Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

“Emory asked what would keep him from just holding on to the two grand and doing nothing,” said Garnett. “The man told him nothing was to stop him, but if this went well, he would use him again. That is, if he didn’t mind doing a little traveling, like to Las Vegas and places.” Garnett gave a derisive chuckle. “Las Vegas.” He shook his head.

“Emory said the caller told him that from time to time he would receive an envelope, just like the one he’d received about you, with information and money in it,” said Hanks. “If he did well-get this-the man would open him an offshore account for the money to be deposited directly. Emory thought he’d made the big time.”

“Are you saying that some kind of organized crime people have put a contract out on me?” said Diane. “Are you serious?”

“Believe me,” said Hanks, “no serious crime organization would hire this guy for anything. He was being played, big-time. No fifty grand would be sent to him after-the deed.”

“But we don’t know who hired him,” said Garnett. “His phone records show the call came from a throwaway cell. We are going to assign a couple of men to you until this is over. We do take this seriously, no matter what kind of buffoon this Emory is. Someone out there knew he would be a good fall guy. He told Emory to make it quick and violent. If you wouldn’t let him in the door, he was to, quote, ‘blow the door off its hinges.’ ”

“Emory may be a moron,” said Hanks, “but the man who hired him isn’t. He knew how to con Emory into doing what he wanted him to do.”

“How do we find this guy?” asked Diane.

“We don’t know that yet,” said Garnett. “We’re going to start with Emory’s family. There’s a chance he made all this up and it’s actually the family taking revenge because of what happened to Ray-Ray. Maybe they weren’t as estranged as they led us to believe. But if that’s the case, we still have the question, why you? Why not Hanks here, or Daughtry? They were the two officers most closely connected to Ray-Ray’s death.”

“I have to call my security,” said Diane. “The way things are, I can’t use my museum office. I won’t bring a maniac into the museum after me. Until we catch this guy, I’ll use my office in the crime lab. Analyzing the evidence from Marcella’s may be the best way to find the answer to all this.”

Garnett nodded in agreement. “It’s a reasonable course of action,” he said. “That’s all we have at the moment. We keep running into dead ends. Whoever the mastermind is behind this, the guy is good at covering his tracks.”

“Please keep me informed on what you discover,” said Diane to the two of them. “Knowledge is what will keep me safe.”

“We will,” said Garnett.

Diane nodded. “Did you tell Hanks about my talk with Vanessa?” she asked Garnett.

“We talked about it this morning,” Garnett said.

“You think this woman, this Maybelle Agnes Gauthier, is our Mad Potter?” asked Hanks.

“Mad Potter?” said Garnett.

“What else would you call someone who made pots out of human bones?” said Hanks.

“I guess that’s what I would call them,” Garnett said with a laugh. “Just don’t let the press get hold of that.”

“She may have been,” said Diane. “But, so far, we only know that she was a painter.”

“At least we have a name,” said Hanks. “Easier to ask around about a person if you have a name. I was thinking I might send someone over, one of the girls, uh, women, over to the retirement homes to ask around. Some of those old-timers might remember her.”

“Good idea,” said Diane, rising from her chair. “If I’m finished here, I am going to the lab. I’ll be either there or at the house.”

She left the building, followed by her two bodyguards, and drove to the crime lab.

When Diane put the crime lab in the west wing of the museum, she added an outside elevator that went only from ground level to the crime lab on the third floor. She also added a small room, a lobby and guard post, at the ground-level entrance to the elevator. It was comfortable and had its own facilities. There was a receptionist and a permanent guard on duty. Diane invited the policemen to stay there. The crime lab was secure, she assured them.

“What about the entrance to the crime lab through the museum?” one of them asked.

“There’s a guard on duty there as well. It also has reinforced doors and locks.”

Diane left them in the elevator lobby and rode up to the crime lab. Izzy was there, holding down the fort while David and Neva were at the crime scene at Marcella’s house.

Izzy looked at her wide-eyed when she entered the lab. “Are you all right?” he asked when she walked in. “Jeez, what the hell happened? I’ve been hearing some strange stuff. The news and some of my buddies said someone shot his way into your house.”

Diane explained the events of the previous evening and her visit to the police station.

“Those IA inquiries,” he said, “don’t worry about them. They have to do that. Nobody’s going to fault you for shooting some son of a bitch in your house. Jeez, he shot through the back door.”

“It was very violent,” said Diane. “I intend to find out who sent him and why.”

“This case has been strange from the beginning,” said Izzy. “Attacking Dr. Payden and making off with only a few paintings and a little pottery-what is that about? And that crazy writing on the bottom of the drawer. You know, at first it sounded like the writer was the victim, but now it looks like she might have been the perp. I don’t know what to make of it. And what about that poor Lassiter woman? None of it makes a bit of sense.”

“No,” said Diane. “But it will soon. I won’t have people coming after me and messing up Frank’s house like that,” she said. “I’ll be in my office in the osteology lab. There are two policemen downstairs assigned to watch over me.”

Diane went to her office and called her chief of security and told her what was going on. Diane told her she wanted to make the office wing off-limits to all but museum personnel until this was solved. She then called Andie, her assistant.

“Dr. Fallon, I heard on the news. Was it true? Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” said Diane. “I’m working from my osteology office, for the time being. I want you to work from the office up in archives.”

“Why?” asked Andie.

“Because you are in my office and I don’t want anyone in there. I’ve instructed security. And please, don’t talk about this. Just have your workstation routed up there,” she said.

“Sure. You think someone will come here?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. The guy who broke into Frank’s house is in custody. But someone sent him and we don’t know who yet. I just want to be extra cautious and make sure everyone is safe,” she said.

“Sure, I’ll do that. I’m really sorry this is happening,” she said. “You know, people are just crazy.”

“That seems to be the general consensus,” said Diane.

After her talk with Andie, Diane donned her lab coat and walked into her osteology lab. The lab was a large room with bright white walls, white cabinets, and plenty of overhead lighting. It was a bright room and cheery in its own way, with its shiny tables, sinks, and microscopes.

Neva had been working on laser mapping the skull. Her computer drawings were spread out on the counter. They showed a pretty girl. She looked so young. Too young to be dead.

The ceramic mask and sherds had been brought up from the archaeology lab and were lying on another table. The bones excavated from Marcella’s well were in plastic containers sitting on one of the metal tables. Diane started laying them out in anatomical order on two tables-one for each skeleton. They were broken skeletons with missing parts. It was a sad group of bones.