Mummy (12 page)

At Christmas, they took roll after roll of film of their three grandchildren. They couldn’t get enough photographs of Emlyn.

She had a grotesque vision of other photographs of herself. Police photographs. And what would her grandparents feel about her then?

Jack left the interstate. It was a traveler’s exit with three gas stations, pancake house, hamburger place, tacos, doughnuts. They stopped and everybody went to the bathroom and then got a hamburger. In the bathroom Emlyn wrapped her remaining gloves in paper towels and crushed them up and dropped them in the trash.

By now the museum staff would have found the glove that was keeping the basement door open. She imagined them saving it for the police. She imagined them standing in the Egyptian Room by the empty bier. The shock. The disbelief.

She was feeling shock and disbelief herself.

Eight more miles brought them to a small lake that gleamed in the moonlight. It was surrounded with tiny houses so close to one another they were like tents in an army camp. Each had a tiny unpaved driveway, towering trees, and a strip of garden and gate. Each had two little steps in front and a little screened porch in back, hanging over the water. Tiny docks stuck out into the lake, narrow as ladders.

It was very quiet.

Donovan hopped out of the van and fiddled around with the light fixture on the teeny front stoop.

“You open the door by turning a lightbulb?” said Jack.

Donovan laughed. “I don’t have a key. But they keep one hanging inside the lamp. So does everybody else around the lake. Just a little tip, in case you want to make off with somebody’s twenty-year-old black-and-white TV”

Inside the cottage was a darling little kitchen, like a toy, and a living room so small Emlyn could not imagine having grandchildren visit on a rainy day. The ladder to the loft really was vertical. Emlyn and Donovan reached the top, and Jack handed them the mummy’s feet, and they crouched while he fed the mummy upward.

The front of the loft had no wall, just a sort of curb. “What did you do when you were babies?” she asked Donovan. “Fall off and bounce?”

He laughed. “There used to be a gate. They took it down once we got older.” He turned on the light in the loft.

There were three bunks, one against each wall. The ceiling was too low for a second bed above them. The floor had exactly enough space to lay Amaral-Re down.

They took the plastic off quickly, gently removing the masking tape from the mummy’s shoulders and sides.

“Don’t touch her,” said Emlyn thickly. “We can’t get oil or bacteria on her.”

But it was impossible not to touch. They stroked her painted hair, black as night, and her lips, dark red. They felt her sharp elbows and ran their hands over the triangle of her captured feet.

“Wow,” said Jack. “Three thousand years old. Wow.”

“In the exhibit,” said Donovan shakily, “it didn’t seem so—well—fantastic.”

“It seemed smaller,” said Jack.

“Less important,” said Donovan.

“Is that real gold?” whispered Jack.

“You know it is,” said Donovan.

“Is it going to look amazing hanging up in that bell tower, or what?” said Jack.

“Don’t call her it,” said Emlyn. “She’s a she. And we can’t hang her in the bell tower.”

“Oh,” said Jack. “Where do you want to hang her, then?” He turned as if accepting her expertise on senior pranks.

“She’s not sturdy and she might fall apart,” said Emlyn. “And what if it rains? We can’t let her get wet. It doesn’t rain in Egypt.”

The boys began to laugh.

“You’re really taking this seriously,” said Jack.

“Amaral-Re took her death very seriously.”

“Well, yeah, but she’s had time to get used to it, Em.”

She knew she was not thinking clearly. The evening had truly taken everything out of her. This was how Amaral must have felt when her brains were removed by the embalmers. Emlyn had thought she would rejoice, would hug herself with the delight of her Bad, the success of her Wrong. But there was no such feeling. There was just a deep, appalling dread.

She had not known the mummy would be real.

Even though she had taken the mummy, lifted and hoisted and sweated to take this mummy, she had not known the mummy would be real.

“I’m exhausted,” said Emlyn. “Let’s get out of here. I feel as if I’ve rowed a hundred miles.”

Jack looked at his watch. “Okay,” he said with an unexpected reluctance. “I guess we can fit that in.”

“Fit what in?” said Emlyn.

“It’ll be on the news,” said Jack. “Stolen mummies don’t happen every day. Eleven P.M. is local news. I figured we’d stay here for the news, but yeah, I think we can get to Lovell’s just in time.” He gestured to Donovan, and the two of them slid Amaral under a bunk, stowing her like old sweatshirts.

Emlyn frowned. “Jack. You just said you didn’t think there would be publicity.”

“Well—except, you know, the police report. That part. That’ll be in the news. So, hey, let’s go, you first, Em. I’m coming.”

The ladder was harder to go down than it had been to go up. From the floor she could not see the bunks, let alone the mummy. Amaral was well and truly hidden. But what if there was a fire? What if—

Emlyn stared at Jack. He had a big, dumb grin on his face. “You phoned the police, didn’t you? When we stopped for a hamburger, you called it in on your car phone, didn’t you? Because you
want
publicity. You don’t care what the museum might want or what I might want.”

“Aw, Em,” said Jack, grinning, leaning down toward her face as if the closer he got the more she would agree. “It’s no fun keeping secrets. Gotta tell. I mean, they don’t know it’s us. They don’t know we took it. They don’t know it has anything to do with senior prank. All they know is, a voice called and said there’s been a theft at the museum. A major artifact has been stolen.”

“You used those words?
Theft
and
stolen?
”

“Well, yeah. The police wouldn’t come if I said
borrowed.
”

They walked out to the car. Donovan said, “You really think that’s real gold?”

L
OVELL LIVED IN AN
apartment building several blocks east of Emlyn’s, but everybody said “my house” even though nobody lived in a house. Way back in maybe second grade, Emlyn had been to a birthday party at Lovell’s, because when they were littler everybody went to every party. They had never become friends. Just classmates who recognized each other.

Emlyn had no memory of the apartment although she could remember the little prize she had won. It had been a diary, its pencil attached by a gold ribbon. She had been so proud and had even written in it once.

It was only minutes before eleven when they pulled up at the apartment building.

In the lobby there was no doorman. Lovell could come and go much more anonymously than Emlyn. They pressed the buzzer, Lovell pressed back, they rushed in, stabbed the elevator button, and the boys all but hopped up and down to make the elevator lift more quickly.

“We’ve got the TV on,” said Lovell, flinging open her door. “Quick! They’ve been giving teasers for the last half hour! ‘Stay tuned,’ they’re crying, with those snarfy little smiles, for an exclusive story about the theft of a major work of art from the city museum!’”

Jack slapped his knee with joy. He and Maris hugged efficiently and separated and went straight to the TV. Then Maris said, “I am so impressed, Emlyn. I mean, really, in the end, I thought we’d all panic and run.”

“She’s not the panic-and-run type,” said Lovell.

“She’s awesome,” said Jack. “But everybody stop talking. We don’t want to miss a word.”

Emlyn might not even have seen the TV, which was draped with plush, long-legged purple-and-violet creatures of unknown species. The apartment looked like a gift shop for creatures made of fur or velvet, corduroy and lace. Stuffed animals sat in rows on the couch and the chairs; they leaned on shelves and tipped in corners. There were pandas and lambs, camels and cats. There was no place to sit, unless you perched on the very rim of a sofa occupied by various teddy bear families.

“Mom and Vanessa and I collect stuffed animals,” explained Lovell.

Lovell’s father had left long ago. Possibly there had not been room for him. In any event, both mother and sister had dates tonight and were not back yet. Lovell didn’t expect them before midnight. So they had an hour to talk things over in safety.

Everybody sat on the floor. Even the floor pillows were shaped like animals. Lovell handed Emlyn an immense, swollen pillow that turned out to be a pig with Velcro-attached piglets.

“You don’t have to take the piglets off,” said Lovell generously, “although, of course we never squash the piglets.”

And they say the ancient Egyptians were weird, thought Emlyn.

She was aching all over. Every muscle felt strained and sickish. She had just been wondering if she was about to come down with the flu when she realized that the aches were from lifting a mummy over her head and running around with it. That would be an interesting reason to give the sports doctor.

She felt loose and unraveled, like the edges of Amaral’s outer bandages.

Lovell and Maris had known about the television. Had publicity been part of the plan all along? What kind of team was this, anyway?

But I knew from the beginning, she thought. We weren’t a team.

“We’re going to be on television,” sang Maris. She had a lovely voice, and Lovell joined her, a third lower, so they were a duet “We’re going to be on television,” they sang together.

The four who were a team beamed at one another and put their arms around one another and rocked a little bit. Emlyn sat slightly behind them, her back supported against the teddy-occupied couch.

She felt dry and sick. Was the mummy really all right where they had left her? Donovan had implied that everybody around the entire lake kept keys hanging inside light fixtures, and if you needed a toaster or an old TV you could just walk in and take it. What would stop somebody from climbing that ladder and inspecting the loft? What would stop them from peering under that bunk?

Sensible robbers are after ATM machines, she told herself. Breaking into shiny new four-thousand-square-foot houses with landscaping. They are not in shabby little summer communities, climbing vertical ladders and poking in corners that can’t have anything better than old beach towels.

Lovell’s hostess technique was to lower bags of chips, tubs of sour cream, handfuls of chocolate bars, and boxes of cookies and doughnuts onto the floor. She tossed down some paper napkins and plastic cups and opened a huge plastic bottle of ginger ale. People who wanted ice struggled to their feet and ran to the freezer.

Emlyn just drank hers warm. She read the bag labels and settled on honey mustard pretzel bits. This would not have passed for dinner at her own household. Then she remembered that not only had everybody else had dinner, she herself had had a hamburger.

“Quiet, quiet!” yelled Donovan. “Here it comes! We’re on!”

“Good evening!” said the anchor. As always, she addressed her fellow newscaster instead of the actual audience. “James!” she cried. “Tell us about the dreadful, mysterious event at the museum!”

“Well, JoAnne,” said James joyfully, “this evening, while the museum was occupied by more than seventy-five people at a fund-raising party and while guards were patrolling both inside and out, a very daring theft took place.”

“That’s you, Emmy!” shrieked Maris, spilling Cheez-Its on the carpet. She ate them anyway.

“Rhonda,” cried James, “over to you!”

Rhonda, excited and laughing, was at the museum, standing by the pedestal on which the mummy had rested. “Forget Washington,” said Rhonda happily, microphone against her mouth, notebook in hand, “forget scandal, forget Wall Street. We have something in our city immensely more surprising and interesting. The only mummy in the museum collection
has been stolen.
”

Rhonda certainly did not regard this as a crime. Rhonda regarded this as a cool, neat event. Thank you, grave robber, was Rhonda’s approach.

“The mummy was taken sometime between eight and nine, when the museum theater was in use for a private party. The guard had just walked through the Egyptian Room. Dr. Brisband, director of the museum, was in his own office, hard at work. The thief is presumed to have entered and exited through the basement, where a door was found propped open with a black knit glove. With us tonight is Dr. Harris Brisband. Dr. Brisband, please tell us about the mummy. What is it worth? What are these thieves going to do with it?”

Gone was the distinguished urbane gentleman with his clever remarks, his jaunty bow tie, and his audience appeal. In front of the camera stood a horrified, heartsick, middle-aged man. His hair had tracks where he had been running his fingers through it. He definitely looked like a man coming down with the flu.

“I’m terribly shocked by this,” he said. His voice trembled. He was shocked. “The mummy is one of our prized possessions. She is presumed by some of the hieroglyphs on her linens to have been royalty, but her connections have never been precisely established. However, the extraordinary care with which she was wrapped would indicate—”

“But what is this mummy worth?” interrupted Rhonda.

“It is not possible to put a dollar value on the mummy. The mummy cannot be replaced.” He turned to the camera, leaving Rhonda on her own. “I beg of you,” said Dr. Brisband, and he was begging, his face was ashen, “do not damage the mummy. She is very fragile. She
must
be kept flat. She cannot be—”

Emlyn had not kept Amaral-Re flat, even after the second time something fell or broke. He is begging
me
, thought Emlyn. He is looking into that camera, praying that
I
am watching and listening.

The realness of having taken the mummy was even more horrifying. She could not reassure Dr. Brisband that Amaral-Re was fine. Nor that she would be kept flat. Bell tower hangings were not gentle activities.

Rhonda broke in. “Dr. Brisband, we have spoken with the insurance company that covers the museum. They could not give us a dollar value, but you certainly can. What is that dollar value of that stolen mummy?”