After Glow

by Jayne Castle

  “That’s for sure,” Melanie chimed in. “After all the media coverage last night, you’re now an even bigger draw than you were when you were just the Mystery Mistress. We’re talking sex, murder, and a terrific dress.”

  Lydia groaned and flopped down into her desk chair. “I can’t stand it.”

  Shrimpton ignored that. Clearing his throat portentously, he held up a page of handwritten notes. “This is an updated list of reservations for private group tours to be escorted personally by you, Lydia. The first one today is a Hunter-Scout group at ten-fifteen.”

  “Not another group of Hunter-Scouts.” Alarmed, Lydia sat bolt upright. “I barely survived the last one. I lost all control. The little monsters crawled all over the artifacts in the Tomb Wing and tried to summon flickers. It’s a wonder they didn’t manage to set fire to the museum.”

  Melanie tsk-tsked. “Don’t whine, Lydia. You know that every Hunter-Scout troop in the city wants a tour conducted personally by the boss’s wife herself.”

  “More to the point, thanks to the Hunter-Scouts’ interest in you, Lydia, we’ve quadrupled our income from student and youth groups in the last few days.” Shrimpton rattled his notes. “Now, then, after the morning group tour you’re free until five. Then you’ll be escorting a VIP after-hours tour.”

  “Hold it right there, sir.” Lydia sat forward and glanced at her calendar. She saw the note she made and smiled in anticipation of triumph. “I can’t do the tour this afternoon. Melanie will have to handle it. I’m scheduled to oversee the transfer of the Mudd Sarcophagus, remember? The movers arrive at five.”

  “Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you,” Shrimpton said. “The sarcophagus isn’t leaving today, after all. The collector’s assistant called late yesterday to postpone the pickup until Monday. Something about not being able to coordinate the security arrangements and the moving company.”

  “All right, I give up.” She shrugged. “With Emmett working so late every evening, I suppose it doesn’t matter if I stay late here tonight.” She checked the time on her watch and looked at Shrimpton. “But if I’m going to be stuck here until six-thirty, I assume that you won’t have any objection to me taking a long lunch hour this afternoon?”

  “No, no, of course not.” Satisfied that she wasn’t going to raise any more objections to the VIP tour arrangements, Shrimpton gave her a toothy smile and hastily backed out of the doorway.

  Melanie looked sympathetic. “Don’t worry, all these special group requests will dry up real quick if and when Emmett goes back to being a private consultant.”

  “When, not if,” Lydia said forcefully. “He is going to step down, I tell you.”

  “Yeah, sure. So, why the request for the long lunch hour? Going to check out some galleries for the Hepscott project?”

  “No, it’s a personal matter.”

  “Hey, if you’re going to shop for shoes and charge it to the Guild, the least you can do is invite your best friend to go along,” Melanie pleaded. “I’m sure I can talk Shrimp into letting me have some extra time.”

  “I’ll bet you could,” Lydia said. “But I don’t think you’ll want to come with me on this errand. I’m not going to shop. I’m going to visit the home of a dead man.”

  Melanie grimaced. “See? That’s your problem in life, Lyd. Your idea of how to have fun just isn’t normal.”

  22

  A FEW MINUTES after noon, Lydia knocked on the door across the hall from Professor Lawrence Maltby’s apartment. Cornish opened it cautiously.

  “You’re back.” He squinted at her with deep suspicion. “How come?”

  “I want to take another quick look inside Professor Maltby’s apartment. But the door is locked now.”

  “Owner came by and locked up yesterday.”

  “I see.” She shot a speculative glance at the closed door on the other side of the corridor. “I wondered if, by any chance, Maltby might have given you a key?”

  “Key?”

  “Neighbors do that sometimes,” she explained.

  Cornish snorted. “Not in this part of town, they don’t.”

  “Oh.” Well, so much for the easy way. She thought about the window that opened onto the alley. The intruders had busted the lock the night she and Emmett had discovered them inside. Perhaps the owner of the building had not had time to get it replaced.

  Cornish looked sly. “But Maltby was always lockin’ himself out on the nights he went down into the tunnels. He took to hidin’ a key under a loose floorboard on the back stairs. I saw him use it a couple of times. He never knew I knew about it. Expect it’s still there.”

  “Will you show me where it is?”

  “Depends.” Cornish squinted. “Heard you and London got married. That makes this a Guild matter, right?”

  She cleared her throat. “Sort of.”

  “So if I do you a favor, it’s like doing one for the Guild.”

  She cleared her throat. “Sort of.”

  “A hundred will get you the key.”

  “If I pay you, it’s not exactly a favor.”

  Cornish shrugged. “Up to you.”

  She sighed and reached into her purse. “Try twenty bucks.”

  “Get real. The other night London paid me a hundred just to tell him a couple of things about Maltby. That key’s gotta be worth at least that much.”

  “A hundred bucks to show me where the key is hidden? That’s outrageous.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “I don’t have a hundred on me.”

  Cornish did not appear concerned. “If this is a Guild matter, London won’t stiff me. He can send the cash tomorrow.”

  She did not have a lot of options here, Lydia reminded herself. “Okay, okay. A hundred bucks. Payable tomorrow. If the key works in that door.”

  “It’ll work.” Cornish darted out into the hall and scuttled down the dingy corridor toward the fire stairs. “Used it myself a few times to see if he’d left any Chartreuse behind when he went out.”

  “It’s so nice to have neighbors you can trust.”

  Key in hand, she let herself into Maltby’s apartment and closed the door. She stood quietly for a moment, taking in the stale, sad feel of the place. No one had cleaned yet. Maltby’s books and papers still littered the floor. The overturned furniture, torn cushions, and crumpled rug appeared to be in the same positions in which the intruders had left them. It did not look as if they had returned to risk a second search. Perhaps they had concluded that whatever they were looking for was not here.

  She put her purse down on the kitchen counter and began to wander slowly through the small space. The first time she had been here, there had been no opportunity to do a thorough search because there had been a dead man lying on the floor and Emmett and the cops had been pounding on the door.

  When she and Emmett had come back it had been at night. They had had only the flashlights for illumination. The trapped milk carton had been a major discovery so they had not lingered to do a more in-depth search.

  Today she was hoping that there might be something else of interest here. She did not know what she was looking for or what she hoped to discover, but there was simply no place else to go. All the leads from the Old Frequency College Alumni office had led to dead ends, literally.

  She rezzed a light switch and discovered that the building’s owner had turned off the power in the apartment. Luckily she had remembered to bring along a flashlight. More important, today she had the added benefit of natural light coming through the small windows in the front room and the study.

  She opened the refrigerator to see if there was anything else of interest inside and immediately regretted the move. In the short time that the power had been cut off, the few items of food stored inside had gone very bad.

  Holding her breath, she opened her psi senses, probing for illusion-trap energy. Nothing.

  Hastily she closed the door and moved on to the kitchen cupboards. In the dull light of day, she saw several small thi
ngs that had escaped her notice on the first two visits: a box of matches, some poison meant for various types of urban vermin, a foul-smelling sponge. But none of the odds and ends looked promising. None carried the taint of psi energy.

  She moved back out into the living room and methodically went through every book and journal on the floor and the few that had been left on the shelves. She got down on her hands and knees and searched beneath the overturned sofa.

  Nothing.

  She did the grimy bathroom next, checking inside tissue boxes and investigating drawers.

  Nothing.

  She saved the small room that Maltby had used as a study for last on the assumption that, between the intruders and Emmett and herself, it had been thoroughly searched. Nevertheless, she took her time, painstakingly exploring every nook and cranny.

  She was on her hands and knees beneath the desk, about to give up, when she saw the little amber bead.

  It had rolled into the corner and lodged in a dusty cobweb. The filmy stuff coated the bead, dimming the natural glow of the amber. If not for the weak sunlight plus the beam of the flashlight, she doubted that she would have noticed it at all.

  Leaning forward, she poked the hilt of the flashlight into the abandoned web, breathing a sigh of relief when no seriously annoyed spider made an appearance.

  The bead rolled free, making a delicate clatter on the wood floor. She picked it up and scrambled out from under the desk.

  Rising to her feet, she blew off the dust and debris and held the bead to the light.

  The amber gem was about half an inch long, cut in an oval shape and pierced so that it could be threaded on a string. No doubt it had once been part of a necklace or a bracelet.

  Don’t get too excited, she thought. It had probably belonged to Maltby. He had been a tangler and, according to Cornish, he had spent a lot of time underground. That meant he would have worn amber.

  But few men wore rez-amber in the form of beads or bracelets; besides, she had noticed Maltby’s amber the day she found his body. It had been set in an inexpensive ring.

  Had Maltby had a female visitor before he died?

  She rolled the bead in the palm of her hand. A small, elegantly inscribed letter A had been cut into one side. The owner’s initial?

  A memory tingled at the back of her mind. Recently she had heard a woman’s name that began with the letter A.

  She concentrated for a few seconds and then it came to her. Burgis’s girlfriend, the woman who had been Karen Price’s roommate at Old Frequency College, had been named Andrea Preston.

  Excitement flashed through Lydia. Coincidence? I think not.

  Okay, so she was feeling smug. She had a right. The bead was a genuine clue.

  She removed a tissue from her shoulder bag and carefully wrapped it around the bead. She could hardly wait to show the amber to Emmett tonight.

  23

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK that afternoon, Melanie appeared in the doorway of Lydia’s office. She wore a very short, red leather trench coat belted snugly around her waist. Her purse was tucked under one arm.

  Lydia looked up warily. “What?”

  “Nothing much,” Melanie said a little too lightly. “I’m on my way home. Just stopped in to say good-bye. See you Monday.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  Melanie grinned. “Well, if you must know, I just saw your VIP tour group gathering in the lobby.”

  Lydia braced herself. “A Hunter-Scout troop?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thank heavens for small favors. Garden club?”

  “Nope. Try again.”

  “Charity organization?”

  “Getting warmer.”

  “I give up.”

  “I’m not going to tell you,” Melanie admitted. “Mostly because I want to see your face when you get a good look at this bunch of VIPs.”

  Resigned, Lydia got to her feet. “You know, the sooner Emmett steps down from his job at the Guild, the better. I’m tired of being a museum attraction.”

  Melanie stepped aside and swept out a hand to usher her through the door. Lydia heard her make some suspicious noises in the hall behind her.

  “Stop snickering,” Lydia ordered.

  “I’m not snickering. I’m chortling.”

  “You’re snickering.”

  Before Melanie could defend herself from that charge, Lydia turned the corner and saw the group that awaited her.

  On the positive-rez side, it was a small crowd, only about half a dozen.

  The negative-rez was that they all had shaved heads, long, green robes, and unnaturally serene expressions.

  “Oh, boy,” Lydia said under her breath. “Greenies.”

  “If I were you,” Melanie whispered as she went past her toward the door, “I’d give them the same tour you give the Hunter-Scout troops. You know, concentrate on the Tomb Wing. Something tells me they’ll want to see the really weird stuff.”

  At that moment the six Greenies noticed Lydia and bowed respectfully. By the time they raised their bald heads, she had her tour-guide smile firmly fixed in place.

  One of them, the leader, apparently, stepped forward. “I am Acolyte Clarence. It is very kind of you to make this time available to us. We are eager to learn.”

  The museum emptied out quickly at five, thanks to the new obsessive-compulsive night guard. Benny Fellows was young, but he took his duties seriously.

  “ ’Evening, Miss Smith.” Benny touched his cap when she paused at the entrance to his small office with the Greenies in tow. “Everything is in order for the tour this evening. I’ve got the lights on in all the galleries.”

  “Thanks, Benny. We’ll be finished in about an hour and a half.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Benny waved the group on into the main gallery.

  Thirty minutes later, Lydia decided that she had been much too hasty in her assumptions concerning the Greenies’ level of intellectual interest in antiquities. Their questions were thoughtful and showed that the group had done a fair amount of study.

  Whatever else you could say about the cult, she thought, it was obvious that the Greenies did not starve their members. All six of the men in this group looked strong, solidly built, and quite fit. They varied in age but they all appeared to be somewhere between twenty and forty. Clarence was the oldest. He was also the one who asked the most questions.

  The museum took on an eerie ambience after closing time, she reflected as she led her group into the Tomb Wing. The long galleries were always on the dark side, of course, even during regular hours, because Shrimp liked the creepy effect. But this evening they seemed drenched in ominous mystery.

  “In this gallery we house the various objects that the experts believe were associated with the alien burial rites,” Lydia said, turning the corner and gesturing toward the dramatic entrance of the Tomb Wing.

  The Greenies appeared suitably impressed by the over-the-top décor. Shrimpton had pulled out all the stops to induce a sense of spectral gloom in this wing. It was darker than the other galleries. The sarcophagi, urns, and other strange objects inside had been carefully arranged to create the most morbid effect. Each artifact was illuminated with a narrow beam of green light that left great pockets of shadows around the relics.

  “Watch your step, please,” Lydia said briskly. “It’s quite dark in here.”

  A ripple of excitement went through the group. There were several murmured comments and exclamations.

  She paused beside a green quartz urn that was dramatically accented with acid green light reminiscent of the interior glow of the catacombs. Nothing made by humans could precisely reproduce that unique radiance but Shrimpton’s small staff had come close.

  “This urn was discovered in a chamber that was heavily guarded with several very complex illusion traps,” she said. “There were also a number of powerful energy ghosts in the vicinity. The assumption is that the original owner wanted to ensure that his tomb would not be disturbed.”

  Clar
ence surveyed the abstract designs on the urn. “Does anyone know what the decorations mean?”

  “Unfortunately, the nature and purpose of the carvings found on so many of the artifacts remain unknown.” She traced the elegantly curved decoration that circled the urn. “Many para-archaeologists, myself included, believe that these designs are examples of Harmonic writing.”

  “Real words? Oh, wow.” One of the members of the group stepped forward to take a closer look. “But what does it say?”

  “That’s the problem,” she said patiently. “We don’t know. If these are meaningful symbols they are, in a sense, locked in code. Until para-archaeologists find a key to the code, the alien writing will remain nothing more than a series of attractive decorations, as far as we humans are concerned.”

  “Hey, look over there.” Another Greenie pointed excitedly across the room. “A coffin.”

  The group hurried past the urn to examine the relic.

  Lydia followed. “You are fortunate to be able to view this object today. This is the last day it will be on display.”

  “Why is that?” someone asked.

  She patted the edge of the uncovered coffin. “It was purchased from the museum by a private collector and it’s due to be picked up on Monday. It’s called the Mudd Sarcophagus after the P-A who discovered it. You will notice that the interior is large enough to hold a full-grown person but that the shape is not quite right for a human.”

  The six Greenies all leaned over to peer into the empty sarcophagus.

  “Weird,” one of them muttered. “The aliens must have had big chests and short legs.”

  She opened her mouth to respond to that observation but at that instant she heard the unmistakable clink of a string of beads.

  Clarence was leaning over the open coffin. The long necklace that until now had been concealed by the folds of his green robes had fallen forward and dangled in midair. The thin spear of light from the ceiling fixture glinted on a series of oval-shaped amber gems.

  Lydia stopped breathing. She was absolutely certain that if she could get her hands on Clarence’s necklace and compare the beads on it to the single amber gem she had found in Maltby’s apartment, she would discover that they were identical, probably right down to the little letter A carved on one side.