mementoMori_-_Nook

by Preferred Customer

  The crowd inside was ethnically mixed but felt strangely homogenous anyway. Many of the guests had been cut on by plastic surgeons. About half the jobs were subtle. The rest were obvious, like wearing designer clothes to call attention to the fact the owner could afford the best and that others should be impressed with their purchases. Lots of pale linen and silk, heavy perfume, white wine and single-malt scotch, all scored by a world-weary jazz quartet. Days were about commutes and computers and business worries, but a Saturday night was for things less earnest. It was for booze, silk stockings, and shrunken heads. This wasn’t about networking or consciousness raising or trying to save the planet. They could do that on Sunday after the hangover wore off. This was about trying something new, something in fashion, something more exciting than the Valentine’s Day drag ball, the tequila tasting and bullfight for Cinco de Mayo, or the escargot picking and eating on Bastille Day.

  It was chic and maybe a little dangerous with the killer still at large, a way of whittling away the darkness with the adult version of the scary campfire story.

  Juliet had donned her social armor, a cocktail dress in slate gray leftover from her days in Washington which made her look elegant if a bit out of place among all the tans and creams, but that was far better than turning up dressed like a hooker at the church social. She hated stockings, especially the Cuban kind with back seams, but she wasn’t dressing for herself. She was there to honor an event that meant a great deal to a friend. And to find a missing mummy.

  But even bolstered with clothes and makeup and an energy bar, she wondered if she had the stamina for another tedious party with self-important people making a lot of self-important noise to help maintain their inflated egos with lots of hot air. She supposed the din had to be endured though, because these were the people that made the art world go round and she wouldn’t abandon Esteban. She would have to make an effort not to behave like a hedgehog. No one was going to ask her opinion about anything. She was just more of the background noise, another receptacle for white wine and lox.

  Sighing, she joined the stream of perfumed bodies and returned indoors.

  Not everyone was as reluctant a guest as Juliet. Delores was everywhere, looking very much like an upscale store mannequin. It was partly her clothing, but mostly her makeup that might have been sprayed on at the body shop. By itself, it rid her face of all expression, but with her hair pulled back tightly enough to lift her eyebrows she appeared a bit like a screaming skull. She was doing what she could to direct people to the gift shop, which was rather nice since the artists received a portion of the sales. Juliet had already bought postcards of Esteban’s puppets and mailed them to her neighbors.

  There was also a string quartet on the second floor, giving valiant if fading service as the voices of the guests rose around them and drowned out their traditional melodies.

  The museum might be looking at another expense, she thought with a frown. The air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the two hundred overheated bodies doused with perfume and cologne. The individual cases were probably fine since they were self-contained environments, but the building was uncomfortably warm and the scents were layering in an unpleasant manner and it was getting difficult to breathe.

  Juliet kept circulating. She paused by the empty sarcophagus. It looked a little bare but most people wouldn’t notice the absence of the mummy unless they read the tiny plaque.

  The flashes from the cameras as “important” people arrived caused moments of annoying blindness. Usually there wouldn’t be so much press at an opening that far out of town, but as Juliet had predicted, murder and wild stories of a mummy’s curse were good for business. Thanks to the word about the staff’s stomach flu getting around and one of the guards having a minor fender-bender on the way to work, that afternoon’s headlines had been especially lurid as they fueled theories of mysterious accidents and ancient plagues.

  MUSEUM EXHIBIT WAKES THE DEAD! SAKKARA STRIKES BACK!

  MUMMY’S CURSE KILLS NIGHTWATCHMAN AND STRIKES STAFF WITH PLAGUE!

  Juliet supposed they could be glad that no one had got around to something like diarrhea of the gods, or something even worse. They had also been too lazy to look up the unhappy history of the castle’s owners or that would also have been worked into the legend of the curse.

  And the insult to the police and every other sane person who was paying attention was that the killer hadn’t even gone to the trouble of trying to age the gauze into something at least slightly old. The bandaging had obviously just come from some pharmacy or maybe a first aid kit which were on every floor. But those in the sensational press had leapt on the suggestion of a mummy killer who wrapped its victim in its own cast-off bandages with no other questions asked in case it ruined their impossible story.

  Probably it was nice to not have to think up any astonishing headlines that week.

  Juliet looked over the railing to the floor below.

  The press, ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate, were heavily represented. Only they weren’t ladies and gentlemen. They weren’t investigative journalists. Actually they weren’t journalists of any kind. They were sensation seekers who got paid by the word and the image, and therefore some didn’t just report on events but also provoked a slowing story into new extremes. And then there were the talking heads, a whole chorus line of them. They weren’t there to do interviews or report on the opening, but they had brought cameramen with small digital cameras just in case they should get lucky enough to witness another attack.

  Did they know that they sucked? That they were the ultimate purveyors of misinformation? Of disinformation even that might help a killer escape justice? Some had to be aware and simply not care. Possibly the others actually saw themselves as the community’s therapists or exorcists who looked after the moral health of the slightly stupid—maybe even very stupid—readership in what some still thought was the forward march of civilization.

  The director would just have to hope that someone on the city council got outed as a leather freak or a transvestite or maybe an alien abductee—although that kind of thing might be too tame to lure the sharks away, this being L.A. They were looking for big kink with all the diligence of an inquisition sniffing out a witch. Laughter laced with the smell of white wine floated Juliet’s way. She tried to keep everyone in sight while she circulated but there were more than two hundred bodies and two floors to cover with suspects on each. Nor could Esteban help since he had to stay with his display and explain it to those who couldn’t or didn’t choose to read the supplied plaques which described everything in detail.

  Esteban was dressed all in black, a shadow that could blend in with the drapery as the puppets performed their dance. Dark on dark, he moved smoothly on silent feet that didn’t wreck the illusion of macabre life the marionettes had been gifted with. The crowds didn’t exactly scatter in front of him when he walked among them since they were packed too tight for rapid movement, but whenever he arrived at a space, it was empty and waiting for him. She had a hunch that people were as drawn to Esteban as they were to his art. But they also sensed that he was dangerous. Juliet would have happily remained, watching the puppets perform their exotic aria again and again, had she not been compelled to be elsewhere.

  Down the stairs again.

  Vickie was standing near the shrunken heads where there was a certain amount of gasping and nervous giggling from those who examined the specimens. She was smiling and smiling and clutching her scotch like it was a teddy bear that would keep the nightmares away. That wouldn’t happen though as long as she was positioned near the most sensational of the exhibits. It was much quieter down by the death masks where people were more reverential. Juliet wondered if she should clue her in but decided not to. She didn’t want to draw any attention from the sharks that were circling the displays, and didn’t really care to be around anyone except Esteban since someone in the museum might still be carrying a garrote as a fashion accessory.

  Celeste Ames was
so hyper and jittery in her moment of fame that she kept dropping things, pacing and laughing as she spat out her all-purpose party chatter so that she looked like a coke addict of the verge of an epileptic fit. She had brought an escort that evening, an aging body-builder type whose hairline was odd. At a glance it looked as though it had slid back about two inches, leaving a bare forehead and an unusually covered neck whose furry tufts erupted over the edge of his collar in the back and on the sides. The coat was expensive though so maybe he was a patron. He looked like the kind of man who would enjoy being an artist’s sugar daddy.

  More camera flashes and these bouncing off glass.

  Theoretically there were no pictures allowed of the exhibits, but the well-dressed ghouls and the gentlepeople of the press in attendance that evening would be unable to resist the buffet of morbidness, especially the mummies, created thousands of years ago in a ghastly attempt to make the dead lifelike.

  Juliet liked to think that her job had made her shock-proof and tolerant of a large spectrum of human behavior, but that probably wasn’t true. And her dislike of those on the periphery of the art world, like much of the press and the critics, was especially strong.

  Though, of course, not as strong as her aversion to those in her old career whom she prayed were not also in attendance.

  Perhaps she needed to drink more white wine. The first glass was barely lapping at the gray cells. It took some of the edge off the shrill voices and fake laughter of the well-heeled crowd as they pretended not to be fascinated by dead things. It also blunted the feeling she had had since the murder that she was being watched.

  And maybe she was being observed; the police were there, at least Browne and Black were attending and there were possibly others out of uniform mixing with the crowd.

  As if feeling her stare, Browne caught her eye and nodded. His glance went pointedly to the Spanish hearse and then to the entrance of the photo gallery. She followed his line of sight and saw two men in bad suits that could only be off-duty cops.

  She wished them luck. There were so many suspects with the means and probably as many with a motive for wanting the unpleasant Geary dead. Solving this case would take diligence and the intervention of providence. But it was nice to know that they would be there for backup and possible crowd control when the killer decided to act.

  The trouble was that people, who naturally included law enforcement, came with preconceptions and prejudices about how life worked, and they wanted facts to fit a certain way so that the right emotional outline was achieved in volatile situations. In other words, facts suiting their truth and not the truth. Even with the best of intentions and great experience, some overlooked puzzle pieces when piecing together a crime because of those expectations and existing beliefs. It didn’t help that the legal machinery was now powered by forensics and in many cases it had swept aside old style investigation and many of the old-time gut-thinkers. Browne and Black were both efficient, but were they intuitive?

  Juliet feared that they were relying on statistics this time as well. Looking for the average killer or thief when what they should be searching for was a werewolf. Someone who could transform into a monster and then back again and do it without any lingering guilt. A Jekyll with a one-use Hyde. And it could be any of the people in their linens suits or pretty silk dresses, though the odds were so much greater that it was one of the staff or the artists at the museum the day Geary died.

  She heard someone mutter, “Hell is empty. All the devils are here,” and looked to see who was quoting Shakespeare. Sure enough, it was a rather scholarly looking man with a permanent four o’clock shadow that couldn’t be eradicated with an electric razor.

  This cheered Juliet. The other people had heads stuffed full of brain cells, but they just didn’t seem to be using them for irony.

  “Ask not for whom the bell tolls.…” she answered with a smile.

  The man turned and half smiled. It was a pleasant smile but for some reason Juliet felt chilled.

  “Jonathon Bryant, professor of history,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Juliet Henry.” Juliet noted the callouses along the edge of his hand. They came from martial arts and not playing a musical instrument. The halls of academia must have been especially dangerous at his university. Or he was a liar. Had Browne brought in undercover cops to cover the event? It seemed more likely that this guy was private. But was he a private investigator or some kind of insurance investigator? Or, God forbid, NSA? “Commercial artist and, this week, general dogsbody. I’ve been helping a friend get ready for the show.”

  “Which of the exhibits belongs to your friend?” Bryant asked.

  “The bone puppets.”

  “It’s an impressive display,” Bryant said but without real enthusiasm.

  “But not your kind of thing?” Juliet probed.

  “Truthfully, I am finding it difficult to remain stout of heart with so many reminders of my mortality staring me in the face. I get enough of that at work.”

  So she and Raphael were not alone in their dislike of the concept of the museum. Of course, a real historian would have loved it.

  She forced her smile to go undimmed.

  “I’ve been doing a facsimile of Buddhist-like detachment all week. Back home at the artist compound it is much easier to shelter from the idea that no man is immortal,” Juliet agreed. “Here, not so much. Still, I am betting that the opening is a howling success and people come by the thousands to see the bits and pieces of the dead. It’s easy if you don’t actually believe that you will ever die yourself.”

  “And you think people are truly that deluded?”

  “Oh yes. We are very, very good at denying unpleasant reality.”

  Her eyes scanned the room. Vickie had left the shrunken heads and was heading for her own display, perhaps recalling that she was there to answer questions and even take commissions for future work.

  Juliet needed to make another pass at the players and see who was still in place. The party was over at midnight. There were only three hours left for the killer to make his or her move.

  “Excuse me,” she said, smiling nicely at the fake professor.

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Not at all,” she lied. “But you’ll have to wait until after I’ve visited the ladies’ room.”

  “There’s quite a line,” Bryant said.

  “Not on the second floor. Be back in a bit,” she said and turned away.

  If he was a plainclothes policeman she would eat her hat. And if he was a private dick or working for one of the insurance companies she didn’t want him around, distracting her or even getting in the way. Ditto if he was NSA. She would have to be sly and subtle if she were going to follow the killer to the mummy.

  She walked past the restroom and took the back stair whose narrow door was hidden behind a velvet drape. The sign said no public access, but she ignored it.

  “Damn it.” Celeste Ames was not at her clock though it was nine and the cuckoo was going through its paces, much to the pleasure of its audience who were applauding loudly. Esteban would start his show at ten minutes after.

  Down the front stairs and past Meyers’ caskets. The coffin maker was gone too. Bill Something was alone, standing silent and comatose like a vertical cadaver.

  So where were Black and Browne? Or the other policemen? Hopefully following suspects because she couldn’t find them on the ground floor.

  Method, motive, opportunity—that was the trifecta of crime solving. Opportunity they all had. The method of killing was strange but couldn’t rule anyone out because they were all physically, if not psychologically, capable of strangling someone with a wire. So it all came down to motive. Who had a reason to kill? Juliet’s gut was pretty firm about what it felt, but there was no proof. For that she would need the mummy.

  It took her a while to realize that Vickie had disappeared as well. Juliet picked up speed. None of the missing artists were in the cafeteria or at the bar and they c
ouldn’t all be in the bathroom.

  Could they have gone off together, maybe for an interview or photos? It didn’t seem likely.

  She glanced upstairs, wondering if they could be at the puppet show. It had begun. She could hear the faint strains of Turandot over the band. Should she take the time to push through the thickening crowds and check one more time?

  No. This was it. Everyone was distracted by the puppets. The killer was moving now to get rid of the mummy and after that there might not ever be any physical proof to link them to the crime. Alarm, and if she admitted, dread perched right on the threshold of her subconscious, waiting for the slightest crack in her resolve so they could invade and cause panic.

  How could they have all disappeared? And where the devil were any of the police? Would she really have to do this alone?

  “Juliet?” The fake professor touched her arm.

  She reached over and patted his hand.

  “Not now. There is trouble with the puppets,” she lied and headed for the basement. She was smaller than the professor and was able to lose him in the clogging crowd trying to get upstairs.

  The feeling of being observed persisted as she hurried through the almost deserted burial chamber, and Juliet began to wonder if she had downed more wine than she could handle in her present setting. The museum was morbid by day but at night with the mood lighting on it was absolutely gruesome.

  The guard at the door was a little surprised to see her, but didn’t object when she went outside. She would have to speak to Herrick about his temp guards. They weren’t very good. Just because he recognized her didn’t mean that she should be allowed to use an unauthorized exit or be in a space that was off-limits to the public.

  The parking lot had lights but between them were mounds of darkness. The staff’s modest cars were parked out back that evening and Juliet took a quick inventory as she hurried by them to the place where the wilds began. There she paused, cupping hands around her eyes to shut out the glare as she examined the little moonlit slice of hell.