Murder on the Silk Road by Stefanie Matteson

more memorable stunts, and suggesting that he was an incompetent scientist.”
    “Needless to say, Bouchard wasn’t too happy about it,” added Dogie.
    “But he’s here,” observed Marsha.
    “Politics,” said Dogie disgustedly.
    Charlotte sat on a rock, sipping from Bert’s canteen and studying Larry’s camp. It looked more like a movie set. She had seen similar camps erected for indulgent directors in locations which, if they weren’t quite as remote as this, were close to it. But that was the power of the studio, not a university.
    “Yale must have a lot of money,” she said, nodding at the camp as she passed the canteen over to Lisa.
    “Not Yale,” said Lisa. “Larry’s family. He’s one of the Fiskes. He uses his trust fund to fulfill his fantasies of the explorer’s life. Hey, I’d do the same if I had the dough. Bert told you how Bouchard finds fossils; now let me tell you how Larry finds fossils. Or rather, procures fossils.”
    “How does he procure fossils?” prompted Charlotte.
    “Not like Dogie—with his head’ swiveling from side to side like a mechanical doll and his body bent over in the paleontology stoop,” Lisa said.
    Dogie stuck his tongue out at her.
    “Larry’s technique involves the liberal distribution of cold, hard cash. His typical M.O. is to go to the market in whatever area it is in which he’s looking for fossils, and put out the word that he’s looking for old bones and that he’ll pay cash for them. Then, he sits around and drinks tea for a couple of days and waits.” She paused to take a long swig of water from the canteen. “Then, when somebody brings him some interesting-looking bones—which somebody invariably does—he asks them to lead him to the spot where they found them, and bingo, he’s made a find. No sweat, no aching back, no sore feet.”
    “I think it’s dishonest,” said Dogie, with a good-natured grin.
    “You’re just jealous,” teased Lisa.
    “But he didn’t do that here, did he?” asked Charlotte. “From what Peng said, you expected to find fossils here.”
    “Yes,” replied Lisa. “But we didn’t know exactly where.” She waved an arm at the tortured landscape surrounding them. “He managed to find the fossil-bearing rock pretty fast. I’ll bet you twenty to one that a week ago you could have found him in the Dunhuang bazaar passing out the yuan.”
    “Judging from what he said last night, his technique must have paid off,” said Charlotte.
    “We’ll soon see,” said Orecchio with a hint of skepticism.
    A few minutes later they had reached the camp. The working area was a large tent whose sides had been rolled up to let in the breeze. There were three large tables and a mahogany camp desk, of the type from which Napolean might have commanded the troops at Waterloo. Behind the desk was a leather swivel chair. A bar tray held an assortment of fine liquors.
    “How did he get all of this stuff out here?” asked Charlotte.
    “Has it shipped,” replied Lisa, flopping down in the swivel chair. “There’s nothing that you can’t accomplish if you have enough dough,” she said as she spun herself around in the chair. “He had this same stuff in Tanzania, in Chile, in India. All the comforts of Abercrombie and Fitch.”
    Bert and Dogie wandered over to investigate some dinosaur bones that were spread out on the tables. There weren’t many, but Larry had only been here a short time. Orecchio and Peng took seats in a pair of burgundy leather armchairs that were placed on an Oriental carpet in one corner of the tent.
    “I wonder where everybody is?” asked Lisa.
    “We’re early,” said Orecchio, checking his watch. “It’s still only ten of. He’ll probably be here any minute.”
    Standing at the side of the tent, Charlotte looked out at the campsite. In the middle was an old well sheltered by a stone hut. Arrayed around the well were other tents that served as kitchen, sleeping quarters, storeroom, and so on. A white