Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

She swallowed. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“So is it you?”

She didn’t respond. She just kept climbing the stairs, even though she knew he was watching her and waiting for an answer. Before he had the chance to lob another question, she ducked into her apartment and shut the door.

She was hugging the bundle of mail so tightly she could feel her heart slamming against it. She yanked off the rubber band and dumped the mail onto her coffee table. Envelopes and glossy catalogs spilled across the surface. Shoving aside the box from L.L. Bean, she sifted through the swirl of mail until she spotted an envelope with the nameJOSEPHINE SOMMER written in an unfamiliar hand. It had a Boston postmark, but there was no return address.

Somebody in Boston knows this name. What else do they know about me?

For a long time she sat without opening the envelope, afraid to read its contents. Afraid that, once she opened it, her life would change. For this one last moment, she could still be Josephine Pulcillo, the quiet young woman who never spoke of her past. The underpaid archaeologist who was content to hide away in the Crispin Museum’s back room, fussing over bits of papyrus and scraps of linen.

I’ve been careful, she thought. So careful to keep my head down and my eyes on my work, yet somehow the past has caught up with me.

Taking a deep breath, she finally tore open the envelope. Tucked inside was a note with only six words written in block letters. Words that told her what she already knew.

THE POLICE ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.

The docent at the Crispin Museum appeared ancient enough to be exhibited in a display case herself. The gray-haired little gnome was barely tall enough to peer over the counter of the reception desk as she announced: “I’m sorry, but we don’t open until exactly tenAM. If you’d like to come back in seven minutes, I’ll sell you the tickets then.”

“We’re not here to tour the museum,” said Jane. “We’re with Boston PD. I’m Detective Rizzoli and this is Detective Frost. Mr. Crispin is expecting us.”

“I wasn’t informed.”

“Is he here?”

“Yes. He and Miss Duke are in a meeting upstairs,” the woman said, clearly enunciating the title Miss and not Ms., as though to emphasize that in this building, old-fashioned rules of etiquette still applied. She came around from behind the counter, revealing a plaid kilt-skirt and enormous orthopedic shoes. Pinned to her white cotton blouse was a name tag:MRS. WILLEBRANDT, DOCENT. “I’ll take you to his office. But first I need to lock up the cash box. We’re expecting a large crowd again today, and I don’t want to leave it unattended.”

“Oh, we can find the way to his office,” said Frost. “If you’ll tell us where it is.”

“I don’t want you to get lost.”

Frost gave her his best charm-the-old-ladies smile. “I was a Boy Scout, ma’am. I promise, I won’t get lost.”

Mrs. Willebrandt refused to be charmed. She eyed him dubiously through steel-rimmed spectacles. “It’s on the third floor,” she finally said. “You can take the elevator, but it’s very slow.” She pointed to a black grille cage that looked more like an ancient death trap than an elevator.

“We’ll take the stairs,” said Jane.

“They’re straight ahead, through the main gallery.”

Straight ahead,however, was not a direction that one could navigate in this building. When Jane and Frost stepped into the first-floor gallery, they confronted a maze of display cases. The first case that greeted them contained a life-sized wax figure of a nineteenth-century gentleman garbed in a fine woolen suit and waistcoat. In one hand he held a compass; in the other, he clutched a yellowed map. Though he faced them through the glass, his eyes looked elsewhere, focused on some lofty and distant destination that only he could see.

Frost leaned forward and read the plaque at the gentleman’s feet. “‘Dr. Cornelius M. Crispin, Explorer and Scientist, 1830 through 1912. The treasures he brought home from around the world were the beginnings of the Crispin Museum Collection.’” He straightened. “Wow. Imagine listing that as your occupation. Explorer. ”

“I think rich guy would be more accurate.” Jane moved on to the next case, where gold coins glittered under display lights. “Hey, look. This says these are from the kingdom of Croesus.”

“Now there was a rich guy.”

“You mean Croesus was for real? I thought he was just some fairy tale.”

They continued to the next case, which was filled with pottery and clay figurines. “Cool,” said Frost. “These are Sumerian. You know, this is really old stuff. When Alice gets home, I’m going to bring her here. She’d love this museum. Funny how I never even heard of it before.”

“Everyone’s heard of it now. Nothing like a murder to put your place on the map.”

They wandered deeper into the maze of cases, past marble busts of Greeks and Romans, past rusted swords and glinting jewelry, their footsteps creaking on old wood floors. So many cases were crammed into the gallery that the passages between them were narrow alleys, and every turn brought a fresh surprise, another treasure that demanded their attention.

They emerged at last into an open area near the stairwell. Frost started up the steps to the second floor, but Jane did not follow him. Instead, she was drawn toward a narrow doorway, framed in faux stone.

“Rizzoli?” said Frost, glancing back.

“Hold on a minute,” she said, gazing up at the seductive invitation that beckoned from the doorway lintel:COME. STEP INTO THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.

She could not resist.

Moving through the doorway, she found the space beyond so dimly lit that she had to pause as her eyes adjusted to the shadows. Slowly a room filled with wonders revealed itself.

“Wow,” whispered Frost, who had followed.

They stood in an Egyptian burial chamber, its walls covered with hieroglyphs and funerary paintings. Displayed in the room were tomb artifacts, illuminated softly by discreetly placed spotlights. She saw a sarcophagus, gaping open as though awaiting its eternal occupant. A carved jackal head leered from atop a stone canopic jar. On the wall hung funerary masks, dark eyes staring eerily from painted faces. Beneath glass, a papyrus scroll lay open to a passage from the Book of the Dead.

Against the far wall was a vacant glass case. It was the size of a coffin.

Peering into it, she saw a photograph of a mummy resting inside a crate, and an index card with the handwritten notice:FUTURE RESTING PLACE OF MADAM X. WATCH FOR HER ARRIVAL!

Madam X would never make an appearance here, yet already she’d served her purpose, and crowds were now turning up at the museum. She’d drawn in the curious, the hordes seeking morbid thrills eager for a glimpse of death. But one thrill seeker had taken it a step further. He had been twisted enough to actually make a mummy, to gut a woman, to salt and pack her cavities with spices. To wrap her in linen, binding her naked limbs and torso strip by strip, like a spider spinning silken threads around its helpless prey. Jane stared at that empty case and considered the prospect of eternity inside that glass coffin. Suddenly the room seemed close and airless, and her chest felt as constricted as if she were the one bound head-to-toe, strips of linen strangling her, suffocating her. She fumbled at the top button of her blouse to loosen her collar.

“Hello, Detectives?”

Startled, Jane turned to see a woman silhouetted in the narrow doorway. She was dressed in a formfitting pantsuit that flattered her slender frame, and her short blond hair gleamed in a backlit halo.

“Mrs. Willebrandt told us you’d arrived. We’ve been waiting upstairs for you. I thought you might have gotten lost.”