"Emma Rousseau."

"Got a man in a tub who's dying to meet you." Bad joke, but we used it over and over.

"Hell's bells, Tempe. You in Charleston?" Emma's vowels weren't up to Honey's, but they came damn close.

"You'll find a phone message somewhere in your mail stack. I'm running an archaeological field school out on Dewees. How was Florida?"

"Hot and sticky. You should have let me know you were coming. I could have rescheduled."

"If you actually took time off, I'm sure you needed the break."

Emma didn't reply to that. "Dan Jaffer still out of the loop?"

"He's been deployed to Iraq until sometime next month."

"You met Miss Honey?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Love that old lady. Brimming with piss and vinegar."

"She is that. Listen, Emma. I may have a problem."

"Shoot."

"Jaffer put me on to the site, thought it might be a Sewee burial ground. He was right. We've been getting bone since day one, but it's typical pre-Columbian stuff. Dry, bleached, lots of postmortem deterioration."

Emma didn't interrupt with questions or comments.

"This morning my students spotted a fresh burial about eighteen inches down. The bone looks solid, and the vertebrae are connected by soft tissue. I cleared what I felt was safe without contaminating the scene, then figured I'd better give someone a heads-up. Not sure who handles Dewees."

"Sheriff's got jurisdiction for criminal matters. For suspicious death evaluation, the winner would be me. Got any hypotheses?"

"None involving the ancient Sewee."

"You think the burial is recent?"

"Flies were opening a soup kitchen as I was scraping dirt."