by Aaron Elkins
When she finished, Miranda dropped into a chair. “So, somebody tell me. What’s this all about? Where do we go from here?”
“Miranda,” Gideon said, “if it didn’t get discovered until this morning, how do you know when it happened? Why couldn’t it have been after ten last night?”
“No, impossible. That’s when we locked up the place. I saw to it myself. And we have a good security system on the doors and windows, and a guard with a dog inside. Nobody got in after ten.”
Gideon nodded. “I see. And we know it didn’t happen before five, because that’s when we were all there in the room looking at it.”
“Exactly. It happened between five and ten. Had to.”
“Wait a minute,” Les said. “If your security system is so great, why didn’t the alarm go off when they opened the case?”
“Because there aren’t any alarms on the cases. They’re just on the doors and windows.”
“So, whoever did it, you’re telling me all they had to do was unscrew the front of the case and walk away with the bones? I mean, jeez, Louise.”
“Don’t look so amazed, Les. It’s pretty standard in museum work. In the first place, security costs money, something skeletal collections don’t have, and—”
“And in the second,” Leland interjected, “why worry, right? After all, who would want to steal a bunch of beat-up old bones?”
Miranda nodded with a wry smile. “That’s about it.”
The fingernail-clicking, which had gone on all this time, finally ceased. “If you have a night guard,” Callie said, “why didn’t he notice it was missing last night?”
“Because he didn’t know it was supposed to be there. That case has been sitting empty for almost a week. The exhibit only went into it yesterday morning, and nobody told Security about it.”
“Now wait, Miranda,” Harlow said slowly, “if it happened when you say it did, and the museum was closed to the public, that means that one of us—that is, one of the WAFA people—must be responsible.”
Leland raised his eyebrows at Gideon and tapped the side of his head with a forefinger. “Quick,” he murmured, “the man is quick.”
“Yes, I think we have to accept that, Harlow,” Miranda said patiently. “Any one of us who wanted it had the run of the museum. With everybody wandering around chattering during cocktails, anybody could have disappeared for half an hour without being noticed.”
“Honestly…” Callie uttered a disbelieving and unhumorous laugh. “Now really…I mean, the question is, who would…”
“No, Callie,” Leland interjected. “The question is, why anyone would—”
“No,” Les said, finishing the last of a raspberry Danish and licking his thumb, “the question is, who gives a shit? Oh, hey, sorry, Leland.”
“Really, Les—” Leland began.
Les shrugged him off. “Look, we’re not exactly talking about stealing Peking Man here, you know. What we’ve got here is a prank, no big deal. There was a lot of booze flowing last night. Some of the grad students had a few too many and figured it’d be funny. It is funny, sort of. They’ll give it back, don’t worry.”
“God, I hope you’re right,” Miranda said.
“Well, I can’t agree with Les,” Callie said, jerkily grinding out a half-smoked cigarette. “I don’t think it’s a joke, I think it’s a cry.”
Leland regarded her sadly, emitting a long, audible sigh. “A cry,” he said.
“A cry, a statement. For empowerment, for self-actualization. An appeal to be noticed, to be accepted as whole, valid individuals in their own right, not as, quote, students, end quote.” She pushed herself heatedly up from the table. “Look, I’m not saying that’s what it’s about on a conscious level, but on a deeper level, yes. I see it as an attempt to shake up the existing status-role hierarchy, the distribution of power, or rather the nondistribution of power.”
Empowerment. Self-actualization. Status-role hierarchy. From somewhere—the sociology department at Nevada? The business school?—Callie had appropriated these and similar terms, and made frequent and ardent use of them. She was reputed to run her own department using fearsome-sounding techniques like sociotechnical systems analysis and instrumented team facilitation. At the last WAFA meeting Gideon had attended, she had conducted a session called “Values Clarification for the Forensic Scientist: A Nonevaluative Simulation.” He’d sat through all three hours of it and come away thoroughly baffled.
Generally speaking, he kept well clear of Callie. No matter how impassioned she got, there was always a part of him that hung back, unwilling to buy what she was selling. The jargon might be right, but somehow the behavior didn’t quite jibe. And, genuine or not, all that concentrated earnestness could be overwhelming. After a conversation with her he tended to come away drained, while she seemed to go her way with more energy than ever.
“I believe the woman somehow feeds on one,” Leland had once remarked along similar lines, “like a veritable goddamn vampire.”
Her assessment of the theft left them in silence for several seconds. Harlow blinked nervously at her, one finger digging fitfully at a spot below his sternum. Leland stared out the window looking distantly amused. Les grinned more openly.
“Don’t you just love it?” he said to Gideon.
“Have the police been notified?” Leland asked.
“Well, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you,” Miranda said. She mooched a cigarette from Callie and lit it like someone not overly familiar with the process. A choky little cough when she inhaled confirmed this. “The fact is, I haven’t called them yet, and I’m not sure if I should. I think it’s just a prank too—”
Callie, drawing deeply on a fresh cigarette, shook her head theatrically.
“—and I think the bones will be returned,” Miranda went on. “At least, I’m hoping they are. Well, if that happens, I don’t see the point of a lot of publicity and fuss, maybe even a police record for some of the kids.”
“Call the police, Miranda,” Leland said firmly. “For one thing, they’re not ‘kids’; they’re in their twenties and thirties. For another, putting the fear of God into them just might have a salutary effect, even at this late juncture.” Miranda looked uncomfortable.
“No, I just can’t agree with that, Leland,” Callie said tightly.
“Somehow,” Leland said, “I fail to be astonished.”
Callie flushed but said nothing. Unlike the others, Callie let Leland get under her skin. An ability to take things with a grain of salt was not one of her strong points.
“Come on, give them a chance to return them on their own,” Les said. He scratched his short beard. Biceps bulged. “Come on, guys, let’s be honest: we all did things just as dumb when we were going to school.”
“I most certainly did not,” Leland said.
Les grinned at him. “Hey, I believe you, Leland.”
“Is there any insurance involved?” Gideon asked.
“No,” Miranda said. “Just on the cases, not the contents.”
He nodded, unsurprised. Objets d’anthropologie were not quite the same as objets d’art. What was the market value on a bunch of burned or otherwise mutilated human bones? What was the estimated replacement cost? And if you could arrive at one, just how would you go about replacing them?
“I’ll tell you what’s really worrying me,” Miranda said. “What’s the museum board going to say? And what about Jasper’s family, for God’s sake?”
“Ah,” Leland said, “the estimable Casper Jasper, et al.”
“As long as you’re worrying,” Callie said, “don’t forget about Nellie Hobert. He’ll have kittens when he hears.”
“Gadzooks,” Miranda said. “I hadn’t even thought about Nellie. Here he keeps the bones safe for ten years, gives them to us, and we lose them in exactly one day.”
“Nellie Hobert’s a good guy. He’s not going to make a fuss,” Les said, an assessment with which Gideon agreed. “And he’s not goi
ng to blame you, Miranda.” He wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and tossed it on the low table. “Look, why don’t we do this: announce to everyone that a joke’s a joke, but the bones have to come back. Tell them they have, say, two days to get them back to the museum, with no questions asked. If they’re not back by then, the cops get called in.”
After a few minutes’ discussion this sensible recommendation was agreed to by everyone; somewhat reluctantly in Leland’s case.
“All right,” Miranda said, “at the ten-thirty break I’ll make a general announcement about the theft and about what we’ve agreed to here. I just hope it all works out.”
“I was thinking,” Callie said, picking a shred of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. “It might help if I set up some voluntary encounter sessions this afternoon—give them an opportunity for some venting and catharsis. I’ll facilitate,” she added unnecessarily.
“Oh, do,” Leland said. “If that doesn’t do the trick, nothing will.”
“Drop dead, Leland,” Callie said.
John Lau arrived late that afternoon, delighted with the sunshine and glad to be out of Seattle. (“You want to guess what it was doing when I left?”) He had dinner in the lodge dining room with Julie, Gideon, and the founding members, where the talk was mostly about the missing bones. John listened with the look of a man who didn’t quite believe what he was hearing but was willing to be a sport and go along with it.
“Bone-napping,” he mused gravely over apple cobbler. “I’d really like to help out, folks, but I don’t think it’s a federal crime. Unless,” he added, as a smile finally broke through, “they cart the stuff across state lines.”
Les laughed. “Hey, Callie, how’d the encounter group go? Anybody ‘fess up?”
Callie had just lit up. She exhaled noisily, lower lip extended to blow the smoke upward, and shook her head. “How many showed up?”
“Well, there wasn’t much lead time, and people had already made other plans—”
“How many? Three? Four? Anybody?”
“Three,” Callie muttered.
“Plenty of venting and catharsis, though, I bet.”
“No,” she said defensively, “as a matter of fact there wasn’t. You can’t expect miracles at a first session. We’re talking about counterintuitive risk-taking behavior here, and you can’t build a conducive climate for that in a couple of hours. It takes time to establish new interactive norms.”
Leland regarded her with open distaste. “I hate to change the subject,” he said, “but need I remind anyone that the evening is slipping away? Are we going to play poker, or are we not? There are traditions to be upheld here.”
John turned to Gideon, surprised. “You people play poker?”
Gideon laughed. “Do birds eat worms?”
John surveyed the table of academics with undisguised avidity. “For money?”
Miranda, on John’s other side, waggled her eyebrows at him. “Care to join us, young man?”
“I wouldn’t want to horn in.”
“The more the merrier. You too, Julie.”
“Well—sure,” she said, then whispered to Gideon: “Will you make me one of those charts?”
“What charts?”
“You know, that shows which hand beats which hand.” “Why do I foresee disaster here?” Gideon said. “Harlow, we’ll use your cottage,” Leland announced. Harlow hesitated. “I don’t know, Leland. I think I’ll sit this one out.”
“Nonsense,” Leland told him. “We don’t want to keep other people up all night, and you have the most out-of-the-way cottage. Besides, I lust after your money.” Leland had had a few glasses of wine by this time.
Harlow smiled wanly. “Couldn’t I just give you ten dollars right now?”
“That,” said Leland, “wouldn’t be sporting.”
CHAPTER 5
“Whuff,” Gideon said, holding out his cup.
Julie refilled it for him from the ancient percolator. Making morning coffee was generally his job, but Julie had wisely quit the poker session early and been in bed by midnight. She’d won $9.50 too, which had mildly irritated him at the time, but in the end it made up for most of his losses. Leland, as usual, had been the big winner. Gideon had finally figured out why he was always so successful. With that perpetually joyless expression on his face, you couldn’t help thinking that this time his cards really were awful.
“I just hope none of the students were trying to find somebody to confess to last night,” she said. “All the professors were holed up in Harlow’s cottage gambling and boozing until three in the morning.”
“Two.”
“Three. You woke me up when you came in. You were quite cheerful at the time. Playful, too, although I must say that didn’t amount to anything.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Are you very hung over?” she asked sympathetically.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, yawning. The coffee was beginning to clear his head. “I could’ve used a little more sleep, though.”
“Well, I should think so.” She leaned her elbows on the little dining-room table, holding her cup in both hands. “Gideon, maybe I’m getting paranoid from living with you too long, but the whole thing sounds fishy to me.”
He scratched his cheek, playing her words back. “I think I missed something.”
“What happened to Jasper’s…remains, or whatever you want to call them. Why are you all so ready to assume it’s just a student lark?”
“What else?”
“Wouldn’t they have left a note or something to show it was a joke? They wouldn’t leave you all worrying about what happened to the bones. No, I think there’s more to it than that. I think somebody might not want them out there in full view with dozens of professional anthropologists peering at them.”
“You are getting paranoid.” He yawned again, sipped some more coffee, and shuddered. Percolators certainly made a powerful brew; you had to say that for them. “Or do you know something I don’t?”
“Maybe one of you—one of your friends, I mean—liked it better when they were out of sight in a drawer somewhere. Maybe somebody has something to hide.”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe Jasper wasn’t killed in that bus crash.”
Ah, he’d wondered if that was where she was heading. “That’s Jasper, all right, Julie. Teeth are like fingerprints; when you get a match, it’s a match. Besides, five highly competent anthropologists worked on that crash, and they don’t come any better than Nellie Hobert—”
She was shaking her head. “No, no, I’m not suggesting it wasn’t him, I’m suggesting maybe he didn’t die in the crash. Maybe—who knows?—maybe he was already dead when it happened, and someone’s afraid one of you bigwig experts will be able to tell it from the skeleton.”
Gideon looked wryly at her. “That would have made getting on the bus a little tricky, wouldn’t it?”
After a second she smiled. “Well, I didn’t say I’d figured it all the way out. But I don’t think you have either. I’m just surprised to see you jumping to conclusions, that’s all. That’s not like you.”
“Well, maybe you’re right.”
“But you don’t think I am.”
“No, I think it was just some of the kids.”
“Well, maybe you’re right.” She stood up. “Let’s talk about something important. Any chance you can break away this morning for a short horseback ride?”
“Well, I hate to miss the sessions.”
“We ought to get our muscles limbered up for Thursday.”
“Thursday? Oh, God, the trail-ride chuck-wagon breakfast.”
“You’ll love it.”
“I don’t know, I’m a city boy. Getting on a horse makes me nervous. They’re too damn high.”
“Now look, you. I’m taking vacation time so we can be together and have fun and relax, and that means—”
“That I’m going on a horseback ride. Yes, ma’am.”
“All right, then. I’ll let you off this morning, though.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek and winced. “Ouch. Take a shave, will you? Then let’s go get some breakfast, I’m starving.”
They got to the breakfast buffet at seven-thirty, drank some orange juice and some more coffee, and on Gideon’s suggestion carried their plates of fried eggs, hash browns, and biscuits outside to look for a place to enjoy the slanting, high-country sunlight for a while. They had the grounds to themselves, the other attendees preferring to eat inside. Most of them were from the Southwest; catching up on sunshine was not one of their priorities.
They found a reasonably comfortable low wall—actually part of the rock-and-mortar foundation of an old building that had once stood there in a grove of ponderosa pine—looking out over the near-deserted road to a broad meadow with a few fat cows grazing in it. Happily vacant of mind (was there anything that made one more contentedly empty-headed than watching cows?), Gideon ate his breakfast enjoying Julie’s quiet company and relishing the morning sun’s warmth on the back of his neck. He could feel it, with pleasure, on the rims of his ears. It had been a long winter on Puget Sound.
After a pleasantly indeterminate time they looked around to see Nelson Hobert come tramping ebulliently up the path, arms pumping, wearing a T-shirt that said: “Young at heart, other parts a little older.” Red bermuda shorts displayed lumpy knees and squat, bowed calves. With him were a group of half-a-dozen people, including three of his students from Nevada State, extraordinarily attractive females in their twenties, trailing behind him in a row. Gideon smiled, remembering something that a frankly admiring Les Zenkovich had once said: “I think the old geezer imprints them, you know? Like ducklings.”
Despite his being five-foot-five, bald, potbellied, billygoat-bearded, and unashamedly into his sixties, Nellie Hobert had a remarkable knack for attracting a steady stream of worshipful and attractive young women students. To his colleagues (and to Nellie himself, Gideon thought) it was a source of wonder and amusement; to some of the more predatory among them a source of envy. Hobert’s harem, they called them, which pleased Nellie immensely, patently unpredatory though he was.