Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“Any men in her life? People she dated?”

“Not that she spoke about. Like Anna, I had lunch with Katrina from time to time, if I happened to be working at the bestiary office when she was there. I believe we had dinner one time, with another one of the museum fellows, because they had business they wanted to discuss with me.”

“Did you and she ever-?”

“Not what you’re thinking, Detective. I’m forty-three years old, with a wife and three children. My relationship with Katrina was entirely professional. There was a good deal of overlap between our two departments, naturally, so we were thrust together on many occasions.”

“What do you mean by overlap?”

“I’m in charge of European paintings and sculpture. Katrina’s interest was medieval art, which is the reason she was assigned to work at the Cloisters. Her field was a subspecialty of my department’s, so I had a lot of contact with Hiram Bellinger and his staff. Quite frankly, I was hoping to lure her away from Bellinger and bring her down to supervise some projects here at the Met.”

“So you enjoyed working with Katrina?”

“Yes, I respected her intelligence and her desire to learn. She was mature beyond her years. And very quiet, very demure.”

Anna Friedrichs laughed. “Not in the meetings I attended. There was a feistiness about her that I loved in a young woman her age. Despite her lack of experience, she wasn’t afraid to take on the old boys who wanted to control the show.”

“I never saw that side of her. How interesting.”

Why were their recollections so different? “Were you two at the same meetings?”

“Rarely. My department is enormous,” said Poste. “It was easy for me to break away and attend things in this building. But once the idea for the big show got started, the action moved across the park.”

“I usually saw Katrina over at Natural History, after the joint planning got under way. It’s a bit looser over there than it is in this mausoleum, as you might guess. That whole place is a lot funkier than the Met,” Friedrichs added.

“Had Katrina worked in any other museums before coming here?”

Poste shrugged his shoulders. “I assume so. But I don’t know any details.”

Friedrichs gave it some thought. “I’m sure she must have had an internship somewhere. The Cloisters would be a pretty plum place to start out. I just don’t know where.”

“Did she confide in either of you?”

“About what?” Friedrichs asked.

“Anything personal. Any bad experience she had while she was here?”

“No. She did seem more somber the last few times we were together. In fact, she broke our dinner date after the last meeting we had. Complained about not feeling well.”

“That was in the fall, Anna, wasn’t it? That’s when she began to talk about going home to help with her father. She was very subdued, as I said. What kind of bad experience do you mean, Detective?” Erik Poste asked.

The telephone rang on a side table in the corner of the room. Gaylord got up to answer it, turning away from us to listen to the caller, then he walked back to the table and spoke to us without resuming his seat. “You’ll excuse me, Detective. Ms. Cooper. Erik and Anna will continue to show you around and answer your questions. I’ve got to go upstairs immediately.”

Gaylored ignored Chapman and me, speaking to his colleagues. “Pierre Thibodaux has just resigned.”

“I’ll be happy to talk to you tomorrow, Detective. I’ve just been ordered up to the director’s office. We’ve clearly got a crisis at the museum that none of us had anticipated an hour ago.”

“And I got a dead broad in my locker who croaked on your watch, Mr. Gaylord.” Mike walked to the phone. “What’s Thibodaux’s extension?”

“He-he’s not there. In his office, I mean. He was already out the door before Eve got on the phone to me. I wanted to talk to him myself. Honestly.”

Timothy Gaylord was as rattled as Mike and I. Thibodaux was either a brilliant actor, able to mask whatever professional trouble was brewing when we talked to him half an hour earlier, or this abrupt resignation might have had something to do with the photograph of Katrina Grooten that we had just stuck under his nose.

“It’s Chapman here. I want your boss. I want to talk to him before he leaves the museum, do you understand?” Mike was running his fingers through his straight black hair. I knew he was angry, thinking Thibodaux had pulled a fast one on him. “Yeah? Then why’d you ask Gaylord to come upstairs if he’s already gone?”

Mike didn’t like Drexler’s answer. He slammed the receiver back into the cradle.

“Want me to try to catch up with him on his way out?”

Mike looked at me as though I were crazy. “You know how many ways there are out of this place? The man has at least a ten-minute jump on us, we’re buried down here in the bowels of the museum, and you don’t know which way he’s headed. Give it up, blondie.”

Gaylord tried to move to the door again. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get upstairs. Eve has asked me to call several of the board members to convene a special meeting.”

Mike pointed at Gaylord like a trainer ordering a show dog to sit. “Stay put.” He used the same finger to dial his squad commander, explaining the situation. “Get a couple of guys over here to get Thibodaux’s address. They want to be talking to Eve Drexler. He’s probably got a car and driver, too. Get the plate number. Have a detail sit on his apartment to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere, will you? Lemme know when you find him, loo. I’d like to pay him another visit. Talk to you later.”

Erik Poste and Anna Friedrichs both looked as though they were afraid to move. They were whispering to each other, as surprised by the news as Gaylord was.

“Any of you know what this is about?”

“I think it’s clear we’re as startled as you are,” Poste said. He tapped his fingers nervously on the tabletop.

Anna Friedrichs tried to muster a smile. “I don’t think you need to treat him like a criminal, Mr. Chapman. I can’t imagine for a moment this is related to Katrina’s death.”

Chapman ignored the comment and spoke to Gaylord again. “Before you run out of here, you want to explain to me where this sarcophagus we found last night has been for the last six months?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just hard to balance all this right now. I’ve got my staff trying to reconstruct the movement of the piece and get you that information as soon as possible.”

“How about the innards?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ms. Grooten didn’t have a bunk mate in the coffin. Wasn’t there a little old princess inside that thing for a few thousand years? Does that mean you got an extra mummy lying around here somewhere?”

Erik Poste stood up and walked to Gaylord’s side, putting a hand on his shoulder. “That’s a good point, Timothy. Perhaps we should be looking for-”

Gaylord stepped away from his colleague. It seemed this added another problem to his plate that he had not considered. “No, certainly not. If any of my people had come across-well, nothing’s been found.” He turned to Erik Poste and Anna Friedrichs. “There’s no point having word of all this spread through the junior staffers. I know it’s an imposition, but Pierre promised Mr. Chapman that he would be shown through the storage area today. Would you two mind very much taking them around?”

Poste appeared to accept the assignment more graciously than Anna Friedrichs. She glanced at her watch and exhaled her annoyance audibly.

“You’ll see what a monumental task we have, Detective. The sad truth is that no one can tell you where the piece was at any given moment during the past few months. The best we can do is try. You want to scout through a few million other pieces of art, be my guest. I’ll turn you over to Anna and Erik, for the moment.”