Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

“Excellent,” said Diane. “You’ve impressed me.”

“Jonas said your skeleton is young-late teens, early twenties, maybe?” Diane nodded. “I was thinking. Between March and June lies the dates of spring break for some schools, ours included.”

“Damn, Sylvia, you’re right. Good thinking. You’ve got a knack for this.”

“I thought so. Go figure.”

Sylvia left her notes with Diane. She also left an evidence bag filled out by Jonas with a cross-section in it of the tree whose roots skewered both the wolf and the human skeleton and, as it turned out, the pig. She took it out and looked at the rings-four years. Another verification. The skeletons were there before four years ago, or else the tree could not have planted its roots between their ribs.

She very nearly had a date. After calling Frank’s partner, Ben, and leaving a message about the time frame that Sylvia had discovered, Diane took the evidence up to the conservation lab and slipped it in the box with the bones. In just a few days she had amassed quite a bit of information. She had no doubt she could find out whose bones they were, and for the first time she felt really close to a breakthrough.

“Is Korey around?” she asked his assistants on her way out.

“Somewhere. He’s been acting kind of strange all day,” said Barbara.

“Been on the phone all day talking to a string of people,” said another assistant.

“I hope everything’s all right. Tell him I was looking for him.”

“Sure thing.”

Diane walked down to the first floor. While she was in the main lobby she decided to go talk to the herpetologist to see if he was any closer to finding the snake. It made her shiver just thinking about it. She had these visions of opening a cabinet somewhere and having the snake fall out on her.

As she walked through, going to the west wing of the museum, she stopped by the museum store to welcome the owners and to check on their progress in getting ready to open. The proprietors, owners of a gift shop in town, were busy shelving merchandise.

They had a huge variety of items, including books, dinosaur replicas, museum kits and tee shirts, and several shelves of toys. She really loved the museum, but any joyful thoughts about it were always followed by sadness that Ariel wouldn’t be here to share it with her.

As she crossed the second lobby with the huge high ceiling that was off the dinosaur room and was the twin of the Pleistocene room, she spotted Korey sitting alone on a bench. She went past the twenty-five-foot-long Albertosaurus skeleton greeting people at the entrance with its mouthful of sharp teeth and sat down beside Korey under a Pteranodon suspended above, its wings spanning almost the width of the room.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine.” He was smiling.

“I was looking for you. I got a lead on who may be involved in the lab break-in.”

“Mrs. Grayson,” he said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Deduction.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around among my staff.”

He didn’t ask what she meant, but continued to stare at the wall, looking like the cat who had just found the source of all cream.

“Are you going to tell me?” she said.

“Yeah.” He turned toward her and grinned.

“You going to make me drag it out of you?”

“Just enjoying the moment. You remember when I was showing Mrs. Grayson the papers we found in the basement?”

“Are you telling me they turned out to be valuable?”

“They’re not particularly valuable, no. Well, some are, but what Mrs. Grayson feared was that they might have certain valuable information that she didn’t want to fall into our hands. And as it turned out, she was right. Fortunately, I locked them in the vault and either she or whoever she got to break in couldn’t find them.

“I believe it was Leonard Starns and his son. His son works for Grayson Real Estate.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. I’ve been calling people all day to make sure that I found what I think I did, and I also took the liberty of inviting an expert out to the museum-I’m flying her in from New York.”

“New York?” She almost gasped. It was not like Korey to do such a thing without asking her.

“I also know what this moving-the-museum thing is all about.”

“You do? You know why Mark Grayson wants to sell the museum?”

“I know why he wants to buy it. Those.” He nodded his head toward the wall murals. “It turns out they were painted by a relatively little-known artist named Robert Camden, who died at the turn of the century at the age of ninety-one. The tiny unicorns in his paintings were one of his trademarks. He may have been little known then, but like our friend here. .”-he pointed to the pteranodon above them-“the value of his paintings has soared. They’re now selling for several million dollars apiece.” He turned his head again to Diane. “And we have twelve of them.”

Diane stood and walked over to the painting-a huge brontosaurus, head held high on his long neck, walking and dragging his tail. Between his front feet, almost obscured by the dust he created with each step, was a small unicorn. The detail of the painting was remarkable. The brontosaurus’ hide was painted like the skin of an elephant, with all the lines and wrinkles and shades of gray. The distant mountains had such clarity and distinction that Diane thought she could probably find them somewhere if she tried.

Korey joined her standing by the painting.

“You’re not joking, are you?” she asked.

“Nope. I found the initial sketches of the paintings and a reference to the painter in the material we gathered from the basement, and, I don’t know, something just clicked in my head. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out about him, you know, have an exhibit of the drawings and the man? I made some calls to friends in art conservation and they referred me to several other experts, who were all quite excited, let me tell you. A woman is coming down from the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow to have a look at them.”

“It’s a good thing we built a railing to keep wandering hands off the walls,” said Diane.

Korey nodded. “I think we’ll have to do more. I was thinking a Plexiglas wall, so no one can get under the railings.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Diane. “When they were found, didn’t anyone investigate their origin?”

“From what I can find out, Milo asked someone from the art department at Bartrum University to come over and have a look. He declared them interesting.”

“But Signy Grayson recognized them.” Diane recalled the snatch of conversation she heard between Signy and her husband-“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know about them.”

“Yes,” Korey said, “I think her husband was going to buy the museum building through one of his companies. I believe when you sell buildings, certain things always go with the building-like the walls and anything attached to them. At any rate, he’d have the contract written so he’d get the paintings for a fraction of their value. And if it was true about the golf course. .”

“You know about that rumor?”

“It’s hard to keep secrets in a place like this. Everyone’s been worried about their jobs.”

“I’m sorry about that. I never had any intention of selling the museum.”

“Some were afraid you’d be forced to.”

“It would take some serious errors or malfeasance on my part for them to be able to unseat me. They were trying. That’s what all those extra supply orders were about.”

“How far did they expect to get, ordering extra paper clips?”

“They also sent orders out for a duplicate set of these guys.” She pointed at the dinosaurs.