The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (8 page)

"Well, Detective, Mr. Lissen, our shipping manager, tells me that's because they were repackaged after they arrived here, depending on where they were being sent. We're in the final planning stages of a huge show that we'll be mounting next year, and in exchange for some of the treasures that belong to us but are on loan in museums around the world, we're sending out some of our other art to help fill in those gaps."

Thibodaux rubbed his eyes before speaking again. He looked paler than he had in formal dress standing on the floodlit platform at the Temple of Dendur yesterday evening. He had probably not slept at all last night, worrying how this dreadful discovery would affect his museum. His French accent seemed more pronounced today, perhaps because of his exhaustion. "This sarcophagus--number 1983.752--it's listed on page twelve of that inventory."

Chapman flipped to find it. "This coffin came back to you last fall. It had been on loan to the Chicago Art Museum, right?"

"So it appears."

"And it's been here ever since then. You know where?"

"I don't, but I'm sure someone can tell you where. Exactly." Thibodaux rose and walked to his desk, opening the drawer and shaking two tablets into his hand. He washed them down with some ice water that was in a crystal pitcher next to his blotter. This was a headache that would not go away with pills.

"And the other stuff in that crate was all from local institutions, am I reading this right?"

Thibodaux came back and picked up his folder. "Yes, that particular box was full of things going to Cairo, mostly from Natural History, right across Central Park, and from the Brooklyn Museum as well. Some were to stay in Egypt, others had final destinations in other parts of Africa.

"You see the enormity of this problem, Detective? There are almost three thousand people who work inside the Met. We've got eight acres of buildings, hundreds of galleries and service areas. There's a fire department, several restaurants, an infirmary, and a power plant. I can't even begin to think about having you disturb everyone here, on account of--of..." He gestured to the small Polaroid, on which he had rested his mug.

"Of the young woman who might well have met her death within these walls?" Mike had already dubbed his victim Saint Cleo, and he would fight to bring her murderer to some kind of justice whether or not he ever found out who she was.

"It probably makes sense for us to start talking with Mr. Lissen, and with whomever is in charge of the Egyptian department as well. Weren't they the gentlemen who were out there in Newark last night?" I tried to take the conversation over from Chapman, who was clearly put off by Thibodaux's dismissal of the deceased.

"Trustees, curators, artists, students. If you've never been in a museum, Detective, you'll have no understanding of what this all entails."

"Maybe your French flics haven't looped the Louvre too often, Mr. T., but I've probably spent as much time in this place as you spend looking down your nose at people like me. What would make you think I've never been in a museum? 'Cause I'm a police officer?"

Thibodaux had just turned a dangerous corner. Mike hated that familiar upper-class assumption that he was just another dumb cop, and every time we came up against it in a case investigation, it infuriated him more and more. "It's just a manner of speaking. I never meant to offend you." He looked across the table to Eve Drexler. "Why don't you call and get Lissen up here, for the detective to speak with."

"Came here the first time when I was four years old." Mike was talking to me now. "My dad had his picture taken right in this office, when the police department gave the museum the guns he recovered."

I didn't understand what he was referring to, and Thibodaux listened as intently as I did.

"During a raid on a whorehouse, back before I was born, my father and his partner recovered a stash of guns, mixed in with a load of other stolen property. Laid in a warehouse for years, the old property clerk's office. Meanwhile, he's telling everyone how beautiful they are, decorated in gold, chiseled steel, and carved ivory with initials on the handle. Story got up to headquarters and someone finally took a look at the stuff."

Thibodaux stared at Chapman with a bit more interest. "Catherine the Great--the empress's pistols and hunting guns?"

"Made by Johann Grecke, the royal gunmaker, 1786. Right before they would have been destroyed to make room for the new evidence storage unit, the department had Pop bring them to the curator here. They traced the original owner, he donated them back to the Met, and we were all right in this fancy room for the ceremony. First time I ever saw a bottle of champagne and ate cake off an antique plate. Used to come as often as I could to look at my dad's treasures."

"Let me apologize, Detective. I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were ignorant of the museum. Five million visitors walk in and out of these doors every year, seeing only the objects encased in glass or the canvases hanging on the walls. They never think about what goes on behind the scenes, out of view, to make a place like this work so brilliantly, to give life to all these inanimate things."

He was turning the charm on now, trying to play up to Chapman and work the hardship angle to his advantage.

Eve Drexler hung up the phone and came back to the table. "Mr. Lissen will be here in ten minutes. I've ordered a fresh pot of coffee. And I've asked some of the curators who might be useful to your inquiry to be on standby." She was a model of efficiency.

"Thank you." The director picked up his folder again and continued to scrutinize the entries. Eve walked behind us to gather the empty mugs from which Mike and I had been drinking. She left them on an enameled tray on a satinwood commode next to the door, turning back to remove Thibodaux's and replace it with a fresh one. She picked up the photograph of the dead girl that he had been using as a coaster and took it over to his desk, peeking at it with curiosity as she placed it on the blotter.

I watched her reaction as she reached for the picture again. "Pierre, didn't you recognize this young woman? She was here for meetings with us a number of times last year. Look again. I think it's Katrina Grooten."

8

Thibodaux walked to his desk, opened the drawer, and removed a pair of reading glasses from a metal case. He studied the photograph and shrugged his shoulders.

"I meet so many young people here, Detective. You must forgive me." He looked at his assistant. It wasn't a glare, but it seemed to me that it was a signal for her to back off. "I'm sure I don't recall any specifics, Eve. Is there any reason Miss Grooten should have stood out to me?"

Eve had resumed her place at the table and picked up her notebook. "I might be mistaken, Pierre. It's possible you had nothing to do with her at all."

"Did she work for us?" he asked, looking perplexed.

"Not here. At the Cloisters."

Most of the Met's collection of medieval art is housed in the Cloisters, the dismantled elements of several European monasteries that were shipped to America by a prominent sculptor in the early 1900s, and then given to the museum by John D. Rockefeller. The magnificent setting is in northern Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River. "Are you familiar with--?"

Before Thibodaux could finish the question, Mike had to prove that his knowledge of the Met wasn't limited to just one branch. "Fort Tryon Park. Thirty-fourth Precinct." I didn't need a reminder of our last trip to that neighborhood, when we had investigated the murder of a prominent art dealer.

"I'm not sure what the girl did there," Eve continued, "but she was working on some aspect of the big bestiary exhibition we're doing with the Museum of Natural History next spring, the one that was just announced last evening. We had several planning sessions in this office. Of course, Mr. Thibodaux is abroad so frequently that I may have been mistaken that he was present for any of them."

"It's a terrible pity that this--this victim--is someone from our own family." The director was exhibiting the appropriate degree of remorse for us now. It was impossible for me to read his expression and know whether he was the least bit sincere.

"Wouldn't someone from the museum have missed her?"

"I'll have to get them to pull her personnel file, Mr. Chapman," Eve Drexler said, turning a page to make a list of things to do. "What else will you need?"

"Everything you've got. Who she worked with, what she did, where she lived, when she started here, and when she left. Of course, we'll need someone to identify the body. How well did you know her, Ms. Drexler?"

The woman was clearly not used to being the center of attention. She was the backup to the boss, but wasn't supposed to be involved herself. "I--uh--I can't say that I knew her at all. I mean, we were both at this table together two or three times, but--"

"You came up with her name pretty quick."

"I'm good at remembering names and faces, Detective. I have to be."

"That's--as you say in English--not my forte, Mr. Chapman. Eve stands at my shoulder at all our receptions, whispering in my ear as people approach." Thibodaux's smile seemed forced. "It seems the larger their collections, the more likely I am to block out their names when I need them most. It's a dangerous thing when you're courting potential donors, trying to get them to include the Met in their estate planning. They each want to believe that they have become my best friend."

"Did you talk to her at all, one-on-one? Find out anything about her?"

"Well, I remember making small talk with her," Drexler said, forefinger pressed against her forehead, as though digging for her recollections. "She had an accent, and since so many of our curatorial staff are from all over the world, naturally I inquired where she was from. You know, waiting for the meeting to get under way. I guessed Australia, but I was wrong. She is--she was, I'm sorry--she was South African."

"Dutch name, right?" Chapman asked.

"Yes, we also talked about that. Her family had been there for almost two hundred years. Boers." Dutch settlers who had moved to the African continent as early as the seventeenth century.

"Keep going. What else did she tell you?"

"That she worked at the Cloisters, of course. Here on some kind of visa. I don't remember any other conversation. She seemed rather shy. Didn't speak up at the meetings, didn't really participate very much."

Mike pointed at her leather notebook. "You take minutes?"

"Yes, I usually did." She looked down the length of the table, at Thibodaux, as though she was seeking his advice.

"I'd like to see those."

The director took his cue. "I'll have Eve find them. We'll have to figure out the relevant dates in order to do that."

Ten minutes with Eve Drexler and you knew she could put her fingers on them in an instant. She was the assistant we all wanted. Roughly fifty years old, memory like a steel trap, polite to a fault, willing to take the heat for the boss, and compulsively organized. There was probably a diary for every day she had worked with the director.

"How long have you been assisting Mr. Thibodaux?"

"Actually, I've been here a few more years than he has." She was blushing, now that the focus of the discussion had moved toher life and actions.

I tried to warm her up by engaging her on a personal level. "Would you mind telling us what your duties are?"

"Certainly, if that will help you with what you need. I came here as a graduate student almost twenty-five years ago. I was planning to spend my career as a museum archivist. That was my training, you see. But Mr. Thibodaux's predecessor thought the things that made me such a good librarian, if you will, would be helpful to him."

Chapman called up his childhood image of the beloved school librarian. "Tight lips? That index finger held over your mouth, going `ssssssssh' while I was trying to set up a football game after school with the other guys in the stacks, huh? What else?"

Drexler smiled at his reference. "Well, he certainly appreciated discretion, yes. And my knowledge of the collection. I spent a great deal of time cataloging entries and answering questions from staff and researchers--those who were too lazy to do the work themselves. And then, when Mr. Thibodaux took charge, he was gracious enough to keep me on."

"When was that?"

The director answered for himself. "Not quite three years ago, Detective. I'm sure you want to know everything about my background as well. Miss Drexler can give you a copy of my curriculum vitae. I'm fifty-two years old, born and raised in Paris. My experience is all curatorial. I ran the European art and sculpture department at the Louvre for more than a decade. Welcomed the opportunity to move to this gem of a museum. My wife was a New Yorker. She very much wanted to come home."

Eve Drexler heard the knock on the door and went to open it. I recognized the man who had been outside the truck at Newark last night, whom Thibodaux had said was in charge of shipping.

"Come in, Maury." He rose and greeted the shipping manager, a short, chunky man with a round face and thick red hair.

"Miss Cooper, Mr. Chapman, this is Maury Lissen. He is going to assist you with everything you'll need from his department."

Lissen took one of the seats at the table and placed the clipboard he carried in front of him.

"I've been up all night going over my paperwork. I just can't see any way this could have happened here."

"Yes, but obviously it did, Maury, and we're going to have to help the police as best we can."

Chapman stood and reached for the photograph of Katrina Grooten and passed it to Lissen. He winced as he looked at it. "I got a weak stomach for this kind of thing, Detective. Don't make me look at it, okay?"

Not exactly a response that resonates with a homicide detective. Mike and his partners rarely had the luxury of encountering a body that was not decomposed, or gaping with stab wounds or gunshot holes. "Take a good look, Maury," he said, sticking the shot back under the guy's nose. "She can't bite. She's dead."

He wouldn't pick up the photo but stared down at it and shook his head.