Lethal Legacy (24 page)

“You want the four-by-eight-foot version, I
guess.”

Mike was right. If the stack of books deposited
under the water tanks in the last twenty-four hours was connected to Tina
Barr’s death, then this high-priced piece of a jigsaw puzzle might prove to be
a clue.

“We’ve got a photocopy machine behind the
reference desk that duplicates folio-size pages,” Bea said. “Just give me a
minute and you’ll each have one to go.”

She disappeared around the corner just as there
was a loud banging on the door.

“Ignore it,” Jill said. “We don’t open to the
public until ten.”

“There’ll be no public today,” Mike said, checking
his watch. “Crime scene techs will be swarming all over the library within the
hour. Nobody’s getting in till the whole place is worked over.”

The banging didn’t stop. “May I check?” Jill
asked.

Mike stood up as she walked to the door.

“Goddammit!” a voice thundered at her. “Get your
foot out of the way and let me in.”

“I’ve got some police officers with me,” I heard
her whisper to the man in the hallway. “Why don’t you wait in my office and
I’ll meet you there shortly.”

“The hell with the police,” he said, pushing open
the door so that Jill tripped over herself getting out of his way. “I’m here to
get what belongs to me.”

There was no mistaking Talbot Hunt. The physical
resemblance to his sister, Minerva, was striking, and the air of Hunt arrogance
as he approached Mike Chapman was equally identifiable. He was tall and whippet
thin, with straight dark hair and dark eyes.

“Talbot, I’d like you to meet Detectives Chapman
and Wallace,” Jill said, trying to catch up with Hunt. “And Assistant District
Attorney Alexandra Cooper.”

“I’ve already wasted two hours of my time
yesterday with your colleagues,” Hunt said. “That business about my sister’s
housekeeper—”

“‘Business’? Oh, you mean the fact that she was
murdered in an apartment your sister owns, dressed exactly like her,” Mike
said. “And the idea that she might have been killed because she was carrying a
book that belongs to you, or that
you
say belongs to you.”

“Who says differently? Is it Minerva?” Hunt asked,
talking to Mike but repeatedly glancing over at the map on the table.

“I don’t remember anyone inviting you here this
morning,” Mike said.

“Some members of Ms. Gibson’s staff seem to place
more value than she does on the library’s relationship with my family. Now I’d
like to see the Audubon volume that you found,” Hunt said. “And my map.”

“
Your
book of psalms,
your
birds,
your
map,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I just can’t imagine the commissioner is
looking to turn these things back over to you until he’s damn sure nothing that
has gone on involves
your
indictment, Mr. Hunt.”

Hunt took a few steps toward the trestle table and
Mercer stood to block his approach. Bea came back into the room with her arms
full of copies of the map, and stopped short when she saw Talbot Hunt.

“It’s a panel from the world map, isn’t it?” Hunt
asked. “Am I right, Ms. Dutton?”

“You are, Mr. Hunt.”

“That is mine, Detective,” he said, each word
separated by a dramatic pause, as though a nail had been driven between them as
he spoke. “My father’s lawyers will want to speak to you as soon as I reach
them.”

“You’re telling me you knew about the existence of
this particular map?” Mike asked. “That you knew it was here, at the library?”

Hunt didn’t seem to want to answer that question.

“Bea, I thought you said you’ve never seen one of
these panels,” Mike said. “That the library never owned one.”

“That’s true,” the petite woman said, holding her
ground. “I haven’t, and we don’t.”

“The world map of 1507,” Hunt said. “Martin
Waldseemüller. The only known original is in the Library of Congress.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know, Mr.
Hunt.” Mike peeled back the wrapper on a pack of Life Savers and popped one
into his mouth.

“I can do that, Detective. I can tell you
something almost nobody in the world knows,” Hunt said. “There’s another
original of that 1507 map that survived. My grandfather bought it from the
Grimaldis—the royal family of Monaco—more than a century ago.”

Bea Dutton’s head practically snapped as she
turned it to look at Talbot Hunt. “You have the other pieces to complete this
map?”

“We can race against each other to find the
missing panels, Mr. Chapman, if you won’t agree to return this one to me,” Hunt
said, choosing to ignore the earnest librarian. “I can leave you to your own
devices.”

“That’s how come they gave me a gold shield,” Mike
said, crunching the mint between his teeth.

“I can assure you that if you fail, someone else
is bound to die.”

TWENTY

Talbot Hunt was seated at the head of the
table, one leg crossed over the other and his hands touching at the fingertips.
“For the moment, Detective, wouldn’t you say that I’m in the driver’s seat?”

Mike was pacing, his back to Hunt as he walked
away from us. “Coop?”

“I’m not bargaining with possessions—no matter how
valuable—in exchange for information connected to two murders, Mr. Hunt. Either
you talk to us, or you tell it to the grand jury,” I said. “The decision about
who owns these things will be made in a courtroom, not because you’re here to
bully us. I assume the library can establish what belongs in this building and
what doesn’t. Things that have been donated to the Hunt Collection—”

“And all those other things they are desperately
hoping will be left to them,” he said, glaring at Jill Gibson. “Fortunately,
while my father is still breathing, everyone here is likely to be on his best
behavior. It takes so little time to change a codicil these days.”

“How did your grandfather get the map?” Mike
asked. “And how come nobody knows he had it?”

“There are a few people aware of the fact—some
more dangerous, more desperate to find it than others.”

“Your sister, Minerva? Is she one of them?”

“Did you ever see a pig looking for truffles,
Detective? My sister would have her carefully sculpted snout deep in the dirt
if it would help her find the rest of the panels.”

“Why would any of this cause someone to be
desperate?” Mercer asked.

“Because the more time that passes before the
pieces of the map are reunited, the greater the likelihood they will never be
found,” Hunt said.

“And there’s much less value to the individual
pieces than to the work as a whole,” Mike said. “But if your grandfather bought
it intact, how did it get broken up?”

“Because Jasper Hunt Jr. was mad.”

“Your sister mentioned that.”

“First honest thing I’ve heard out of her mouth in
ages,” Hunt said. “We hardly knew him—he died when we were very young—but the
stories about him are legion. He was all about games and pranks and tricks, Mr.
Chapman. The older he got, the more difficult. Like many rich men, he wanted to
take it all with him. Very torn about whether he should create a legacy that
would outlive him or go out like a pharaoh, with all his worldly goods
surrounding him for the long ride.”

“How did he come to buy the map?” I asked.

“According to my father, Grandpapa was thirty
years old when the discovery of this map was made by Josef Fischer. The news
spread worldwide, of course, and even though Jasper’s interest was primarily in
books, like most collectors he was fascinated with the idea that one could
still uncover such treasures, untouched over time, in a personal library. And
so he made a plan.”

“And what was that?” Mike asked.

“Jasper asked his curator to study the small royal
families of Europe, like the Waldburgs of Wolfegg Castle, where the map was
found. Kingdoms, principalities, and duchies that had libraries in 1507, when
the great map was printed, and had perhaps managed to hang on to those
residences throughout the four intervening centuries. It was well known that
royals were among the first to buy these documents at the time they were
printed.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Mercer said.

“By the time they finished a careful survey of
European history three years later, Jasper was surprised to see how few of the
existing properties had not been pillaged or changed hands numerous times. So
he and his curator—and his personal banker—decided to embark on a grand tour of
the continent.”

“Just to search for that map?” I asked.

“The ostensible purpose was that the great
American book collector Jasper Hunt Jr. was making a pilgrimage to Europe’s
oldest royal libraries in order to add to his own. But Grandpapa was also
counting on the fact that while many of these princes had retained their
titles, they had lost most of their riches and their long-gone feudal
lifestyles. Some of them might be ready to offer to sell him valuable
works—maybe even the great world map.”

“But wouldn’t there already have been a feeding
frenzy, after the announcement of the discovery of the one map?”

“Actually not, Mr. Wallace,” Hunt said. “You see,
Prince Waldburg had no intention of selling his. The great excitement at the
time was that it existed at all, and in such perfect condition. Cartographers
everywhere wanted to see and study it, but the prince made it clear that there
was never to be a price tag placed on the map, so it was never assigned a
commercial value in the marketplace. A century later—just a few years ago—we
all learned that the Library of Congress had made known its interest in
acquiring the map.”

“So your grandfather never knew that it was worth
millions of dollars?” I asked.

“Grandpapa had a great eye for the rare and
beautiful, but not even he could have guessed the price this would have
ultimately been worth. No one could have.”

“How did he find it?”

“In 1905, they were traveling through Belgium and
the Netherlands, actually making some magnificent purchases of incunabula and
very old illustrated manuscripts, when Jasper was summoned by Prince Albert of
Monaco—Albert the First,” Hunt said. “The two had known each other for quite
some time because Albert had married a rich American girl from New Orleans
whose family was well acquainted with the Hunts. It seems that Albert got word
of Jasper’s search, and from Jasper’s perspective, the Grimaldi family was high
on his list of prospects. They had ruled Monaco since the thirteenth century,
and being in such an important strategic position on the Mediterranean seaport,
would likely have been interested in a map of the New World at the time it
first appeared.”

“Yeah, but the Grimaldis had been chased out of
town at least once,” Mike said. “They didn’t retain possession of their palace
for that whole passage of time.”

Talbot Hunt’s furrowed brow suggested his
puzzlement at Mike’s display of knowledge, which was doubtless some factoid of
military history. “You’re right, Detective. That, too, was part of Prince
Albert’s story.

“Don’t forget that Monaco is built on top of a
rock, Detective—literally, a fortress atop a great cliff above a strategic
harbor, with ramparts constructed all around to reinforce it. Before the
Grimaldis fled the palace during the French Revolution, they were able to stash
many of their treasures—crown jewels, the art collection amassed by Prince
Honoré, and a good portion of the royal library—inside a series of catacombs
built into the rock in medieval times. Everything still high and dry when the
next generation was restored to the palace thirty years later.”

“Why did Albert contact your grandfather?”

“Word had spread throughout these European
principalities about the questions Jasper was asking during his travels. And
Albert was an unusual prince for his time, far more interested in intellectual
pursuits than most others. In fact, he is best remembered as an explorer—a very
serious oceanographer—which explains his attachment to maps.”

“There’s a great oceanographic museum in Monaco,
isn’t there?” I asked.