The Codex

3

He found them standing in the shade of the piñon tree, arms crossed, silent and glum. As Barnaby approached, the guy in the suit asked, “Did you find anything?”

“Like what?”

The man scowled. “Do you have any idea what’s been stolen here? We’re talking hundreds of millions. Good God, how could anyone expect to get away with this? Some of these are world-famous works of art. There’s a Filippo Lippi worth forty million dollars alone. They’re probably on their way to the Middle East or Japan. You’ve got to call the FBI, contact Interpol, shut down the airports—”

He paused to draw in air.

“Lieutenant Barnaby has some questions,” said Fenton, taking up the role he played so well, his voice curiously high and soft, with an undercurrent of menace. “State your names, please.”

The one with the cowboy boots stepped forward. “I’m Tom Broadbent, and these are my brothers, Vernon and Philip.”

“Look, officer,” the one named Philip said, “these artworks are obviously headed for some sheik’s bedroom. They could never hope to sell these paintings on the open market — they’re too well known. No offense, but I really don’t think the Santa Fe Police Department is equipped to handle this.”

Barnaby flipped open his notebook and checked his watch. He still had almost thirty minutes before the crime-lab truck arrived from Albuquerque.

“May I ask a few questions, Philip? Okay if I use first names here?”

“Fine, fine, just get on with it.”

“Ages?”

“I’m thirty-three,” Tom said.

“Thirty-five,” said Vernon.

“Thirty-seven,” said Philip.

“Tell me, how is it that all three of you just happened to be here at once?” He directed his gaze toward the New Age type, Vernon, the one who looked like the least competent liar.

“Our father sent us a letter.”

“What about?”

“Well…” Vernon glanced at his brothers nervously. “He didn’t say.”

“Any guesses?”

“Not really.”

Barnaby switched his gaze. “Philip?”

“I haven’t the slightest.”

He swiveled his gaze to the other one, Tom. He found he liked Tom’s face. It was a no-bullshit face. “So Tom, you want to help me out here?”

“I think it was to talk to us about our inheritance.”

“Inheritance? How old was your father?”

“Sixty.”

Fenton leaned forward to interrupt, his voice harsh. “Was he sick?”

“Yes.”

“How sick?”

“He was dying of cancer,” said Tom coldly.

“I’m sorry,” said Barnaby, putting a restraining arm on Fenton as if to stop him from asking more tactless questions. “Any of you got your copy of the letter?”

All three produced the same letter, handwritten, on ivory laid paper. Interesting, Barnaby thought, that each one had his copy. Said something about the importance they attached to this meeting. Barnaby took one and read:

“Any chance of a recovery from the cancer, or was he a goner?” Fenton asked.

Philip stared at Fenton and then turned to Barnaby. “Who is this man?”

Barnaby shot a warning glance at Fenton, who often got out of hand. “We’re all on the same side here, trying to solve this crime.”

“As I understand it,” Philip said grudgingly, “there was no chance of recovery. Our father had gone through radiation treatments and chemotherapy, but the cancer had metastasized and there was no getting rid of it. He declined further treatment.”

“I’m sorry,” said Barnaby, trying unsuccessfully to summon up a modicum of sympathy. “Getting back to this letter, it says something here about funds. How much money came with it?”

“Twelve hundred dollars in cash,” said Tom.

“Cash? In what form?”

“Twelve one-hundred-dollar bills. Sending cash like that was typical of Father.”

Fenton interrupted again. “How long did he have to live?” He asked this question directly at Philip, thrusting his head forward. Fenton’s was an ugly head, very narrow and sharp, with thick eyebrow ridges, deep-set eyes, a huge nose with each nostril projecting a thicket of black nosehairs, crooked brown teeth, and a receding chin. He had olive skin; despite the Anglo name, Fenton was a Hispano from the town of Truchas, way back up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He was scary, if you didn’t know he was the kindliest man alive.

“About six months.”

“So he invited you here for what? To do a little eeny meeny meiny moe with his stuff?”

Fenton could be awful when he wanted. But the man got results.

Philip said icily, “That’s a charming way of putting it. I suppose that’s possible.”

Barnaby broke in smoothly. “But with a collection like this, Philip, wouldn’t he have made arrangements to leave it to a museum?”

“Maxwell Broadbent loathed museums.”

“Why?”

“Museums had taken the lead in criticizing our father’s somewhat unorthodox collecting practices.”

“Which were?”

“Buying artwork of dubious provenance, dealing with tomb robbers and looters, smuggling antiquities across borders. He even robbed tombs himself. I can appreciate his antipathy. Museums are bastions of hypocrisy, greed, and cupidity. They criticize in everyone else the very methods they themselves employed to get their collections.”

“What about leaving the collection to a university?”

“He hated academics. Tweedy-dums and tweedy-dees, he called them. The academics, especially the archaeologists, accused Maxwell Broadbent of looting temples in Central America. I’m not spilling any family secrets here: It’s a well-known story. You can pick up just about any copy of Archaeology magazine and read about how our father was their version of the devil incarnate.”

“Was he planning to sell the collection?” Barnaby pushed on.

Philip’s lip curled with contempt. “Sell? My father had to deal with auction houses and art dealers all his life. He would die the death of a thousand cuts before he’d consign them one mediocre print to sell.”

“So he planned to leave it all to you three?”

There was an awkward silence. “That,” said Philip finally, “was the assumption.”

Fenton broke in. “Church? Wife? Girlfriend?”

Philip removed the pipe between his teeth and, in a perfect imitation of Fenton’s clipped style, answered him: “Atheist. Divorced. Misogynist.”

The other two brothers broke out laughing. Hutch Barnaby even found himself enjoying Fenton’s discomfort. It was so rare that anyone got the better of him during an interrogation. This Philip character, despite his pretensions, was tough. But there was something sad in the long, intelligent face, something lost.

Barnaby held out the bill of lading for the shipment of cookware. “Any idea what this is all about or where the stuff might have gone?”

They examined it, shook their heads, and handed it back. “He didn’t even like to cook,” said Tom.

Barnaby shoved the document into his pocket. “Tell me about your father. Looks, personality, character, business dealings, that sort of thing.”

It was Tom who spoke again. “He’s… one of a kind.”

“How so?”

“He’s a physical giant of a man, six foot five, fit, handsome, broad shoulders, not a trace of flab, white hair and white beard, solid as a lion with a roaring voice to match. People say he looks like Hemingway.”

“Personality?”

“He’s the kind of man who’s never wrong, who rides roughshod over everyone and everything to get what he wants. He lives by his own rules in life. He never graduated high school, but he knows more about art and archaeology than most Ph.D.’s. Collecting is his religion. He despises other people’s religious beliefs, and that’s one reason why he takes so much pleasure in buying and selling things stolen from tombs — and robbing tombs himself.”

“Tell me more about this tomb robbing.”

Philip spoke this time. “Maxwell Broadbent was born into a working-class family. He went to Central America when he was young and disappeared into the jungle for two years. He made a big discovery, robbed some Mayan temple, and smuggled the stuff back. That’s how he got started. He was a dealer in questionable art and antiquities — everything from Greek and Roman statues that had been spirited out of Europe to Khmer reliefs chiseled out of Cambodian funerary temples to Renaissance paintings stolen in Italy during the war. He dealt not to make money but to finance his own collecting.”

“Interesting.”

“Maxwell’s methods,” Philip said, “were really the only way a person nowadays could acquire truly great art. There probably wasn’t a single piece in his collection that was clean.”

Vernon spoke: “He once robbed a tomb that had a curse on it. He quoted it at cocktail parties.”

“A curse? What did it say?”

“Something like He who disturbs these bones shall be skinned alive and fed to diseased hyenas. And then a herd of asses will copulate with his mother. Or words to that effect.”

Fenton let a laugh escape.

Barnaby shot him a cautionary glance. He directed his next question to Philip, now that he had the man talking. Funny how people liked to complain about their parents. “What made him tick?”

Philip frowned, his broad brow furrowing. “It was like this. Maxwell Broadbent loved his Lippi Madonna more than he loved any real woman. He loved his Bronzino portrait of little Bia de’ Medici more than he loved any of his real children. He loved his two Braques, his Monet, and his Mayan jade skulls more than the real people in his life. He worshiped his collection of thirteenth-century French reliquaries containing the alleged bones of saints more than he worshiped any real saint. His collections were his lovers, his children, and his religion. That’s what made him tick: beautiful things.”

“None of that’s true,” said Vernon. “He loved us.”

Philip gave a little snort of derision.

“You say he was divorced from your mother?”

“You mean our mothers? He was divorced from two of them, widowed by the other. There were also two other wives he didn’t breed with and any number of girlfriends.”

“Any fights over alimony?” Fenton asked.

“Naturally,” said Philip. “Alimony, palimony, it never ended.”

“But he raised you kids himself?”

Philip paused, then said, “In his own unique way, yes.”

The words hung in the air. Barnaby wondered just what kind of father he might have been. Better stick to the main thread: He was running out of time. The SOC boys would be here any moment, and then he’d be lucky ever to set foot on the crime scene again.

“Any woman in his life now?”

“Only for purposes of mild physical activity in the evening,” said Philip. “She will get nothing, I assure you.”

Tom broke in. “Do you think our father is okay?”

“To be honest, I haven’t seen any evidence of a murder here. We didn’t find a body in the house.”

“Could they have kidnapped him?”

Barnaby shook his head. “Not likely. Why deal with a hostage?” He glanced at his watch. Five, maybe seven minutes left. Time to ask the question. “Insured?” He made it sound as casual as possible.

A dark look passed over Philip’s face. “No.”

Even Barnaby couldn’t hide his surprise. “No?”

“Last year I tried to arrange for insurance. No one would cover the collection as long as it was kept in this house with this security environment. You can see for yourself how vulnerable the place is.”

“Why didn’t your father upgrade his security?”

“Our father was a very difficult man. No one could tell him what to do. He had a lot of guns in the house. I guess he thought he could fight ’em off, Wild West style.”

Barnaby shuffled through his notes and checked his watch again. He was disturbed. The pieces were not fitting together. He was sure it wasn’t a simple robbery, but without insurance, why rob yourself? Then there was the coincidence of the letter to the sons, calling them in for this meeting at just this moment. He recalled the letter… a very important matter affecting your future… very disappointed if you do not come… There was something suggestive about the wording.

“What was in the vault?”

“Don’t tell me they got into the vault, too!” Philip dabbed at his sweating face with a trembling hand. His suit had wilted, and the devastation on his face looked genuine.

“Yes.”

“Oh, God. It held gemstones, jewelry, South and Central American gold, rare coins and stamps, all extremely valuable.”

“The burglars seem to have had the combination to the vault as well as keys to everything. Any idea how?”

“No.”

“Did your father have anyone he trusted — a lawyer, for example — who might have kept a second set of keys or had the combination to the vault?”

“He trusted nobody.”

This was an important point. Barnaby looked at Vernon and Tom. “You agree?”

They both nodded.

“Did he have a maid?”

“He had a woman who came daily.”

“Gardener?”

“A full-time man.”

“Any others?”

“He employed a full-time cook and a nurse who looked in three days a week.”

Fenton now interrupted, leaning forward and smiling in that feral way of his. “Mind if I ask you a question, Philip?”

“If you must.”

“How come you’re talking about your father in the past tense? You know something we don’t?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Philip exploded. “Who will rid me of this Sherlock Holmes manqué?”

“Fenton?” murmured Barnaby, casting him a warning glance.

Fenton looked over and saw Barnaby’s look, and his face fell. “Sorry.”

Barnaby asked, “Where are they now?”

“Where are who?”

“Maid, gardener, cook. This robbery took place two weeks ago. Somebody dismissed the help.”

Tom said, “The robbery occurred two weeks ago?”

“That’s right.”

“But I only got my letter by Federal Express three days ago.”

This was interesting. “Did any of you notice the sender’s address?”

“It was some kind of drop-shipping place, like Mail Boxes Etc.,” said Tom.

Barnaby thought for a moment. “I have to tell you,” he said, “that this so-called robbery has insurance fraud written all over it.”

“I already explained to you the collection wasn’t insured,” said Philip.

“You explained it, but I don’t believe it.”

“I know the art insurance market, Lieutenant — I’m an art historian. This collection was worth about half a billion dollars, and it was just sitting in a house in the country protected by an off-the-shelf security system. Father didn’t even have a dog. I’m telling you, the collection wasn’t insurable.”

Barnaby looked at Philip for a long time, and then he looked at the other two brothers.

Philip let out a hiss of air and looked at his watch. “Lieutenant, don’t you think this case is a little big for the Santa Fe Police Department?”

If it wasn’t insurance fraud, then what was it? This was no damn robbery. A crazy idea began to form, still vague. A truly nutty idea. But it was starting to take shape almost against his will, assembling itself into something like a theory. He glanced at Fenton. Fenton didn’t see it. For all his gifts, Fenton lacked a sense of humor.

Barnaby then remembered the big-screen television, the VCR, and the videotape lying on the floor. No, not lying: placed on the floor, next to the remote. What was the hand-lettered title? WATCH ME.

That was it. Like water freezing, it all locked into place. He knew exactly what had happened. Barnaby cleared his throat. “Come with me.”

The three sons followed him back into the house, into the living room.

“Have a seat.”

“What’s this all about?” Philip was getting agitated. Even Fenton was looking at Barnaby quizzically.

Barnaby picked up the tape and the remote. “We’re going to watch a video.” He flicked on the television set and slid the tape into the VCR.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Philip asked, refusing to sit, his face flushed. The other two stood nearby, confused.

“You’re blocking the screen,” said Barnaby, settling himself on the sofa. “Have a seat.”

“This is outrageous—”

A sudden burst of sound from the video silenced Philip, and then the face of Maxwell Broadbent, larger than life, materialized on the screen. All three sat down.

His voice, deep and booming, reverberated in the empty room.

“Greetings from the dead.”