Beverly Connor - Dead Past

“I don’t see the connection,” said Jin.

“Maybe the killer wanted to be seen. Assume for a moment that both Stanton and McNair were killed by the same person. He seems to be professional; he left very few clues. Why then would he show himself at a time and place where he knew he was likely to be seen?”

“Good thought,” said David. “You thinking he disguised himself as another suspect? Could happen; the description was in the news as well as all over the neighborhood. In that case, there might be no link between Joana Cipriano and Marcus McNair. The detectives are just running in circles trying to make a connection.”

“All of this is conjecture,” said Diane. “But it is something to think about.”

“We need to look at each crime scene with a fresh eye,” said Jin. “Just look at the evidence and build from there… ”

As Diane listened to Jin, she picked up Neva’s report on the processing of her car that had been lying on her desk for days. She absently thumbed through it and stopped abruptly, stood, and stared at the page.

“Where is the evidence you gathered from my car?” said Diane.

Jin stopped in the middle of what he was saying. “What?” he asked.

“Which one?” asked David.

“The first one, the carjacking,” said Neva, looking at the report Diane was holding. “It’s all in the evidence locker.” She pointed in the direction of the crime lab.

Diane rushed out of her office, through the osteology lab, and into the crime lab. She made a beeline for the evidence locker, keyed in the digitized combination, opened it, and walked in. The box she was looking for was right up front. It was labeled with her name, the make and model of her car, Blake Stanton’s name, and the date and time, written in neat black lettering on the end. She pulled it out and set it on the table.

Jin, Neva, and David had followed her. They stood looking at each other quizzically and shrugged.

“Is something wrong?” asked Neva

Diane ignored her as she searched through the box for the evidence bags. She found the bag she was looking for, initialed it, opened the seal, and poured out the contents into her hand where she examined them closely before placing them on the table.

“These are Cypraea aurantium, ” she said, eying Neva.

“Sorry, I thought they were seashells.” Neva creased her forehead in a worried frown.

“They look like those shells that you see in African motifs,” said Neva. “That’s what I thought they were.

“Cowrie shells,” said Diane. “Golden cowries-they are worth about three hundred dollars apiece.”

“Three hundred dollars for one of those?” said Neva, pointing to the eight shells, each the color of a deep yellow sunset.

Jin whistled. “Wow, Boss, you sure know your seashells.”

“I know these because they belong to the museum,” said Diane. “You found these in my car, Neva?”

“In the backseat. They were in that Ziploc bag with the blood on it. The blood is his. We sent it off to be tested. The shells have his fingerprints-from the hand that was cut off. He had a scar on his thumb that shows up in his prints. So he had them before he got in your car.”

“I’m not following this,” said David, standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the cowrie shells. “These are your shells?”

“Not mine personally. The museum’s. We’ve had a series of thefts. Among them, six thousand dollars worth of rare seashells. So far we’ve discovered the loss of rare items valued at a total of over thirty thousand dollars missing from various departments in the museum-including Vanessa Van Ross’s ten-thousand-dollar diamond that she gave to the museum’s gem reference collection.”

David, Neva, and Jin glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. David shrugged.

“Why weren’t we called?” asked Jin.

“Museum Security is tallying the loss. We just discovered the items were missing. The thief substituted imitations or cheaper items in place of the missing ones, so it’s taken a while for all the thefts to be discovered.”

David pulled up a chair from one of the tables in the room and sat down. He stroked the fringe of hair that still grew around the back and sides of his head.

“What does this mean for all the theories of the crime that we’ve been positing?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Diane. “This adds a new wrinkle, doesn’t it?” She sat down, too, and the others followed.

“Does this mean Blake Stanton’s extra money was coming from thievery and not drugs?” asked David.

“Or both,” said Jin. He leaned forward with his forearms propped on his thighs and hands clasped between his knees. “I don’t think we have to throw away all the theories of the crime just yet.”

“Campus police will probably cooperate with museum security better than they will with us. I’ll have Chanell call them and find out if the university’s been having similar thefts.”

“You think maybe that’s what he’s been getting out of his perpetual student status-plenty of places to pilfer?” said David.

“Maybe,” said Diane. “Just look at the hunting grounds-all the departments, the library, the campus art museum.”

“Not to mention money,” said Jin. “If you’re any kind of good thief, there’s lots of opportunities around university departments to swipe money.”

“It might be a good racket,” said David. “If you don’t steal too much from any one source, it may take a while before they even notice anything’s missing, or that there’s a larger pattern.”

“But you have to have a place to sell it,” said Diane.

“He has to be selling to collectors for most of it,” said David. “That’s where you’ll get a premium price for those kinds of items. And collectors often don’t ask probing questions.”

“How did he get access to so many departments in the museum?” said Neva. “I mean, the Van Ross diamond isn’t even on display. It’s in the reference collection.”

Jin and David looked at her with the same question on their faces.

“I know because Mike showed me the diamond, OK?”

“How is Mike?” said Jin. “We haven’t seen very much of him lately.”

“He’s away searching for those strange organisms,” said Neva. “All our dates lately have been over a webcam. Right now he’s caving in South America.”

“Webcam dating,” said David. “That sounds like me. Only, I usually don’t know the girl at the other end.”

Jin laughed; Diane rolled her eyes.

“Just kidding,” he said. “Although I understand you can have some pretty good remote kinky sex with a webcam. Joana Cipriano’s ex-husband apparently gets lots of cartoon action.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” said Neva.

“I wouldn’t.” Diane shook her head.

“You can tell me later,” said Jin.

Diane replaced the seashells in the evidence bag, resealed it, and had Neva, Jin, and David sign as witnesses. Just as she put it in the locker, her cell phone rang. She looked at the display. It was Laura Hillard, psychiatrist friend and museum board member.

“Hi,” said Diane. “You call to tell me I’m a murder suspect?”

“I guess you know that some crazy woman’s been calling all of us,” said Laura. “I tried to set her straight, but it’s awfully hard to set someone straight who’s nuts-I know. Actually that’s not why I called. It’s about your employee, Juliet Price.”

“Juliet? Is she all right?” Diane walked back to her office as she listened to Laura.

“Nothing’s happened. Don’t worry. She’s been coming to see me. You know how I like to work-I have my patients come every day for a couple of weeks before I go to a weekly appointment schedule. I think the initial intensity gives them a lot of security up front and lets me get to know them better. Of course, I’ve had a few who think it’s just a money-making scheme.” She laughed. “Anyway, she gave me permission to speak with you. I thought you could help.”