timecard yesterday… Oh… Really? Huh.’
Edie placed her palm over the handset, whispering, ‘According to Linda, I never clocked in yesterday. But I know for a fact that I did.’
She removed her hand from the phone. ‘Silly me, huh? You’d think after all these weeks I’d be able to get it right. I, um, was in and out so quick that I guess I forgot to —’
C?dmon mouthed, ‘Ask for Padgham.’
‘Is Dr Padgham in his office by any chance? He asked me to take some photos for a special project and I was just… Oh, gosh, that’s terrible. Well, um, since he’s not at the museum, would you be a dear and walk down the hall to his office for me? I spilled a cup of coffee all over his Persian carpet and I just wanted to make sure the cleaning crew took care of — Yeah, he is a bit of a priss, isn’t he? Thanks, Linda.’
Again, Edie placed her palm over the handset. ‘You’re not going to believe this. She claims that Dr Padgham’s longtime partner was killed yesterday in a hit-and-run accident and that Dr Padgham flew to London to take care of the burial arrangements.’
C?dmon’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘They’re trying to make it appear that Padge is still among the living. My, my, what a tangled web we weave.’
She again motioned him to silence. ‘That’s great. Well, I, um, gotta run. Thanks a million, Linda. I’ll catch you later.’
Edie hung up the phone, stunned.
‘What did she say about the blood-stained carpet?’ C?dmon prompted.
‘To Linda Alvarez’s eagle eye, there’s no stain on Dr Padgham’s carpet. No bloodied bits of brain matter. No noxious pile of vomit. Nothing but a beautifully vacuumed Persian rug.’ Edie pulled out the chair in front of the desk and plopped into it. She glanced at C?dmon’s reflection in the wall mirror. ‘It’s a cover-up. A huge wipe-the-slate- clean cover-up.’
‘Since the last thing that the thieves want is for the police to become involved, they’ll undoubtedly invent something to kill off Padge in London. No one on this side of the Atlantic would question Padgham’s suicide, say, grief-stricken at his partner’s death.’
‘I think they killed Dr Padgham’s partner.’
‘More than likely they did,’ C?dmon replied, his crisp accent noticeably subdued.
‘How in God’s name did Rosemont pull off such a well-organized cover-up?’
C?dmon seated himself on the edge of her bed. ‘With inside help, I dare say. Who captains the ship?’
‘At the Hopkins? That would be the museum director, Eliot Hopkins.’
‘Call him. Ask for a meeting for later this morning.’
Edie cast him a long, considering glance. ‘Tell me why exactly I want to set up a meeting with the museum director?’
‘In the hope that Mr Hopkins will spill some gilded beans.’
‘What do I tell him? I can’t think of a single reason why Eliot Hopkins would agree to meet with us, let alone give us the straight scoop.’
‘Try coming at the problem from a different angle. Why would the venerable Mr Hopkins agree to participate in the theft of a relic he already owned?’
‘That’s easy. Insurance fraud. He intends to collect on the policy.’
‘But I suspect that the Stones of Fire was purchased on the black market.’
‘Meaning the relic wasn’t insured.’ Edie said, beating him to the punch.
‘Ergo, Eliot Hopkins had nothing to do with Padge’s murder. But I believe he had something to do with the subsequent cover-up.’
‘But why cover up the murder? It doesn’t make any sense.’
Still sitting on the edge of her bed, C?dmon crossed one jeans-clad leg over the other. ‘What would happen if the authorities discovered that the director of the Hopkins Museum had knowingly purchased a stolen relic smuggled out of its country of origin?’
‘In addition to a hefty fine, Eliot Hopkins might be sentenced to prison.’
‘And in the process, his reputation and good name would be ripped to shreds. All of which makes Eliot Hopkins a very weak link.’
‘And you want to find out who’s yanking his chain,’ Edie said, the reason for the proposed rendezvous suddenly making sense. ‘I’m guessing it’s the guys at Rosemont. Probably what’s his name? Colonel MacFarlane. Who else could it be?’
Rather than answer, C?dmon stretched out along the length of the bed, reaching for a tourist map on top of the bedside cabinet, part of the welcome-to-your-room pack. Unfolding the map, he spread it on his lap. ‘The National Zoo, the National Cathedral or the Lincoln Memorial. Which of these are you most familiar with?’
‘The zoo,’ she answered, wondering where he was headed. ‘It’s only a few blocks from my house. When the weather is nice, I like to power-walk it.’
C?dmon refolded the map. ‘Then the National Zoo it is. Tell Mr Hopkins to be there at ten a.m. Sharp. Do be sure to add that. When talking to thieves and murderers, it’s always best to speak with authority, that being the only way to deal with a playground bully.’
‘That or kick him in the nuts,’ Edie muttered as she reached for the phone.
25
Eliot Hopkins slowly hung up the telephone.
Just as the monsters at Rosemont Security Consultants had predicted, Edie Miller had initiated contact.
The first piece of a very complicated puzzle had fallen into place.
He sighed, a long drawn-out breath that was equal parts regret and pain. Regret because he was fond of the quirky and offbeat Miss Miller. Pain on account of the cracked rib he nursed, courtesy of a muscled behemoth with a misplaced sense of civility, the fiend having grinned and said ‘Howdy do’ after administering the unexpected blow. The men of Rosemont wanted his cooperation. And they’d gone about gaining it in a most primitive fashion.
Why negotiate when one can use fists and threats to achieve the same end?
Glancing at the imposing John Singer Sargent portrait that hung above the mantel, Eliot thought he caught the hint of a smirk on his great-grandfather’s stern visage, the coal magnate having put down more than one strike with clubs and bullets. Unlike Andrew Carnegie, who had suffered with a guilty conscious, Albert Horatio Hopkins had never lost a single night’s sleep worrying about the plight of the men who earned him his immense fortune. A true vandal, Albert Hopkins had raped the West Virginia mountains for their minerals and stripped his employees of their dignity.
Long live King Coal.
While he was the great-grandson of Albert Hopkins, he was also, and more importantly to his mind, the grandson of Oliver Hopkins. In his day and age, that being the feel-good, anything-goes frenzy before the Great Depression, Ollie Hopkins had had a well-deserved reputation as a ne’er-do-well. Turning his back on the family business, he instead supped with African chieftains, rode wild horses with Mongolian warriors and explored the licentious world of the harem with Arab potentates.
Along the way, he had spent a king’s ransom searching for the relics of the Exodus.
As a young boy, Eliot would sit for hours at his grandfather’s knee, enthralled by his exciting tales, which rivalled any adventure book. His particular favourite had been the time that his grandfather, disguised as a Turk, had tunnelled into the bowels of the Temple Mount, only to be discovered by Sheik Khalil, the hereditary guardian of the Dome of the Rock. Chased through the streets of Jerusalem by an angry mob, his grandfather made his getaway in a motor yacht hijacked from the port of Jaffa.
Considered a wastrel by his father, Oliver was eventually disinherited. Penniless when he died, he had left his favourite grandson the fruits of all his labours — an immense collection of artefacts and relics mined over the course of some fifty years. The collection became the cornerstone of the Hopkins Museum of Near Eastern Art, the museum founded in homage to the man who had given Eliot the only familial affection he ever knew.
