Last Breath

6

“S o, what you’re saying is we need a game plan.” Louise’s fingers tapped impatiently on the arm of the sofa. On their way back across campus from the museum, Daria and Connor stopped at the president’s house to discuss their findings with her.

“Right. I’ve given this a lot of thought over the past few days,” Daria told her. “And after talking with Connor this afternoon, I do have a proposal.”

“Let’s hear it.” Louise sat back against the cushions and waited.

“If the university is serious about reopening the museum by the fall of next year, they have to raise the capital now, and quickly. I think what you need to do is have the entire collection properly appraised by an art historian who is capable of putting dollar valuations on the artifacts.”

“I thought you could do that.” Louise frowned.

“I thought perhaps I could help you in that regard,” Daria admitted, “but after seeing what’s here, I’ve come to the conclusion that you need someone who is an expert in appraising large collections. I’m an archaeologist, Louise. I can tell you the cultural value of every piece in those crates, but I don’t feel comfortable putting dollar signs on them. Is it enough to know that the collection is priceless?” She shrugged. “Would a bank find that sufficient documentation for a loan the size of what you’re going to need to put that building into shape? I really doubt it.”

Louise appeared to think it over.

“Can you recommend someone?” She asked.

“Off the top of my head, no.”

“I have an idea,” Connor spoke up. “You know that you’re going to have to have this entire setup insured, the building as well as the artifacts. Why not contact your insurance agent, tell them you want coverage for the museum and ask them to send an appraiser to put a number on the collection as well as the building?”

“You think they have people on staff who do that?”

“I’m sure they have someone who can appraise the building, and as far as the contents are concerned, I think they’ll find someone real fast. They’re going to want the business, because the premium will be huge, but they’re going to make certain that the amount of insurance is adequate so if there is a loss, they don’t get raked.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment, then added, “I’ll bet they even have someone in their risk management department who can tell you exactly what you need to do as far as the renovations are concerned to best safeguard the collections. I have a cousin who works in this field and he spends a lot of his time inspecting buildings and working with the security firms.”

“Connor’s got a really good point,” Daria said. “And chances are, the bank is going to want to bring in an appraiser of their own, if you’re going to use the collection as collateral for the loan.”

“I can call our insurance agent and see what she suggests,” Louise said thoughtfully. “I suppose it would save us considerably over hiring an independent appraiser. Plus, if they can send someone out to tell us exactly what to do in the building…”

“Be prepared to move the collection in the interim, though,” Connor cautioned. “The bank may want to place it in one of their vaults until security has been brought up to date. I’m sure the insurance company will require specific improvements to the system-such as it is-that’s in place now.”

“All of which means you need to get to the bank as soon as possible,” Daria told Louise.

“I’ll put a call in to the vice president of our local branch first thing in the morning and see when he can meet with me,” Louise said. “Maybe take a few of the flashier objects with me to give him an idea of what we’re talking about here, see if we can get them to establish a line of credit for us so that we can start the improvements to the building as soon as possible.”

“I’d do that first thing,” Connor said. “In the meantime, I’m going to see what I can do about tracking down the missing artifacts.”

“We’re going to track the missing artifacts,” Daria corrected him.

“I was hoping you’d come with me to the bank, Daria,” Louise said. “I’m really not qualified to explain what we have here and why it’s so valuable. I think it would have greater impact coming from someone with your credentials.”

“Just let me know when.”

“I’ll call Jim Sanders, the bank VP we usually deal with, and see when he’s available. This sort of thing may be out of his field of operations, but we’ll start with him.”

“Don’t forget your insurance people,” Daria reminded her.

“Alice Radell.” Louise smiled. “Best agent in the state. I have a meeting with one of our department heads at eight tomorrow morning, but as soon as that’s over, I’ll start making my calls.”

“While you’re doing that, I’ll get started on the search for the missing artifacts. I’ll have my cell on, so just give me a call when you’re ready to go.” Daria stood.

“Thank you.” Louise smiled. “I have to admit, I feel a little better, having a plan. I’ve been worried sick about this since learning about the missing items, and worried, too, about protecting what we have.”

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to find some of those items,” Connor said as he rose from his chair.

“Well, Daria, you’ll be pleased to know that help is on the way.” Louise turned to her. “I spoke with Sabina Bokhari about an hour ago. She was shocked when I told her what was going on. She insisted on cutting her trip short, and will be here by Tuesday at the latest.”

“Great. She’ll be an enormous help. But I thought she was on a dig with some students.”

“She is, but she isn’t the only archaeologist on the site. She said she feels very comfortable leaving the dig in the hands of the other two. A Dr. Henning and someone else whose name I don’t recall.”

“Emmitt Henning, yes. I know him well. I wouldn’t hesitate to leave my work in his hands, either. And I’m very much looking forward to meeting Sabina.”

Turning to Connor, Louise asked, “Have you decided to bring in the FBI’s art people?”

“Not yet,” Daria replied before Connor could. “We will if we have to, but if Connor and I can handle this on our own, I think it would be better for everyone. I’m fairly confident that we can, at least for the time being.”

Daria explained to Louise how even the hint of having purchased stolen antiquities could ruin the reputations of collectors as well as museums, not to mention tarnishing the reputation of the university.

“Well, if we can guarantee the return of whatever items you might be able to find without causing undue embarrassment to the owners, I’d certainly go along with that. Of course, if you’re unable to locate any of the missing pieces, I expect we’ll have to turn this over to the FBI.”

“That’s the plan,” Daria assured her.

“How long do you suppose before you’ll know if you’ll be successful?”

“A few days, maybe. I expect to find some of the information we need on the Internet. It’s either there or it isn’t. In which case, Connor will call in his people.”

“Go to it, then,” Louise told her. “Daria, does this mean you’ve accepted our offer to reopen the museum?”

“First things first, Louise,” Daria said from the doorway. “Without a commitment from the bank, there won’t be a museum. Get your funding, and then we’ll talk.”

“But you’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Connor asked as they walked back to McGowan House.

“I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, mine included. If they can’t renovate that building, and do it quickly…if they can’t guarantee the security of the collection…” Daria shrugged. “It all depends on whether or not Louise can convince the bank to give the university a very large loan. I can’t even begin to estimate what it would cost to do everything that has to be done to the museum. They’ll need all new systems-new electric, new plumbing. Air-conditioning and a new heating system. You name it, that building needs it.”

“It looks pretty good, though, considering its age. I guess boarding it up for a while preserved it somewhat,” Connor noted. “I’ll be interested to see what the insurance company recommends.”

“That was a good suggestion, by the way,” Daria said as they approached her temporary home. “Getting the insurance company to prepare the appraisal and assess the building. And since the bank will probably want its own expert to come in, that will give the university two appraisals. Hopefully, the two experts will agree.”

She unlocked the front door.

“But, as Louise noted, at least we have a game plan.” She pushed open the door. “Come on in. I’m sorry it’s so hot and stuffy in here. There’s no air-conditioning and only one fan in the house, and I put that in my bedroom last night so I could sleep. I tried to open the windows downstairs but haven’t been able to get them to move.”

They stepped into the quiet house.

“Maybe I can budge them,” Connor offered. “Which ones would you want opened?”

“The ones in the kitchen, for starters, since I’ve been working in there at night.” She gestured toward the hall that stretched out in front of them. “It’s back here.”

“This is some house,” he said, looking around.

“Isn’t it? Benjamin Howe built it as a wedding present for his daughter, Iliana, when she married my great-grandfather,” Daria explained. “She was his only child, and I guess he wanted to guarantee that she stayed close.”

“So I guess Pop wasn’t disappointed when Iliana fell in love with one of his hires.”

“Not at all. According to her journal, he was pretty damned pleased with her choice of husband. It worked out well for her, I suppose, in the long run. Alistair was quite a bit older than she, and he died when their children were still young, but at least they had a roof over their heads. Since her mother died when Iliana was a young girl, she served as her father’s official hostess here at the university. She stayed until her death, actually, in the late 1930s. She died in this house.” Daria smiled. “Louise says that some who’ve stayed here claim she’s still around.”

“No sightings?”

She shook her head and grinned. “Of course, I’ve only spent a few nights here, but no. Nothing’s gone bump in the night, not even a knocking pipe to wake me. Of course, I sleep like the dead myself, so anything could be going on around me and I’d probably miss it.”

She placed her bag on the table. “I’m going to run upstairs for my laptop. We should probably set it up in the library, if we’re going to get on the Internet. They have wireless access there. Feel free to wander if you want.”

She found him in one of the front parlors when she came back downstairs.

“I was admiring the tiles around this fireplace,” he said when she came into the room.

“Mercer tile,” she told him. “There are different tiles surrounding each of the fireplaces in the house. Whoever chose them had great taste.”

“I agree.” He straightened up. “Ready?”

“Yes.” She turned a lamp on in the front window. “Just in case it’s dark later.”

“I’d like to stop at my car and pick up my own laptop,” he told her as she locked the front door behind them.

“Because two heads are better than one?”

“That, and because I may be able to gain access to areas you might not.”

“You have super-duper FBI powers?”

“Something like that.” He fell in step alongside her. “And if we really need to call in the cavalry, I have a friend at the Bureau who has extraordinary computer skills. He can get into just about any place.”

“How?”

“If he told me…”

She laughed. “Yeah, yeah, he’d have to kill you.”

“That’s what he tells me, so I don’t ask. I just let Will do his thing.” They’d reached the parking lot, and Connor unlocked his trunk. He opened it, took out a black leather case, and slammed the trunk lid closed.

“The library’s just over on this side of campus,” she told him. “It’s not far.”

“I’m not in a hurry. Besides, I like the company.”

She couldn’t think of a response, so she let it go.

They went into the library, which on a hot Sunday evening was deserted except for the lone librarian at the front desk. Not bothering with the pretense of a welcoming smile, she glanced pointedly at the clock above the door-no doubt noting the late hour-before gesturing in the direction of the cubicles where Internet access was available.

Connor and Daria took seats next to each other, then booted up.

“What’s the procedure?” he asked.

“First, we go to our favorite search engine.” Daria typed in an address and Connor did the same. She glanced at his screen. They’d chosen the same one. “Next, we type in…oh, let’s try ‘artifacts from Shandihar’ and see what comes up.”

The screen filled with a long list of choices.

“Look here, see the second entry?” Daria leaned over and pointed at his screen. “It’s a link to a newspaper article from Westport, Connecticut.” She clicked on the link on her computer. “Justin and Cloris Porter. Collectors of antiquities.”

She began to skim the article.

“Here you go, third paragraph. ‘Their collection contains a very rare ceremonial goblet from the lost city of Shandihar, an ancient settlement in what is now Turkey that was excavated in the early 1900s and later lost again when an earthquake struck the region.’”

Daria took a notepad and pen from her bag and wrote down the names and location of the item.

“See? Not so difficult,” she told Connor cheerfully. “We don’t need an FBI team to do this. We’ll go through all these links, then we’ll start on the museums.”

“Don’t get overly confident,” he cautioned. “Maybe you just got lucky.”

“And got lucky again.” She tapped him on the arm and pointed to her screen. “It appears that Damian Cross from Centerville, Delaware, is the proud owner of a statue of the goddess Ereshkigal.” She glanced over at Connor. “ Centerville is really close, maybe a forty-five-minute drive. We could go…or should we try to get a number and call first?”

“I think we should just drop in on him. For one thing, if you call, maybe he doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he hangs up. If you cold-call, once you get your foot in the door, he’s likely to hear you out.”

“Okay, so let’s go.” Daria began to stand.

“Let’s finish up first. I know you’re eager to get going, but let’s get all the info we can now, then we’ll start tracking people down.”

“All right.” She sat back down. “You’re right. It’s going to make me crazy, though, knowing that there’s a piece so close. Just down the road, practically.”

“If he still has it, it’ll most likely be there tomorrow.”

“True.”

“And this way, we’ll track what we can, check off what we’ve found on the list, then maybe have this friend of mine see what he can do before we decide whether we want to turn over the list to the Bureau.”

“Good point.” She resumed her search. “Why don’t you stick with the private collectors, and I’ll start going through the museums.”

“How will you know if a museum has any of the missing items?”

“Easy. Many of them list their exhibits by name and identify not only the artifacts, but where they came from.” She typed for a moment, then sat back and said, “For example, here’s the website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over here on the left, we’ll click on Permanent Collections. There, you have a listing of their collections. We’ll click on Ancient Near Eastern Art…”

“You can see photos of what they have right online.” He shook his head. “Why does this strike me as being too easy? Shouldn’t someone have done this before?”

“Why would anyone? Who would have known to look? Remember,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “no one knows it’s here but us.”

“I hope you’re right about that,” he muttered.

“Well, they certainly have a wonderful collection, but I don’t see any sign of what we’re looking for. Not that I’d expect to, but I wanted to show you how easy it can be to track things. And see how under the photograph of each item they list the provenance of the piece. Where it came from, whether it’s on loan from a private collection or donated outright or purchased, and the year of its acquisition.”

Connor watched over her shoulder as she skipped from one item to another.

“Do all museums have their collections available like this?” he asked.

“There’s one way to find out.” She closed out the screen and typed the name of another museum into the search engine. “Let’s see what they have.”

They spent the next several hours searching the Internet, but came away with a mere six artifacts in private hands. Interestingly, four were within driving distance of Howeville.

“That’s six more than we knew about this morning,” she reminded Connor as they walked across a quiet campus. “And all very significant pieces, three of the collectors are almost in our backyard. One in Greenville, the other two here in Pennsylvania. Which makes me think there’s a dealer-or was, at one time-close by. Maybe in Philadelphia or Wilmington.”

“I want to get on this right away. We’ll start tomorrow with Damien Cross,” Connor said thoughtfully. “He’s the closest, and he might know of other collectors and be able to direct us to someone else. We’ll find out who sold him the piece, and when, and maybe we can track down the dealer or the party who sold it to him. Then we’ll move on to the Blumes-Anderson and Kelly, they’re the couple in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania -and from there, we’ll go see Mrs. Sevrenson in Philadelphia. We’ll leave the two parties in New England-the Westport couple and the woman in Marion, Massachusetts -for last.”

“Sounds like a plan. I can’t wait to get started.”

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” Connor couldn’t help but smile. “You’re just beaming from ear to ear.”

“Well, it was a successful search. We’re close to at least a few of the missing artifacts, and maybe tomorrow we’ll even get to see one of them. I’d say that was a good day’s work.”

“Agreed.” They’d reached McGowan House and stopped at the end of the walk.

“You’re not driving back to Maryland tonight, are you?” Daria asked.

“I don’t have a reservation anywhere, but I noticed a motel on the main drive coming into town, right off the highway. I’m sure I can get a room.”

“Great. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“See you then.” He walked off into the night.

Daria entered the quiet house and locked the front door behind her. She dropped the bag holding her laptop at the bottom of the steps and went into the kitchen. It was closing in on eleven, and she realized that she hadn’t eaten all day. She rummaged in the refrigerator and came out with an orange. She made a piece of toast and spread it with honey from the jar Vita had brought her that morning from one of the local farms and ate standing up. Her hunger sated, she sat at the table and went over her notes.

Six, she told herself. This morning she’d known only that they were missing. Now she knew where they were, or at the very least, where they had been. There was always the possibility that one or more items had been sold or gifted or loaned to a museum. For now, it was enough to know that these six artifacts existed and were almost within reach. And there was also the very real possibility that some of the owners might know of other pieces in other private collections.

She opened her bag and took out her notebook, prepared to check off the items which may have been located. She noticed that her phone, which she’d silenced in the library, was blinking to alert her to a new message.

“Daria, it’s Louise. I couldn’t wait until morning, so I called Jim Sanders. We have a meeting with him tomorrow morning at eleven. Please meet me at my office by nine-thirty and we’ll go over to the museum together and select a few items to take with us. See you then.”

Daria erased the message and scrolled the phone’s list of calls received. When she found the number from which Connor had called her two nights ago, she hit send and waited while it rang.

“Shields.”

“Connor, it’s Daria. I just got a message from Louise about tomorrow. We have an appointment with the bank at eleven, and I’m meeting her at nine-thirty to go to the museum and select a few of the artifacts to take with us.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I don’t know.” She frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know if the presence of the FBI would alarm the banker or reassure him.”

“In that case, go without me but let him know we’re on the case if you feel you have to. I’ll spend the morning trying to locate more of the artifacts. I’ve already put a call in to my friend at the Bureau to see what he suggests, so maybe we can add to that list we started tonight.”

“Good idea. How about I call your cell when I get back from the bank?” Through the phone, she could hear sirens and traffic sounds in the background. He was still on the road.

“Great. Then you can let me know what the banker had to say and I’ll tell you what the FBI’s computers have been able to dig up.”

“Deal. I’ll see you then. Good night, Connor.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Daria disconnected the call and dropped the phone into her bag. She wondered if she should have offered him a room here at McGowan House. There were five empty rooms on the second floor. Funny, if he’d been one of her colleagues, she wouldn’t have thought twice about having a man stay in the house. The men she spent time with in the field were all friends, and nothing more. They shared commonalities of education and philosophy and reverence for the past. They spent much of their days together on a dig, painstakingly sorting through the debris of the ages, and their nights gathered around a communal fire talking about the day’s finds and frustrations. There had been the occasional fling, but other than a professor in Near Eastern studies she’d met two years ago at a symposium at Harvard, serious affairs had been few and far between. She thought of the men with whom she’d spent the greater part of her adult life in the field, and couldn’t name one who had sparked more than a professional interest. Compared to Connor, they all appeared in her memory as dry and pale. Intellectually stimulating, perhaps, and comfortable companions, but not the sort of men who set your pulse racing.

There was nothing dry or pale about Connor Shields.

Stimulating, on the other hand…yeah, she could say that. Tall and rugged, a killer smile. Nope, nothing dry or pale there…

Careful, girl, she told herself as she got up and went to the back door to make sure it was locked. He’s probably not going to be around for that much longer, and even if he was, do you really think you’re his type?

She tried to close the windows, but except for one, once opened, it was as if they were resisting being returned to the position they’d been stuck in for God only knew how many years. Daria gave up and gathered her notes, her bag, and the phone from the table and turned off the kitchen light. She checked the front door, turned off the lamp in the parlor window, and headed up the steps.

In Iliana’s bedroom, she paused and glanced in the mirror that stood on the dressing table near the window. Nothing flashy about that face, she told herself. She ran a hand through her hair, which had grown out since the last time she’d cut it. Good enough for the field, but maybe now a real cut from someone who knew what they were doing might be in order. Maybe even some makeup.

Forget it. She turned away from the mirror and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. What was she thinking? Neither a new hairstyle nor a new face would make her anything other than what she was, and right now she was…well, field-weary, her mother would say. Tired from trekking over hills and mountains, with dark circles under her eyes and skin dry from too much desert sun.

“Yeah, I’m a real glamour girl,” she said softly as she stripped off her clothes and headed for the shower. “Chances are there’s a woman in his life anyway, so don’t set yourself up for a fall.”

All the same, she thought as she began to shampoo her hair, she could use a cut with a little style. After all, if she stayed at Howe for a while, there’d be meetings with the bankers and the trustees and members of the archaeology department, and eventually the media, if they really got this project off the ground. She would need to look a little more polished-all right, a lot more polished-and less like she’d just crawled out of a tent.

She made a mental note to ask Louise if she could recommend a salon.