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What bones are buried in the shadows of the past?

Asked to join in a dig at the site of the eighteenth–century Chandler House, archaeologist Emma Fielding and her student crew have descended upon Stone Harbor, Massachusetts. But certain residents of the tiny coastal community are none too happy about Emma's arrival — especially when her excavation uncovers a pair of freshly slain corpses. There are dark forces at play in this dangerously divided town, where a distrust of strangers wars with a desire for tourist dollars. And when a young local's life is snuffed out, Emma is determined to get to the twisted roots of the strange secrets buried in this killing ground. But a mystery that lies among the tumbled ruins of a once grand manor could change Stone Harbor forever. And for some murderous someone, one more death — Emma's — would be a small price to pay to keep it hidden.

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Past Malice

Avon

Chapter One

I have to smile when I think that they're imagining big skirts, wigs, and courtly manners. They are not imagining a world without antibiotics or indoor plumbing or the hope of democracy and equal rights. They are forgetting that they might be lost without supermarkets or instantaneous global communication or electricity. They are not thinking of a world where, to paraphrase Monty Python, the king was the only one who didn't smell like crap, which isn't such a bad summary for most of history.

It wasn't even the neat row of trenches by the side of the house that reminded me of a battlefield: I would never have allowed my students to let things get that messy. No, our trenches were orthogonal, hell, even the back dirt piles were clean, made of well-sifted loam, filled with fat worms and sorted pebbles, the sort of thing that sends gardeners drooling. If we didn't have to put it all back when we were finished, I would have brought it back home with me myself. And it wasn't the fencing we'd put up around the site to keep the unwary, the unthinking, and the dim-witted from falling into one of our nice, square units and breaking a neck, or worse, disturbing my carefully exposed stratigraphy. We'd even deliberately chosen the portable wooden fencing to blend in with the scenery, so you couldn't even claim that it resembled a military picket. No, I'm afraid it was the general background hum of negative emotions that made me feel like I was digging in for my own protection as much as I was trying to learn about the Chandler family.

I'm not usually so misanthropic; it's just that I was tired of trying to fight to do my job properly and we still had another two weeks of work to go. It would have worn the patience of a saint down to a nubbin, and I'm no saint for all my sister claims I am a Puritan. I just knew that I had to bide my time and pick which battles to fight, and which ones to avoid. Anyone who tells you that the Ivory Tower is a quiet retreat from the dirty old "outside world" doesn't know what she's talking about.

I sighed and stood up from the bench, telling myself that I would be better off for another walk around the property, and another long look out at the ocean behind the house. I was waiting to be invited into the Stone Harbor Historical Society's board meeting to tell them all about the archaeological research I'd talked them into letting me do on their property at the Chandler House. I figured there'd be another half hour or so of their private business - to which I was pointedly not invited - before I had to go in.

The main part of the Chandler House was an early example of a brick Georgian structure, two floors with four rooms each, and an attic with dormers. As I faced the front, there was a small brick addition to the right; there was none on the left. When I walked around to the rear, there was another, later addition, also in brick; its two large cube-shaped rooms faced the ocean that relentlessly crashed against the Massachusetts coast.

I picked up a flat pebble from the path and slung it side-wise, making it skip three times before it lost momentum and sank. The one that followed it only brushed the water twice, then hit a wave with a plop. The next pebble I picked up ached to be thrown at the fat seagull I saw perching on a white-stained piling not too far away from the shore. I told myself that I could hit it, if I wanted to. But my aim is pretty bad and I didn't really want to wreck my karma by taking out my bad mood on the poor bird, no matter how nasty I think gulls are. Besides, my veterinarian sister was staying with me and any slight I inflicted on the animal kingdom would be immediately telegraphed to her, and she would instigate a massive retaliation. So I dropped the stone back on the path and walked up the lawn to the house. After another half-perambulation around the building, I heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel in front of the house.

"Evening, Professor."

I looked up to see Justin Fisher, one of three security guards who worked here. A nice kid, maybe twenty-four or so, who looked like he was five years younger. He had straw-colored hair that was cut fashionably short and close to his head, a crooked smile, and a youthfully eager presence that was made positively gawky by the authority of his uniform ...

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Past Malice by Dana Cameron
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