One Grave Too Many (39 page)

“Maybe. I’ve just promoted Chanell to head of security, and I’m going to hire extra people. I don’t want anyone to work alone at night until this is solved.”

They photographed the entire skeleton, including close-ups of all the remarkable characteristics. As they worked their way around the bones, Diane explained the history of the skeleton and the steps they’d taken to discover its story.

“Cool stuff. You know, some museums have a forensic unit,” Barbara said.

“So I’ve been told,” said Diane.

She packed up the bones and labeled the box. Just for added security, she put the box in a large empty supply box, taped it up and stored it next to the excess supplies apparently ordered by Leonard Starns. She wrote the initials J. D. on the outside of the box.

When she left, Korey was still on the phone.

As she got back to her office, Sylvia Mercer darted through the closing door.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “Is there such a thing as a forensic zoologist?”

“A forensic zoologist? Is that what you’ve become?” Diane showed her faunal curator into her office. Sylvia sat down at the table under the Escher prints and began spreading out her papers. Diane pulled up a chair, sat down beside her and picked up one of the sheets of paper.

“This looks like a copy of the Abercrombie taxidermy records.”

“It is. I’ve been looking at the animals directly under and over the main part of the human skeleton. We have a
Canis lupus
directly above, and on that same level we have a
Vulpes fulva
and four
Odocoileus virginianus
. Below we have a
Sus scrofa
and two
O. virginianus
.”

“Wolf, fox, deer and pig?”

“Right. That was lucky, really lucky. It could have been nothing but
O. virginianus
above and below, and that wouldn’t have given us much to work with. I’ve been working with Whit Abercrombie on his father’s records. They’re a bit difficult to read.” She paused and looked over at Diane. “By the way, Whit’s a babe. I don’t like what he does for a living—the taxidermy stuff.” She shrugged. “But then again, I collect roadkill.”

“He’s also the county coroner.”

“There’s that too. You know he carves the taxidermy armatures himself from wood? He’s really an artist. He gets all the musculature beautifully. I told him it’s a shame to cover them up with the animal skins.”

“I didn’t know he carves. Sounds like you two had a good time.”

“We did, actually.” Sylvia sounded surprised. “Any-way, the wolf wasn’t a problem. They mounted only three in the past six years. Of the two most recent, one was mounted last winter and the other one just last spring. So, thinking that the one we found was the one mounted for the museum, we looked up the date it was mounted: June 6, 1998.”

“So we know the human bones were dumped no later than that date,” murmured Diane.

“Right. Now
S. scrofa
was a bit of a problem.”

“How’s that?”

“One, the skull was missing.”

“I understand that problem.”

“Yeah, Jonas said they’re still looking for your skull. I can see how that makes identification harder.”

“It’d certainly be nice to have it.”

“Another problem is that they mounted several pigs in the target years. Some were feral pigs shot by hunters, and some were pets.”

“People mount their pet pigs? People have pet pigs?”

“I found it hard to believe too. A couple just last week had their pet potbellied pig mounted. Whit said he and his dad have done several potbellies. Some were in our time frame, but, unfortunately, Luther recorded only pig or deer or whatever, the name of the client, the date, kind of mount and what he charged. He didn’t differentiate by genus and species and certainly not subspecies.” Sylvia seemed to think that it was amazing of Luther not to include that information. “And, of course, he didn’t include where he dumped the carcass.”

“So what did you do?”

“Went on a road trip with Whit.” She grinned. “First, I identified the subspecies of
S. scrofa
—the pig bones. I had to take them to the university’s faunal collection for that. We have a more complete range there for comparison. One of the things I’d like to do here is increase the collection of reference skeletons for the lab.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“From the bones we recovered, we identified our pig as a potbellied pig. So we went to visit all the people on the taxidermy list to look at their stuffed pigs to see which ones were potbellies. Interesting—of most of the pigs that were hunted, only the heads were mounted. The people with pets had the whole animal done. That should have given us a clue in the records, but we were having a good time and didn’t stop to make that deduction. Only two on the list had a stuffed potbellied pig. One was significantly larger than ours. The other one looked right. The date was March 1, 1998.” Sylvia had a look of triumph on her face.

“Excellent,” said Diane. “You’ve impressed me.”

“Jonas said your skeleton is young—late teens, early twenties, maybe?” Diane nodded. “I was thinking. Between March and June lies the dates of spring break for some schools, ours included.”

“Damn, Sylvia, you’re right. Good thinking. You’ve got a knack for this.”

“I thought so. Go figure.”

Sylvia left her notes with Diane. She also left an evidence bag filled out by Jonas with a cross-section in it of the tree whose roots skewered both the wolf and the human skeleton and, as it turned out, the pig. She took it out and looked at the rings—four years. Another verification. The skeletons were there before four years ago, or else the tree could not have planted its roots between their ribs.

She very nearly had a date. After calling Frank’s partner, Ben, and leaving a message about the time frame that Sylvia had discovered, Diane took the evidence up to the conservation lab and slipped it in the box with the bones. In just a few days she had amassed quite a bit of information. She had no doubt she could find out whose bones they were, and for the first time she felt really close to a breakthrough.

“Is Korey around?” she asked his assistants on her way out.

“Somewhere. He’s been acting kind of strange all day,” said Barbara.

“Been on the phone all day talking to a string of people,” said another assistant.

“I hope everything’s all right. Tell him I was looking for him.”

“Sure thing.”

Diane walked down to the first floor. While she was in the main lobby she decided to go talk to the herpetologist to see if he was any closer to finding the snake. It made her shiver just thinking about it. She had these visions of opening a cabinet somewhere and having the snake fall out on her.

As she walked through, going to the west wing of the museum, she stopped by the museum store to welcome the owners and to check on their progress in getting ready to open. The proprietors, owners of a gift shop in town, were busy shelving merchandise.

They had a huge variety of items, including books, dinosaur replicas, museum kits and tee shirts, and several shelves of toys. She really loved the museum, but any joyful thoughts about it were always followed by sadness that Ariel wouldn’t be here to share it with her.

As she crossed the second lobby with the huge high ceiling that was off the dinosaur room and was the twin of the Pleistocene room, she spotted Korey sitting alone on a bench. She went past the twenty-five-foot-long
Albertosaurus
skeleton greeting people at the entrance with its mouthful of sharp teeth and sat down beside Korey under a Pteranodon suspended above, its wings spanning almost the width of the room.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine.” He was smiling.

“I was looking for you. I got a lead on who may be involved in the lab break-in.”

“Mrs. Grayson,” he said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Deduction.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around among my staff.”

He didn’t ask what she meant, but continued to stare at the wall, looking like the cat who had just found the source of all cream.

“Are you going to tell me?” she said.

“Yeah.” He turned toward her and grinned.

“You going to make me drag it out of you?”

“Just enjoying the moment. You remember when I was showing Mrs. Grayson the papers we found in the basement?”

“Are you telling me they turned out to be valuable?”

“They’re not particularly valuable, no. Well, some are, but what Mrs. Grayson feared was that they might have certain valuable information that she didn’t want to fall into our hands. And as it turned out, she was right. Fortunately, I locked them in the vault and either she or whoever she got to break in couldn’t find them.

“I believe it was Leonard Starns and his son. His son works for Grayson Real Estate.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. I’ve been calling people all day to make sure that I found what I think I did, and I also took the liberty of inviting an expert out to the museum—I’m flying her in from New York.”

“New York?” She almost gasped. It was not like Korey to do such a thing without asking her.

“I also know what this moving-the-museum thing is all about.”

“You do? You know why Mark Grayson wants to sell the museum?”

“I know why he wants to buy it. Those.” He nodded his head toward the wall murals. “It turns out they were painted by a relatively little-known artist named Robert Camden, who died at the turn of the century at the age of ninety-one. The tiny unicorns in his paintings were one of his trademarks. He may have been little known then, but like our friend here . . .”—he pointed to the pteranodon above them—“the value of his paintings has soared. They’re now selling for several million dollars apiece.” He turned his head again to Diane. “And we have twelve of them.”

Diane stood and walked over to the painting—a huge brontosaurus, head held high on his long neck, walking and dragging his tail. Between his front feet, almost obscured by the dust he created with each step, was a small unicorn. The detail of the painting was remarkable. The brontosaurus’ hide was painted like the skin of an elephant, with all the lines and wrinkles and shades of gray. The distant mountains had such clarity and distinction that Diane thought she could probably find them somewhere if she tried.

Korey joined her standing by the painting.

“You’re not joking, are you?” she asked.

“Nope. I found the initial sketches of the paintings and a reference to the painter in the material we gathered from the basement, and, I don’t know, something just clicked in my head. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out about him, you know, have an exhibit of the drawings and the man? I made some calls to friends in art conservation and they referred me to several other experts, who were all quite excited, let me tell you. A woman is coming down from the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow to have a look at them.”

“It’s a good thing we built a railing to keep wandering hands off the walls,” said Diane.

Korey nodded. “I think we’ll have to do more. I was thinking a Plexiglas wall, so no one can get under the railings.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Diane. “When they were found, didn’t anyone investigate their origin?”

“From what I can find out, Milo asked someone from the art department at Bartrum University to come over and have a look. He declared them interesting.”

“But Signy Grayson recognized them.” Diane recalled the snatch of conversation she heard between Signy and her husband—“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know about them.”

“Yes,” Korey said, “I think her husband was going to buy the museum building through one of his companies. I believe when you sell buildings, certain things always go with the building—like the walls and anything attached to them. At any rate, he’d have the contract written so he’d get the paintings for a fraction of their value. And if it was true about the golf course . . .”

“You know about that rumor?”

“It’s hard to keep secrets in a place like this. Everyone’s been worried about their jobs.”

“I’m sorry about that. I never had any intention of selling the museum.”

“Some were afraid you’d be forced to.”

“It would take some serious errors or malfeasance on my part for them to be able to unseat me. They were trying. That’s what all those extra supply orders were about.”

“How far did they expect to get, ordering extra paper clips?”

“They also sent orders out for a duplicate set of these guys.” She pointed at the dinosaurs.

“That’d be a lot of money, but as soon as the Bickford called . . .”

“Exactly. The person who did the ordering didn’t understand the process. He didn’t know they would have to call about details of the order.”

“This campaign doesn’t seem well thought-out on their part,” said Korey.

“I believe that’s because it was carried out by several people. The extra orders, I think, were done at the instigation of someone who worked with Grayson. I believe Grayson and his cronies were doing other things that might very well have had an impact.”

“Like what?”

Diane went back to the bench and sat down. She was silent for a long while. Now that she had shared Ariel with Frank and Andie, perhaps it was time to share her with other people. She told Korey a shortened version of her daughter and what happened to her—and the music.

“That was cruel and sadistic.”

“Yes, it was. And it had an effect. This past year I was a mess. I couldn’t even work. I think they wanted to send me back to that black place I just climbed out of.”

There was something else that had been bothering Diane. Something Melissa said: “I wish we’d just let whatever was going on happen to you.” She mentioned it to Korey, explaining only that Melissa was angry with her when she said it.