by Alex Archer
He scowled as he dug for it, then put it to his ear. “Really? Really? This is going to be a long day, Arnie. I’ll be down in a few.” He returned the cell to his pocket, picked up the suitcase and gestured with his chin to get Annja to leave.
She remembered the email Edgar had sent her yesterday. I have quite the monster for you to chase, dear Annja. We must meet for dinner tomorrow so I can give you my notes.
“Oh, there’s a very real monster here, Detective Rizzo. The one that killed Edgar. And I definitely plan to chase it into the ground.”
She spun on her heel and headed toward the elevator just as the radio started to play Alice Cooper’s rendition of “Only Women Bleed.”
Chapter 5
The elevator doors opened to the lobby, revealing the flashing red lights of an ambulance parked just beyond the hotel’s front doors. Paramedics were loading someone into the back of it; Annja couldn’t see who.
But from the buzz of voices coming from the people gathered nearby, she picked out a name: Elyse Hapgood. Annja didn’t know if that was a hotel employee, a random guest or one of the archaeologists attending the conference. The latter, she decided, when she gleaned more sentence fragments.
“Heart attack, poor dear.”
“Keeled over in the middle of the French toast.”
“Too young for a heart attack.”
“Told Elyse to go on a diet.”
“Think she’ll make it?”
“Was she breathing? Did anyone notice if she was breathing?”
“She wasn’t fat. Elyse just had a big chest.”
“Double D.”
“Triple.”
Hotel employees were dutifully keeping the entrance clear. Lieutenant Greene looked to be holding court over the controlled chaos. He stepped away to talk to one of the paramedics, who nodded and got in the ambulance.
The siren started again and the ambulance pulled away.
Rembert appeared at her shoulder. He had a pensive expression, as if he were considering something. He looked beyond her, toward the ballroom doorway, where the gaggle of conference attendees grew and continued to chatter. Their voices were a buzz, like cicadas nesting, Annja thought, but through it she continued to pick out interesting bits.
“Dr. Schwartz.”
“Elyse.”
“Deaths come in threes.”
“Who’s next?”
“Only one death—Edgar Schwartz. Elyse might make it.”
“Edgar, Elyse, they should’ve lost weight.”
“Two deaths. Don’t forget Papa.”
“Why do they want to talk to Peter?”
“Peter’s with a policeman.”
“Threes, I tell you. Someone else will die.”
“Did you...do you...know her, Annja?” Rembert had a small camera in his hand, and he had it pointed at the gathering of archaeologists. He panned with it a moment, then turned it off.
“Elyse?” Annja wondered if Rembert had recorded the woman being taken out on a stretcher or Peter being pulled into the manager’s office.
“Yes, her. Did you know her?”
“Never met her. I don’t even know who Elyse is,” she told him. “And I don’t know what happened.”
“It wasn’t a heart attack.” Rembert kept his voice low. “I’ve seen a few heart attacks. That wasn’t one of them.”
Annja recalled that he used to work at one of the big New York news stations and probably had seen a lot of things, heart attacks included.
“I was getting shots of the breakfast,” he continued. “Just background stuff. A little color. I saw her go down. By chance, I saw it. Got it.” He tapped his camera and smiled. “Fortunate I was aimed right at her. There’s nothing in my contract with Doug that says I can’t shoot stuff on the side. He knows I still do some freelancing, doing more of it now. Got her going down, collapsing, the reactions of the people around her. Choice stuff.”
Annja waited to pick up more news through overheard conversations. The archaeologists continued to talk, some of them moving back into the ballroom, one starting up the lobby’s impressive sweeping staircase, a few heading to the bank of elevators. One of the elevator doors opened, and Detective Rizzo came out carrying Edgar’s suitcase. He walked past her and around the corner of the registration desk. Annja assumed the manager’s office was back there. Lieutenant Greene followed him.
“No, I certainly don’t think it was a heart attack,” Rembert repeated. “I’d bet money on it...if I had some money to bet. It was just...weird. And I don’t think she choked on anything, either. That biddy over there—” he tipped his head toward the hawk-nosed woman who had been at Annja’s table for breakfast “—thinks she swallowed too big a hunk of French toast. But it wasn’t choking. It was...weird.”
Annja was beginning to lose her patience. She faced Rembert. “Then what was it?”
He shrugged. “I just know it wasn’t a heart attack. Her eyes got all big and her mouth started opening.” He made an O with his lips and tapped his camera again. “She looked sort of like a goldfish.” He paused. “We got a fantail a couple of weeks back for Colton. She was breathing, too. You don’t breathe if you’re choking to death. Sweating like a pig. She was really sweating, like instantly sweating. Really weird.”
Annja’s thoughts whirled. She didn’t know Elyse, and so the woman wasn’t her concern, but Edgar was, and she wanted...needed...to pursue that. She glanced toward the corner where Detective Rizzo had vanished and she tried to shut out the incessant drone of conversations.
It wasn’t working; the voices continued.
“Are they arresting Dr. Chiapont?”
“Peter? Going to jail?”
“No! Peter’s friends with Elyse. Maybe the cops just need information about her.”
“But he was arguing with Edgar yesterday, Peter was. Dr. Schwartz. Red-faced. I saw him. Peter and Elyse and Dr. Schwartz, right here in the lobby.”
Annja looked away from Rembert and tried to see who had made that last comment. She couldn’t catch it. But now Elyse had suddenly become her concern, too.
“Peter wouldn’t hurt anyone.” The statement was made multiple times.
“He was hot about something, though,” Dr. Steger said. “Really angry at Edgar. And he didn’t seem all that pleased with Papa on the tour.”
“Maybe Peter’s just having a bad day. We’re all entitled to bad days.”
“Bad day? Peter made threats.”
She saw who made that comment, a round-faced man with a shock of red-brown hair. She’d talk to him later.
“He wasn’t mad at Elyse,” Dr. Steger added. “He was with her just before this happened.”
“Elyse is married.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Peter plays around,” the hawk-nosed woman interjected.
A door shut loudly somewhere behind her. A moment later Detective Rizzo walked by and fluttered his long fingers at the group. Like a conductor directing an orchestra, he got them to quiet. Annja watched him pull out his notebook. Next to her, Rembert was recording again.
“Show of hands,” Detective Rizzo said. “Who was sitting near Mrs. Hapgood?” He was looking at name badges and scribbling furiously. “What did she eat?” More scribbles. “Did any of you eat the same thing?”
“Poison,” Rembert said just loud enough for Annja to hear. “He’s thinking poison. Someone tried to kill that woman.”
Detective Rizzo was separating the conference-goers based on their answers and trying to herd some of them back into the ballroom.
“Poison.” The word came out flat. Annja’s head throbbed. “Poison, here? This is just a conference.”
“There’s death wherever you go, isn’t there?” Rembert mused. “Paris, France, and Madison, Wisconsin.”
The crowd chattered again; and once more Detective Rizzo got them to stop.
“I might have a juicy story here,” Rembert said. “Something I can sell to one of the local networks. Got some great video.”
>
Annja’s lips curled. Rembert was thinking about a paycheck, not about the woman who’d been taken away in the ambulance, not about Edgar...whose death he hadn’t even learned of yet.
“Threes, I tell you,” one of the archaeologists repeated as he was nudged into the ballroom. “Deaths come in threes. There’ll be another one.”
The hawk-nosed woman put a finger to her lips.
“There’s been three,” Dr. Steger said, ignoring Detective Rizzo’s admonition to be quiet. The detective gave up and disappeared from Annja’s sight, going farther into the ballroom.
Annja spotted Dr. Steger standing just inside the ballroom entrance. “Didn’t you hear about Papa? Gregor Papadopoulos, a local fellow? He was on our tour yesterday. But he never made it to the hotel for the breakfast. Died in his sleep last night. So there’s been three. Well, three if Elyse dies.”
Annja’s throat tightened. She thought about her sword, hanging in the otherwhere, waiting for her to summon it to her hand. She pushed the image away.
Rembert muttered, “Maybe even one of the big nationals will pick up the story if it’s a slow news day. I can hear the headline now: Archaeologists Drop Like Flies.”
Annja walked at a snail’s pace toward the ballroom.
What the hell was going on in Madison, Wisconsin?
Chapter 6
The next hour added to Annja’s headache. She sat at a table in the middle of the ballroom, absorbing the activity and sorting through the details she’d gathered. She watched Detective Rizzo methodically talk to one archaeologist after the next, always writing in his notebook, which seemed to have inexhaustible pages. She couldn’t hear his questions or their answers; she wasn’t close enough and there was too much competing noise. But she studied expressions, and from that she decided who she would speak to later.
As Detective Rizzo dismissed them one by one, some remained in the room, hovering nearby to overhear what the others said, while some left for elsewhere in the hotel. At the other end of the room, the conference organizers massaged the speaking schedule. She could hear them a little better, but she chose to shut it out.
A small cadre of busboys entered and started clearing the tables, trying to be quiet, yet still managing to clink and clunk plates and cups and rattle silverware. Rembert came in a few minutes later. Annja turned so she couldn’t see him; she didn’t want to watch him record more pieces for potential sale.
Annja didn’t know Gregor Papadopoulos, hadn’t heard of him before the scuttlebutt she’d picked up minutes ago...but then she didn’t know most of the archaeologists she’d seen at the breakfast. There had only been a dozen or so familiar faces. Perhaps it was time she attended more of these conferences and broadened her circle of contacts in the field face-to-face. Her internet contacts were many, but it wasn’t the same.
Of course, if she did attend more of these things, more of her contemporaries might die. Rembert’s words festered: “There’s death wherever you go, isn’t there?” Her macabre dance partner wasn’t about to abandon her.
She shook off a little of the melancholy with a long breath that fairly whistled between her teeth. Her presence had nothing to do with Edgar’s death, she told herself. Or with this Gregor, whom she’d never met and whom she doubted simply died in his sleep. Her being here had nothing to do with whatever happened to Elyse Hapgood...whom she also didn’t know and who wasn’t dead—yet, at least.
But all three incidents were somehow related; Annja felt it in her gut. And she suspected that Detective Rizzo thought so, too.
So what was the common thread?
Them being archaeologists, sure.
But it had to be more than that.
“What can you tell me about Gregor Papadopoulos?” Annja asked Dr. Steger. The detective had finished with him, and it looked as if he was not one to stick around and eavesdrop.
He stopped short, surprised, as if he’d been lost in thought and hadn’t noticed her sitting there. “What?”
“Gregor Papadopoulos? I heard you talking about him.”
“Oh, Ms. Creed.” He pulled out a chair and sat next to her, glancing away for a moment as a trio of busboys clattered by and picked up more plates and cups. One of them dropped a glass on the floor and muttered a profanity as he picked up the pieces.
“I knew him, most certainly I did. But I didn’t know him all that well,” he said. “If you take my meaning.”
Dr. Steger had a kind face, but his cheerful demeanor from breakfast was gone, replaced by a rueful expression.
“I didn’t know him at all,” Annja told him. “I’ve realized I’m not terribly familiar with a lot of my Midwest contemporaries. I know far more archaeologists on the coasts and overseas. And lately, I’ve stayed in touch over the computer rather than in person.”
“Ah, the computer. It keeps people close and at bay in one fell swoop.” Dr. Steger steepled his fingers and appeared thoughtful. “This conference pulls them from all over, archaeologists—professionals and hobbyists, a good mix of students from the local university and the University of Chicago—but the glut come from the middle of the country,” he admitted. “Gregor was from right here in town. Heard he was Greek. Born there, schooled here and stayed. Never married.”
“Tell me some more about him,” she urged again.
“I don’t know all that—”
“Whatever you know. Anything.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know much more than that. We weren’t friends, but we were friendly. I’d see him every year at this conference...except the one that was in Saint Louis, but that was a while back. He specialized in the indigenous peoples of Wisconsin and northern Illinois, from the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, if I recall correctly. Helped with exhibits at the Milwaukee museum—a nice place, you should go—and at a little museum down in Kenosha. It’s a good spot, too, but not worth your trouble unless you’re local. Anyway, he was real chatty on the tour yesterday, but then he must’ve known the mounds like the back of his hand. He told us to call him Papa. Wasn’t an old man.” He paused. “Not young, either.” He paused again. “Oh, maybe fifty. I’m five years past that. Makes you think about your own mortality, eh?”
“Of course,” Annja said.
“Oh, and I heard he taught a course every semester at the University of Wisconsin.”
Dr. Steger got up to leave, and Annja reached out, touching his wrist. “What about Mrs. Hapgood? What was...is...her specialty?”
His face pulled forward, eyebrows touching in the middle. “You think this is somehow related...Dr. Schwartz, Dr. Papadopoulos, Elyse?” He gave a soft laugh. “Dr. Schwartz died from a fall in the stairwell, Dr. Papadopoulos in his sleep. Probably a heart attack. Heard he’d had a bypass after last year’s conference. That was the early rumor at this morning’s breakfast, his bad heart. We were talking about that right before you joined us. So you think this might be related, eh? A big game of Clue? Gregor Papadopoulos in the library with the wrench. Mrs. Hapgood in the study with—”
Annja frowned, lying to him. “No. I don’t think that. I don’t think they’re related. All coincidence, I’m sure. Just...I’m just curious. Do you know Mrs. Hapgood?”
“Nope. But Dr. Chiapont does. They showed up together. And her specialty?” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the conference program, unrolled it and flipped through a few pages. “Lots of lectures on the Midwest and Plains indigenous peoples this year. Lots... Oh, here she is. Doesn’t have a doctorate, but she’s scheduled. Specialty? Probably something to do with Mesopotamia. She was supposed to lecture on her research on the fabled Hanging Gardens.” He rolled the program and put it back in his pocket. “Nice picture of you inside the cover.”
Annja drew her lips into a thin line. “Thanks.”
“They’re moving some things around, but the lecture on the cultural contexts of medieval Britain and how it pertains to archaeological studies in America is still on for one o’clock. See you there, Miss Creed?�
�
She politely nodded, but she was lying again. Annja’s plans for the weekend were changing. She couldn’t let questions go unanswered or a mystery slip by her...especially if it involved a friend, like Edgar. It was just a matter of where she would start.
Maybe with Peter. She got up and turned to go back to the lobby, to wait there until Detective Greene had finished questioning Peter. She’d ask Peter some questions of her own.
“Ms. Creed!”
She hadn’t noticed the conference chairman approaching her.
“Ms. Creed, do you have a moment?”
She was going to say no, but he barreled ahead.
“We’ve moved some things. Dr. Chiapont’s seminar. Mrs. Hapgood’s canceled, of course. Hopefully, Peter can make his lecture this evening. Dr. Schwartz’s panels, naturally, off the docket. We’ve moved yours up.” He had a program in hand. “The one on the spirit caves in Tham Lod. It’s in one of the smaller conference rooms.” He pointed to a map in the program. “You’ve got a half hour before it starts. You don’t mind, do you?”
She was going to say yes, but he continued.
“We’re running the changes on the screen in the hotel lobby and printed up a sheet to distribute. Tragic, all of this. But with all of these people here, the conference must continue.”
A woman behind him had a stack of papers, which Annja guessed were copies of the quickly amended schedule. She handed a sheet to Annja.
“Awful, just awful, all of this,” the chairman went on. “And on my watch. Imagine. Not a single health problem the past three years, and now this.”
“Things come in threes.” The woman tutted.
Annja mulled over how to politely decline.
“You’re the only speaker on the Tham Lod topic,” the chairman said.
Annja had an obligation to Edgar, but she also had an obligation to the chairman. “All right.” She did have thirty minutes before the lecture, so she’d at least let Peter know she wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. The lecture would be easy; she didn’t need notes. She’d experienced so much in her explorations of the Thailand caves that she could easily fill the time slot.
