Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train

by Maria Hudgins

  “Right. We still don’t know who bashed her. The police are working on it, but …” Paul reached over from his seat on the edge of his cot and placed a hand on her knee. “They think you did it.”

  Lacy swallowed her mouthful of beer hastily. “What?”

  “Sierra told them she couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to do her harm—except you.”

  Lacy started to jump up and say something she’d regret, but Paul shushed her.

  “She considers you a rival. I told her that’s crazy, but Sierra isn’t dumb.” Paul held up both hands as if begging a chance to explain further. “I’m sorry, but apparently I mention you more often than I would if I considered you nothing more than a colleague.” Paul looked at the top of the tent as he said this. “You know? Sierra notices. She’s not stupid.”

  Lacy said nothing but savored the warm glow she knew would soon be doused.

  “The police say you had blood on your legs when they questioned you that night.”

  “It was my own blood! Someone knocked me down when I crawled out of my tent.”

  “And next day, you split! Bad move.”

  “How was I to know?”

  Paul ignored the question. “As soon as Sierra came to, in the hospital, the police talked to her. Then they wanted to talk to you. I had to tell them you were AWOL.”

  Lacy sat back and folded her arms. “I should have saved a swab of the blood on my leg. We could DNA test it. It was my blood.”

  Paul looked at her legs, now criss-crossed with ligature marks, bruises, and scrapes. For the first time that evening he looked her up and down in the lantern light, and Lacy watched his face as he surveyed the black eye now yellow around the edges, the angry red lines cut by the duct tape on her wrists, the multiple contusions and bruises on almost every exposed inch of her skin. “What the hell?”

  “Long story. Tell you later. Go on with yours.”

  “Ready for another?” Paul bent his empty Efes can and threw it at the pile of its predecessors, bringing several down with a clatter. Lacy’s was still half full. “Did you hear Bob and me arguing?”

  “I’m afraid I did.”

  He pulled another beer from his cooler and cracked it open. “We can’t figure out what’s going on with the Sebring Foundation. Bob calls, Henry calls, I call. We each get different answers. They’re going to stop all funding until they decide what direction the Foundation will go in. Or, they have to wait until the first of the month. Or, they’re waiting for someone in the family to tell them what to do. It’s a different story every time we call.” He took a swig from his new can and sat down again, looking at her over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Before we go any further, Paul, do you think I did it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you didn’t.”

  “Just making sure.”

  “Max’s will leaves everything to the Foundation, but Max didn’t really have anything. He got a monthly allowance. A big allowance, I’ll grant you, but still . . . The money belongs to his father who, unfortunately, is in a coma. When his father dies, the money will go to . . . who?” Paul shrugged and gestured with both hands, sending a splash of beer onto a stack of books. “Max is his beneficiary, but Max has predeceased his old man. So now what? Nobody knows!”

  “Hasn’t anyone talked to an attorney about what’s in the old man’s will? It must have a clause to cover Max dying first.”

  “Probably, but we can’t get a straight answer out of anybody. Plus, the old guy is still alive. He may stay in that coma for years. Who knows?”

  “If Max didn’t really have any money of his own, who was funding the Sebring Foundation’s projects?”

  “The Sebring family, under the direction of Max. It’s a royal mess.”

  “You and Bob weren’t arguing about that, though. You were saying something about Bob going walkabout and this site being closed.”

  Paul sighed, put his beer can on the ground, and, hunched over with elbows on knees, clapped his palms together. When he did speak, his voice had a different tone. Softer. “Before you came out here last week, I found a gold earring at the bottom of the east trench. I’ve been researching it and I’m sure it’s Assyrian. It doesn’t belong here at all. How did it get here? I have no idea. As soon as I saw it, I realized Bob would go apeshit. He’d claim it was from the lost hoard of King Croesus or Midas’s gold or whatever, and it would validate his idea that we’re standing in the route taken by the Persians after they conquered Lydia. He’d forget all about this dig and take off combing the hills for more gold. The Sebring Foundation would either back him or it wouldn’t. Either way, this site would be history. So I picked the earring up and hid it.”

  Paul knelt in front of the safe that sat on the floor near the head of his cot and gave the combination lock a spin. “What I did is a no-no, Lacy. Artifacts must always be photographed and studied in situ. Bob spotted a small piece of pottery on the finds table and realized it was out of place. He asked me about it. I had no clue where it came from but I guess my face gave me away. That I was hiding something. I need to work on my poker face. At that point, I knew I’d better show him the earring.”

  Paul removed something from the safe. He stood and placed a delicate gold earring in her hand. By the color, Lacy recognized it as pure gold or nearly so, 18 karat or better. A filigree design, so intricate it would challenge the skill of a modern goldsmith, curved around a crescent that ended in a tiny, hinged wire for a pierced ear.

  “Wow! It’s perfect. Assyrian, you say? How old?”

  “Don’t know yet.” Paul returned the earring to the safe. “Now Bob has gone apeshit like I knew he would, and I’m telling him to cool it.” He paused a moment, his gaze cast down. “I think it’s from the Iraq Museum, Twigs.”

  “Part of the loot that’s still missing?” Lacy had tried to stay abreast of the fate of the thousands of items that went missing from the Iraq Museum during the 2003 War. Some had been spirited across the borders into Lebanon and Jordan, and from there to the U.S., Europe, or Japan. Some turned up on eBay. Thankfully, many items had been removed before the attack and placed in banks elsewhere for safekeeping. But an estimated three thousand items were still missing. “So why is it here?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  Lacy held up her empty beer can and raised an eyebrow. “Back to the attack on Sierra. I’ll talk to the police first thing tomorrow, but before I go in, all ignorant, what else did they find out since I left?”

  “They found the weapon she got hit with. It’s a torque wrench. They found it in the parking lot, and it still had blood on it. They figure her attacker heard or saw someone coming and ran. Threw the wrench away on the run.”

  “Any fingerprints?”

  “No useable ones. The attacker probably wiped them off, or wore gloves. Plus, the handle end has a sort of hatched surface that wouldn’t pick up prints very well.”

  “Gloves? Sounds premeditated.”

  Paul handed her a fresh beer. “Actually they did find one partial print near the socket end. Unfortunately, it was mine.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “No problem. The wrench, they figured out, was from the toolbox we keep in the back of the van. Could have anyone’s prints on it, including mine.” Paul turned toward the tent flap swinging in a soft, warm breeze. Pressing his knuckles into the small of his back, he stretched, then took advantage of the seven-foot clearance in the center of the tent to raise his arms over his head. The stretch squeezed up an unbidden beer belch. “They figure Sierra may have been lucky. Someone, it’s not clear who was the first, heard her scream and ran toward her. Otherwise, her attacker would have kept on beating her.”

  Lacy cringed. “I’m so glad she’s all right now. She is, isn’t she?”

  “No, she’s not all right. She still has horrid headaches. And nightmares. She’s afraid to stay in a tent out here anymore and I can’t say I blame her.”

  * * *


  It took Lacy a half-hour and a third beer to tell Paul her story. Meanwhile he sat on the side of his cot, shaking his head in disbelief or disgust or both, but said little. As she talked, she wondered if Paul’s mind was back in Lebanon five years ago, reliving the violent death of his wife. Her name, Lacy knew, was Melanie, and she’d simply been caught in the crossfire between warring factions. Not much similarity to the scenario Lacy was describing now, but still, both involved an innocent woman in jeopardy. Well, not entirely innocent in her own case, she had to admit. She sort of asked for it by snooping.

  “This guy Milo. You trust him?”

  “I do. If it weren’t for him I’d never have gotten out of Istanbul alive.”

  “You could’ve solved the whole problem by going to the police.”

  “No I couldn’t! First off, they’d never believe me. Second, there was nothing they could do but take down my description of Jason. Then what? I might have talked them into going with me to the little room over the fish market, but what would they see? A chair and some shredded duct tape. Wow.”

  “They could have talked to the fishmonger.”

  “I have a feeling he was in on it. How else would Jason have known where to look? He got there only a few minutes after I went upstairs. I saw him talking to the fishmonger, and he marched straight up the stairs. He knew where to find me.”

  “Refresh my memory, Lacy. Why were you doing this?” Paul rose from his cot and leaned forward, his face inches from hers. “This concerns you, how?”

  “A man was murdered and I’m the only person in the world who cares.”

  “So, tell the police what you know. It’s their job, not yours. Tell them everything about the train, about the man named Jason, about what you learned at the Whatchamacallit Hotel. They’ll take it from there.”

  “No, they won’t. Not unless someone holds their feet to the fire.”

  Paul took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You are the stubbornest girl I have ever met!”

  “Make that tenacious and I’ll agree with you.”

  “Bull-headed.”

  “Unrelenting.”

  One corner of Paul’s mouth quivered. “Okay. You’re the most unrelenting girl I’ve ever met.”

  “Unrelenting woman.”

  * * *

  When Lacy stood to leave, Paul stood as well and threw an arm around her shoulder. “You know what I said the day you got here and told me about the man on the train and the nametag in his coat?”

  “You said there was no connection.”

  “Coincidence, I said. I take that back. A man wearing a trench coat with Max Sebring’s name in it, was hell bent to come out this way. Looted antiquities are showing up here and Max Sebring is footing the bill. Man gets killed en route. There must be a connection.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Entering her little tent—actually Gülden’s little tent but Lacy had begun thinking of it as hers—she switched on the battery-powered lantern Gülden had loaned her. She felt strangely warmed by the sight of the belongings she’d left behind. They weren’t much, but they were her very own: shampoo, brush, iPod, the ballpoint pen with a flower on one end, the paperback mystery she’d dog-eared on page 187, the clean blue shirt she’d been saving in case she needed to spruce up. She pulled off her denim shorts and knelt beside her duffle bag, searched the side pocket, and found a one-hundred lira note. Why had she put it there? Never mind. Right now it looked like a pot of gold. She ran her hand down the seam of the pocket and felt paper. Unfolding it, she laughed and pressed it to her chest. It was the copy she’d made at home of her passport photo page, and near the bottom of the sheet, in a secret code only she could decipher, she’d written her credit card numbers and their expiration dates.

  She returned everything to the duffle and sat back on the soft lining of her sleeping bag, pulling the top part up and over her bare legs.

  “Knock, knock,” Henry called softly from outside the tent.

  “Wait a minute. I have to put my shorts on.”

  “If you insist.”

  When Lacy unzipped the door, Henry crawled through and sat Indian-style facing her, their knees nearly touching. It was a bit uncomfortable. He was Lacy’s first guest in her tiny home, and its dimensions forced them to invade each other’s personal space. She put up both hands, palms forward. “Pattycake?”

  Henry laughed. His dark eyes twinkled in the lantern light. “I came to apologize for my rude behavior. I’m sorry. I was concerned about where you were and I drove all the way back from the airport thinking I must have gotten the day wrong. Hoping I had, actually. Otherwise, you might be in trouble and I had no idea how to locate you.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I had no idea you’d come to meet me.”

  “How did you think you’d get back here?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it. Sorry.” Lacy couldn’t remember that far back, to the time when she still planned to take a plane back from Istanbul. So much had happened since then. Suddenly she flashed on a mental image of the return ticket and printed itinerary in her stolen backpack. Jason would have had these well before the scheduled flight, but would he have realized she couldn’t board without a passport?

  “So why did you drive back?”

  “Make yourself comfortable, Henry. It’s a long story.” Lacy wished she had liquid refreshment to offer him, but she didn’t. She gave him a condensed version of the story, anxious to get to the important questions. Henry’s face was so intent his eyes ceased to blink and he leaned forward, closer and closer. Speaking in a deliberately lowered voice, she said, “Did you and Max, by chance, stay at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul?”

  “Yeah. We did.”

  “When did you rent your car?”

  “The next day, I think. The morning after we flew in. We had to go to this little town south of the city to pick up a rug Max had ordered custom-made.”

  “I know.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Henry’s head jerked backward.

  “I talked to Elbert MacSweeney.”

  “Who’s Elbert MacSweeney? Oh! The dude who manages the carpet project, right?”

  “I know MacSweeney. We’re friends, but never mind. Back to the Pera Palace Hotel. Did you and Max go to the hotel bar soon after you got there?”

  He thought for a minute. “Max did. I didn’t.”

  So far, all details were dovetailing nicely. Lacy forged ahead. “Did Max have a green trench coat?”

  “Yeah. Burberry, I think. He got it in London but it wasn’t really green, more like a … green. Right.”

  “When was the last time you saw it?”

  “Why?” Henry shifted his weight, brought one knee up and rested an arm on it.

  “Because the man I met on the train was wearing it, and someone killed him.”

  “No shit!” Henry’s smooth, brown forehead crinkled, a vertical line forming between his eyebrows.

  “So think. When was the last time you saw that coat?”

  After a long pause, Henry said, “He was wearing it at JFK before we left New York. Yes. He was wearing it.” He paused again. “On the plane, he probably put it in an overhead bin. After that, I don’t remember.”

  “Was he wearing it or carrying it when you went from the airport to the hotel? Did you go straight to the hotel?”

  “They had a car waiting for us at the airport. We went straight to the hotel, but I can’t remember even looking at Max. I was preoccupied with our luggage and all. Max never worried about details. That was my job.”

  “When did Max go to the bar?”

  “Not long after we got there. We went to our rooms and I wanted to shower, but Max said he was going to hit the bar first.”

  “Was he wearing alligator shoes?”

  Henry’s eyes popped. “Alligator shoes?”

  “Alligator wing-tips, European size 45. Handmade. Italian.” Lacy couldn’t say it with a straight face.

  Henry buried his face in the cr
ook of his arm. He was laughing. “Yes. That is, he did have alligator wing-tips, European size 45, handmade, Italian, but whether he was wearing them when he went to the bar, I can’t say. I was in the shower.”

  “Was he wearing them on the plane?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Did he bring them with him?”

  “Wait. I did his packing for him. Sure.” Henry looked at Lacy’s duffle bag as if picturing the contents of Max’s luggage. “I packed his new boots, old tennis shoes, shower shoes, but I left his alligator shoes out, along with the rest of the clothes he wanted to wear on the plane.”

  “Where did Max go after he left the bar?”

  “When I got dressed, I went downstairs and called Max out of the bar. We went back to our suite so he could shower and change for dinner.”

  “You really did everything for Max, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t mind. I was his Man Friday. My job, among other things, was to figure out what he was forgetting and do it for him.” Henry picked a long blond hair from the coated polyester floor and wrapped it around his finger. “Actually, at one time Max wanted to adopt me.” Henry blushed a little. “After his own son was killed in that plane crash, he, like, transferred all his paternal feelings to me. He told me he would make me the primary beneficiary in his will, and I would take over as head of the Sebring Foundation when he was ready to retire.”

  “And you said no?”

  “I had to. My mother is still alive. How would she have felt?”

  “Did that make things weird between you and Max?”

  “No, not at all. He understood.”

  Lacy wondered if Henry might be Max’s beneficiary after all. If Henry had turned down the adoption idea and Max wasn’t upset by the rejection, he might well have changed his will in Henry’s favor anyway. But Paul said Max didn’t really have any money because it still belonged, technically, to his comatose father.

  Henry seemed to drift off into another world. He twisted the blond hair around his index finger until it cut off the circulation and turned his fingertip blue.

  Lacy returned to the former topic. They’d been making good progress there for a minute. “If Max was wearing the alligator shoes on the plane, he was probably still wearing them when he went to the bar.”