One Grave Too Many (10 page)

“Will you be using the lab for your forensic work?” Sylvia had come up behind Diane and was looking over her shoulder.

“No. This is a onetime thing.”

“Where was it found?”

“That’s a good question. It was given to the detective without provenience.”

“Is there anything you can tell from just that one piece?”

Diane briefly described what she knew about the bone as she examined its surface under the microscope.

Having missed the fish rib the first time stung, and she wasn’t going to miss anything else. But she found nothing on the weathered surface that hadn’t been evident with the hand lens. She tore off a piece of butcher paper from a roll hanging on the wall and gently shook and tapped the bone over it. A few flakes landed on the paper, along with a tiny brown oval that looked like a dark flake of popcorn shell. She put the paper on the microscope stage and examined the objects.

“What is it?” Sylvia leaned over Diane’s shoulder, looking at the microscope stage with interest.

“I’ll have to check with the entomologist, but I believe it’s a cap from a blowfly puparium. Its presence inside the bone cavity is as unusual as the fish rib. At this stage of development, the blowflies have moved away from the carrion and burrowed underground. Because this is a cap, we know that the adult blowfly did emerge.”

Diane looked at her watch. She had a board meeting in just a few minutes.

The faunal lab, like all the labs in the museum, had a specimen photography setup—a maneuverable camera stand with lighting that allowed the object to be photographed from different angles. Before proceeding with her analysis, she placed the bone on the camera stage and snapped pictures of it from several views.

She found another vial in the lab supply cabinet for the new material. After placing the new material in the vials and labeling them, she took the bone saw, put in a new blade and cut a sample of bone that was more than enough for her friend to test.

Sylvia Mercer looked on as Diane found a specimen bag and box to ship it in. “What kind of test are you going to do on it?”

“Stable isotope. It’ll be interesting to see if I can find any useful information.”

“It will. I’d think that modern diet wouldn’t lend itself to a test like that.”

Diane finished addressing the package and started for her office. “I’ve got to run. Andie has catalogs of office furniture, curtains and blinds and things. She’ll help you find whatever you need.”

In her office, she locked the vial in her filing cabinet and was putting stamps on the package when she heard Andie go into her office. Diane retrieved the budget figures and the fax information and opened the door between their offices. “I know you just came back from some errands, but I really need you to overnight this package for me.”

Andie stood with her keys still in her hand. “Sure. I’ll do it now.”

“Thanks.” Diane looked at her watch again. It was almost time for the meeting. She wondered if Donald had gone up to the conference room yet.

With file folders in hand, Diane locked her door and walked around the corner to Donald’s office. When knocking brought no response, she turned the knob. It was locked. Few people in the museum had master keys, but she was one of them. She opened his office and walked in, closing the door behind her.

To Diane, Donald’s office did not reflect his personality. His thinking, as well as his work, often seemed disorganized to her ordered sensibilities. But his office was something else, better organized than hers. It didn’t seem like him at all. Framed
National Geographic
covers decorated his walls, along with shadow boxes displaying rocks and minerals. A faux zebra-skin rug covered the area in front of his desk. Animals carved from a variety of exotic woods stood between books on his shelves. She would never have thought that Donald had decorated it, had she not seen him carefully measure and hang the pictures and place the books and carvings on the shelves.

She remembered when he had come to her with the catalog showing the desk he wanted—one of the few times his interaction with her was cordial. The polished dark walnut desk with the black ebony inlaid top was one of the most expensive pieces of office furniture they were ordering. The choice defied his characteristic argument for thrift. He had wanted that desk, and she’d agreed to purchase it partly because she hoped it would help their future interactions.

Diane wasn’t sure what she was looking for in his office. Some evidence she could confront him with. She didn’t approach his desk or his walnut filing cabinet. She didn’t intend to rifle though his things. Pangs of guilt gnawed at her for venturing without permission this far into his office.

Nothing stood out to point to his guilt. Maybe it wasn’t him. Then who? Not Andie. It could have been Andie, though. Maybe she simply did not remember ordering the duplicate exhibits. No, that was absurd.

Diane assumed that someone ordered the items to make her life difficult. Perhaps she was just paranoid. That thought made her feel better. It would be easier to deal with her own paranoia than with some secret mischief-maker in the museum. Feeling ashamed for her trespass, she turned and put her hand on the doorknob. As she started to turn it, a stack of magazines caught her eye.

On top of the stack was an issue of
U.S. News and World Report
. The cover photograph was of a mass burial. She picked up the magazine and thumbed through the pages. They opened automatically, as if the magazine had been laid open at that point, to an article about a mass burial site she had excavated in Bosnia. There were no pictures of her, nor was she mentioned in the article, but it was her site. She picked up the other magazines and flipped through them—
Newsweek, Time
, more
U.S. News and World Report
s—all had articles about places she’d been.

Only one photograph actually showed her, but she was unrecognizable with the bill of her cap pulled down over her eyes. She and the team always kept a low profile. They avoided mentioning their names for journalists, hid their faces when photographs were taken. No team members went out of their way to make themselves a target. But there were plenty of pictures of open burials in the process of being excavated—skeletonized bodies piled on one another. It made her stomach turn.

So Donald had been reading about her. He knew the places she’d been with her team. How much else did he know? The articles talked about the mass graves, the politics of the region, the United States’ and world response to atrocities, but never any personal details about the field crew. Never anything that the forensics team chose to keep private.

Who knew about the last year in Puerto Barquis? Only the people she’d worked with. Only members of World Accord International. Quite a few people, but all were good at being circumspect. She hadn’t confided in anyone here. Did someone know? Did someone know what “In the Hall of the Mountain King” meant to her? It wasn’t exactly a secret, but to find out, you had to know one of her team—know them well enough for them to trust you.

She returned the magazines to the shelf and looked back over the room, her cheeks burning with anger. She’d a mind to search it, go through his desk drawers, his filing cabinet. But she didn’t. This job was her return to a civilization where tyrants are kept in check. She wasn’t going to become one after she’d spent the past ten years working to bring them to justice.

She shouldn’t have come into his office. First, the mistake she’d made with the bone, and now this. She was getting sloppy. If she couldn’t do a good job for Frank, she shouldn’t have said she would look at the bone. If she couldn’t control her employees without invading their privacy, then she didn’t need to be museum director. She left Donald’s office and locked the door behind her, got on the elevator and rode to the second floor.

As Diane walked down the hallway to the large conference room, she heard murmurs of restless conversation. Turning the corner, she saw the board members standing in the hallway. Half were looking very unhappy. Donald was deep in conversation with Madge Stewart. He looked up when Diane approached, then down at his watch.

“It’s locked,” said Madge, tapping her foot, her springy gray hair bouncing with each tap. Madge had missed the contributors’ party because she had marked it wrong on her calendar, and she blamed Diane. It appeared to Diane that Madge often blamed whomever was available for everything that the vagaries of life made her do.

“I have other meetings. If I ran my restaurants like . . .” Craig Amberson was fidgeting with his briefcase. Laura had told Diane he was quitting smoking. He had actually asked the doctor if he could wear two nicotine patches in the beginning.

Kenneth Meyers was working on his Palm Pilot. “Get yourself one of these,” he told Craig. “You can work anywhere.”

Diane looked at her watch. Three minutes late. “I’m sorry. I had some unexpected business to attend to.”

Even Harvey Phelps appeared curt. “Where’s Andie? Doesn’t she have a key?”

“Laura went to look for her, just before you got here, Harvey,” said Mark Grayson, looking at his watch. “Look, Diane, if this is the way you intend to run things . . .”

Laura rounded the corner. “Couldn’t find Andie or Diane. . . . Oh, there you are.”

“Andie’s running some errands,” said Diane. “I have three minutes after eleven. Why is everyone so impatient?”

“Because we’ve been waiting for more than twenty minutes,” said Mark.

“Donald reminded us last night that the meeting was rescheduled for 10:45,” said Laura.

Diane had the key in her hand, ready to unlock the door. She spun around and faced Donald. “Why did you do that?”

He took a small step back. “You said to change the meeting to fifteen minutes earlier.”

“No, I did not.”

“I have your E-mail.”

“I didn’t send it. This is going to stop.” She thrust the key in the lock. Before she turned it, the door opened, almost knocking her backward.

Diane and every one of the museum board members took a step backward at the startling sight of a disheveled, droopy-eyed Signy Grayson stumbling into the hallway and almost to the floor, if Diane hadn’t held on to her arm. The heavy aroma of metabolized alcohol and perfume wafted over the small crowd.

“I must have fallen asleep. It’s, uh, been a long day.” She looked at them in confusion.

No one said anything for several beats, shifting their gazes from Signy to Mark, who stood strangely silent and surprised. Diane broke the silence. “Are you all right? Were you here all night?”

“Signy?” Mark found his voice and pushed his way to the door and took her by the arm. “Sweetheart, are you ill?”

“Just feeling a little tired. What does she mean ‘all night’?” Signy put her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes.

“Because it’s Wednesday,” said Diane. “The party was last night.”

A look of alarm crossed Signy’s face. “Oh, no.”

“It must be the cold medicine,” Mark muttered to the silent crowd around them. “We won’t be long here, and I’ll take you home. We can pick up your car later.”

“Would you like to go to the first-aid station and lie down?” asked Diane.

“No . . . I’m fine, really.”

Diane spotted the head conservator walking in their direction. She nabbed him as he came past, heading toward the elevators. “Korey, will you escort Mrs. Grayson to the staff lounge?”

“Sure thing, Dr. Fallon. I have the proposal for the conservation workshops.” He waved the folder he was carrying. “I’ll give it to Andie.”

“Good. I’m anxious to see it.”

“Come with me, Mrs. Grayson. I was just heading in that direction.”

There were some quiet whispers among the board members who stood watching Signy, in her red sparkling dress, walk down the hallway with the much taller Korey, dressed in his khaki dockers and yellow museum tee shirt, his long dreadlocks falling past his shoulders. As the two of them turned the corner to the elevators, Diane heard Korey say: “Lovely dress, Mrs. Grayson.”

Diane wondered why it wasn’t Mark who was escorting his wife—and how he didn’t know she hadn’t come home last evening. Laura must have wondered the same thing. She lifted her brows at Diane, who knew what she must be thinking: Mark was up to his same old tricks as when he was married to her.

Signy must have slept on the leather couch at the end of the room. It stood against the wall with two companion stuffed leather chairs arranged in a conversation group. A small glass-and-wood coffee table held an overturned wineglass. It was a comfortable sofa. Signy should have gotten a good night’s sleep on it.

They filed around the long mahogany table with Diane at the head. She stared down the length of it as the board members found their seats. Mark Grayson sat to her immediate right. His eyes darted from his watch to the door. As they waited, several board members took quick glances in his direction. They were probably wondering the same thing she was—how come he didn’t know his wife hadn’t come home last night?

Mark shifted uncomfortably in his chair again as Craig Amberson sat down to Diane’s left. She knew that Mark had made the most headway with Craig in his quest to sell the museum and property. They could have been taking up battle positions, surrounding the enemy, the way they seized possession of the chairs and drew them up to the table.

Diane tossed down her papers and glanced at each member of the board. She had decided against bringing up the duplicate orders until she had a chance to question the staff.

The conference room door opened and Gordon Atwell rushed into the room. “Sorry to be late, folks. I didn’t get the message about the changed meeting time until a short while ago.” He took a seat at the table.

“You’re denying you sent the E-mail?” Craig Amberson asked Diane.

“Craig, I didn’t send the E-mail.”