by Alex Archer
“Amazing,” she said. The man across the table from her nodded. He was eating the French toast, too.
“So you’re the famous Annja Creed.” This came from a hawk-nosed woman a few seats down on the opposite side of the table. “I’ve seen your show—once. That picture in the program book doesn’t do you justice.”
Annja came up for air and mumbled a thank-you around a mouthful of poached egg. She definitely was going back for a second plate—a heaping one. On that trip she’d look around for Edgar; she’d tell him their dinner date would be in the hotel restaurant. No need to go outside with food as delicious as this.
Speaking of Edgar...she heard his name pop up in a few of the nearby conversations. She took a large pull from a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice a server poured, and met the gaze of the man directly across from her.
“Dr. LaVerne Steger, right? I think we spoke a few years ago at—”
“The Society for Medieval Archaeology Colloquium in Belguim. Yes!” His lopsided grin showed he was happy that she remembered him. “I’m looking forward to this afternoon’s lecture on the cultural contexts of medieval Britain and how it pertains to archaeological studies in America. Are you going to it, Miss Creed?”
Annja craned her neck this way and that, not seeing Edgar but hearing his name mentioned again.
“Edgar,” she said, not answering his question. “Dr. Edgar Schwartz. Have you seen him this morning?”
Dr. Steger paled, and the people seated around them stopped eating. Someone tipped over a water glass.
“Oh, you don’t know?” Dr. Steger’s face showed shock.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear.” This from the hawk-nosed woman. She put down her fork and folded her hands in front of her. “Dr. Schwartz is dead. He fell in the stairwell last night and broke his neck.”
Annja felt the color drain from her face.
“The poor dear,” the woman went on. “He’d been dead a few hours before someone came across him. He’d be eating with us now if he’d only taken the elevator.” She paused. “He would have loved the French toast. Well...he would have loved everything here.”
Annja’s thoughts shot to the two men in the lobby in the department-store suits. They were police.
“Excuse me,” she said, pushing away from the table, her appetite dissolving in a flood of grief. All of a sudden the murmur of conversations and the clink of silverware that had sounded so pleasant moments before became a thunderous wave pounding at her senses. Annja focused on keeping her breakfast down and stumbled from the room, just as the keynote speaker came to the podium and addressed the gathering.
“Welcome to Madison, Wisconsin, for the annual convocation of the Great Lakes States Archaeological Conference. We hope you—”
The two detectives were still talking to the manager, the taller jotting something in a notebook, then closing it and putting it in an inside jacket pocket. Bright light spilling out from the hotel’s restaurant off the lobby haloed them.
Both men were lean, broad shouldered and had short hair. There the comparison ended. The tall one was somewhere in his sixties, with long fingers and a long face that reminded Annja of the Lenny Briscoe character from Law & Order. She placed the shorter one at thirty...at the outside. He had boyish features, and his eyes met hers when he turned toward the bank of elevators.
She stepped up to intercept them. “Excuse me...”
“Annja Creed,” the older detective said.
She nodded, then realized that he’d read her name off the badge she’d pinned to her blouse. “You’re here about Edgar.” She put her hands in her pockets. “Dr. Edgar Schwartz.”
The older one gave her a visual up and down and stepped around her and to the elevators. Annja now had a clear view into the restaurant. Rembert was there, eating a plate of eggs and looking at something on his iPad.
“I’m a colleague of Dr. Schwartz’s,” Annja offered. “Edgar and I go back some years.”
She received a nod in response from the younger detective.
She waited, hoping he’d volunteer some information. When that didn’t happen, she continued, gesturing with a tip of her head toward the ballroom. “The people in there, they said Edgar died last night.”
“Broke his neck when he fell in the stairwell.” This came from the tall one behind her who’d punched the up button. “That’s what the M.E.’s initial report says. Pretty clear-cut accident, she says. Chief sent us out just to confirm.”
Annja fixed her gaze on the young officer. He had a handsome, angular countenance and animated earth-brown eyes. She felt an instant connection, and she took a step closer. He had on a hint of soft, musky cologne that agreeably tickled her nostrils. “Clear-cut. But maybe you don’t think so. Do you, Detective?” she asked him. It was a guess, and she tried to get a reading from his expression.
“Yes, actually, I do think so. Accidents happen all the time. But we caught the call and so we’re looking into it to be certain, Ms. Creed,” he continued, his face turning hard and shattering that connection she’d felt. “This is a police matter. Routine, sure, but a police matter nonetheless. You can learn about it in the newspaper tomorrow or the day after. We’re not at any liberty to discuss it. Regulations, you understand.”
“Please tell me something,” Annja pleaded. There was a quiet intensity in her voice.
“Sorry,” he cut back. “Contact the coroner’s office. Maybe she’ll cave and release something to you.” The elevator chimed, ending the conversation. He gave Annja a curt nod and brushed past her.
“You didn’t ask me.” This came from the older detective, who was holding the elevator door open for his partner. “I don’t think it was an accident. I’m pretty sure your Dr. Schwartz was murdered.”
The detectives got into the elevator and the doors closed behind them.
Chapter 4
Annja impatiently watched the light above the elevator; it indicated the detectives stopped on the tenth floor. She pushed the up arrow and waited for the next one.
Murder.
Annja was on intimate terms with death, a macabre partner that had held her dance card ever since she’d mystically inherited the sword that once belonged to Joan of Arc. The blood on her hands would never wash off—not that any of the men she’d killed had given her a choice.
But Edgar wasn’t part of that world. He was just an archaeologist, her friend and colleague, inoffensive and retiring.
Murder?
The elevator chimed and a door opened.
Annja stepped in, hitting the button for the eighth floor.
Murder? Edgar?
Edgar Schwartz was a lifelong resident of New Mexico. Annja had met him quite a while ago filming a segment for Chasing History’s Monsters. Tourists claimed to have seen chupacabras south of Albuquerque, and it was a ripe topic for her show. Edgar’s specialty was the Anasazi, which history had mysteriously swallowed. He’d indulged Annja and took her out into the desert to where the chupacabra was reported and where his students were sifting at a kiva. Annja had liked Edgar immediately, and their friendship strengthened through the years. They reconnected at archaeology conferences and at southwest digs she visited on her own or for Chasing History’s Monsters. They’d corresponded often through emails, sometimes chatting about archaeology news, always discussing dishes they’d sampled and favorite restaurants. Edgar’s appetite matched or exceeded Annja’s, though while she remained slim and athletic, he had not.
She exited the elevator on the eighth floor and returned to her room, where she tugged her laptop out of her duffel. A quick search showed nothing about Edgar Schwartz’s death, but she found a blog posting he’d made early yesterday, about arriving at the conference, passing on the tour because he was tired and perusing the menu. The last entry mentioned how much he was looking forward
to dinner with the TV archaeologist Annja Creed.
She closed the laptop down and left the room, turning toward the elevator and then spinning and heading instead to the stairwell. Indeed, she was on intimate terms with death—she just hadn’t expected to be touched by it in Madison, Wisconsin.
Her stairwell landing was shadowy, but the landing below and the one above were lit. Annja shivered involuntarily as she leaned over the railing, looking down. They said Edgar had been found dead at the bottom. Sucking in a deep breath, and finding the air a redolent mix of stale odors and antiseptic floor cleaner, she took the steps up two at a time and came out on the tenth floor. No sign of the police detectives, no open hotel-room doors.
But the Arms was a big place, and the hallways branched in different directions. She turned left, made another left at the next corridor toward where she knew the elevators would be and heard muted voices coming from an open door. She recognized the voice of the young detective who had been rather curt with her.
For a heartbeat Annja considered slipping up quietly and eavesdropping; she might gain a little more information. But she squared her shoulders, dismissed that notion as juvenile and lengthened her stride to stop squarely in the doorway.
Edgar’s room was tidy, almost as if the maid had just readied it or he’d not had time to settle in.
The detectives ceased their conversation and stared at her. In the silence that settled between them, Annja noted the faint chime of an elevator, but it was for the floor above. She heard a siren, a fire truck from the sound of it, in the distance then growing in volume, joined by another before fading as they moved deeper into the city. A radio played from a room or two down the hall. The tune was Stevie Wonder’s. A snippet of the closing lyrics came through. “Boogie On Reggae Woman” was the song. From the seventies, she thought. Edgar would have favored it.
The young detective was giving her a serious look. Realizing she wasn’t moving on, he shook his head. “Police investigation, I told you. Wait until tomorrow’s paper and—”
“He was a friend,” Annja said.
“Good to have friends.” He stepped between her and the door frame, squeezing out into the hall. “I bet he was friends with a lot of the people at this conference. But they have the sense and courtesy to stay downstairs.”
The problem with detectives was they didn’t have the little name badges that uniformed cops wore. Annja wanted to address him by something.
“Look—” she started.
“Lieutenant Greene,” he supplied.
“Look, Lieutenant Greene, I—”
“—was a friend of the deceased. I get that.” His expression softened, but only for a moment before it became stoic again. “And like I said in the lobby, I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, no matter how routine it is. It’s policy. If you’ll excuse me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Manny, I’m going back down, to talk to this—”
“—Professor Chia something,” the tall detective interjected.
“Yeah. I’m going to pull him into the manager’s office. Meet me there when you’ve got this packed to go.” Then he was gone down the hallway. He touched the elevator button, and like magic the door instantly opened for him.
Annja was glad to see the door close and the contraption whisk him away.
Chia something? Dr. Chiapont? Peter? Did he know something about what happened to Edgar?
She stepped into Edgar’s room.
The older detective was scribbling in his notepad. On the desk next to him was a file folder about a half-inch thick. Edgar’s suitcase was open in the center of the bed. It looked as if nothing had been removed from it, clothes neatly folded. She craned her neck, but she couldn’t see into the bathroom; the door was halfway closed.
The oldies station aired a brief commercial about a local auto lube service, then Morris Albert’s “Feelings” cut in. Annja wrinkled her nose; she hated the song.
“I am... I was—”
“—a friend of this Professor Schwartz,” the detective said. “You’ve mentioned that a few times, if I recall.” The detective had a long face, heavily lined more from the outdoors than the years, Annja decided, based on its ruddy color. She thought it made him look like a piece of carved tree bark. His eyes were dark and set wide, his forehead high and his hair thinning and gray.
“I need to know, Detective—”
“Manny. Manny Rizzo.” He closed the notebook and sighed deeply, the sound reminding her of dry leaves blown across parched ground and adding to her image of a tree. He shut the suitcase and snapped the latches. “You’re not going to give up, are you? Figure I’m the easy mark, eh? A softy. Arnie...Lieutenant Arnold Greene’s in charge of this investigation and wouldn’t give you the time of day. But me, you figure—”
“He was a friend,” Annja repeated.
“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
“A good friend.” Annja didn’t have too many good friends, and now she was down one.
“Look, Ms. Creed, I know who you are. A beauty queen or supermodel or somesuch who traipses around Egypt and the Amazon pointing out old buildings and creepy—”
Annja felt her cheeks reddening. Her blood simmered whenever people didn’t take her seriously, didn’t think she was a real archaeologist.
“Listen to me,” she cut in. “I know...knew...Edgar pretty well, better than anyone here at this conference, most likely.”
“You’re not a relative.”
“No.”
“Not sure if they’ve notified his next of kin yet.” Detective Rizzo scratched his nose. “Hope they took care of that, though, from the station. People downstairs are probably tweeting and texting and whatever else they can do on their little telephones. Hate to have his wife find out by—”
“Edgar was divorced.”
“—or his kids hear by—”
“—and grandkids.” Annja remembered Edgar happily showing her pictures of them.
“Yeah, hate to have them find out on Facebook or wherever. I better check to make sure the notification’s gone out.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in some numbers, muttered a curse and tried it again, his fingers seeming too big for the buttons.
Annja blatantly listened in. The conversation took Annja aback. The investigation was indeed very fresh if Edgar’s sons were only just being notified now.
He finished and dropped the phone in his pocket.
“Anything else, Ms. Creed? I’m working here.”
She took the edge off her voice. “What makes you, Detective Rizzo, think it was murder? I take it Lieutenant Greene doesn’t share your—”
“He’ll come around,” the detective said. “Right now he’s going with the M.E.’s preliminary report. All by the book, Arnie is. But he’ll come around real soon. Bright boy. Before the rest of the morning’s gone, he’ll—”
“What makes you think that Edgar...that Edgar was—”
Detective Rizzo picked the suitcase off the bed and rested it next to the desk, then put his back to her, not out of rudeness she realized, but because he was looking around to see if there was anything else to close up and take with him. He ran his long fingers through what little hair he had and let out another leaf-blowing breath.
“Detective.” Annja tried again. “What makes you think—”
Detective Rizzo turned, a perturbed expression marking his long face. “Oh, for the love— Seriously? Why would you think it wasn’t murder, Ms. Creed?”
Annja answered with a question. “Was there a power outage last night in the hotel?”
“No.” He shook his head. “We checked.”
“Then Edgar took the stairs for some other reason. He wouldn’t normally have done that.”
Manny offered a wry smile that deepened the crinkles around his eyes. “
Lieutenant Greene is a young man, Ms. Creed. And so he doesn’t understand old men. We don’t take the stairs unless we have to. Especially fat old men like your Professor Schwartz.”
“Edgar would have taken the elevator—”
“If he would’ve taken any way out of the hotel at all. My guess was he hadn’t intended to go anywhere. He’d just ordered room service,” the detective continued. “Wouldn’t think a man like your Professor Schwartz would abandon a fancy meal.”
Another siren wailed from out on the street, an ambulance by its tone. It grew until it seemed on top of them, then cut out.
“So someone took him into the stairwell,” Annja mused aloud. “Dragged him or forced him or chased him. Someone killed him there and tried to make it look like an accident.”
“That’s my thinking.” He straightened his tie, folded his notebook and stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Laptop’s missing, but the cord is here. Found the cord on the floor. Another clue some amount of foul play’s involved. The perp maybe was an amateur because he left the cord. But it’s too early to say just what went down. All just guesses on my part.” He sighed. “And you shouldn’t be saying anything about any of this. I don’t need Lieutenant Greene on my wrinkled ass because I talked about a case to a movie star.”
Annja nodded. “I won’t say anything.” She looked around the room for...for what? “I...I want to help.” Need to help, she decided. All thoughts of attending the conference had vanished.
“Chasing History’s Monsters, right? That’s the name of your television show.”
She didn’t answer, still glancing around, eyes recording all the details and searching. There was the laptop cord on the desk, next to the folder. Edgar’s folder? “He always brought a laptop everywhere,” she said. “Never an iPad or tablet. An old laptop, because for whatever reason he liked its operating system and didn’t mind its bugs.”
“Sounds like you really did know him.”