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“No.” Patricia sighed. “Her husband was called Jonathan, and he was a film director who is probably turning in his grave at his widow’s terrible performance. Marcus is something else entirely. I think mentioning him might be Alice’s idea of talking in code. I’m fairly certain she was trying to give me a message.”
“What message?” Julia stopped emailing Elle.
“That Marcus is up to his neck in this mess. After Alice’s over-the-top declarations of love for Marcus, I get the horrible feeling that the woman I call my lifelong best friend may have had sex with my ex-lover. Honestly, I told her the man was rubbish in bed. What was she thinking?”
“Gran!” Both of Julia’s hands shot up to cover her open mouth.
Patricia rolled her eyes. “We’re old. Not dead.”
“But the same man?”
“Not at the same time! Who knows what the crazy woman meant. It could all be part of her daft act.”
Julia clapped her hands over her ears. “I didn’t hear that. I can’t hear you talk about your boyfriends. It didn’t happen.”
Patricia’s eye roll was much more dramatic than anything Alice had managed during her broadcast. “You and I are going to have a talk, missy.” She pointed at Julia. “A woman doesn’t stop having needs just because she ages. And Marcus wasn’t my boyfriend. I’m in my sixties. I don’t have boyfriends. I have lovers. Your feminist education is sorely lacking.”
“This isn’t about being a feminist.” Julia’s voice rose, and Joe realised she wasn’t shy when it came to family. It gave him hope that, one day, she’d feel comfortable enough to shout at him too. “It’s about being a granddaughter,” Julia shouted.
“Enough!” Joe held up his hands for silence and hid his shock when he got it. “Your sex life isn’t interesting to anybody but you,” he told the pouting Patricia. “What we need to talk about is this guy Marcus and why everybody is so damned interested in a worthless mummy.”
“I’ll tell you everything. But first I need a drink.” Patricia looked over her shoulder at them. “I suggest you get one too.”
Chapter 6
“Do you know what a mummy hunter is?” Patricia asked them once she had a glass of wine in her hand and was settled into an armchair.
“I thought we were going to start with this Marcus guy?” Joe said.
“I’ll get there, but you need some background first. Do I need to explain what a mummy hunter is or do you all know what I’m talking about?”
“Let’s assume we don’t have a clue.” Ed pulled out a chair at the dining table. “Start from the beginning and fill us in.”
Joe was sitting on the sofa beside Julia. He leaned forward, grabbed a bottle of water from the table in front of them, unscrewed the cap and handed it to Julia. When she took it and drank without looking up from the notes she was scribbling on her iPad, he smiled indulgently. Her brain was working a mile a minute. Again. Damn, but she was gorgeous when she was thinking. He mentally rolled his eyes at himself. He was losing his mind over the woman. It was only a matter of time before he started googling Shakespearean sonnets to drop into conversation.
Patricia rested her wine glass on the arm of the chair. “There are a dedicated group of people who study mummified bodies. Most of them aren’t experts in the field, but enthusiasts. Well-educated enthusiasts. We’re talking research biologists and professors in palaeontology or criminal pathologists.” She pointed at Julia. “You would have made a fabulous criminal pathologist, darling. It isn’t too late to continue your studies, if you’re interested. I could put a word in at my old university for you.”
“Thanks, Gran,” Julia mumbled, her focus on her iPad.
“Back to the mummy,” Joe said when Patricia paused. Presumably so they could spend a moment in awe of the calibre of her fellow mummy-obsessed nut jobs.
After giving him a look of pure censure, she carried on. “These people get together every couple of years for a conference in Chile. They present papers on everything to do with mummies. They swap stories of new finds and speculate about sites for undiscovered bodies. About ten years ago, just before she officially retired, Alice made a documentary for the Discovery Channel about the conference and the people who attended.”
“I thought she wasn’t used to being in front of the camera?” Ed said.
“She was a producer,” Patricia said. “Women can do that nowadays—in their free time away from cooking and cleaning, and looking pretty for their husbands.”
Ed held up his hands in an amused, but genuine, sign of apology.
“Anyway, that’s when she became hooked on the subject of mummified bodies. Alice asked me to attend the next conference with her, and I was just as fascinated. Since then, we’ve become part of the group and have attended all of the conferences.”
“What’s this got to do with your missing friend?” Joe asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Patricia snapped. “Have a little patience.”
Joe rubbed a hand over his jaw and motioned for her to carry on. Seemed like they were going to do things at her pace, whether they liked it or not. It didn’t appear to matter that they were working against a damned tight deadline.
He got up, wandered to the food cart, selected some prewrapped cookies and took them back to Julia. Again, she accepted the snack and ate it without even realising what she was doing. It made Joe want to keep feeding her just to see how long it would take her to register she was being fed. He glanced at the iPad, which she was furiously filling with information—all in neat, bullet-pointed columns. There was definitely something spectacular going on in her gorgeous head.
