Birthright

herbal tea.” Frannie sprang to her feet, then just stood twisting her fingers together.
    “We got any?”
    “Yeah, I could make it for you. She was running,” Frannie burst out, then shot a defiant look at the others around the table. “She was. And if she hurt Bill and Rosie then I’m glad you kicked her ass.”
    She stalked to the stove, grabbed a pot. She was sniffling as she filled it with water.
    “Thanks, Frannie.” Callie turned as Jake came in. “I know everybody’s upset and confused. I know everybody liked Dory. I liked her, too. But unless somebody wants to stand up and say they put Seconal in my jug, the Seconal that put Rosie in the hospital, that leaves Dory.”
    “Cal says Dory did it.” Digger jerked his head in a nod. “Dory did it.”
    “Yeah, but . . .” Bob shifted in his seat. “It’s not right to turn on her like this. It isn’t right to turn on one of our own.”
    “She knocked you flat on your ass,” Digger reminded him.
    “Well, yeah, but still.”
    “Was she running?” Callie demanded.
    “I guess. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. Man, Callie, she was the one who called the ambulance for Rosie. And when Bill . . . when that happened, she fell to pieces.”
    “She told Sonya Callie wanted her off the project.” Frannie blinked at tears as she set the pot on the stove. “You can ask her, ask Sonya. She said how Callie wanted her gone because she thought she was fooling around with Jake, and how Callie’s jealous of every other woman on the project, and she was just waiting for a chance to kick her off.”
    “Christ.” Matt rubbed his face. “That doesn’t mean anything. That’s just girl shit. Look, I don’t know what’s goingon. I don’t think I want to. I just can’t see that Dory had anything to do with Bill. I just can’t see it.”
    “You don’t have to.” Jake opened a bottle of water. “I just got off the phone with Lana. She and Doug just landed at Dulles. The FBI is questioning Dorothy Spencer. And they’re sending an agent here to talk to her daughter. Could be they can see it.”
    C allie took her tea into Jake’s office, sat down, and looked at the time line of her life.
    “One of those events changes, everything that follows is affected.” Knowing Jake was in the doorway, she sipped at the tea, kept studying the chart. “I still haven’t figured out if I’d alter any of the events if I had the choice. If I didn’t break my arm, maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much time reading all those books on archaeology. If I hadn’t booted you out the door, maybe we wouldn’t be working on patching things up. If I hadn’t turned down the dig in Cornwall to take that sabbatical, I wouldn’t have been available for this one. Suzanne Cullen might never have seen me, recognized me. Bill would be alive, but everything Carlyle did would still be buried.”
    He sat on the worktable beside her. “Philosophy sucks.”
    “I’m almost finished brooding. You know that crap about me being jealous of Dory’s bogus, right? If I’d been thinking straight, I could’ve stopped her another way. Just called out, asked her to hold up a minute. Something. Then if she’d run, everyone would’ve seen it. But I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to stop her.” She shook her head. “Not even that. I just wanted to hurt her.”
    “Damn straight,” he agreed.
    “I should’ve figured you’d understand the sentiment.” She drank some tea and it soothed. “Now I feel sort of let down. I’m counting on the police and FBI to nail it, but it’s like I’ve dug down, layer by layer, and I see pieces of what’s under there, but I can’t seem to make the whole thing out. And something tells me the whole thing isn’t going to be what I wanted to find in the first place.”
    “A good digger knows you can’t choose what you find.”
    “There you go, being rational again.”
    “I’ve been practicing.” He picked up her hand, examined the scraped knuckles, wiggled her fingers. “How’s this feeling?”
    “Like I plowed it into bone at short range several times.”
    Still, she used it to pick up the phone when it rang. “Dunbrook. Sheriff Hewitt.” She rolled her eyes derisively toward Jake, then froze. Saying nothing, she pushed off the table, stood with the phone at her ear another moment, then lowered it. Shut it off.
    “They lost her.” She set the phone down carefully before she could give in to rage and heave it through the