The guard who’s leading us in yells, “You that old gent’s family?”
Susie, Rob, and I agree. Yes. Family. Rob puts his arm around my waist.
The guard gestures. “Over there.”
And yes, over there. It’s my father.
He looks all right. In fact, he looks pretty good. He has one of the few chairs in the place. It’s a metal chair left over from the aircraft hangar days; Daddy sits on it, knees together, body half bent forward in a concentrating posture, head cocked intently; he’s saying something to a small crowd of people grouped on the floor around him. It looks as if he’s telling a story. He gestures and they nod. He lifts an arm; they also lift arms. A story circle. They had story circles in Egypt; they happened late at night in the coffeehouses. I never got to see those, of course; no ladies admitted, but I knew what they looked like. Sometimes the workers at a dig would group together like that at lunchtime.
“Old gentleman,” the guard mouths at us. He leads us on a circuitous path through the room. Rob clutches my hand and squeezes.
Daddy has reached the crunch-line of his story. His voice wavers at us through the other din. “So when they finished chipping the hole in the door . . . you’ve seen pictures of that?”
A couple of heads in his class bob.
“And a light was held up to the hole . . .” He’s telling them the tale of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb. He looks up and sees us. He holds his arms wide. I think he says, “Some other members of my party.”
“I guess he was a famous old guy, huh?” the guard asks in my ear.
Daddy scrambles to his feet and one of the floor sitters grabs his chair.
Cherie doesn’t bother to be introduced. She fights her way through to him and kisses him on the cheek. She says, “Let’s get outta here, Crocodile Dundee.”
Daddy smiles at her. He seems to think Crocodile Dundee is a perfectly good name.
I start out with, “Well, I thought it was pretty bad, arresting him,” and I’m warming up for a speech about my eighty-six-year-old handicapped father, but Cherie puts her hand on my arm.
“Honey-pie, you don’t know. You don’t understand; I don’t understand; they don’t even have a clue; damndest case; I just can’t believe . . . Crocodile, you been sayin’ Egyptian spells at ’em?”
“No.”
Rob says, “What’re you talking about; what’s up?”
Cherie switches gears and becomes professionally reassuring. “Everything’s fine. Jus’ fine. They’re not charging Edward here with any crime. What’d he do? He insulted the sheriff. That sheriff is an insecure creep. He doesn’t want the story circulating about how he was insulted. And your dad didn’t exactly resist arrest. Too many people saw; he didn’t resist arrest.”
She adds, “I guess that rich guy—the museum owner one—put some pressure on, too.”
“But . . .” I say. I don’t really want to ask outright: There was this man on the floor. I thought he was dead. I thought that my father . . . well, that my father . . . “Somebody died,” I say.
“Listen, honey”—Cherie is forceful—“there aren’t any charges. Not any at all. And that man—he’s a museum trustee; his name is Marcus Broussard—he wasn’t dead.
“And, well, this is the part that’s so fucking weird—you’re not gonna believe it—they brought this Marcus Broussard to the hospital, stretched flat on a gurney, in a coma, half the time breathing, half not, cold as a fish; they turn their backs, and guess what—he disappears.”
I stare at Cherie, probably with my mouth open, but Rob interprets: “Somebody stole the body.” He and I saw a lot of old movie videos when we lived together in Santa Cruz.
Late afternoon sun slams down on the four of us where we are stopped in the middle of the gravel walk, halfway up to the parking lot. Faint chaotic musical noise travels from the prison. Cherie’s admirer, the guard on the upper road, starts sauntering our way.
Cherie says, “Nobody stole the body. He wasn’t a body. He wasn’t dead. He’d had some kind of attack. An episode, is what they call it. He was comatose, but not, what they say is, expired. They dumped him and this gurney in a private room and went off to get their machines—they’re real upset about this; they keep trying to explain it—and when they came back, he was gone. But they say they’re sure. He wasn’t dead.”
My father hasn’t seemed to be listening at all to this conversation. His attention has been occupied with attempting to scrape a blob of prison detritus off the sleeve of his tweed jacket. He looks up now and says, “Not dead? Oh, yes. Of course he was dead.”
“Crocodile, darlin’,” says Cherie, “that man was alive. They’re taking oaths on it.”
“No,” my father says firmly. “He’s dead. He was trying to eat life, but that won’t work. Maybe works for today, maybe for tomorrow, but that’s all. After that he’s dead.”
He smiles at Cherie, his little boy smile, as if he’s sharing a secret. “It’s a mug’s game, my dear, trying to eat life.”
Chapter 4
Egon Rothskellar, the director of Egypt Regained, is waiting for us at the gate of Innocente Prison.
Egon waits in style in a Lincoln limousine with bud vases and a bar and a chauffeur in a turban. He is quaffing something bubbly from his bar, and he holds up a bottle in salute. “You must,” he says to us, “must, must come back with me to my house. So distressing. Climb in.” The padded, gray-leather-lined door of the limousine is held open in invitation.
Daddy is thrilled. He is completely ready, once again, for Egypt Regained. He says he needs to look at his coffin lid. No arguments from me that he saw it five hours ago make any difference. “That man,” he says, “is gone; I know he is. Oh, I need to see.”
Cherie is fulsomely invited, but she declines. She announces that she has to get back to file a brief, and she and Susie drive off, hair flying.
So Daddy and I are buckled into Egon’s plushy vehicle, supplied with pillows, bottles of water. “A green drink,” says my parent. “I appreciate that.”
“So glad to have you,” Egon tells him. “Because today was regrettable, totally regrettable.” He punches some buttons on his cell phone and has a discussion about dinner. “Aram sandwiches. Plenty of pâté. Moroccan chicken.
“And now,” he says. “Oh, what a terrible day you have had, Dr. Day. If only I can make up for it just a little.
“Dr. Day is one of our most outstanding scholars,” Egon continues, addressing me. “We are so proud to have his coffin lid. So history-making.”
The coffin lid has been in Egon’s museum ever since Daddy managed to wangle it away from Cairo on an indefinite loan. My father preferred Egypt Regained over other, more prestigious museums because of Egon’s expensive climate control.
“I have a wonderful treat,” Egon says now. “Dear Dr. Day, are you all right?”
My father says that all right is a relative term, but Egon goes on talking. “Scott Dillard is staying with us. So intelligent, so fine. You know him, of course you do . . . So prestigious. You know, Scott has new publications and a new appointment to Yale and—rumor has it—the Hartdale.” He half whispers this name; it’s a magic one, that of a famous grant. “And he is here! At our just-established Scholars’ Institute!”
He pauses for emphasis, to which Daddy says, “The past is encroaching.”
“Oh, not at all.” Egon sounds defensive. “If you mean this terrible event today. Or the thefts. The disappearances of artifacts. I told you about them. So distressing. We have been so troubled. Artifacts disappearing, when we are sure they are well guarded. But we are taking steps.”
My father says he is worried about the artifacts, and Egon says, No, no, he should not worry. After which Daddy says he is concerned about his coffin lid, and Egon says, “No, no, completely attended to.”
Meanwhile I sit caressing my cold drink-bottle and wondering what Egon’s house will look like. I’ve been to the museum several times and was involved in a scary conf
rontation there once. But I’ve never seen the house itself, never been asked to a meal.
“And now,” he intones as a new person appears from some distant marble depths, “you’ve been waiting for this, I know, Dr. Day. Here is your wonderful colleague, someone you know of old. Dr. Scott Dillard, Yale University’s newest shining star.”
Egon stands aside and beams, as if he has produced an especially sleek rabbit out of his hat.
Scott Dillard looks reluctant.
He’s one of those handsome, sturdy men, about forty, stocky and energetic, with watchful gray eyes. He wears blue jeans and a black turtleneck sweater and a gold chain. Right away he bothers me. He looks familiar. He looks like one of my old boyfriends.
This boyfriend and I parted badly. I abandoned him back in Baker’s Landing, Tennessee, where he was the head of a Habitat for Humanity project I worked on.
Scott Dillard and I stare at each other. The atmosphere seems tense. Of course, today is an uncomfortable day, but maybe I also remind Scott of somebody. He holds a hand stiffly out to my dad and says “Oh, yes,” and “Hello.” Finally he projects a hand at me.
He has a surprisingly wiry handshake.
“Wonderful revelations from this young man,” says Egon. “History-making.”
I know something about Scott Dillard’s history-making-ness. In car, I was reading Egon’s newsletter, Egypt Regained for You, and sandwiched between appeals for contributions, he provides news items about the museum. “Record Attendances in March,” et cetera. There’s a major story about Scott Dillard, “One of our two wonderful Resident Scholars. Dr. Dillard, newly hired at Yale to be Focus Professor of Ancient Egyptian History. He will be with us for two months. We are eagerly anticipating his revelations about NEFERTITI. A big celebration for this. Tickets soon.”
The other Resident Scholar, it seems, is Rita Claus, the crazy lady who thinks my dad is a murderer.
Scott looks at Egon. If I knew Scott better, I’d say the glance was pitying.
We go on into Egon’s house, which is big and overstuffed. Like the museum, it contains a lot of slate and marble; it also has wall paintings that resemble tomb wall paintings, chairs that look like the ones in a tomb, couches copied from Tutankhamen’s collection. Everything is red, gold, or peacock blue; straight-backed; and signaling, I am ferociously uncomfortable. Tomb furniture was designed for the next life, not to be sat on by living people, or at least not modern ones. The Egyptians seem to have had better posture than we do.
The room is bathed in pink light from recessed overhead fixtures. I glance at Scott D. under this romantic illumination. He still looks handsome and I remember how much I hated that Habitat guy.
Daddy is bland. He takes another piece of chicken, he wipes his hands on a linen napkin. He says that he would like to see his coffin lid.
And eventually, everyone being sated on chicken and fried doohickies dipped in powdered sugar, we form a short trail behind Egon, headed for the museum and its Edward Day Room.
My father likes having everyone’s attention. “Someone was trying to kill that man,” he announces as we start walking.
“Dr. Day, you must tell me,” and “What exactly did you see?” Egon tries, reaching for Daddy’s arm.
But Daddy shrugs him off. “The ways are strange,” he declaims.
Egon is plaintive. “Oh, dear. I feel so very lost.”
Egon cheers up when he gets to demonstrate this. “It was a special idea of hers.” She is his grandmother, Gudrun Rothskellar, a lady whose portrait appears on bottle labels as lantern-jawed, ferret-eyed, and wearing a lace cap with ears. Gudrun, I have heard, made a bundle off a restorative tonic for women and left her fortune to Egon. “Very interested in Egypt,” he says now. “Very spiritual. In touch with meaningful forces.” He gestures. “The niches were her idea.”
This section of the underground passage is lined with open apertures that look like the ones in the catacombs in Paris. The Paris catacomb niches contain bodies, most visibly skulls. These openings hold Egyptian pottery plus some objects that look like skulls but are, I hope, ceramics. The walls are calcined an attractive shade of blue-green. There are candleholders at intervals whose candles end in crimped electric flames.
Scott gestures at the pottery. “A couple of good things here, Egon.”
“The ka will be distressed,” my father says.
Egon says, “I worry about earthquakes.”
My father says he is on his way to see his coffin lid.
Egon says, “You know, she is buried in the basement.” I gather that we are back on the subject of his grandmother. “In a special sublevel. A truly beautiful tomb. A marble structure on top, but inside many aspects of the New Kingdom. We must do a tour. I don’t usually invite people for tours.”
I decide I like the museum better when there’s nobody else here. The mummy and decayed wrappings exhibits seem less staged minus the lines of schoolkids making remarks like, “Yech. Where’s his eyes?” and “I bet when they take that glass lid off, it really smells.” The museum has some decent art objects that show up now. I stop to admire a bronze mirror with a handle shaped like a lotus plant.
“Excellent proportions. New Kingdom,” Scott remarks of the mirror.
He has begun acting interested in me, that business of looking to see if I’m listening, aiming his remarks my way. But he doesn’t get too close, which is a plus. I dislike men who stand too close.
We proceed at a leisurely pace through the big gallery, where I stop to admire a cartonnage of a cheerful fat lady, a great favorite of Daddy’s. A cartonnage is a mummy encased in plaster and painted to look like the person inside; this one has black bangs and a jaunty smile and sports too much mascara. She’s cheap and appealing. She looks like a cocktail waitress.
“Late. Not very fine,” Scott pronounces, smiling my way and missing the whole idea.
I start to explain that the lack of finesse is a big part of the charm, and am deciding not to do this when we’re interrupted by a commotion in the next room, Egon’s voice and my father’s voice. Daddy sounding like his old professor-self, “An intrusion. Appalling,” and Egon making birdlike squawks.
When we get there, Egon has become articulate. “No one had access. No one.”
We’re in the Edward Day Room; I can’t see anything amiss except for Egon jittering and waving his arms and my father standing erect and angry, like the captain of the ship.
Egon gesticulates, “Truly, Dr. Day, I do not understand.”
“Undo it,” commands my dad.
I look at my father’s coffin lid case and then inside it; I’m at first baffled. Everything seems okay; the coffin lid itself inclines in its usual place, appearing old, scratched, and unimpressive; the transparent shell above it shines. “There,” Daddy says, pointing.
And yes, there, on the lower corner of the lid, certainly is something that ought not to be present. A little intruder. A creepie-crawlie. “Oh,” I offer cheerfully, “a bug.”
This is met by silence from Egon and cries of “No, no,” from my dad.
“It crawled in there to die,” I continue. And then I look more closely. This little thing is not a bug but a snake, small and tightly curled, more a worm than a snake, except for a very definite snake’s head. And it hasn’t crawled anywhere for a while; it’s encased in plastic. It’s one of those stupid charm souvenirs they sell at tourist stands in places like Fisherman’s Wharf. A tiny red snake in a blob of plastic. A strip of paper is Scotch-taped onto it. By squinting, I can see that the paper contains hieroglyphs. I identify a couple of them; I remember that the bird with its tail down is a negative image.
“Red is bad,” a voice says from behind my shoulder. “Bad fortune. Red is the death color.”
The voice is not Scott’s, being an octave higher; I turn and identify. The voice belongs to Rita, the crazy lady who thinks my father is a killer. Also, one of the museum’s Resident Scholars.
She wears a purple sweater and silver
leather pants. Her black hair stands up almost straight.
“Oh, hell,” Scott says in her direction.
Egon gives her a thoughtful glance and turns back to the display case. “But how on earth . . .” He points at a shiny, professional-looking lock. “The case is secured. The guard and I have the keys. She is a reliable guard.”
“A house is open to him who has goods in his hand,” my father offers in a tight voice.
“Dear Dr. Day.” Egon sounds alarmed. “What can you mean?”
“Do you know, a person was trying to kill him?”
“You were,” Rita says.
Scott puts his hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “What person?” he asks. “Is the person here?”
My father says, “We must get my coffin lid case open.”
“What was the person wearing, Ed?”
Daddy doesn’t answer, but he pats Scott’s hand where it rests on his shoulder.
Scott turns to Egon. “You’ve got the key on you?”
Rita says, “Y’know what? Somebody should do that case for fingerprints.”
I’ve been thinking this, too, but now, looking hard, I can see that the surface is squeaky clean.
It comes up easily. Apparently, it’s very light.
And inside sits the nasty little plastic souvenir.
“Hey, hold it,” I call out, fishing in my pocket for a Kleenex to protect any fingerprints on the snake thing.
But already it’s too late. Egon, who is grasping the case with one hand, has reached under it with the other hand.
Rita mutters about a setup.
I’m not going to slip into suspecting Egon, who probably hasn’t even heard of fingerprints. He shakes the plastic blob to get the paper extended and starts trying to read it, moving his lips and frowning.
“Apep, the evil god,” my father says, watching the plastic snake. “Very strong. Dangerous. There should be a talisman against it.”
Scott takes the snake blob out of Egon’s hand. He squints at the paper. “Arhoo,” he reads. “Pain.” He starts waving one hand, something I guess he does when he concentrates. “Yes. A familiar inscription. A vulture, a reed shelter, a quail chick, a sparrow with tail feathers down; this denoting pain because . . .” He stops and looks at me. “Sorry. There I go again.”
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