Diane led Jonas from Andie’s office through a private door into the Pleistocene room, across the mammal exhibit to the set of elevators that ran up the middle of the museum and opened at Jonas’ office. She managed to traverse the whole area without being seen.
“Who knew this job would call for this much stealth?” said Jonas.
“I know this must seem very bizarre.”
“Yes. Why are you hiding from your staff?” Jonas pulled out a chair, one of the comfortable stuffed ones at the chess table, for Diane, and he took the other one. “Of course, I’ve known a department head or two who’ve hidden out from the faculty.”
“We’re having a board meeting.”
“Ah. They must be like our faculty meetings.”
Diane managed a laugh. “This involves the man who’s been after me to move the museum. I don’t want him to know I’m here until it’s time for the meeting. He thinks I’m in the hospital. We’re at the endgame.”
“I see. Who’s going to win?”
“We’ll see. What do you have to show me?”
He handed her an arrowhead. “Do you remember Rick finding this?”
“At the pit?” Diane thought a minute. “Yes, I remember. They all thought it was rather ironic.”
“He didn’t notice when he picked it up, but after he cleaned it he found a number on it.”
Diane looked at him, not understanding the significance.
“It’s been cataloged. It has provenience,” he said.
“You’re going to have to spell it out for me.” She paused. “We know where it came from. Oh, if it happens to have belonged to the perp or the victim, we know where he got it.”
“That’s our thinking. Rick didn’t notice the number at first. Someone’s tried to scratch it off, which means it’s probably stolen. Makes sense-it’s a nice stemmed point. I’d say Laurentian, from around New York, but I’m not sure. I thought we could look at the number through the microscope.”
They took the arrowhead to his workroom, where he had a dissecting microscope sitting in the corner. Diane looked at the table covered with potsherds and at his small amount of space.
“You need a better lab, don’t you?”
“This is fine for my needs. As I understand it, this is the largest office space in the building.”
“Still, if you ever need more room. .” She put the dark gray chert point on the stage and looked at a strip of partially scratched-off white paint with fine writing on it in black ink. “I see a one and a nine-and what looks like a B or an E.”
“Nineteen. That’s Massachusetts.” He went into his office and came back with a book. “The possibilities are Barnstable, Essex, Berkshire and Bristol.”
“What are you looking at?” asked Diane.
“A map of Massachusetts-these are counties that begin with B and E. Do you have any clue what the second letter might be? The county designations are like the postal abbreviations for states-GA for Georgia, TN for Tennessee. Same principle. The second letter might be a clue as to which county in Massachusetts.”
“No. It’s gone.”
“There should be a third set of numbers after the letters. They reflect the site number within the state.”
“Maybe the first digit is a. . could be a zero, or maybe a nine or an eight. It could possibly even be a two or a three. Only the portion between the cap line and the X line are there.”
“Which means?” he asked.
“The bottom of the number is missing. The second number is a four, I think. There aren’t any more on that line.”
“There’s another row?” Jonas said. “That may be an artifact number. Can you read it?”
“No. It’s just white paint now. They were successful in scratching it off.”
“I’d vote for zero or three on the first digit. I don’t think Massachusetts has that many sites, but I may be wrong. I’ll make some calls, if you like.”
“That would be good. Thanks for doing this.”
“Because the site is in Massachusetts, doesn’t mean the person got the point from there. University of Arizona, for example, could have excavated the site and stored the artifacts there. But I’ll start with the Massachusetts state archaeologist and see if he’ll fax me a list of their sites and site numbers.”
Jonas went into his office to make his calls. Diane stayed in his workroom and called Frank’s partner, Ben Florian, on her cell phone. He picked up his phone immediately.
“Hi,” he said. “I got your message about the missing persons query and passed it along immediately to the police in Rosewood.”
“What do you mean?” Diane had a sinking feeling.
“My boss thought it would be better if Rosewood handled sending out the query. It’s not an official case for us, and he likes to maintain good relations with the surrounding jurisdictions.”
“They won’t do anything with it.”
“Sure they will. . ” He hesitated.
“No, they won’t. They’ll sit on it. That’s why Frank was doing it himself. They have their theory of the crime and that’s it for them. Besides, the skeleton wasn’t found in the city of Rosewood’s jurisdiction, but in the county under Sheriff Bruce Canfield’s jurisdiction. They don’t like him either, so they’ll have given it to some secretary and told her to put it on the bottom of her to-do list. The sheriff won’t get it probably for a few months.”
The other end of the line was quiet for several long moments. “I’m real sorry, I didn’t know.”
Suddenly Diane wanted to cry. She bit her lower lip and tried to keep her voice from quavering.
“We’ve only lost a couple of days,” she said. She told him about the artifact number she and Jonas were trying to translate. Trying to express as clearly as she understood it what the site number meant. “I’m going to call some of the Massachusetts universities and ask if they’ve had any students go missing in the past five years. I’ll give Sheriff Canfield the information too, so he can send out a query.” Diane wondered if she sounded bitter-at that moment her voice reminded her of her mother’s “well, if you can’t do it, I’ll have to do it myself” voice.
“I’ll call a few people and see if I can hurry the process along,” said Ben. “How’s Frank doing?”
“Getting better. We have rooms across the hall from each other.”
“You’re in the hospital too?”
“I was.” She told him about her kidnaping and the desire of the kidnapers to get their hands on the remains. “I’ve got out to go to a board meeting, but I had to promise the doctor I’d come back.”
“This isn’t good,” he said. She could hear the regret in his voice. “Look, I’m real sorry about the misunderstanding.” Diane could hear from his tone that he was, but the anger still sat in her stomach like undigested food. She was working as hard as she could to solve this, and the people in authority-even the friendly ones-did nothing but throw up roadblocks. When she hung up, she wanted to put her head down and cry. She was so tired and her body ached all over.
Instead, she called the sheriff. To her great surprise and relief, he had sent out a query as soon as he heard about the results of the stable isotope tests, making updates when he found more information. Diane thanked him so profusely it seemed to confuse him.
“Just doing my job. I heard something else happened to you.”
Diane related a quick version of the incident.
“Whoever did this is here and desperate. You take some serious precautions, you hear?”
“I am.”
“I’ll get on this new Massachusetts information right away. Who knows? We might come up with something in a hurry.”
Diane thanked him again and pushed the disconnect button.
“They’re going to fax my computer with a list of sites,” said Jonas from his office. Diane went back and sat in the comfortable chair, closing her eyes, grateful that the sheriff, at least, knew what his job was. “You need someplace to rest.”
“I. .” She was interrupted by a knock on Jonas’ door. “I hope that’s Korey.”
Jonas opened the door slightly as if checking credentials before letting anyone in. It was Korey and a petite woman with short salt-and-pepper hair and a face much younger than her gray hair suggested.
“This is Dr. Allison Onfroi, an art historian from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Diane rose and greeted her. “We’re glad you could come to look at our murals.”
“I am just mesmerized by them.”
“So they are authentic Robert Camdens?”
“Oh, no question.”
Diane and Korey grinned at each other.
“These are those wonderful dinosaur and Pleistocene paintings?” asked Jonas. “I go in the rooms sometimes and just sit and look at them.”
Dr. Onfroi nodded. “I find his work, though some of my colleagues disagree, similar in mood to William Trost Richards. Of course, they both were American Pre-Raphaelites. Richards created such emotion with his realism. Camden does the same for me. Most people don’t know him-he was never in favor in his own time, partly because of his rather strange insistence on inserting those whimsical unicorns in his paintings, juxtaposing the utter realism with the utter unreal. Now people identify with that.”
“Were wall murals his usual work?” asked Diane.
“It turned out that way. He had to make a living painting illustrations and murals for buildings. Most haven’t survived. And there weren’t that many of his other works. Your paintings are the best I’ve seen. I’d love to work with Korey on protecting them for you.”
“Allison had another interesting tidbit of news,” said Korey. “It seems that several months ago, someone from the Heron Museum of Art was asked to have a look at a collection of Camden murals for a museum.”
“It was all very secretive, as a lot of our work is.”
“Grayson,” said Diane.
“I’m sure,” said Korey. “I told Allison about the secret plans to buy the museum building and move us somewhere else.”
“I wish I could say I was shocked,” said Allison Onfroi, “but I’ve seen a lot of underhandedness going on in the art world. I’m sure the Heron thought it was on the up-and-up. I deal with them a lot, and they’d be shocked to know what they were a party to.”
“I’ve booked Allison into a Sudwith’s bed and breakfast,” said Korey.
“Oh, you’ll like that,” said Diane. “Thanks again for coming. I look forward to working with you on this project.”
Before they left, Korey handed Diane a piece of paper. It was Dr. Onfroi’s appraisal of the monetary value of the paintings. Diane stared hard at it for a moment and put it in her pocket.