“Why that one?” Clare asked, echoing the question Kent had been thinking.

  “It might be something to do with me. Everyone started calling me that when I was first named chair of the department, Oedipus the king, you know? My sister and I were named after his daughters, Antigone and Ismene.” She laughed. “We used to call our dad Brother, and Mom was Grandma. They weren’t thrilled about that, but they should have thought the names through more carefully before they chose them.”

  Kent and the other two turned to stare at her.

  “Killed his father and married his mother? Oedipus?” Tig explained.

  “Got it,” Kent said. “And I’m beginning to understand why you’re so obsessed with nicknames.”

  Tig nodded. “I used to call my sister Meany. She hated me.”

  The last was said in the nostalgic tone of someone who was most definitely not hated by her sister or anyone else in her family. Even those brief comments told Kent that their childhoods had been far from similar. Her three brothers had protected her and acted as surrogates for her indifferent, older parents, even though they had their own lives and friends, but she sometimes had felt as if she existed on the periphery of her parents’ lives. She’d never been abused or gone without either the basic necessities or extras like toys and books, but she hadn’t experienced the teasing, playful, loving type of parents that Tig’s words had conjured up in her mind.

  “Did she really try to give you a nickname?” Sawyer asked Kent, with a mixture of disbelief and awe in her voice.

  Kent nodded, leaving the memories of her nontraditional childhood behind and coming back to the present. “I think Adi was the first attempt,” she admitted. Larson and Sawyer both looked at her with their brows furrowed, as if not understanding where the name came from. “Short for Adriana,” she explained, which didn’t seem to help their comprehension. “My first name.”

  “You have a first name?” Clare asked. “Really?”

  “I thought her first name was just Sergeant,” Miles added, shrugging at Clare.

  “You’re both fired,” Kent said, fighting to hide her smile. “Now open that file so we can see the goods he had on Professor Weston.”

  “Oh, those are just some of my exam questions from last spring,” Tig said, after skimming through the pages. “We were talking about our methods for designing tests, and I sent him that file. I wrote them myself, based on topics we had discussed in class, so there’s nothing I’d even pay him a nickel for as hush money.”

  “Could he have used them for his classes?” Kent asked. “Passed them off has his own?”

  “Well, I suppose so,” Tig said skeptically. “But his students would have been confused by all the questions about Aeschylus’s plays when they had spent the quarter studying Virgil’s Aeneid.”

  “Can you ever just answer a question without adding sarcastic commentary?” Kent asked mildly.

  “No, she can’t,” Clare answered for her, earning herself a playful elbow in the side from Tig.

  Kent kept her attention on the computer screen, and off their antics. She didn’t really mind Tig’s inability to keep from inserting her own brand of humor into every conversation. In fact, she liked it, more than she should. If they just kept to plain, impersonal words, then she wouldn’t find herself growing more and more intrigued by Tig. It was too late to undo the attraction she had already developed toward her, but she could do her best to keep from adding to it.

  They went through the rest of the files without finding anything else incriminating. Kent could sense when Tig read through some of the documents with more intensity than others, as if something about them bothered her but she couldn’t explain why. Once they finished, Miles went back to the station with orders to print the files for Tig to read more closely when she didn’t have the others to distract her.

  Once he had gone, the three of them wandered through the office, eventually opening drawers and pulling out stacks of notes. Tig was reading through one of the heavy texts from the bookshelf—Kent couldn’t figure out if she was still investigating, or if she had gotten bored with it and was simply reading a book. She was leaning against the bookcase, with a plaster bust of some Greek or Roman perched near her elbow.

  “Do all classics professors collect copies of statues and vases?” Kent asked, turning a large vessel she had just taken from a high shelf behind Davies’s desk in her hands. It had been partially hidden by a stack of composition notebooks and a dying fern.

  “Most of us, I suppose,” Tig said, looking up from the book. “It makes you feel closer to the past, to have these replicas of artifacts near at hand. We’re always seeking to deepen our connection to ancient history, and these physical objects can help.”

  “You have a statue of a woman in draped robes in your office,” Kent said.

  “Yes, she’s a small-scale replica of a caryatid from the Acropolis. They were used in place of columns on the temple Erechtheion.”

  “Ah. And the one you were going to throw at me?”

  Clare looked up at that comment, and Tig gave her a quick shrug. To her credit, she didn’t even pause to consider denying it. “A bust of Homer. And that’s a black-figure amphora you’re holding. The design with horses and chariots might mean it was made as a prize that would be given to the winner of a race. It would have been filled with precious oils.”

  “I like how they aged it to seem more authentic,” Clare said, coming over to stand beside Kent, and tracing a sealed crack in the vase with a gloved finger.

  Tig joined them. “I don’t remember seeing that amphora before, but I think he used to have a couple others in here. Can I hold it?”

  Kent handed the heavy vase to Tig and watched as she examined it more closely. She and Clare exchanged a curious glance as Tig frowned and moved so she was directly under the ceiling light.

  “Holy crap,” she said. “This might be authentic.”

  Chapter Eight

  Tig felt all her recent concerns fade into the background as she gingerly held the amphora in her hands. Chase’s death, the possible loss of her job, her confusing feelings toward Kent. Those things weren’t going to disappear anytime soon, but for this moment, she allowed herself to pretend they didn’t exist. She held the vase closer, squinting to see the details in its design, grateful that she already had gloves on before she picked it up.

  “Authentic?” Kent repeated. “How is that even possible? Wouldn’t it be in a museum somewhere?”

  “Art theft and blackmail,” Clare said. “This is getting more interesting by the minute.”

  Tig shook her head. “Ancient pieces come up for auction now and then, so it’s not unheard of to have one in a private collection. An amphora this size, in this condition, would bring well over one hundred thousand, probably double or triple that. More? I don’t know. Don’t get too excited, though,” she said, speaking as much to herself as to the others. She had looked into the prospect of buying a tiny ancient object for herself—a drinking cup for wine or water, maybe—but she hadn’t been able to justify the cost of even a small artifact that was in poor condition. This was the exact opposite. She couldn’t imagine how Davies had managed to acquire it. “I’m not an expert at all, so this might be something he picked up for five dollars at a kiosk outside the Parthenon.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” Kent stated.

  Tig met those beautiful hazel eyes that seemed to have gotten very good at looking right into her. And now, she knew, Kent’s observant eyes were most likely seeing the excitement in her own—excitement Tig wasn’t even bothering to hide.

  “I don’t believe that,” she agreed. She could cite her reasons, starting with the way the foot, neck, and handles of the jar had been made separately and attached with slip, while most modern replicas were fired as single pieces. But she was convinced more by the feel of the object in her hands than by her rudimentary knowledge of Greek vases. Even through the layer of her gloves, she felt an ancient energy emanating from the terra-cotta vessel. Some part of her, deep inside, resonated in turn.

  She was not telling Kent any of that.

  Clare gave a low whistle. “Maybe Professor Morris was a better blackmail subject than we thought.”

  “Or there were others,” Kent said. “If he was willing to blackmail one colleague, why stop there? Or why not add another crime, like embezzlement or theft?”

  “Or he saved up and bought it,” Tig said, still wanting to protect him, or at least to offer a less morally bankrupt explanation. “He’s single with no kids. He has a house in Pinehurst, which couldn’t have been cheap, but he might have been extremely frugal in the rest of his life in order to splurge on this.”

  Okay, he wasn’t frugal with clothes. He always wore well-tailored good clothes. He and Tig might share the same basic aesthetic, but she doubted they shopped at the same stores since his outfits always had a high-end quality about them. Hers had a nice midrange quality she preferred. And his car was newer and fancier than most of the other ones in the faculty parking lot. Nothing extravagant, but not an old beater. Maybe he ate rice and beans every night.

  Kent watched her silently, probably aware that she was refuting her own explanation in her mind.

  “So, he saves a shit-ton of pennies and buys this,” Kent said, after a moment. “Why hide it on a shelf and not tell his colleagues about it? You’d think it would be worth bragging about. Tell me, if you bought something like this, what would you do with it?”

  “I have no idea,” Tig said, hugging the amphora gently to her. “Why don’t I take this home for a week or two, then I can let you know?”

  “I’m going to need that back now,” Kent said, reaching for it, but Tig turned evasively to one side.

  “Fine, I was kidding. I’d probably keep it in my house for a few weeks.” Or months. Maybe years. “I’d want it close. But eventually, I’d give it to a local museum or place it in our gallery in Denny’s basement. It would be safer there, better protected than I could manage in my home, and I would want other people to be able to see it. I’d want my name on the plaque, though,” she added, in the name of honesty.

  “So, part of the joy of having it would be sharing it with others,” Kent said.

  “But plenty of art collectors just want pieces they can enjoy in private,” Clare interjected. “They have no interest in sharing, and some of the thrill of ownership comes from knowing no one else can see what you get to stare at every day.”

  Tig nodded. That sounded more like Chase Davies than she wanted to admit. “Keeping it here, but hidden, would play into that as well,” she said. “How exciting to know that other people are close to your treasure but don’t realize it’s there.”

  “That explanation makes sense to you, doesn’t it?” Kent asked her. “It fits the man you knew.”

  “Yes, and stop reading my mind,” Tig protested.

  Clare laughed. “You’re an open book, Tig. We can practically read your thoughts like you have the words scrolling across your forehead.”

  Now she knew why she had never won at a poker night in her life. “Chase liked to be in control,” she said, disregarding the commentary about her and focusing on the matter at hand. “He liked taking charge at meetings, that sort of thing. Until yesterday, I’d never seen him act out on it physically, but it was always present in his interactions with us. He was the one who started calling me Oedipus Rex, and it had a definite passive-aggressive tone when he started it. Once everyone else joined in, though, it turned more playful.”

  Tig paused, gently cradling this secret, wonderful thing that Chase had been hiding under her very nose. “Although we’re assuming he could display it but chose not to.”

  “Stolen?” Clare asked, at the same time as Kent’s “Smuggled?”

  “Either one,” Tig admitted. “The trend with artifacts is increasingly that they rightfully belong to their country of origin. In the past, anyone with enough money and some knowledge of where to dig could go pillage archaeological sites and take whatever they found back home. But with increasing regulations on trade comes a corresponding increase in illegal movement of ancient artifacts across borders. I don’t know if Chase was involved in anything like that, but it’s another possible reason for keeping it hidden.”

  Kent nodded, then gestured toward the amphora again. “How ancient are we talking here?”

  She snapped the question at her, but Tig didn’t take it personally. Clare was correct that the case had gotten more interesting, but Kent was probably focused on the fact that it was now much more complicated.

  “Maybe sixth century BCE? Somewhere around there. I know an art history professor who would be able to give us more information.”

  Kent rubbed her eyes and sighed. “If you’re about to say the name Libby Hart…”

  “Alexis Matthiou,” Tig said quickly. She knew, though, how excited Libby would be by this office visit and everything they had found so far. Tig had a feeling Clare was thinking the exact same thing. She was equally sure neither of them were going to share that with Kent. “She’s a visiting professor from Greece. Her specialty is sculpture, but she teaches a couple Museology courses, too, so she must have some credentials in that area.”

  Kent took the amphora from her again, and Tig congratulated herself on not keeping hold and starting a tug-of-war, although that was more because she wanted to protect the vessel than because she had a superhuman amount of self-control. “Fine, then,” Kent said. “I’ll contact her and see if she can help us. Tomorrow, we’ll go to Davies’s house and see what other treasures we can unearth. Tig, I’d like you to go with us.”

  Tig nodded, not in agreement with Kent’s request, but because she was already planning on accompanying them. If there was any chance of finding another artifact like this one, she wasn’t about to be left behind.

  “I’ll be there. And while we’re waiting for Professor Matthiou to check that out, I can keep it in my office.” Tig reached for the amphora, but Kent held it out of reach. “Hey,” Tig protested, “I’m just trying to do my part.”

  Kent shook her head. “I have enough on my plate without needing to chase you across the country when you run away with it.”

  “I would never…” Tig started, trying to inject as much of an air of affront as possible into her words. Clare and Kent were both staring her down, though, so she gave up the pretense. “I would never leave enough of a trail for you to find me.”

  “Ha. I’d have you in custody before you left the county. Now, I’m taking this over to the Art History Department. Sawyer, make sure this office is guarded, and get Professor Weston’s class schedule for tomorrow so we can plan our trip to Davies’s house for when she’s not teaching. And both of you”—she stared at each in turn—“remain silent about this. We don’t even know for certain what we have here.”

  Tig didn’t hear much conviction in her last order. After only one day of knowing each other, Kent believed her, even though she didn’t have the expertise or equipment to prove that her gut feeling was correct. Kent’s trust in her gave her a feeling of almost physical warmth in her belly, but even though she knew that trust was not given lightly, she had to merely be grateful for it and then let it go without letting it take root. The amphora was an exciting find, but it didn’t change the fact that Tig’s future was uncertain.

  Tig went back to her office and emptied some old files out of a box and piled them on the floor so Kent could use it to transport the vessel across campus in a less obvious way than tucking it under her arm. She carefully covered the vase with an old sweater she found draped over her coat rack, to protect it from the rain, and then Kent took the box and left her and Clare behind.

  “Are you gazing wistfully after my sergeant, or after that vase thing?” Clare asked, breaking Tig out of her reverie as they left the office behind Kent.

  “That vase thing is potentially an authentic prize amphora. And I’m not wistful. I’m just concerned because she might trip and fall, and I really should be there to catch the box if she does.”

  Clare grinned. “You were watching Kent walk away, weren’t you? I’m telling Libby that you’re in love with her.”

  Tig turned on her, indignant even though Clare was completely right. About the walking away part, not the rest of it. “First of all, I was not watching her. Second of all, who could blame me if I did when she manages to make wool uniform pants look so sexy from the back? Third, don’t you dare tell Libby anything about this. You know what a matchmaker she is—she’ll never leave me alone.”

  “Come on, you have to let me tell her,” Clare said as they left Tig’s office and headed toward the stairs. “She’s going to smell it on us, that we found something interesting. I need a diversion, and you’re it.” She paused at the top of the steps. “Although I might promise not to say a word to her if you vow to never mention anything remotely related to my sergeant’s ass around me again.”

  “Deal,” Tig said with relief. It didn’t mean she’d stop noticing it, but she could certainly manage not to say anything out loud to Clare.

  “Good. Now you need to get that dreamy look out of your eyes, no matter the cause, and go teach your class. I’ll see you at the restaurant tonight.”

  Tig nodded. “Pizza Tuesday. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  She walked down the hall toward the room where her advanced Greek students were waiting to translate lyric poetry, sternly telling herself that she would not go off topic and embark on a lecture about black-figure vases when they were meant to be discussing Callimachus, no matter how tempted she was.

  She was distracted enough by her internal monologue that she yelped and jumped about a foot to one side when Kam stepped out from a doorway and into her path, as if he had been waiting there for her. Which he might likely have been doing, since he knew her course schedule. He was holding his usual armload of loose papers, and Tig wondered if he just swept everything off his desk and carried it with him each time he left his office.