My deductive centers logged in immediately. The dates didn't correlate.

Mitchel went missing in February. The VFA profile gives a postmortem interval of six to seven weeks, placing the death in late August or early September.

Maybe Mitchel survived the night of the Mighty High Tap. Maybe he ventured off, then returned and died of exposure six months later.

Ventured off?

On a trip.

A seventy-two-year-old alcoholic with no car or money?

It happens.

Uh-huh. Died of exposure in the summer?

I sat, stumped and frustrated by a milion facts I couldn't integrate.

Hoping pictures would be more headache friendly, I switched to the photo archives.

Again, smal things caught my attention.

I'd gone through fifty or sixty folders when an eight-by-ten black-and-white aroused my interest. Flower-draped casket. Mourners, some in broad-shouldered baggy suits, others in traditional Cherokee dress. I flipped to the back. A yelowed label identified the event in faded ink: Charlie Wayne Tramper Funeral. May 17, 1959. The old man who had gone missing and been kiled by a bear.

My gaze roved over the faces, then froze on one of two young men standing apart from the crowd. I was so surprised I gasped.

Though forty years younger, there was no mistaking that face. He would have been in his late twenties in 1959, newly arrived from England. A professor of archaeology at Duke. An academic superstar about to fade.

Why was Simon Midkiff at Charlie Wayne Tramper's funeral?

My eyes slid right, and this time the gasp was audible. Simon Midkiff was standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who would later rise to the office of lieutenant governor.

Parker Davenport.

Or was it? I stared at the features. Yes. No. This man was much younger, thinner.

I hesitated, looked around. No one had poked through this file for half a century. It wasn't stealing. I would return the print in a few days, no damage done.

I slipped the photo into my purse, returned the folder to its drawer, and bolted.

Outside, I dialed Raleigh Information, requested a number for the Department of Cultural Resources, then waited while the connection was made. When a voice answered I asked for Carol Burke. She came on in less than ten seconds.

'Carol Burke.'

'Carol, this is Tempe Brennan.'

'Good timing. I was just about to close it up for the day. Are you planning to dig up another graveyard?'

Among its many duties, the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources is responsible for heritage preservation. When development involving state or federal moneys, permits, licenses, or lands is proposed, Carol and her coleagues order surveys and excavations to determine if prehistoric or historic sites wil be threatened. Highway projects, airport work, sewer lines — without their clearance, no ground is broken.

Carol and I met in the days when archaeology was my main focus. Twice Charlotte developers had retained me to help relocate historic cemeteries. Carol had overseen both projects.

'Not this time. I'd like information.'