Curious Minds

  “You don’t seem especially worried,” Emerson said.

  “I drink a lot,” Irene said. “And I smoke dope. It keeps me more or less happy.”

  Irene opened the door at the top of the stairs, and everyone stepped into Günter’s home office. It was a room much like Günter’s office at Blane-Grunwald, all rich mahogany and plush upholstery. A few flies buzzed around in the semidarkness. A shaft of sunlight fell on the ornate partners desk through the gap in the heavy draperies. The walls were paneled and lined with bookshelves. The books were for the most part academic.

  Irene opened the drapes. “I really should air this room. I can’t imagine how these flies got in here.”

  A door chimed downstairs, and Irene looked at her watch. “That’s my housekeeper. I need to talk to her. And I’m meeting a friend for coffee in a few minutes. Will you be much longer?”

  “Yes,” Emerson said. “Considerably longer.”

  Riley thought Irene looked like she wanted to stick a fork in Emerson’s heart. And she didn’t blame her.

  “Would you mind terribly letting yourself out?” Irene said, forcing a smile. “I really need to run.”

  “No worries,” Emerson said, rifling through Günter’s file drawer, not looking at Irene. “We’re fine on our own.”

  Riley settled into an oversized overstuffed chair and watched Emerson search through the room. After fifteen minutes she was tired of watching. She checked her cellphone for emails and surfed some news sites. At the thirty-minute mark she began sighing. Loudly. SIGH!

  “I hear you,” Emerson said. “I would expect better communication skills from you than sighing.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “That’s very British.”

  “I went to secondary school in England. Several of them, actually.”

  “Kept getting kicked out?”

  “I was an academic challenge.”

  “Are you finding anything useful?” Riley asked.

  Emerson opened the top drawer on the desk and removed a scrap of paper. “This room is surprisingly sterile. Very much like Günter’s office. No personal effects scattered about. And to answer your question…perhaps. There’s this piece of paper with a quotation from Seneca, the Roman philosopher. Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s either a suicide note, or the exact opposite.”

  “What’s the exact opposite of a suicide note?” Riley asked.

  “Getting up every day and living. And even better than the quote is the name scrawled on the back. ‘Dr. Bauerfeind.’ ”

  “Do you know him?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “Anything else that’s captured your interest?”

  “The beetle hanging on the wall. It’s a death’s head beetle.”

  Riley crossed the room and examined the beetle. It was perfectly preserved and mounted in a glass frame. The shell was shiny, with two black spots on it. The wings were glossy and golden. Under it was pinned a piece of paper with an inscription, written in a fine scientific hand. SCARABAEUS CAPUT HOMINIS.

  While Riley looked at the beetle, Emerson removed a Rembrandt etching from the wall and exposed Günter’s safe.

  “So predictable,” he said. “It really takes some of the fun out of it.”

  He stared at the digital keypad for a minute or two, punched in a combination, and the safe swung open.

  “How did you know the combination?” Riley asked.

  “It was obvious. I only doubted it because it was so simple.” Emerson pointed to the framed insect on the wall. “What can you tell me about that?”

  “It looks fake.”

  “It is. Someone must have given it to Günter as a joke. It’s painted to look like a golden skull. And the inscription on the label, ‘Scarabaeus Caput Hominis’—Man’s Head Beetle. Clearly, it’s an homage to the Edgar Allan Poe story in which a man finds a fabulous treasure with the help of a fantastic insect, ‘The Gold-Bug.’ ”

  “ ‘Goldbug,’ ” Riley said. “That’s also a term used in investing. It means an expert who recommends buying gold as an investment.”

  “Exactly. A person who believes that gold is a stable source of wealth, like it was during the days of the gold standard. So it wasn’t hard to guess that ‘goldbug’ would be Günter’s combination. That and the fact that the numbers are written under Bauerfeind’s name on the scrap of paper. Of course the numbers are rearranged, but the code is a simple one.”

  He reached into the safe and pulled out the single object inside. A gold bar. A fly fluttered off the bar and Emerson handed the bar to Riley. She was amazed by the heft of the thing.

  “I’m pretty sure this is a Good Delivery bar,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen one in person.”

  “Like you, my knowledge is academic. I know that Good Delivery bars are noted for high purity and large size, weighing in the vicinity of thirty pounds each. Most gold collectors collect coins or small bars of one ounce. Good Delivery bars are much harder to analyze or to trade. They are used in major international markets like Tokyo and London and New York and the gold reserves of major governments. And the International Monetary Fund. This one was made in Munich. It has the word ‘München’ carved in it, along with a half moon and crown, followed by the minting date and serial number.”

  “If this actually is a Good Delivery bar it meets the specifications issued by the London Bullion Market Association, and it would contain about four hundred troy ounces of gold,” Riley said.

  “A fortune for most people.”

  “But not for Günter,” Riley said. “It’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Günter has more money than he could possibly spend in one lifetime.”

  “He has ninety million. He could spend that,” Emerson said.

  “How?”

  “If he lived to ninety-five, he could do it.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “It could be done.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I could do it.”

  Riley didn’t think she could do it. She came from a culture that clipped coupons and shopped at yard sales.

  “What would you buy?” she asked Emerson. “A shark with a laser beam gizmo attached to his head? It would have to be something incredible.”

  Emerson handed the gold bar to Riley. “Put this in your bag.”

  “What?” Riley asked.

  “Put it in your bag. We’re going to take it with us.”

  “Are we going to ask first? We’re going to ask.”

  “Why should we ask?”

  “Because it’s a gold bar worth in the vicinity of half a million dollars. That’s more than grand larceny. That’s great-grand larceny.”

  “We’ll bring it back. We’re just going to borrow it. I don’t think Irene even knows it’s there.”

  “You don’t think?”

  —

  Riley dumped her bag onto the Mustang’s backseat and slid behind the wheel.

  Emerson got in, and Riley put the car in gear and sped out to the parkway before Irene Grunwald could return from her coffee date, peek into her safe, and call the cops. Or the Secret Service. Or whoever they sent after you for stealing gold bars.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said.

  “Believe,” Emerson said.

  “Why do you want it?”

  “It feels off. The safe had been cleaned out. There were no papers, no stacks of extra cash. None of the things you would expect to find in a home office safe. Why was this gold bar left behind?”

  “Maybe it was left in the safe to be…safe.”

  “Maybe. But think back. What was in the safe when I opened it?”

  “Just that gold,” Riley said.

  “Your eyes see, but they do not observe. Cast your mind back to when I opened the safe. What did you see?”

  “The gold,” Rile
y said.

  “And?”

  “A fly.”

  “Exactly. What kind of fly?”

  “A fly with big wings. Almost like a dragonfly, but smaller.”

  “It was a mayfly. Also called a shad fly or lake fly. An aquatic insect. It only lives for about twenty-four hours after it sprouts its wings.”

  “And Mrs. Grunwald said no one had been in that room or the safe for days.”

  “But someone was in that room, and in that safe, sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Someone, most probably, who came from the waterfront and tracked the mayfly larvae in with them. Someone who opened that safe but didn’t take the gold. Why not?”

  Riley finished his thought. “They took something else?”

  “Or they planted this gold inside.”

  “But you don’t know which.”

  “No, but I intend to find out. That’s why we’re going to Blane-Grunwald to see Maxine Trowbridge.”

  “Do you think she planted the gold?” Riley asked.

  “I think she has a dislike and fear of Werner and fond feelings for Günter. As his trusted assistant she would know many things, possibly including the combination to his home safe and the code for his security system. When you were working as Günter’s intern, what was your impression of Maxine Trowbridge?”

  “I thought she was very efficient. The ultimate professional. Always appropriately dressed. Always polite. Günter trusted and respected her, but I never saw anything to indicate that the relationship went beyond the office. She worked for Werner before Günter. That was the one oddity. Working for Günter would have been a demotion of sorts.”

  “Unless Werner put her in there to spy on Günter.”

  “Yes. And I suppose I could see him doing that,” Riley said.

  “Since he asked you to spy on me?”

  “It wasn’t stated that specifically, but yes.”

  “And are you spying on me?” Emerson asked her.

  “I suppose I am.” Riley kept her eyes fixed on the road, looking for the bridge exit. “How did you remember the name of an Edgar Allan Poe story?”

  “When the Siddhar was training me, he had me learn all of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination by heart. Along with the first five books of the Bible, the Purva of Jainism, and the tragedies of Shakespeare.”

  “Just the tragedies?”

  “They have all the good lines.”

  “Why all that memorizing? Don’t you have a computer? Or Google?”

  “ ‘Wax on, wax off.’ ”

  “You’re quoting Karate Kid now?”

  “I also memorized a lot of movies from the eighties. But the point was to exercise my mind. The material I memorized was incidental.”

  “Oh, yeah. Like when Mr. Miyagi from Happy Days had Ralph Macchio wash his car. It was to teach him a greater lesson. I can’t remember what.”

  “Television lessons tend to be fleeting,” Emerson said.

  “What else did that Siddhar teach you? Did he teach you Kung Fu? I bet he taught you Kung Fu.”

  “He didn’t teach me Kung Fu. Although I know many forms of martial arts.”

  “Does he have a white beard and bushy white eyebrows? Does he wear a long white robe?”

  “No, no, and yes. The robe was terry cloth and I believe he ordered it from Pottery Barn.”

  “Did he do magic tricks? Walk on coals? Sleep on a bed of nails?”

  “I don’t think you take this seriously. But I’m enjoying this repartee. You have an agile mind.”

  “My agile mind is working overtime trying not to panic over the fact that we just committed a felony. Are you sure Irene doesn’t know about the gold bar?”

  “There’s one way we can be sure if she does know about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If we’re arrested for stealing it,” he said.

  Riley pulled the Mustang into Günter’s parking space at Blane-Grunwald and cut the engine.

  “What are we going to do with the gold?” she asked Emerson.

  “We’ll take it with us.”

  “I’m not carrying that gold into the building.”

  “No problem. I’ll carry it. I’ll put it in my rucksack.”

  Emerson pulled the bar out of Riley’s bag and dropped it into his rucksack.

  “Good riddance,” Riley said.

  They took the elevator to the seventeenth floor, walked the corridor to Maxine’s office, and peeked inside. Empty. Riley stepped across the hall and asked a woman if she knew where they could find Maxine.

  “At home,” the woman said. “She called in sick.”

  Riley looked at Emerson. “Now what?”

  “Now we visit her at her home.”

  Riley got Maxine’s address from Human Resources, they returned to the Mustang, and Riley plugged the address into the maps app on her iPhone.

  “It looks like she’s about fifteen minutes away,” Riley said.

  She drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, turned right onto Thirteenth Street, and found herself in the gentrified neighborhood of Columbia Heights. The street was lined with expensive row houses built around the turn of the last century, but remodeled and refurbished and polished like antique jewelry.

  “How can she afford a place like this on an executive assistant’s salary?” Riley asked as they stepped out of the car.

  “Maybe Günter helps her out,” Emerson said.

  “You think?”

  “You’re speaking sarcastically as a way of agreeing with me, aren’t you?”

  “You think?”

  “You did it again. I find that endearing.”

  They walked up the stoop and rang the bell. The door opened and Maxine looked out at them. She wasn’t dressed like somebody who was home sick. She was wearing rugged workout clothes and a yellow and gray jacket with a drawstring at the waist.

  “Goodness,” Maxine said. “This is a surprise. Is something wrong?”

  Emerson pulled the gold bar out of his rucksack, and Maxine stared at it, dumbfounded.

  “Did you leave this at Günter’s house last night?” Emerson asked.

  “Of course not,” Maxine said. “Why would you think such a thing?”

  “Because I’m brilliant,” Emerson said. “Can we come in?”

  —

  Maxine led them into her living room but didn’t invite them to sit.

  “I hope you won’t think me rude,” she said, “but I only have a few minutes. I was on my way out.”

  The room was nicely furnished with a chunky pale gray sofa and two matching club chairs. The end tables were mahogany and the rug was a deep pile Tibetan.

  “About the gold bar,” Emerson said.

  “I don’t know how you came to get that bar,” Maxine said, “but something bad might happen if you don’t put it back. Does Irene know you have it?”

  “She wasn’t present when I discovered it,” Emerson said. “I would like to know how it got into the safe in the first place.”

  “You guessed right. I put it there last night.”

  “How did you manage it?” Riley asked.

  “Günter has a sailboat tied up to the dock behind his house. I don’t believe he’s sailed it in years, but he loved the boat, and he would have his coffee there in the morning, and sometimes a cocktail in the evening. I knew he kept a spare key with a remote to turn the security system on and off in the cabin, so I went to the boat after dark, got the key, and waited until after midnight, when Irene would be too drunk to hear anything. When I saw the lights go out, I let myself into the house, went up to his office, opened the safe, and left the gold bar.”

  “Why?” Emerson asked.

  “Because that’s what I was told to do.”

  Maxine pulled a plain wooden box off a bookshelf, took another gold bar out of it, and placed it on the coffee table next to the one from Günter’s safe. They were identical. Same “München” inscription, same half moon and crown. Same date and serial number.


  “A few months ago, Günter heard he was getting a new responsibility—one he’s wanted for a long time,” Maxine said. “I know Werner told you he wasn’t, but Werner lies. He lies about everything.”

  Riley thought there was a lot of anger in Maxine’s voice when she talked about Werner’s deceit. Most likely Maxine had some unpleasant personal experience with Werner and his lies. Or maybe she was just feeling protective of Günter.

  “Günter was going to be put in charge of all the gold holdings at Blane-Grunwald,” Maxine said. “More specifically, the huge underground vault that’s built into the Manhattan bedrock below the New York offices. The B&G vault is the biggest privately owned gold repository for central banks, institutions, exchange-traded funds, you name it. It’s where all the largest investors store their gold.”

  “Who was in charge of this prior to Günter?” Emerson asked.

  “The senior Grunwald. After he died, the position was simply left open, but for whatever reason the board recently decided to name Günter as overseer. Anyway, Günter went to Manhattan to check it out. He met with Yvette Jaworski, an old friend of his at the New York office, and discussed things. When he came back, he was a changed man. Distant. Uncommunicative. I asked him what was wrong. He wouldn’t talk about it.

  “Then Yvette disappeared. He became more secretive after that. He would go away for long weekends. Even I didn’t know where he went. Finally, he showed up here one night, after work. And he had these two gold bars. They’re identical in every way. Down to the serial numbers.

  “He told me to keep the one you brought with you, but if anything happened to him, I was to get my hands on the one in his home safe and swap it out. He said if it was found among his effects it would be bad for his wife, for his reputation. So I was supposed to switch them.

  Emerson looked at the two gold bars. “One of these is counterfeit.”

  “I’ve thought the same thing,” Maxine said.

  “But which one?” Emerson asked.

  Maxine paused and adjusted a wisp of hair. “I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t care. I’ve done what he asked me to do. I can let it rest.”

  Emerson leaned in closer to Maxine. “Did you know that the CIA has identified six primary physical signs of deception, including behavioral delay and grooming gestures? It’s true. I read it in a book.”