Aaron Elkins: Dead men’s hearts

“Listen, I’m lucky I know what it is.”

“Back of the storeroom off Workroom A,” she told him.

As they crossed the workroom with its pottery fragments in open trays and its containers of glue and preservatives, Saleh sniffed the air appraisingly. “I smell… what is it?”

Gabra knit his brow. “Pizza?”

“Must be the glue,” Jerry said, straight-faced. He led them confidently through the storeroom to a floor-to-ceiling set of open metal racks on the end of which was taped a flyblown, typewritten placard: “El-Fuqani, 1921-23, C. Lambert.” The three-shelf racks were loaded with heavy cardboard boxes stacked two high. Jerry moved down the racks, forefinger extended, scanning the numbers on the front of the boxes. A few stacks in, he stopped.

“Here we go, 4360.”

He pulled out the box, set it on an empty rack, and, with a flourish, swept off the lid.

Except for a crumbly accumulation of bone dust, it was empty.

“So,” Saleh said with his cool smile, “the mystery is solved. Nothing very serious, it seems.”

Haddon’s bearded jaw had stiffened. “I consider it quite serious enough,” he said, looking directly at Jerry. “These specimens are housed here on the assumption that they be given proper care and protection. They have received that protection for some seventy years, but now it seems that some rather slipshod practices have been allowed to take hold.”

“I’ll look into the matter, sir,” Jerry said with that serenity that sometimes infuriated TJ, sometimes filled her with admiration, and never stopped amazing her. Even after living with him for twelve years. How did he do it? And he wasn’t even nursing an ulcer from suppressed emotions; he just didn’t give a damn. In his place, she thought, flames would be shooting out of her nose.

“I think we’d better look into it right now,” Haddon snapped, “while we still have the services of these good gentlemen.”

“I don’t know what-”

“How many more of our specimens have been made off with? Are any of them still in their boxes?”

The same question had occurred to TJ, but she had hoped to examine the rest of the collection with Jerry later on, without anybody-especially and above all others, Clifford Haddon-watching balefully over their shoulders, waiting to pounce.

“Well, let’s just see,” Jerry said amiably, and took the lid from 4370, the box that had been beneath 4360. It was full of old brown bones. So was 4340, 4350, and 4370. So were the other fifty-two boxes. Everything was as it should have been; only 4360 was not peacefully resting where it was supposed to be.

Gabra, who had opened cartons with the others-Saleh had stood watching, glancing occasionally at his watch- rubbed dust from his hands. “Very good. Merely an error of some untrue sort.”

“Gentlemen,” Haddon said ardently, “you have my sincere apologies for wasting so much of your time.”

“I assure you, it was no trouble,” Saleh said formally. “I am only happy that it was not a more serious matter requiring continued police attention.”

“No, no, I take full responsibility for the actions and oversights of my staff.”

TJ silently ground her teeth again. What an unfailingly petty sonofabitch the man was. In his spiteful, self-centered way he managed to see all this as some kind of personal loss of face, which meant, from his point of view, that somebody- anybody but him-had to be blamed.

“Please, please,” said Gabra, who seemed like a nice guy. “It was a most interesting morning with no apologies being necessary.”

This elicited a few curt, unintelligible syllables in Arabic from Saleh, and a moment later the policemen had gone, leaving Haddon, Jerry, and TJ staring at one another over the empty box.

“I hope you understand,” Haddon said, “how deeply displeased I am, and that I am forced to consider the two of you responsible for the lapse in proper procedure that allowed this ludicrous incident to take place. As the major said, we’re fortunate it wasn’t more serious. This entire collection might well have been walked off with.”

“Dr. Haddon, let’s look at this reasonably for a minute,” TJ said. She didn’t feel like being reasonable, she felt like bashing him with the Seventeenth Dynasty stone jug on the rack behind him. Seven years she’d been there, and never once until now had she heard him express the slightest interest in the skeletal collection. If he’d ever been in this room before, it was news to her. So why all this goddamn fuss now? He was blowing a trivial, silly incident all out of proportion. It was odd, yes, but hardly earth-shattering.

“Only one set of bones was missing,” she said calmly, doing her best to emulate Jerry. “Whoever threw it out, and whatever reason he did it, we now have it back. In very short order, 4360 will be back in his snug little box again, as good as new.”

“Except for a gnawed bone here and there, and whatever was carried off by the rats,” Haddon said, “but what’s that among friends?”

TJ eked out a smile. “Well, actually, I think the rats got to him back in the Fifth Dynasty. They usually don’t find 4,400-year-old bones very appetizing.”

“I don’t find any of this very appetizing.”

“Sir,” Jerry put in, “you can rest assured that nothing like this will ever happen again. I’ll go over the security arrangements with a fine-tooth comb-”

What security arrangements would those be, TJ wondered.

“-and make whatever changes are necessary. I’ll clear them with you first.”

“Do,” Haddon said aridly, and to TJ: “Shall we return to the scene of the crime, Doctor?”

“Sure,” said TJ, but wasn’t this the scene of the crime?

Haddon picked up a femur and rubbed the dirt off with the heel of his hand. “Forty-three sixty,” he read aloud, shaking his head. “Do you have any idea what a laughingstock we’ll be if this gets out?”

TJ studied her toes.

Haddon dropped the bone back in the dust and wiped his hands on a handkerchief. “First,” he said, “I want this area scoured for every bit of bone that can be found. You do it; your husband wouldn’t know a metacarpal from a marshmallow. Then I want them cleaned and put back where they belong. And then I want this horrible enclosure torn down and its contents thrown away. I want it done immediately, is that understood? Have Mrs. Ebeid see to it.”

“Getting the garbage people to come out anytime soon is going to be a problem,” TJ said. “They’re-”

“Bury it, then. Dig a hole, shovel it in, and cover it over. Use the whatever-it’s-called.”

“Backhoe,” said TJ. “There’s a lot of stuff in here. It’d have to be a pretty big hole.”

“Well, put it-where was it Arlo suggested?-in the northeast corner, where Lambert’s people used to bury their trash. That’s appropriate enough; some of this rubbish has been around at least since then.” He kicked disgustedly at an old-fashioned kerosene space heater, dented and rusty, and gestured with both arms. “What a pigsty. We should have had it cleaned out-” He stopped, frowning and uncertain, his eyes focused on something in his mind. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t there…”

He turned to look at a corner of the enclosure, against which an old bed frame was propped. He pointed at the base of the bed frame. “There was a head there.”

“No, sir,” TJ said after a second, “the skull was over here, by the-”

“Not a skull, a head.”

“A-head?”

“The head of a statue,” he said irritably. “A statuette. What the devil did you think I meant?” He prowled around the enclosure, edging around bones and junk, his eyes searching the ground. “Yellow jasper, or possibly quartzite-about half-life-size, I think. It’s not here.” He peered at her. “You didn’t see it?”