Dust to Dust

giant, vivid green here.
    She closed the window and walked across to the living room to turn on the light. Her eye stopped on the desk where the light sat and she realized that it was the desk—or rather what she had found in it—that was nagging at the back of her mind. That must be it.
    Marcella had cleaned out the ramshackle potter’s shed behind her house. Among miscellaneous pieces of broken furniture and weathered plywood, under a piece of old linoleum long ago ripped up from the kitchen floor, with myriad items littering its top, she had found the old desk. A rough pearl constructed of distressed maple, it had three drawers down each side and one long drawer in the middle. Although it was not an extraordinary desk, she liked its solid promise.
    When she was cleaning the layers of dust and grime from the desk, she found writing on the bottom of the middle drawer. The house had been a treasure trove of nice surprises, but this surprise was disturbing. It was also old; too old to do anything about. Still, she intended to speak with Jonas about it and ask him to mention it to Diane Fallon.
    Marcella partially pulled out the drawer as she turned on the banker’s lamp on top of the desk. The fluorescent bulb had a second’s delay before the light came on. Just as it brightened, she felt another Lewis-moment shiver and the world went black.
    Another bright shining light appeared and Marcella wondered whether she should crawl to it. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought, as she struggled to move across the floor.

Chapter 1
    Diane Fallon parked her car well out of the way alongside the narrow drive. She closed her car door and stood looking at the old farmhouse illuminated by the headlights of a police car and the forensics van already there. Diane was director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History and director of the Rosewood Crime Lab, which was housed in the museum. It was in her role as crime lab director that she was here, but she suspected on this occasion she would be wearing both hats. That was because the house belonged to Dr. Marcella Payden, whom the museum’s archaeology curator, Jonas Briggs, had hired to create a reference collection of prehistoric potsherds for the museum’s archaeology department.
    It was an old house, perhaps from the early 1900s, set among trees that looked old enough to be original to the place. The two-story white wooden structure had a blue tin roof and long open porches on the first and second floors that stretched across the front of the house. There was a redbrick chimney on each end. At one end of the house a metal carport contained a light-colored SUV. Large square-cut stones lined the gravel driveway.
    The yard was mainly dirt with rock-bordered areas that had once been flower beds. Broken concrete yard ornaments—statuary, fountains, vases—littered the yard. From its appearance, the place could have been an archaeological dig. In reality, it was just an old farmhouse yard containing an odd assortment of disused items.
    Diane changed from her heels to comfortable loafers and slipped a flannel shirt over her dark metallic burgundy cocktail dress. She held the shirt tight around her as she walked toward the house to shield herself from the wind, which was becoming chilly.
    Neva Hurley and Izzy Wallace were taking their kits from the crime scene van as they spoke with a patrolman. Diane waved to them.
    “What do you know?” asked Diane as she got within earshot.
    Neva and Izzy were police officers with the Rosewood PD and two of the four crime scene investigators who worked for Diane. Neva was energetic, slim, and in her late twenties. Izzy, the newest member of the crime lab, was a fiftysomething, sturdily built guy. They grinned at her when she approached.
    “You know Officer Daughtry?” asked Izzy, with a tilt of his head to indicate the patrolman.
    “Diane Fallon,” she said, shaking the officer’s hand.
    “Good to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
    He seemed a little green. Must be a rookie , Diane thought.
    “Nice outfit,” said Neva. “I like the way your dress matches the burgundy in the plaid of your shirt. Very lum berjack chic.”
    Diane smiled. “I’ve been to a benefit at Bartrum University.”
    Neva looked at her watch and up at the sky. It was close to dawn.
    Diane gave her a weak smile. “Frank hasn’t given up on teaching me to dance. We went out afterward.”
    There was a gust of cool wind and Diane folded her arms across her