Digging Up the Dead

by Jill Amadio

  He looked at the crwth that sat on the table between him and Tosca and remembered its acquisition, too. Ah, yes, the young student from Cardiff, Wales. She had been in New York to perform as a member of a Welsh orchestra. As soon as he’d set eyes on it during the concert, he knew he had to have it. After the concert Blair went backstage, ostensibly to congratulate her on her skill with the ancient instrument.

  There were too many people milling around to get close to her. He waited until all of them left, including the other musicians who told her to join them as soon as she’d finished packing up her crwth. Blair entered the room and said how much he admired the strangely shaped instrument with its two cutouts. He asked if she found it awkward to play because of having to wear a strap that went around her neck to hold up the bulky, square harp.

  How enthused she had been to tell him that no, the strap was fine, it helped to support the instrument as long as it was placed correctly. Blair asked her if she minded demonstrating again the positioning. She obliged, slipped the strap around the back of her neck and held her hands in place as if playing. It was a matter of seconds for Blair to wind the strap, so conveniently in place, completely around her neck and pull it tight. She’d barely struggled.

  He read in the newspaper a few days later, when the murder was reported, that this particular crwth went back to Roman times when Britain was occupied. The instrument had originally been discovered during an archaeological dig on land that belonged to the student’s family. The crwth was immediately declared a national treasure and displayed in a Cardiff museum. The girl was given permission play the precious instrument only at international music events, Wales having realized its significance, and the museum as a tourism attraction.

  “Graydon, hello!” Tosca said, realizing he was daydreaming.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I was distracted for a moment, thinking about the crwth. It’s stunning, isn’t it?”

  She agreed it was most lovely and that all of them were the best of any odd, stringed instruments she’d ever seen.

  “You said these are only part of your collection. What else do you have?”

  “Only two others, a fourteenth century Psaltery, which you may know is a zitherized harp, and another kind of zither, a Chinese chyn.”

  “Way out of my field of knowledge,” said Tosca. “I was wondering, when we heard you play the other night on your boat, if the sea air has any effect on them?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. I mostly keep them at home, though, and occasionally bring some of them on board to work on or play.”

  “May I ask you about this Baroque chitarra battente? It looks like a Spanish guitar, but I know that it didn’t originate in Spain.” She indicated the instrument. “What’s its history?”

  Blair was tempted to tell her that it had been the easiest to steal. His old-timer musician friends in New York had told him about an elderly Italian woman with a chitarra battente. She’d brought it with her when she immigrated to the States fifty years earlier, said it was a family heirloom. Blair had soon found out her name and paid her a midnight visit. Piece of cake.

  “Its history?” he said to Tosca. “I really have no idea; I bought it at a second-hand store in New York. The owner didn’t remember where or when he’d purchased it. Said it had been sitting in a corner for as long as he could remember.”

  He realized Tosca was standing up. “I’ll have to come back and listen to you play each one in turn,” she said.

  Blair knew he’d better say nothing. No sense in encouraging her. He walked her to the door and thanked her for her visit, which he silently and fervently hoped she would not repeat.

  After he ushered her out Tosca turned back halfway down the front path and said, “Oh, I must talk to you about Fuller Sanderson and his lost manuscripts. That’s actually why I came to see you.”

  But Blair made no reply and was already closing the door.

  She strolled slowly home, thinking about the man’s passion for his musical instruments and his transparent obsession with owning them. Where had he found them all? The mini-sized spinet and the rebec were centuries old. She didn’t know a lot about the crwth but knew one was displayed in the Cardiff museum as one of its most treasured artifacts. Was Blair’s from the same era, or was it a copy?

  Chapter Forty-One

  Once settled at the dining table after breakfast, J.J. having left early again, Tosca booted up the laptop and Googled the square-shaped “crwth.” She learned it originally came from Central Asia in the ninth century, eventually reaching Europe in the tenth and twelfth centuries. She was fascinated to read, too, that the instrument was a favorite of the lower classes and never made its way into a royal court. But then another document claimed the reverse. It didn’t matter that much, but she did like to get her facts straight. Her newspaper editor was a stickler for citing reliable sources.

  Tosca found several more articles relating to the archaic stringed instrument. One magazine story claimed that only four crwths had survived, one of which had been stolen from the Cardiff Museum seven years earlier. A photo of the last person to play it, a young university student from Wales, accompanied the article, as well as a photo showing her family weeping at her funeral. Despite extensive Interpol searches among private collectors, the crwth nor the strap that had strangled the musician had ever been found.

  Was Blair’s crwth the one from Wales? There was no strap with it, and she assumed the murderer would have disposed of it separately. The article ran a portion of the police report of the theft, noting that the museum director said there were no distinguishing marks with which to identify it, were it ever recovered.

  The next instrument Tosca researched was the rebec. One batch of articles caught her eye. Several newspaper stories that ran consecutively for over a week in the New York Ledger said an extremely rare rebec had been stolen from a diplomat in New York eleven years earlier along with a medieval dagger. There were photos of similar daggers, detailed descriptions of the rare piece and interviews with Jordanian diplomats.

  The thief, the police believed, had stabbed the man to death during the commission of the robbery, using an ancient Arabian dagger from the diplomat’s own valuable group of six displayed on a wall near the man’s body. The weapons were arranged in a star shape, and the photo showed one piece was missing. Like the rebec, Tosca realized as she read on, the dagger had never been recovered. The local police and the FBI had publicized the murder and theft widely, and the Jordanian Consulate had launched an extensive search, but neither the rebec nor the dagger was ever recovered and a murder suspect never identified nor apprehended.

  Tosca peered closely at the photo of the instrument, then went upstairs to get her magnifying glass. Studying the photo of the rebec again, she saw a scratch on the side, similar to the one on Blair’s instrument. Was he the thief? And the killer? Had Blair been in New York at the time? No wonder he was so secretive about showing off his instruments.

  “Thatch,” she said into her phone after dialing his number. “I wonder if you’d mind calling in a favor to that nice spy you know?”

  “You mean Dan at the FBI? You’re not off on one of your harebrained theories again, are you?”

  “Of course not! What an idea. I merely wish to ascertain a fact.”

  “Tosca, whenever you use those kinds of words and that tone of voice, I know you’re up to something wacky. If you’re at home, I’ll come over.”

  She assured him she was home and would put the kettle on.

  “You mean plug it in,” he corrected before hanging up.

  “Yes, yes, plug it in,” she muttered to herself, “but there’s nothing like a kettle you can boil on a gas stove. I am positive water tastes better that way.”

  Fifteen minutes later she heard Thatch’s steps on the stairs and went out to greet him, telling him that she’d just returned from a visit to Blair and tea was ready.

  “And?” said Thatch.

  “I will make yours iced.”

&n
bsp; “No, I mean, what’s this theory?”

  She indicated the sofa and brought over a cup of tea for herself and a glass of iced tea for her visitor. As he was about to take a drink, she said, “Graydon Blair is a murderer and a thief.”

  Thatch set the glass back down on the coffee table, shaking his head and suppressing a snort.

  “Jumping to conclusions again. Tosca, you really have to stop hoping to find a corpse or unmask a murderer so you can go back to England. It sounds almost comical.”

  “This is no joke. I just knew there was something googly about that man when I met him at Karma’s party. I could feel it in my bones.

  “Googly.”

  “Yes, of course. A cricket term for when the bowler is a wrist spinner and turns the ball the opposite way than the batter expects. On top of that, didn’t you notice how Blair twirled his cigar holder but never smoked all evening? ”

  “Lots of people are giving up smoking. Could be his way of quitting, like still clinging to his holder but not using it.”

  Asking for proof of her accusation against Blair as a thief, Thatch, seeming bemused, listened as Tosca related her conclusion by showing him the magazine article about the stolen rebec she’d printed out. She drew his attention to the scratch on the side and gave him the details of her time on Blair’s boat and seeing his collection of musical instruments.

  “So you see, keresik, all I need is for you to ask your spy chap if he can check out Blair’s whereabouts on the date that the rebec was stolen.”

  She sat back on the sofa, satisfied she’d stated her case succinctly and had justified her plea for Thatch’s help. All he had to do, she repeated, was find out where the literary agent had been eleven years ago. She’d already searched his web site, but there was little information aside from the fact that he was the agent of record for Fuller Sanderson’s works. In fact, there was more space given to his father, Tinky, than to the son.

  “And what will that prove?” said Thatch.

  “That Blair was in New York and could have stabbed the owner of the rebec and stolen it. It’s the same instrument. Bet he’s got the dagger, too.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  After Thatch left Tosca’s house he put in a call to the FBI’s small satellite office in Anaheim that was an adjunct to the much larger Los Angeles bureau. He had kept in contact with two or three agents after retirement, and one in particular, Dan Delano, FBI Assistant Director in Charge, was a close friend.

  “How about a few Stiegls?” said Thatch. “A six pack is cooling right now in my fridge.”

  “Hey, man, in exchange for what? Let me think. Finding the Holy Grail, locating Captain Kidd’s treasure or discovering the lost city of Atlantis. Wait a minute, you’re looking for Montezuma’s gold. You still on that geology kick?”

  Thatch laughed. “It’s not a kick, Dan, you know I’m a serious hobbyist. Just got back from a rained-out trip to Idaho. No, come on over, and I’ll fill you in.”

  He waited until Delano arrived before putting out tortilla chips, salsa and two beers. The FBI agent was still dressed in his office clothes: a dark suit, white shirt and striped tie. He followed Thatch outside to the patio that overlooked the Newport Beach Upper Back Bay and sank into one of the two wooden-slatted Adirondack chairs, sighing loudly.

  “Rough day?” asked Thatch.

  “Kind of intense. A lot on our plate at the moment. Aside from keeping track of potential local terrorist lone wolf types, of which we’ve ID’d three in Orange County, cyberspace hackers are proliferating, and then there’re the usual number of pedophiles and bank robbers.” Delano leaned forward. “What was in Idaho?”

  “Fishing in Bear Lake.”

  “What did you catch, machinaws or cutthroat?”

  “We jigged for trout, and I caught a sixteen-pound cutthroat, which I threw back in. I did catch a whitefish, though. Then we planned to go to the nearby rift volcano, but the rain was relentless, so I came back early.”

  “When I retire I might just settle up there along with a bunch of other FBI guys who already have. Seems to attract former law enforcers who are tired of the rat race down here.”

  Thatch bent down to open the cooler at his feet and handed his friend another beer.

  “Dan, I need a favor. You can say no, of course, but I don’t come to you with frivolous requests, you know that.”

  “No problem, buddy.”

  “As a matter of fact, it could mean just one phone call. I’m looking for a killer who murdered a Jordanian diplomat in New York eleven years ago and stole a rare rebec from his house.”

  “Uh, rebec?

  “I know, I never knew what it was either. It’s a kind of guitar. The murderer was never caught. Think you can help? I’m sure the FBI was on the case. The victim was a diplomat.”

  “Any other details?”

  “Here’s the diplomat’s name and the name of the possible killer who calls himself Graydon Blair. We’d like to know if he was in New York at the time and anything else you can tell me about him. Oh, here’s an article about the case that Tosca downloaded from the Internet.”

  “Ah, Tosca. Is she still cussing in Cornish?”

  “All I’ll say is that my vocabulary is improving. So, Dan, will you do it?”

  “Sure, Thatch.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Graydon Blair spoke into the phone, “Of course our meeting is still on, Oliver, although Karma won’t be able to make it. An irate customer needs her to drive down to San Clemente immediately. No problem that Karma won’t be here. You and I are the main players.”

  He heard Swenson mumble something about waiting until Karma was free.

  “No, no, Oliver. Come down to the boat as planned. I’m polishing the handrails. Is this something aside from what the three of us are going to discuss? Okay, okay. Calm down. When will you be here? Right, see you in half an hour.”

  He kept on working till he reached the end of the stainless steel bow rail, then took the polish and rags into the cabin. In the small bathroom mirror he made sure his hair was in place. After putting the cleaning materials away and slipping the dirty rags into a bag to take home to launder, Blair remained in the cabin, sitting on the white leather bench seat at the small dining table where the Kinnor harp rested, two of its strings missing. Why are my strings snapping all at once? he wondered. From a large, thick envelope that bore several stamps from Denmark and two blue Par Avion stickers, he removed a plastic bag holding new strings. He took them out of the bag and placed them next to his musical instrument, pleased they were exactly as ordered.

  Deciding to make the replacements after Swenson left, when he’d be able to focus on the tuning process more accurately, Blair lit a cigar and thought about the visitor he was expecting. Swenson had done a damned fine job, considering what an effort it required. He and Sally had been lucky he stayed on after Sanderson died. Now what could he want? The writer had almost fulfilled his side of the bargain just before Sally kicked the bucket, and his bank balance would explode in several months. Surely Swenson wasn’t asking for more money?

  Blair looked at his watch, saw it was ten o’clock and stubbed out his cigar. He went on deck to see the writer trudging toward the boat.

  “Hello, Oliver,” said Blair. “Come aboard.”

  Swenson was sweating as he mounted the small portable steps Blair had placed on the dock next to the boat for easier access. In the cabin Swenson could barely squeeze himself onto the bench seat opposite the agent and apologized for knocking the ashtray off the table.

  “Not an issue,” said Blair. “I’m glad to see you after that terrible tragedy at Karma’s house the other night. So tell me. What’s up? Are you concerned about your job at the publishing house? Karma and I are extremely satisfied with your work, and once we get the ball rolling you’ll be a rich man.”

  “No,” Swenson said, “I’m not worried about being fired. I know you are confident that the work I did is exactly what you asked for. In fact,
that’s why I am here. I wasn’t sure who I should talk to about my plans. Do you know who is taking over at Hirsch House?”

  “Haven’t a clue. It’s in chaos right now because Sally had run out of money, although I know you’ve been paid to date. My guess is it will simply go out of business. So no more Hirsch House. As I told you and Karma, we’re going after the big international publishers.”

  He offered Swenson a drink, which was declined.

  “Oliver,” Blair continued, “what plans are you referring to? Are you joining another publisher? Your editing has been first class, and Sally had said that your other work is brilliant, more than Karma and I could hope for. We might even pay you a bonus.”

  Blair wondered if he was piling it on too thick. Like most of the ghostwriters he knew who were in the same line of business as Swenson, they weren’t the type to suddenly produce an ego. Their contracts forbade them to go public. Everything they found out from tape recordings of a client and his family and colleagues was to be kept confidential, and when the book was finished, all materials that the client had supplied, such as tapes, photos, documents and letters, were returned. Have we misjudged Swenson?

  To calm down the agitated writer, Blair hastened to describe the inquiries he’d been making to offer Sanderson’s books to other publishers when he’d told them that the contracts he had with Hirsch House to represent Sanderson were now moot, given the bankruptcy situation.

  “Here’s the list of my contacts,” Blair said, producing two pages of names. “I’m sure we’ll get into a bidding war. This is really exciting news for you, Oliver, in light of what we are about to do. By the way, I need the flash drive. It wasn’t in Sally’s office.”