by Alex Archer
“What about Mrs. Hapgood? Does she have anything to do with Mayans in Wisconsin?” Was she Peter’s potential alibi?
Another burst of laughter. This time Peter threw back his head and his shoulders shook. Annja couldn’t tell if he was laughing hard or if he had started to cry.
“Peter...Edgar is dead. Dr. Papadopolous is dead. And your friend Mrs. Hapgood is in the hospital.”
“Coincidence,” he said, head still back. “All this in one weekend, coincidence.” He sucked in a big breath, held it, then released it in a whoosh. “My friend Annja Creed. My dear friend Annja Creed wants to connect dots when there’s nothing to connect. Coincidence. My dear friend Annja Creed wants to know about the Mayans and Edgar’s mysterious find. I’m here in a damnable jail cell, maybe facing murder charges, and she wants to know about the Mayans. What a dear, dear friend I have in Annja—”
“Peter!” Annja spit his name out furiously. “I’m here to help you! But I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. I had to know what the argument was about. Why the police suspect you. I can’t help you—” and I can’t avenge Edgar, she thought “—if I don’t have enough information.”
“Fair enough. No, Elyse Hapgood has nothing to do with Mayans and she’d just met Edgar in the lobby yesterday. Coincidence. An unfortunate coincidence.” Peter looked at her. “Also unfortunate is me being here.” His eyes were red and puffy. He swallowed hard and nodded. “Sorry for barking at you, Annja. Bad mood. Jail does that to you. False accusations do that to you.”
And my aching head isn’t helping me, she thought. “Do you have an attorney?”
“I picked one out of the Yellow Pages. Nice advertisement. Nice picture. On the young side, probably good judging by her fees. She’ll be here in—” He looked at the clock on the wall. It was covered with a mesh cage. “About an hour.”
“Do you need me to call anyone for you?”
“I’d like to know if Elyse is okay.” He snickered, but it was a sad, nervous laugh. “Other than that, no. I think enough people already know all about this. A few hundred of them back at the hotel. And their wives and husbands and children and neighbors. Probably my neighbors by now, too. Soon they’ll all be passing my mug shot around. Ain’t the internet grand?”
“I’ll see if I can find out anything about Mrs. Hapgood for you.” She gave him a rueful smile and picked through the rest of her questions, deciding what to pose next. “Peter, I—”
But she didn’t have the opportunity. A door opened on Peter’s side of the room, accompanied by a loud, nasally buzz. A deputy walked in and motioned to him.
“Gotta go,” Peter told her, hanging up the receiver.
Annja hung up and stared at the phone.
Where next?
Back to the hotel...
“Miss Creed?”
She turned too abruptly and winced, adding to the ache in her head. “Detective Rizzo.”
“Manny’ll do.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Your friend tell you much?”
Had he been listening? “Too much and not enough.” She shifted on the stool so she could look directly at him. He’d changed clothes since this morning, a different shirt, no jacket. “Can you recommend a car-rental place, Detective?”
“Going somewhere?”
Yes, she thought. But where? What was her next step? “I prefer it to calling another cab.”
“I can give you a lift. Save you the time and the money.”
“Back to my hotel?” She intended to poke around there for clues and answers.
“Actually, I was thinking Lakeside.” His face took on a serious mien.
“Lakeside? Where is—”
“Professor Schwartz was there, stayed for a couple of days before he ended up at the bottom of the stairwell. Hotel records said he’d been a guest of theirs on and off over the past year.”
Annja stood.
“A fellow by the name of Gregor Papadopoulos was there with him this last time and one time before,” Detective Rizzo continued. “Damned interesting, eh? So I think I’ll check it out. Not far from here. Care to join me?”
“What about your partner, Lieutenant Greene?”
“Arnie’s back at the hotel. The conference breaks up Sunday night, Monday morning. Only got two and a half days before all those archaeologists spread to the winds. He’s giving me what he thinks is the grunt end of this. He’s taking the cushy side in the air-conditioned hotel.”
“Lakeside,” Annja repeated.
“It’s about thirty-five minutes from here, less if I push it. Just off I-94. And I tend to push it. I won’t ask again.”
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
He thrust out a folder. It was the one that had been in Edgar’s room.
“I’ll drive. You can read.” He held the door open for her. “And you can buy us a couple of sodas from the machine on the way out. I want one with caffeine.”
Annja gladly reached into her pocket for a handful of coins. A dose of caffeine might be good for her, too.
Chapter 9
The Asian woman in the tight green dress was not here for the conference. She clung to Garin as they stood on the lawn across the street from the Madison Arms, pretending to admire the capitol building.
“I’m hungry,” she told him, clicking her manicured red nails against his plastic-coated name badge. “You went to lunch without me.”
“You were still in bed, sweet Keiko. And you eat so little anyway. Like a bird.”
She pouted. “I’m bored, Gary. You said I’d have something to do while you were at this convention. All these anthropologists—”
“Archaeologists, Keiko.”
“They’re boring. So many of them are...old.”
Not nearly as old as I, he thought.
She playfully entwined her fingers with a loose strand of his hair. “Can’t we go see something?” She leaned close and whispered into his ear. “A movie? A dirty one? Is there a zoo? I adore penguins.” She sucked in her lower lip. “No, not the zoo. It might rain, and I just had my hair done. We could go to a mall with boutiques. I love to shop. Somewhere, Gary. Please?”
He’d met Keiko in Chicago, where he’d been for the previous two weeks on business. A waitress at a restaurant he frequented, he’d taken her back to his hotel one night, and she’d been returning there ever since.
Garin appreciated athletic and inventive young women, and so Keiko had been a fine distraction. But he didn’t need her to be a distraction now. He reached deep into his pants pocket and pulled out a small clear envelope filled with white powder. He pressed it into her hand. “This should ease the boredom.”
She smiled wickedly. “Share it with me?”
“Not now. I’m meeting a man here, and then there are a few lectures I intend to catch.”
She pouted, but he could tell it was a put-on face. “All right, Gary. I’ll go to our room and ease the boredom.” This last she said trying to parrot his voice. She tilted up on tiptoe and kissed his ear. “And then maybe I’ll go shopping by myself and spend a lot of your money.”
He listened to the gentle shoosh of traffic behind him, slowing, probably due to the light changing, and then in the lull he heard Keiko’s shoes click clack across the pavement as she returned to the hotel.
Garin stood motionless for several minutes and took in the other sounds. A jackhammer started up somewhere out of sight, chewing into asphalt; honking—taxis everywhere had the same tone, it seemed; the faint burst of a siren that just as quickly stopped; the laughter of a child playing nearby on the grass in the shadow of her mother. Madison sounded “wholesome,” at least on this cloud-scattered day. Wholesome and a little...he used Keiko’s favorite word...boring. But he read the news and knew that here, in front of the capitol building, there were rollicking protests...over government, taxes and whatever other causes stirred up the residents. Campouts in the rotunda. Often they played out on the national networks. And there was the university, with its notorious Hallo
ween weekend to consider. Still, the city seemed rather decent; the kind of place boring people could raise boring families, could grow old and die and decay beneath the earth.
He watched the little girl. She’d scooped up a long green beetle and studied it, smiling and letting it walk from one of her fingers to the next. A burst of giggles, and she squeezed it between her thumb and forefinger, and brushed the pieces away.
“Over there.” A man who’d crossed from the hotel strode past Garin, indicating a bench under a sad-looking honey locust.
Garin waited a few beats before following him.
The mother called to the little girl, took her hand and left the lawn to follow the sidewalk deeper into the city. A cloud overhead brightened with a sliver of lightning, followed by a quiet rumble of thunder.
“Willamar,” Garin said as he joined the man on the bench, a comfortable space between them. The other benches were occupied, these with capitol employees who had brought their lunches outside.
The man’s name tag read W. Aeschelman, marking him as a participant at the archaeology conference. He saw Garin looking at the badge and unclipped it and put it in his pocket. “I don’t suppose I need this here.”
“No,” Garin agreed, taking his own off and palming it.
“I recognized you immediately from the description they sent me,” Aeschelman said. “You stand out in this crowd, Gary Knight. My associates said you have attended our gatherings in New York and overseas.”
“I’ve been to a few.” Garin had not signed up for the conference with his real name, nor had he given it to Keiko. “Aeschelman.” Garin drew out the surname. “Your family is from the Aeschel Valley at the Swiss–German border.”
“My grandfather,” Aeschelman admitted. “How would you know that?”
“I know Germany.” Garin pinched the bridge of his nose hard, as if that twinge of pain might push away a memory. Garin was born in Germany, bastard son of a knight who had little to do with him. He found more of a father figure in the company of an old man who sometimes claimed to be a wizard. “Wir Deutschen tun unsere arbeit im schatten hell Wisconsin sonne, ja?”
“I don’t really know Germany,” Aeschelman returned. “And I don’t speak German.”
“Pity. Though some consider the tongue guttural, I think it the most beautiful language.” And a beautiful country, though Garin thought it better five centuries ago.
They sat quietly as a woman leading a dozen teenagers walked past. She pointed at the capitol building. It was probably one of those tours students were forced to take at the tail end of the school year, Garin mused.
“The capitol’s architect, George Browne Post, graduated in 1858 from New York University.” Her delivery was monotone, as if she’d spoken it too many times. “It remains the tallest building in the city.”
Garin thought of Keiko, who would have called the tour guide boring.
“Many pieces are being exchanged this weekend, most of them small and easy to transport. Several of them quite rare and exceptional. I’m looking forward to this auction,” Aeschelman said after the tour group was well beyond them. “Some very rare things, actually.”
“I’m looking for one item in particular. I emailed you about it.”
“And I am assured it is among what has already been secured.”
Garin’s palms itched with anticipation.
“What you want is likely not the most costly of the offerings this time, but pricey nonetheless, I’m sure.”
Money didn’t matter to Garin. It came and went. He’d lost and gained fortunes and was currently flush. “I want to see it first, a private viewing before it’s up for auction.”
“The pieces are coming in tomorrow. Though hopefully, what I am looking for will be acquired today.”
“How many buyers?”
“Only eight besides yourself and myself, so ten in all. Two of them are attending the conference as we are. One is acting as a broker, doesn’t have the resources himself. But his patron is well-heeled. I have nothing to sell this time. Like you, I am just buying.” Aeschelman leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “There was to be one more buyer.”
Garin knew the number of buyers would be low this venture; the fewer people involved, the less chance their illicit business would draw attention. In larger cities, especially in Europe and in Japan, a few dozen serious collectors would be invited, and the bidding wars could be fierce. Garin had attended several of the “meetings” and had purchased small, expensive things to ingratiate himself with the market and the people who ran it. Nothing he particularly wanted, but it was all a means to get him in deeper and thereby eventually get what he was really after, which according to Aeschelman would be within his grasp tomorrow.
“One of the archaeologists who died?”
Aeschelman didn’t answer.
Garin waited a moment, then asked, “Where will this take place? The auction?”
Aeschelman lowered his voice. With the traffic sounds and the jackhammer and a radio one of the picnickers had turned on, Garin could scarcely hear him. He leaned closer. “In a large hotel suite, Governor’s Club level, during the banquet. Not everyone at the conference attends those things, meal functions—expensive and dull and only three choices of entrées.”
“Enough people there, enough people absent,” Garin observed. “So none of those actually attending the conference will be missed either way.”
“Precisely.”
“You said there was to be one other,” Garin pressed. “What about—” He raised an eyebrow, always curious, leaving his question hanging. He wanted to know which one of the fallen attendees had been involved in—and now removed from—the competition.
“A mistake, Mrs. Elyse Hapgood,” Aeschelman returned. “She made a mistake.”
“The woman from this morning?” Garin watched the tour guide lead the teenagers up the capitol steps. She was still pointing to this and that, still lecturing. Thunder rumbled again. “Who took—”
“I took care of her.”
“Poison? Did you use poison?”
“It’s only detectable in autopsies, tissue samples, and only in the best labs if it is done quickly. Never shows up in the blood. It degrades fast, and so it will be gone by the time the Madison coroner makes the first cut. Usually they chalk it up to a heart attack or stroke.”
“So she’s dead, this Mrs. Hapgood.”
“Not yet. Two more hours at best, I should think.” Aeschelman flexed his fingers. “That’s the beauty of it. The stuff draws the death out long enough—”
“—so that the poison is gone by the time it is over.”
“Yes,” Aeschelman said. “There is nothing for the coroner to find. I’ve used it a few times before. I use any means, Mr. Knight, to get what I want.”
“And you poisoned her...why?” Garin rested the back of his neck against the top rung of the bench. Aeschelman was dangerous in daring to admit this to him. Garin nearly asked why he would do such an imprudent thing and draw the attention of Annja Creed. “Why eliminate Mrs. Hapgood’s pocketbook?”
“Pity I had to do it. She had provided many items for our auctions in the past. I purchased one of her Babylonian demon jars a year ago. She provided us another demon jar this weekend. Intact. She was more of a provider than a buyer. She knew how to acquire things and give us leads for rare pieces.”
“Then why—” Garin persisted. He wouldn’t ask again, not wanting to provoke Aeschelman. Yet he had the sense that the man wanted to talk about it.
“In the end, I felt we had more to lose by keeping her. I wanted to be rid of her, that’s all. I just wanted to be rid of her.” Aeschelman stood and rubbed his hands on the sides of his pants, retrieved his name tag and looked toward the hotel. Then he squinted up at the darkening sky. “I wanted to be rid of her because she was talking. Talking. Talking. Talking. I was the one who invited her into our circle, and so it was on me to do something about her. She had connections and leads, most certainly. But s
he also had a big mouth. I overheard her discussing with a few of the other archaeologists yesterday on the mounds outing, dancing much too close to the topic of our circle. Couldn’t let her keep talking, you understand.”
“I completely understand,” Garin said. So Aeschelman’s confession was actually a warning to him: play by the rules or don’t play at all. Keep the artifact smuggling ring a secret or die. But Aeschelman didn’t know Garin had his own set of rules, and poison or guns or any other sort of lethal weapon would not truly hurt him. “I understand completely, Willamar.”
“Good, Mr. Knight. You were recommended to me, but I do not know you.”
“Some of your associates do.”
“Yes, they say you favor medieval relics. I just want to make it clear that we are a clandestine group.”
“Crystal.” The dying woman was of no concern to Garin, but he suspected Annja would meddle. Three deaths at the conference would be too much of a mystery for her to ignore, and she would wrongly think that they were connected. “I want a good look at it. Beforehand. I want to make certain it’s real before I spend my money.”
“Everything within our little circle is real, Mr. Knight. You should know that by now.” Aeschelman reached under his collar and tugged out a leather cord. A gold disk hung from it, twice the size of a silver dollar and thick, gleaming despite the gloomy day. Similar in appearance to an Olympic medal, but clearly made of real gold, Garin imagined it must feel heavy hanging from the man’s neck. It was shiny and smooth, and the image of a beautiful bird had been pressed into the center of it. “This is real. I acquired it Thursday night from an archaeologist Mrs. Hapgood told me about. He was not able to come to the conference this weekend, but a few of his acquisitions will be available. Not this one, though. This one I am keeping for myself.”
“The medallion is striking.”
“And genuine. Everything within our circle is all real, I assure you.”
“Your medallion, is that—”
“Mayan, Mr. Knight.” Aeschelman tucked it back under his shirt and extended his hand. Garin shook it. “I will let you know when the items arrive tomorrow. You will get a close look at what you’re interested in. A private viewing, as you—and your money—have requested.” He turned away and walked toward the Madison Arms, pausing only to wait for a break in the traffic.
