The Five-Day Dig (21 page)

Working side-by-side on the doorway put them closer together than they’d been on previous days. It was hard not to notice every time she brushed against him, but she tried to concentrate on working. Time was ticking away, and she wanted to make sure they could start on the interior the next day.

“Here’s something.” He used his trowel to pick lapilli away from a brown object in the middle of the entrance. Slowly, a decorative floral motif emerged on a rounded surface. “This feels like metal, perhaps bronze, judging by the color.”

She inched closer and watched him free the artifact from its 2,000-year-old constraints. As he lifted it out, a wire-like handle fell to one side. “A bucket,” she said.

A smile curved his lips. He set down his trowel, picked up a brush, and dabbed at the dirt stuck to the relief. “This is consistent with the building being a purgatorium.”

“Were there pre-Christian rituals similar to baptism?” she asked.

“Yes, though they’re not well documented.”

She searched her mind for relevant classical accounts and came up with nothing. Then something else popped into her head. “When you think about it, early churches and medieval cathedrals had the baptistery separate from the church, the same way this building stands outside the temple. I wouldn’t be surprised if the old rites were similar to modern ones, too.”

“Neither would I.” He looked at her curiously. “Do you have a Catholic background? I mean, you don’t practice, but your sister does, right?”

A wave of aversion washed through her. Continuing to work, she forced herself to answer. “My mom’s family is Catholic, but she has never practiced.”

“And it’s a ticklish subject between you and Christina?”

She swallowed and nodded. “There’s a story behind it. When we came to
Italy
, the churches intrigued me, and I asked a lot of questions. Come Sunday, my mom took us kids to mass. It didn’t go well. The priest talked about how women should be subservient to their husbands. I’d been taught women and men were equal, so I was appalled. Then, when we got home ...” Her voice failed her. But she wanted to tell him. “That was the day my dad was lost.”

“Oh, Winnie.” He moved toward her.

“No, don’t.” She held up a hand, refusing to look up from her work. “We don’t have time to be maudlin. I’ll just add that over the next few days we spent a lot of time at the church. Each time we went, I felt worse.”

He drew in a deep breath. After a moment, he asked, “I heard you say that he committed suicide. Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

“Ninety percent sure, I guess. He didn’t leave a note. In fact, the police ruled the death an accident. But he was a great swimmer. He sailed a lot. He knew tides and weather. I just feel that if he’d wanted to live, he could have.”

To her surprise, the tension in her lifted. Instead, she felt a sense of relief. She’d never before shared that much detail about how she’d experienced the tragedy. Even she and her family didn’t discuss it.

The sound of Farber’s voice in the distance interrupted her thoughts. As usual, he greeted everyone he passed in a loud, sing-song tone: “How are you!” inflected like a statement rather than a question. After all, he didn’t actually want to know the answer.

He appeared at the side of the trench, carrying an unopened bottle of water. “Well! A bronze bucket. Your theory about this building being a purgatorium may be correct, Charles.”

Winnie stood up in the pit and brushed off her hands. “The kid knows his purgatoria.”

Chaz rolled his eyes. “My personal purgatory is you calling me ‘kid.’ ”

Farber opened up his water, drinking from it as two students carrying empty pails approached the trench from behind him. “By the way, Winifred, this morning someone connected with
Pompeii
scavi
called me looking for you – a Dr. Lombardo.”

At first, the name didn’t sound familiar. Then she connected it with the retired professor they’d met at the wine bar along with the tour guide. “Really? Did he say what he wanted?”

He eyed the students as they kneeled next to the trench and shoveled spoil into the pails. “He said he has something to give you. I confirmed that we’re staying here, so he’s sending it over today.”

“What is it?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t ask. If it were my business, I suppose he would have told me.”

She turned to Chaz. “Could I have lost something while we were on the night tour?”

He rubbed his chin, unknowingly leaving a streak of dirt behind. “If it’s the man from the wine bar, when you asked him about your father, he acted as if the name rang a bell with him. Maybe he remembered something.”

Excitement shot through her, but her next thought dampened it. “But his colleague said the Price they knew was too young to be my dad – and, apparently, still alive.
Maybe Dr.
Lombardo knows a distant relative of mine.”

He nodded. “But, if so, perhaps that relative will know something about your father.”

“I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

As the students left with their buckets of spoil, Farber stooped next to the trench. He glimpsed back over his shoulder, then said, “I need a word with you two about something else, too.”

Figuring her personal quest didn’t interest him, she wondered if he’d seen his digging partner do something suspicious. She shifted closer, and Chaz followed suit.

“Father Giampiero and I have been talking while we work,” he said in a hushed tone. “I think he has a point about the ritual reenactment they’re staging here being unseemly.”

She nearly laughed out loud. That was his big concern? “I’m not crazy about it, either, Will, but we told Dunk we’d do it.”

“Well, I’m going to abstain – or, at most, take a background role. I think you two should, too.”

She frowned. Once again, she found herself defending “The Dig.” “We can’t leave Dunk out in the cold. He needs to shoot the segment for the show. He was kind enough to include us in this project, and we agreed to participate fully.”

Her boss snorted. “As usual, Winifred, you take things too literally. It’s not as though our contracts with ‘The Dig’ specify that we have to take part in every segment. As with anything in life, there’s room for interpretation and modification. Frankly, participating in the reenactment is going to make the university look foolish.”

She lifted her chin. “Backing out would make us look like we can’t be taken at our word.”

He glared down his nose at her. “You have some quaint notions.”

“Integrity isn’t a quaint notion.”

“Nor is dignity.”

She gave him a wry smile. “How about stuffiness?”

Chaz cleared his throat. “Any interesting developments at the lodging, Dr. Farber?”

He gave Chaz an irritated look, then sighed and let his posture relax. “Yes. We’ve found that the building has a downstairs, like the temple. We’re working on opening the door.” He turned back to her. “Maybe we’ll actually find scrolls there, Winifred. The priests likely would have kept texts of some sort.”

She and Chaz glanced at each other, and she knew he was thinking about Giampiero, too.

He addressed Farber again. “Do you need a hand over there? Maybe Dunk would temporarily reassign us to your trench.”

“No, Father Giampiero and I can handle it. Your place is here in the purgatorium.”

With that, he stood up and walked away.

Chaz looked at Winnie, raising an eyebrow. “And it will always be our place, if it’s up to him.”

She laughed. Standing up, she brushed off her hands. “I’d better let Dunk know that our boss says there could be scrolls in the lodging, just in case.”

“We should be so lucky.” He went back to cleaning the artifact he’d found.

She climbed out of the trench and walked toward the temple through the now-familiar hive of activity. Checking all of Dunk’s favorite backdrops, she spotted him near the temple entrance. He and Amara stood to one side, watching, as Hank filmed Jack pointing to a geophysics graph and speaking directly to the camera.

Winnie tapped Dunk on the shoulder. “Can I have a quick word in private?”

“Sure.” He gestured for her to follow him around the corner of the building. Eyes on the set, Amara didn’t react to their leaving.

Around the side, Winnie made sure no one else was listening, then asked in a low voice, “You heard about the lower floor in the lodging, right? Has Will told you that he thinks there may be scrolls there?”

He nodded. “He has, and I’m monitoring that trench closely. We’ll get the camera over there next and document what they’re doing.”

She felt a little foolish. “I figured you’d be aware, but I wanted to be sure.”

“Cheers. How are things in Trench 2?”

“Going well. Chaz found a small bucket, which supports the idea that we’re working on a purgatorium. We’ll be inside tomorrow.”

“Brilliant.” He dimpled at her. “By the way, we’re postponing the reenactment another night because of the robbery. Domenico has a security team coming in this evening to make sure the property is safe.”

“Oh, OK.” At this rate, maybe they wouldn’t even get around to acting out the rites. She didn’t know whether to sigh in relief or worry about having another cozy dinner with Chaz. “Are we eating casually again tonight then?”

“Somewhat, but I want everyone in the dining room at eight anyway, so we can go over our plans for the reenactment. Be there or be square.” He winked at her and headed back toward Amara and Jack.

So, she would escape the quiet meal with Chaz. To her dismay, she found she felt disappointed.

Ugh.
Did she actually
want
to seduce a student?

T
REDICI

B
URROWING INTO THE
purgatorium got more difficult as Winnie and Chaz worked their way into the bottleneck of the entrance. Both eager to get as much done as possible, they resorted to digging with one person standing and one sitting. Though they traded places every so often, neither position was ideal. The person below got peppered with crumbs of lapilli, while the one above had the disadvantage of standing.

Luckily, whenever one of them uncovered something, working conditions improved. The finder would lift the artifact out of the ground along with a large chunk of the surrounding soil, then take it aside to clean it up, while the other person continued with the heavier digging.

Artifacts didn’t come often enough, though, and the afternoon began to drag, especially since Winnie couldn’t wait to get back to the house and see if her package from Dr. Lombardo had arrived.

At five-thirty – a half-hour earlier than usual – she began packing up her tools. “I apologize, but I’m not hanging around tonight. I’m too anxious to see what’s in that package.”