“I guess I’m preoccupied with the new alkaloids,” Edward said. “I’m eager to get to the lab to work on them.”
“Why don’t you drive back to town and go do your thing?” Kim said. “I’ll take the train back later.”
“Good idea,” Edward said. “But I’ll take the train.”
After a mini-argument which Edward won because there was no way for Kim to get to the train station later that afternoon, they walked back to the cottage and climbed into the car. Halfway to their destination, Kim suddenly remembered Elizabeth’s head in the backseat.
“No problem,” Edward said. “I’m taking it with me.”
“On the train?” Kim asked.
“Why not,” Edward said. “It’s in a box.”
“I want that back up here ASAP,” Kim said. “They’ll be filling in that trench as soon as the utilities are in.”
“I’ll be finished with it in no time,” Edward assured her. “I’m just hoping there’s something in it to sample. If there isn’t maybe I could try for the liver.”
“We’re not going back into that coffin for anything but to put this head back,” Kim said. “Not with my father hovering around. To make matters worse, he is apparently in contact with the contractor.”
Kim dropped Edward off at the top of the stairs that led down to the train station. Edward lifted the plumbing supply box off the backseat.
“Want to meet for dinner?” Edward asked.
“I think not,” Kim said. “I’ve got to get back to my apartment. I’ve got laundry to do, and I’ve got to get up early for work.”
“Let’s at least talk on the phone,” Edward said.
“It’s a deal,” Kim said.
As much as Edward relished spending time with Kim, he was glad to get back to his lab. He was especially happy to see Eleanor, whom he did not expect to be there. She’d gone home, showered, and slept, but only for four or five hours. She said she was too excited to stay away.
The first thing she did was show him the mass spectrometry results. She was now certain that they were dealing with three new alkaloids. After talking with him that morning she’d spent time researching the results; there was no way they could have been made by any known compounds.
“Are there any more sclerotia?” Edward asked.
“A few,” Eleanor said. “Kevin Scranton said more will be on their way, but he didn’t know when. I didn’t want to sacrifice the ones we have until I’d spoken with you. How do you want to separate the alkaloids? With organic solvents?”
“Let’s use capillary electrophoresis,” Edward said. “If necessary we can go to micellular electrokinetic capillary chromatography.”
“Should I run a crude sample like I did with the mass spec?” Eleanor asked.
“No,” Edward said. “Let’s extract the alkaloids with distilled water and precipitate them with a weak acid. That’s what I did over at the biological labs and it worked fine. We’ll get purer samples, which will make structural work easier.”
Eleanor started toward her bench space, but Edward grabbed her arm. “Before you start on the extraction I want you to do something else,” he said. With no preamble he opened the plumbing supply box and lifted out the mummified head. Eleanor recoiled at the ghoulish sight.
“You could have warned me,” she said.
“I suppose I could have,” Edward said with a laugh. For the first time he looked at the head with a critical eye. It was rather lurid. The skin was dark brown, almost mahogany in color. It had dried to a leathery texture and retracted over the bony prominences, exposing the teeth in a gruesome smile. The hair was dried and matted like steel wool.
“What is it?” Eleanor asked. “An Egyptian mummy?”
Edward told Eleanor the story. He also explained that the reason he’d brought the head to the lab was to see if there was anything in the cranial vault to sample.
“Let me guess,” Eleanor said. “You want to run it through the mass spec.”
“Exactly,” Edward said. “It would be scientifically elegant if we could show peaks corresponding to the new alkaloids. It would be definitive proof that this woman ingested the new mold.”