The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

who spun the clay on his wheel. And the woman who used that pot to carry water. And the child who one day dropped it and broke it. History’s never been dead for me. I’ve always felt it was alive and pulsing in those objects you see in the museum cases. It’s in my blood, something I was born with, because…” Her voice trailed off as she realized she’d strayed into hazardous territory.
Don’t talk about the past.
    Don’t talk about Mom.
    To her relief, Detective Frost did not pick up on her sudden wariness. His next question wasn’t about her at all. “I know you haven’t been here too long,” he said, “but did you ever get the feeling things weren’t quite right here?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “You said that you feel as if you’ve been working in a house of horrors.”
    “That was a figure of speech. You can understand it, can’t you, after what you just found behind the basement wall? After what Madam X turned out to be?” The temperature in her air-conditioned office seemed to keep dropping. Josephine reached back to pull on the sweater she’d hung on her chair. “At least my job isn’t nearly as horrifying as yours must be. You wonder why I choose to work with pottery and old bones. And I wonder why someone like you would choose to work with—well, fresh horrors.” She looked up and saw a glimmer of discomfort in his eyes because this time, the question was directed at him. For a man accustomed to interrogating others, he did not seem eager to reciprocate with personal details of his own.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m not allowed to ask questions. Only answer them.”
    “No, I’m just wondering what you meant.”
    “Meant?”
    “When you said
someone like you.
”
    “Oh.” She gave a sheepish laugh. “It’s just that you strike me as such a nice person. A kind person.”
    “And most policemen aren’t?”
    She flushed. “I keep digging the hole deeper, don’t I? Really, I meant it as a compliment. Because I’ll admit, most policemen scare me a little.” She looked down at her desk. “I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way.”
    He sighed. “I’m afraid you may be right. Even though I think I’m the least scary person in the world.”
    But I’m afraid of you anyway, she thought. Because I know what you could do to me if you learned my secret.
    “Detective Frost?” Nicholas Robinson had appeared in her doorway. “Your colleague needs you back downstairs.”
    “Oh. Right.” Frost shot a smile at Josephine. “We’ll talk more later, Dr. Pulcillo. And get something to eat, why don’t you?”
    Nicholas waited until Frost had left the room, then he said to her: “What was that all about?”
    “We were just chatting, Nick.”
    “He’s a detective. I don’t think they
just chat.
”
    “It’s not as if he was interrogating me or anything.”
    “Is something bothering you, Josie? Something that I should know about?”
    Though his question put her on guard, she managed to say calmly: “Why would you think that?”
    “You’re not yourself. And it’s not just because of what happened today. Yesterday, when I came up behind you in the hallway, you almost jumped out of your skin.”
    She sat with her hands on her lap, grateful that he could not see them tighten into two knots. In the short time they’d worked together, he had become eerily astute at reading her moods, at knowing when she needed a good laugh and when she needed to be left alone. Surely he could see that this was one of the times she wanted to be alone, yet he did not retreat. It was unlike the Nicholas she knew, a man who was unfailingly respectful of her privacy.
    “Josie?” he said. “Do you want to talk about anything?”
    She gave a rueful laugh. “I guess I’m mortified that I blew it so badly with Madam X. That I didn’t realize we were dealing with a fake.”
    “That carbon fourteen analysis threw us both off. I was just as wrong as you were.”
    “But your background isn’t Egyptology. That’s why you hired me, and I screwed up.” She leaned forward, massaging her temples. “If you’d hired someone more experienced, this wouldn’t have happened.”
    “You didn’t screw up. You’re the one who insisted on the CT scan, remember? Because
you
didn’t feel completely confident about her. You were the one who led us to the truth. So stop beating yourself up about this.”
    “I made the museum look bad. I made
you
look bad, for hiring