Rituals (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

The building housing Rosebower's museum was utterly unpretentious. So why did it scare Faye?

It was a single-story wood frame building dating to the 1940s, originally built as a house. Samuel's father had established it as a museum in the 1960s. The bathroom looked exactly as one would expect it to look, tiny and utilitarian. Its vintage sink and tub contrasted with a replacement toilet in a groovy shade of avocado green. The rest of the building showed the same historical mishmash. There were gorgeous heart pine floors in the display rooms, but the vinyl flooring in the work room was ugly enough to keep a weary archaeologist awake on the job.

It was not a beautiful building, but it wasn't a frightening one. Nevertheless, Faye lingered on the sidewalk outside, her heart fluttering in her chest. It was time for Samuel to meet his new consultant, the one who was going to tell him that the centerpiece artifacts of his museum were worthless.

Okay, maybe they weren't worthless, but they weren't what he thought they were and they weren't anything special. Faye had set Joe up for a difficult meeting. It didn't help matters that she and Amande would be working in the next room while it happened.

Joe put a hand on her waist and started walking, herding her along with him. Amande followed behind, as if she knew Faye was thinking of retreat.

***

Faye sat at her desk, wondering whether Samuel would throw a tantrum and whether she'd be able to hear it through the wall. Maybe her company was destined to lose its only current contract within the next twenty minutes. Even so, she wasn't the type to go down without a fight. She might as well make those twenty minutes billable.

She picked up a box filled with carefully packed china, enough to serve a party of twenty. There was no denying that the plates and cups were pretty, festooned with pink roses and blue scrolls, but they were probably mass-produced. Or they could also be as rare and valuable as Myrna's irreplaceable antiques. Faye bet herself that she and the Internet could ferret out the truth before Joe and Samuel finished talking.

***

As Faye had expected, American antique stores were crammed full of rose-trimmed china plates just like the one in her hand. Twenty minutes of her billable time had been spent proving that Samuel didn't need to waste shelf space on it. She supposed this was valuable information.

“Amande, can you catalog these pieces and pack them properly for storage?”

“Sure. I'm ready to go on the clock now.”

Her expression said, “You're supposed to ask me what I've been doing and why I wasn't on the clock,” so Faye obliged her.

“I wasn't asleep when you and Dad were talking in the car. How'd you like to know who owns the property surrounding Mr. Marlowe's development? You know…the land he needs if he's going to build that golf course he wants? Well, it just so happens that there is one name on the deeds of all the tracts that touch the property he owns now.”

She was still wearing her “Ask me!” face.

Faye was interested, so she cooperated. “Let me guess. Is it Dara? I remember hearing that she and Willow built their auditorium near there on property she inherited.”

“Close but no. Tilda owned all that property surrounding Marlowe's land, so I guess Miss Myrna owns it now. I also found some more nearby land that Mr. Marlowe probably wants. It's hard for me to tell, because I don't know exactly how big a golf course needs to be.”

“Are you going to tell me who owns that land, or are you going to make me guess again?”

“Guessing would be fun, but I do need to get billable, so I'll tell you. Myrna owns it outright. She didn't inherit it from Tilda.”

Faye had heard Myrna say that Tilda had opposed Gilbert Marlowe's plans as much as she did. She realized that her next billable museum chore needed to wait. First, she needed to let Avery know that Tilda Armistead, and probably Myrna too, had stood between Gilbert Marlowe and the golf course that his resort probably needed to be profitable. When Faye had seen Marlowe and Myrna arguing, he had obviously been surprised that she opposed him. Before Tilda's death, he might have presumed she was the only person in his way, not knowing that her sister had more grit than he'd thought. Perhaps he had thought that, with Tilda out of the way, Dara would sell him her inheritance and Myrna would go along meekly with whatever he and her niece wanted.

Was Myrna in danger now? Faye didn't think Marlowe's obstacles fared well in this world.

Myrna was growing more frail by the day. Did her resistance matter to Gilbert Marlowe, when he knew that her heirs, Willow and Dara, would probably sell him anything he wanted after she was dead? The answer to that question depended on how long Gilbert Marlowe was willing to wait.

***

Faye waited until the door closed behind Joe before she hissed, “How did it go?”

He walked across the room and sat on her desk. Amande sat next to him. They both leaned down to put their mouths next to Faye's ears, making it impossible for Samuel to overhear this impromptu company meeting.

“What did he say? Was he pissed that I'd flown my mostly Creek husband up here to explain that, even in the absence of Europeans, civilization can be possible?”

“You were there when he first saw me, before you disappeared into this room. He was very polite. He has some weird ideas, but he has good manners.”

“Good. Because you certainly dressed to rub your not-European-ness in his face today.”

Joe had made a new pair of moccasins for the occasion, and he'd stuck a feather in his braid. This was his version of formal business attire. On “Casual Fridays,” he went barefoot.

Amande couldn't contain herself. “So what did he say?”

“He said the same stuff to me he's been saying to your mother, and it ain't nothing new. People have been talking about ancient dead ‘moundbuilder' cultures since Columbus stepped off the boat. They didn't want to believe that the people who were here waiting for him could possibly have built awesome things like mounds and pyramids. ‘Cause if they believed that, they would've had to think twice about treating them the way they did. Samuel still thinks that way. He wants our report to say that his artifacts prove that aliens came to upstate New York in ancient times.”

“I think there are still plenty of aliens living here in Rosebower,” Amande muttered. “And some of them are ancient, themselves.”

Faye covered Amande's mouth with her hand so she would let her father talk. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him the same stuff you've been telling him. The spaceman artifact is just a souvenir somebody brought home from a trip to Mexico. The Rosebower spear is made out of rock that looks local to me. His runestone is a piece of pottery. It ain't rare and it's also local.”

“Did he blow you off, like he did me?”

“Not exactly. I'm supposed to come back tomorrow with proof. He wants ‘authoritative' sources, which to Samuel means books. I told him I couldn't gather up all the books I needed that quick, but that I could do it if he would consider some Internet sources, too. Maybe he'll listen. Maybe our problem's solved.”

Faye should have been happy that Joe had made progress with Samuel, but she was mostly pissed off. If Samuel had been willing to let her show him published proof, she could have done it a week ago. Instead, he'd spent quite a lot of money on bringing in Joe to tell him the same thing.

Joe held up his hands in surrender. “I know what you're thinking. Maybe this guy only listens to men, but hey. We're making some money off the deal.”

If this statement was supposed to keep Faye from being angry, it missed the mark.

***

Faye couldn't believe it. The pile of shabby cardboard boxes waiting to be sorted was undeniably smaller. She leaned back in her desk chair, crossed her arms, and did nothing but look at it for a moment. She was glad she'd asked Avery to wait a day for the house tour, because three people working a full eight hours could do an impressive amount of work. Joe had to go back to Florida in a week but, at this pace, Faye had no doubt that she and Amande could finish this contract on schedule.

“We're off the clock now, right? Mom?” The unnatural glow of a computer screen reflected on Amande's young skin.

“Yes. You're free to chat or web-surf or watch cat videos. You've earned the right to waste your time.”

“Actually, I'm looking at aerial photos of Tilda's and Myrna's land and comparing them to a website on golf course design. I think Marlowe could squeeze a course onto their combined property, but he'd be better off if he had some of the other land around it, too.”

Joe had gotten comfortable at some point in the day, so his moccasins had been kicked into the corner. He poked Faye in the calf with his bare toe. “She's as nosy as you are.”

Faye poked him back without actually acknowledging his “nosy” comment. “Why don't you email those links to Avery, sweetie, then shut the computer down? I'm starving.”

“Wait,” Joe said. This was uncharacteristic. Nobody in their family was known for turning down food, or even delaying it slightly.

Then he walked out of the work room and checked to make sure the rest of the museum was empty. When he returned he said, “I want to talk about the golf course and the burnt house and all the things that go with them. And I want to do it here, where nobody will hear us.”

Amande rose silently to check the closet. Faye heard the service door's lock slide into place. Smart girl.

“It seems to me that we learned some stuff today that changes everything. Marlowe is distracting people from the fact that he doesn't have enough land to build the development that he's trying to jam down their throats. The person who did own the land is dead, and the person who owns it now doesn't look so good. Does any of this mean anything?”

“It means that Marlowe had a motive for Tilda's death, but it doesn't give us anything to link him to the fire. Technically, it means that Myrna had a motive, since she could now sell Marlowe the property that Tilda wouldn't sell him.

“But that doesn't add up, Mom, since we heard Myrna say she'd never sell it to him.”

“True. But Marlowe seemed surprised by her refusal, didn't you think? If a man killed a woman, believing that her sister would sell him what he wanted, then it would be an ugly surprise to find out that she
wouldn't
sell.”

“I think I know somebody else that's surprised,” Joe said. “I think the red-haired psychic was real shocked to find out she wasn't getting an inheritance. I saw how much she wanted that crystal ball this morning. Maybe she wanted the property that bad, too, so's she could sell it to Marlowe. It would be a terrible thing to kill your own mother, then find out you weren't going to inherit a fortune, after all.”

“Or to kill your mother-in-law, only to find out that your wife has been disinherited,” Faye said, watching Amande pout at a suggestion of Willow's guilt.

Amande responded by changing the subject. “What about the crystal ball and the lemons and nails and pennies?”

“The lemons and nails and pennies are a hex.” Joe said it matter-of-factly, as if everybody knew that walking over rotten citrus fruit would give a person bad luck. “I've heard of it. I've seen it done. Never tried it myself.”

Faye hoped Joe never tried to hex her. She said, “So somebody who believes in hoodoo was trying to give the Armistead sisters some bad luck.”

“It looks that way to me,” Joe said. “The crystal ball is different, though. I don't think it was a hex. It wasn't there nearly as long as those lemons—“

“Yuck,” said Amande. “They were gross.”

“—and the two of you sat in the same room with it on Monday night. It left the house right afterward, or Avery would have found it while she was searching through the ashes. I'd say that either Mrs. Armistead or her killer took it out of the house right after you left.”

“Makes sense,” Faye said. “But which?”

“Let's start with the set-up you told me first—the killer nailed the séance room shut, thinking she was in there, but she wasn't. She escaped from the burning house, but not before she breathed in enough smoke to die from smoke inhalation. The only way the killer comes away from that scenario with the crystal ball is by taking it before he thought Mrs. Armistead would go in the room. After that, the ball was nailed up in the room.”

“That doesn't sound right,” Faye said. “Tilda was so attached to her crystal ball. No one who knew her would be certain how she would behave if she opened the séance room door and saw that it was missing. Maybe she would go in to look for it, making it possible for the killer to nail the door shut behind her. But maybe she wouldn't go in. Maybe she'd start searching the house for her crystal ball. Maybe she'd even leave the house to get help finding it.”

“But if Tilda suspected something,” Faye said, “she might have gone in and gotten the ball before the killer even arrived. Maybe because she knew the killer wanted it?”

Amande interrupted her again but, again, her observation was astute. “Or maybe she just wanted to be sure her prized possession was safe.”

“I think that's our answer,” Faye said. “Tilda managed to get out of the room—but not the house— in the tiny window of time before her killer came, and she took the ball with her. The killer nailed an empty room shut and set the house on fire. Tilda escaped, but the hot smoke had already ruined her lungs. I lean toward this scenario because it explains the hiding place of the ball. Why would the killer have left it behind after going to the trouble of stealing it from Tilda's? And remember what Tilda said when she was dying? She said she tried to wake Myrna. I think she saved herself and the ball from the fire, then ran across the street to wake up her sister. The ball was heavy, so she hid it under Myrna's house.”