One Grave Too Many

by Beverly Connor

  Diane picked up the envelope with his check in it. “I’ve just made Chanell head of security. One of the things she’ll be investigating is who’s been forging my name to order over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of supplies and exhibits.”

  Andie and Chanell were both completely caught off guard. But not Leonard. He stood, stiff and frowning, in front of Diane’s desk.

  “Was anything actually stolen?” he managed to say.

  “An attempt was made to steal over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the museum through fraudulent purchases. That carries with it more impact than simple mischief. I intervened in the middle of one attempt and prevented it. I suspect the purpose was actually to deprive me of my job.”

  “Do you have my paycheck?” Leonard’s lower lip stuck out like he was about to pout. Diane smiled. “You think that’s funny?” he said. Leonard was becoming belligerent.

  “Considering I was paying you to guard the place, yes, I do. Were you also involved in the break-in of the conservation lab?”

  “You can’t prove anything.”

  “I just sent a set of fingerprints off to the crime lab.”

  Leonard grinned broadly. “You can’t prove anything.”

  To Diane, that was like an admission of guilt. But, unfortunately, an inadmissible one. She opened a drawer to her desk and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves and pulled one on over her hand and held it up.

  “What I think, Mr. Starns, is that you made those fake orders, and you did it for your son, who works for Mark Grayson. Were you helping him get some brownie points?”

  Leonard’s attention was focused on the gloved hand.

  “I think you were involved in the break-in,” said Diane. “You used the master key to let whoever it was in. If you were alone, you wouldn’t have bothered to wear these gloves. You could just say you were checking things out if we found your prints. Was it your son?”

  “You can’t prove anything.” He was sounding like he was caught in a loop.

  “Did you know that this kind of glove fits so tight it can leave fingerprints through the latex? I lifted some from the break-in, didn’t I, Chanell?”

  “She sure did. Nice clear prints too.”

  Leonard’s smug expression started to collapse.

  “If your son’s prints are anywhere on file and there’s a match, I will prosecute, vigorously.”

  “You think this place is so important. It’s just a collection from somebody’s attic. There’s other things more important, and you’re too stubborn to see it.”

  That was quite a long speech for Leonard. And another bit of admission.

  “Like the bonus your son would get if he brings Mark Grayson my head on a platter?”

  Diane could see the uncertainty in him. The snide facade was cracking under the gentlest pressure she was putting on him. She could almost read his thoughts in his eyes as his gaze darted from one point in the room to another. Indecision—say something to defend his son, or stay quiet until he could get advice? Leonard was a follower, not a leader, and she suspected it was his son who was doing the leading.

  “You going to give me my paycheck?”

  “Yes, Leonard, I am. We’ll just see what happens when the report on the prints gets back. Don’t think for a minute I won’t follow through.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know why the conservation lab was broken into.”

  “You’ll have to ask Mrs. Grayson.”

  “Signy Grayson?”

  “You’ll have to ask her. I don’t know anything and neither does my son.”

  “How about the attempted break-in at the faunal lab last night?” asked Chanell.

  This time Diane was caught by surprise. So, it seemed, was Leonard.

  “What? You can’t pin that one on me or my son. I don’t know anything about that—I don’t. Maybe Mrs. Grayson knows about that too.”

  “Would you mind holding out your hands and arms so that I can see them?” Diane said.

  “What?” Leonard pulled his hands to him reflexively and seemed to step back on his heels.

  “Whoever attacked me three nights ago received considerable damage to his hands and his arms. Could I see yours, please?”

  Leonard pulled up his shirtsleeves and held his hands out before her, turning them palms-down and then palms-up for her to see. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with no attack on you.”

  He had no swollen fingers, and there were no bruises or bite marks on his arms that would be on her attacker. Diane handed him the check.

  “Chanell, I want you to start changing all the locks in the museum.” She spoke to Chanell, but she didn’t take her eyes off Leonard Starns. He turned abruptly and left the room.

  “I know it’s going to be a big task,” she said. “But I’m sure he made copies of the keys. From now on, I want you to work up a plan to coordinate the night security with the custodians. But get your paperwork done first. You want your paycheck to reflect your new job.”

  “Sure will. I’ll get to everything right now. You want me to see about the faunal lab, too?”

  “Tell me about the faunal lab.”

  “We had someone try to break in. Bernie scared him off.”

  “Bernie?” said Andie. “I’d have thought they would have scared him off.”

  “Bernie’s not as wimpish as he looks. He’s just scared of the primate skeletons and the snakes.”

  “You have any idea who it was?”

  “He didn’t get a look at him. He knocked Bernie down and started to kick him. Bernie pulled his gun, and whoever it was ran off. Bernie said he was dressed in black and had a ski mask.”

  “Was he white or black?”

  “Bernie said he was white.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Sure. They took our statement and said they’d get back to us. Me and Bernie’s holding our breath. We were going to call you, and I . . .” She hesitated. “We handled it, and you were already handling so much, I just thought I wouldn’t disturb your sleep since I was coming in to see you this morning anyway.”

  “Looks like you and Bernie had everything under control. Call one of the temporary security companies and get some extra people for the night shift.”

  “OK.”

  “I’ve given you a lot of work for your first day as the new head of security.”

  “You won’t be disappointed.” Chanell left smiling.

  Andie stood in Diane’s office with her hands on her hips. “I feel as though there’s a lot of stuff going on in the museum that I don’t know about.”

  “There’s stuff going on here that I don’t know,” said Diane. “But I’m going to find out. Send a message to all the departments telling them that no one is to be working alone. And if anyone wants me, give me a call on my cell.”

  Diane ran up the stairs and stopped midway when a sharp pain shot through her lower back. It was acute enough to deliver a wave of nausea. “Shit,” she said and tried to remember if she’d been drinking enough liquids, or too much. Probably not enough rest. She waited until the pain subsided and continued up to the lab at a slower pace.

  Korey was in his office on the phone. Barbara, one of his staff, came up as she entered.

  “Korey told me to help you photograph the skeleton.”

  “Good. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  They went into the vault where Barbara or Korey had already set up the camera equipment on a long arm so it would reach over the bones.

  “I heard someone tried to break in the faunal lab,” said Barbara. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Diane. “Security’s working on it.”

  “We seem to be generating our own crime wave. Who’d’ve thunk it in a place like this?”

  “It’s going to stop,” said Diane. “I believe some of it has to do with this guy here.”

  They set up a shot of the shoulder girdle.

  “You think someon
e’s looking for him? His murderer?”

  “Maybe. I’ve just promoted Chanell to head of security, and I’m going to hire extra people. I don’t want anyone to work alone at night until this is solved.”

  They photographed the entire skeleton, including close-ups of all the remarkable characteristics. As they worked their way around the bones, Diane explained the history of the skeleton and the steps they’d taken to discover its story.

  “Cool stuff. You know, some museums have a forensic unit,” Barbara said.

  “So I’ve been told,” said Diane.

  She packed up the bones and labeled the box. Just for added security, she put the box in a large empty supply box, taped it up and stored it next to the excess supplies apparently ordered by Leonard Starns. She wrote the initials J. D. on the outside of the box.

  When she left, Korey was still on the phone.

  As she got back to her office, Sylvia Mercer darted through the closing door.

  Chapter 40

  “Hi,” she said breathlessly. “Is there such a thing as a forensic zoologist?”

  “A forensic zoologist? Is that what you’ve become?” Diane showed her faunal curator into her office. Sylvia sat down at the table under the Escher prints and began spreading out her papers. Diane pulled up a chair, sat down beside her and picked up one of the sheets of paper.

  “This looks like a copy of the Abercrombie taxidermy records.”

  “It is. I’ve been looking at the animals directly under and over the main part of the human skeleton. We have a Canis lupus directly above, and on that same level we have a Vulpes fulva and four Odocoileus virginianus. Below we have a Sus scrofa and two O. virginianus.”

  “Wolf, fox, deer and pig?”

  “Right. That was lucky, really lucky. It could have been nothing but O. virginianus above and below, and that wouldn’t have given us much to work with. I’ve been working with Whit Abercrombie on his father’s records. They’re a bit difficult to read.” She paused and looked over at Diane. “By the way, Whit’s a babe. I don’t like what he does for a living—the taxidermy stuff.” She shrugged. “But then again, I collect roadkill.”

  “He’s also the county coroner.”

  “There’s that too. You know he carves the taxidermy armatures himself from wood? He’s really an artist. He gets all the musculature beautifully. I told him it’s a shame to cover them up with the animal skins.”

  “I didn’t know he carves. Sounds like you two had a good time.”

  “We did, actually.” Sylvia sounded surprised. “Any-way, the wolf wasn’t a problem. They mounted only three in the past six years. Of the two most recent, one was mounted last winter and the other one just last spring. So, thinking that the one we found was the one mounted for the museum, we looked up the date it was mounted: June 6, 1998.”

  “So we know the human bones were dumped no later than that date,” murmured Diane.

  “Right. Now S. scrofa was a bit of a problem.”

  “How’s that?”

  “One, the skull was missing.”

  “I understand that problem.”

  “Yeah, Jonas said they’re still looking for your skull. I can see how that makes identification harder.”

  “It’d certainly be nice to have it.”

  “Another problem is that they mounted several pigs in the target years. Some were feral pigs shot by hunters, and some were pets.”

  “People mount their pet pigs? People have pet pigs?”

  “I found it hard to believe too. A couple just last week had their pet potbellied pig mounted. Whit said he and his dad have done several potbellies. Some were in our time frame, but, unfortunately, Luther recorded only pig or deer or whatever, the name of the client, the date, kind of mount and what he charged. He didn’t differentiate by genus and species and certainly not subspecies.” Sylvia seemed to think that it was amazing of Luther not to include that information. “And, of course, he didn’t include where he dumped the carcass.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Went on a road trip with Whit.” She grinned. “First, I identified the subspecies of S. scrofa—the pig bones. I had to take them to the university’s faunal collection for that. We have a more complete range there for comparison. One of the things I’d like to do here is increase the collection of reference skeletons for the lab.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “From the bones we recovered, we identified our pig as a potbellied pig. So we went to visit all the people on the taxidermy list to look at their stuffed pigs to see which ones were potbellies. Interesting—of most of the pigs that were hunted, only the heads were mounted. The people with pets had the whole animal done. That should have given us a clue in the records, but we were having a good time and didn’t stop to make that deduction. Only two on the list had a stuffed potbellied pig. One was significantly larger than ours. The other one looked right. The date was March 1, 1998.” Sylvia had a look of triumph on her face.

  “Excellent,” said Diane. “You’ve impressed me.”

  “Jonas said your skeleton is young—late teens, early twenties, maybe?” Diane nodded. “I was thinking. Between March and June lies the dates of spring break for some schools, ours included.”

  “Damn, Sylvia, you’re right. Good thinking. You’ve got a knack for this.”

  “I thought so. Go figure.”

  Sylvia left her notes with Diane. She also left an evidence bag filled out by Jonas with a cross-section in it of the tree whose roots skewered both the wolf and the human skeleton and, as it turned out, the pig. She took it out and looked at the rings—four years. Another verification. The skeletons were there before four years ago, or else the tree could not have planted its roots between their ribs.

  She very nearly had a date. After calling Frank’s partner, Ben, and leaving a message about the time frame that Sylvia had discovered, Diane took the evidence up to the conservation lab and slipped it in the box with the bones. In just a few days she had amassed quite a bit of information. She had no doubt she could find out whose bones they were, and for the first time she felt really close to a breakthrough.

  “Is Korey around?” she asked his assistants on her way out.

  “Somewhere. He’s been acting kind of strange all day,” said Barbara.

  “Been on the phone all day talking to a string of people,” said another assistant.

  “I hope everything’s all right. Tell him I was looking for him.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Diane walked down to the first floor. While she was in the main lobby she decided to go talk to the herpetologist to see if he was any closer to finding the snake. It made her shiver just thinking about it. She had these visions of opening a cabinet somewhere and having the snake fall out on her.

  As she walked through, going to the west wing of the museum, she stopped by the museum store to welcome the owners and to check on their progress in getting ready to open. The proprietors, owners of a gift shop in town, were busy shelving merchandise.

  They had a huge variety of items, including books, dinosaur replicas, museum kits and tee shirts, and several shelves of toys. She really loved the museum, but any joyful thoughts about it were always followed by sadness that Ariel wouldn’t be here to share it with her.

  As she crossed the second lobby with the huge high ceiling that was off the dinosaur room and was the twin of the Pleistocene room, she spotted Korey sitting alone on a bench. She went past the twenty-five-foot-long Albertosaurus skeleton greeting people at the entrance with its mouthful of sharp teeth and sat down beside Korey under a Pteranodon suspended above, its wings spanning almost the width of the room.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Fine.” He was smiling.

  “I was looking for you. I got a lead on who may be involved in the lab break-in.”

  “Mrs. Grayson,” he said.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Deduction.”

&n
bsp; “There seems to be a lot of that going around among my staff.”

  He didn’t ask what she meant, but continued to stare at the wall, looking like the cat who had just found the source of all cream.

  “Are you going to tell me?” she said.

  “Yeah.” He turned toward her and grinned.

  “You going to make me drag it out of you?”

  “Just enjoying the moment. You remember when I was showing Mrs. Grayson the papers we found in the basement?”

  “Are you telling me they turned out to be valuable?”

  “They’re not particularly valuable, no. Well, some are, but what Mrs. Grayson feared was that they might have certain valuable information that she didn’t want to fall into our hands. And as it turned out, she was right. Fortunately, I locked them in the vault and either she or whoever she got to break in couldn’t find them.

  “I believe it was Leonard Starns and his son. His son works for Grayson Real Estate.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. I’ve been calling people all day to make sure that I found what I think I did, and I also took the liberty of inviting an expert out to the museum—I’m flying her in from New York.”

  “New York?” She almost gasped. It was not like Korey to do such a thing without asking her.

  “I also know what this moving-the-museum thing is all about.”

  “You do? You know why Mark Grayson wants to sell the museum?”

  “I know why he wants to buy it. Those.” He nodded his head toward the wall murals. “It turns out they were painted by a relatively little-known artist named Robert Camden, who died at the turn of the century at the age of ninety-one. The tiny unicorns in his paintings were one of his trademarks. He may have been little known then, but like our friend here . . .”—he pointed to the pteranodon above them—“the value of his paintings has soared. They’re now selling for several million dollars apiece.” He turned his head again to Diane. “And we have twelve of them.”

  Diane stood and walked over to the painting—a huge brontosaurus, head held high on his long neck, walking and dragging his tail. Between his front feet, almost obscured by the dust he created with each step, was a small unicorn. The detail of the painting was remarkable. The brontosaurus’ hide was painted like the skin of an elephant, with all the lines and wrinkles and shades of gray. The distant mountains had such clarity and distinction that Diane thought she could probably find them somewhere if she tried.