Conspiracy to Murder

by Heather Graham

“Yes?”

  “I thought I heard the door slam.”

  “Did you see when Mr. Richter left today?”

  Valeria shook her head. “No… I… I saw him yesterday. I didn’t see him at all today. But, of course, that means nothing. I do not sit here and stare at the door, you know. I don’t mean to be a—what do you say?—wiseass. But I don’t know.”

  Micah smiled. “It’s okay. I don’t think you’re trying to be a wiseass. What you do know is this—Mr. and Mrs. Richter fought. They came home from the hospital yesterday at about noon. You saw them both go to her room. You haven’t seen Mr. Richter since—and you saw Mrs. Richter for the first time today when you went to get her for my associate and me?”

  Valeria nodded, wide-eyed.

  Micah handed her one of his cards. “If you need help, call me.”

  Her eyes brightened and she held the card close to her chest.

  Micah headed out to the street. He saw a taxi and grabbed it, pulling out his cell phone as he did.

  They were nearing the bridge when he got through to Craig.

  “The maid didn’t actually see either of the Richters after about noon yesterday,” he told Craig. “Until she brought her to the door this morning.”

  “Interesting,” Craig said. “Because Ned Richter isn’t at the museum. I talked to the officer in charge. No one’s seen him since yesterday, sometime in the afternoon. In fact, right around the time Arlo Hampton was found.”

  * * *

  HARLEY JUMPED UP, determined to find Jensen. She was almost certain that she’d discovered the truth about Amenmose. She’d put well-known facts together with information from less well-known sources—and had come up with her theory.

  She wondered if there was a way to prove what she believed she knew.

  Not easy.

  Because, of course, if the murderer was Ay or any other person with power, he or she wouldn’t have performed the deed himself—or herself. He—or she—would have had lackeys.

  But Harley was convinced her theory made sense. Perfect sense.

  Amenmose had been killed. He’d been killed because he’d secretly been a far greater fan of Tutankhamen’s father than he’d ever let on. Ay had probably known that Amenmose whispered in the boy king’s ear. Amenmose had been skilled at playing the political game. He’d pretended to listen to every word that left Ay’s mouth; he’d proclaimed himself a man of the future, not the past. But in his heart, he’d felt certain that Tut’s father had been right. And because of that—because those closest to him had known and others might have suspected—anyone connected to him, related to him, or even just a friend or servant to him, might have been in danger.

  She left the room and glanced quickly down the hall. There was no one to be seen; not a police officer, not an employee, no one.

  “Jensen?”

  No answer.

  “Jensen, where the hell are you?” she wondered aloud.

  She hurried down the hall, past the lab. No one there, either. Of course, Arlo was the person who usually worked in the lab. And Arlo…

  She hadn’t heard that he was dead. Maybe he was still clinging to life, even if his poisoning had been worse than Vivian’s. She hoped so.

  Because she just didn’t believe that he was guilty.

  “Jensen!”

  Past the lab, she made for her friend’s office and knocked. Once again, no answer. She tried the door and it opened easily, but Jensen wasn’t inside.

  “Damn you,” she grumbled. “Bring me in—and then disappear!”

  Harley closed the door and tried the offices of Vivian Richter, Ned Richter, Arlo—even the museum director, Gordon Vincent’s. No one was in any of them.

  As she stood there, she again heard the terrible screech of a cat.

  Just as she had heard when she’d been looking at the cat mummy.

  Nothing mysterious about that, she told herself. There was obviously a cat somewhere in the museum. She’d meant to ask someone. It had probably been a stray, and a museum employee, unable to stand the sight of the poor creature begging in the street, had brought it in. That person must have fed it and kept it hidden here somewhere.

  Poor thing; it deserved better.

  “Where are you?” she murmured aloud. “Little creature, where are you? Where’s Jensen? Where’s anyone?”

  She went back into the hallway, listening for the cat.

  She heard it meow. She thought the sound was coming from the walls—or from beneath her.

  She guessed the cat was down in one of the old tunnels, maybe in a section of the abandoned subway.

  Harley remembered the day she and Micah had been with Arlo, and she hurried to the stairway that led below.

  It was dark, of course.

  She had her flashlight—of course.

  She turned it on and walked carefully down the steps, first to the basement, through rooms and rooms of storage, and then down another level.

  To tunnels of nothing.

  To darkness that led nowhere.

  And then she heard it again. It wasn’t a scream this time. It was a pathetic kind of mewling.

  She hadn’t even seen the cat yet, but she felt so bad for the little creature, which was obviously scared. It probably had no idea where it was, how to get out, how to find help or sustenance.

  Maybe she could keep a cat. A cat would be a good companion.

  She wondered if Micah liked cats.

  She wondered if it mattered.

  Harley knew she was definitely in lust and halfway in love, but she’d told herself it was just temporary, that she expected nothing. He was living and working in Washington, DC, and he’d go back there. He’d given her no hint, nothing to suggest Harley should go back with him.

  And yet she couldn’t accept the fact that he might walk away. They’d met and joined forces over Henry. They got along extremely well, but they were both determined and stubborn, and she didn’t intend to forget that she wanted to pursue her career.

  Everything had begun just a few days ago, and already she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it.

  She gave a little scream, startled when the cat let out another mew. The sound was very close.

  “Kitty, kitty, where are you?” she called.

  The pathetic squeaking began again.

  “Where are you? Come on, kitty, kitty, kitty. I’ll help you!”

  She came around a corner and almost fell into a niche in the wall. She tried to steady herself and realized she was leaning on an old maintenance door.

  It creaked open on very rusty hinges.

  She heard the cat cry again, really loudly this time. She’d found it!

  “Hey, there you are,” she said. “Come on, little one. I’ll take you somewhere safe and warm and get you something to eat.”

  What if Micah Fox was allergic to kittens? She’d never asked him about pets.

  She’d never asked him about anything. She’d just fallen into something crazy, she’d wanted him so desperately.

  She shone her light around again, seeking the cat.

  “Hey, sweet thing, I’m going to find you,” Harley said out loud.

  And then she froze as her light fell on the crying kitten.

  And on so much more…

  * * *

  “GET IN HERE. We’ve got Sanford Wiley, our man in Cairo, ready for a video chat in twenty minutes,” Richard Egan told Micah. “He has some information.”

  “On Satima Mahmoud?” Micah asked.

  “That’s what I imagine,” Egan replied.

  Craig was doing the driving. He was a damned good driver, and as a New Yorker, he could maneuver the streets as few could.

  Micah had a feeling that whatever Sanford Wiley had discove
red, it was important to their case.

  He put a call through to Harley, anxious to talk to her, to hear her voice.

  She didn’t answer.

  Craig glanced over at him.

  “She didn’t say she was going out,” Micah murmured. “Or, she might have said that she was going to be with Kieran.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. Leave a message. If she’s on the subway, she won’t get it for a while.”

  “I’ll bet she went to the museum. Jensen—that friend of hers—I think he keeps encouraging her to come in. I don’t feel good about it, but I’m not sure why.”

  “At least Vivian Richter seemed fine. She seems to believe that Arlo tried to kill her and that he might’ve killed Henry Tomlinson.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t believe it, and I’m positive you don’t, either. Also, I know damned well that Harley doesn’t believe it. And Craig, what I’ve said before is true—Harley’s had more classes of all kinds than we have. Yes, in a classroom. She doesn’t have much practical experience, not really. But she’s smart as a whip. If she says something is off, it is.”

  “I’ll call Kieran. She’ll track her down. How’s that?”

  “Thanks. Tell her we’ll join the tracking party as soon as we’re done with the video chat,” Micah said.

  “Will do.”

  “She’s at work, though, isn’t she?”

  “She won’t have a problem. Tell them it’s an active case and the good doctors will be more than happy to send Kieran off—or get into it themselves!” Craig assured him. He spoke to the car phone; it dialed Kieran.

  “Anything new?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Can you find Harley?” Craig asked her.

  “Sure. I know where she is.”

  “You do?”

  “At the museum. I talked to her briefly when she was on her way there. Jensen asked her to come in. They’re good friends, you know, and I think he’s feeling pretty lost and alone in all this.”

  “Yeah, lost and alone,” Micah murmured. “Can you get over there? I tried to reach her by phone. She didn’t answer.”

  “I’ll go right over,” Kieran promised. “I’ll find her, don’t worry. And when I do, we’ll give you a call.”

  Kieran said goodbye and hung up; Craig looked at Micah. “Feel better?”

  “I wish I did.”

  “You don’t like Jensen.”

  Micah shook his head. “But he was with Harley when Henry was killed, so…”

  “Yep.” Craig was quiet for a minute, and Micah knew what he was thinking.

  “Two people could’ve been involved,” he said quietly. “It’s a question of which two. Do you think maybe Ned Richter? Would Richter actually have done that to his own wife?”

  “They fight quite a bit, or so we’ve heard,” Craig said. “Yolanda told us she heard them arguing, and the maid told you that they were fighting yesterday.”

  “Yes, but…wrapping someone in nicotine-soaked linen?”

  “She was found immediately. So she survived,” Craig said.

  They reached the office. Leaving the car, they hurried through the ground-floor security check and up to Egan’s office.

  Egan was already engaged in the call with Sanford Wiley.

  On the video screen, they could see that Wiley looked glum.

  “Did you find her? Did you find Satima Mahmoud?” Micah asked.

  “Yeah, we found her,” Wiley said.

  “But you didn’t bring her in.”

  “She’s dead,” Wiley told them.

  Micah had been standing. He sank into one of the chairs in the conference room. “Dead? Not…as a mummy?”

  “As a mummy? No. Right now, they have some of her friends in custody. She was likely killed by a member of her ‘group’—although exactly who that is, I don’t know—or by an enemy of this group. That’s just what we’re being told. The situation’s complicated, but from what we’ve gleaned so far, there was no real insurrection planned for the night Henry Tomlinson died. We know this because the Egyptian police are questioning someone they pulled in. Some kid who didn’t want to spend his life in prison. He says they were contacted by Satima Mahmoud. She had money, a lot of money. She was willing to pay them to get a fake insurrection going. That’s why it was such a pitiable show. No one really wanted to bear arms, go against anything—or get caught,” Wiley explained.

  “So we’ve been thinking in the right direction,” Micah said. “It was all a diversion to keep the police or any other authorities from discovering what really happened to Henry Tomlinson.”

  “Yes, that’s what we believe on this end,” Wiley said. “Satima Mahmoud was found with a bullet in her back. We think it could’ve been fired by someone in a group with a different political view for the future—or, as I said, someone in her own group. Many people were arrested for taking part in the so-called uprising. Perhaps someone wanted revenge.”

  “Still hard to understand,” Craig said. “The Amenmose find was worth a fortune.”

  “Yes, there were priceless objects. And, yes, they might have wanted them for their monetary value to support their cause, whatever that was. Thing is, the black market is hard to navigate these days. And if you’re caught…not good. Cash—cold hard cash—is far better than even a priceless object. Someone gave Satima a lot of cold hard cash. At the moment, that’s all I know. If we get anything else…”

  “Thank you, Wiley,” Micah said. “You’ve been a tremendous help. I’m sorry the woman is dead,” he added.

  Egan finished up with Wiley, and they cut off the chat.

  “Cold hard cash? Someone with access to a lot of it?” Egan mused. “That’s not your average grad student.”

  “There’s Richter,” Craig said. “Or…well, some grad students come from family money. That’s how they manage to study forever and ever. We have background checks on everyone. I’ve skimmed all the files…”

  “Morrow, Jensen Morrow. His father invented some kind of cleaning product. He’s got money,” Micah said. But it was true, too, that they’d just left the Richter house, which had to be worth millions.

  Craig nodded. “Yeah. But to be fair, it could be Richter. He’d have the money. He was supposedly with his wife when everything was going on back in the Sahara. We know now that the two of them fight, although Vivian Richter swears that her husband is totally loving and good.”

  “But the maid said differently,” Craig pointed out.

  “The maid?” Egan asked.

  Craig waved a hand in the air and said, “Sir, I think we may have to help that woman out when this is all over. She talked to Micah about Richter’s whereabouts.”

  “Go and get Vivian Richter,” Egan said. “Bring her in. I think it’s time we had a conversation here in the office.”

  “On our way!” Micah said.

  They hurried back to the street where the car was waiting.

  As they drove, Micah tried Harley’s number again.

  “Still not answering,” he muttered to Craig.

  “We’ll find her,” Craig promised. “Don’t forget,” he said, “she’s my cousin.”

  There was a grim set to Craig Frasier’s mouth.

  Micah was glad for it. That meant he wasn’t alone; they were going to find Harley, and they’d damned well find her fast—and she’d be all right.

  * * *

  IT WAS RIDICULOUS, it was horrible, and it was like something out of a horror movie by a master of the genre.

  Harley had found the cat.

  And the cat was sitting on the head of a man.

  The man was dead. It was Richter. Ned Richter.

  She couldn’t scream.

  The last thing she should do was scream!

  In fact
, she was worried about having her flashlight on. But the whiff of gases or decay, some ghastly smell, that was coming to her made Harley think the man she was staring at had been dead for some time, probably at least twenty-four hours.

  He hadn’t been wrapped in linen. He probably hadn’t died from any kind of poisoning.

  Ned had been stabbed through the heart with an Egyptian dagger. He was shoved up against a wall; he’d probably died right there, she surmised, studying the pool of blood that surrounded him. Blood that had grown sticky.

  He’d been killed yesterday. Either just before Arlo had succumbed to the linen wrappings and their nicotine, or just after.

  If Arlo had tried to kill Ned Richter… Wait, that made no sense. Why stab Ned with an ancient Egyptian dagger, and then dress up in linen wrappings himself?

  And who the hell had that been on the street, the person shorter than Arlo who’d approached her, touched her with the poison?

  “Harley? Harley, where are you?”

  Jensen?

  Jensen was calling her now.

  Sure, Jensen was taller than the figure who’d come up to her. But what if he was working with someone? What if he’d gone with her that night in the desert just to throw suspicion off himself? He hadn’t killed Henry Tomlinson; that would’ve been impossible. But he might have been in on it.

  She forced herself to stay silent.

  But to her great distress, the kitten took that moment to mew desperately for help once again—apparently deciding that help wasn’t going to come from Harley.

  “Kitty! Aw, here, kitty, kitty!” Jensen said. “Who the hell would be keeping a cat down here?” he asked himself.

  He was coming in her direction.

  He didn’t sound like a killer.

  To make matters even worse, Harley’s phone began to ring.

  It was on vibrate, but even vibrate sounded shockingly loud to her!

  She saw that it was Micah, and that he’d called several times. The calls hadn’t gone through. Suddenly, now—now!—they were.

  She backed as close as she could against the wall. She almost let out an involuntary scream; she’d backed into the corpse. She was stepping in the sticky blood.

  “Micah!” she whispered.

  He was talking as she answered. She didn’t think he’d hear her, and she didn’t think he had any idea that she wasn’t in a good situation.