Date with a Sheesha (8 page)

Behind me I could hear the clattering footfalls of at least two, maybe three, pursuers. I was coming up to a set of stairs and screeched to a halt, like Scooby-Doo.

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Up or down?

Another decision.

No time.

Footsteps getting closer.

I kept running. I turned down hallway after hallway and into narrow passageways that could have been leading me to a campus library or straight to the centre of hell for all I knew. I had no idea and at that point, I didn’t much care. Somehow, the unknown in front of me seemed much preferable to the unknown behind me.

After several minutes of this, I had to stop. I needed to catch my breath. Running around this crazy maze while still cocooned in my heavy winter coat and scarf was causing me to sweat pro-fusely. I fell against a wall and desperately tried to regulate my breathing and internal thermostat. Only then did I realize something had changed.

I could no longer hear the footsteps I’d been fleeing.

Had I lost them?

I forced myself to hold my breath and focus my ears on the sounds around me. Nothing. Only the low buzzing and humming of a building at rest.

Slowly, and with relief, I sunk to the floor. My jangling nerves and pumping leg muscles began to relax. Now I could allow my brain the time to focus on something other than escape. Jeez Louise, what had just happened to me?

The thing that had caught me by surprise in the museum was an overhead projector. Now I know most people consider overhead projectors to be ancient technology, replaced by PowerPoint and the like, but to have one in a museum for antiquities? Seemed a bit desperate to me. They had to really be hurting for display items. Or maybe their acquisitions budget for the year had been particularly pitiful.

Then I’d taken a closer look. The projector wasn’t a display item at all. It had been in use. Quite recently. Right there in the museum. The machine’s
Wall•E
-type head was pointed at a wall.

Hanging on the wall was a large fresco, about three metres wide and two metres high, painted a vivid red. But unlike every other 53

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piece in the museum, this one was incomplete. A work in progress. A replica. A—dare I say it—fake.

On a table next to the projector was a book, about the size of one you’d expect to see on a coffee table. It was opened to a page displaying a glossy picture of a frieze. And guess what? It was about three metres wide and two metres high, painted a vivid red.

The book’s frieze, however, was covered with symbols and designs carved into the surface. The one on the wall was still blank except for its red background. Apparently the forger had yet to complete the imposter fresco with the aid of the projector.

What was going on? What had I stumbled into? My mind ran the gamut of possibilities. Was the Museum of Antiquities pulling a fast one on the public, pretending to house great works of art but actually putting up cheap replicas created under the cover of night? Or worse, was someone in the museum’s employ, perhaps the curator, replicating its collection, and then selling off the originals for personal profit? If so, what would they do now that I’d seen the proof?

Chase you down a dark series of hallways to start with, Quant, that’s what.

But then what?

I heard a noise.

My head jerked up.

A young woman in tight jeans and a sweater had come to an abrupt halt in front of me. She was holding a stack of books against her chest.

“Oh, good,” I said, pulling myself up off the floor. “I need your he—”

“He’s over here!” she screamed. “He’s over here!”

I stuck out my tongue at the traitor—a move I’m not proud of—and took off for…well, somewhere other than there.

I knew I had to get out of the building. Whoever was after me likely knew the place better than I did. Once outside, I hoped, I could make it to the Babamobile and skedaddle.

After a minute I found an elevator. Renewed sounds of scurrying footsteps behind me told me I didn’t have enough time to wait for it. But wherever there’s an elevator, there’s gotta be a set 54

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of stairs close by. I twisted my head, and voila, there it was, only a few metres away. I descended two steps at a time, once almost losing my footing, saving myself only by hanging onto the railing.

Before long I was back on the ground floor where I’d first entered the building. I looked around for a familiar landmark, but found none.

“Downstairs!” I heard a voice echo down the stairwell.

Oh shit.

Zoom, zoom. I ran.

Exit? Exit! Where’s a damn exit?

I raced by a series of doors and considered trying one. Maybe I could hide in a closet or under a desk until morning. But no. It was only mid evening. The thugs behind me had all night long to search every room before students and other university types started flooding the hallways for another day of higher learning.

I had to get out. Out! I wanted out!

I heard new voices. Not gangster, I-wanna-kill-Russell-Quant voices. These were the lyrical tones of young students goofing off.

I headed straight for them. Two hallways later I found them. A guy and two girls having an innocent laugh. Didn’t they know there was a
Bourne-Identity
-quality chase going on here?

“Outside?” I breathlessly yelled the question at them as I skid-ded past their wide-eyed faces.

One of the girls pointed—while the other two continued to stare—and I decided to trust her and followed the finger.

And there it was. Bright red exit sign! Hallelujah!

I burst through the door as if I’d been caught in a locked freez-er all night. But in reverse. The temperature outside must have plummeted several degrees since I’d arrived on campus.

I looked around. Now where the hell was I? There were hillocks and trees and a sidewalk winding through them. I followed the Yellow Brick Road, or in this case, the White Snowy Pathway. Although I was already winded, I continued to keep a jogging pace. After a minute or so, I was beginning to recognize a bush or two. Could the parking lot be near by? I never thought I’d be happy to see my big-ass van, but right about then, I could think of no more beautiful sight.

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What I got instead was something not so pretty at all.

Rounding a snow-topped bush, I ran face first into an expansive belly.

I felt a viselike claw tighten on my jacket collar. A voice said,

“That’s as far as you go, Mister.”

Well, at least he called me mister. That was polite. Right?

I was unceremoniously dragged back into the building from which I had just escaped. Or so I’d thought. I debated yelling for help. Sounded like a good idea.

“Help!” I screeched.

That got me a fleshy mitt clamped over my face for the remainder of the trip back into Hades.

I must have been running in circles, for although it seemed to take me eons to find the door to outside, it took me and my escort only a few minutes and one eon-length elevator ride to get back to the museum.

When we arrived, Mr. Hamhock with the generous tummy tossed me into the room like a sack of detective. I barely stopped my stumbling, tumbling momentum in time to avoid toppling into a bust perched atop a Grecian-style column.

“Watch it, you idiot!” screeched a woman’s voice. “Do you know how much Constantine cost?”

Unfair question. I had an advantage. I was betting the cost was a lot less than one might think. Given that it was probably a fake. Just like the in-progress frieze I’d spied earlier.

“Who are you?” the woman demanded, her head shaking with outrage, but her pixie cut (think Halle Berry in that James Bond flick) black hair not moving an inch.

“I’m Russell Quant. Who are you?”

“What were you trying to steal? Was it the coins? What made you think you could get away with this, anyway? The door was unlocked. You must have known someone was in here.”

Steal? “I wasn’t trying to steal anything.”

She rolled her eyes, then turned away from me toward Mr.

Potato Head behind me. He’d now been joined by his cousin, Mr.

Pimply Face.

“Call the cops. And get him out of my museum,” she ordered, 56

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disgusted.

Cops? Uh, wait a sec. Wasn’t I the one who should be calling the cops? Shouldn’t she be worried I’d reveal her forgery scam to the world?

“Lucy, no.” Another man entered the room.

“Colin, this man just tried to rip off the museum.”

Colin. The new guy had to be Colin Cardinale. My date for the evening, and, I hoped, my knight in shining armour come to rescue me.

He was an impressive man. Six foot three, with dark features that could best be described as devilishly handsome. Dark eyes sparkled under heavy, arched eyebrows. His nose and chin and cheeks rivalled those of the statues of Greek gods he stood next to.

And he smelled really good too.

The man smiled a master-of-all-things-evil smile at my captor, showing off a wide expanse of white Chiclets teeth and a dimple in the hollow of each cheek. All that was missing were nubs of horns, which might have been covered by his generous crop of glowing, charcoal hair. I know this sounds fiendish, but in a good way. Studying him, I realized he looked a bit like a male version of my friend, Mary Quail. I wondered if he too had some Cree blood in him.

“No, Lucy, he didn’t. This is Russell Quant…” he looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. He continued. “He came here to meet me.”

She gave me a suspicious look through narrowed eyes. I couldn’t blame her. Even so, I gave her one right back.

“I’m sorry about this, Mr. Quant,” Cardinale said, approaching me with a big hand held out in greeting.

I shook the hand, but remained mum. No apologies accepted yet.

“I asked you to meet me here because the route to the gallery is not clearly marked yet, and not easy to find on your own. And I knew Lucy would be working late as usual.”

The woman and I exchanged further mistrustful glares.

“This is Lucy Wu,” he said, “the curator here at the Museum of Antiquities.”

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“Oh,” I said to Cardinale, “I thought you were the curator.”

“No, that’s incorrect,” Lucy quickly informed all present.

“Colin is the executive director of WACS. He’ll be the curator of the university’s soon-to-be revealed collection of antique carpets.

But that collection will be housed in the Department of Antiquities.”

“Uh, isn’t that right here?”

“This is the Museum of Antiquities.”

Okay, well that was clear.

“Lucy, can we send Stu and Jack back to their regular duties now?” Cardinale asked, throwing the security guards a contented cat smile.

But she wasn’t ready to let go of her muscle—such as it was—

just yet. “Why did you run?” she demanded. “If you didn’t mean to steal anything, why did you run?”

Good point. I was guessing that the answer “If I’m being chased, I run;” wasn’t going to suffice.

I threw a pointed look at the overhead projector, and the fake frieze on the wall in front of it.

Lucy’s and Cardinale’s eyes moved to the suspicious set-up.

Then, in the instant before coming back to me, I caught them sharing an ever-so-quick smile. Lucy gave the guards a dismissive wave. As the two men left without so much as a “toodles,” I fought the temptation to call them back. Even though I’d been running away from them only minutes ago, I was beginning to wonder if I would be better off with the goons present. As witnesses against these two curator types.

I assessed my potential foes. Even though Cardinale was big, and I was guessing Lucy Wu could hold her own in a fight, I was pretty certain I could take them down. Unless they had hidden weapons somewhere nearby.

After the boys left, Lucy stepped closer to the forged fresco.

“It’s going to be lovely, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice growing gentler.

I eyed the woman closely. Was she the scariest of all criminals?

The kind so confident in the success of their scheme, they gaze upon flies in their ointment (i.e. me) with apparent calm polite-58

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ness, a disguise for sneering contempt.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “I suppose it will be. But a replica is never as lovely as what it pretends to be, is it?” I could do contemptu-ous too.

She gave me a strange look. “I disagree with you, Mr. Quant.

Quite vehemently, in fact.”

I shrugged. I looked at Cardinale, then back at Lucy. Okay, kids, show me what ya got. I’m ready for it. Is it guns? A knife? Or did they have their own band of thieving merry men ready to come out of the shadows and attack me?

Instead, Lucy kept talking. “If it wasn’t for the pursuits of this museum, Mr. Quant, most of our students would never have had the opportunity to appreciate and study the artistic accomplishments of the world’s major civilizations. You must know that examples of classical art are, quite simply, unavailable to us at the U of S, either because of their price or because they are priceless.

This museum of replicas allows us visual encounters with ancient art that would otherwise be impossible without spending the vast sums of money and time that would be necessary to visit the originals in distant countries. If the originals even exist any longer.”