“Frank? Frank, I’m. . fine. And you? It’s been a while.”

“I’m good.” He hesitated half a beat. “I wrote you several letters.”

“I didn’t receive them.”

“I didn’t mail them.”

“Oh.”

“Could I take you to dinner?” he asked. “There are some things I’d like to talk with you about.”

“I don’t know. This is a bad time, Frank.”

He hesitated again. “I hate to ask a favor of you over the phone.”

“A favor? What is it?” Diane looked over at her students busily working on the sloth exhibit. She hoped she had sufficiently put the fear of God into them so that they wouldn’t mess up again.

“I have a bone that may belong to a missing girl. . ”

Diane’s voice caught in her throat. “A bone? No,” she said a little too roughly, almost choking on the words.

“No, what?”

Andie was standing in front of her, holding out two handfuls of artificial leaves. The interruption gave her mind time to think and her racing heart time to slow down.

“Hold on just a moment, Frank.” Diane placed a hand over the mouthpiece and raised her eyebrows at Andie.

“They sent the wrong plants, Archaeopteris, but Donald insists we go ahead and use them. He says no one will know the difference.”

“That’s why we’re here-to teach them the difference. Tell him this is a museum of natural history, not a B-grade movie set-we have to be accurate.”

Andie smiled. “That’s about what I told him you’d say.”

“I’m sorry, Frank. We’re opening a big exhibit tomorrow evening and I’m up to my ears.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“No, I don’t do that anymore.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Forensic work. I don’t do it anymore.”

There was such a long stretch of silence on the phone that Diane thought he might have hung up. “You still there?”