Dead Guilty

saying whether she thought it had merit.

‘‘I think this is a good idea. Good price,’’ read one note.

Diane looked at the form. The paleontology curator had found a small museum that was selling its collec tions. They had two casts of velociraptor skeletons for what really did appear to be a good price. The casts were damaged, but the paleontologist assured Diane that this wasn’t a problem.

Velociraptors were the speedy, vicious villains of Jurassic Park. Everyone who came to the museum wanted to see one. They were not nearly as large as the Albertosaurus or brachiosaur, but the movie gave them a long-lived reputation. Diane wrote on Kendel’s note to tell the paleontologist to purchase the skele tons. When they were assembled, it would mean an other round of good publicity for the museum.

The next item was another memo from Kendel. She discovered that members of the family who gave them the mummy had amulets that had come from the mummy’s wrapping. She thought she could negotiate a good deal on them. Diane agreed with that too. As long as they had a mummy and a case, it would be good to have everything that went with it. They cer tainly couldn’t afford an entire Egyptian collection.

The last item was from Korey. He had X-rayed the mummy, and she could come up to the conservation lab at any time and take a look. He had also scheduled an MRI for next week.

Things seemed to be going along nicely at the mu seum. So far, working two jobs hadn’t been too much of a problem—and she really didn’t need that much sleep. She wrapped up the museum business and left her office, walking directly into the Pleistocene room.

She liked the museum at night. The cavernous rooms were dark except for a few low-level lights fixed close to the floor so that one could navigate through the museum at night without running into the exhibits. Museum lighting was its own problem, light being a destructive force, yet completely necessary. The light ing of a museum must take into consideration angle, distance, strength and type of light, and requires more mathematics than one might think possible for what for most people is a commonplace matter. The light must have destructive UV rays filtered from it, but it also must render accurate representations of color. Diane had staff whose only job was to take care of the lighting.

Her footfalls echoed a hollow sound on the granite floor. Walking though the Pleistocene hall was like being in the twilight area of a cave—that place where only a small amount of light filters in from the en trance and gradually diminishes to total darkness. Here she could see only the silhouettes of the skele tons of the mammoth, the giant sloth, the huge shortfaced bear.

Caves are places of dramatic opposites. Some rooms and passages are so small you have to suck in your breath just to get through. Others, Diane could have fit her entire museum inside. The big rooms of mapped caves have glorious names—the Chandelier Ballroom, Pellucidar, Cathedral Hall, Grand Ball room, Throne Room, or sometimes simply Big Room. Diane had the same love of the museum as she did for caves. It was calming to her, which was why she always took the museum route out of her crime lab.

She opened the huge doors to the Pleistocene room and entered the main lobby again. Chanell wasn’t at the front desk. Probably making her rounds. Diane unlocked the outside doors and walked out into the hot night air. Her car was parked almost alone in the middle of the lot. As she walked toward it, an uneasy feeling crept over her.

She looked around, wondering what might be caus ing the feeling. The lights from the high poles illumi nated the entire parking lot. Beyond the lights was darkness. It never bothered her before. She scanned the dark border, looking for something that she might have subconsciously seen from the corner of her eye. Nothing. Silly, she thought, as she clicked the button that unlocked the driver’s side door of her Taurus.

Chapter 15

When the car door unlocked, the dome light illuminated the interior. As she reached out to open the door, she saw a bouquet of red roses lying on the backseat. Diane smiled. Frank must be back. She looked around the lot but didn’t see his car. Why hadn’t he come into the museum? She took the flowers into her arms and smelled one of the roses, a bud just barely open. Nice. The card was slipped between the flowers and the tis sue wrapping—no name, simply two words printed in a script font that read: TO JUSTICE.

Frank’s side must have won the case, she thought. Diane slid onto her car seat and put the flowers on the passenger’s seat. The aroma of the bouquet filled the car. It was odd, though, not like Frank to just leave flowers. Perhaps Star, his adopted daughter, put him up to it. Diane started the engine and drove home.

She lived in a huge old Greek revival house con verted into apartments. It had a good feel to it. Once inside, she put the flowers in a vase of water, kicked off her shoes and headed for the shower. The cool water felt good, a relief from the heat. The landlady still had not fixed the air-conditioning.

Out of the shower, Diane turned on the ceiling fan, slipped into a nightgown and started to set her radio alarm for the morning when she noticed the red blink ing light on her answering machine. She crawled in bed, hit the replay button and lay back to listen to the messages. The first was from Frank.

‘‘Hi. Since you’re not there, you’re probably work ing yourself to the bone, so I won’t try your cell phone. I’m still in San Francisco, but I’m catching a plane tomorrow. I’ll call. Get some sleep.’’

If he was still in San Francisco, who sent the flowers? Diane wondered as she listened to the next message play nothing but road noise. She deleted it, and the machine cycled to the third message. A deep male voice she didn’t recognize spoke.

‘‘Why won’t you talk to me? I’ve tried your cell phone, your E-mail and your home. I need to talk to you.’’

Wrong number? She checked the caller ID. One call came from San Francisco; that was Frank. The next two were from Denver, Colorado, and Omaha, Nebraska.

Denver. ‘‘I wonder if that’s the same number as the cell phone call earlier at the lab,’’ she said aloud. ‘‘Who do I know in Denver?’’

Couldn’t be a wrong number; he had tried both phone numbers and her E-mail. She didn’t know any one in Omaha either.

She shrugged, deleted the message and lay back in bed, thinking that perhaps Frank had the flowers de livered. But who put them in her locked car? Andie? Made sense. Had she given Andie a key? She drifted off to sleep.

Diane awakened abruptly at the sound of the ring ing telephone. She looked at the clock—6:00 A.M. Her radio