MURDER NEVER FORGETS EXCERPT Carly," he says. He's standing on the path behind me a little to the left; there's a curious alert note in his voice. "Yes." "Someone is sleeping here." Sleeping? I get up. I start to put an arm around him, but he doesn't seem to need that. His voice is tight in what I think of as his 'archeology-discovery' tone, the one used for 'This is the entry to a tomb.' "Shoes," he says. "Nice ones." The shoes are women's: small, flat, and thin-soled. The uppers are silver kidskin. There are small, bony feet and legs projecting out of the shoes, but not side-by-side and neatly arranged; no, one shoe has been almost kicked off, one white-stockinged leg is twisted on top of the other. "Father, stand back." My father doesn't want to stand back. He pushes up right behind me. I kneel down and fight off some of the long grass blades that are bent across the out-flung shape. It lies on its back, arms stretched. Its dress, a blue one with spangles across the shoulder straps, is disheveled. The person in the dress is someone I recognize perfectly well in her patch of bright moonlight. The last time I saw her she was wearing her moon-and-stars cape. "Ah," says my father. I suppose he, like me, has recognized Hospital Aide Mona. Her peroxided hair is splashed around among the grass blades, but the parakeet clip still clings, a darker color in the bright hair. "She's not wearing her scissors belt," he says. One of the things I didn't like about working in the Santa Cruz lab was dealing with the dead animals. I've never seen a dead person before, but people are animals and dead is dead. And this person, not-sleeping on her back, really looks dead. Although... well, I saw her just recently, didn't I? Giggling and carrying on in her Mona way, part of a party, drinking a drink? I touch the back of my hand to the pulse-place in her neck. Nothing. And then to her mouth. Again, nothing, no moisture. But she feels perfectly warm. I bend closer and get my lips near hers. The eyes are half-open; there's moonlight reflected back in them. And now I understand it—the twist of the head. The neck kinked back in that impossible angle. Hospital Aide Mona is truly dead. With her head at that peculiar slant, I'd guess she dies of a broken neck. I notice that one of my hands is shaking Not my right hand, my left one, the hand that an Egyptian fortune teller once told me had the fate line in it. "Daddy," I say. "We should get back. Quickly." My father is the world's biggest innocent, but he knows about death, not just because of dead pharaohs but also because of dead archaeology workers, people falling off ladders or getting rocks dropped on their heads or coming down with bilharzias. Sometimes, believe it or not, he had over a hundred workers asking him what to do. Right now, he looks down at Mona and seems to remember some earlier event. The inspector will be here to investigate. "Shouldn't we do artificial..." He can't think of the word. "This is alarming," he says. "It wouldn't work. Let's just get back fast." "I'm feeling dizzy." And I guess he is. I almost have to drag him. © Diana O'Hehir