ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE

by Penny Publication

  We arrived at what I imagined would be the highlight of the day, on a par with the view at Mount Nemrut. If there's anything in the world I love more than exploring sites, it's going behind the scenes in a museum. Seeing things in their cases can be a treat, but getting to see them up close, with no Plexiglas separating you, is an extraordinary event.

  We would be coming back to the museum tomorrow for a formal tour of the public collections, but Lale had studied with Dr. Saatchi and wanted to show off the prizes of the museum to us.

  "Hey, Em. Calm down," Brian said. "You look like you gotta pee."

  I realized I was bouncing around a little, and tried to chill out. My good mood lessened when I saw Lale take Dr. Saatchi aside and hand him the small object Rose had taken. He frowned and asked her several questions. He glanced at Rose, and then, after Lale said something else, glanced at me. I nodded. He continued with Lale in Turkish.

  With a gesture that said the matter was over, he pocketed the clay disc. I was surprised when Lale led him over to me.

  "Dr. Fielding, I am pleased to meet you. I used your paper on trade goods on early American sites to do something similar with trading centers in Asia Minor."

  A little shocked, I shook his hand. "I'm delighted it was useful to you."

  "Well, we have so many cultures, so much history in Turkey, we are happy to use whatever tools best give us a clear picture of the past."

  Brian nudged me; I raised one eyebrow and gave him a mock-serious frown. Yes, I was totally awesome; he shouldn't ruin it by acting like this didn't happen all the time. This was one situation where I didn't mind bringing my profession into my vacation.

  Lale explained that Dr. Saatchi would be showing us important artifacts from sites from all over Turkey, including finds from the Roman, Greek, Persian, and Hittite cultures. We'd be seeing things from as far back as the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures; southeastern Turkey, with the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, had been part of Mesopotamia two millennia BCE.

  He unveiled a tray of tiny treasures in glass and stone and clay. Their colors ranged from shiny black to bone white, including pale pink, brown tiger-stripes, deep blue, spotted green, and blood red.

  First was a group of cylinder and stamp seals; with their tiny images and symbols, they looked like beads no longer than my fingertip. Alongside them were the impressions made by them on soft clay, showing how the marks would have appeared on wax.

  "I saw on the news that a lot of those kinds of things were stolen from the museum in Baghdad during the war," Eugene said. "They were worth thousands and thousands of dollars."

  Leave it to Eugene, I thought. He was right, though; there would be a small fortune in just a handful of the objects before us.

  Some of the other pieces were similar to the one Rose had just handed over, simple discs that could be used in any number of games. Another object was a reconstructed bracelet, the beads restrung into a rainbow interspersed with gold.

  "It looks like yours, Tiff!" Nicole exclaimed.

  Tiffany held out her necklace, purchased from one of the many vendors we encountered at all of the sites. Although she might have found a similar souvenir anywhere in the world—little glass beads were, after all, just little glass beads—she was pleased.

  Even more spectacular were the metallic objects on the next tray: coins and jewelry in silver, gold, and bronze. And one very small piece was possibly the most valuable on the whole table. A tiny bronze figure of a stylized horse, possibly a votive offering to one of the many gods in Anatolia, which made up most of what is modern Turkey.

  "Every object, no matter its monetary value," Dr. Saatchi said, "has a story to tell us, about the people who owned it, where it came from, and how it got here. That history—"

  A klaxon sounded at near-deafening levels. Randy started; his flailing hand knocked into Brian, who had been taking a close-up of one of the coins.

  Artifacts scattered from the velvet-covered table. Everyone automatically bent to gather them.

  "Fire alarm!" Lale called out. "Please do not touch anything! Follow me out of the room. Be careful not to step on anything!"

  A few people set the artifacts on the tray and we filed out and hurried down the hall to the main entrance. Constitutionally unable to pass a vendor or shop without stopping, Randy paused at the displays of the museum store. He began to pick through the piles of loose beads.

  "Please, we must leave the building, Randy." Lale was remarkably polite, considering. "We will return shortly, and the shop will still be open."

  Another group of tourists, presumably doing a walking tour of the city, paused nearby us outside the museum, while their guide explained the history and importance of the artifacts inside. The fire-alarm racket made the guide have to speak up, and she apparently made a joke: The group looked around and laughed. I certainly hoped they'd be going in tomorrow, as it seemed rather silly for them only to view the outside of the building.

  Lale, ever alert to maximize the good in any situation, saw a woman cooking in the front of a tiny storefront restaurant. After introducing herself, she spoke rapidly to her in Turkish, then gestured for us all to gather round as waiters handed us all glass cups of tea on saucers with tiny spoons and two pieces of lump sugar.

  "Mrs. Kaya has offered to do a demonstration of Turkish cooking for us while we wait to return to the museum."

  The tour group outside the museum had apparently seen our tea and were pressing in. I frowned when someone pushed a little too hard.

  Get your own Mrs. Kaya, I thought. She's ours.

  "Jack, Harold, if you would like to gather round?" Lale said.

  I stepped over to let Jack in, as Mrs. Kaya spoke rapid-fire Turkish to Lale, who translated for us. The older woman nipped off small pieces of dough with her fingertips, stretching them out flat, then she made a well with a deft gesture of her thumb. She filled the dough with a small pinch of what looked like ground beef and herbs, pinching the sides closed at the top, making a dumpling no larger than my thumbnail.

  "This is manti," Lale explained. "Although Mrs. Kaya uses lamb, you can use ground beef, and after they're boiled, you top them with fresh yogurt and browned butter and chili powder. It is one of my favorite dishes from childhood."

  She spoke again to Mrs. Kaya, who dusted off her hand and brushed Lale's cheek in an affectionate, grandmotherly gesture. Mrs. Kaya continued working, but called to one of her assistants. Soon we were all given spoons and were sampling the finished project.

  Across the little knot of our group, I saw Brian jotting down notes without taking his eyes off Mrs. Kaya's movements. She'd moved on to rolling up seasoned rice in grape leaves, with a series of motions that were so fluid they could only have been acquired after years of practice. The finished product was thinner than I expected, no thicker than a pen or a marker, and perfectly wrapped.

  Mrs. Kaya spoke. "If any of you would like to try to do this yourselves, you may now," Lale translated. "This is an excellent opportunity to learn from a real home-style cook at work."

  Immediately, Brian, Tiffany, and Jack stepped forward. "This is what I'm talking about," Jack said enthusiastically. "Never mind the old stuff, point me towards lunch."

  Each was given a pickled grape leaf and shown how to fold it around the rice. Brian got better with each try, and soon, about a half-dozen slender tubes were arranged by his plate. Mrs. Kaya pursed her lips and nodded once.

  Tiffany kept giggling, posing for Nicole to take her picture. "Look, I'm doing something cultural!"

  Jack's efforts were more labored, but he proceeded gamely. He grabbed one of the misshapen rolls and popped it into his mouth, chewing exaggeratedly to general laughs.

  "Well, traditionally we wait until they are steamed," Lale said diplomatically.

  At that moment, a guard from the museum came over and whispered something to Lale. Her smile vanished, and she inquired about something. I cursed my lack of Turkish beyond "hello," "thank you," and other tourist
necessities.

  "We must return to the museum." She spoke to Mrs. Kaya, gave her a small gift of money for the demonstration, then guided us back.

  The alarm was off now, but the staff was buzzing like bees in a kicked hive. We were still the only tourists around, and it was after official hours. Surely we wouldn't be continuing now, when it was so late?

  Lale waited for Harold to join us, and when Randy beat a path for the shop, she spoke sharply. "I'm afraid we must stay close together, Randy. I have some very disturbing news. There are some artifacts missing."

  "From the ones we were looking at? But none of us even touched them."

  But some of us had. I remembered the instinct to retrieve them myself. Several people had replaced the small, elusive objects on the cloth after we were told to leave.

  "No, of course not. Dr. Saatchi is concerned that perhaps they might have accidentally gotten snagged on a sock or in a cuff, when the tray went flying. We would like to put your bags through the X-ray machine again, as we did when we came in. Just to be sure. And, if you wouldn't mind turning out your pockets? I'm sure no one would take anything on purpose, but when everything went flying, it is possible . . ."

  She ended lamely, and I knew she was only doing her job, which had just become a hundred times more difficult. Both her professional and personal reputation were at stake.

  "Well, I'm not going to—" Rose said, gathering herself up for a long-winded refusal.

  "I'll go first," I said quickly. If I could cut her protests off, maybe everyone else would fall into line, and we could get this sorted out. Or at least, remove ourselves from the equation.

  I handed Lale my bag, which she handed to the guard, and it went through the X-ray. Then the guard went through the bag by hand, after I nodded permission. I emptied out my pockets onto the table, then pulled them out to show they were empty. To finish the point, I checked the bottoms of my hiking shoes, to make sure there was nothing caught in the treads. Nothing.

  It took me an embarrassingly long time to sort the large pile of tissues, Purell bottles, Swiss Army knife, lira coins, sunglasses, phrase book, and camera back into the pockets of my shirt and trousers.

  "Jeez," someone muttered. "I've seen pool halls with fewer pockets." There were a few nervous giggles. Good; anything to break up the tension.

  Brian stepped up next, and I could have kissed him.

  Jack went after him, shrugging. "I don't like this," he said. "But I've got nothing to hide."

  Although Eugene Tollund didn't rebel, he followed, with poor grace. "Not what I paid so much money for," he mumbled.

  Rose was still talking up and down about police and rights and citizenship, when Randy finally said, "Rosie, just do it."

  She did, eventually, but still invoking the embassy and her cousin, the alderman, at home. Nicole and Tiffany followed, but reluctantly, exchanging meaningful glances.

  No one had any of the missing artifacts.

  "The Storm God's gonna be totally pissed now," Nicole whispered.

  We went to our hotel that night tired, dusty, and bewildered. None of the missing artifacts—including the votive horse—had been recovered, and Lale had been on her cell phone almost nonstop. I was curious as to how she would handle the situation. I found myself going over to offer my help, when I felt an arm on my shoulder.

  "It's not your problem to solve," Brian said. "And if there has been a theft, I'm sorry to say you're as much a suspect as anyone here."

  "More," Harold added suddenly. "You're one of the few people who knows anything about this stuff."

  For his first time talking directly to me, it was a hell of a thing to say. I gave Harold a sour look.

  He shrugged. "I'm just calling it like I see it."

  I nodded to Brian. "You're right; this isn't my problem to solve. Say, this is an American chain hotel, right? With an American-style bar? I could use an American-style whiskey."

  Brian and I sat up late, with a couple of drinks, which were hugely refreshing. We'd been careful to avoid the local water, and cold drinks, besides beer and the licorice-flavored raki, were rare. We were alone; Harold was on the other side of the bar, having refused our invitation to sit with us. He was handling his lighter like he was jonesing for a cigar, and eventually, he removed a metal tube from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and shook the cigar out. Nodding to us, he said goodnight.

  Harold didn't go to the elevators, though. He went outside. A brief flare of the lighter, and he vanished.

  "Randy kept wandering over to the gift shop," Brian said, when he noticed I couldn't seem to focus on anything else with real attention. "I know he's got this magpie-like compulsion, but it really was excessive today. If he did it, I wondered if he hadn't stashed something over there."

  "Hiding the real thing among the souvenir beads and the imitation coins and seals?" I tilted my head. "It would make sense. If he took it."

  "He bumped up against my camera when the alarm went off," Brian reminded me. "Maybe he was making a distraction, so his wife could snag a few things. We know she has a taste for unsupervised antiquities. Or perhaps she picked up that gaming disc intentionally, as a distraction? A way for their eyes to be on Lale and her talking to Dr. Saatchi while her husband did the work?"

  I shrugged. "Seems too elaborate. And she couldn't count on finding something at the sites we visited. There was nothing on her when they searched her. Of course, that doesn't mean she or Randy couldn't have done it."

  Brian thought a minute. "We all went outside. Maybe the thief stashed it somewhere outside the museum?"

  That was a glum thought. "Okay, with objects so small, they could be hidden anywhere. Let's rule that out for a minute. Was anyone missing during the food demonstration?"

  "No. Well, Steve was at the hotel, sick, but the rest of us, we were all there." Brian counted off on his fingers. "Lale had to round us all up. Jack, Harold, and I were there in the middle, trying to roll the grape leaves into tubes and get the manti to stay stuck together. Everyone else was there, because I remember Lale was very careful to keep a head count. I don't envy her; it's like herding cats, keeping track of everyone. Tiffany and Nicole were there too—remember, they were taking all those pictures? Since they're always scampering off, I remember looking around for them."

  "They seem awful young to be on such an expensive trip," I said. "And usually twenty-somethings are, I don't know, going to more popular destinations, don't you think? Rome or the Greek islands?"

  "Or Ibiza," Brian agreed. The young ladies in question were now in the lobby, chatting up our young—and very dishy—van driver, Emin. More blushes, more giggles, more photos.

  That reminded me: As we headed to the end of the trip, I wanted to organize some tips from all of us for Emin and for Lale. They were well paid, but had done such a good job—

  Something Harold had just said reminded me: I wasn't the only one who knew what the objects might be valued at. Lale certainly did, and she knew ahead of time we'd be seeing them as well. But there was no way she would have taken the artifacts. Was there?

  I shook my head; this speculation was hopeless. "Such small objects—some no bigger around than a pencil—and worth so much. You could hide dozens of them anywhere, and have a small fortune."

  Brian opened his mouth, then hesitated. "This is crazy, but—"

  "Go for it," I said.

  "What if Jack or Tiffany rolled them into the grape leaves?"

  "Or the manti?" I thought about it, then shook my head. "Even if they were expert, they couldn't stuff a whole handful of coins and seals into one grape leaf. And it's too obvious, too public. You'd have to be a magician to pull it off."

  Suddenly, I was thinking of Harold and the trick he did with his lighter. And of the supply of empty cigar tubes he might have accumulated over the course of the trip. Still too complicated. "I'm beat, Brian. Let's go upstairs."

  "Remember, we have to put the suitcases out before we go down to breakfast tomorrow, to be loaded
in the van."

  I slumped. I really didn't want to do more organizing so late; it had been a long, tiring, eventful day. But I resigned myself as I worked; it was a small price to pay for seeing the world.

  After I got into bed, I thought I'd be asleep in an instant. But I stared into the dark, listening to Brian snore softly. The noises of the air conditioner, and farther away, barely audible, the elevator and ice machine.

  It had been such a wonderful trip, I thought. It's people, really, who can spoil tourism—

  I sat up and switched on the light, took out my tablet computer to check something. I spent another couple of hours thinking, then shook Brian.

  "'Mup," he said. He squinted against the light. "Time 'zit?"

  "It's not time to get up, yet," I said. "What do you know about ‘Ozymandias'?"

  When he realized it really was the middle of the night, and there was no emergency, he sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Are you kidding me?"

  "Nope."

  "Emma, what are you talking about?"

  "The theft. I don't want to be a suspect. I've been there, I don't like the feeling. I don't want Lale to get into trouble, she's been too good to us. And I don't want the museum to lose its excellent artifacts and good reputation. What do you know about ‘Ozymandias'?"

  "He didn't build the tomb on Mount Nemrut," Brian said, rubbing his eyes.

  "No, I mean the poem. You had to memorize it, right?"

  "Yeah, but it was like six hundred years ago. I don't know anything about it." He looked around. "Is there any bottled water left?"