several plantings below the surface. “Some people plant them in the fall.”
Mike jabbed his small shovel into the dirt again. “Too bad Tina didn’t stick around for the spring bloom.”
“She’s still the victim,” I said. “Is there another shovel?”
“Not until Billy Schultz gets home.”
Whoever tended the little garden kept it densely packed with perennials and small shrubs. Mercer was pulling them out to get a better angle as he dug.
Minutes later, I heard the sound of metal clanging against metal. “I’m in,” Mercer said.
Bea jumped to her feet and both of us clustered behind him. Mike saw the hole in the ground left by Mercer’s uprooting of a dwarf pine and started digging furiously. Seconds later, the tip of his shovel struck against some kind of metal vault.
“Right where it shows on the map,” Bea said.
Both men scrambled to excavate the dirt on top of the buried chamber.
Just like on the diagram Bea had shown to us, the exterior of the rectangular chest was almost ten feet long bordering the rear of the house, and only three feet wide.
“It looks like it’s split into compartments,” Bea said, peering in over Mike’s shoulder.
“Can you tell from your map,” Mike asked as he continued to throw dirt back onto the flagstone path adjacent to the site, “whether there were peepers way back then in the buildings behind us?”
He raised a valid point. It wouldn’t have been a very good hiding place if everyone around could see the dig.
“It appears from the maps I’ve examined that Hunt enclosed these first two buildings-the ones for his mistress and her mama-with a common wall,” she said, pointing to the brick surround, which was about twenty feet tall. “The family held on to the property behind us until almost 1930, when those apartments that back up on it were constructed.”
“See that stump?” Mercer said. “Bet there was a big old shade tree right there that might have given some cover.”
“You gentlemen need to understand something about topography,” Bea said. “The reason this chamber was displayed on the map is because at some point, the top of it must have been visible, on the surface of the ground. A hundred years later, with shifts in the land, it settled in a little deeper.”
“So what are you telling us?” Mike asked.
“That this would have been much more accessible to Jasper Hunt when he wanted to get to it,” Bea said. “Probably only covered with a thin layer of sod.”
Mike and Mercer were both kneeling at ends of the chest. “Doesn’t seem to be any opening on my end,” Mike said. “Totally airtight. How about you?”
“Same.”
Bea looked pensive as she walked back to the house. “Could be another way at it, don’t you think?”
I followed her into the kitchen, where she turned to study the cabinet doors high above the sink, out of reach to both of us. “You’ve got me on height, Alex.”
I dragged one of the chairs over and stepped on the seat of it to climb to the lip of the old sink. I pulled at the latch, too useless a location to have ever been replaced by any of the tenants.
It stuck for my first few attempts, then opened wide as I yanked again, practically dislodging me from my perch. Bea reached out to steady my legs.
The thick layer of dust that coated the interior shelf had recently been disturbed. Streaks across the width of the space suggested someone had reached inside.
“You might be right, Bea,” I said.
“Hey, Mike,” she called out. “Come help us.”
Mercer and Mike were behind me seconds later.
“Make yourself useful, Bea,” Mike said. “I’ll hold her legs.”
He put his hands around my calves, squeezing them to reassure me that all was okay between us.
I reached back and ruffled his thick black hair.
Mercer opened several closet doors until he found a stepladder. He helped me down and, with his great height added to the three steps, was halfway inside the cabinet when he called out, “There’s a false front here.”
He leaned to the side, pulling out the piece of wood that formed the crossbar for the single shelf.
In the space behind the center cabinet-a good four feet wide-was the side of the metal chamber we had seen from above.
Directly in front of Mercer, in the seam of the concealed door, was a keyhole-an old-fashioned design, which looked like it would accommodate a notched tip turned with an ornate bow.
“Call the lab, Mike,” I said. “Get someone up here with the key that I found in the library stacks.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“It’s a fake,” Bea Dutton said, her gloved hands spreading the parchment that appeared to be a panel of the 1507 world map across one end of my dining room table, after we’d made the short drive from East Ninety-third Street.
We had waited forty minutes in the basement apartment until one of the forensic biology lab techs appeared with the key that I had found along the path the killer probably took to dispose of the body of Tina Barr.
Mercer had opened the locked chamber to reveal a watertight series of metal chests within chests-like a small version of the caskets in Napoleon’s tomb-and removed them from the hidden compartment.
The smallest one was fitted with a velvet lining large enough to hold double-folio-size prints. Only one thing-a piece of the map-rested within the case. Mercer removed it and Mike called the lieutenant to tell him we were on our way to my apartment to determine what it was.
“How can you tell it’s a fake?” I asked.
“Remember what I said yesterday about forgeries of something as detailed as this piece? The fact that it’s a made from a woodcut, not just a drawing?” Bea asked. “It would be next to impossible to pull off.”
Bea put on her reading glasses and began to examine the paper more closely.
Mike was looking over her shoulder. “Which of the twelve parts is it?”
“
Bea rubbed the edge of the parchment between her fingers. “The texture is the first giveaway,” she said, starting to explain the flaws. “Most experts could tell right off the bat.”
“Someone like me, Bea, who doesn’t know rare maps,” I said. “Would it fool me?”
“Stevie Wonder could tell this one’s a forgery, Coop. Get with the program.” Mike pulled at a strand of hair that had fallen between my eyes. “Make yourself comfortable, Bea. Want a soda?”
He walked into the kitchen and helped himself to a soft drink.
“Nothing, thanks. Do you have that photocopy of the entire map I made for you at the library?”
“I got it,” Mercer said. He had brought a stack of work up from the car and sorted it out from the pile he had dropped on the credenza on his way inside.
“Let’s lay it out on the table. Do you mind if I move your flowers, Alex?” Bea asked.
Mike lifted the vase of white lilies. “More where those came from, Bea. Guess this guy didn’t get so lucky. The place usually looks like a funeral home when she’s put out her best stuff.”
Bea ignored him. “Grab me some tape and a few pads.”
Mike knew his way around my place. He left the room, then returned from my office with what Bea requested.
“You guys keep going on your end. Let me play with the map a bit,” she said.
Mercer, Mike, and I set ourselves up around the coffee table in the living room. It was late in the afternoon, and the three of us were trying to use a quiet Saturday to regain the territory and figure out what we had to work with so far in the murders of Tina Barr and Karla Vastasi.
