The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (34 page)

The first thing I did the morning after I returned was to call the financial office and tell them I wanted to review phone records for the last couple of months.

A patient voice directed me how to access the file on my own computer. It proved childishly easy. I clicked into the subfile for Greco-Roman Collection Curatorial Office. Lots of long-distance calling. And then, there it was, the 413 number for LeBlanc’s
operation. It had been called three times, once in March and twice in April.

I subdued a frisson of predatory anticipation and pondered my next move. I knew I should call Lieutenant Tracy and tell him what I had found so far. But what had I found? The forger? Possibly. But I had no real proof.

In the midst of these cogitations I received a text message from Alphus containing what sounded like good news. Esther Homard, the literary agent, has a renowned and well-financed publisher interested in his memoirs. So interested, in fact, that they are chartering a plane to fly him to the great big apple for a meeting.

Alphus wants me to accompany him, but frankly, I think Felix would be far more useful. There’s already been some e-mailing back and forth about establishing a trust of which I would be one of the trustees. It strikes me as strange that Alphus is not recognized as a legal entity.

I sent back a text message (I am not comfortable with
text
as a verb) congratulating him. I also asked him to stand by for a lie detector exercise in the afternoon.

I called Diantha out at the cottage. “Angel,” I said, using my Humphrey Bogart voice, “could you do a background check for me on Feidhlimidh de Buitliér? There’s a site called something like Who Was Who.com.”

“I could try. How do you spell that?”

I spelled it out for her and then told her about Alphus’s good news.

“Fly him to New York?” She sounded skeptical.

“On a private charter. I think he would do better in a car.”

“Whatever.”

I heard some of her old exasperation. I said, “Diantha darling, if Alphus gets a nice fat advance, he’ll be able to afford some place of his own and hire a keeper.”

“If …”

“Yes, if.”

Rather than call my latest suspect and arrange to have him come by for an interrogation, I decided to drop in unannounced at his small office on the third floor.

He wasn’t in, but a young man, a veritable ephebe of Hungarian birth named Josef, asked me if he could be of any help. I told him who I was and that I wanted to speak directly to Mr. de Buitliér.

“Doctor de Buitliér won’t be back until later,” he said vaguely. “Do you want that I take a message?”

“Yes, tell him to call me the moment he gets in. Tell him it’s very important.” Then, neutrally, I asked him what he did in the museum.

“I’m Doctor de Buitliér’s assistant.”

“Really? I don’t think personnel knows about that.”

“Actually, now I am only an intern.”

In the course of this exchange, I happened to glance out the window. It was, like most of the windows at the museum, a large, generous thing. It gave out onto both the museum and Center for Criminal Justice parking lots and would have afforded de Buitliér a direct view of what happened on the night of von Grümh’s murder. That is, if he had been around.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I asked myself. I had not even checked the electronic log for him or others who might have been at the museum that night.

Cursing myself for neglecting such routine yet critical investigative tasks, I took the elevator down to the basement to see Mort. He was in his office keeping an eye on the big panel of security screens while watching a baseball game on one of those little things that fit into a drawer.

I let it slide. I had better things to talk to him about. “The
records for the night of May tenth,” I said, taking a seat nearby.

He nodded, pecked at a keyboard, and after several false starts brought it up with a flourish. “There,” he said, giving the word two syllables.

I frowned. The record showed that de Buitliér left the building around six thirty and did not return that night.

“Mort, tell me, is there any way of getting into and out of the building without swiping your card?”

When he began to squirm and shake his head, I said, “Mort, this is very important.”

“Well … You know the loadin’ dock in the back and the two big doors that open out. Off to the side, there’s a small access door. You need to swipe there to get in, but it ain’t wired into the records yet. They’re supposed to come look at it all summer, but you know how contractors are.”

“Who knows about this?”

“Don’t know. Word gets around.”

“Good. Thanks. And what’s the score?”

“Three to nothing Sox in the fifth. Last I knew.”

Back in my office I again considered calling Lieutenant Tracy and letting him in on what I was doing. But I felt I needed to tie up a few more loose ends first. For instance, who had reported to the police the meeting between me and Heinie at the Pink Shamrock? Who but de Buitliér?

It was one o’clock and I had gotten a bit peckish. I printed out a likeness of de Buitliér I found on the museum’s Web site. With this in pocket I drove over to that establishment, which I found to be busy with a mixed crowd in terms of sexual preference, at least as far as I could tell.

A large-faced genial bartender by the name of Pat asked what he could do for me. I ordered a pint of ale and glanced at the menu. “The ham on rye looks good,” I told him.

“Ham on rye it is.”

I sipped my ale and ate the sandwich, which I found excellent. I didn’t begin my inquiries until it was time to pay the bill.

“You’re Pat?” I asked, fishing several twenties out of my wallet.

“The very same. Pat Kelly.” He reached a big hand across the bar. “From Ballinasloe, County Galway.”

“Norman de Ratour. I work at the Museum of Man.”

“Just up the road.”

I nodded. I said, as casually as I could, “You don’t strike me, Pat, as very much like a lot of your clientele.”

“As indeed I’m not. It’s a job. And they’re people, you know, no less than you and me.”

“Do they confide in you?”

He laughed. “Some of the more desperate ones do.”

“What do you tell them?”

“I don’t. I just listen.” His eyes turned shrewd. “What can I do for you, Mr. de Ratour?”

I produced the folded printout of de Buitliér’s likeness and showed it to him. “You could tell me if this gentleman frequents this bar.”

Pat eyed me suspiciously for a moment. “You’re not police, are you?”

“No.”

After a glance at the picture, he leaned over the bar and, keeping his voice dramatically low, said, “That’s Philly de Buitliér. He’s not really a regular. He comes and goes. I would say he was from Ulster if I had to, but I don’t think the man is from anywhere.”

I thanked him and placed a couple of twenties on top of the few dollars I had left as a tip.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, but accepted them
graciously when I insisted. “And do come back and see us.”

I drove home and picked up Alphus. He was in a rare good humor, showing me the e-mail he had gotten from his agent. Then raising his hand to slap mine.

Feidhlimidh de Buitliér came in to my office and sat down, glancing at Alphus and generally acting like a cornered rat. The insolence had gone out of his eyes. He didn’t exactly grovel, but his body language was that of someone very nervous.

I softened him up for my interrogation as I had before with some generalities about changes in the Greco-Roman Collection. Did it really fit into the scheme of the museum with its heavy emphasis on native arts and traditions? I asked. Especially since the coins had proven fake.

He didn’t say much until I mentioned the plans the Wainscott administration had for the museum once I had been removed.

“What do you mean?”

“Your name appears prominently in the documentation,” I said, fixing him with a stare of real anger.

“How’s that?”

I showed him the e-mail in which his name was mentioned as my successor.

“I had nothing to do with that,” he lied.

I let silence descend. I leaned back, “Tell me, Mr. de Buitliér, what was your business with Alain LeBlanc in Shetland Falls?”

“Who?”

“The Swiss gentleman who made expert copies of the coins von Grümh gave to the museum.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I produced a printout of the phone records with his calls to the number circled in red and handed it to him.

He glanced at it. “This doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves that someone from your office called the number of a forger who had set up business in a small town in western Massachusetts.”

He shook his head.

I pressed on. “The chief of police in Shetland Falls is willing to testify that you were out there making inquiries about Mr. LeBlanc. It also turns out that the fire that destroyed the building where LeBlanc made his forgeries is considered of suspicious origin by the state fire marshal’s office.”

He said nothing.

“You’ve been very busy, Doctor Buitliér. You’re the one who told the police, anonymously, of course, that I was with von Grümh in the Pink Shamrock on the night he was murdered.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“I checked with the bartender. The big Irish gentleman. He says you’re in there quite a bit.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You also sent the anonymous letter implicating Col Saunders in the murder.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Confuse things. Saunders doesn’t think much of you. Never has.”

All the while to one side, Alphus was regarding him intently and with his right hand making signals for the video camera on the shelf.

Again I said nothing for a while. Then, without preamble, I launched into the set of defining questions. “Tell me, Doctor Buitliér, did you kill Heinrich von Grümh?”

He looked at me almost with alarm. “Why do you ask me that?”

“Just yes or no.”

“No. Why should I?”

“Did you want to murder Heinrich von Grümh?”

“No.”

“Do you know who murdered Heinrich von Grümh?”

“No.”

“Do you know where the murder weapon is?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Because you were here the night of the murder. I think you know a lot more about this than you are telling me. I think you are hiding something.”

He said nothing, but a touch of the old defiance had crept back into his eyes.

Not long afterward, I thanked and dismissed him. I locked the door so that Alphus and I could review the results undisturbed. They proved very interesting. According to Alphus, de Buitliér’s response to the first question was ambivalent. Was he like me in that he didn’t know if he did or didn’t murder the man?

De Buitliér told the truth about not wanting to murder von Grümh. Out of principle? Because his murder would not be to his advantage? Because, complementary to that, he was more valuable to de Buitliér alive than dead?

When Alphus said de Buitliér lied about knowing who killed von Grümh, my blood ran cold. Because it still could have been I. But then, if it was, why wouldn’t he simply have called the police and told them?

It gave me a distinct throb of excitement to know that he lied when he said he didn’t know where the murder weapon was. But what if my prints were on the weapon? What if …

I didn’t hesitate. I put in a call to Lieutenant Tracy and left word that I needed to see him as soon as possible. I didn’t want to waste much time, because de Buitliér had the keen intuition of the cunning. He knew something was afoot.

While I was waiting for the lieutenant to get back to me, Diantha called with some results from her search of de Buitliér’s background.

“You were right. I’m e-mailing you his information.” We chatted. She asked me if the interest in Alphus’s memoirs was the real deal. I told her absolutely. I had checked into Esther Homard and found that she was not someone to waste anyone’s time, especially her own.

It turned out that Feidhlimidh de Buitliér had an intriguing résumé. For starters he was born Philip Bottles in Riverbend, Missouri. While attending a small local college, he spent a semester abroad at University College Cork in Ireland.

However, it appears he didn’t get his name changed until after he graduated. He worked for more than a year in a pet-grooming business in Milwaukee before becoming an “associate” at a large home-improvement chain in upstate New York.

During this time, he enrolled in a doctoral program run by an online university not known for its rigorous standards. His doctorate was in “Classical Studies.” The title of his dissertation, if any, was not listed.

How he ended up in Seaboard is not recorded. Under the late Dr. Comer, he began in a curatorial training program. From there, he simply insinuated himself into the woodwork of the place, starting as an interim curator for the Greco-Roman Collections.

The lieutenant appeared in my doorway wearing a light tan jacket and open collar. “I was in the neighborhood,” he said without preliminaries. “What’s up?”

“Some developments, I believe.” I stood and shook his hand. “We may have a break.”

He looked at me quizzically as we both sat down, the tension in the room suddenly electric. “You’ve been busy.”

“I have. And I think we will have to move quickly.”

“I’m listening.”

I launched into a brief account of what I had been doing, starting with the day we went out to inform Merissa Bonne of her husband’s murder and the number I found on the pad near the phone.

“You should have told us about that,” he said, half smiling, half rebuking.

“I forgot about it myself until a couple of days ago. Anyway, Diantha traced it to an antiques restorer in the Berkshires by the name of Alain LeBlanc. Not only was he gone when we got there, but the building where he’d had his shop had burned to the ground in what the fire marshal out there regards as a suspicious fire.”

The lieutenant listened with a frown as I detailed the rest of the story. Chief Ballard’s description of de Buitliér as someone else who had been out poking around. How I found and questioned a local named Wally Marsden who confirmed that LeBlanc made replicas of coins and that he had made two sets for von Grümh.