Shell Game — Sarah R. Shaber

North Carolina professor and forensic historian Simon Shaw is stunned to find the bludgeoned body of his close friend, archaeologist David Morgan, slumped over his computer. Moreover, Shaw is convinced his colleague's death is linked to a 14,000-year-old Indian skeleton, a momentous discovery embroiled in a raging controversy. Morgan's vote would have decided the bones' fate: either to be buried according to the demands of the local Native Americans, or studied as potentially the greatest prehistoric archaeological find in North America.

As the executor of Morgan's estate, Shaw attempts to connect the dots of the victim's missing--or stolen--notes, files and crucial artifacts. Though warned off the case by the police, he probes the darker reaches of a friend's life, and his own emotional vulnerabilities, to reveal the surprising identity of a killer more than willing to murder again.