by Lee, Rachel
“Hey, hero lady,” she said. “Feeling on top of the world this morning?”
“I was.”
Vicki came into the room. Impossibly tiny, barely reaching five feet, she always roused a twinge of envy in Anna’s breast. And Anna knew for a fact that she did the same to Vicki. They’d once agreed they’d change bodies in an instant. Vicki wanted desperately to be tall enough to command attention.
“What do you mean, was?” Vicki asked. “You were a megahit.”
Anna passed her Peter’s card without comment, hoping Vicki would accept that as the complete explanation.
“Oh, man,” Vicki said. “That guy is as dense as the Wall of China.”
“Yeah.”
Vicki passed the card back. “The flowers are pretty, though. You don’t want to throw them away.”
“No, but we could put them out at one of the ticket windows.”
Vicki giggled. “I’ll do it. Listen, I’ve got a class in fifteen minutes. But I can be back in about an hour and a half if you need me for anything?”
Anna shook her head. “I think it’s going to be a slow, quiet day. I need to check out the Alcantara exhibit—we’re receiving a new shipment today—and I don’t expect there are going to be any uproars.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Larry said we got a call from the shipper. They’ll deliver around two, so I’ll be sure to be back by then.” Vicki scooped up the flowers and carried them away, taking their perfume with her.
This left Anna alone to contemplate the two business envelopes on her desk, neither of which seemed interesting, and the strange mixture of feelings that had clouded her day. A missing gag dagger and Peter. It really shouldn’t bother her at all.
But somehow she knew the day was already going to hell.
A short while later, Anna decided to stroll through the Pocal exhibit. The shipment for the Alcantara exhibit wasn’t due until two, and she wanted to wait and see what new discoveries had arrived before she started making her plans to improve the display.
Meanwhile, she had a little time to spare and decided to use it productively. She wanted to listen to what the visitors were saying. They would tell her what worked and what didn’t.
She skipped the film, which gave a general introduction to the Maya and the jungles in which the relics had been found, and walked past one of the docents, who was offering visitors tape players and headphones.
She’d listened to that tape once, and once was enough. With the information she had provided, a couple of students and professors in the theater department of USF had written the script, and one of the students with a deep, engaging voice had recorded it.
It was a wonderful tape, mostly, telling the story of the discovery of the Mayan relics while providing specific information about the exhibits. Anna loved it, except for the very end.
“Two days after Pocal’s tomb was opened, an earthquake struck the area, setting off petroleum fires that leveled two square miles and killed hundreds of people. Was it a natural event? A simple accident of nature? Or did it have something to do with Pocal’s Curse… ?”
Once was more than enough.
She slipped through the double doors into the cool dim interior of the exhibit. Wending her way along a narrow path between artfully placed silk-and-plastic foliage, listening to the recorded sounds of birdcalls and distant thunder, she was struck anew by how enchanting this was. In little setbacks to either side, scattered so they didn’t overwhelm the jungle feeling, were the artifacts themselves, cased in glass. From time to time there was a bench for visitors to rest on, but mostly the exhibit was designed to keep people moving at a fairly steady pace through the pretend jungle until they emerged in rooms that held the greatest treasures. With a lot of effort, they had tried to paint the walls to look as if they were interior rooms in a pyramid. She still wasn’t entirely sure if the effect worked, but it was better than ordinary walls.
But the pièce de résistance was the mock-up of the tomb. Along the way she listened to snippets of conversation that indicated people were enjoying the atmosphere, and even the taped account of the discovery. Docents, placed strategically, nodded and smiled as she passed. Several were hard at work giving more detailed information on some of the artifacts to interested visitors.
The tomb replica was at the foot of stairs leading back down to the main floor into an unused storage space. It couldn’t come close to mimicking the more than three hundred stairs that had been necessary to reach Pocal’s tomb from the top of the original pyramid, but it still managed to give visitors the sensation of being underground.
The first thing she noticed when she stepped into the dim space was that Janine was sitting on one of the benches, her long legs stretched out before her, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her white shorts.
“Something wrong?” Anna asked. There were no other visitors here at the moment.
Janine glanced at her. “No way. I’m admiring our brilliance, which is particularly obvious here. I’m also wondering if I could find a bottle of must to spray around here.”
“Must?” Anna was sure she must have misunderstood. “You mean musk?”
“No. I mean must as in musty. What this place needs is to have the scent of old, damp earth and rock.”
“True.” Anna sat beside her on the bench. “I suppose I could bring in a couple of bags of potting soil…”
“Maybe. But I’m not sure that would do the trick.”
“Maybe not. Anyway, we don’t want to get in trouble with somebody who gets asthma from molds.”
Janine sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
“How about a couple pairs of dirty socks?”
Janine looked at her, realized she wasn’t serious, and laughed. “Wrong smell.”
Anna scanned the room, noting that the sarcophagus, reproduced from a mold provided by the museum in Mexico, looked like real limestone. The guys who had painted it had done a wonderful job. In fact, now that she thought about it, the museum probably ought to throw a party for the theater students who’d helped with all of this, from lighting to scenery, in exchange for credit in their various courses.
“Party,” she said aloud. “Remind me, Janine. We should throw a party for all those students who pitched in.”
“We should,” Janine agreed. “You know, I’ve been sitting here thinking that if we could make the tomb look this real, maybe we could do the same for the underwater display upstairs.”
“Great minds think alike. I’m getting ready to push some ideas on that.”
“Want me to bring you some drawings?”
“I’d love it. We can hash it over for a few days, then I can go to work on the directors.”
Janine nodded and stood. “I gotta get back to my drawing board. And by the way, if it’s not too late, stay away from the Sentinel this morning. He praised the exhibit to high heaven, but I get the feeling he’s not too fond of you.”
“Thanks.” Anna lowered her head a moment, wondering what Howell’s ax was, then tossed the concern away. Maybe he didn’t like his beat, maybe he wanted to be chasing cops around town. Or maybe he just didn’t like her because she was a redhead. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Sighing, she stood and looked around the tomb once more. Along one wall was a lighted case showing artifacts that had been scattered around the tomb, as if at one time vandals had entered. Then there was the dagger. The most priceless of the artifacts, it stood alone in its own vacuum-sealed, heavily alarmed case. It had been discovered inside the sarcophagus, in Pocal’s hands, and now stood beside it on a pedestal, under glass. It winked back at her, cold and deadly, and a little shiver ran along her spine.
Forget it, she told herself. The exhibit was fantastic. All she had to do was ignore the worries that seemed determined to invade her thoughts or run along her nerve endings. Get back to reality.
She heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Visitors. Suddenly she wondered what had happened to the docent who was supposed to be th
ere.
Moments later her question was answered. The docent, a young grad student named Lance Barro, was escorting several people down the stairs, keeping up an interesting patter about the exhibit. He smiled and nodded at Anna and continued talking about the tomb and the artifacts they were about to see.
Satisfied that things couldn’t be going any better, Anna headed out. But just as she climbed the first stair on the far side of the exhibit, a glint caught her from the corner of her eye.
Turning with only half her attention, only vaguely wondering what it was because she had never noticed it before, she saw the dagger gleaming in its lighted case. A glint off the glass or something.
But then her heart stood still. Something was wrong. The dagger looked… odd. Ever so slightly discolored. And the corner of something white and flat and very small stuck out from underneath it, something that hadn’t been there before. Of that she was absolutely certain.
She hurried over to the case, actually stepping in front of one of the guests who was trying to see it.
Inside the case, looking just as it had when Anna found it last night in her office, was the glass replica. The real jade dagger was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Stepping back quickly, she resisted the urge to say anything, even to the docent. Instead she clattered away up the exit stairs.
As soon as she emerged into the bright daylight of the lobby, she hesitated, considering what to do next. If she simply called the campus authorities, Ivar Gregor, the managing director, was apt to be furious with her.
She was, after all, simply the curator. Ivar ran the museum like a general in charge of a small army, coordinating everything, from hiring and firing to making sure all the different teams did their jobs, from the supply people to the shipping people to the security staff. In short, he was the chief executive officer.
And Anna was acutely aware that he was the person who doled out additional people when she needed them, who oversaw her budgets for projects, and who was quite willing to kibbitz her every decision on grounds that it was impractical or out of budget.
He hadn’t been too difficult on the Pocal project, but that could change overnight.
She had to tell him first. Sticking her hands into her slacks pockets, she headed down the admin hallway to hunt him up. She passed offices on either side where people toiled with all the paperwork from import licenses to purchase orders to payroll.
Things had certainly changed since her arrival two years ago. The museum, then, had been little more than a few dusty rooms at the back of a classroom building where items were stored. Then the building had opened, and the Alcantara exhibit had been set up. First it had been rows of display cases, of little interest to anyone except students and their teachers.
But all that had changed since they had decided to go ahead with the Pocal exhibit and see if they could generate some of their own operating funds, rather than relying on the university, the endowment that had set them up, and the occasional gift from alumni.
Since then, things had kicked into high gear, and Ivar had seemed to thrive with each bit of growth. He’d also become more self-important. More difficult. More of a prick, as Nancy would say.
Ivar was way at the back, his office being the only one on this hallway with a window on the world. He was at his desk, visible through the glass wall that went from ceiling to waist height. He sat at an old mahogany executive desk that he thought gave him more cachet than the fiberboard-and-pressed-wood desks everyone else was using.
Behind him his windows gave a view of the campus: trees, grass, some sidewalks. There weren’t many students visible, but the museum was tucked in a relatively isolated location, away from most of the classroom buildings. Florida sun drenched the world.
Anna lifted her hand and knocked, noting that her mouth was dry. Not because she faced Ivar, but because the dagger was gone. In a matter of hours she had gone from the pinnacle to the pits. Her future hung in the balance. And somehow, deep inside, she knew the theft of the dagger was directed at her.
Ivar motioned her to come in and take a seat. A plump man of about sixty, who had only a few wisps of hair remaining, he wasn’t inclined to smile easily. From the way he beamed at her, however, she guessed she was the fair-haired child today. Well, that would last only thirty seconds. She waited until he hung up the phone.
“Fantastic,” he said. “Meg Allbritten is thrilled with the media coverage.” Allbritten was the president of the university, a really charming, pleasant woman. “She says they’re thinking about setting up a program to show other university museums how we did this on such a tight budget.”
“We had a lot of free grunt labor.”
“Well, yes,” he agreed. “We integrated some of our teaching programs with hands-on experience. Wonderful idea we had.”
It had been hers, but she didn’t say so. She was too preoccupied to bother. “Great news, Ivar,” she said, entirely too briskly, but she didn’t care. “Listen, we’ve got a serious problem.”
“How serious could it be? Everything’s going just as it should, like a well-oiled machine.”
He was feeling unusually expansive today. It was almost sad to have to ruin his mood. “Ivar. Ivar, listen carefully. You need to call the police.”
He looked blankly at her. “Did someone break something?”
“No. Worse. Someone stole the Pocal dagger.”
It was horrible to watch his face whiten. No red or purple spots of anger emerged. He didn’t spray spittle as he was wont to do when furious. For a minute, he couldn’t even speak. “You’re joking,” he said almost desperately.
“No, I’m not. It’s been stolen. We need to call the cops. Then we need to rope off the tomb room and keep people out before all the evidence is destroyed.”
“Keep people out?” He was aghast. Then, almost as she decided that shock had turned him into a blithering idiot, he nodded and reached for the phone. “I’ll take care of it. Police first, and the security company, then I’ll have the guards clear everyone out.”
He punched in a number swiftly, then as he waited for an answer, he looked at her. When he spoke, he rocked her to her very toes. “I’m sorry, Anna. This could have been so good for both of us.”
Back in her office, waiting for the police while the guards cleared the guests from the exhibit, and ticket-window personnel refunded money, Anna swiveled her chair around and stared out through the blinds at the perfect April day.
She understood exactly what Ivar meant, and her stomach churned miserably. Two years ago, just before the new museum building opened, and just before she began working there, there had been a theft. Someone had crept into the chaos of the earliest stages of transition and slipped away with a precious golden mask that had been found with the sunken treasure ship. The mask had been unique, a one-of-a-kind relic of a tribe that had disappeared forever from the earth, a tribe about which almost nothing was known.
Both the university and the museum officials had suffered a great deal of embarrassment over poor security measures. Ivar had been in charge then, too.
Now it had happened again, with the best security in the world. Ivar might well lose his job. And Anna… well, Anna might not find it so easy to locate another. Not for a long time.
The thought that everything she had worked for had been ground to dust under the relentless boot of some crook made her ill.
But not as ill as the loss of the dagger. Nowhere near as ill. The thing was priceless, the inheritance of future generations.
Oh, God, what if the thief had taken other things? She hadn’t even thought to look.
Little was as eye-catching as gold, but almost every genuine article in the exhibit was worth a small fortune to unscrupulous collectors. The clay pots, the textiles, the toys carved out of stone for small hands …
Her heart thudded, and her stomach sank as if she were riding a fast elevator. What if he had taken other things?
And how were they going to expla
in this to the Mexican museum that had agreed to exchange exhibits? It would be years before any other museum would again consider sharing irreplaceable articles with the Museum of Antiquities.
Ivar was right. They were both dead in the water even if they kept their jobs.
Not that either of them was responsible for security. Dinah Hudson, from HiSecurity, Inc. had overseen that. Her firm wasn’t going to be thrilled either. They’d promised to install a state-of-the-art system from the ground up, and it hadn’t even peeped when an item was stolen.
Their only hope now was that the police could find the burglar.
The campus police immediately called the Tampa Police Department, which quickly dispatched a couple of cars to the museum, then dumped the call on Clarence Tebbins’s desk.
Excitement grabbed him. He’d known something more was going to happen at the museum, and the replica dagger suggested they might be up against a real criminal mastermind. Most criminals were so stupid his job could be a routine yawner, but a criminal like this, one who would go to all the trouble to duplicate a dagger of that intricacy, and thumb his nose at the world by showing the replica first… well, it tickled his fancy more than the cases he was currently working on.
“You need me?” his partner Vance Newman asked. Newman was an average-looking guy with absolutely nothing memorable about him. He was a passable detective, but not up to Tebbins’s horsepower, and they both knew it. They also weren’t very fond of each other. Newman thought Tebbins was weird, and Tebbins hated it when Newman called him Tebbie.
But he’d learned not to say anything about that. He’d been called Tebbie by his peers ever since third grade, and it had finally dawned on him that the more he objected, the harder his life got. So he’d learned not to say anything at all about it. Besides, anything was better than being called Clarence.
But he was nearly positive that Newman had figured out it bothered him. That would fit with the rest of his character.
