On the left, next to a bank of elevators, was a smaller Cinasat logo, and near it, a sign that said OUR MULTICULTURAL PARTNERS. Below the sign, several objects hung in two rows, each with a small accompanying sign. They all looked like pieces that could have been in a museum: a dark metal shield, a sword, a dagger with an ornate hilt, an elongated wooden figurine, and three masks. The mask closest to the Cinasat logo was clearly Sri Lankan.
“Look, there it is,” Mo said, pointing. “That sign was in the background. And there’s the mask! I knew it—Bent was lying.”
Grace took a step toward the mask, examining it. “No, that’s not the same one. The one in the photo had three cobras. And a tongue. But it’s pretty similar. That’s why Duncan thought it was the same.” She felt relieved. “I told you, you can’t count on Duncan’s memory.”
“Are you sure?” Mo said. “Let’s check the photo. I have it here.” He fumbled with the envelope in his hand.
“Can I help you?” the security guard behind the counter called out.
“No, thanks,” Grace said, hoping she didn’t sound as uncertain as she felt.
“Are you here to see someone?” the security guard said, his voice rising a notch. “You’ll need to sign in.” He gestured for them to come forward. He was a fresh-faced young man with spiked red hair. Acne scars marred his cheeks, and a few reddish spots suggested that this was an ongoing problem.
They went up to the counter. “We were actually looking up something,” Mo said, pulling a small stack of photos out of his envelope. There were a half dozen or so, five inches by seven.
“Looking up what?” the guard said in a tone that was not too polite.
“This mask,” Mo said. The photos tumbled onto the counter. Mo leafed through them and pulled out the photo he’d shown Grace before.
“See,” Grace whispered to Mo. “See the tongue?” The mask in the photo had the same bared teeth, but the red tongue hanging from its mouth was missing from the one on the wall. The colors were a little different too. The one on the wall was greener and less menacing. The shape of the ears was almost the same, but on the mask on the wall, each ear was formed from a lotus and several curving leaves, rather than a coiled cobra. It was clearly a different mask.
Mo looked from the photo to the mask on the wall. He turned to the guard. “This mask. It used to be over there, by the elevators. It looks like that one, but see how it’s different, with the tongue and the two extra snakes? Do you remember it?”
The guard looked at Mo as if he might be dangerous. “Never seen it before,” he said.
“Are there masks on other floors? By the elevators?”
“No, only in the lobby. What is this about?”
“It’s a long story,” Mo said.
The guard looked skeptical. “What are you? Police?”
“No, no. Actually, my husband works here,” Grace said. “We would have asked him, but he’s out of town.”
“Who’s your husband?”
“Dr. Duncan McCloud,” Grace said. “He works in the marketing division. He just started working here recently.”
The guard typed on a keyboard, peered at the screen positioned beside him, and appeared satisfied. “Okay. Dr. McCloud’s office is on the fifth floor . . .” He looked again at the photo. “I don’t know anything about another mask. Those are the only ones I’ve seen down here, but I’ve only been here a couple of days.”
“You’re new at Cinasat? When did you start?” Mo said.
“My first day was Thursday,” the man said.
“So it could have been here before that?” Mo said, sounding excited. This really was insane, Grace thought. He was feeding his preconceived ideas any way he could.
The guard shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose.”
“Do you recognize this woman?” Mo said, pointing to the woman next to Angie in the picture.
“Never seen her. I see everyone passing through, but I don’t know very many. All I have to do is look at their badges. Easy work.” The guard picked up one of the other pictures that had fallen out of the envelope. “Him, I know. Mr. Hyland. He introduced himself on my first day. And him. He got dropped off by his chauffeur, right at the door. One of the big bosses.”
Mo took the picture from him. “Which one is that?”
Grace looked at the picture he was holding. In it, Bent was seated at a table in a restaurant, his face lit by a copper lamp. He was with Hammond and another man, deep in conversation.
“That’s Hammond,” she said to Mo. “Hammond Gleeson. The CEO.”
“Oh, you know him,” the guard said, a new note of respect in his voice.
“Sure. A bit,” Grace said.
“What is all this about anyway?” the guard said, his expression turning suspicious again. His eyes ran over Mo’s polo shirt. “You a journalist?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Mo said. “It’s complicated . . . a personal matter.” He picked up Angie’s photo again. “Are you sure you haven’t seen the mask in this picture?”
The guard studied the picture. “Nope. Sure looks like that one on the wall, though. It got stolen or something?”
“Something like that,” Mo said. “We’re looking—”
Grace grabbed his arm. “We should go,” she said, then let go of him to gather up the pictures and stuff them into the envelope. And to the guard, “Thank you for your time.” Ignoring the guard’s curious stare, she tugged at Mo and propelled him away from the counter.
“What was that about?” she said to Mo as they emerged into the warm air outside the building. “What was that other picture you showed him?”
“I didn’t mean to show that one to him. It was just in with the other pictures I took from Angie’s room. It was stuck to the back of one of the others.” He took the envelope from her fingers and extracted the pictures again.
Grace slid into the driver’s seat, irritation rising inside her. She should get to work, and back to the grant. This flight of fancy had gone on long enough. “I’ll drive you back to get your car,” she said. “Then I really have to get to work.”
They traveled in silence for a while.
“Listen,” Mo said, as they neared Grace’s house. He was holding the two photos in front of him, fanned out against the dashboard. “This is starting to make some sense to me.”
Grace nodded grimly. More of the same, she thought.
“What if,” Mo said, snapping the photos against the dashboard. “What if Angie was writing a story about Cinasat? Maybe there was something she dug up. Maybe that’s why she took this picture of Bent and this Gleeson and the other guy. Maybe that was why she was at Cinasat before she died. And maybe that’s why Bent doesn’t want people to know she was there.”
What could she say to this, Grace thought. Maybe you are losing your mind? She didn’t want to be harsh when he was clearly having a hard time. “Look, Mo,” she said. “You’re making too many leaps in logic here.”
“Think about it,” Mo said. “I know Angie was here less than six days before she died. Because of the necklace. The damn mask was here then, so it must have broken after that. Or been replaced. What if Bent had it replaced after I showed him that photo? Because he didn’t want anyone to know Angie had been there recently. Maybe he made sure the new mask was similar enough that people wouldn’t notice the replacement.”
“Please, Mo. Listen to yourself. Bent was grieving, at a funeral. Just like you. He probably just didn’t remember the mask. It’s a small thing. You’re making too much of it.”
“I’m not,” Mo said with a conviction that was beginning to frighten Grace. “You didn’t see his reaction to the photo that day. And then there’s the break-in at Angie’s house, and the fact that she was here, for whatever reason, and her death. This Minowa. And the other woman who’s died at Cinasat. And why did Angie have this photo of Bent and this Gleeson? What’s that about?”
“God, Mo. These could all be completely unrelated. You’re going by som
e feeling you had about Bent’s reaction. It really is starting to sound as if you’re losing it.” There, I said it, Grace thought.
“Marla said Angie was working on a big story that night,” Mo said. He didn’t seem bothered at all by what Grace had said.
“I told you, Mo, that could be the story about Minowa. The police are already working on that. It’s not connected to Cinasat, or to Bent.”
Mo appeared to not have heard. He snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Her computer!” He turned to Grace, his expression intense. “What happened to it? Her damn computer? Didn’t Marla say she was typing in the cabin?”
“No idea,” Grace said. “Someone must have sent it to her mother. There must have been other things, right? Did she come in a rental car? Did she have any luggage? I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me until now.”
“I’m going to call Marla and find out,” Mo said. “She’ll know.”
“Mo, don’t stress her out, okay? Remember the pregnancy,” Grace said.
“Just drop me off,” Mo said. “I’ll keep you updated.”
25
DUNCAN
In Transit
Bent and Janie had joined Duncan by the galley, where he’d gone to stretch his legs. Janie hopped from one foot to the other, the unbuckled strap of one fluorescent-pink sandal threatening to trip her up.
“Walk to the back of the plane and back,” Bent said to her.
“Hang on,” Duncan said, stooping to buckle her sandal.
Janie skipped off down the aisle, wagging her head from side to side, her ponytail swishing.
“Sometimes I wonder if I should spend more time with her,” Bent said. “Her mother relies too much on babysitters.” He shrugged. “The price I pay for my work. But the last thing I want to do is be like my father.”
“He didn’t spend much time with you?” Duncan said.
“He tried, I suppose,” Bent said, his tone grudging. “My parents divorced when I was ten. Dad was in Thailand most of the time when I was a kid. Managing the factory there for Pop, my grandpa.”
“Grace said your grandpa has a furniture business,” Duncan said.
Bent nodded. “Built it up from nothing. He started in the US, with small wooden chests he made himself. They had inlaid lids—bits of glass or ceramic or stone. He gave Grace one of those early chests once.” He twisted his lips. “She probably threw it out. She never liked him much.” He shrugged. “She didn’t understand him. He can be a bit abrasive, but that’s because he came up the hard way. When he was young, he used to go door-to-door with those chests he made. Stack them in his Ford, go driving around the US. Lonely housewives were his best customers, he used to say. My mother thinks those housewives didn’t just buy his chests. But she didn’t think much of him either. She feels Pop pushed Dad away from her. But I think she and Dad got divorced because she didn’t like living in Thailand.”
Duncan made a noncommittal sound. He recognized this sudden verbosity of Bent’s. Jet lag and lack of sleep, he realized.
“How come you were at KIS? Why not Thailand?”
Bent closed his eyes for a moment. “Pop’s idea. He didn’t like the international schools in Thailand. He was paying for it, so Dad didn’t have much say. Plus Pop was developing some business interests in Sri Lanka.” He straightened his shirt. “But it was a good choice. I had a good time there. Mostly. And it made me want to be in a position like Pop’s one day. Controlling things.” A half smile crossed his face, and then he pushed himself off the bulkhead on which he’d been leaning, his pretty lips thinning. “Got to get back to work instead of standing here going on about old times. I have some things to sort out.”
Duncan watched him stride back to his seat and open his computer. He was an eye-catching figure, with his broad shoulders pressed back against his seat. Janie pranced up to him and tugged at his arm. He said something to her, patting her head and pointing at his computer screen. Janie’s face fell, and then she came loping toward Duncan.
“Want to play a game?” she said when she reached him. “A race?” She hopped up and down.
“We can’t run in here,” Duncan said, smiling at her enthusiasm. “How about a guessing game?”
“Boring,” Janie said.
The poor kid must be going crazy, cooped up for so long, Duncan thought.
“See who can stand on one leg for the longest,” Mrs. Atukorale called out as she returned to her seat. She had spent some time freshening up, Duncan saw. Her hair was neatly pinned and her lipstick freshly applied. “My children always did that when we traveled.” At Duncan’s mock accusatory look, she laughed. “Very good for the circulation, also.”
“You have to do it without laughing,” Janie said. She stood on one foot, the other curled up, flamingo-like, and immediately burst out laughing.
It took several rounds of the game to satisfy Janie’s demands. When she finally returned to her seat, where Bent was still deep in communion with his laptop, Duncan sank into his seat and stretched out his legs.
“I was watching you and thinking,” Mrs. Atukorale said, leaning over to him confidingly. “I was thinking . . . what you were saying about your wife . . . Why keep trying the same doctors if they can’t do anything to help? Why not try something else? A ceremony?” Most of their conversation had been in Sinhala for some time now. She seemed to think of him as a native son.
“Grace wouldn’t agree to it. She’s a scientist. She doesn’t believe in all that.”
“Scientist maybe, but also Sri Lankan, no? Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, doesn’t matter. Some of these ceremonies, we all do,” Mrs. Atukorale said. “Not thovil, or any of that. Just simple ceremonies, you know. I myself didn’t have children for the first year after my marriage. Only after I poured milk at the foot of the bo tree at our local temple.”
“Right, right,” Duncan said. She seemed to have forgotten that she had dismissed these sorts of rituals as being villagers’ fancies.
“And also I made a vow at the temple. That I would make a pilgrimage to Kandy if I had a child. This is what helped us.”
“Grace doesn’t even go to the temple now,” Duncan said. “I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t make a vow.”
“At least a pirit ceremony, I could organize for her,” Mrs. Atukorale said. “That, her family will approve, I am sure.”
Maybe her family would agree to an ordinary Buddhist ceremony like that, Duncan thought, but not Grace. She didn’t believe in karma, let alone that it could be accumulated by chanting or giving alms to monks.
26
GRACE
Saturday
Grace hurried out of Gannon Hall, looking for Mo. His phone call had shattered the elation she had been feeling about all but finishing her grant application that afternoon.
A hard breeze was blowing, turning the air chilly. Grace clutched her cotton cardigan close and headed toward Mo. He was leaning against the hood of his BMW, raking his hands through his hair. His polo shirt was untucked, and he looked agitated.
“Mo, this is crazy,” she said. “You have to let it go.”
“I think I’m onto something,” Mo said. “Get in the car. Please. I’ll explain on the way.” He climbed in and reached over to open the passenger-side door.
His voice was so urgent that she got in. “I can’t believe you went back there,” she said. “To bribe the guard!”
Mo brushed this off with a wave of his hand. “It wasn’t a bribe. I just asked if he could get me in touch with the guard who worked there before.”
“A hundred bucks! Who does that?”
Mo shrugged, accelerating down the road. A small silver unicorn hanging from the rearview mirror swung wildly. “He might not have done it if I had offered less. It’s not illegal. This guy is not just a coworker. He’s a friend, he said.”
“You have to let this mask thing go. I don’t know how to . . . Where are we going?”
“Not far. Newark. I know you think I’m barking up a nonexistent tree here, but
I want you to hear what I have to say. If I’d just told you on the phone, I was afraid you wouldn’t listen.”
Grace waited, frowning, feeling faintly nauseated at the smell of the pine air freshener in the car. They were speeding along Route 3. She tried to focus on the looming billboards, pushing back her irritation.
“I called Marla first,” Mo said. “Angie’s computer is missing.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, she had a computer with her in the cabin, Marla said. A small laptop—you know, the kind you can put in a woman’s purse. But it seems to have disappeared. After she died, Mortensen apparently got all the things she had left in the cabin—a backpack with a few things, her car keys—and said he would send it all to Angie’s mom. I don’t know if he sent the car keys. Maybe he sent that to the rental car company. Anyway, Marla said the computer must have been in the backpack. So I called Katherine in Houston to ask about what was sent to her.” He paused and ran his hand over his eyes. “I hated the thought of upsetting her. I just said we were wondering if her computer was in the backpack. I had to come up with a story to tell her because I didn’t want her involved in all this speculation.”
“You lied to her?”
“Well, I just said that the computer had an essay that I wanted to have.”
An essay you believe was on the computer, Grace thought, looking out the side window. The prone body of a dead deer came into view, its legs rigid. Grace winced, turning her attention back to Mo.
“Anyway, Katherine said she got a backpack with a few things, but there was no computer in it.”
“So where is it?”
“I don’t know. But when I spoke to Katherine, she said that Mortensen had called her and asked if she knew of any connection between Angie and Cinasat.”
“When?”
“Today.”
The Mask Collectors Page 15