Browne said nothing about the mummy in his statement which played on the ten o’clock news. No one, except Celeste Ames, had said one word about the gauze draped over Geary’s body being connected to the missing mummy, and yet somehow that detail which the police withheld was in the morning papers. And the story was also front page because there hadn’t been a celebrity outrage or bizarre serial killing in almost two weeks. A murder and a stolen mummy was just the thing to wake the paparazzi up from their hibernation.
She had to admit that Boris Karloff had made an attractive mummy. In fact, he looked way better than the one that was missing. Somehow the press had gotten their hands on one of the brochures which had a picture of the display. It was only one quarter of the size of Karloff’s picture though since it was much less exciting.
Juliet began to read, feeling outrage building with every sentence.
The press blithely accepted the insane premise that somehow a three-thousand-year-old dead thing had animated itself—without so much as a blink at the impossibility or even the illogic. They then further hypothesized that the mummy had somehow unwrapped himself—though how it managed with its arms and legs bound tightly together and the linen bandages hardened by resin into something which would require tin snips or a saw to remove, Juliet couldn’t even begin to fathom—and then it had for some unknown reason stalked and killed Geary in the bathroom, wrapped him in its cast-off bandages, staggered down the stairs to the basement, and then let itself out into the parking lot and disappeared into the night. All without being seen by any human or detected by any of the security cameras, which it was apparently aware of though they hadn’t actually had anything like it when the mummy was alive a thousand years ago.
It was fortunate that no vehicles were missing from the parking lot or they would probably claim that the mummy had also hot-wired a car.
Would the mummy strike again? Was anyone safe from the curse? Enquiring minds wanted to know.
“You are sneering, Bella. Have some coffee. You’ll feel more able to cope.”
Juliet shook her head. Terrifying amounts of coffee flooded through Esteban’s digestive tract every day without the slightest symptoms. Juliet, who preferred tea, had drawn the line at a third cup so she didn’t end up with heart palpitations. The museum was upsetting enough without added stimulants.
“Idiots. They can’t believe the stuff they print.” Juliet handed Esteban the paper. It was pointless to brood about things one couldn’t control and she understood why, since it had leaked, the police weren’t trying to contradict the stupid story, but she found the very suggestion of supernatural agency to be more annoying than a mosquito bite.
Esteban was frowning and taking his own advice about coffee.
“I wonder who has the big mouth. It could be Celeste.” It was Juliet’s experience that many artists were desperate for attention, and those trying their hardest to be eclectic or avant-garde were the ones where the seeds of self-doubt were thickly sown and deeply rooted in the psyche. Though they might pretend to be indifferent to criticism or disregard of those too short-sighted to see their brilliance, most truly did crave the adulation, or at least the attention, of the mainstream media. Celeste was known in her particular niche, but could she be striving for greater fame?
Of course, everyone had heard her suggestion. Maybe Meyers was the one who was looking for a boost in his ratings. Or it might be Delores looking to scare up some free publicity.
“This is unfortunate. It will become a media circus. Are they all as bad?” Esteban asked, a frown marring his brow as he realized that there simply wasn’t enough coffee to fix this.
“Just about. Detective Browne is probably giving birth to kittens as we speak.”
“Let me see the others.”
Juliet and Esteban read all the local papers over breakfast and discussed the case when they were done. They had chosen to drive into town and eat at one of the chain places rather than risk the hotel diner again. None of the other patrons, who were mainly tourists with small children, were paying any attention to them, so they could speak freely as long as they kept their voices low.
Reading through a half dozen of the local rags there could be no doubt about what the tabloids thought had happened, but the police weren’t weapons grade idiots and weren’t going to be wasting time pursuing any nonsense about the walking dead turning into a supernatural killer. They were looking at the living, seeing who had financial motives for killing as well as any personal ones. Who had a stake in the museum’s success or failure, or a bad weekend in Vegas, or a catastrophe on Wall Street that might be solved with a quick sale of a mummy?
The trouble was that mummies were a specialized market. And the dead—at least the non-famous ones—just didn’t sell for that much. Cleopatra’s corpse might save a financial empire, but an unnamed businessman or minor clerk wouldn’t make for much of a bailout.
And anyway, what if this killing didn’t have anything to do with robbery or the killer wanting a mummy? What if this was all just a diversion? Did she need to point this out to Detective Browne? Probably not. He wasn’t stupid.
Still, taking a mummy had been a lot of work for a minor distraction that wouldn’t actually deflect a police investigation, though it might slow it if it brought out the crazies and they flooded the tip line with their nonsense. And where was the thing now? One couldn’t just carry it into a hotel or an apartment or even a house—unless there was a garage? The dehydrated corpse was on the smallish size and missing its internal organs, but it wasn’t weightless and wouldn’t fit easily in the trunk of a car.
So a van? Probably one of the museum’s since it could carry some weird things without drawing too many questions. Assuming one wanted to keep the mummy intact. That was more likely than a truck with an open bed. One could throw a tarp over the body, but it would still look like a corpse and might raise questions if one got pulled over.
Juliet snorted and shook her head. It didn’t matter, she said firmly. She was going to leave this alone. This wasn’t her fight, not her neighborhood that was threatened. It was police business—and she hadn’t even liked the man who was killed. She was not getting involved this time.
Esteban agreed when she said this out loud, but they were both whistling in the dark and knew it. Artists had temporal responsibilities. Esteban knew this better than most. Life did not always allow creative people to exist solely in the sublime fires of creation. Opportunities for advancement had to be pursued with a will and everyday adversities overcome.
“I tell you what, Bella. Whoever did this had some massive cojones.”
“They were either very angry, or very crazy to take that kind of risk,” she agreed. The killer, having parted from societal morals, went out and gorged on a kill. Was it now sated? Had it meted out enough punishment and suffering to satisfy whatever had driven it to murder?
Or was the murderer waiting to kill again?
Celeste, Jorge, Delores, Bowman, Meyers, and Bill-something. They had all been there that afternoon. And Vickie and Herrick could have been in the building, though it was a long shot that it could be the museum director according to Browne.
None of them seemed like a crazed killer. But one of them probably was.
Excepting perhaps the insane, murder was the ultimate violence that one human could commit on another. It was the place where one went when all other options for retribution had been exhausted—when blood would finally have blood.
Celeste, Jorge, Delores, Bowman, Meyers, and Bill-something, Vickie or Herrick. Who was angry enough to kill? Or who was that insane?
“Did you get any message saying we shouldn’t come in today?” Juliet asked, half-hoping she would get a reprieve though she knew Esteban needed every minute they had to get prepared for the show.
“No, so we will go and hope for the best. My display is on another floor so perhaps we will be able to work.”
“Okay.”
Juliet was still sorting variables when
they pulled into the museum’s lot and parked on the west side where there was some shade and relief from the wind. It wasn’t bad that morning but it would get worse as the heat began to create thermals and an easterly current.
Juliet got out of the car and stared up at the castle. It was square and hard and unfriendly.
Leaving aside the mummy, there was another aspect of the case that needed consideration. Most people don’t kill. There were exceptions, professional ranchers and butchers, hunters, people in law enforcement and the military. But none of these professions would teach someone to kill with a garrote—unless they had taken very specialized training. A garrote is a very personal weapon, much like a knife. You had to get close enough to touch the person you planned to kill, to smell them, close enough to feel the very moment that they died. It took a lot more nerve to use something like that than it did a gun or poison. It took cojones, as Esteban put it.
Juliet knew of at least one professional assassin in the NSA database whose preferred weapon was the garrote, but in her experience it was favored mostly by psychopaths who had acquired a taste for the close-up and personal death.
None of the people at the museum had struck her as sociopathic. Neurotic and narcissistic, yes, but not clinically psychopathic.
So, had the garrote been a weapon of opportunity and not of choice? Was that possible, given the costume and the spray paint and other evidence of advanced planning?
Or did that method of killing carry a message to the victim that the killer wanted delivered personally? The question made her shiver but she didn’t back away from it. That could be an important clue.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask Esteban to delve into Geary’s background when there was still so much to do on the display. The sound and light system was working but wouldn’t synchronize with the motor that controlled the puppets’ movement as they glided along the track behind the valance. The whole operation was controlled by Esteban’s laptop.
The police would be looking into the dead guard’s background anyway, since they knew as well as Juliet that Geary hadn’t walked in on a burglar, but was in fact the target of a planned murder. The motivation for the killing had to be somewhere in his past. She just wished that she knew what it was because it was difficult to construct a theory on a foundation of ignorance.
“Bella?”
“Coming.”
The whiff of rot inside the museum reminded her of the murder and that she was once again riding a tide not of her choosing.
Naturally, the mood among the staff and artists was subdued, but at least the opening was going on as planned. Black and Browne had collected their evidence and, under pressure from the higher-ups, they had given permission for the show to go on as scheduled and for the artists to be allowed to work on their displays. That meant shoulders to the wheel and noses to the grindstone for those who hadn’t finished their exhibits before the killing. It was good that the museum staff were getting over their unseasonal flu and returning to work. Many hands made for light work and there was also safety in numbers. Not surprisingly, people returning to work were tending to huddle and eye everyone else nervously.
Juliet looked around at the exhibits and wondered which of the gods they should pray to for safe deliverance. Because the matter wasn’t over, not while there was still a mummy missing and a killer was wandering among them.
Juliet watched her coworkers as much as possible, but to no avail. It was annoying, and quite strange that the renowned pattern-seeker wasn’t finding anything useful in the suspect’s behavior. No one she talked to seem to carry a single trace of sorrow, guilt, remorse, or regret. It was as if no one had committed the crime or even remembered that it had happened. There was no talk of funerals, or the police interviews, or the stories in the paper. Those who had seen the body and were suspects in the killing were acting like nothing had happened. It was as though they had agreed to take a practical view of the attendant risk and made the judgment that the killing had nothing to do with them or their art and they opted to keep focused on their work.
Could artists and the people at the museum be so obsessive that they had truly forgotten that there was a killer in the building and that they didn’t really know why the murder had happened? Was it possible to be so focused on the opening that Geary’s death and an undiscovered killer were just unimportant background noise? Though the returning staff were cautious, no one who had been there the afternoon of the killing seemed to have altered behavior much. Perhaps they made sure to leave before dark, and maybe there was more taking of breaks at times when the catering or janitorial staff went to use the bathroom or go down to the basement for supplies, but that was it.
Certainly Celeste had an obsessive’s lack of compassion. And she had a face that was free from grief and suffering. Except Juliet didn’t think this meant anything. This was Los Angeles. Everyone used Botox—certainly Delores did—and no one else was teary-eyed with grief over the death of the unpleasant man they barely knew. Vickie and Herrick had features that easily folded themselves into lines of worry, but worry was a long way from homicidal rage.
And could she really suspect Meyers and his assistant? They had only arrived a few hours before the killing. Surely Geary couldn’t have angered them to the point of murder in that short period of time.
Unless they had known him before. That was always possible. And Geary had probably been expecting trouble or why the elephant gun in his desk?
There was also a very long shot idea that she had to consider. Artists striving for the upper echelons had trouble holding on to their souls. There were so many people who wanted a piece of their God-given talent and who were ready to pay for what they wanted. What if someone had offered Celeste or Vickie or Meyers a place in the show if they agreed to do a killing? Or maybe Jorge or Delores had a lot of secret debts and were willing to go to extremes to settle them. It seemed highly unlikely but it couldn’t be ruled out.
Juliet sighed. Even she, who usually felt some form of no man is an island kind of regret when someone died, couldn’t work up any kind of sorrow at Geary’s death. And, truth to be told, having Esteban’s display working was feeling more important than trying to track down the killer, though it was always at the back of her mind. A part of her was also calculating. If you summed up all the misery that Geary had likely caused in his foreshortened life, did it cause the scale of justice to finally weigh down in favor of the killer opting for a permanent solution? A part of her thought that maybe it was fair that karma paid him back. Did that make her a bad person? Or one who was growing calloused and narcissistic? Could she blame this on the damned Santa Ana winds?
She would have to discuss this phenomenon with Raphael. He was also a student of human nature and knew the artistic mind better than she did.
“Bella, have you seen the drill?”
“It’s in the charger. I’ll get it.”
“What would you like for dinner?” Esteban asked, trying to ease the tension.
“An end to the winds, for every reporter in California to lose their Internet connections. A cure for cancer. And world peace,” she added.
“How about tamales?”
“Tamales would be good too.”
That night when she called Raphael with her theory of obsession he had news that distracted her.
“You and Esteban and the cursed museum made the local news.”
“TV or paper?” Juliet asked.
“Both. It was handled very tastefully. You and Esteban were mentioned only once by name and I don’t think they brought up the killer mummy motive more than three of four times.”
Juliet groaned.
“You know this is going in my file at the NSA.”
“Yes. But on the bright side—”
“There is a bright side?” she asked.
“If you sound like a whack-nut they might not want you back.”
“And here I was thinking that this situation had no silver lining.”
Raphae
l chuckled.
“Shall I tell my Bavarian millionaire he’ll have to wait for his triptych and fly to Los Angeles tomorrow?”
“I would love it, but absolutely not. This is hell on earth and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Why even the hotel is gruesome. I’ve probably caught cooties off the sheets.”
“Charming. But the offer stands if you or Esteban feel the need of moral support.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “But it isn’t moral support that is needed so much as common sense—and I doubt that there is anything that even you can do about that when the greater part of southern California has lost its collective mind and has started blaming mummies for a murder. Even when they know it isn’t true.”
She was on edge. She hadn’t painted in days and that left her feeling out of control. When she painted, she was in charge, the master of her universe where everything was beautiful or at least comfortable. The last week had been an endless series of events designed to make her feel like Fate’s bitch.
Juliet had resisted the temptation to do a little digging because she wasn’t a trained police investigator. She tracked falsehoods, not murderers. Also, she was certain that somehow the NSA was able to follow her Internet searches and she didn’t like them sticking their nose in her business.
The local grapevine usually had good roots in the community, but it wasn’t able to easily pick up and move its intelligence apparatus to new locations, and anyway, the museum wasn’t local to any branch of law enforcement situated in no man’s land. So that night she opened her laptop and did some looking around.
She found out some interesting things. Herrick had served in the Gulf War and was a decorated veteran. Meyers had not graduated from high school and had learned his woodcraft in his father’s boatyard in Louisiana. Celeste Ames had studied in Switzerland in her freshman year of college and later apprenticed herself to a German clockmaker. And Victoria Bremen had received a volunteer of the year award for her work at a battered women’s shelter in Florida.
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