'That was last week. Did you lighten your hair?'

'A mistake. What's this progress?'

I told her about the DNA hit.

'So your foot belongs to whoever went soupy inside the wal.'

'And it wasn't any jive deer.'

'Who was it?'

'I'l bet the farm it was Jeremiah Mitchel.'

'The black Cherokee.'

'Yes.'

'Now what?'

'I'm waiting for a cal from the Swain County sheriff. With the DNA match, a warrant should be a piece of cake. Even from that medieval moron of a magistrate.'

'Nice aliteration.'

'Thanks.'

Over dinner, we decided on Wild Dunes at Thanksgiving. The rest of the time Anne described her trip to England. I listened.

'Did you see anything besides cathedrals and monuments?' I asked when she paused for breath.

'Caves.'

'Caves?'

'Totaly bizarre. This guy named Francis Dashwood had them dug sometime in the eighteenth century. He wanted a Gothic atmosphere, so he had this corny three-sided stone structure built around the entrance. Cathedral windows, doors, and arches, a stone-bordered portal in the center, and a black wrought-iron fence at each side. Creates a sort of courtyard. Gothic chic, complete with souvenir shop, cafe, and white plastic tables and chairs for the thirsty medieval tourist.'

She took a sip of wine.

'You enter the caves through a long white tunnel with a low, rounded ceiling.'

'Why white?'

'It's al fake. The caves were chiseled out of chalk.'

'Where are they?'

'West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. It's about an hour's drive northwest of London. Someone told Ted about the place, so we had to stop off on our way to Oxford.' She roled her eyes. 'Tempe, these caves are mondo bizarro. Passages meander al over the place, with little rooms and crannies and side branches. And they're filed with al sorts of creepy carvings.'

'Creepy?'

'Most of the engravings look like the work of kids, but they're way too grotesque.'

'Like what?'

'A face with a cross gouged into its forehead, another wearing a sorcerer's hat, the mouth and eyes perfect O's.'

She gave what she must have considered a ghostly grimace.

'Tunnels split, then rejoin, then change direction for no reason. There's a Banqueting Hal, and a River Styx, complete with fake stalactites, that you have to cross to enter a chamber caled the Inner Temple. My personal favorite was a winding passage to nowhere stuffed with tacky mannequins of Dashwood and his cronies.'

'Why did Dashwood dig the caves?'

'Maybe he had more money than brains. The guy's mausoleum is there, too. Looks like the Coliseum.'

She drained her wine, swalowed quickly as another idea struck her.

'Or maybe Frank was an eighteenth-century Walt Disney. Planned to make milions opening the place as a tourist attraction.'

'Didn't they provide an explanation?'