Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

anyway.
    “Nobody in this room, myself included, will ever discover a royal tomb like King Tut’s or stumble onto a lost city like Machu Picchu. Few archaeologists are so lucky. We will spend our careers in the trash heaps, the wastepiles, even the latrines, of dead people. Among the waste, we will find the ordinary junk of day-to-day life, things that we will call artifacts. When we guess their purpose, we will be wrong.”
    They weren’t listening. They were never listening, but she felt obligated to strip the profession of its pseudo-glamour. The students that remained would be worth keeping.
    She forged ahead. “I see that you don’t believe me. Consider this. About the time that you were born, soda and beer companies stopped making cans with detachable pull tabs. When I was in school, my friends and I tossed our soda tabs on the ground outside this very building. One day, archaeologists will find distinctive metal artifacts surrounding every door to every public building that was standing during the mid-twentieth century.”
    They were muttering among themselves, interested but still missing the point. “Soda tabs used to come off the can? Why?”
    “Mark my words,” she said, looking directly at the one student who appeared to be looking at her. “They will declare those pull tabs to be an integral part of our religious practices. How else will they explain the inexplicable? Remember this and be humble when you try to piece together the lives of people you have never met.”
    She dismissed the orientation class early so they could rush to the student union and confirm that beer was, indeed, actually for sale on campus before noon. Returning to her office, she found a soul-killing pile of administrative drudgery still festering on the far corner of her desk. It could stay there, even if Dr. Raleigh came and stood in the room so that he could watch her do precisely nothing. She had no stomach for academic tedium, not any more. She had had no stomach for much of anything since Sam and Krista died.
    The telephone rang and she forced herself to let it ring twice so that the extent of her idleness wouldn’t be obvious to the caller.
    A cultured female voice said, “Please hold for Senator Cyril Kirby,” and Magda did as she was told.
    “Dr. Stockard?” the senator said in a low voice that commanded attention without resorting to the booming hyperemphasis used by most politicians.
    “Yes, Senator, what can I do for you?”
    “I called to offer my condolences on the loss of your students. I have already spoken with their parents but, having through coincidence shared the incidents of that terrible day with you, I felt that you, too, had suffered bereavement.”
    “Why, thank you, Senator, that’s very thoughtful.”
    “Rest assured that I’ve spoken with the sheriff. He knows that if I have access to any resources that might help him solve this crime, then he should consider those resources his.”
    Magda thought that the senator displayed more social finesse than the typical backslapping politician, but, lacking a corresponding level of grace, she could think of nothing more intelligent to say than, “Thank you. I appreciate that and I know the families do, too.”
    “It’s the least I can do. Now, I’d like to ask you a question about a tangentially related matter.”
    “Certainly.”
    “I’ve been doing business with a woman who, I believe, is an employee of yours. Attractive, petite, thirty-ish, dark-skinned—her name is Faye Longchamp. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her, but she forgot to leave me her address or phone number.”
    “Oh, she didn’t forget. She lives on her boat and keeps to herself. You can’t reach Faye unless she wants to be reached.” Even if Magda had known Faye’s address, she would not have given it to anyone without her permission—not a colleague, not a minister, and certainly not a minor-league politician. It didn’t occur to her that she was giving out sensitive information when she said, “Faye will be in here to see me this afternoon. I’ll ask her to get in touch with you.”
    He thanked her and hung up, and Magda didn’t think about the conversation again for an hour, not until she saw the senator himself in the departmental library.

    Faye sat across a library table from Senator Cyril Kirby. She would hardly have been more surprised if she had walked in and found a woolly mammoth awaiting her.
    “Hello, Senator Kirby,” she began.