Slugfest

Fifty-three

John rushed to Nikki’s side, instructing her not to touch anything, which I thought an unnecessary precaution since her fingerprints were everywhere. Perhaps it was just cop talk. He left a message for Labidou, who was floating around the building. Stancik peered over the edge of the sarcophagus through the grate. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and slid the heavy makeshift tabletop a few inches to the right to see what had elicited Nikki’s reaction. She took a step back as if something were going to jump out of the stone tub; David put his arm out to catch her, just in case. She’d already cracked her skull once that weekend.

“Is it a body?” Nikki asked.

Perversely, I stepped closer to the sarcophagus for a better look. I saw a ripple of colors and thought I recognized a scrap of fabric with a familiar image on it, Delicate Arch, a common symbol for Arches National Park, one of the places Garland Bleimeister had visited and memorialized on his jacket. The jacket he’d given to Jamal Harrington.

“Oh, no.” The words escaped my lips like a low moan, and before I knew it I’d drawn even closer to the stone vessel. Whatever Jamal might have done, this was no way for a kid like him to end up.

“Stay back,” John said. It was spoken softly, a request, not an order, and I complied. “It’s not a body. Or a jacket.” Stancik used one of the vintage fireplace tools in Nikki’s booth and fished something out of the tub—Garland Bleimeister’s missing bag. He dumped it on top and we watched the water drain through the decorative grate. Just then someone joined us.

“What’s going on? I guess they have to keep it humid at these things, but this is ridiculous. No wonder everyone’s hair looks bad.”

“It’s not the humidity,” I said mechanically.

“It’s the heat?” she said. “Wait, that doesn’t sound right.” She threw her head back in a full-throated laugh, cracking herself up. “Love the sarcophagus. Saw one at the Gardner Museum, but I’d never be able to get it up the stairs.” Lucy Cavanaugh marched right up to it for a closer inspection.

“Oooh, that bag’s never going to be the same. I dropped a backpack in a canal in Amsterdam once. Smelled for days and all my lovely patches ran. To say nothing of the stuff inside. Thank goodness most of it was in plastic bags.” She snorted. “Wow, that was a long time ago.”

Lucy sucked on a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee and handed me the one she’d brought for me. Skim milk, no sugar. It was just like her to jump right into an ongoing discussion and totally hijack it.

She looked around for an ally or an explanation. “What?” she asked. “What?”

“I don’t think the owner of this particular bag will object to its condition,” I said. Sometimes clueless but never slow, Lucy nearly gagged on her coffee.

“That’s the dead guy’s bag?” She gave it a closer look, including the patches, some of which had started to bleed at the edges. “At least he got to travel a bit, before, you know…” She trailed off, realizing she was getting into a line of conversation that might be considered in poor taste.

“Detective Stancik, are we going to see what’s inside?”

He hesitated before answering me.

“What’s the big deal?” I said. “Apparently it’s been here for days. I think I was even accused of not being curious enough when your partner asked me about it.”

He unzipped the main compartment. Inside, sopping wet but still neatly folded, was a change of clothing, slightly more formal than the T-shirt and jeans he was wearing when we met—black slacks, a button-down shirt, and black slip-on shoes. There was a small Dopp kit with travel-sized toiletries and a washcloth; three water-logged paperbacks; and Zagat New York Restaurants with Post-its fringing the pages. In the outside zippered pocket was a soggy deck of cards. What wasn’t there was even more telling.

“No wallet, no keys, no ID,” Stancik said.

“No phone either,” I said.

“How do you know he had a phone?”

“Everyone has a phone,” Lucy said.

“He called me. But it was after he left his bag, so he must have had it with him. He had a few bags. Three, I think. Maybe this was the nonessential stuff.”

“No wonder he didn’t bother to come back for it,” Lucy said. “There’s nothing here that couldn’t be easily replaced if you were trying to get out of town in a hurry.”

“I think he left a little sooner than he planned,” I said. “But why all the fuss about a bag with extra clothing in it? Especially if you’re expecting a windfall and leaving the country? If it was that important to him, why didn’t Garland just come and find me on Wednesday morning after he sneaked in?”

It hit me and Stancik at the same time. Garland wasn’t looking for his bag—someone else was. Someone who knew it was missing and wanted to know what was in it. I’d never actually spoken to him on the phone—Babe did, and she wouldn’t have recognized his voice. And anyone could have left that note on the bulletin board. For all we knew it was Garland’s killer who’d been trying to reach me.

None of us had seen the bag since Wednesday, when I’d stashed it under the table. Nikki thought the grate might have been slightly out of place on Saturday morning after her husband had been there. “I assumed Russ moved it.”

“Friday was the morning you thought I had rearranged Primo’s sculptures, remember?” I said. “Maybe someone took the bag from under the table in my booth, searched it, and then dumped it in the sarcophagus.”

“But why?” Lucy said. “Why not just steal it?” It was an excellent point.

Labidou arrived, carrying a black plastic bag like dozens of others on the show floor. He also held a bunch of battered roses he’d picked up for free. When he saw something was up, he got into cop mode and pushed them on Lucy, who was too confused to respond but was used to men bringing her flowers, so she simply said, thanks, and tried to figure out if she knew him.

Stancik placed the waterlogged evidence in the plastic bag and handed it to Labidou. Still wearing the gloves, Stancik removed the grate. “We’ll return this after we’ve had a chance to examine it. I don’t expect we’ll learn much but we have to check it for prints. We also have someone collecting the garbage carts, but I don’t know that we’ll find anything useful after this sprinkler business.” As the two men left, I was still pondering Lucy’s question, Why not just steal it?

“Either they took what they wanted out of the bag,” I said, “or they wanted to make sure that something wasn’t in the bag. Something that might link them with Garland Bleimeister.”

“Then why not toss it back under the table?” Lucy said, absentmindedly whacking the roses against her hand.

Who knew? Fear? Fingerprints? Would there still be fingerprints on something if it had been floating in the water? The cops seemed to think it was possible, but would a criminal know that? Was it bad timing? If they’d been inspecting the bag on Nikki’s table, it might be easier to slip it in under the decorative grate if someone came by. If you were strong.

A handful of rose petals fell, and Lucy bent down to pick them up. Instead of trashing them she tossed them into the water in the sarcophagus. “Oh, sorry.”

“Go ahead,” Nikki said. “It looks good. Reminds me of a spa treatment I once had.” The two women floated the rest of the roses in the concrete tub.

In lieu of the sarcophagus Lucy bought a pinecone nightlight she reckoned would be easier to get into a fifth-floor walk-up. We still had time before the doors opened and I planned to give Lucy a quick tour and drive-by introductions to Connie, Lauryn, and Rolanda, but she dragged her feet.

“Okay, but let’s go this way,” she said. “We should probably stay away from the security guard at Hall E. I don’t think she likes me.” That was Rolanda’s post. It seemed they had already met.