Judy laughed. "I only had s.e.x with him once, if you must know, and it was so bad I had to use my vibrator when I got home."

Seth felt a little better by the information.

"And, Seth, cooperage was one of the most important crafts as well as one of the first. It dates back to the Bronze Age. Some of the very first tools made of metal were slat-cutters-froes, they were called-for barrel-making. It goes all the way back to the Alpine Valley civilizations five thousand years ago."

Seth shook his head. "You really do defy the cliches." "What?"

"Egghead chicks are supposed to be mousy and dull. They"re not supposed to have hot bods."

"Not that hot," she said, looking down at herself, fists to hips. "And I"ve definitely got some cellulite behind my thighs." Her lips pursed. "I"m almost forty. It"s inevitable."

He stared outright at her gleaming physique. "Judy. You"re beautiful. You don"t have any cellulite. Yeah, you"re almost forty but you look thirty. Your body"s excellent. No, it"s better than excellent."

"Then that would be preeminent."

Seth rolled his eyes. "All right! Preeminent! Your body"s hotter than a rock in a campfire-"

"How sweet!"

"-so stop all this talk about being fat!"

"Oh, I know I"m not fat now, but I used to be," she said, and now she was errantly rubbing an ice cube from the gla.s.s all around her abdomen. "Ooo, that"s nice in this heat."

Seth grew half frenzied. "Stop it, you"re killing me. You know I"ve got that wet-skin thing."

She grinned at him and pulled her top up. She rose a moment on her tiptoes when she ran the cube around a nipple. "That wet-skin thing is actually a wet-skin paraphilia, more commonly known as a fetish, and that particular fetish, I believe, is called swetanoglia."

Seth sat down on the barrel they"d placed on its side, then put his face in his hands. "My G.o.d. Is there anything you don"t know? You speak Czech, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew-"

"And Old Norse and Scythian," she added.

"You know about switchgra.s.s, ethanol, and bioma.s.s, earthquakes, steamboats, fetishes, cooperage, lamp oil made out of coal dust-"

"Slurry fuel."

"-and you"re a professor of theology."

"Theology and theosophy," she corrected yet again. "You make me feel like a moron."

"No need to. I just read a lot," she said.

The ice had erected her nipples to pinpoints off which the water dripped. Then she lowered the quickly dissipating cube and traced it back and forth across the waist of her bikini bottoms.

Oh, man, Seth thought.

She took two cubes in each hand and circled them round her abdomen. The rush of melted ice ran in rivulets down her skin.

"You trying to drive me nuts?"

She shot a sly grin. "That ruffles your feathers, huh?" "Yeah."

She kept doing it, bringing the cubes back to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Now water dripped off her nipples like a leaky faucet.

Can"t stand it anymore, Seth resolved. He jumped up abruptly, then rushed into her, embraced her, and slid his arms tight around. He kissed her at once, at the same time sliding his hands up and down her slick back. She embraced him as well, and when her hand cupped his crotch, he became fully aroused. Seth flung her top across the room, then pulled her bikini bottoms down to the bottom of her rump. She squealed in his mouth when he rubbed several ice cubes around her b.u.t.tocks, then up and down her back.

"We"re gonna do it right here," he breathed.

Her hand struggled with his belt, and she panted, "Yes, yes, right in the dirt..." But just as she started to lower herself, she bolted back upright and pushed him back.

"What"s wrong?"

"Nothing, but-"

"Come on! You can"t tease a guy like that!"

"Seth. Look," she said and pointed behind him.

Fl.u.s.tered, he turned around.

"Holy c.r.a.p..."

What neither of them had noticed was this: when Seth had risen from the barrel, it had begun to roll. It rolled right into the larch timbers of the wall.

And now some of the stulls pushed back at an even angle.

"That barrel"s not heavy enough to dislodge heavy wooden beams sunk in the ground!" Seth exclaimed.

"Maybe they"re not all sunk into the ground," Judy said with an edge of mystery and scurried over. "Grab the flashlight..."

So much for getting laid in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Seth resigned. The blaze of sunlight from the open bas.e.m.e.nt doors didn"t reach back far enough. He grabbed the flashlight and returned.

Judy pushed on the dislodged beams, and three of them swung back farther, as if on a hinge.

"Judy, is that-"

"It"s a door, Seth. A hidden door." And then she went in. Seth followed.

It"s a hidden door, all right, he saw and came up right behind her. He waved the flashlight"s heavy beam to reveal the details of a long, narrow, low-ceilinged room walled by still more dark rafters.

"Gavriel Lowen"s hidden stash?" Seth Joked.

"He was very successful," Judy said, looking around. "Which explains the hidden room."

"In what way?"

She smirked at him. "A successful mill owner, who manufactured railroad ties? He was very rich. Rich men need a safe place to store their valuables."

"Yeah, but I don"t see any-"

The flashlight fell on the only thing that occupied the room. It was a cabinet that had been mounted to the wooden back wall.

Judy grinned in the light-wedged dark. She touched one of the cabinet"s k.n.o.bs. "Maybe this is where Gavriel Lowen kept his riches..."

Something primal in Seth upped his heart-rate, and then it came right back down when he reminded himself that riches were something he didn"t need at all. It wouldn"t matter if all those barrels out there were full of gold, and the same goes for this cabinet. I don"t need any of it...

Judy opened the cabinet. There were three shelves. Seth let the light shine inside, then something shined back.

"Even as negligent a Jew as I"ve been, I know what that it. It"s a menorah," he observed.

"Yep."

Cobwebs covered the eight-branched candelabrum, and off of each cup hung stalact.i.tes of very old wax.

"Looks like gold," Seth said.

Judy pulled it out of its froth of webs, checked the bottom of the base for markings, and tapped on it. "Nope. Bra.s.s. But the date on the bottom says 1810, Schecktel Metalworks." Judy nodded, her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s gleaming in the flashlight glare. "This is worth money."

From the second shelf Judy withdrew a well-veneered wooden bowl, and placed it under the light. Engraved in the bottom was a- "Star of David," he said.

"And, more accurately, the Magen David, the shield of the king of Israel." She put it back inside, then her brow furrowed. "Now what the heck is this?"

She pulled out something that looked like a black carrot.

"I got no idea," Seth said with a chuckle.

She tapped it, sniffed it. "Some kind of root, I guess, but I"m not aware of any Jewish rites that used roots."

Seth shrugged, looked deeper into the cabinet. "Looks like only one more thing inside." He reached in to remove a finely crafted wooden box that looked like cedar. It was about eight inches long, one inch wide, and one inch high. There seemed to be no lid, but a crescent-shaped aperture at one end.

"You know what that is, too, right?" she asked.

"Uh...no..."

"It"s a mezuzah vessel."

"Really? I thought mezuzahs were gold and tiny," Seth reflected. "You wear them around your neck."

Judy took it from him, ran her finger over the aperture. "It"s only very recent that people would wear them around their necks. In the old days they were this size and almost always made of wood. They were hung on doors. But the actual mezuzah is the piece of paper inside, which has a calligraphied prayer on it."

Seth felt more inept than ever.

"Come on!" she blurted and moved toward the hidden door.

Seth"s eyes went wide. "Oh, it"s time to have s.e.x in the bas.e.m.e.nt now?"

"No, silly! Let"s go upstairs and see what the prayer says!"

IV.

"At least he didn"t seem too p.i.s.sed off," D-Man said, stepping behind the shovel blade to dig deeper. "Wasn"t our fault the dude got those guys to move the barrels to his house."

"d.a.m.n straight," Nutjob agreed, wielding the other shovel. "Not our fault."

"We"ll see what he wants next but a"course, I think I can guess." He looked down at the hole. "Won"t be as nutty as this, though."

"Yeah. Go figure. We done some off-the-wall s.h.i.t in the past but this takes the pie."

D-Man frowned. "Cake, moron! This takes the cake." Nutjob smirked. "Cake, pie? Don"t see what difference it makes."

They were digging just in the fringe of woods off one of the back roads. From the fields behind, peepers chirruped en ma.s.s, a throbbing sound like electronic music. The moon hung high and bright, which afforded them sufficient light for this very arcane job: burying a body that-they"d been told-would have to be dug back up later.

Strange, D-Man thought, and lifted out another shovelful of dirt.

"But it sure was a funny correspondence, wasn"t it?" Nutjob chuckled. "The man calls us and tells us to find a body to bury, then five minutes later Rosh calls us and tells us he"s got a body he wants us to get rid of."

D-Man stopped midstroke, thought a second, then glared. "A funny correspondence? You jack-head! It ain"t a correspondence! It"s a coincidence!"

Nutjob"s bottom lip hung low as his brain registered the word. "Oh."

"Jack-head. But you"re right, even though ya got the word wrong. First, the man, then Rosh. Like killin" two bears with one stone."

"Yeah, man. Two bears..."

When the hole was deep enough, they slid the flimsy plywood coffin out of the step van. Inside the homemade box lay a roughly attractive female corpse with mussed-up auburn hair. She had once answered to the name of Carrie "Lazy" Whittaker. She was naked now. But when Rosh had delivered her earlier in the day, she"d been wearing a radiant pink halter top and jeans. The why"s and how"s of her current nudity were best left unsaid.

"Guess I"ll screw the lid on." Nutjob took the initiative, but then D-Man slapped the back of his head.

"Don"t ya listen to nothin"? There"s somethin" we gotta do first."

"Oh...yeah." Nutjob picked up the towel-wrapped bundle off the van floor and put it in the coffin with the dead girl. Her skin looked bluish in the moonlight.

D-Man smoked a cigarette while Nutjob screwed the lid on, and when the job was done, both men dropped the coffin in the hole and filled the dirt back in.

Nutjob began to tamp the earth down with a booted foot, until- "Oww!"

-D-Man slapped him in the head again.

"Are ya stupid?"

"Uh..."

D-Man shook his head. "Don"t pack the dirt down! It"ll just make it harder tomorrow night when we gotta dig it back up again."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Now let"s get outta here. Tomorrow"ll be one h.e.l.l of a busy day..." They got in the big van and drove off.

The towel-wrapped bundle contained several loaves of bread.