“Yes ma’am,” Emma said like a scolded child. She focused on the director, whose brown eyes never betrayed anything.
“I know it’s short notice, but with Dr. Armstrong’s sudden departure it’s become necessary to give you a baptism of fire, so to speak.”
“What can I do to help?”
“We’re holding a fundraiser gala Thursday night. I’d like you to attend and be our point woman. Unless you already have plans.”
“Me? No, ma’am.” Emma knew part of her job as assistant director would be to attend such events and glad-hand donors—and prospective donors. She hadn’t thought it would happen so soon. She would have to get a new dress from Mrs. Chiostro, maybe see the witch’s sister Sylvia about her hair—
“We have some very important people coming to this event. With their help we’ll be able to fund the satellite museum in Westfield.” A smaller museum in the suburbs had been an obsession of the director’s ever since Emma began to work at the museum. The project had yet to break ground due to a lack of funds. “I shouldn’t have to tell someone as intelligent as you, Dr. Earl, that the new museum will need a director.”
“I understand, ma’am.”
“Good. The event starts at eight o’clock. I will of course be attending as well, but I’d like you to personally make some of our more important guests comfortable.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very good.” The director shifted some papers on her desk to indicate the meeting was over. Emma started towards the door when the director called out, “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“We have a prodigal son returning today with some important news. Can you make sure Dr. Dreyfus finds his way to my office?”
Emma stared blankly at the director for a moment. Time had frozen around her as she summoned Dan’s face to her mind. He was back? For how long? She would have to find out.
***
Though it was probably not appropriate for an assistant director, Emma couldn’t help but run down the hallway, to the elevator. Once the doors closed, she studied her reflection in the metal of the doors. She did what she could to tidy up her hair and smooth out any wrinkles in her suit. The last thing she wanted was for Dan to think she was a slob.
How could he be back? She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. Over a year ago she had heard he’d found an ancient statue in the desert. The last she had heard, he was still in Egypt to excavate what appeared to be a temple from the same area. She had assumed this work would take years, by which time she might be able to settle her feelings for him.
Not a day went by in the last five years when she didn’t think of Dan and the brief romance they had shared. That romance ended when she knocked him out and then injected him with a potion from Mrs. Chiostro that wiped Dan’s memory of his time with Emma. She had also planted the suggestion that Dan go far away, which had taken him back to Egypt.
The guilt she felt for this continued to haunt her. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but after he confessed his love, she didn’t feel she had a choice. As the Scarlet Knight, it was too dangerous for anyone to fall in love with her. She had so many enemies, any of whom would kill for the chance to find an opening to get to her. But a voice always told her that she had acted selfishly; she had sent Dan away because she didn’t want to take responsibility for him on top of everything else.
She should have known this day would come, when he would return to the Plaine Museum. What would she do now? She could use another potion on him—Mrs. Chiostro might have one that would make him go away forever—but she had learned her lesson. Magic was not something to fool with.
The doors opened to the ground floor. A few early visitors were already in the main gallery to stare up at Alex. Emma hurried past them and wondered if perhaps she were too late. Dan might already have gone up to the anthropology department to check in. She chided herself when she hoped this was true so she wouldn’t have to meet him yet. She’d already had five years to prepare for his return; what difference would another day or two make?
She wasn’t all that surprised to find Dan on the same bench as Steve had sat on earlier. The years in the Egyptian desert had given him a movie star tan and there were perhaps a few wrinkles around the eyes that hadn’t been there before, but those eyes were still the same ones she had fallen in love with five years earlier.
“Dr. Dreyfus,” she said, her voice as tiny as a little girl’s.
He smiled, that smile unchanged as well by those years in Egypt. “You must be Dr. Earl,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t suppose you’d remember me. We met briefly about five years ago.”
“Oh, yes. I remember.” She looked down at her feet and wished she could force herself not to blush like a teenager. “The director wanted me to show you upstairs.”
“Great. I haven’t talked with her in person in a while.” As they started towards the elevator, Emma didn’t narrate as she’d done with Steve; Dan might have forgotten her, but he shouldn’t have forgotten the museum.
In the elevator, she tried to organize her thoughts. He took her by surprise by asking, “Are you still in the geology department?”
“Actually I was just made assistant director.”
“Really? That’s quite a coup at your age.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Emma wanted to hit the stop button to freeze the elevator between floors and then wrap her arms around Dan. She wanted to shower him with kisses until she made up for all the years that had passed between them. She didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead, she worked up her courage to ask, “What brings you back here?”
“We’re wrapping up our work in the desert and getting ready to transport everything back here for an exhibition. I’m here to lay the groundwork for that.”
“Then you’ll be going back?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’d like to, but my wife wants us to settle down. Start a family—maybe.”
Emma’s legs wobbled; she stumbled back against the rear of the elevator. “Your wife?”
He held up his left hand to reveal a gold wedding band. “We’ve been married for a year now. It’s been kind of rough living in a tent like Bedouins.”
“I guess it would be.”
The doors mercifully opened so Emma could lead Dan to the director’s office. She left him there with a handshake. When her eyes met Dan’s, she no longer saw the love in them for her. Another had replaced her in his heart.
***
For ten years Lieutenant Lottie Donovan had imagined what she would do when she finally got Don Vendetta into custody. Many of these scenarios involved the use of a variety of primitive instruments to inflict the kind of pain on the don as she had ordered inflicted on countless citizens of Rampart City. The old saying of “an eye for an eye” didn’t seem to go nearly far enough in this case.
As she opened the door to the holding cells, Lieutenant Donovan steeled herself for her moment of triumph. In the other cells were the usual assortment of drunks, junkies, and homeless, not to mention a few petty dope dealers, thieves, and wife beaters. These made the usual whistles and catcalls as she strode down the corridor.
It wasn’t standard practice to put a perp in her own cell, but in this case Lieutenant Donovan didn’t want to take any chances. Don Vendetta had plenty of enemies, but she had even more allies within the criminal underworld. Any of the dope dealers, thieves, or wife beaters might help her escape to have some credit to barter later with the don. Or those who wanted to become a legend might stab the don with a homemade knife. In either case, Lieutenant Donovan wanted to make sure she got Don Vendetta to her arraignment.
A guard opened the door to the solitary cell so Lieutenant Donovan could enter. She found the don of organized crime in Rampart City on the bed; she calmly stared up at the ceiling. “How have they been treating you?” Lieutenant Donovan asked.
“The Rampart Arms has nothing to fear from your accommodations. Or your cooking.” The don motioned to a
n untouched tray in the corner.
Lieutenant Donovan wished she could take a cigarette from her pocket, but there was no smoking anywhere in the station. She had to settle for a piece of chewing gum, which was no replacement for nicotine when it came to her nerves. “You want a stick?”
“No. Why don’t you get to your point, Detective?”
“If that’s what you want. I came to give you some advice. Things would go a lot smoother for all of us if you confessed now. The DA is willing to make you a good deal, especially if you turn over the names of the rest of your crew.”
“You want me to rat out those in my employ?”
“We’ll catch up to them eventually. It’s only a matter of time. You could save a lot of that with your cooperation.”
“I will have to consider that. Thank you, Detective, for bringing that to my attention.”
“You still think you’re going to wriggle out of this. Trust me, you’re not. We have you dead to rights this time. You made it even easier by stealing that truck.”
“You shouldn’t be so overconfident, Lieutenant.” The don finally sat up to meet Lieutenant Donovan’s glare. “I wouldn’t be here at all if not for your little red friend.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t. I suppose if internal affairs searches your computer they won’t find any messages from you to an anonymous Email account.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I don’t make threats, Lieutenant.” The don’s smile as she said this chilled Lieutenant Donovan to the bone. “There may still be time to delete those messages if you hurry.”
“You don’t have anything. If you did, you’d already have done something.”
“Maybe. But then some predators enjoy toying with the prey before they strike.”
Lieutenant Donovan stepped back to knock on the door for the guard to let her out. “See you at the arraignment, Don.”
She didn’t get more than a step out of the cell when she ran into Captain Mitch Kramer. The captain’s voice cracked like a boy’s as he asked, “What were you doing in there? If you were working her over—”
“I was trying to persuade her to cooperate.”
“I’ll have your badge if you touched her—”
“I didn’t lay a hand on her. We just talked. Like two rational grown-ups.”
Captain Kramer stuck a finger out to poke Lieutenant Donovan’s chest. “The next time you want to go shake down a prisoner, you had better get my permission first. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“I’m tired of you flouting the rules, Lieutenant. You either start being a team player or you’ll be on the bench. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Captain Kramer spun on his heel and then strode away with the precision of a good martinet. Lieutenant Donovan shook her head as she watched him go. There was no such thing as a good team player on the Rampart City force, not when you considered much of the team was on Don Vendetta’s payroll. It was only when she turned one of these corrupt cops that Lieutenant Donovan had been able to finally bring in the don.
And with the Scarlet Knight’s help. Lieutenant Donovan wondered if the don really knew about the Email messages to the masked vigilante. In any case, the lieutenant wasn’t dumb enough to send these from her computer at the department. She used her personal phone and laptop for those communications. Internal affairs would need more than the don’s insinuation to get a hold of those.
Even if they did manage to search those, the messages would do little to implicate Lieutenant Donovan. She never specifically mentioned the Scarlet Knight by name, leaving only the meet places and times. And the Scarlet Knight never responded. For all anyone who read the messages knew, Lieutenant Donovan might be meeting with her mother.
The don wanted to rattle her cage. It would take a lot more than that to shake Donovan up. You’ll have plenty of time to think of something better, Donovan thought.
Chapter 3
For the rest of the morning Emma sat in her office, to get acquainted with her new duties as assistant director. This kind of administrative work didn’t tax her mind much, which left her with plenty of brainpower to spare to think about Dan Dreyfus. Married. That word appeared in her mind over and over again. Married to someone else.
As a logical person, she knew it wasn’t so absurd to think Dan could fall in love with someone else, especially when he didn’t know he had once loved Emma. She should have known it was possible. She had never forced herself to contemplate that reality. Now it was here to confront her.
She wondered what his wife looked like. She was probably beautiful, far more so than Emma. She would have to be smart too; he wasn’t the type to fall in love with a bimbo, no matter how beautiful she looked.
She finished the last of her paperwork by one o’clock. With a sigh she pushed away from her desk. On her way out of the office, she told Leslie she was going to lunch. The food in the cafeteria was nothing special, but a cup of tea might at least calm her nerves.
When she saw Steve in the cafeteria, in a corner by himself, she thought back to high school. Unlike high school, the other staff at the museum probably hadn’t alienated him on purpose, as they didn’t alienate Emma on purpose. That’s at least what she told herself. She took her cup of tea and dreadful tuna sandwich over to his table.
“How are things going?” she asked.
“Fine,” Steve said.
“Too easy for you?”
“A little.”
“We’ll have to find something a little more challenging for you,” Emma said with a wink. She sat down across from him at the table.
“How about you? How does it feel being assistant director?”
“It’s a little boring, truth be told.”
“A mind like yours should be in a lab, not doing paperwork.”
“My mind’s not that special.”
“Becky says you’re up to fifteen languages now.”
“Not fluently.” Emma’s cheeks turned red as they always did whenever the topic turned to her brilliance. She had heard such things from teachers, students, and coworkers in one form or another since she was four years old.
“Any lab in the country would be lucky to have you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Didn’t you ever want to work in a real lab?”
“No. I wanted to work here.”
“You’re not just saying that because you’re the assistant director, are you?”
“No, I mean it.” She told him the story about when her parents had taken her to the Plaine Museum when she was three years old. An old janitor named Percival Graves had moved aside a velvet rope so little Emma could touch Alex the mastodon’s tusk. From that moment on she had dreamed of working at the Plaine Museum.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I didn’t realize—”
“It’s all right. I haven’t told many people that story.” She hadn’t even told that story to Dan, not that he would remember it now in any case. “What about you?”
“Promise you won’t get mad?” Steve asked. Emma nodded. “I got offers from some research labs in California and Japan. More money and better benefits than this one—no offense. I didn’t tell Becky because she’d never leave the city.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t want to leave you. Sometimes it seems she thinks you’re her daughter.”
“I get that feeling sometimes too.” Emma chewed on her tasteless sandwich and felt another surge of guilt. She didn’t want to think she had held Becky and Steve back. She didn’t want anyone to sacrifice anything for her.
Guilt personified came to the table in the form of Dan Dreyfus. “Dr. Earl,” he said. “Would you mind if I join you two?”
Emma deferred to Steve since it had been his table first. She hoped he would make some excuse, but he didn’t. “Go ahead,” he said. Dan sat down next to Emma with a grilled chicken s
andwich and chips. The two men introduced themselves and then shook hands.
“It’s good to finally get some real food. Even this stuff isn’t bad compared to the canned stuff we had to eat in the field,” Dan said.
“Didn’t you like your trip to Egypt?” Emma asked.
“Sure, just the food was lousy. Except when we went into the village. They made the best kabobs in this one café.”
“Is that where you met your wife?” Emma asked, the venom in her voice enough to cause Steve to push his chair back a couple of inches.
“No, she was my assistant on the dig. After we found the statue we celebrated and, well, one thing led to another.”
“How nice.”
“She’s a really great gal. The smartest and most beautiful girl I’ve met.”
Steve traded a look with Emma. She said through nearly clenched teeth, “What does your wife do?”
“She was getting her degree in Egyptology from Brown, but right now she’s on a leave of absence. We’re still deciding if we should wait for a family.”
“How interesting.”
“She’s a fascinating woman. Been all over the world. The only place she hasn’t gone is Antarctica.” Dan laughed as he added, “We were thinking of that for our honeymoon but they don’t really have any resorts there.”
Steve laughed at this while Emma remained silent. She had never felt hatred this powerful before, not even for the men she thought had murdered her parents. She had never met this woman or even seen her, and yet Emma wanted to wring her neck, to snuff the life out of this usurper. To fight back her irrational anger, she drained her tea in one gulp. “I have to go.”
“Oh, sure,” Dan said.
“I suppose I should be getting back to work too,” Steve said. He reached across the table to offer Dan his hand to shake again. “It was good to meet you.”
“Likewise.” As Emma stood up to leave, Dan asked, “Are you going to be at the gala on Thursday night?”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Page 57
