yes, although we can date by tree ring age…”
“I mean skeletal remains,” he added. “I have a skull…I have a whole skeleton, in fact. There’s a great deal of patination, and in situ in a cave with Paleo-Indian lithic specimens, Folsom point if I’m not mistaken…There are two effigy figures that would certainly date from the Hopewell period, very fine…The skull has an enlarged brain case and wide nasal cavities, the dentition is indicative of…well, the skull is possibly Neanderthal in origin.”
She actually gasped. She clutched the phone so hard that her knuckles went white. “Are you serious? We’ve never dated anything back further than ten to twelve thousand years, and that’s at a site in Tennessee, not North Carolina. There simply are no authenticated Neanderthal remains anywhere in North America…!”
“That’s right. But I…found some,” he said. “I think I…found some.”
She sat up straight. “Is this some sort of hoax?” she asked coldly. “Because if it is…”
“I know you’re wary—I don’t blame you.” He paused. “I’m a doctor of anthropology visiting the area. I know what I’m talking about. This is no hoax. But…they’re covering it up,” he added in a rushed whisper. “He said that if this gets out, they’ll kill him, they’ll kill me! They’ll do anything to keep the project going. If we tell, they’ll be shut down indefinitely while the site’s being excavated. Of course, it would mean national publicity as well, and it will bankrupt him!”
“Him, who?” she demanded. “Where’s the site? And who are you?”
“I can’t tell you…not yet. I’ll call you back when I can. They’re watching me…!” On the other end of the line, Phoebe heard a loud knock and the sound of a door opening. There was a woman’s strident voice in the background, but it was muffled. She guessed that he must have put his hand on the receiver. “Yes, I was just…speaking to my daughter! Yes, to my daughter. I’m coming!” he called to his visitor. Then he came back on the line. “I’ll speak to you later…goodbye,” he told Phoebe. There was a sudden noise and the phone slammed down.
She pressed star 69 on her phone to get the number that had called her, but it had been blocked at the source. She ground her teeth together and put down the phone. Maybe it was just a hoax, she thought. There had been several such “discoveries” over the years, including one in California that professed to show a set of human remains, which would predate the Cro-Magnon period—and those so-called Neanderthal findings were dated by one of the most famous anthropologists on earth. But the date was controversial and it was discounted by most authorities. There was a similar story from New Mexico which put forth the theory that a set of remains found in a cave were over thirty-five thousand years old, but they mysteriously vanished before they could be scientifically evaluated. Whether those cases were hoaxes or not could never be proved. The newest archaeological controversy revolved around Kennewick man, a California find, who was purported to be from the Paleo-Indian period, but who did not have predominantly Native American features. That controversy was still raging.
Perhaps this man who’d called her was just some crackpot with time to kill, Phoebe reasoned. But he’d sounded very sincere. And frightened. She chided her own gullibility. It was nothing at all and she was overreacting. She pulled up her computer screen and got back to her e-mail.
THE DOOR OPENED unexpectedly, and a tall, well-built man with a light olive complexion, short black hair and dark twinkling eyes stuck his head in. “Time to eat!” he said.
She looked up from her computer screen, smiling at the deputy sheriff. “Hi, Drake. Marie said you were bringing lunch. Thanks!”
“No sweat. I get hungry, too, Miss Keller, and sometimes I have to eat on the run,” he drawled, moving into the office with two box lunches. “Which is why mine is still in the car. I’m on my way to a call now. I brought these for you and Marie.” She punched a button on her phone. “Marie, Drake’s here with food!”
“I’ll be right there!” she called excitedly.
“At least somebody’s happy to see me, even if it’s just my cousin,” he said with mock disappointment. “You’re preoccupied.”
“I am,” she agreed, closing down the computer program. She looked up worriedly. “I just had a call a couple of hours ago. Maybe he was a crank, or a crackpot. But he sounded scared.”
Drake’s easy smile faded. He moved closer. “What was it about?”
“He said something about human skeletal remains that might date to the Neanderthal period being covered up by some contractor,” she said, boiling the conversation down to its basics. “He hung up abruptly. I tried to get his number, but he had it blocked.”
“Neanderthal remains. Uh-huh,” he said mockingly.
She smiled. She’d forgotten that he’d taken an Internet course on archaeology that had been offered through the museum.
“I suppose it was just a joke,” she added.
“Somebody hoping to graduate from high school. He’ll trip himself up, like that kid who wrote a bomb threat to his school on his father’s letterhead paper,” he added. She nodded. “Thanks for bringing the salads. It’s a long way to food from here,” she pointed out as she dug in her purse to pay him back.
“I can’t get you to come out with me,” he commented on a sigh. “It’s the next best thing to have lunch here,” he added. “I’ve got to go.”
Marie stuck her head in the door. “I’m starved! Thanks, Drake. You’re a sweetie, even if you are my cousin!”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “At least somebody thinks so,” he said morosely, with a speaking glance at Phoebe.
“Oh, she’s off men,” Marie told him chattily.
He frowned. “Why?”
Phoebe shot Marie a warning glance. She held up both hands, looking sheepish, and changed the subject.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT MORNING, Phoebe heard sirens racing past her small cabin just as she woke up. She hoped there hadn’t been some terrible accident. The mountain roads were narrow and some were dangerous in this part of the area. They’d had flatland tourists go over guardrails occasionally. The drop was inevitably fatal.
She dressed and grabbed a quick cup of coffee before she drove her old Ford to work. The museum parking lot was usually empty at that hour, except for her car and