kind of box. Made out of an elephant’s foot, I believe.”
That Nora Kelly again. Custer made a mental note to question her himself once he was done here. She’d be his prime suspect, if he thought her capable of hoisting a heavyset man onto a dinosaur horn. Maybe she had accomplices.
Custer jotted some notes. “Has anything been moved in or out of here in the past month?”
“There may have been some routine additions to the collection. I believe that once a month or so they send dead files down here.” Manetti paused. “And, after the discovery of the letter, it and all related documents were sent upstairs for curating. Along with other material.”
Custer nodded. “And Collopy ordered that, did he not?”
“Actually, I believe it was done at the order of the Museum’s vice president and general counsel, Roger Brisbane.”
Brisbane: he’d heard that name before, too. Custer made another note. “And what, exactly, did the related documents consist of?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Brisbane.”
Custer turned to the two museum employees behind the desk. “This guy, Brisbane. You see him down here a lot?”
“Quite a bit, recently,” said one.
“What’s he been doing?”
The man shrugged. “Just asking a lot of questions, that’s all.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Questions about Nora Kelly, that FBI guy . . . He wanted to know what they’d been looking at, where they went, that kind of thing. And some journalist. He wanted to know if a journalist had been in here. I can’t remember the name.”
“Smithbrick?”
“No, but something like that.”
Custer picked up his notebook, flipped through it. There it was. “William Smithback, Junior.”
“That’s it.”
Custer nodded. “How about this Agent Pendergast? Any of you see him?”
The two exchanged glances. “Just once,” the first man said.
“Nora Kelly?”
“Yup,” said the same man: a young fellow with hair so short he looked almost bald.
Custer turned toward him. “Did you know Puck?”
The man nodded.
“Your name?”
“Oscar. Oscar Gibbs. I was his assistant.”
“Gibbs, did Puck have any enemies?”
Custer noticed the two men exchanging another glance, more significant this time.
“Well . . .” Gibbs hesitated, then began again. “Once, Brisbane came down here and really lit into Mr. Puck. Screaming and yelling, threatening to bury him, to have him fired.”
“Is that right? Why?”
“Something about Mr. Puck leaking damaging information, failing to respect the Museum’s intellectual property rights. Things like that. I think he was mad because Human Resources hadn’t backed up his recommendation to fire Mr. Puck. Said he wasn’t through with him, not by a long shot. That’s really all I remember.”
“When was this, exactly?”
Gibbs thought a moment. “Let’s see. That would have been the thirteenth. No, the twelfth. October twelfth.”
Custer picked up his notebook again and made another notation, longer this time. He heard a shattering crash from the bowels of the Archives; a shout; then a protracted ripping noise. He felt a warm feeling of satisfaction. There would be no more letters hidden in elephants’ feet when he was done. He turned his attention back to Gibbs.
“Any other enemies?”
“No. To tell you the truth, Mr. Puck was one of the nicest people in the whole Museum. It was a big shock to see Brisbane come down on him like that.”
Noyes moved toward the front desk just as the Archives door burst open. Custer turned to see a man dressed in a tuxedo, his black tie askew, brilliantined hair hanging across his outraged face.
“What the hell is going on here?” the man shouted in Custer’s direction. “You just can’t come bursting in here like this, turning the place upside down. Let me see your warrant!”
Noyes began fumbling for the warrant, but Custer stayed him with a single hand. It was remarkable, really, how
