She’d been part of the Amenmose expedition because of her fascination with figuring out motives, clues, possibilities. The puzzle aspects of a crime.
Not that solving the murder of a mummy could help with a present-day case.
Still, solving what might be considered an extremely cold case was certainly a useful exercise.
That afternoon, in the room with the mummies and the artifacts and Henry Tomlinson’s notes, she found herself even more fascinated with the crime—committed thousands of years ago—because, despite time and place, people were people.
She was familiar with Tutankhamen, but read more about him, including some material that was new to her. She read about Ay. There were numerous references to Amenmose, as well. He knew the stars; he could navigate by them. He knew the heavens and the earth.
And he knew about Ra, about the dishonor Tutankhamen’s father had done the ancient gods.
She reviewed the facts about Tut and Akhenaten in Henry’s notes and translations, as well as those prepared by other scholars. The discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 had opened their ancient lives to investigation, leading to years of speculating. Some of that speculation had proven to be true; Akhenaten had tried to create a monotheistic society, his one god being Ra, the sun god. When Tutankhamen came to the throne, his father’s efforts had been completely erased. In fact, his father’s reign had been erased from records, and his mummy had disappeared.
Among Henry’s papers, Harley found a research document dated 2010, of which he was a coauthor. It was about the discovery, in a cache of royal mummies, of one who’d proven through DNA testing to be Akhenaten.
But in Tut’s time, there must’ve been many people who still believed what Tut’s father had believed. Perhaps there were people prepared to kill a man like Amenmose, a man so ready to help Tut and Ay obliterate his father. Or not. Most experts concluded that Ay had ordered the murder.
Then Harley came across the translation of a letter mentioning a woman named Skrit; more digging showed that she was Amenmose’s wife.
Harley rose and walked around the room for a moment. Was one of the mummies there Skrit?
She saw nothing that would indicate such a thing.
Why wasn’t the woman buried with him? Of course, the tomb had been a secret. Had she, his loving wife, planned it, planned the burial? Amenmose had been murdered, but he’d been given all the correct funeral rites such a man would have required.
Frustrated, Harley sat back down. She began to read and research again, referring not just to the notes they had, but looking up entries online made by scholars through the ages.
She stopped looking for Amenmose. She started looking for Skrit.
And what she found was truly fascinating.
* * *
MICAH KNOCKED AGAIN.
He knew the housekeeper was in the house.
He’d been there for nearly ten minutes, and she had yet to answer the door.
But he knew she was in there. And that she was hovering close to the door.
“I just have a few questions,” he said loudly. “If you don’t care to answer them...well, I can have some people from Immigration come down here in a few minutes. I can call Homeland Security, too.”
The door finally opened. The pretty housekeeper stepped back. Her eyes were huge and wet with tears she was trying not to shed.
Micah felt like a real jerk. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I don’t want to hurt you in any way. I just have to ask you a few questions. And I need you to answer me honestly.”
She nodded, looking anxiously out at the street, then pulled him quickly inside.
“I am Valeria. Valeria Andreev. I don’t want to go back, please. I want to be legal. Mr. Richter has said he will help me. He pays me well. He is a kind man.”
“I don’t want you to be sent back, either. You obviously want to be here, and you seem to know the language well.”
“I want to be American.”
“We can try to help you. But I need your help.”
She nodded again, an earnest expression on her face.
“Did Mr. Richter go to the hospital to bring Mrs. Richter home yesterday?”
“Yes, that is true. It is not a lie.”
“What time was that?”
“Close to noon.”
“Okay, thank you. And then?”
“And then Mrs. Richter asked me for juice and some food, and told me that she would sleep, and she didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“And?”
“I did not see her again until this morning.”
“Okay, thank you. And what about Mr. Richter? Did he stay with her? Talk to her, take care of her and make sure she was all right?”
Valeria looked stricken. She didn’t want to tell the truth.
“I saw him... I saw him bring her home.”
“He went into her room?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t stay there.”
Valeria bit her lower lip and shook her head unhappily.
“I don’t think so. I think...they argued. I think she was angry with him. I heard their voices, and then I heard nothing, and I thought...”
“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 ot
hers 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 discovered, 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.