Fever Dream

by Douglas Preston

  “Do you have logs of all the researchers who used the collections?”

  “Yes. But we always check the collection after they leave, to make sure they haven’t nicked something.”

  “Then we can narrow down the time frame even further. Bring me the logs, please.”

  “Right away.” The woman bustled off, the eager clomping of her shoes echoing in the attic space as she descended the stairs.

  Within a few minutes she returned, carrying a large buckram volume that she dropped on a central table with a thump. Turning the pages while D’Agosta watched, she finally arrived at the month in question. D’Agosta scanned the page. Three researchers had used the collection that month, the last one on September 22. The name was written in a generous, looping hand:

  Matilda V. Jones

  18 Agassiz Drive

  Cooperstown, NY 27490

  A fake name and address if ever there was one, thought D’Agosta. Agassiz Drive my ass. And New York State zip codes all began with a 1.

  “Tell me,” he asked, “do the researchers have to show you some kind of institutional affiliation, ID, or anything?”

  “No, we trust them. Perhaps we shouldn’t. But of course we supervise them closely. I just can’t imagine how a researcher would manage to steal birds under our very noses!”

  I can see a million ways, thought D’Agosta, but he didn’t say anything out loud. The attic door was locked with an old-fashioned key, and the bird cabinet itself was a cheap model, with noisy tumblers that an experienced safecracker could defeat. Although, he mused, even that would hardly be necessary—he recalled seeing Marchant plucking a ring of keys off the wall of the reception hall as they set off upstairs. The door to the plantation house was unlocked—he had breezed right in. Anyone could wait until the curator on duty left the front desk on a bathroom break, pluck the keys off the nail, and go straight to the birds. Even worse, he’d been left alone with the unlocked bird cabinet himself when Marchant went to get the register. If the birds had any value they’d all be gone by now, he thought ruefully.

  D’Agosta pointed to the name. “Did you meet this researcher?”

  “As I said, I was just the assistant then. Mr. Hotchkiss was the curator, and he would have supervised the researcher.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “He passed away a few years ago.”

  D’Agosta turned his attention back to the page. If Matilda V. Jones was indeed the thief—and he was fairly sure she was—then she was not a particularly sophisticated crook. Aside from the alias, the handwriting in her log entry did not have the appearance of having been disguised. He guessed the actual theft had taken place on or around September 23, the day after she had been shown the exact location of the birds by pretending to be a researcher. She probably stayed at a local inn for convenience. That could be confirmed by checking a hotel register.

  “When ornithologists come here for research, where do they usually stay?”

  “We recommend the Houma House, over in St. Francisville. It’s the only decent place.”

  D’Agosta nodded.

  “Well?” said Marchant. “Any clues?”

  “Can you photocopy that page for me?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, hefting and carting off the heavy volume, once again leaving D’Agosta alone. As soon as she was gone, he flicked open his cell phone and dialed.

  “Pendergast,” came the voice.

  “Hello, it’s Vinnie. Quick one: you ever heard the name Matilda V. Jones?”

  There was a sudden silence, and then Pendergast’s voice came back as chilly as an Arctic gust. “Where did you get that name, Vincent?”

  “Too complicated to explain now. You know it?”

  “Yes. It was the name of my wife’s pet cat. A Russian Blue.”

  D’Agosta felt a shock. “Your wife’s handwriting… was it large and loopy?”

  “Yes. Now would you care to tell me what this is about?”

  “Audubon’s two stuffed Carolina Parakeets stored up at Oakley? Except for a few feathers, they’re gone. And guess what: your wife stole them.”

  After a moment, a chillier response came: “I see.”

  D’Agosta heard the clomp of feet on the attic stairs. “Gotta go.” He shut the cell phone just as Marchant rounded the corner with the photocopies.

  “Well, Lieutenant,” she said, laying them down. “Are you going to solve the crime for us?” She bestowed a vivid smile on him. D’Agosta noticed she had taken the occasion to re-rouge and touch up her lipstick. This was probably a lot more exciting, he thought, than back-to-back episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

  D’Agosta shoved the papers in his briefcase and got up to leave. “No, I’m afraid the trail is too cold. Way too cold. But thanks for your help anyway.”

  21

  Penumbra Plantation

  YOU’RE SURE OF THIS, VINCENT? ABSOLUTELY sure?”

  D’Agosta nodded. “I checked the local hotel, the Houma House. After examining the birds at Oakley Plantation—under the name of her cat—your wife spent the night there. She used her real name this time: they probably required identification, especially if she paid cash. No reason for her to spend a night unless she planned to return the next day, slip inside, and nab the birds.” He passed a sheet of paper to Pendergast. “Here’s the register from Oakley Plantation.”

  Pendergast examined it briefly. “That’s my wife’s handwriting.” He put it aside, his face like a mask. “And you’re sure of the date of the theft?”

  “September twenty-third, give or take a few days.”

  “That puts it roughly six months after Helen and I were married.”

  An awkward silence descended on the second-floor parlor. D’Agosta glanced away from Pendergast, looking uncomfortably around at the zebra rug and the mounted heads, his eye finally coming to rest on the large wooden gun case with its display of powerful, beautifully engraved rifles. He wondered which one had been Helen’s.

  Maurice leaned into the parlor. “More tea, gentlemen?”

  D’Agosta shook his head. He found Maurice disconcerting; the old servant hovered about like a mother.

  “Thank you, Maurice, we’re fine for the moment,” said Pendergast.

  “Very good, sir.”

  “What have you come up with?” D’Agosta asked.

  For a moment, Pendergast did not respond. Then, very slowly, he interlaced his fingers, placed his hands in his lap. “I visited the Bayou Grand Hotel, formerly the site of the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium, where Audubon painted the Black Frame. My wife had been there, asking about the painting. This was, perhaps, a few months after she first met me. Another man—an art collector or dealer, apparently of dubious repute—had also made inquiries about the painting, a year or so before Helen.”

  “So others were curious about the Black Frame.”

  “Very curious, it would seem. I also managed to find a few odd papers of interest in the basement of the sanatorium. Discussing the course of Audubon’s illness, his treatment, that sort of thing.” Pendergast reached for a leather portfolio, opened it, and pulled out an ancient sheet of paper enclosed in plastic, stained and yellow, missing its lower half to rot. “Here’s a report on Audubon written by Dr. Arne Torgensson, his attending physician at the sanatorium. I’ll read the relevant part.”

  The patient is much improved, both in the strength of his limbs and in his mental state. He is now ambulatory and has been amusing the other patients with stories of his adventures along the Frontier. Last week he sent out for paints, a stretcher and canvas, and began painting. And what a painting it is! The vigor of the brush strokes, the unusual palette, is quite remarkable. It depicts a most unusual…

  Pendergast returned the sheet to the portfolio. “As you can see, the critical section is missing: a description of the painting. No one knows the subject.”

  D’Agosta took a sip of the tea, wishing it was a Bud. “Seems like a no-brainer to me. The painting was of the Carolina Parakeet.”
>
  “Your reasoning, Vincent?”

  “That’s why she stole the birds from Oakley Plantation. To trace—or, more likely, identify—the painting.”

  “The logic is faulty. Why steal the birds? Simply observing a specimen would be sufficient.”

  “Not if you’re in competition, it wouldn’t,” D’Agosta said. “Others wanted the painting, too. In a high-stakes game, any edge you can give yourself—or deny others—you’re gonna grab. In fact, that just might point to who mur—” But here he stopped abruptly, unwilling to voice this new speculation aloud.

  Pendergast’s penetrating glance showed he had divined his meaning. “With this painting, we just might have something that so far has escaped us.” And here his voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Motive.”

  The room went quiet.

  At last, Pendergast stirred. “Let us not get ahead of ourselves.” He opened the portfolio again, withdrew another tattered scrap of paper. “I also recovered this, part of what is apparently Audubon’s discharge report. Again, it is a mere fragment.”

  … was discharged from care on the fourteenth day of November, 1821. On his departure he gave a painting, only just completed, to Dr. Torgensson, director of Meuse St. Claire, in gratitude for nursing him back to health. A small group of doctors and patients attended the discharge and many farewells were…

  Pendergast dropped the fragment back into the portfolio and closed it with an air of finality.

  “Any idea where the painting is now?” D’Agosta asked.

  “The doctor retired to Port Royal, which will be my next stop.” He paused. “There is one other item of at least tangential interest. Do you recall Helen’s brother, Judson, mentioning that Helen once took a trip to New Madrid, Missouri?”

  “Yes.”

  “New Madrid was the site of a very powerful earthquake in 1812, greater than eight point zero on the Richter scale—so powerful that it created a series of new lakes and changed the course of the Mississippi River. Approximately half the town was destroyed. There is one other salient fact.”

  “And that is—?”

  “John James Audubon was in New Madrid at the time of the earthquake.”

  D’Agosta sat back in his chair. “Meaning?”

  Pendergast spread his hands. “Coincidence? Perhaps.”

  “I’ve been trying to find out more about Audubon,” said D’Agosta, “but to tell the truth I was never a good student. What do you know about him?”

  “Now, a great deal. Let me give you a précis.” Pendergast paused, composing his thoughts. “Audubon was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and his mistress. Born in Haiti, he was raised in France by his stepmother and sent to America at the age of eighteen to escape conscription in Napoleon’s army. He lived near Philadelphia, where he took an interest in studying and drawing birds and married a local girl, Lucy Bakewell. They moved to the Kentucky frontier where he set up a store, but he spent most of his time collecting, dissecting, stuffing, and mounting birds. He drew and painted them as a hobby, but his early work was weak and tentative, and his sketches—many of which survive—were as lifeless as the dead birds he was drawing.

  “Audubon proved to be an indifferent businessman, and in 1820, when his shop went bankrupt, he moved his family to a shabby Creole cottage on Dauphine Street, New Orleans, where they lived in penury.”

  “Dauphine Street,” murmured D’Agosta. “So that’s how he got to know your family?”

  “Yes. He was a charming fellow, dashing, handsome, a superb shot and expert swordsman. He and my great-great-grandfather Boethius became friends and often went shooting together. In early 1821, Audubon fell gravely ill—so ill he had to be taken by horse-drawn cart, comatose, to Meuse St. Claire. There he had a long convalescence. As you already know, during his recovery he painted the work called the Black Frame, subject unknown.

  “When he recovered, still flat broke, Audubon suddenly conceived the idea to depict America’s entire avifauna in life size—every bird species in the country—compiled into a grand work of natural history. While Lucy supported the family as a tutor, Audubon traipsed off with his gun and a box of artist’s colors and paper. He hired an assistant and floated down the Mississippi. He painted hundreds of birds, creating brilliantly vibrant portraits of them in their native settings—something that had never been done before.”

  Pendergast took a sip of tea, then continued. “In 1826, he went to England, where he found a printer to make copper-plate engravings from his watercolors. Then he crisscrossed America and Europe, finding subscribers for the book that would ultimately become The Birds of America. The last print was struck in 1838, by which time Audubon had achieved great fame. A few years later, he began work on another highly ambitious project, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. But his mind began to fail, and the book had to be completed by his sons. The poor man suffered a hideous mental decline and spent his last years in raving madness, dying at sixty-five in New York City.”

  D’Agosta gave a low whistle. “Interesting story.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And nobody has any idea what became of the Black Frame?”

  Pendergast shook his head. “It’s the Holy Grail of Audubon researchers, it seems. I’ll visit Arne Torgensson’s house tomorrow. It’s an easy drive, a few miles west of Port Allen. I hope to pick up the trail of the painting from there.”

  “But based on the dates you’ve mentioned, you believe—” D’Agosta stopped, searching for the most tactful way to phrase the question. “You believe your wife’s interest in Audubon and the Black Frame… started before she met you?”

  Pendergast did not reply.

  “If I’m going to help you,” D’Agosta said, “you can’t clam up every time I broach an awkward subject.”

  Pendergast sighed. “You are quite right. It does seem that Helen was fascinated—perhaps obsessed—by Audubon from early in life. This desire to learn more about Audubon, to be closer to his work, led—in part—to our meeting. It seems she was particularly interested in finding the Black Frame.”

  “Why keep her interest a secret from you?”

  “I believe—” he paused, his voice hoarse, “—she did not wish me to know that our relationship was not founded on a happy accident, but rather a meeting that she had intentionally—perhaps even cynically—engineered.” Pendergast’s face was so dark, D’Agosta was almost sorry he’d asked the question.

  “If she was racing someone else to find the Black Frame,” D’Agosta said, “she might have felt herself in danger. In the weeks before her death, did her behavior change? Was she nervous, agitated?”

  Pendergast answered slowly. “Yes. I always assumed it was some work-related complication, getting ready for the safari.” He shook his head.

  “Did she do anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I wasn’t around Penumbra much those last few weeks.”

  Over his shoulder, D’Agosta heard the clearing of a throat. Maurice again.

  “I just wanted to inform you that I’m turning in for the night,” the retainer said. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Just one thing, Maurice,” Pendergast said. “In the weeks leading up to my final trip with Helen, I was away a good deal of the time.”

  “In New York,” Maurice said, nodding. “Making preparations for the safari.”

  “Did my wife say, or do, anything out of the ordinary while I was away? Get any mail or telephone calls that upset her, for example?”

  The old manservant thought. “Not that I can remember, sir. Though she did seem rather agitated, especially after that trip.”

  “Trip?” Pendergast asked. “What trip?”

  “One morning, her car woke me up as it headed down the drive—you recall how loud it was, sir. No note, no warning, nothing. It was around seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, I recall. Two nights later she came back. Not a word about where she’d been. But I recollect she wasn’t herself. Upset about something, but wo
uldn’t say a word about it.”

  “I see,” Pendergast said, exchanging glances with D’Agosta. “Thank you, Maurice.”

  “Not at all, sir. Good night.” And the old factotum turned and vanished down the hall on silent feet.

  22

  D’AGOSTA EXITED I-10 ONTO THE BELLE CHASSE Highway, barreling along the nearly empty road. It was another warm February day, and he had the windows down and the radio set to a classic rock-and-roll station. He felt better than he had in days. As the car sang along the highway, he guzzled a Krispy Kreme coffee and snugged the cup back into the holder. The two pumpkin spice doughnuts had really hit the spot, calories be damned. Nothing could dampen his spirits.

  The evening before he’d spent an hour talking to Laura Hayward. That started the upswing. Then he’d enjoyed a long, dreamless sleep. He woke up to find Pendergast already gone and Maurice waiting for him with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and grits. Next, he’d driven into town, where he’d scored big with the Sixth District of the New Orleans Police Department. At first, on learning of his connection to the Pendergast family, they’d been suspicious, but when they found he was a regular guy, their attitude changed. He was given free use of their computer facilities, where it took less than ninety minutes to track down the dealer long interested in the Black Frame: John W. Blast, current residence Sarasota, Florida. He was an unsavory character indeed. Five arrests over the past ten years: suspicion of blackmail; suspicion of forgery; possession of stolen property; possession of prohibited wildlife products; assault and battery. Either he had money or good lawyers, or both, because he’d beaten the rap every time. D’Agosta had printed out the details, stuffed them into his jacket pocket, and—hungry again despite breakfast—hit the local Krispy Kreme before heading back to Penumbra.

  Pendergast, he knew, would be eager to hear about this.