by Alex Archer
He handed the phone back to the girl when he was done. The girl, Keesha, was now rooting through her purse. “Here!” She handed Annja a small notebook and delved again, likely for something to write with. “Could you sign this? Could I get your autograph? Could you write To Keesha on it? OhmyGodohmyGod.”
Annja obliged her, finding an empty page. She noticed that the other pages had sketches: an eye of Horus, an Egyptian-stylized bird, a crude rendering of King Tut’s death mask. “You like archaeology, Keesha?”
“Like it? I love it. I live it. I’m going to be an archaeologist. I want to be just like you. I’ve seen every one of your episodes, and I have the DVD sets, too, the ones with the behind-the-scenes sections. OhmyGod.”
“She’s on TV?” This came from the boy, who suddenly seemed more interested in Annja.
“I’ve watched everything I could find on mummies, too. Egypt is going to be my specialty, the Karnak temples.” She babbled on for several minutes, and Annja listened attentively.
Annja had learned to never be rude to fans, particularly ones with a real interest in archaeology. Every time she thought her Chasing History’s Monsters was too sensational and not serious enough, something like this happened...someone showed her that the program made a difference or meant something to someone.
“And I’ve loved everything you’ve done on the Nile Delta and Kufu and—” Keesha came up for air. “I’m going to be a sophomore at Lakeside High, and we don’t have much chance to study archaeology. But our library has a good selection, and the Milwaukee museum is wonderful. They had a King Tut exhibit and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, they weren’t really the scrolls—they were reproductions. The real scrolls will never be put on display like that or let out of the country. But these looked amazing, and the tour was great, and some people thought it was horrible when they discovered they’d paid a separate fee to see the exhibit when it wasn’t the ‘real’ scrolls. But they did have a real section of a scroll. A real piece of it. I went twice.” She took another breath.
“So you’re on TV?” the boy asked. “Is it one of those reality shows? Maybe I should have my picture taken with her.”
Keesha just glared at him. “Are you on Facebook? I didn’t think to look you up on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook, do you think I could—”
“Of course you can ‘friend’ me,” Annja said.
“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.”
Annja chatted with the girl for several more minutes, asking about her studies and recommending books. The girl soaked it in.
“So, why are you here?” Keesha asked. “In Lakeside? Are you trying to find the big snake? ’Cause I can tell you it doesn’t exist. You’d be wasting your time.” She nodded toward the shop Annja had been about to enter. “As silly as crop circles. You’re not here for that, are you?”
“No, actually, I came to Madison for the Great Lakes States Archaeological Conference, and—”
“There’s an archaeological convention in Madison?” Keesha squealed. “How did...? I didn’t know... Where was it publicized? Can I get in? Is it expensive? I don’t have a lot of—”
“Here.” It was Annja’s turn to reach into her purse. She pulled out her badge. “Use mine.” She opened the plastic and stripped off the label that had Annja Creed printed on it. “Just write your name on it and see if it will work.” The conference was quite expensive, likely out of the teenager’s reach. If Annja wanted to get back in, she could buy another pass. But she suspected the conference was over for her. “I happen to know that there are two programs tomorrow on Egypt and the ruins they’re finding under residential areas.” Fortunately neither happened to be Peter’s seminars, and so they were still scheduled, last she’d heard.
The girl covered her mouth again. “OhmyGod. I’ve read about that, homes collapsing because tomb robbers are tunneling underneath them.” She looked at the badge. “I can go? Really?”
“It’s downtown at the Madison Arms Hotel. Hopefully, the badge will work for you. Well, you’ll have to find a way to Madison, but—”
“Mitch’ll take me, won’t you? Mitch has a license and a car and he can drive and take a book and read in the lobby while I go to the seminars and it’ll be great and so very awesome.” The girl’s lower lip trembled. “OhmyGod.” She shut her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. “But if I have your pass and you’re in Madison for the conference, how are you going to go to the conference and—”
“I think I’m done at the conference,” Annja said. “I think I’m going to spend a day or so here.”
“Not on the big snake?”
“No, not on the snake.”
The girl brightened. “Oh, the mounds in the lake!”
“There you go,” Annja said.
“Awesome.”
“Whatever.” This from the boy. “Keesha, can we just—”
“Okay, okay, the beach, I get it. And then the carnival. But tomorrow you’re taking me to Madison.”
“Whatever.”
“OhmyGod. Thankyousomuch, Annja Creed. Thankyouthankyou.”
The boy tugged her down the street in the direction of the lake.
Chapter 18
Annja finally pushed open the shop door, stepped inside and saw an incredible jumble of...stuff.
“Help you?” This came from a bearded middle-aged man with a bald head that gleamed in the overhead fluorescent light. He had a slight paunch, rounded shoulders and was wearing a Batman Lives T-shirt that had seen many better days.
The shop smelled fusty, and Annja forced down a sneeze. She walked across a wooden floor that creaked with each step, stopping in front of the counter. “I hope you can help. I’m trying to find out about—” The word Joe died in her throat. On display in the glass counter in front of her were coins. Most of them were quarters issued to commemorate the various states—and most of those were the Wisconsin variety—with a few silver dollars in the mix. There were a couple of silver certificates in plastic sleeves, and against a piece of velvet was a gold circle a little larger than a silver dollar showing a half-wolf, half-man figure—the same size as the circles Edgar had. She was surprised she spotted it, what with all the other items strewn around it.
She pointed to the coin.
“Oh, that’s reeeeeeeeeeeeal valuable,” Sully said. “It’s reeeeeeeeeeal gold. If it was for sale, well, that’d cost you a cool thousand. And it’s not for sale.”
“Do you have more?”
“Ones like that? I did. Sold them late last summer. Keeping this one for myself. It looks good in the counter, don’t you think? Sentimental, you understand. My cousin gave them to me.”
“Your cousin Joe gave them to you?”
“Yeah, Joe. Rest his soul.”
“Them. Gave them to you. How many did you have?”
He gave her a mean look. “What’s it to you? I’m not selling this one. Last real good thing I got of my cousin’s. That and an ugly old pot that I’m using for a spittoon.” He reached under the counter and pulled out a silver flask, unscrewed the top and took a long drink. “To Joe,” he said as a toast, taking a second swallow then putting the cap back on.
Annja smelled the whiskey.
She glanced around. To her left was a shelf filled with political memorabilia, including a bobblehead Ronald Reagan, a plush Bill Clinton doll and a case of presidential campaign pins, some of them quite old—Harding, Coolidge, “Let’s Back Ike” and a Landon Knox Kansas, whom she’d never heard of. Amid the junk, Sully had some truly expensive and valuable pieces. She hoped he had good security.
“Where did Joe get the gold circles?” she asked. “Do you mind telling me that?”
He shrugged.
Annja looked around for something to buy. “I’ll take that old postal coupon. How much?”
“Twenty.” He t
ook it out of the case.
She paid for it and put it in her purse. “The woman across the street told me Joe was killed last fall.”
“Sucked,” Sully said. “Sucked a big onion, it did. Not just killed. Murdered. Still haven’t caught the guy. Probably thought Joe was loaded.”
“Because of the gold circles?” Annja pointed to the glass case.
“That and some other stuff probably.” Sully folded his arms across his chest and shook his head as if he was disgusted. “But he wasn’t loaded. Joe, he didn’t keep anything for himself, you know. He was gonna be a priest at one point. Didn’t work out, but he hung on to the poverty thing. Kept enough to live on, barely, and gave everything else away. Friggin’ everything. Probably why some bugger thought Joe was loaded. Didn’t even buy paperbacks. Checked stuff out of the library. Worked on the pots across the way ’cause he liked messing with the clay wheel, he told me. They didn’t pay him much, not what he should’ve earned. He only needed enough money for food, rent and a few hobbies, is what he always told me.”
“Where did Joe...where did Joe get them, the gold?” Annja tried to keep the excitement out of her voice.
“You want to buy anything else?” Sully raised his eyebrows. “I got some old gold rings and such if you have to have gold.”
“How about that ten-dollar silver certificate? How much is that?”
Sully brightened. “I can let you have it for two hundred. And that’s a bargain. Issued out of a LaSalle, Illinois, bank that doesn’t exist anymore. In good shape.”
She passed over her credit card and he handled the sale. This little trip was going to put a serious dent in her savings when it was all done. The silver certificate was in a hard plastic case and Annja added it to her purse.
“Do you know where Joe got them, the gold pieces?”
“Persistent as hell, aren’t you?”
Annja smiled.
“You remind me of that big old guy who bought most of Joe’s other stuff, him and his friend. They wanted to know where Joe got it all, too. Even went over to the pottery place and talked to Joe about it. Pestered the heck out of him, from what I understand.”
Annja rested her fingers on the counter. “Sully—” She ran her thumbs in a circle against the glass. “The big old guy was a friend of mine, dead now, maybe dead because of those gold pieces. In fact, probably because of them. His friend, too, dead. Maybe your cousin died because of them.” All connected, she thought once more. “So, I’d like to know where they came from. And if I were you, I’d put that piece of gold away, not leave it out on display. It might not be healthy.”
Sully blanched. “He found the gold, young lady! Joe didn’t steal it or nothing. He found it in the lake. That big guy and his friend, they wanted Joe to show them right where the gold came from. I don’t know if Joe was gonna take them out on the lake or not. Joe didn’t say. And then he was dead, Joe.”
A car honked on the street, and Annja turned to see someone jaywalking.
“And that ‘big guy?’ Did you ever see him after he and his friend bought the gold? Did he return?”
Sully looked thoughtful. “I remember him coming back after Joe was killed, once, asking questions I didn’t have answers to, and saying ‘sorry for your loss’ and all that. Looking for more of them gold pieces, they were. But I wasn’t going to sell neither one of them the last one. Hell, between the two of them, they’d already bought seven of the eight pieces Joe’d given me. Even I draw the line somewhere. Kept the one for myself. I sold them the bracelet, though. Real pretty, it was, gold and silver and had jade on it.” He smiled slightly. Annja wondered if he was proud of the fact he wouldn’t cave and sell the last one or happy for the money he’d made off the other pieces.
“Sully, how much did you charge them for the pieces?”
“I might be overpriced on my stuff, but I wasn’t gonna rob them blind. Three hundred for each coin, five for the bigger one with the bird on it. The gold in them was only worth, oh, four to five hundred by the weight, but they looked old, you know, and had pictures on them. Not coins, money, I can tell that, but old. Age has a value. The bracelet, now, I’d taken it to the jewelry store, and she offered me a thousand for it. So I brought it back, marked it at two thousand, and that fellow who was with the big old guy didn’t bat an eye and paid me for it.”
Annja felt clammy. She remembered word for word what Sully had said when she pointed to the coin he had left: “Oh, that’s reeeeeeeeeeeeal valuable. It’s reeeeeeeeeeal gold. If it was for sale, well, that’d cost you a thousand.”
She kept herself from saying that thousand would have been a steal. If they were indeed Mayan, and indeed from Wisconsin, she’d guess the piece under the glass—and the three she’d seen in the police evidence bag—were probably each worth at least three to five times that much. Maybe not enough to kill over. But the bracelet? If it was Mayan, too...
He folded his arms. “The big old guy and his friend, they tried real hard to get me to sell this last one. Said name your price, they did. But Joe was family, and family is worth more than money, you know.”
“Family is priceless.” Annja had never had one. “Keep the piece close. For all sorts of reasons, Sully, keep that very close.”
“Oh, I will. Hey, and I remember them asking for Joe’s dive records. I couldn’t help them there, either.”
“So Joe was an avid diver? That’s how he found the coins, going deep?”
“Yeah. One of his hobbies. He liked to dive the lake, liked the lake. He’d get pottery designs from the stuff around the shore and such. Me and Joe...we were always interested in the lake, obsessed maybe. Obsessed but for very different reasons.”
Annja dropped her head, taking a last look at the piece of gold under the counter. “Those dive records would have helped,” she said softly.
“Well, I couldn’t help the big old fellow, not then. But I can help you now. I didn’t have Joe’s stuff then. But I’ve since got all of it...except for his clothes, I gave that stuff to the Saint Vincent DePaul center over by the church. Joe’s old landlord dumped it all on me, not that there’s all that much. A couple of cardboard boxes...that’s what I kept. Diving logs are there. I hung on to them, thought that big old guy would come back. I was gonna sell them to him.”
Annja gripped the counter. “Can I see them? Can you sell them to me?”
Sully got a far-away look in his eyes. “I heard that girl out in front of my shop, making a big deal about you. A TV archaeologist, she said.”
Annja sighed. “How much are these diving logs going to cost me?” So Sully thought she was rich, that television equated to a lot of money. He was going to bilk her out of as much as he could. And she’d pay it.
“I heard her say you’re a star on that program Chasing History’s Monsters. Seen it, but I didn’t recognize you.”
“Yes,” Annja admitted. “I’m with the program. But what about the dive records?”
“Oh, you can have them, but it’ll cost you. I ain’t looking for money out of this deal, lady. I’m looking for something else entirely.” He unscrewed the top of the flask again and raised it to her in another toast.
Annja left the shop, a myriad of emotions dancing through her—she was anxious, exhilarated, tentative, hopeful and, overlaying all of that, unable to shake her grief over Edgar. Her old friend had to have known the pieces were worth more than what he paid. But she also knew he wasn’t a wealthy man and probably couldn’t have afforded to cover their true cost. And just what were they worth? What was the demand for Mayan pieces?
She’d check in with Manny, see what the expert from the Milwaukee museum had to say today. And do a little digging on her own at the hotel tonight, contact a few sources. But first... She pulled her cell phone out and punched in Rembert’s number. Again it went to voice mail.
“I hope you�
�re not heading back to New York,” she said. “I hope you’re still in Madison, Rem. I need you. I’ve got a project, and I desperately need your help.” She hated to admit the “desperate” part, but she was. The mystery was burning ever brighter in her soul, just like it had in Edgar’s. “Call me as soon as you get this message. Please.”
Chapter 19
In a spacious suite on the fifth floor, Garin stared at a shield that sat on a bureau protected with a starched white linen cloth. The bureau would normally have had a large-screen television on top of it. The room’s occupant said he had asked for the television to be removed. He wanted flat spaces on which to display the wares.
“This man—” Garin indicated Rembert “—is my partner, and he will help authenticate it for me.”
“I saw him taking video of the conference yesterday.”
“At my request,” Garin said. If Rembert had trouble with the ruse, Garin was pleased that he did not show it. “He is also here now at my request.”
“Certainly, then.” Willamar Aeschelman handed Rembert a pair of white cotton gloves. He was also wearing a pair.
It was a “heater” shield, so named by European museum curators because they thought the shape looked like an iron used on clothes. The top edge was flat and straight, two feet across, the side edges gracefully convex curving and coming to a point at the bottom, all of it forming a triangle about thirty inches long.
“It is genuine. I guarantee that.”
“We shall see,” Garin said. “Mr. Hayes?”
Rembert moved closer, bringing his face within inches.
“Not too close,” Aeschelman warned. “I don’t want your breath affecting it. A true museum piece.”
“How old are you claiming this to be?” Garin did not take his eyes off the shield.
“It is from the 1400s, obviously French, obviously rare.”
“Obviously,” Rembert said. “Why do you think it is so obvious?”
Garin hid his displeasure. He’d told Rembert to say as little as possible, to nod and to pronounce the shield authentic and worth buying if Garin gave the sign.