She wants to control you.

“A teeny tiny piece of a cockroach wing which is why I mentioned dirt as in nasty spaces and hidey-holes where critters congregate,” Bryce says. “Oh my God maybe the source is the actual house? Holy shit. Are you noticing insects? Is it slovenly? I hope it doesn’t get out about Amanda Gilbert that her daughter lived like one of these hoarders on TV with their filth and dead pets and bugs everywhere …?”

“Tell Ernie I’m going to call him directly.”

“Wait a minute. He’s saying something. What …?”

I hear Ernie’s voice in the background again. I make out the word millefiore, Italian for a thousand flowers. He’s referring to a type of bead made centuries ago in Venice and used as currency.

I HANG UP on Bryce and enter the number for Ernie’s lab. Suddenly my favorite microscopist is in my earpiece, and the sound of his familiar voice is a comfort and a relief.

“It goes without saying this isn’t something I usually come across, Kay, but it’s familiar,” he explains. “I’m not an archaeologist and don’t pretend to be but over the years I’ve become sort of an armchair one, a Sherlock at rooting through society’s detritus. When you’ve worked enough cases there isn’t much you don’t see, including remnants from the past. Like minié and musket balls that mistakenly end up in the labs or buttons and bones that turn out to be from the American Revolution.”

“Which is what you think this is from. The past.”

“I’ve seen similar artifacts. You know how much I’ve always loved digging things up microscopic and otherwise, and you may remember a couple years ago I took my family to Jamestown, to the excavation there. We got a personal tour of the site, got to go through the lab and see all the artifacts. That’s one reason the piece of glass from your scene at Brattle Street is familiar. It’s reminiscent of trade beads our early colonists used to snooker the Indians. Especially beads that were blue like the sky. I guess they were passed off as good luck or magical.”

“You’re talking about a time period of the late fifteen hundreds, early sixteen hundreds,” I reply.

“Your broken bead might be that old.”

“Any details you can give me, Ernie.”

“What we’ve got is a decent-size fragment that’s multifaceted, made from three layers of glass, probably by molding it over the heat of an oil lamp as opposed to drawn or blown glass that requires a proper work space and equipment like a kiln. Once upon a time making beads was a cottage industry sort of like minting your own money, and typically the finishing touch was adding dots of colored glass or thin threads of gold, copper, silver, a pièce de résistance for the perfect gaudy bauble.”