Conspiracy to Murder

by Heather Graham

  “I’ve seen the news and read a few of the papers. Yeah, what a great story. But there was no mummy walking around. That was Vivian. And speaking of her, how’s she doing? Have you heard anything?” Harley asked.

  “Doing well, I understand. Awake and aware and lording it over the hospital staff. She’s going to be fine.”

  “Thank God. But what’s she said?”

  “Nothing. She remembers nothing. Who knows what’ll happen eventually? They’ll have shrinks in there and everything. At the moment, though…nothing.”

  “But she’ll be okay. That’s the most important thing.”

  “Of course,” Jensen agreed. Then he said, “So, what are you doing tonight?”

  “What am I doing?” Harley repeated. She felt a strange tension. She’d almost dated Jensen when they were on the expedition. Almost. There was nothing to dislike. He was good-looking, he was smart, he was alpha-fun and…

  She did like him.

  But she suddenly dreaded the fact that he might be asking her out. There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with dating Jensen. They’d teased and they’d flirted and come close. But now she wanted to retreat; she wasn’t sure why. It must be everything that had happened, that was happening…

  She didn’t want to turn him down. She wanted to be friends. Maybe she even wanted the relationship option left open.

  “I’m, um… I’m not sure,” she said. “I came here this morning because you said you needed me, and I want to help.”

  “This is social.”

  “Oh. Well, um—”

  He laughed softly. “Don’t worry. I’m not putting you on the spot. Not tonight. We wanted the whole group to get together. Those of us who were the last people with Henry,” he added.

  “Oh. Okay. Well, you know that my cousin’s girlfriend owns a place and—”

  “Yes! That’s right. What a great idea! Finnegan’s on Broadway. We were planning on meeting somewhere midtown, but once you’re on the subway, who cares? We talked, Belinda and Joe and Roger and I. And we thought we owed it to ourselves and to Henry to have our own private little event. Can you get us a corner at Finnegan’s? A reserved corner?”

  “Anyone can make reservations. But—”

  “But you’ll be someone they care about when you make the reservation.”

  “It’s a pub. That means hospitality. They care about everyone.”

  “But more about you.”

  She gave up. “No problem. I’ll make the reservation.”

  “Cool. So you’ll join us all?” Jensen asked her.

  “Sure. It’ll be great.”

  Would it be great? she wondered. What was going on with Vivian now? The woman hadn’t died; she was doing well. If that had changed, surely they’d all know.

  And the majority of the museum was open, although there was a little time left for the cops to come back and look over the new stuff for the Henry Tomlinson section. Still…

  “Love ya!” Jensen said, grabbing her by the shoulders and planting a quick kiss on her lips. “I’m so glad you’re in for tonight! I was afraid that you wouldn’t be.”

  “Nope, I’m in,” Harley assured him. “Anyway, I thought there was work you needed me to do?”

  “Yeah, look around the exhibit. Some of the work here is yours, like the prep stuff you were writing up before we even found the tomb. For someone who was going into criminology, you were quite the Egyptologist.”

  “Hey, lots of people do more than one thing in life. I love Egyptology. It was my minor, just not my major.”

  “That’s my point here. Thing is, check it all out. Make sure there are no imbecilic mistakes.”

  “Okay. But I’m not the most qualified person to be doing this.”

  “Oh, come on! You should’ve been an Egyptologist. You were so good at all the stuff we delved into. You knew who thought what, all about the argument over the gods, everything. And you cared about what we were doing. You just wanted to do more with fingerprints and DNA and the detecting part of it. But this exhibition is your baby, too. Check it out for me. You’re going to love it!”

  He waved and started walking in the direction of the temple, then apparently decided he should go the other way. The temple was a dead end, except, of course, for museum employees. There was a back hall that led to the stairway and a number of museum offices.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To clean up—after the cops!” he told her.

  “Clean up what?”

  He didn’t hear her or pretended not to. But he wasn’t heading to his office. She had no idea what he was up to.

  She glanced at her watch.

  That was all he wanted? For her to verify exhibits? He’d said he’d needed help because Vivian wasn’t there. And yet he didn’t really need much.

  Did it matter? She’d never get a chance like this again.

  She wasn’t even part of it all anymore; she was Jensen’s guest and she was a guest because once, she had been a part of it all. She didn’t embrace Egyptology with the same wonder that drove some of the others, but she did love ancient Egyptian history.

  Nope, she probably wouldn’t have another opportunity to wander the exhibit entirely alone.

  For a moment, she stood still, and then she smiled. She hurried to the right, slipping into one of the rooms where the social and political climate of Amenmose’s life and times were explained. She’d done a great deal of the research work and prepared a number of the papers from which the story in the exhibit had been taken.

  Entering the first room, she looked around. Display cases held many items of day-to-day life; sure, there were fantastic necklaces and beautiful jewelry, but Harley had always been most fascinated by the storage jars, the pans and other cooking implements that told more about a basic everyday lifestyle.

  The center in this exhibit was an exceptionally fine statue of the god Ra, depicted with the head of a falcon, the sun disc above him.

  She read softly aloud. “‘Ra—ancient Egyptian sun god. By the fifth dynasty, in the 25th to 24th centuries BC, he had risen to prominence, and would be joined by others at various times. Tutankhamen’s great changes after his father’s reign and his own ascension to the throne involved bringing back the old religion. Under Akhenaten’s rule, the old gods had been disrespected; many statues and other honorary sites were destroyed. His dedication to his religion—he wanted to see the deity Aten, the disc of Ra, the sun god, worshipped above all else—caused a weakness in the Egyptian military and a lack of action that was seen as a betrayal by a number of the kingdom’s allies. Tutankhamen meant to undo the harm, as he saw it, his father had done. He wanted to bring back all the old gods, including Amun and Mut and others who made up the hierarchy of ancient Egyptian power. Amun-Ra, as Ra was often called, and the others would return. Tutankhamen felt his father’s legacy was one of destruction, and under his rule, the world would improve. To that end, he looked to the priest Amenmose, despite the fact that the priest Ay was in power as the boy king’s regent.’”

  She let her words settle in the empty room. “Pretty good,” she said with satisfaction.

  There was an inner sarcophagus of a handmaiden, buried with Amenmose, in the last of the horseshoe-shaped displays. The woman, at least judging by the artist who had painted her face for the sarcophagus, had been beautiful.

  “What do you think?” she asked the image of the long-dead woman. “The New Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, Old Kingdom—it can all be so confusing. Not to mention the dynasties! Anyway, I think the display works, and I had a lot to do with that. It’s simple enough to be understood, without leaving out any important facts. Of course, in my view, young King Tut was probably murdered, too. But we’ll never find out now, since Howard Carter found that tomb so long ago!”

  She read
the little note beneath the sarcophagus. The young woman’s name had been Ser. She’d served Amenmose in his household. She hadn’t been killed for the purpose of being placed in his tomb. She’d succumbed to a fever before his death, and had been moved here to lie with the man she had served so loyally.

  Next to her was a servant, Namhi. Like Amenmose, Namhi had been strangled. There was no explanation anywhere on his wrappings or in the tomb. From all that she had read, Harley suspected that either Namhi had been used as an instrument of murder, or he had belonged to the cult of Aten-Aten, a secret society pretending to agree with Tutankhamen’s return to the old religion while trying to undermine it at the same time. It had been suspected during Amenmose’s lifetime that Namhi was a leader of the cult. That alone would make Ay want to murder him, as well as Amenmose. But Amenmose might also have been murdered by Tutankhamen’s half sister or brother-in-law.

  Ay had actually been the grand vizier. And, upon Tutankhamen’s death, he would become pharaoh.

  “You all had motive,” Harley murmured.

  Yes, just as it seemed everyone did today in the murder of Henry Tomlinson and the attempted murder of Vivian Richter. No one had a solid motive—or, rather, they all had the same motives! Fame, position in life, in society. But…was that enough to make someone kill?

  Harley turned to look at the case where mummified animals were displayed. She was staring at a mummified cat when she heard the bone-chilling sound of a cat screeching as if all four paws and its tail had been caught in a car door.

  She froze; she felt goose bumps forming all over her body.

  There were no cats in the museum. Not living cats, anyway!

  A complete silence followed the sound. And then Harley became certain that she heard movement in one of the side rooms off the Amenmose exhibit main hall.

  She remained still, listening.

  She’d spent her life priding herself on her logic. Obviously, a mummified cat had not let out a yowl. It was more than possible that someone else was in the exhibit. And possible that a cat had somehow found its way in. There might well be police in the prep areas and in the offices behind the public areas of the museum.

  Despite her logical reasoning, there was no way to explain the sensations she was feeling. They were different from anything she’d ever known.

  She quickly slipped from the side room where she’d been, the first one next to the temple. She thought she saw movement at the end of the hall.

  A person, wearing something dark.

  That hall was a dead end for visitors. There was a magnificent podium that held the giant-size lion sculptures that had guarded the inner door to the Amenmose tomb. You walked around it and saw the second side of the exhibit before exiting to the rest of the museum.

  She told herself she had no reason to be afraid that someone was there. People worked here, for heaven’s sake! The cops and crime scene techs were probably still trying to figure out how Vivian Richter had been assaulted with nicotine poison.

  But…

  There’d been something furtive about the dark figure.

  Well, at least it hadn’t been a mummy walking around. The person had definitely not been in decaying and frayed linen wrappings.

  Whoever it was wore black. Head-to-toe black. Slinking around.

  Crazy!

  The room she was in displayed different stages of mummification. There was a life-size display in which a mannequin was being dried with natron on a prep table, while priests said their prayers and sprinkled him with some kind of herb water or oil. In the next window, the wrapping process itself was displayed.

  The next room was filled with sarcophagi and mummies, wrapped, half-wrapped and unwrapped. And among them…

  She paused again, gazing at Unknown Mummy #1. She suddenly, vividly, remembered the night Henry had died. She could see the interior of the prep tent, could see Henry, his face reflecting his enthusiasm.

  Somebody brushed by something out in the hallway.

  Anyone might have been there! Working, investigating, exploring.

  No. The person was moving…

  Furtively.

  She hurried to the door and looked outside. She could run back to the statues and escape into the back to the offices and prep rooms behind the scenes.

  She could demand that whoever it was show him or herself.

  And wind up with a belt or other object around her neck, or poisoned linen wrapped around her body?

  She realized that her heart was thundering. In a thousand years, she could never have imagined being so frightened in the middle of the day in a museum. She wasn’t sure she’d been this frightened even when they were forced to flee the Sahara.

  Harley flattened herself against the wall, waiting.

  She was startled to hear the scream of a cat again.

  That was no damned mummy! There was a living cat in the museum—fact!

  But she wasn’t staying to search for it.

  She burst out into the hallway, racing toward the exit.

  “Harley!”

  She heard her name; it was a heated whisper. She sensed somehow that it wasn’t a threat, but by then she was propelling herself forward at a frantic pace.

  “Harley!”

  That whisper of her name again.

  She wasn’t going to make the exit.

  She turned and saw Micah Fox standing there.

  One minute she was running, her feet barely touching the floor.

  The next…

  She’d fallen flat on her back, blinking up at the man straddling her.

  “Harley! Damn!”

  Fox. Micah Fox. Special Agent Micah Fox.

  She stared at him blankly. For a moment, she wondered if he’d been stalking her through the Amenmose exhibit.

  “There was someone in here!” she said. “Watching me.”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “And thanks to you, that someone has gotten away.”

  Micah rose to his feet and helped Harley to hers. “What?” she demanded. “How?”

  “I had him—or her. I don’t even know which it was. Then you made enough noise to raise a legion of the dead—”

  “Oh, no, no, no! You were the one making the noise!” Harley told him.

  “Harley, if you’d just stayed where you were…”

  “And let someone get me? What a bright comment from a law enforcement officer!”

  “Harley,” he began, then broke off and halfway smiled, lowered his head and shook it slightly. “Sorry. I guess I think of you as Craig’s cousin, and as a student of criminology, and I suppose…”

  “You suppose what?”

  “That you’ll behave as if you were trained in criminal behavior and…well, working a case.”

  She stood there, still staring at him, pursing her lips. Then she offered him an icy smile. “Okay, let’s put it this way. Take doctors. Some are great practitioners and others are diagnosticians. My training helps us to figure out what happened—not to bulldoze our way into a situation with guns blazing!”

  He listened to her speak; his reaction was undeniable amusement.

  “Okay, whatever. Let’s go to the offices here and see who we can see, yes?” he asked her.

  She turned and headed for the doors marked Cast Members Only—as if they were at a theme park rather than a museum—and pushed her way in. She feared for a moment that the doors would be locked. They were not.

  A long hall stretched before her. To the left were offices; to the right were the labs and prep rooms.

  She could see that one door was marked with the name Gordon Vincent. She hadn’t really met him, she realized, and he wasn’t just in charge of the Amenmose exhibit, but the entire museum. His appearance was perfect for the part; he was solid, about six feet
even, gray-haired and entirely dignified. The office beside his bore a temporary name; that was obvious from the way the name placard had been slipped over another, the name being Arlo Hampton. Next to his office, the jerry-rigged nameplate read Vivian Richter.

  Jensen Morrow had his own office, since he was now an employee of the museum.

  No one was in the hall. Looking through the large plate-glass windows to the lab, they could see that Arlo wasn’t in his office; he was in the lab. He was working with one of the unnamed mummies they’d found in the tomb, running the X-ray machine over the remains. Harley waited until he’d completed his task. Then she tapped on a window. Arlo raised his head, startled. He saw Harley and offered her a large smile—then noticed Micah and didn’t seem quite so pleased. He disappeared for a moment as he walked through the changing area and then opened the hallway door to let them in.

  He beamed; in fact, he seemed to come alive as he met Harley’s gaze.

  He did not seem concerned that a woman, a colleague, was in the hospital. That someone had attempted to murder her in a particularly grotesque manner.

  “Harley, nice to see you. Jensen said he asked you to come in. I believe he was going to ask you to work with him on a few last additions we’re thinking of adding. I’ll tell you the truth, I wish you’d been one of ours. I want a room on what we’ve discovered from the mummies—and what we know about their deaths. Oh, the whole Tut thing is still speculation, and that’s not ours to tear apart. This is!”

  “Thanks,” Harley said, wondering why Jensen hadn’t mentioned that. “I’m happy to help with…whatever’s needed.”

  “Great. And you, Agent Fox.” Arlo turned to him. “Are you part of the police investigation? They were here all night. They found nothing. Of course, they still have Vivian’s office closed off and we won’t open this section until tomorrow, but…wow.”

  “Yeah, wow,” Micah said, his tone flat. “So, what do you think happened to Vivian Richter?”

  “Her husband’s with her now,” Arlo said. “I mean, needless to say, we care most about the living. It’s just that…well, the world can’t stop because something bad happened to someone.”