The Hunt Chronicles: Volume 1 (25 page)

The two
stolen paintings, Alfred
Pintaro’s
Rhapsody
and Susan
O’Donahue’s
The End of Eden
, in
addition to a stolen sculpture, Barry
Nitalino’s
Paradox
in Blue
on loan from the artist’s personal New York City gallery, push the
bill up to over $100,000.  Ida
Scribbs
, Curator
of the Beaumont Museum of Art, was not available for direct comment. 
Instead, museum department head Dennis
Trago
read a
statement on behalf of Ms.
Scribbs
at today’s press
conference. “This crime will not go unpunished.  These vandals have robbed
this City and its citizens of not only valuable works of art, but items of
immeasurable educational and inspirational value.  My staff and I will
cooperate with the authorities to ensure these individuals are brought to
justice and this City’s artistic heritage is restored.”

The museum
will be closed pending the completion of the police investigation.  Any
individuals with information regarding this crime are encouraged to contact the
Beaumont Police Department immediately.

Lisa
Rochello
, Senior Reporter

I arrived
at the museum before any of the others.  Eventually, police cruisers
pulled up outside delivering all who had been invited.  The second museum
party was about to begin.

I asked Myron to get
everyone inside the great room.  The room seemed lifeless now; no music,
no running water, and when someone turned on the lights, the chandelier seemed
dim and grey.

“What the hell are
we doing here?”  Ida
Scribbs
harped.  “Some
of us have jobs, you know.  We can’t all be retirees living off the rest
of society.”

“Quiet ma’am,” Myron
said sternly.  She huffed and walked over to the fountain, sitting on the
edge of the basin and frowning.  Carol followed her but chose to
stand.  The thought of sitting down so close to Ida
Scribbs
clearly bothered her.

“I think we deserve
an explanation,” Dennis piped up.

“Everything will be
explained,” I said calmly.  Dennis walked over to the fountain and sat
down next to his former boss, or is Ida his former
former
boss?  Either way it didn’t surprise me.  Emily came up to me and,
with her back to the others, whispered in my ear.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m ending this,” I
said softly.  Then I added “Please forgive me.”  She looked into my
eyes,
then
backed away.  Leon followed her, not
even looking in my direction.  Emily sat down on the other side of Carol,
who put a hand on her shoulder.  Leon veered off to the right and leaned
against the wall beside the doors to the Human Sciences room.  He stood
and stared at the dormant fountain, and it made me feel like garbage.

Dolores
Tilson
said nothing.  She sat next to Dennis, complete
with cracked glasses, looking thoroughly exhausted.  I wiggled a finger at
Myron who hustled to my side.  As I whispered in his ear, he flagged one
of his deputies to come near.  After we were finished, Myron stood next to
me, and the deputy headed for Arnold’s office.  The others watched him as
he disappeared inside it.  “Arnold Medley’s murder has been caught, ladies
and gentlemen,” I proclaimed.  “This terrible ordeal is about to end.”

“Yes, we all know
that,” Dolores said.  “We know all about Tommy Hall and Simon
Dunlowe
, but why are we here?”

“You’re all here
because Mr. Hunt doesn’t think either of the boys killed Mr. Medley.”  The
others looked at each other and then back at us.  “He thinks it was one of
you.”  Instantly the others jumped up from their seats and
protested.  This is
absurd,
this is ridiculous,
blah
blah
blah
.  I
elbowed Myron in the ribs and he nodded to the two deputies behind us, who
quickly rushed forward to quash the uprising.  “He thinks it was one of
you folks, and I think he’s right.”

“I knew it,” Ida
Scribbs
said.  “Fifteen minutes just isn’t enough when
you’re a walking fossil, is it?  So what’s the arrangement, the cop
figured it out and the sarcastic windbag here is going to solve this crime,
write the book and split the royalties with you?  Is that it,
Jumbo?”  Myron stepped forward slowly and overshadowed the scrawny old
crow.  She diverted her eyes, and didn’t say anything more.  Her
attempts to divert me didn’t work, though I wondered why she had so much
hostility towards me.  Perhaps she caught on as to how much I liked Arthur
that night at the party, just as I had seen how close Arthur was with
Carol.  Regardless, my train of thought on the subject was abruptly halted.

“I knew it!  I
knew it wasn’t the kid!” Carol shouted.  “Dennis has wanted that job
forever.  I knew you did it you rotten bastard!  Couldn’t even do it
to his face, fatso?  You had to hit him from behind like a
wuss
!”

“Oh, please!” 
Dennis retorted.  “You knew he was giving me that job and you couldn’t
take it, so you killed him before he got the chance to make it official! 
You jealous murdering bitch!”
  Emily stood up and
started shouting.

“Stop this, stop!
You just can’t-”

“Cram it,
Doc!”  Dolores blurted out, and that honestly surprised me.  “You fly
in here as nothing but a pee-on volunteer and take him. I’ve been with him for
seven years and you just waltz in, flash some leg, and start banging my boss
!
”

“Tone it down,
Dolores,” Leon said from the wall.  “Everyone tone it down.”

“So you killed him
because you weren’t getting any, huh sweetheart? 
How
pathetic!”
  Ida snapped at Dolores.  The arguing voices
eventually merged into steady, angry hum, the echoes of which were close to
deafening.  After the sounds separated again, I spoke calmly and slowly,
and I walked towards the group.

“There are enough
motives to go around, people.  Ms.
Scribbs
said
it best I think when she described the love triangle between you two and
Arnold.”  Emily and Carol looked at each other and then looked away. 
“Those situations are always hostile, and speaking of hostility, who knows what
Mr.
Trago
would do if his
precious promotion didn’t pan out.  And Ms.
Tilson
,
who seemed utterly
harmless
has proven the
contrary.  Jealousy is a powerful emotion, Dolores.  Who knows what
you might be capable of underneath that demure exterior?”

“Yet again, Mr.
Hunt,” Ida butted in.  “Why am I here?”  I looked over her head at
the deputy coming out of Arnold Medley’s office.  He walked towards us
carrying an object that, up until about an hour before, I had considered
irrelevant.  Myron reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of white
gloves.  I put them on, and took the object from the deputy.  I
nodded and he retreated behind me.  Holding the object, I looked at Ida
whose eyes were very wide.  She stood up slowly and started walked towards
me.  Myron raised a hand without saying a word, and she stopped, frozen to
the marble floor.

“You’re here Ms.
Scribbs
because you killed Arnold Medley.  And you
killed Arnold Medley because of this.  
Ladies and
gentlemen,
The End of Eden
.”
  I held up the hideous painting
for all to see, and Ida glared at it.  She took a step back, as if scared
by it.  She had every right to be.

“I did no such
thing.  I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I think you do,” I
said, handing the painting back to the deputy.  “At first, I agreed with
everything you said, right down to the fact that you didn’t have any reason to
kill Arnold.  Like you said, you run a successful museum and you’re
probably better off now than you were ten years ago, but that got me thinking
about something.  Arnold told me that they hired him, a museum department
head, over you, already a Curator at that time.  That seems odd now that I
think about it, turning down someone with more experience, so I pulled your
original application from the town’s public records.”  I pulled a wad of
rolled papers out of my back pocket.  I plucked one from the stack and
handed it to Myron.

“You withdrew your application?” 
He asked, reading the stamp across the sheet.

“That she did,” I
said with a smile.

“But
why?”

“Because she was
forced to, isn’t that right Ida?”  Ida said nothing, but backed up and sat
down on the fountain again. The others began to slowly shuffle away from her,
like she was carrying a contagious disease.  They migrated towards Myron
and me, leaving Ida alone on the cold fountain’s frame.

“Who forced
her? 
How?”
  Carol asked.

“Arnold, of course,”
I answered.  “To know how you would have had to look back almost a year
before Arnold was hired.”  I pulled out another sheet of paper, the copy
of the news article I had found at the library.  I held it up for the
others to see.

“Stolen art? 
So?”  Emily asked.

“According to this
article, almost eleven years ago, the Beaumont Museum of Art was ransacked and
several valuable pieces were either stolen or damaged.  One of the stolen
pieces was this,” I said, pointing to the painting.

“Arnold stole that
painting?”  Leon asked, shocked.

“Well, it makes more
sense than paying for the ugly thing,” Dolores muttered.

“No, no. 
Arnold didn’t steal the painting from the museum. He got it from the
thief.”  The group looked at me, dumbfounded.  “Ida
Scribbs
stole artwork from her own museum, and Arnold found
out.”

“How did he find
out?”  Emily asked.  I didn’t answer, but I turned and faced
Dennis.  He took a step away from
me,
ironically
bringing him closer to the woman he had every intention of abandoning a few
seconds ago.

“Ha,” Carol shouted,
pointing an accusing finger.  “You’re dead to rights now, fat man.  I
knew you had something to do with this.”

“So what happened,
Mr.
Trago
?” Myron asked.  “You get scared of the
old lady’s crime spree and bail out?”

“Hey!” Ida
screeched.

“Or maybe the plan
was for you to get another job at a new museum and steal some more art work?”

“No,” Dennis said
softly.  “It isn’t true.”

“So
how, then?”
  Myron
pressed.  “You got a job here and called your old boss to have a chat about
some missing exhibits and Medley heard you on the phone?  Is that
it?  Or maybe you told Arnold and you worked out a blackmail scheme
together to ring her dry?”

“It doesn’t matter
how it happened,” I interjected.  “The point is that at some point Arnold
found out about the robbery and blackmailed Ida.”

“That’s
ridiculous!  This is all ridiculous!”  Ida protested.

“Afraid not, ma’am,”
Myron said.  “On a hunch,” he said, turning and winking at me, “I
investigated Arnold’s bank statements a little more thoroughly.  Turns out
that what I thought was insurance or an inheritance from his dead wife was
actually blackmail money from you.  You’ve got withdrawals coming out of
your bank accounts that match deposits to Arnold’s account.”

“Not just deposits,”
I added, “nice deposits.”

“You’d think someone
who bragged so much about her Forensic Science Department would have been
better at fixing financial records,” Dolores commented.

“She isn’t good at
anything,” Dennis mumbled, and we all turned to him.  “She never was.”

“Shut up, Dennis!”

“Couldn’t run a
department, couldn’t run a museum,
couldn’t
run around
the block without screwing it up.  That’s why she stole the art, and
that’s why she left shortly after.  No one knew she was the one who stole
the exhibits, but it was more proof that she didn’t have what it took to run a
museum.”

“Dennis, shut up you
worthless piece of-”

“Let it go,
Ida.  It’s over.”

“Over?”
  She stood up again, her voice turning shriller
than ever.  “You all seem to be forgetting that we’re talking about a
murder
here, not a robbery!  You’ve got the murderers in jail, Sheriff. 
Those kids!  Why are you letting this farce
continue
?”

“What makes you
think one of them did it?”  I asked.

“The murder
weapon,
and the fingerprints.  That boy Simon’s fingerprints
were all over Arnold’s office, I heard you say
so on
the ride here!”  She screamed, pointing to Myron.  Beads of sweat
started to trickle down the side of her face.  “And that rhino statue…he
killed Arnold with that statue.”

“I’m afraid not,” I
said with immense glee.  “Simon didn’t kill anyone, nor did Tommy
Hall.  Simon’s prints are all over Arnold’s office because he used to work
here as a volunteer.”

“Oh my God, you’re
right!”  Leon shrieked.  “Remember, he wasn’t here long, and he had
to leave when his father made him go to work at the catering business.”