Murder in the Smithsonian

by Margaret Truman

  “So, Miss McBean, you were engaged to marry Lewis Tunney. I’m most sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, Captain… We hadn’t been engaged long, only a few weeks…”

  “I’m sure that makes it especially tough,” Hanrahan said, unsure of what to say. “Did you work with him, I mean in the same field?”

  “Yes, in a way. I was a museum curator.”

  “Which museum?”

  “The British Museum in London.”

  “I thought you were Scottish.”

  “Being born Scottish doesn’t mean lifetime prohibition from traveling.”

  He sat back. This one sure had spirit. The question was, would she help or backbite. “Did you meet Dr. Tunney through your work?”

  “In a manner of speaking. He’d been friendly over the years with my uncle, Calum McBean, who was one of the world’s leading collectors. They shared an interest in secret societies from post-Revolutionary War America. They didn’t see much of each other, though. My uncle was a recluse. But they were fond of each other.”

  “And your uncle introduced you to him?”

  “No, Dr. Tunney stopped by the museum one time and introduced himself after he’d visited my uncle. You see, Captain, my parents died when I was an infant and Calum raised me as a daughter.”

  “Sounds like a good man.”

  “I adored him, and he adored me.”

  Hanrahan could believe it. He was impressed with her clear-skinned beauty and eyes that never let you go. By now his overall impression was that this lady was legit, no games, told you straight out what she thought but wasn’t out to offend. He liked her. “What about Dr. Tunney’s activities before he flew here from London, Miss McBean? It might help us to know that.”

  “Nothing very unusual. He was busy organizing his life after having spent two years on a research project that came a cropper. He was glad it was over, and surprisingly enough after spending two years chasing some rainbows, he was in quite good spirits.”

  “What about just before his trip here? Did he indicate anything that might have some bearing on what happened to him?”

  She told him what she’d told Chloe.

  “No names?” Hanrahan asked. “Did he say who he planned to see in Washington to solve the problem?”

  She shook her head. “He was anxious to see your vice president, Mr. Oxenhauer. They were old friends.”

  He scribbled notes on a yellow pad. “There was also a theft that night. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, I did. My uncle Calum was the one who donated the Legion of Harsa to the Smithsonian.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh, yes, and it caused quite a good deal of upset in his life. He’d sent it to Chloe Prentwhistle at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History. She accepted it but wrote back that it would probably take years of investigation to find out whether it truly was the Harsa. That, to put it mildly, angered my uncle. He wrote her and said, among other things…” She laughed. “I recall this line so vividly. He said that if her ‘pompous, arrogant and haughty attitude was any indication of the basic American character he was glad to never have visited her country and would see to it that he never did.’”

  “Sounds like a man who knew his own mind… How long will you be in Washington?”

  “Until whoever killed Lewis is brought to justice.”

  “That might take a long time.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Where will you be staying?”

  “The Madison.”

  “I’ll be in touch… you know, some aspects of this case are over my head.”

  “What are they, Captain?”

  “The museum world, the missing medal, background on Dr. Tunney that might relate to his death. You could help me.”

  “I’ll do anything you ask.”

  “I appreciate that, Miss McBean. Here’s my card. I’ll put my home number on it. Call any time, day or night.”

  She put his card in her blazer pocket, and he walked her downstairs and watched her disappear around a corner.

  Ten minutes later he was sitting in Commissioner Johnson’s office.

  “How’d it go with the vice president, Mac?”

  “Not bad… Tunney told the veep something interesting just before he was murdered.”

  Johnson sat forward.

  “Oxenhauer claims that Tunney told him he had proof of a major scandal in the Smithsonian that, like they say, could blow its lid off.”

  “And?”

  “The veep says he doesn’t know what the scandal is.”

  Johnson sat back. “How could he not know if Tunney told him?”

  “According to Oxenhauer Tunney never got specific. They made a date for the next morning but, as we know, Tunney didn’t show up.”

  “Do you believe Oxenhauer?”

  “He’s the vice president.”

  “He’s also a politician.”

  “Then let’s say I half believe him. I just talked to Tunney’s fiancée, a girl named Heather McBean. She says pretty much what Oxenhauer told me… that Tunney knew about something brewing at the Smithsonian. He wouldn’t tell her the specifics, either, promised to do it when he got back to England.”

  Hanrahan filled Johnson in on more of his conversations with Oxenhauer and Heather, including Oxenhauer’s urgent request that nothing be made public unless it was absolutely important for the case.

  Johnson shrugged. “He didn’t tell you anything worth making public, did he?”

  “Just that there’s an unspecified scandal. Maybe we’ll find out more when we dig into Tunney. I know one thing, Cal, my initial theory that Tunney just stumbled on a theft in progress doesn’t hold much water. If Tunney knew something and was about to announce it to Oxenhauer and to the world, there’s a museum full of people who might have wanted to shut him up.”

  Johnson went to the door. “Fill me in at the end of the day.”

  Hanrahan shook Tums from a bottle into his pocket and headed for the meeting with his assistants.

  Johnson returned to his office and took a call from Vice President William Oxenhauer.

  Chapter 7

  Heather checked into the Madison Hotel at Fifteenth and M Streets. She emptied her bags and arranged toilet articles in the bathroom, then mentally flipped a coin—a nap or food? Her stomach prevailed, and she called room service. Twenty minutes later her meal arrived: grilled fresh sea trout, fresh green beans and parsley potatoes. She ate slowly, hardly tasting the food. All she wanted to do was wipe from her mind, even for a few minutes, the nightmarish reality of what had happened.

  She finished eating, changed into a robe and fell asleep. She woke up at four, showered, dressed and went to the lobby where she bought the day’s Washington Post. There it was… on the front page a story about Lewis’s murder. There was a picture of him, an old one they’d found in the files. Seeing it was like being jabbed in the stomach with a hot poker. She breathed hard and went outside. It was overcast; hot and sticky. She walked south along Fifteenth Street, the newspaper clutched under her arm. She did not have a destination at the moment, or in her life anymore, it seemed. The best thing that had ever happened to her, Lewis Tunney, was no longer in her future.

  She stopped and looked at the Treasury Department. Behind it was the White House. She sat on the steps and read the Post’s account of the murder. Now, the words and the picture represented only a black-and-white record of a crime. There was no mention of her in the article. Why should there be? She wished they’d been married two weeks earlier instead of just getting engaged. At least then there would be some acknowledgment, some record that she’d existed in his life, and he in hers.

  She tore the front page from the paper and stuffed it in her purse. At least there was more room in it now… she’d checked much of its contents with the hotel clerk, including the Harsa papers she’d brought from England.

  She reached the Washington Monument, looked to her left and realized she was at the Mall, along
which the Smithsonian museums were strung. Her spirits lifted a bit. As far back as she could remember a museum had provided her a place of tranquility and for reflection. It was one of the reasons she had become a curator. Museums were like friends, places to turn to when she felt troubled.

  She walked the length of the East Mall; twelve square blocks, her guidebook said. On her left was the museum she had been in this morning, the Museum of American History, followed by the Museum of Natural History, and then the skating rink. To her right was the Freer Gallery with its world-famous collection of Oriental art; the original Smithsonian “castle,” now the administrative center; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and finally the very modern National Air and Space Museum. Across from the Air and Space were two buildings housing the National Gallery of Art. The first, the West Building, was more traditional in its architecture than the newer East Building. According to what Heather had heard, their collections reflected their architectural concepts.

  She paused in the West Building’s rotunda—columns quarried in Tuscany, Italy, the floor of green Vermont and gray Tennessee marble; Alabama Rockwood stone, Indiana limestone and Italian travertine on the walls. “God… it’s beautiful,” she said aloud.

  She tried to decide which exhibit to visit first. She loved Venetian and North Italian art, although her specialty at the British Museum was eighteenth-century British art, particularly the works of portraitists Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

  She went to the Venetian section and immersed herself in Bellini, Giorgione and Titian. Rather than take in another exhibit she decided to go to the East Building, get a general impression of it and then go back to her hotel.

  On her way back to the rotunda she paused in a gallery featuring Florentine and Central Italian Renaissance art. She stood all but transfixed in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Ginevra de Benci.” Finally she glanced at her watch. Eight-thirty. Signs proclaimed that the museums closed at nine.

  She exited the West Building and looked across a cobblestone courtyard at two massive pink marble triangles that formed the new East Wing. It was now almost totally dark, and a threat of rain hung in the humid air. Few people were in the courtyard, most visitors preferring to use an underground concourse that linked the two museums. She walked to a fountain in the center of the courtyard where streams of water spewed into the air and, because there was no enclosure, flowed freely over cobblestones and down terraced concrete to a sheet of glass that formed one entire wall of the lower concourse.

  Heather looked down over the rippling water to the below-ground window-wall. Children, noses pressed to the glass, looked back at her. One waved. Heather returned the greeting. The children’s mother joined them.

  Heather waved again and as she did wondered about the pungent odor… like a perfume?… she suddenly was aware of.

  But not for long.

  It happened fast. Someone came up behind her, brought a long, slender cane down across the back of her neck. At the same time a hand ripped her large purse from her shoulder.

  The children and their mother gaped as Heather toppled forward, twisting as she fell, her right shoulder leading the way down the terraced steps, water splashing over her as she stumbled, legs akimbo, arms searching for an anchor.

  Her body hit the curtain wall. The mother and her children recoiled from the anticipated smashing of the glass. It didn’t happen. Heather slumped against the window, water flowing over and around her. She shook her head and blinked her eyes. Water swirled into her open mouth. She raised her head and looked, eyes clouded, at the faces on the other side of the window.

  Two men scrambled down behind her and carried her back up to the courtyard. One of them placed his jacket over her shoulders. “Anything feel broken?” he asked.

  “I… I don’t know.”

  A police ambulance arrived. By this time Heather was sitting up and talking with museum security guards. She didn’t, she told them, need to go to a hospital but was overruled and taken to the emergency room at Capitol Hill Hospital, where after an examination that revealed nothing more serious than bruises and lacerations, she was released. A uniformed officer from MPD asked whether she felt up to giving him a report.

  “I think so,” she said, “but I want to go back to my hotel and change my clothes. Everything’s torn and wet.”

  “We’ll take you back in the car, ma’am,” the officer said.

  “Could I speak with Captain Hanrahan?”

  “Mac Hanrahan? He wouldn’t be around this time of night.”

  “I have his home number. I’d like to talk to him.” She pulled Hanrahan’s wet, crumpled card from her blazer.

  “Sure, give him a try,” said the officer.

  She dialed Hanrahan’s home from a booth in the hall.

  “Hello,” Hanrahan said after the first ring.

  “This is Heather McBean…”

  “Oh, sure, Miss McBean, how goes it?”

  “Not so well, I’m afraid,” and she quickly told him what had happened.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “Why not let the officer drive you to the hotel. You can skip giving a statement tonight. Come to the office in the morning and I’ll take one from you.”

  “That’s very kind, but I would like to talk to you tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Well, don’t you think that what just happened to me tonight has to do with Lewis’s murder.”

  “Why do you assume that?”

  “Are you suggesting it might just be a coincidence?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, but I’m sorry to say muggings aren’t exactly unknown in Washington. Now that you asked, I’d have to say it probably was a coincidence—”

  “I was attacked by a female mugger.”

  “‘Female’? Did you see the mugger?”

  “I overheard a museum security guard tell one of your officers that a witness saw a woman hit me and steal my purse. And just before it happened I’m pretty sure I smelled perfume.”

  “Let me talk with the officer.”

  Heather put him on the line. “Hello, Captain, Officer Scheiner here. She’s right. A witness says she saw a tall woman hit Miss McBean with a cane.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir; except whoever did it ripped off her purse and took off.”

  “Look Scheiner, treat her nice. She’s also a prime source of information in the Smithsonian murder. Take her back to her hotel—she’s staying at the Madison—and don’t press her for a statement. I’ll take care of that myself.”

  “Okay, Captain.”

  Heather got back on the phone.

  “Miss McBean,” Hanrahan said, “you go on back and get a good night’s sleep. I’m sure you can use it.”

  “Yes, thank you…”

  “Come by my office in the morning and we’ll talk about this. All about it. I’m not dismissing anything. I’ve got an open mind.” I better, he thought. There’s sure as hell nothing in it at the moment to solve this thing…

  “All right, thank you, Captain. I appreciate it.”

  ***

  The two uniformed officers escorted Heather into the Madison, which of course had people turning to stare. She told the desk what had happened, adding that her room key had been in her purse. She was given a new one, told that the staff stood ready to help in any way it could, then went with the policemen to the twelfth floor. They stopped in front of her room. “I’ll open it,” one of the officers said. She handed him the key. He inserted it into the lock, turned the knob, stepped inside and flipped on the overhead light. “Damn,” he muttered.

  “What’s the matter?” Heather asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. She looked into the room. “Oh, my God…” The room had been ransacked. Every dresser drawer was on the floor, along with her clothes. The bed had been stripped, the drapes torn from their rods.

  “Could I have Captain Hanrahan’s home number again, miss?” Scheiner said. He dialed. “Captain, this is
Scheiner—”

  “What now, Scheiner?”

  “We just brought Miss McBean to her room. It’s been torn apart. Obviously somebody was looking for something—”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Heather said to Hanrahan. She felt herself shaking.

  “Stay put, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Tell the officers to wait with you until I get there.”

  ***

  Hanrahan hung up, turned off the television and went to the bedroom, where he took off his blue terry-cloth robe, dressed in what he’d intended to wear to the office the next day and got his car. It was not the way he’d planned to spend his evening. It was to be an early-to-bed night. He was deep-bone tired. His back ached, and his stomach, always on the verge, was in open rebellion.

  He turned the ignition key, popped a Tums in his mouth and headed for the Madison.

  Chapter 8

  They sat at a corner table in the Madison’s lobby bar. Heather hadn’t wanted to come downstairs but Hanrahan told her he needed a drink.

  She cradled a glass of single-malt Scotch. Hanrahan had his usual gin on the rocks. (He’d ordered a martini without vermouth in the hope of avoiding a single measured shot of gin over ice. He needn’t have worried. This bartender poured from the bottle no matter what the order. Real class.)

  “I still don’t understand the need for a policewoman in my room,” Heather said.

  “Indulge me. At my age I like being indulged.”

  Heather smiled. Hanrahan had called the policewoman, Sergeant Shippee, before he left his house. She arrived at the hotel carrying a small suitcase, told Heather that she was used to such assignments, that they’d get along fine, set about making up a pull-out couch with extra linen ordered from housekeeping.

  “How old are you, Captain?” Heather asked.

  “Depends on the day. Sometimes I’m forty-seven, sometimes I’m forty-seven going on seventy-four. Then again, there are days when I just turned twenty-one.