Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Kathleen Ryan

  “Mrs. Dimitros?” he began at last, addressing Amy. Up close, his carriage seemed younger than the gray hair suggested. His face was a mess of wrinkles, but beneath the lines hid the face of a young man. He could have been thirty-five, she thought…or fifty-five.

  “Mrs. Rutherford—I’m Amy Rutherford.” Her eyes narrowed as she checked his voice against a memory.

  “Good morning, ma’am. My name is Jordan Kettridge.”

  “Lizzie—” Amy pulled Elizabeth across the room with the tone of her voice. She said to Kettridge, “You called us half an hour ago?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Jordan Kettridge, Elizabeth,” said Amy, informatively. Liz nodded and extended her hand to shake.

  “Good morning, Professor Kettridge. I…was hardly expecting to see you here in New York.”

  “You’re Elizabeth Dimitros?” He stared hard at her, and let her hand go a moment later than was entirely comfortable or polite, cocking his head to one side as he studied her. “You don’t look like you write.” Elizabeth said nothing, but her gaze was as frank and open as the stranger’s was blunt and suspicious. Amy glanced from one to the other, and decided to stay close by.

  “Well, Ms. Dimitros. The bead in my article does have striations running counterclockwise in relation to the flatter side.” His eyes were gray-green and piercing, and they locked with hers. “Though I would have thought, looking at the diagram in SCAD,” he said sharply, and threw the words down like a challenge, “that it would be impossible to determine that from the angle at which it was drawn.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the young woman smoothly, “I’m glad to hear that the design, at least, matches the bead I’m seeking. Can you tell me who is currently in possession of the bead, Doctor?”

  “The artifact is in my private collection, Ms. Dimitros.” Kettridge spoke with an inexplicable emphasis—his tone would have suited a death threat better.

  Elizabeth kept her shock out of her face, and was glad to see Amy wearing her best Rutherford business expression as a mask.

  “I see,” Liz said, though she was almost certain that she didn’t. “And are you willing to sell?”

  “That would depend entirely on the circumstances, Ms. Dimitros.” Kettridge rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Who’s the buyer?”

  “Rutherford House,” said Elizabeth, hoping like hell that Amy’s face wouldn’t betray surprise and give her the lie.

  Kettridge chuckled. “I’m sorry. I don’t believe for one minute that you pick your antiques out of archaeological journals at random—who put you up to this?”

  Amy broke in. “Doctor Kettridge,” she said slowly, “when we represent a client, we do not make a habit of giving their name away to simply anyone who asks for it. Confidentiality is a watchword here. And when the buyer specifically requests us not to divulge their identity, it is a point of honor with us to respect their wishes.”

  He said, “Honor, is it?” and smiled. His wrinkles wrapped around his mouth and eyes readily enough; the lines had come there smiling in the first place. Elizabeth rallied, and sat on the edge of the center table. “It’s far too early, at any rate, to begin discussing terms, Dr. Kettridge. We haven’t any idea whether your find is the piece our client wants—we’ll need to see your bead to verify that, and match the data on it to the data on the item being sought. After that, we’ll contact our client. It is possible, I suppose, that he or she will be willing to make an exception to their confidential status this one time, as a concession to you.”

  “And just how much data do you have, Ms. Dimitros, on the ‘item’ being sought?”

  Amy cut in. “Is the bead for sale, Dr. Kettridge?”

  He looked at the two women—Amy Rutherford, clad in iron-gray, her arms folded, her chin held high— Elizabeth Dimitros, perched on the table’s edge, chic and trim in burgundy, following him casually with her eyes—and found his way to the door without quite turning his back on either of them. “I’ll think about it,” said the professor, and then he left.

  Elizabeth let out a sigh, and some of the backbone dropped out of her posture. Behind her, she could hear Amy walk to the viewing table, pick up her coffee cup, and finish it.

  “All right,” said Amy Rutherford. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me another one, Lizzie.”

  “I’ll tell you the whole damned story. If it makes any more sense to you than it does to me—I’ll—I’ll probably die of apoplexy. Look,” she said, and told her boss the story of the “puzzle” Hesha had brought with him. She dug the casts and the journal out of the tote bag she’d brought with her, and the recitation ended with Amy wearing a jeweler’s loupe, scrutinizing the tiny bits of putty as if they were the crown jewels of Ruritania.

  “I just don’t see it,” she said, trading the loupe for her bifocals.

  “Good. I felt like a blasted idiot. On the other hand, I was hoping you’d know something about the statue, or Kettridge, or Ruhadze that would make that—” Elizabeth gestured toward the display floor with a wild hand “—make some sort of sense.”

  “And all you did was ask what collection the bead was in?”

  “Yes. I signed as Rutherford House staff—you said yourself that Ruhadze was a VIP even to Agnes and your—

  “Don’t mention her, please.”

  “Mrs. Rutherford,” finished the younger woman, hopelessly.

  They stared at each other across the viewing table.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Elizabeth.

  “We wait and see if Kettridge comes back, and we wait to hear from your beau. In the meantime…I’ll make some phone calls. I always wanted to be a sleuth.”

  “Everyone I know is turning into a detective, these days.”

  “You mind the store, dear, and don’t worry. I can’t see how even…Mother…could possibly blame you for any of this. It could be a very nice deal. And if we pull it off, I’ll see that you get a cut, even if it has to come out of my share.” Amy tromped up the stairs, leaving Elizabeth alone in the shop to wonder.

  “You have reached 202-555-7831. At the tone, please leave your name, your number, the time you called, and your message.”

  “Hesha? This is Liz. Look…well…all right. To start with, the article I found was in the Southern California Archaeological Digest for Fall 96. If you can’t get a copy, I’ll fax pages from mine….the article is by Kettridge, Jordan Kettridge; he’s a professor at Berkeley. As far as I could make out from the article, he’s got one of the missing eyes of your statue. So I e-mailed him to see if he would sell. That was Saturday. He turned up in our showroom this morning, acting as if he was about to… I don’t know, start a fight. Punch Amy in the mouth. Damn it. I don’t even know why I’m calling. He was hostile, I doubt he’ll sell. Do you want Rutherford House to pursue it? Give me a call when you can. Bye.”

  Tuesday, 29 June 1999, 2:14 AM

  A studio apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn

  New York City, New York

  Elizabeth staggered through the door and into her apartment. It locked behind her, and she shuffled, exhausted, to the living room and threw herself on the big sofa. For ten minutes, she vegetated in absolute stillness. Only when the standing-up aches from her day at Rutherford House had been replaced by face-down-on-the-couch aches did she move.

  Her hand reached out and tapped at a blinking red light, and presently it spoke to her.

  “Elizabeth? Hesha. I found the article; I think you’re right. You’re very quick. Thank you for looking out for me—or at least, gnawing away at my puzzles for me. I’d love to acquire the piece, of course. Put the Rutherfords on the track. They’ll finagle it out of him if anyone can. Do look after yourself, though. I’ve met Kettridge once or twice, and he’s a touch…eccentric. The scene today sounds typical of him. I’d hesitate to use the word ‘unstable’ about such a prominent and capable scholar….” The tinny copy of Hesha’s voice slowed, and a note of c
oncern crept into it. “Please, be careful, Elizabeth. I’ll talk to you again soon.”

  Wednesday, 30 June 1999, 11:58 AM

  Victor’s Authentic Mediterranean Cafe, Upper West Side, Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  Elizabeth sat in a tiny booth of her favorite, very small restaurant, reading a heavy volume on the prehistory of Persia. From time to time, she remembered the salad in front of her, and took a few bites. She turned a page. Without warning, a man slid into the seat facing her. She looked up, ready to scream bloody murder—she was enough of a regular that, even in New York, one of the waitstaff would care—and closed her hand over her keyring on the seat beside her. The tube of pepper spray provided an iota of confidence.

  Jordan Kettridge greeted her with an apologetic grimace. “Hi.”

  She said nothing, but kept her hand on the keys.

  “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about the scene at the gallery yesterday.”

  Elizabeth, stony-faced, waited.

  “I’d just flown in from Turkey, I was jetlagged, I confess to a terrible temper, and I have been having the weirdest time with this damn bead. There have been some really…strange things happening in connection with it.” He smiled ruefully, and the lopsided effect was actually very appealing. Liz still said nothing, but the hand with the pepper relaxed the slightest bit.

  “I had a second offer for it, yesterday. Sight unseen,” he said, stressing the two words as if they were unspeakable possibilities. “I don’t have the faintest idea why.” He leaned forward, hands open as though begging her. “Can’t you tell me anything about it?”

  “Professor Kettridge, I haven’t seen the bead,” said Elizabeth wearily. “So far as I know, you have a rock with a hole through it.”

  He nodded. “That’s exactly what it looks like. It’s not a work of art, it’s of no particular archaeological significance, it’s not even made of anything intrinsically valuable.” He searched her face in some desperation. “So why am I being offered ridiculous sums of money to part with it?”

  “How ridiculous?” He told her. She put down her book, and stared at him. “Now can you see why I’m worried?”

  Elizabeth frowned. “I can see why you’re worried today. That’s a frightening amount of money for one bead. I still don’t understand the scene you caused at Rutherford House, Professor.”

  “Please, call me Jordan.”

  “No.” She shook her head vigorously. “Why the hell should I?”

  “Damn it!” he snarled. “Look I came here—”

  “You followed me here—it’s called stalking, Professor.

  “To tell you,” he shouted her down, “that I’m willing to consider your client’s offer.”

  Elizabeth waited, and slowly the attention of the staff and other lunchers drifted away from the spectacle.

  “I can’t say whether he’d be willing to pay such an extravagant price for a lump of rock with a hole through it, Professor.”

  “The money doesn’t matter.”

  Elizabeth raised both eyebrows, and he relented. His gray-green eyes locked with hers, and he continued levelly.

  “The money doesn’t matter that much, Ms. Dimitros. But I want to know who I’m dealing with. I don’t dig for or sell to thieves, to collectors who deal with thieves, to idiots who want to ‘invest’ in things they’re incapable of appreciating, or to blood-sucking corporate art-buyers.” Kettridge was good at reading faces, and he watched the woman across from him carefully as he said each word. On “blood-sucking,” her expression didn’t change in the least.

  “Well,” said Elizabeth. “I suppose I can thank you for your apology about the scene you made in front of my boss. And I’ll remember that you hold a certain code in your dealings; we’ll note it in the company’s file on the item. If I were you, though, I’d be less concerned about dealing with Rutherford House—which if you know anything about the market, you know is as clean as it gets—than about dealing with someone willing to pay so much, blindly, for your find. Most of our clients are connoisseurs. Sometimes we work for families trying to recover their heritage or build one. As for corporations…well, museums incorporate these days, and corporations build museums. I hope you don’t consider building the Getty a sin? We certainly don’t deal on the black market. I can’t say we check to see whether our clients do; it would be an invasion of privacy.”

  Kettridge listened. “Ms. Dimitros, I believe in your sincerity. But I’m not sure whether you really know who you’re fronting for. Be careful. Be damn careful. There are dangerous people mixed up in this business.”

  “In antiques?”

  “No!” He struck the table with a closed fist. “Sorry.” He whispered, “In this—wrapped up in the bead and whatever goes with it.

  “Look.” Kettridge stared at the speckled Formica tabletop as if for answers, leaned his head on his hands, and spoke softly. “You read the article. The bead was found in a grave. I excavated that grave from the natural surface down to the cemetery level. As I dug, I found broken pieces of clay with amulet-signs baked into them. They were scattered around in stratum after stratum. The placement suggested that the people of Sur-Amech put one or two a decade onto the grave for generations after the body was interred. The writing degenerates after a century or two, but the symbol stays the same.

  “When I reached the original surface of the grave, I found the same sign scratched onto a large flat rock, facing downward. When I found the body, it was surrounded by the same kind of stone, with the same rough drawing of the amulet sign—again, facing toward the body. Literally surrounded, Ms. Dimitros—lying on a bed of them, walled in by them, and covered with them. The body was in the worst preservation of any found in the area. We pull desiccated, brittle bones from the sand there. This was just the dusty outline of a skeleton.

  “There’s no other grave like it in Sur-Amech.

  “And the most interesting thing, Ms. Dimitros, is that the symbol carved into the rocks in that grave is still in use as a protective sign among the nomads who live in the area.” He whipped out a pen, took a napkin from the dispenser, and drew a little glyph on the flimsy paper. “It’s a ward against the Evil Eye, Ms. Dimitros.” Elizabeth caught the eye of her waitress, and signaled for the check. “Thank you for the lecture, Professor. What’s your point?”

  “The people of Sur-Amech wouldn’t bury this corpse with their own dead. They hauled the body and the stones into virtual wilderness to get rid of it, and they protected themselves against the power of that corpse as well as they could, for as long as they could. They were afraid, Ms. Dimitros. And so am I.”

  “You believe in curses, Professor?” Elizabeth asked, incredulously. “Is the Smithsonian going to wrack and ruin because the Hope diamond is on display there? Did the Carter expedition really die because they violated Tutankhamen’s tomb?” She paid her bill, and stood to leave.

  “I wanted to warn you. But I can see that you’re blind to it all, Ms. Dimitros. I’m terribly sorry. I hope you’ll be all right.”

  “Thank you.” Liz picked up her book and turned toward the door. Kettridge didn’t rise. She had to speak to the back of his head. “And the bead?”

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Kettridge.

  Wednesday, 30 June 1999, 12:53 PM

  Rutherford House, Upper East Side, Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  Amy found Liz in the bindery. The younger woman was pale, but her eyes weren’t red. As she worked, very slowly, but with her usual care and precision, she brushed her hair away from her face, and the hand that moved trembled, just the faintest bit. Amy pushed the door open. “Lizzie?” she asked softly. “What’s wrong?”

  Elizabeth jumped in her chair. “Sorry, Amy. You scared me.”

  Amy shut the door behind her. “You were fine two hours ago. Now you’re spookier than a cat with its head in a bag. Are you sleeping all right? You aren’t walking again?” Starkly suspicious, she asked, “Did your mother c
all and upset you?” The girl shook her head, and Amy insisted: “Tell me what’s happened, dear heart.”

  “Kettridge…came after me.”

  “Oh, Lord. What do you mean?”

  “I was eating lunch at Victor’s, and he sat down at my table. He was trying to…warn me, or threaten me, or something. There’s something terribly wrong with this bead, I think…”

  In bits and pieces, Amy gleaned the whole story from her friend.

  “First thing we do,” said Amy seriously, “is insulate you from this whole affair. If Kettridge shows up again, you tell him you’re not at liberty to discuss Rutherford business. Tell him to contact the partners. Then you leave as fast as you can, okay?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Second, I’m calling your Mr. Ruhadze and telling him to do his own negotiations. We’ll ask for a finder’s fee, but if there’s trouble, it’s his. Not ours, and certainly not yours, Liz.

  “Third, we’re going to pin down the mysterious Professor Kettridge. He comes in and out of here without so much as a contact number, fine and dandy. I’ve been asking after him around our mutual associates already—I’ll find out where he’s staying, or I’ll find him through Berkeley, and I’ll get him off your back.”

  Elizabeth smiled uncertainly.

  Amy smiled back. “I’m sure there’s a reason for all this. Damned if I can say it’ll be a logical one, though. Everyone I talked to Monday said Kettridge was ‘a nice guy’—which means nothing, of course—neither ‘nice’ nor ‘good’ mean anything nowadays. Kettridge is not supposed to be off his rocker. He can get a little insistent over his favorite theory, but I’ve never known a scientist who didn’t, at least a little. We’ll deal with this.” She got up and opened the door. “You stick to the diary, Lizzie, and I’ll go tackle the madmen.”