Murder in the Smithsonian (4 page)

He shifted his focus from his reflection to the display.
The mannequins, exquisite in their detail, represented the early women who’d occupied the White House. Other display rooms featured more contemporary first ladies. In this room, according to the placard, were Sarah Polk; Betty Taylor Bliss, President Taylor’s daughter, who served as White House hostess in place of her ailing mother; the tall and motherly Abigail Powers Fillmore; the Victorian Jane Means Appleton Pierce; Harriet Lane, bachelor president James Buchanan’s “mischievous romp of a niece,” who functioned as her uncle’s official hostess; the extravagant Mary Todd Lincoln; and Martha Johnson Patterson, daughter of President Andrew Johnson. Martha’s mother, too, had been ailing during the White House years and had delegated hostess duties to her.

“You comin’?” the guard asked. The dog yawned.

“In a minute,” Hanrahan said, drawn to the splendor in the room behind the glass—Mary Todd Lincoln’s resplendent silver tea service gleaming from a marble tabletop in the center, wallpaper reproduced from a scrap discovered during a White House renovation, a white marble mantle from the Pierce administration, laminated rosewood American Victorian furniture by John Belter, a burgundy floral carpet with pink and red roses surrounded by green leaves, gilt-framed mirrors, oil portraits of the presidents and a myriad other reminders of America at another time and place.

“Let’s move on,” the guard said. He sounded impatient.

“Yeah, right. Sorry. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.”

“I guess.” He jerked the dog’s leash and the animal slowly, reluctantly moved with his master.

They went now to the center of the floor, where the Foucault pendulum dangled through the circular opening.

“Well, thanks for the tour,” Hanrahan said. “By the
way, are there any places you know of where somebody could hide, I mean
really
hide?”

“Like whoever killed the man tonight?”

“Yeah, like him.”

“Mister, there’s more places to hide in this funhouse than you can imagine.”

“I figured,” Hanrahan said.

As he peered over the railing, he was, of course, unaware of a most peculiar movement in the First Ladies’ exhibition. One of the mannequins, dressed in a black velvet casaque over a gray silk skirt with black velvet ruffles and ruche, wearing a brunette wig combed up over crepes on the sides and adorned with velvet ribbon, feathers and a bead clasp, took a tentative step away from where she had posed between Sarah Polk and Betty Taylor Bliss. The mannequin-come-alive hesitated, listening for sounds of anyone approaching. Hearing nothing, she continued toward a door at the side of the exhibition room, opened it and stepped from the room to the visitor’s aisle in front of the glass. Long, dark eyelashes lowered, then came up again. A deep breath, a sigh, then disappearance behind one of hundreds of partitions used to separate the museum’s backstage activities from the tourists.

“Tell Mr. Rowland we’ll be in touch,” Hanrahan said to the guard. He went outside, where reporters waited. It had started to rain. The steps leading up to the museum were tented with umbrellas. Hanrahan moved back under cover of a narrow overhang, pulled a sheet of notations from his pocket, cleared his throat and said in the best official voice he could manage, “The deceased’s name was Dr. Lewis Tunney, Caucasian, forty-three years of age…”

J
UNE
5

“Captain Hanrahan?”

“Yes.”

“The vice president of the United States wishes to speak with you.”

Hey, Mac, he said to himself, your ma should be proud of you…

“Captain Hanrahan?” asked the now familiar deep voice of William Oxenhauer.

“Yes, sir.”

“You get in as early as I do.”

“I didn’t get in, sir, I never left.”

“Oh… look, I’m sorry, Captain… I can’t go into details, but I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone our meeting.

Hanrahan looked at his watch. It was seven-thirty. He’d intended to leave at nine for his appointment with Oxenhauer to make sure of being early. “Well, sir, may I ask when—?”

“Something brewing on the international front. I just can’t get away today. I called you myself because I want you to know how much I want to cooperate with you. Lewis Tunney was a very dear friend. To both
my wife and myself. If I can help you solve his… well, I’ll do everything and anything I possibly can. I want you to understand that.”

“Yes, sir, when can we meet?”

“Tomorrow morning, I should think. Same time, ten. That all right with you?”

It will have to be, won’t it? Hanrahan wanted to say. Instead he said, “That’ll be fine, sir. But I can’t let this slide. If you have something to offer, sir, I need it. Fast.”

“Of course. Tomorrow morning at ten. Thank you for your patience, Captain.”

Hanrahan waited until his superior, Police Commissioner Calvin Johnson, arrived at MPD. He called and told Johnson’s secretary that he had to see him right away.

“You’ll see him soon enough, Captain. He’s on his way down.”

Johnson was a big man, six feet three inches tall. He came from a distinguished family of black educators and had a Ph.D. in sociology. Which made him somewhat partial to Hanrahan’s assistant, though he too occasionally winced at Joe Pearl’s penchant for the jargonish language of his field. He had been commissioner only two years, but in that brief time had managed to establish a reputation for having gotten a handle on D.C.’s crime problem, and even some solutions for it. He had also made Washington’s best-dressed list. This morning he wore a charcoal gray pinstripe suit that looked like it had been tailor-made to his lean, well-exercised frame, plus a pale blue shirt pinched at the neck with a gold bar, and a royal blue silk tie. What hair that was left on his fifty-two-year-old head was black and wavy.

“Hello, Mac,” he said.

“Hello, Cal.”

“You look like you’ve been up all night.”

“Can’t imagine why. You want coffee?”

“Not your coffee. It’s terrible.”

“Hire me a better coffee cook. Okay, you want to be filled in on last night.”

“I appreciated your call at three this morning; Julia didn’t.”

“Give her my apologies.”

“I did. What’s new on this thing?”

“Nothing. We searched the museum, logged every one of the two hundred guests and asked the usual prelim questions. The lab people did their job, the press was fed a lean diet and everybody was put on notice not to leave town. It boils down to one dead historian, a missing medal and a suspect-cast of thousands.”

“What about the medal?”

“It belonged to a society called Harsa. It has something to do with the Revolutionary War, and with another society called the Cincinnati.”

“And?”

“And, well, I have to find out a helluva lot more. I put a bulletin out to Interpol on the medal in case they try to fence it overseas.”

“Do you think the medal is what got Tunney killed?”

“As of now that seems to be the scenario, Cal. Professional jewel thieves in the act of stealing the medal, Tunney stumbles onto them, gets killed with the closest thing at hand, Thomas Jefferson’s sword.”

“Thomas Jefferson’s sword?”

Hanrahan nodded. “Excuse me, Cal, but I really need coffee, no matter how bad it is.” He returned carrying a steaming mug. “Sure?”

“More so than ever.” Johnson perched on a corner of Hanrahan’s desk after checking the surface for stains or splinters, touched a thin, gray moustache with the
middle finger of his right hand. “Mac, what about the vice president?”

“What about him?”

“He was there.”

“Right. It seems he and his wife are old friends of the deceased, as Joe Pearl would say. His wife got hysterical, and the veep didn’t look too terrific either.”

“Did you talk to Oxenhauer?”

“Sure. I had an appointment with him this morning but he canceled.”

“Why?”

“Something international, he said.”

“Meaning what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think he was trying to avoid you?”

“I doubt it. But who knows?”

“When are you seeing him?”

“Tomorrow morning at ten.”

Johnson went to a window and looked down to the street. He asked without turning, “Why so interested in interviewing the vice president? You bucking for a White House security job? Maybe Secret Service?”

Hanrahan made a sound of disgust. “You’re right, Cal, this coffee is terrible. Better job? What could be better than this one? It’s like going to heaven every day.”

Johnson nodded, straight-faced. “It looks like rain… Why so much interest in Oxenhauer?”

“Because he told me Tunney said something to him before he died that might be important.”

“What was it?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Why not?”

“He wanted to get his wife home. She was in pretty bad shape.”

“Oh.”

“That’s what I said. I’ll see what he has to say in the morning.”

“I can see the papers now, blaming this on the ‘Smithson Bomber.’ What about him? Any possibility that he finally came out of the closet?”

“And killed Tunney?”

Johnson nodded, shrugged.

“I doubt it, but who knows? That’s getting to be my favorite line on this case. Anyway, all we can do is wait for him to make a mistake, stick his head out of his hole. He hasn’t taken credit for this yet.”

“Beef up the search for him, and make a point of it with the press. The media’ll play this to the hilt, turn it into a circus. God, Mac, a leading historian has Thomas Jefferson’s sword rammed into his back in the middle of two hundred people in tuxedoes at the Museum of American History. Imagine what they’ll do with this.”

Johnson cleared his throat and moved to where a color photograph of Hanrahan, his ex-wife, two sons and a daughter stood on the corner of a cabinet. He touched the frame. “Are you over this yet, Mac?”

“Over what? The divorce? Sure.”

“Must have been tough. I mean, having your wife run off with a younger man.” They respected each other enough to talk straight.

“It was. It isn’t anymore.”

“Good. Good for you and good for this case. I’d hate to see you distracted. This is a big one, Mac. Tunney was a good man, I’ve heard of him… but our big problem is
where
he died, and the circumstances. We want to do this right. We’re making some headway in this town. I’d hate to see it set back by a lot of high-level backbiting.”

Hanrahan momentarily resented the pressure, even if well-intentioned, from the commissioner. Then
the resentment subsided and he rolled his fingertips on the desk top. “We’re on top of it, Cal. I’ll keep you informed.”

“I know you will, Mac. Get some sleep. By the way, what did you say that medal was called?”

“The Legion of Harsa.”

“Find out more about that too. I’ve always enjoyed history. Like they say, we are what we were.”

“Yeah, like they say, Cal.” He didn’t press the point that that would have made the commissioner a slave.

***

Twenty-four hours later, as Captain Mac Hanrahan fidgeted in Vice President William Oxenhauer’s outer office, a thirty-four-year-old woman named Heather McBean stood at the Constitution Avenue entrance of the National Museum of American History. Next to her were four suitcases. A cab driver who had driven her to the museum from Dulles International Airport offered to help her inside but she declined. “I suppose I should have gone to the hotel first,” she said in a voice reflecting her weariness after a long flight from London.

“Want me to take you there?” the driver asked.

“No, thank you. I suppose they have a checkroom inside. But thank you for offering.”

“Sure. You’re British, huh?”

“Scottish.”

“They sound the same to me.”

“Sometimes to me too. Thank you.”

The checkroom was immediately to the right of the entrance. Heather checked her bags, put the receipt in her pocketbook and went to the Information Desk, where a pleasant woman with blue-tinted hair smiled and asked if she could be of help.

“I’d like to see Chloe Prentwhistle, please.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but I think she’ll see me. It’s about… about what happened here last night.”

The woman’s face tightened. “Yes, just a moment.” She consulted a directory, dialed three numbers and told whomever answered that Chloe Prentwhistle had a visitor. “Your name?” she asked.

“Heather McBean.”

“Heather McBean,” the woman said into the phone.

The woman listened, looked up. “You said your last name was McBean?”

“Yes, Heather McBean.” She suddenly felt faint, realized she was very hungry.

“Ms. Prentwhistle will send someone down for you shortly.”

“What? Oh, yes, thank you.”

Heather looked across the main floor to the Foucault pendulum, where a group of schoolchildren waited for the brass bob to fell another red marker. “I’ll be over there,” she said.

She joined the children. They’d grown giddy as the moment drew near and, for a second, Heather forgot about what had brought her across the ocean, the jarring jangle of a telephone in the middle of the night, the faraway voice telling her something that was, at first, incomprehensible, then still unbelievable. Could one phone call topple her from the delicious heights of the past few months, send her into the deepest despair? It could and it had.

Only weeks before, she had celebrated her thirty-fourth birthday and had never felt more alive and positive about her future. If there was a prime of life, this, she decided, certainly was it as the Mouton-Cadet Bordeaux claret and the warm outpouring of affection from her friends washed through and over her. She’d actually become tipsy that night, a rarity for her. Her
uncle, Calum McBean, had once commented about her, “She looks, smells and acts like a woman, but she drinks like a man…”

The children’s squeals of delight broke into her reverie as the next red marker fell. Seeing them so happy almost made her smile.

“Ms. McBean?”

Heather turned.

“I’m Chloe Prentwhistle.”

“Oh, yes, I…” She looked at the children. “It’s a pleasure seeing them enjoy it so—”