Bound For Eternity Page 4

  "Fine. Gotti, check the staff list with Miss Blake, and we'll start. How about you first, Dr. Fitzgerald? Then you can go about your regular business."

  "Certainly." Victor stood up with his usual grace. "The rest of you may go back to your offices until you are called." He led the police away.

  Ellen and I left together. Ellen's usual perky expression was subdued today, but nothing could stop her talking.

  "Why was Marion here last night, anyway?" she asked. "I thought she couldn't do anymore on Carl's exhibit until he finalized his artifact list."

  "I think she wanted to play with the sarcophagus and mummy placements for the Egyptian exhibit. That's what she was muttering about when I talked to her earlier," I answered.

  "You were right, though, Lisa. Why attack Marion? Why attack any of us?" Ellen's blue eyes were puzzled.

  Why indeed, I thought, as I turned into my office. I sat down in my tattered black swivel chair and stared out the window, which had a stunning view of the staff parking lot.

  Had the attacker still been in the building when Stuart and I had carried the mummy up last night? It was certainly possible. There were plenty of places to hide-behind partitions, or the larger Roman statues...I shivered. The building was like Swiss cheese-too many entrances, and too many offices.

  Susie stuck her head in the door. "You're next," she said. "McEwan and Gotti are waiting for you."

  As I followed her reluctantly, an even more chilling thought struck me.

  Both policemen had asked us not to talk about the crime. Did that mean they were just trying to keep us quiet? Or were they certain the attacker was a member of the staff?

  ? ? ? ?

  Sergeant McEwan was seated at Susie's desk looking like he belonged there. His partner, a short woman with intelligent dark eyes, was perched on one side of the desk with an open notebook.

  "Take a chair, Ms. Donahue," said McEwan. "We'll need to go over some of the same ground you covered last night."

  I could hear other cops moving around the gallery as they bagged and tagged bits of evidence. What had they found, anyhow? I was nervous, but McEwan took me matter-of-factly through my account again while Detective Gotti took notes. I described the sequence of events all over again. When I got to the part about seeing Marion's bloody head, I gulped and had to stop. I reached into my pocket for a Kleenex and blew my nose.

  "Sorry. Seeing her like that...it was horrible. I think that's all, except that I checked for a pulse. Then I got Emma and Stuart out of there and pulled the alarm switch."

  "And you were present when the medics and the Crime Scene Unit arrived."

  "That's right."

  "Did you observe anything, anything at all, that was out of place in the gallery?"

  I thought hard. "No. It looked to me like Marion had been making notes about the Egyptian exhibit, because her clipboard was there, next to her. The mummy case was open, but that was because we'd taken the mummy out for the X-ray session. I've been thinking, though..."

  "Yes?" McEwan's eyebrows twitched, but otherwise his face revealed nothing.

  "It could be an outsider who attacked Marion, because the building has so many doors and several departments besides the Museum. But it could also be a staff member, someone Marion knew and wasn't afraid to turn her back on. And if it was a staff member, he or she could have come in the back door."

  McEwan stared at me "Wait a minute, last night you told Sergeant Clyde that only Dr. Fitzgerald, Marion Grainger, and Ginny Maxwell have master keys."

  "That's right. But the rest of us have several keys each-the ones we need to do our jobs every day. So, we can get in any time the system is disarmed, and most of us have acquired back door keys because the back stairway's closer to the parking lot."

  "Hmm. Too many keys altogether. When does the museum usually close?"

  "Five p.m. every night except Tuesday, when we're open until eight. But the building is open until midnight because of the student computer labs on the first floor." I resisted the desire to fidget in my chair, sensing that both cops were watching my body language.

  McEwan lifted the clipboard, showing me the list Marion had been working on. "What do these numbers mean?"

  "That's a list of objects for the Egyptian exhibit. The first number is the year of acquisition-24 means 1924-and the last number is the artifact number."

  "Okay." He made a note.

  "Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against Marion?" asked Gotti.

  "No. She was a very nice person, very dedicated to her job. A little insecure sometimes-she hated even the thought of criticism. But actually she was the best preparator the museum had ever had."

  "What does a preparator do?" That was Detective Gotti. Her laser-beam focus on my face said, "I'm watching you, sweetheart, and I miss nothing."

  "Usually exhibit preparation-layout and installation of artifacts in the cases. But because we have such a small staff, she actually did considerably more. Marion tracked the movement of objects in and out of storage, display, and conservation, and helped maintain the database." Her job actually overlapped that of the registrar, Ginny Maxwell, who controlled the database, but I didn't see any point in explaining that.

  "What do you know of her home situation?" asked McEwan.

  "She's single. Lives-I mean lived-alone, no kids or pets. I think the people at the museum were her family, and the artifacts under her care were her reason to get up in the morning."

  "Thank you, Ms. Donahue. Oh, one more thing-how long has Dr. James Barber been your lawyer?"

  Oops.

  "About twenty-four hours. He introduced himself that way last night to make sure he'd be allowed to stay."

  "Hmph. You may go now."

  "But don't leave town?" I said, producing a startled grin from McEwan. "Um, there's something else..."

  They both looked at me attentively.

  "The extra security we talked about before you got here-having staff members double up on weekends and at night-won't do any good if the attacker is one of us."

  McEwan's eyebrows shot up. "True. I'm going to assign an officer to cover the museum as much as possible, but we're short-staffed. If we get another homicide somewhere else in the city, that person may have to be pulled off duty here."

  "Have you found the weapon yet?"

  McEwan and Gotti looked at each other.

  McEwan leaned forward with his big hands braced on his thighs. "No. We're still looking. But it was something heavy, with a distinct edge to it. Something larger than a flashlight but smaller than one of your nude Greek statues." His eyes glinted with momentary amusement. "If you find something that fits that description in an odd place, don't touch it-it might still have traces of blood or hair on it-and call me immediately." He handed me a card with two phone numbers on it.

  I nodded. McEwan said I should tell Carl to come in next, right after I had my fingerprints taken.

  "Sergeant? Something you might not know-we all wear white gloves when we handle artifacts. So any fingerprints you find are more likely to be from visitors than staff."

  "Thanks, that's useful. But I'm sure you aren't wearing gloves all the time." He looked pointedly at my ungloved hands. "You all touch the glass cases, the doorknobs, the chairs in the galleries, the ladders..."

  "Right," I conceded.

  As my fingers were rolled one by one over the inkpad and pressed onto a card labeled "Donahue, Lisa K.," I went over the interview in my mind. The police might view me as an ally since I had been so cooperative. On the other hand, there was no witness, as far as I knew, to the time I had entered the museum. McEwan had to keep me on his list of suspects.

  With that uncomfortable thought, I went to find Carl.

  ? ? ? ?

  It was late afternoon when I decided I just had to have another cup of coffee. The police were still all over the museum, photographing and sketching. We would remain closed at least until the end of the week, maybe longer.

  As I topp
ed up my mug with black sludge and added two spoons of extra sugar for courage, Ellen joined me.

  "What an awful day." Ellen flopped down onto the green couch that had seen better days and ran her hands through her short blond hair so it stood up in spikes.

  "You can say that again." I joined her and took a noisy gulp. "You know, Marion was worried about artifacts moving around-she said she thought sometimes they walked around by themselves at night and chose new drawers."

  "Sounds like her. She was such a perfectionist."

  "A good quality for a preparator."

  "Yes," said Ellen. "But she was like a neurotic pet ferret when she thought she'd misplaced an artifact. Ran all over the place, driving people nuts."

  "And paranoid, too, about damaging stuff. Remember when she broke that Greek vase and hid the pieces in a drawer for a week before she showed them to you?"

  Ellen grinned. "I sure do."

  We were silent for a moment.

  "Hey!" said Ellen, eager to change the subject. "You didn't tell me how the X-ray went."

  I smiled grimly. "We've had other things on our minds. It went fine. We found out that the mummy's a child, with a possible fracture to the jaw. Oh, yeah-the radiographer hit on me."

  "Was he good-looking?"

  "Tall, dark, quite a hunk. But not my type."

  "You're way too picky!" Ellen was single too, but had never married. Ellen was much more adventurous about men than I was. I'd rather stay home with a good mystery book than go out on a blind date.

  I was just about to tell her I'd met James, but Ellen changed the subject.

  "Did I ever tell you the story of fetching the mummy?"

  "That was you?" I gasped.

  "Sure was. I drove my brother's Honda to the gallery and parked illegally..."

  "And a cop stopped you and asked what the hell you were doing..."

  "And I said I'm just here to pick up my mummy!"

  "He was so surprised, he let you park for free..."

  "Well, actually he insisted on seeing it first. After he asked what the holdup was, and I told him we were having trouble getting the mummy box through the revolving door, he came in and helped."

  I laughed. "I wish I'd been there! I bet you looked all blond and innocent!"

  "Naturally." Ellen patted imaginary curls and pointed her sleek little nose in the air.

  I aimed my own distinguished nasal appendage in her direction. "Doing a Susie?"

  "Yup. Vamping the Boss."

  We both laughed. Susie would like to be Mrs. Fitzgerald, and didn't care who knew it.

  Ellen looked at her watch. "I've got a date tonight. Maybe I can leave a little early."

  "Still seeing James?"

  "Yes, James. He's a real sweetie-remarkably free of hang-ups for someone who's lost his wife."

  "Lost his wife?"

  "She died from breast cancer. A few years ago."

  "How awful," I said slowly, thinking how rare it was to find someone our age that had lost a spouse already.

  "Shall I ask him if he'd like to look at your X-rays?"

  "Actually, I already met him."

  "Met James? How?" Ellen stared.

  "He was there when we did the X-rays, but at first I thought he was a vet. And I misread his nametag because I didn't gave my glasses on."

  Ellen grinned. "Small world."

  "He's very nice. He said he'd like another look at the mummy X-rays."

  Ellen didn't think there was anything strange about this. She switched back to the more engrossing topic of Marion.

  But I had tuned Ellen out. I had just realized that I had been one of the last people to speak with Marion...

  ? ? ? ?

  The storerooms were several classrooms knocked together, with one entrance door and a deadbolt lock. The dusty labyrinth stretched the entire length of the fourth floor. It was stuffed with elderly metal shelving and heavy wooden cabinets and dimly lit overhead by forty-watt bulbs.

  As I made my way down a narrow aisle between shrouded medieval statuary, I reflected that we had a long way to go before we could apply for accreditation. We needed climate control, up-to-date storage facilities, and a fully computerized database. We would probably have another two years of work to do after we moved to the new building.

  I found Marion at the far end of the Egyptian storeroom, leaning over a wooden tray. Her chestnut hair was wild and both her hands were smudged. A cobweb festooned her dark blue skirt. Boxes and drawers of artifacts were all over the floor, and piles of papers littered the single desk.

  I didn't see how Marion could make any progress in such a place.

  "Hi, Marion."

  Marion jumped like a startled rabbit.

  "Sorry, I guess you're busy. Victor asked me to give you this." I handed over the list of artifacts for the Pueblo exhibit.

  Marion absently put the list on top of a stack of files and returned to her tray. "Lisa. I can't think...I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm going crazy...the records simply don't match the artifacts' locations. Six months ago, I could find things. Now, I don't know, maybe they walk around by themselves on weekends."

  "The artifacts walk around? You mean someone's moving them?"

  Marion, rubbing her face with one dirty hand, looked distraught. "Yes. I mean no. I can't understand it..."

  "Show me," I said.

  Marion motioned to the clipboard she had been using. The top sheet was covered with her notations and exclamations such as "number doesn't match!" and "wrong drawer!"

  "See these mummy beads, 1924.02.0008-10? They should be in drawer five, at the back."

  "Two is the lot number, right?" I asked.

  "That's right," said Marion, sounding more confident. "And 8-10 are the individual artifact numbers."

  We looked in the correct drawer, but the faience beads weren't there. Then we looked in adjoining boxes and the beads turned up in drawer seven, next to an exquisite diamond-shaped pendant of lapis lazuli.

  Marion's agitation increased. "That's wrong! It doesn't make sense; that pendant shouldn't be there! I remember seeing it with two others like it, in drawer ten."

  I found the registration number, carefully inked on the edge of one of the pendant parts. Marion seized it.

  "Forty-five? That lot only goes up to forty-four!"

  "You know how many students and volunteer assistants we have," I reminded her. "We make mistakes. And we don't always put things back in the right places, either."

  Marion was almost in tears. "But I train those students! I spend hours with them, showing them and explaining...it's so important to keep track of things. Victor will think I'm not doing my job..." Now her thin shoulders were shaking. She rubbed her forehead with one dirty hand, leaving a dark gray smudge above one eye.

  "Victor knows mistakes still happen. Don't worry so much," I said as I put an arm around her. I could feel her shoulder blades jutting through her blue sweater. "We might have a better track record if we forbade music and talking in the registration area, but then no one would want to work here."

  She pulled away from me. "Yeah, I guess all that weighing, measuring, and Munsell color-reading is pretty tedious for some people." It wasn't tedious to Marion; that sort of work was bread and butter to her.

  We'd once had a conversation about housework-she enjoyed it, while I was a master at finding excuses to avoid it. Museum work was just like polishing dirty silver; you had to take out the same heirloom pieces for every holiday, sorting and cleaning the same stuff, over and over again, year after year. Keeping track of thousands of artifacts required the mind of a squirrel, a fanatical searcher determined to locate every nut in every cache. Marion was a perfect squirrel-or fer-ret-with her bright, beady eyes and tireless activity, and she was an expert at collections management and exhibit preparation.

  Marion gave me a watery smile. Then she showed me another drawer. "Look, Lisa, here's another one. This headpiece, I mean, cartonnage. It's in a 1987 lot, but the numbering's updated-th
e full four digits for the year instead of two. Part of the red color is peeling off, too."

  We peered at the artifact. The haunting Egyptian face was originally brightly colored, but while the blues and white adhered nicely, the reddish-brown areas were flaking. I said, "Why don't you take it back to Ellen in the lab? If this is one of the pieces they cleaned, they'll have a record of it. If it isn't, she can test it."

  Marion's bony shoulders sagged with relief.