Past Malice: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,1

not too far away from the shore. I told myself that I could hit it, if I wanted to. But my aim is pretty bad and I didn’t really want to wreck my karma by taking out my bad mood on the poor bird, no matter how nasty I think gulls are. Besides, my veterinarian sister was staying with me and any slight I inflicted on the animal kingdom would be immediately telegraphed to her, and she would instigate a massive retaliation. So I dropped the stone back on the path and walked up the lawn to the house. After another half-perambulation around the building, I heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel in front of the house.

“Evening, Professor.”

I looked up to see Justin Fisher, one of three security guards who worked here. A nice kid, maybe twenty-four or so, who looked like he was five years younger. He had straw-colored hair that was cut fashionably short and close to his head, a crooked smile, and a youthfully eager presence that was made positively gawky by the authority of his uniform.

“Evening, Justin. You know you can call me Emma, right?”

“I know, it’s just that I made the mistake of calling you Emma in front of Mr. Fiske, and he wasn’t thrilled. So I figured I’d just better….” He shrugged. “You know.”

“Just to keep on the safe side.” I nodded and we both smiled uncomfortably, trying to find a topic that was a little less awkward.

“Hey, that book you told me about, for my paper?” Justin was taking classes at night, trying to earn a graduate degree in history.

“Was it helpful?”

He rocked his hand, mezzo-mezzo. “Kind of. It was a little off from what I needed, but there was an appendix with a whole lot of references that really paid off. Archaeologists really do look at things differently than historians, don’t they?”

I shrugged. “Well, I think the main differences are in the scale and focus of what we’re looking at—historians tend to look at major events on a global scale, and we’re more often looking at individual families or communities. The materials are different, but I wonder if the distinctions aren’t really just academic.”

Justin’s face showed he wasn’t convinced. “Feels different to me. But I like getting the alternative perspective.”

I couldn’t help smiling and waved a finger at him. “Ah, that’s the first step down the slippery slope, though. First it’s getting an alternative perspective, then you’ll start looking at houses—looking to see what was original, what was added on later—and you’ll tell your friends you can stop any time you want. Except then, architecture won’t be enough for you. Your family will start to worry. You’ll begin to ask about old photographs and paintings and how Stone Harbor used to look before the war—Revolutionary War, that is—and then it will get worse. You’ll start walking with your head down, looking for broken bits of pottery that might have washed out of the fill they’re using to make the new sidewalks downtown. There’ll be an intervention—your girlfriend crying, your grandparents shaking their fists at the sky—but it will be too late. You’ll be an archaeologist and there’s no cure for that.”

“Yeah, except for the bad pay. Except for the snakes and spiders and worms and all that manual labor. Nice try, but no thanks. I think I’ll stick with teaching grade school history.”

“Okay, okay, but do let me know if you need any more help—oops, it looks like I’m on.”

We looked over to the house, where an older woman was waving to me.

Justin raised his hand in farewell. “Good luck. I’m going to walk down along the seawall and make sure there isn’t some threat coming to us by water.”

The woman called, “We’re just about ready for your presentation, Professor! Come on in!”

I went up to the front door and tried to banish my embattled feelings. I wasn’t particularly fond of Fiona Prowse—“call me Fee” was what she told everyone—but I did want to try to get along with her. Problem was, she saw my work as an unnecessary expense and kept trying to find ways to make it either vanish or make it pay into the coffers of the Chandler House, neither of which was likely to happen.

She clapped her hands to get me to speed up, and although I knew from the big grin on her face that she thought she was being funny, I gritted my teeth against her false cheeriness. I decided that if she’d only