Lethal Legacy

FORTY

By nine o’clock, curators and cops had been returning to the map division room in rolling waves, like eager kids gathering clues on a scavenger hunt.

Bea was in charge of examining each volume they found in hopes of coming across a panel of the missing map, but none of the rare books and atlases yielded any treasure. Jill Gibson sat glumly in a corner of the room, checking her master list against the items that had been retrieved, noting those that were reported to be missing from their proper places.

“I’m so hungry, I’m losing it,” Mike said.

“There are some places in the neighborhood,” Bea said. “We could take a walk.”

“No time for that. Coop, you got enough cash for about eight pizzas to feed these guys?”

I dug into my pants pocket and handed him my money.

“We can’t eat in here, Mike,” Bea said. “You can lock me up before I let you get food into this room.”

“Deal.” He signaled to one of the rookies. “Send your partner for as many pies as this will buy. Anything but anchovies. Get me some tarps from the Crime Scene wagon. Set them up on the ground at the receiving dock.”

Mike turned to Bea. “A little brisk for an al fresco picnic, but that’s what I’m offering.”

“Accepted.”

While we waited for the takeout order, Bea continued to study the books, most of them from the Hunt Collection. I caught glimpses of the Asian sex lithographs, the Curtis photos, and several versions of Marco Polo’s journals. The erotic drawings were as visually stunning as the sepia prints of Native Americans and the brilliant notations made by the great Italian traveler, but nothing she searched turned up any unexpected bonus.

Twenty-five minutes later, when our dinner arrived, Mike and I-joined again by Mercer-led our bleary-eyed soldiers out to the freight entrance and tried to get our minds off work while we ate.

“I bet you’re real good at trivia,” Mike said to Bea. He was sitting cross-legged on a tarp while she parked herself on one of the steps a few feet away.

“Not many topics. Why?”

“Mercer, the Coopster, and I bet on the Final Jeopardy! question most nights. I’m asking you to be my teammate, okay?”

“I won’t be much help.”

Mike was on his second slice of pepperoni and sausage. “You were taking your crazy cab ride last night, kid, so I know you didn’t see the show. And Mercer was with me. Lucky that I’ve got TiVo and no life. Twenty bucks, everybody. Coop, I’m taking it out of your change.”

“Help yourself. It would have been the first time you ever gave me change.”

“The category is Animals. Animals, ladies and gents.”

“No fair, Chapman. You know the Q and A,” Mercer said.

“Double or nothing. I’ll keep my mouth shut, and if Bea gets it, I’m buying dessert.”

“So what’s the answer?” Mercer asked.

Mike did his best Alex Trebek imitation. “The answer is…Oldest living animal on the planet. Oldest living animal on the planet.”

“Wait a minute, Bea,” I said. “I’ve got another idea, another possible literary hiding place for Jasper Hunt.”

“Hold that thought, Coop,” Mike said. “I’m looking to score.”

“I give up. This is more important. Whales, elephants, rhi-noceri.”

“Bad sport, Blondie. Don’t spoil it for the others.”

Bea was wiping the crumbs from her veggie pizza off her sweater. “Tell me, Alex. What are you thinking?”

“Aw, Bea. Give me an old animal,” Mike said. “In the form of a question.”

“What’s a snail?”

“Bad answer, Bea. You’re letting me down. Mercer?”

“What’s a…?”

“I’ll give you a hint. Coop’s favorite restaurant in the world. Martha’s Vineyard. The Bite.”

The Quinn sisters’ tiny shack by the side of the road in Chilmark served the very best chowder and fried clams I’d ever tasted. But Mike revealed the question before I could shift my train of thought from rare books to shellfish.

“What’s an ocean quahaug?” Mike said. “Trebek said some researchers dredged up a four-hundred-year-old clam near Iceland this year. It’s got growth rings, just like trees, so you can tell its age. Check your chowder next time. Those old quahaugs could get chewy.”

He was eating his third piece of pizza, with no sign of slowing down.

I went back to the thought I had while Mike was quizzing us. “Bea, I’m sure the library must have a good sampling of Shakespearean originals.”

“Absolutely. I’m not familiar with them, but I know we have several copies of the four folios. Someone in this group will be able to tell us,” she said. “And we’ll find out if any have to do with Jasper Hunt. What’s his connection to the Bard?”

Mike wiped his mouth. “Slip of paper on the corpse. ‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’”

Bea bent down to help me stack the empty boxes and collect the trash. “So why are you looking for the books?”

“Because Hunt was into pranks and tricks,” I said. “Seems like it would have appealed to that eccentric part of him to hide pieces of the map in a Shakespearean folio, if that was his favorite passage. Make it hard for his greedy heirs to put them back together.”

“Maybe that was the evil part of him,” Bea said, straightening up. “Maybe the good-the rest of the panels to complete the map-maybe they’re interred with his bones.”

Mike Chapman was on his feet faster than a bolt of lightning could strike a tree.

“You’re my girl, Bea. Didn’t Talbot tell us that his grandfather wanted to go out like a pharaoh, surrounded by all his worldly goods? Let’s find out where Jasper Hunt was laid to rest. Let’s see what’s buried with his bones.”