The Maya Stone Murders

by Malcolm Shuman

  “My thoughts, too.” He nodded. “So I’ve told the police about the entire affair. I mean, there’s really not any way to keep it quiet now, is there? It has to come out.”

  “Probably.”

  “It will ruin me, of course,” he said bleakly. “I’ll never get another cent of research money. I’ll lose my students. Maybe even my directorship.”

  There was an awkward silence and then he removed his glasses and pressed his fingers against his eyes. “If you’ll send me your bill, I’ll see that it’s paid immediately.”

  “You want me off the case?”

  “I’d hardly say you’ve done me any good, would you? Since employing you, I’ve had my student killed, and the very thing I feared, a public airing of the whole business, seems inevitable. Since the police are paid by the public to investigate from this point on, I can’t see why I should retain your services. I assumed you had come to that conclusion yourself, and were here to present your bill.”

  “I’m here because somebody was killed outside my place,” I said. “It gives me a personal stake. So if you don’t mind, I’ll keep asking questions. On my own time.”

  “Whatever,” he said and I knew our conversation had come to an end.

  I went out down the stairs and into the quadrangle. It was already hot, and with my lack of sleep I was having trouble putting my thoughts together. Astrid Bancroft had had a possible motive to kill Gordon Leeds. But even as I considered it I knew that was the wrong question. The answers to the murder had to do with the artifacts that someone had brought into the exhibition, the artifacts that had no business being there. Perhaps Leeds had found out who was doing it. There were lots of possibilities, and I still was short of data.

  I found her in the laboratory, fumbling with some bits of pottery, her face pale. There was a young man with her, fair-haired and handsome, dressed in a business suit. He was talking to her in a low voice and she seemed to be working at the pottery as if she needed to keep her hands busy.

  I knocked on the doorframe to announce myself and stepped into the room. “Miss Bancroft? My name is Micah Dunn. I’d like a few minutes, please.”

  Their heads jerked up and for an instant I saw fear in her eyes. Her mouth half opened, and then the man with her straightened. His good-natured baby face gave him a pleasant appearance. He wore a blazer coat and a Tulane tie pin of the type alumni associations give away for a nominal donation.

  “I’m Fred Gladney, Astrid’s fiancé. She’s had a pretty bad shock, Mr. Dunn. One of her friends has been murdered and the police were just here. Maybe you could come back a little later.”

  It seemed a reasonable request, but murder is never reasonable.

  “I’m sorry. I know about the murder. That’s what I need to ask about.”

  Gladney frowned. “Are you with the police?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t think it’s the time or the place.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is. You see, Miss Bancroft, I recognized you in Lavelle’s voodoo shop yesterday. And when you saw me, you left. I’d like to know why.”

  Gladney’s face registered shock and he looked down at the girl. “Astrid, what’s he talking about? What voodoo shop?”

  “Lavelle’s is downstairs from my office. It was really my office you were looking for, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  ‘I …” The girl’s mouth moved but she seemed to have a problem getting her words together. “Katherine Degas told me you were a private detective. I was worried something was wrong. I was going to ask you to …”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “I was afraid. I could lose my assistantship.”

  “Why? Is something wrong? Did you know about something going on here that shouldn’t have been?”

  She looked from me to Gladney and he gave me an entreating look. “Mr. Dunn, she’s upset. Can’t this be discussed some other time?”

  As if to reinforce his words, she burst into tears and I realized I wouldn’t get anything more today. I nodded assent and walked out.

  It must have been the lack of sleep, because I passed the white sedan at curbside and it wasn’t until I heard the doors open and footsteps behind me on the sidewalk that I turned around.

  “Micah Dunn. I thought it was you.” The speaker was a short, wiry man in his forties with thinning black hair and a simian face. Like his younger companion, he was dressed in a rumpled suit, and where his coat hung open I could see the badge stuck onto his belt.

  “Sal Mancuso,” I said. “You mean they gave you this case?”

  “Me and Leon here, that’s right. You remember Leon.”

  “Sure.” We shook hands and Leon’s eyes shifted away from my left side as if that part of my body didn’t exist. He still wasn’t quite used to it, but I knew his partner would straighten him out. Mancuso would tell him he was too young for Nam, but if he wanted to see our world, the real one, he could come to the kind of meeting where Sal and I had met.

  “Well,” Mancuso pronounced, “looks like it doesn’t matter about the names now.”

  “Names?”

  “The ones you wanted me to run. I did, by the way. All clean. Now, you got anything for us?”

  I told him about my meetings with Thorpe the day before and my conversation afterward with Gordon Leeds. “So you know as much as I do, Sal.”

  “Maybe a little more.” He smiled. “After all, we got the resources of the whole bankrupt City of New Orleans at our beck and call.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning just keep your eyes open and read the papers.”

  “Thanks a lot, Sal.” I left them on the sidewalk and walked back to my car. It sounded as if they were on to something, but they weren’t about to share it. All I could do now was continue my own investigation.

  I drove back uptown to the Cultural Center and found Jason Cobbett in his office. It appeared that the police had not been to see him yet and that made me think they had already decided who was responsible and were about to make an arrest. He was a bluff man of sixty, with a silk shirt, gold watch chain, and a belly that must have made deskwork difficult. He peered down at my PI card through half-moon glasses and then handed it back with a smile.

  “Well, what can we do for you, Mr. Dunn? I’m afraid we don’t need a security specialist. Our alarm system is excellent.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said dryly. “But what I’m looking into isn’t museum theft. It’s murder.”

  “Murder?” He frowned and then shook his head so that his double chin trembled. “Dear me. No one I know, I hope?”

  “Gordon Leeds, Dr. Thorpe’s assistant.”

  “Gordon?” He came up straight in his chair, his jowls giving him a bloodhound look. “Why, this is terrible. When did it happen?”

  “Early this morning. He was run down in the Quarter.”

  “Run down? By a car? Then how do they know it was murder?”

  “I saw it. Believe me, it was no accident.”

  Cobbett rose slowly. He started to close the door, and then turned back to me. “Why haven’t the police been here then? Why are they leaving it to a private detective?”

  “The police are used to easy solutions. They go for the obvious, and in a couple of days they usually have the guilty person. After that, it becomes unlikely they’ll ever find the perpetrator. They aren’t stupid. It’s just that their resources are stretched thin. I assume that in this case they think they know who did it.”

  “My Lord.” He took a step toward me and when he spoke again it was in an exaggerated whisper. “And you don’t agree, is that it, Mr. Dunn?”

  “I’d just prefer to cover all bases. It happened outside my apartment. I take that personally.”

  “And quite rightly so. Please consider me at your disposal. This must not be unavenged. Gordon was a very fine young man, from what I’d seen of him. He took his work very seriously, a commendable quality.”

  “I understand he was at your house last night, along
with Professor and Mrs. Thorpe and some others?”

  “That’s true. I hope …” He frowned again and then smiled. “Of course not. Forgive me for what I was thinking. I know you have to ask these questions. There’s absolutely no reason for me to take them personally, is there?”

  “Not if you’re innocent,” I said evenly.

  “Innocent?” His eyes bulged slightly and then he broke into a giggle. “For a moment I thought … Well, never mind. My house last night. Yes. We had a little function, Adele and I, for the opening of the exhibition. We wanted to bring Professor Thorpe together with some of the sponsors of the exhibition. Naturally, we invited the members of the field team. There was Gordon, and there was Mrs. Degas, Thorpe’s secretary, and that strange young woman, what is her name? Astrid Bancroft, and her young man, Frank something or other …”

  “Fred.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Not an archaeologist. He stayed until two o’clock.” Cobbett shook his head disapprovingly. “Then there was Mrs. Porrier, the president of the Friends of the Cultural Center. Old money,” he confided in a lowered voice. “And Esther Weingarten, the executor of the Weingarten Foundation; and Marcel Thidobeaux, whose husband is the chairman of First Commercial. And, of course, Jules St. Romaine. His son Claude was supposed to be there, too, but … Well, so long as they send their checks.” He managed a chuckle. “They were all people who’d supported the exhibit, don’t you know? I was trying to get them together with Gregory, but I’m afraid it was pretty much a lost cause.”

  “Oh?”

  “The man is so maladroit socially. Stands there like a wooden Indian. I’m sure he’s a genius in the field, with his Indians and students, but if you ask me, he’ll never last at the Institute.”

  “I thought he’d been there for some time.”

  “At the Institute, he has. But only as a professor. He only stepped in as director this last year, when the old director got a better offer somewhere else. That was a real loss; a second-generation archaeologist, too.” Cobbett leaned toward me. “He was the one who really started the work at Ek Balam. When he left, they should have done a search, gotten someone from the outside. But Gregory was right there and available. A mistake, mark my words.”

  I remembered Thorpe’s question about my arm and I mentally placed him in a salon with a bevy of society matrons. Cobbett was right. If he was expected to woo blue-haired dames, he was the wrong man.

  “Was Leeds by himself last night?” I asked.

  Cobbett thought for a moment, then nodded. “Matter of fact, he was. In fact, I’ve never seen him with anyone else. Seemed a rather solitary young man. Intent on his work, I should say.”

  “How was Leeds last night, at the party? Did you notice anything different about him?”

  “Different? Oh, you must be talking about the business with Thorpe. I hope no one’s blown that out of proportion. It was nothing, really, just a difference of opinion.”

  “They had an argument?”

  “I’d hardly call it that. It was something about the importance of planetary phenomena to the Mayan priesthood. Thorpe was being dogmatic, claiming the ordinary people had no appreciation of astronomical phenomena and that’s what kept the priests in power. Young Leeds was just holding for a more open-minded position. But Gregory wouldn’t have any of it. Made some cutting remark about graduate students being the wisest species of creatures. Meant it as a joke, of course, but Leeds just went red in the face and turned away. Come to think of it, he left not long afterward.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Oh, come now. Conflict between teachers and students is as old as Socrates. Most students feel they’re intolerably oppressed. I wouldn’t read anything into it.”

  “No. But what about museologists?”

  His face went blank. “Pardon?”

  “Museologists and archaeologists. They fight, too, don’t they?”

  “Oh, I see someone’s been filling your head with some nonsense. That’s all ancient history.”

  “How so?”

  “Because, my dear Mr. Dunn, archaeologists started out as collectors, and, despite all their pretensions, many still are. All the great classical archaeologists—Schliemann, Carter, to mention a few—dealt in artifacts. More recently, archaeologists have tried to distance themselves from that image by passing ethics codes. At the same time, they forget that museologists have been policing themselves as well. Oh, every so often we find the odd curator who buys a black-market item, and when it happens it makes headlines. But we mustn’t forget that there are also archaeologists whose discoveries are fabricated. I can assure you that everything was perfectly aboveboard here.”

  “What about appraisals of smuggled artifacts?”

  “Smuggled artifacts?” Cobbett tisked to himself. “Mr. Dunn, someone has badly misinformed you. I do appraisals, of course. But most are of items that have been in this country for twenty, thirty, or fifty years. Figurines brought across the border by somebody’s grandfather before there even were antiquities laws. We depend on public support and enthusiasm here. I cannot possibly offend people by assuming a judgmental attitude concerning some item that has been in the closet for the past quarter century. Occasionally I am brought something by a diplomat from a Latin country, something that he has brought in via the diplomatic pouch. My assumption in such a case is that if his country has allowed the item to leave, then it is not my office to interfere. But knowingly abet the trade in illegal antiquities? Never.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. Then I reached into my pocket and brought out the little jade object.

  “Maybe, since I’m here, you could take a look at this,” I said, unwrapping it.

  He stared down and his hand went down to touch it and then pulled back, as if the stone were hot.

  “But that’s not Mayan,” he said. “That’s a jade hacha from Costa Rica. Mayan influence, certainly, but not Mayan. Where did you get it?”

  “A friend gave it to me,” I told him. “Is it valuable?”

  He screwed up his face. “A hundred dollars. Maybe a little more or less. Probably part of a cache.”

  “A cache?”

  “A group of burial artifacts. It has the form of a hatchet, but it was never intended for use. Purely ceremonial in function. Actually, that one may not be worth quite as much as I suggested, because the edge is broken off. Lowers the value, don’t you know?”

  I rewrapped the little artifact in its paper cocoon and put it back in my pocket.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Cobbett. I’ve learned a lot.”

  “Have you. Well, I’m sorry to hear about young Leeds. But I can hope that the police will find his killer soon.”

  “I hope so,” I said and went on.

  This time, standing in the sun outside the museum, what was prickling me was more than perspiration from the heat. It was a sixth sense, born of experience. Something about the way he had drawn back his hand, a tremor that had passed through his voice.

  I knew Jason Cobbett was lying. He had seen the jade before.

  5

  I had a ten-thirty appointment with a man whose warehouse was being pilfered. Nothing exciting, just a routine investigation. I asked him if he was more concerned with prevention or with finding the guilty party. He said the best prevention was to make an example, and besides, he didn’t want any thieves working for him. Then he said if I’d bring the culprit in, so he could break his neck, he’d give me a one-day bonus.

  I sympathized but said it didn’t work that way. When I explained how much it would cost to put a man under cover, he seemed to be having second thoughts about vengeance as well.

  “I mean, can’t you just place one of those electronic gadgets in one of the boxes?” he asked. “Or use some of that powder?”

  “How would I know which box was going to be pilfered?”

  He knew I had him there. We talked a little about surveillance cameras and alarms and his eyes kept going to my bad arm. But lots of people d
id that, and by now I was used to it. It was when he asked me what I thought about the Saints that I knew I wasn’t going to get a job from him, at least not today.

  I went back to the office, stopping in to ask Lavelle about the jade hacha. He looked at it with an expert’s eye, turning it over in his hands.

  “Cobbett told you right. Chances are this came from a bigger lot. But I haven’t seen anything like it lately. There was a Tico named Flores, used to be a consultant to some university program here. He used to bring in the things on a diplomatic passport, but he was recalled about two years ago. He was small-time.” Lavelle sneered and handed the object back.

  “It couldn’t have come from Yucatán, then?”

  “It is not likely to have originated in Yucatán, because there aren’t any jade deposits there. But it could very well have been made to order elsewhere and been imported to Yucatán. After all, those are very definitely Mayan glyphs and the face is feline, a frequent Mayan motif.”

  I thanked him and went up the steps to my office. I fell into my chair, closed my eyes for a few minutes, and then forced myself back to business. There was a message from Sandra on the answering machine that she was taking a couple of days off, followed by a message from the owner of the Riverwalk Express Shoppe congratulating us on the job and asking me to call him about the bill. I had a bad feeling I was about to get stiffed.

  Then I played the next message and my stomach went weak. It was a woman’s voice, but I recognized it immediately.

  “Micah, this is Elaine Murphy. I didn’t know whether to call you or not, but I thought I ought to. I had to take the Captain to the hospital. He had a little spell. You know my number if you need to talk. I hope I haven’t worried you. Good-bye.”

  I bit my lip and rummaged through my card file for her number. I found it and dialed but there was no answer. She was probably at the hospital with him, but which hospital?

  We had never been close, the Captain and I, and now each of us was missing the intimacy that other fathers and sons had enjoyed. Instead of playing ball, he had sent me postcards from exotic places and color photos of his various ships. I opened my drawer and removed a second album from beneath the one with my yacht collection. It was a long time since I’d opened this one, but now I did, smiling wanly at my name scribbled on the inside cover. How old had I been? Nine years old?