The Five-Day Dig (3 page)

Chaz shot her a grin.
“Brilliant suggestion.”

“Yes, of course.” Farber slid a hand over his short-cropped gray hair. “Winifred, find out what projects the academics are working on and assess opportunities with the most prestigious ones. Charles,
focus
on the younger guests, but don’t waste your time on anyone who comes off as less than professional. Meanwhile, I’ll hone in on the suits.”

The TA gave the chairman a wry look.
“Got it.
You mingle with the haughty, we with the
hoi polloi
.”

Farber cocked an eyebrow at him.
“If you will.”

Once set free from her colleagues, Winnie made her way into the most crowded part of the room. Blocked from her boss’s sight, she headed for the bar. As she stood in line, she gazed up at a painting on the wall. In the scene depicted, a woman wearing a mix of Roman garb and Egyptian ornaments gazed out at a waterway. In one hand, she carried a small bucket; in the other, the ceremonial rattle Winnie recognized as a
sistrum
.

Cleopatra dressed as Isis
, she concluded. The last Egyptian pharaoh had been a favorite of her father’s. He had always said that to ensnare Julius Caesar and Mark Antony successively, Cleo must have been an extraordinary woman.

Reminded of him, she wondered if anyone who had worked with him in
Italy
might be attending the conference. Maybe some veteran archaeologist here could tell her something about his work that she didn’t know. She figured she might as well ask around, since she had to network anyway. It might even keep her from sounding too much like a salesperson for
Growden
University
.

 
“Winnie Price!” a female voice next to her exclaimed.

She turned to see a former roommate from her undergrad days. “Liz Cho!” She hugged her old friend. “You look amazing. I thought you just had a baby.”

Liz laughed. “Eight months ago, and I just got back to pre-baby weight. She’s at home with her dad.”

They each grabbed a glass of Chianti,
then
Liz pulled her around to the side of the bar. “You look great, too. When we ran into each other at the airport a couple years ago, you were so stressed out. I’m glad to see you have your glow back.”

“Thank you. I feel healthier since my divorce went through.”

“Anyone new in your life?”

Winnie shook her head.

Liz put an arm around her. “Well, we’ll see if we can find you someone here.”

“Oh, please.” She waved off the idea. Then she remembered the tug of attraction she’d felt for Chaz on the plane. That kind of thing couldn’t become a habit. She sighed. “On second thought
,
 
I’ve
been alone for two years. Maybe I should be more open-minded.”

“That’s my girl.”

They traded small talk about mutual acquaintances. Then Liz lowered her voice. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m with two male colleagues from Weiland U
–
a geologist and a volcanologist. My husband calls them my ‘hard-rock friends.’ They’re nice guys but very technical. It’s nice to fit in some girl talk.”

“I’m in a similar situation.” She sipped her wine. “Unfortunately, I have orders to mingle from my department chair. That reminds me: You don’t happen to be working on a prestigious project that Growden can horn in on, do you?” She winked.

Liz laughed. “I’m afraid not. Sorry.”

“That’s fine. But I do have to move around a bit, for appearance’s sake. Maybe you could introduce me to your colleagues for a start?”

“Sure.” She led Winnie around to the opposite side of the bar, pausing in the middle to whisper, “Just so you know, neither one of them is single.”

Winnie rolled her eyes.

The hard-rock guys also weren’t old enough to have known her father, but they did make interesting conversation. She learned from Nico Grotz, a rail-thin German geologist with a mop of blond hair, that without volcanic ash the Romans never would have invented concrete and left behind wonders like the Colosseum. Then Luca Spadafora, a short but buff Italian volcanologist, talked to her about research he’d done atop Vesuvius at the oldest volcano-monitoring facility in the world.

“So you’ll be among the first to know if she’s about to blow?” she joked with him.

He answered her seriously. “Unfortunately, volcanic eruptions follow no discernible patterns that aid in their prediction.”

She gulped down the wine in her mouth. “In that case, I hope the people running the oldest monitoring facility in the world are at the top of their game.”

“They are.” He pulled a business card out of his breast pocket and offered it to her. “E-mail me. I will send you a link to the Web site, and you can track alert levels while we are here. When I checked earlier, we were at ‘Basic Level.’
Nothing unusual going on.”

“Good to know.” She stashed the card in her handbag and grabbed a couple of her own to hand to her new acquaintances. “By the way, I’m looking for older archaeologists who might have worked with my late father here in
Italy
twenty years ago. If anyone at the conference happens to mention Royston Price to you, could you let me know?”

There.
She’d broached the topic without choking up. To find that she could talk about Daddy casually in this setting felt good.

“For sure.”
Luca pulled out a pen and jotted down her father’s name on the back of her card. “I’ll make some inquiries for you, if you’d like.”

“I would love that,” she said.
“
Mille grazie.
”

Nico and Liz assured her they’d do the same.

Just when she started feeling good about the evening, she spotted Will Farber in the midst of the crowd staring at her. Her shoulders slumped, but she tried to smile at him.

He made a circling motion with his hand, which she took to mean that he wanted her to move along.

She nodded to him and looked back at her companions with regret. “Excuse me. My department chair is signaling that he expects more schmoozing from me. I’m off to introduce myself to someone.
Anyone.”

“Try the guy in the black Armani suit.” Liz tilted her head discreetly toward her left.

Winnie looked across the room to see a group of three fiftyish businessmen and instantly knew which one her friend meant. Not only was he dressed impeccably, he looked put-together in every way, from his perfectly contoured sideburns and slightly receding, dark brown hair, to the white teeth that flashed when he smiled at his associates. He held himself with a pure confidence that she suspected could only come from being affluent all of one’s life.

Luca followed her gaze. “That’s Domenico Rentino, local businessman and landowner.”

“Married?” Liz asked.

“Widowed.”

“What would bring him to an archaeology conference?” Winnie asked.

Luca shrugged. “Rumor has it there is an ancient temple complex under his estate, but he refuses to let anyone excavate.”

“Then I guess he’s here just to tease us,” Liz said.

Winnie raised her eyebrows, still watching the man. “I imagine he can do a good job of that.”

Her stare drew his eye. Maybe it was the wine, maybe the urging from Liz about meeting someone new, or maybe the playful thought she’d just expressed gave her momentum, but instead of looking away, she held his gaze and widened her smile.

He smiled back and gave her a slight nod before returning to his conversation.

So cool
, she thought. Women stared at him all the time, no doubt.

She looked back at Liz. “I don’t think I have the nerve to approach that guy, but I’ll start making my rounds, and we’ll see.”

After getting a second glass of Chianti, she
strolled
the perimeter of the room, scouring it for anyone who looked remotely familiar. If nothing else, she reasoned, she could always open a conversation with, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Non lei conosco da qualche luogo
?” a soft male voice asked next to her, as if reading her mind, but in Italian.
“
Lei è di Roma
?”

She spun around to find Domenico Rentino next to her. Up-close, his hair glinted with copper highlights, and he smelled faintly of bergamot with a woodsy note. Apparently, her blatant staring had led him to believe they had met in the past.

 
“
Non
.
Io sono
americana
.” She smiled to mask her embarrassment. “
Mi dispiace per fissare solo adesso
,” she added, apologizing for staring.

“
Ma, mi piace che fissi
.”
He slid
her a
smooth grin. “No need to be sorry. Beautiful women don’t often stare at me anymore. And I think I do recognize you. You’re Winifred Price, author of
Voyage with Virgil
?”

“Why, yes.” She couldn’t believe he was familiar with
Voyage,
her obscure first book. “You’ve heard of that book?”

“I read it. I like your idea that it was pizza that Aeneas and his party found the inhabitants of
Italy
eating when they reached the spot where they were destined to found
Rome
.”

A nervous laugh slipped out of her. The theory had made sense in the privacy of her office, but, obviously, an actual Italian had more insight into his own culture than she did. “You find that plausible?”

“Why not?”
He grinned at her, and she wondered whether he was laughing with her or at her.
“Without the tomatoes, of course.
We did not have those until Cristoforo Colombo brought them back from the
New World
.”

She moistened her lips. “I just figured the words
piatto
and
pizza
sound enough alike that it might provide an explanation for a story about people eating their plates.”

“For sure.”
His deep brown eyes glittered with amusement.

Studying his face for clues to his real thoughts, she tilted her head to one side. Whether or not he took her seriously, he certainly seemed willing to indulge her.

At that moment, Will Farber stepped up to them, swirling a brandy snifter in his left hand. “Winifred, it’s good to run into you.” He turned to Rentino and held out his right hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met, signore. I’m Dr. William Farber of
Growden
University
.”

She gave the Italian an apologetic look. “Dr. Farber is Chairman of the Department of Classical Studies. He’s my boss.”

Rentino shook Farber’s hand, still smiling, but the gleam had left his eye. “Domenico Rentino.”

“Your reputation precedes you.” The chairman’s eyes narrowed. “I understand you have a Roman temple complex under your estate.”