“The Park Service,” Marilyn corrected, “responds to political pressure. I’ll bet DeLage has already called both our senators and that idiot we have for a congressman.”
Gator’s toothless mouth opened in shock. “But—”
“She’s probably right,” I said. “Well, there isn’t anything we can do about it.”
“I could break Freddie’s legs,” Gator volunteered.
“I don’t think so.”
“Slash his tires?”
“Nice thought, but we’ll pass.”
“Boss—”
I patted him on the back and caught Frank Hill’s smirk.
“And don’t hack into his damn computer,” I told Frank. “That’s just as bad.”
“Whatever.” Frank shrugged.
I went back into my office and flopped back into my chair.
Broken legs. Slashed tires. A deadly computer virus …
To tell the truth, none of them sounded so bad.
TWENTY-TWO
I called Pepper in midafternoon. She wasn’t at her office and so I tried the apartment. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Did I wake you up?”
“Not really. I was just listening to some music and thinking.”
“You okay?”
“Sure. And you?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just reading reports.”
“I know about Pringle,” she said. “Esme called me.”
“Oh.”
“There ought to be something …” She stopped in mid-sentence.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’ll both live. We just have to cut our losses.”
“Yes.”
“You’re safe?” I asked her. “I mean—”
“I’m fine. The killer’ll go after Freddie now.” She gave a bitter little laugh. “Anyway, I’ll keep myself locked in tonight.”
Silence. Then, “Alan …”
My heart thumped. “Yes?”
“Thanks for understanding.”
“No problem,” I lied.
I was still brooding at just after four when the phone rang and Marilyn told me it was Esme.
“Don’t tell me Freddie’s been badgering you, too,” I said.
“My dear, I don’t worry about that man,” Esme declared. “Though, actually, he has caused some problems.”
“Oh?”
“He called the chancellor’s office and claimed we were interfering with a legitimate project and that the university was going to look bad, helping a company that had been fired by the client.”
“That bastard. I ought to sue—”
“I’m sure Stanley would love the business.”
I took a deep breath. She was right: Our lawyer would make money, Freddie’s lawyer would make money, and the battery of attorneys the university employed would make money. The rest of us would lose.
“So what’s the university going to do?”
“I spent most of the day with the vice chancellor for research. He’s willing to let us have another day and then he says, in fairness, we ought to let Freddie’s expert look at the document. His suggestion was that we all work in harmony.”
“Of course it was. So we have, what? Twenty-four hours?”
“That’s why I was calling, Alan. We may not need it.”
“What?”
“Shelby’s with our man right now. He just called me. They want us over there as soon as we can make it.”
“You talked to Shelby?”
“I was out. There was a message on my machine. He just said to come, that his man, Flinders Mott, wanted to discuss things.”
“Where are they?”
“The Life Science Building.” She read the room number.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said.
I took the elevator to the third floor, sharing the space with a couple of students and a white-coated professor with a clipboard. I took the hallway right, passing a series of open doors that revealed lab rooms with sinks and fume hoods. The one I wanted was on the end and when I walked in I saw two men hunched over a microscope. One of them looked up and I recognized a thinner Shelby Deeds, his face looking more gaunt than the last time I’d seen him. We shook hands and he introduced me to the other man, who raised his head slowly and took me in as if he were appraising a rare document.
“This is Flinders Mott,” Shelby explained. “He retired from the FBI a few years ago, and since his hobby was history, he does a lot of business examining questioned documents.”
Flinders Mott was small, graying, and wore thick, rimless glasses. A thin black mustache divided the space between his nose and upper lip. His handshake was limp, as if he didn’t want to spare the time, and I was surprised at the cold dryness of his skin until I realized he was wearing latex gloves.
“I hear you’ve got some news,” I said.
Shelby stuck his hands down into his pockets and looked at the floor. “I’ll let Flinders do the talking.”
Flinders Mott shoved back his chair and got up slowly, hiking his pants as he stood.
“I’ve been examining the document in question,” he said in a reedy voice. “And I’ve brought several other mid-nineteenth century documents for comparison.”
He opened a folder and carefully removed a yellowed sheet of paper, which he laid beside a document I realized must be the will.
“This is a handwritten letter dating from 1849. A woman’s letter to her niece in Boston. Unquestionably authentic and unquestionably trivial, as a historic document. Please tell me what you see.”
I looked down at the paper. The handwriting was a pleasantly sloping cursive that had gone brown over the years.
“The handwriting is different from the will,” I said, shrugging. “Other than that …”
“Paper quality?” he asked. “A document should be written on paper that was available at the time.”
He handed me a magnifying glass and I scanned the letter, and then the will.
“See any differences?” he asked.
“Should I?”
Flinders Mott allowed himself a small smile.
“No. The paper of both is clearly nineteenth century foolscap. Now let’s put it under the microscope.” He moved the letter onto the viewing platform and then bent to peer through the eyepiece and adjust the focus. “Do you see the handwriting?”
I took off my glasses and squinted into the instrument. What I saw was a slightly raised strip of brown ink.
“Yes.”
“The ink used in the nineteenth century turned brown over the years,” he explained. “It’s oxidation or rust caused by the iron in the ink itself. So if you have a document that purports to be nineteenth century but the ink is still black or blue, you have cause to be suspicious.”
He removed the letter, replaced it in the folder, and then held up the Lewis will. Its ink was brown.
“Now let’s examine the will under high power.” He slid it under the scope, adjusted the eyepiece, and motioned for me to look.
“Tell me what you see now.”
I saw another raised brown line, textured with tiny cracks.
“Looks the same,” I said.
“Exactly?”
“There are some small cracks. From age, I guess.”
Another tight little smile.
“No.”
I looked up from the eyepiece to his face and then over at Shelby, who looked away.
“Then what do the cracks mean?” I asked, my throat dry.
“Ever hear of the Mormon letters?”
“It sounds familiar.”
“Famous case a few years back. Fellow named Hoffman tried to sell some letters purportedly written by Joseph Smith, the founder of the church.”
I was getting a very queasy feeling.
“When the Smith letters were examined, they showed the same pattern of cracks in the ink that this document has. It was very puzzling to the examiners. The ink appeared to be the same in chemical composition as other nineteenth century ink
s and the paper was undeniably old. They had to consider whether the letters were genuine and whether the cracks were the result of some environmental effect, such as humidity, or whether they indicated that the document was a modern forgery.”
With the word forgery my throat tightened.
“The two examiners, Throckmorton and Flynn, did a number of experiments, mixing their own inks, using the ingredients that would have been used at the time the letters were supposed to have been written. They were able to duplicate the inks, of course, but the modern ink they mixed was clearly distinguishable from the early ink because of its color: The modern ink was black and the older, as you’ve seen, is brown.”
I had an urge to tell him to cut to the chase, but I knew I had to hear him out.
“So they set about to try to see if there was a way to turn an ink brown quickly and thus mimic the effects of age.”
“And they succeeded,” I suggested.
“After many experiments. They found that they could make the ink turn brown by spraying the document with ammonia.”
Ammonia …
“But there was just one drawback,” he continued. “When the spray dried and the ink was brown, something else happened.”
“Cracks,” I said, my throat dry.
“Tiny cracks like you see here. Because ammonia is alkaline and nineteenth century inks contained gum arabic, a sugar, which is—”
“Acid,” I said. “The cracks are the result of a chemical reaction.”
“Exactly.”
“So the will—”
“Is a very clever production, done by someone who managed to mix the right kind of ink and who was able to find some blank paper from the last century, and then was able to copy the real Meriwether Lewis’s handwriting very convincingly.” He gave a tight little smile. “Yes, very impressive. But, without a doubt, I can say that this will is a fraud.”
TWENTY-THREE
I am too old to drink myself into a stupor. That night I made an exception. Esme had arrived at the lab a few minutes after I had and listened to the same lecture from Flinders Mott. She’d asked a lot of questions and then, in the face of the little man’s reasoning, wilted and admitted defeat.
“I’ll have to tell the vice chancellor,” she warned.
I shrugged.
They invited me to dinner, but I had no taste for wakes, and elected to go home instead, where I got out a bottle of Elmer T. Lee I’d been saving for a special occasion.
No sense calling Pepper: Why ruin her evening? She’d probably feel sorry for me and come running over. Well, I could do all right feeling sorry for myself.
I’m a slow drinker and by nine-thirty the bottle was still half full, but what I’d drunk was more than enough.
After all, the governor had been a drinking man. Captain Russell had taken away his hard liquor and put him on wine.
“Not exactly cold turkey,” I told Digger, who looked at me with infinite sympathy. “But it probably beat the water.”
His eyes told me he agreed.
“So we’re back to square one,” I explained. “Somebody fabricated this whole business. And that means the governor really is buried under that granite block and Pringle still isn’t going to be able to dig him up. At least Freddie’ll look like a fool, and DeLage won’t make money from his tourist park.”
The phone rang and I stared at it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone in this condition, with my words jumbled and my thoughts five seconds behind. The recorded message said to leave a number and then fell silent.
“Can’t be important,” I told Digger and he nuzzled me.
Then I heard a familiar voice: “Al, you son-of-a-bitch, what are you trying to pull? The vice chancellor called Nick and told him about the forgery. Is that your work? You trying to make us look stupid? You trying to screw up this whole deal?” By now the voice had grown to a shout. “My lawyer’s gonna have your ass. That’s a promise.”
“Fuck you, Freddie,” I said, and erased the recording.
I looked down at my confidant.
“Who, Digger? Who would do something like this?” I hiccuped. “Nick doesn’t know enough. Sure, he could’ve hired somebody. But does he think nobody would catch it?”
I reached for the bottle and poured another swallow into my glass.
“But, then, why should they? Nick’s cheap. He probably hired some half-assed amateur historian who thought he was too bright to get caught.”
The whiskey went down warm and smooth.
“But does that mean our forger is the killer?”
Digger cocked his head.
“But what about Miss Ouida’s journals? How could they be forged? But they have to be, Digger, ’cause, like Lincoln said, this onion can’t endure half forged and half free.” I shook my head. “Well, you know what I mean.”
I wasn’t sure he did, but the whiskey hit the bottom of my already inflamed stomach then and a sudden urge to heave overwhelmed me. I raced for the bathroom and the rest of the night was a kaleidoscope of retchings and tortured dreams of the governor, heading for Grinder’s and telling someone (probably me), “I’m on my way to die. Don’t look for me anywhere else.”
The next morning I lay awake for an unknown time, wishing my stomach would disassociate itself from the rest of my body. My head hurt, but I couldn’t bear to move, for fear it would set off my stomach again. My mouth felt like I’d gargled with cotton balls and the room stank with a sourness.
I had to get in to work or they’d be worrying about me.
And then I remembered it was Saturday.
Last night I dreamed Freddie called me, raving.
Except that as I lay there, sorting out memory from imagining, I realized it hadn’t been a dream.
I reached over for Pepper and felt a furry body.
When I turned my head that way I saw two soulful eyes and a long snout.
“Go find that possum,” I moaned.
Half an hour later I forced myself up and headed for the shower. The unshaven specter who stared at me from the mirror with bloodshot eyes was someone I barely recognized.
What was wrong with me? I was acting like a kid. Grown-ups didn’t take their disappointments this way. After all, the only thing that had happened was that the company had lost a couple of grand and missed being involved in a scandal that could have ruined our reputation.
Or was it really the Lewis business I was disappointed about?
I showered, fed Digger, put on some coffee, and pulled out some frozen waffles. As I ate, I tried to make sense of it all. Someone had concocted this business, but the size of the fraud was what astounded me: He’d had to know about the burial of Louis, and he’d had to also know the story of the mysterious death of Lewis. That pointed to a historian, or at least a very well read amateur. But not just any amateur had access to Désirée. Ergo, we were looking for someone with connections to the Fabré family, and that led back to Nick.
But he didn’t know enough history, so the idea had to have originated with the person who put him up to it.
I was back where I’d started last night. And the pieces still didn’t fit.
I swallowed the last of the coffee and tried to jump-start my mind. Charlie Fabré had probably gotten a tax break by donating his family papers to the university. But someone had been needed to put the collection in order. Maybe Fabré had employed an archivist.
Who? Would the university have a record? Maybe … but the rare book room would be closed until Monday.
I cleaned up the dishes and tried to think what to do next. I wanted to call Pepper, although I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. But Esme had probably already talked to her. Still, I couldn’t be sure and I wanted to know she was all right.
She answered on the first ring.
“You talk to Esme?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“It was too good to be true,” I said. “We should’ve known.”
“Sometimes you ha
ve to take a chance.”
“I guess.”
“Alan, you’re such a pessimist.”
“Sorry.”
“I mean, I won’t let it go. I refuse.”
“Pepper …”
“There’s a poor old lady Nick DeLage has taken advantage of. I don’t think for a minute she had anything to do with this.”
“You’re going to see her, then.”
“Yes.”
“Good for you. But watch out for that nurse, Krogh. I don’t trust her.”
“Me either. And Alan …”
“Yeah?”
A pause. “Nothing. We’ll talk later.”
“Right.”
The rest of the day oozed away. I straightened up the house, and when my headache was gone, I took Digger for a mid-afternoon walk. It was a pleasant day, with a home football game tonight, and cars rushed past me along Park Boulevard with their purple banners rippling in the wind. In the big stadium parking lot, campers would be almost bumper to bumper, with people cooking chicken, sausages, and steaks on small grills. A few would even have prepared pots of jambalaya, feeding all comers in a spirit of general benevolence. And, of course, regardless of university rules, there would be plenty of beer.
I had to get my mind off Pepper and back to the real problem, which was the death of Meriwether Lewis.
Or was it?
The only death that could be effectively investigated was the murder of Brady Flowers.
Monday morning I would go to the rare book collection myself and see if I could find out who had catalogued the Hardin collection, if such records, in fact, existed.
I went back to the house, put Digger in the backyard, disconnected the upstairs phone, and took a long, fitful nap. When I got up it was nearly dark. I went downstairs, checked my answering machine, and saw, to my chagrin, that there were no messages. I watched an old movie and then flipped to the five o’clock local news.
After a story about a three-car pileup at Whiskey Bay, I poured myself a glass of milk. When I came back I was looking at Sarah Goforth, standing outside the now locked gate of Désirée.
Oh, shit.
“Today, a story we brought you yesterday has taken a strange and unexpected twist. We reported that a local businessman, Nicholas DeLage, was sponsoring an investigation to determine if the final resting place of the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis is located at Désirée Plantation, just across the river from Baton Rouge. DeLage had hired a local archaeological consultant and had even brought in famed forensics scientist Marcus Pringle to study the bones buried at Désirée. But now, according to a high official at Louisiana State University, the documentation that purported to prove that the bones were those of Lewis has been shown to be a forgery. Dr. Pringle is unavailable for comment, but we have learned that he has returned to his university in Michigan. We called Nicholas DeLage, but he has not returned our calls. And according to the consulting firm chosen, the project has been canceled. A spokesman for Pyramid Consultants, Dr. Frederick St. Ambrose, blamed DeLage’s previous consultant. According to St. Ambrose, the first archaeologists involved in the project ‘failed to perform the most elementary research to verify that these documents were genuine.’”
The Meriwether Murder Page 17