Restless Soul - Alex Archer [76]
Annja logged on to one of her favorite archaeology newsgroups. Several of the members had helped her ferret out information on this topic or that relic through the past few years. She suspected someone on her list would help with the skull bowl, too. But how soon that help would come was a proverbial crapshoot.
Minutes, maybe, if someone was online this very moment. Hours, or even a few days, if they were busily engaged in their own interests. She attached the photographs, along with a brief description of where they were found. Annja did not mention the golden treasure that had been found with it, but just before she hit Send, she added the dog tags—but not the names of the soldiers—and mentioned all the dried blood.
“Macabre bowl, indeed,” she said.
“Here’s that coffee.”
She’d been so intent on typing that she hadn’t heard Pete approach.
“No cream, sorry. None in my office. I usually take it black. But I have a few of these fake-cream packets.” He sat the mug to her side and scattered the packets near it. “Rose keeps sweetener in one of her drawers. Is that some of the treasure? A little misshapen, isn’t it?” He looked over her shoulder at the image of the skull bowl that took up most of the screen. “Ivory?”
“It was with the treasure,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s really part of it. Everything else was gold or bejeweled, or carved from jade or coral or ivory. This is part of a human skull.”
He wrinkled his nose and pointed back at his office. “You better make a couple of copies of all of that.”
“Just in case,” Annja repeated, slugging down the coffee and pushing the cup forward for a refill. “Do you have anything handy to eat?” Her stomach rumbled so loudly she suspected Pete heard it.
“I could poke through the kitchen. I’m sure I could find cream there, too. Or I have a box of Twinkies in my desk.”
“Twinkies would do nicely.” Annja salivated at the thought of sugar and empty calories. “And another cup or two or three of coffee.”
22
It’s not Vietnamese or Laotian, Benjamin Vaughan wrote. Or Thai, Chinese, Nipponese, Burmese. It’s not Asian at all.
Vaughan was a junior college history teacher from Baton Rouge who frequented the archaeology blogs and chat lists on the weekends and in the summer months, calling himself a “lurker,” but often contributing useful tidbits. He’d helped Annja in the past, but she hadn’t heard from him personally in more than a year. He must have been on the internet cruising through the chat lists when she’d sent the images and description of the skull bowl.
Lucky for her, she thought. She remembered Vaughan’s past information being reliable, though rambling.
It’s American, he continued in his private post to her. That container you found is American, most likely. At least, I’m pretty sure it is—American by way of Africa. From New Orleans, to be precise. But don’t quote me on that until I can take a hands-on look.
Surprised and intrigued, Annja read on, leaning close to the screen as if she might absorb the words better by a nearer proximity.
I saw something like your device—your container—two winter breaks ago in a museum in Florida, down by Orlando. They had a collection of shrunken heads, too, but the curators were going to put the heads in storage because a group of locals were picketing and had gotten the newspaper involved. They were up in arms about human remains being on public display. The Field Museum hid away its shrunken heads about the same time. Anyway, I found out that several months later the head curator in Florida packed up the heads and sent them to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum that had just opened in New York City, down by Times Square, where they’re a major attraction to this day. The museum claims to have one of the largest collections of shrunken heads in America. The heads are the last thing