increased and lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the tree line for a second. The crack of thunder rattled the windows. “Ariel wasn’t afraid of the thunder and lightning. She thought it was a great show, and she was really into loud noises. I worried about her little ears. I wouldn’t let her have earphones, no matter how much the nuns begged me.”
“ ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ was written on the note you gave me to analyze.”
“Yes. Someone, I don’t know who, left the note for the musicians to put it on the playlist.”
Frank pushed away and stared at Diane. “A coincidence?”
“Perhaps.” Diane told him about her conversations with Gregory and about the possibility of one of Santos’ associates being in the United States.
“Diane, why didn’t you tell me? This is serious.”
“It’s also a long shot. He’s run the president out of Barquis. I doubt it’d be worth the effort to come after me. These days the U.S. is in no mood for terrorists. I’m sure Santos is aware of that. I’ve suspected that it has something to do with Mark Grayson trying to get me to sell the museum property.”
“That would be a cruel thing to have done. Is he that mean?” asked Frank.
“I believe he, like a lot of dictators, wants what he wants.”
“Have you confronted him?”
“I have no proof whatsoever. But I’m getting pressure from all sides.” She told him about the unpleasant visit from the mayor. “So I’ve heard that rumor about me before.”
“I’ll tell Izzy. He didn’t know. . ”
Diane stood up and began gathering the pictures. “He didn’t know. I wonder why, then, he felt justified in relaying the rumor.”
“He was looking out for me. I’m sure he’ll apologize.”
“I suggest he doesn’t come around me for a while, or he won’t like the consequences. The mayor didn’t.”
Diane looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s almost four A.M. Maybe we can get a couple of hours’ sleep before we have to get up. You don’t have to go in to work tomorrow, do you?”
“No. I’ve had some time coming to me. I’m using it to try to take care of things.” He stood up and gathered the coffee cups and took them into the kitchen. When he came out, he caught Diane going into the bedroom and put his arms around her waist and held her close.
“Diane, you’ve been a big help to me. I didn’t realize the cost.”
“I guess I’m just a sucker for hard stories.”
Chapter 21
The grounds personnel were hard at work cleaning up the broken limbs and debris when Diane arrived at the museum. Storms are good at cleaning out the dead wood of a forest, and apparently this one went to work along the nature trail and the larger trees around the museum.
“Much damage?” she asked the head gardener, a small silver-haired man who’d retired from the university grounds department a couple of years ago.
“Not much. Mostly in the nature trail. We did have a tree limb fall against the west wing, but, fortunately, no windows were broken.”
As Diane walked up the steps and into the museum she heard voices raised in anger coming from the stairwell.
It sounded like Melissa Gallagher quarreling with some man.
“Don’t be like this, Mike. You don’t understand.” Melissa sounded close to tears.
“No, I don’t, and I really can’t deal with it anymore.” It was Mike Seger, the geology graduate student.
Diane hurried up the stairs in time to see Mike close his hand around Melissa’s arm.
“What’s going on?” said Diane.
“Nothing,” said Melissa.
“It doesn’t look or sound like nothing.” Diane held Mike in her gaze. “You’re going to bruise her arm, the way you’re holding it.”
“I’m not holding it that hard,” Mike said. But he let her go.
“Really, he wasn’t,” said Melissa. Diane thought she saw fear in Melissa’s dark eyes as she glanced from Mike to her.
“Your argument is spilling from the stairwell out into the museum. It would be better if you take your disagreements off museum grounds.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Dr. Fallon. Really. It won’t happen again.” Melissa hurried up the stairs and out of sight.
Mike remained, however, and turned to face Diane. He was a few inches taller than she, so she moved up to a higher step to face him.
“I don’t want anything like what I just saw occurring in the museum.”
“We were having an argument. That was all. I know we shouldn’t have been arguing here, and we won’t again. But that’s all that was going on.”
“I’ve noticed Melissa has had bruises in the past few days.”
“They haven’t come from me. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“If I find they did, you’re out of here.”
“Look, Dr. Fallon, I need this job. Assistantships in geology are hard to come by, and this has been a fortunate opening for me. I don’t want to be fired because of something I didn’t do.”
“Then do we understand each other?”
“Yes.” He turned and headed up the steps, then stopped and came back down to Diane’s level. “Korey Jordan said he found old maps, rocks and fossil collections in the basement dating from the mid-to late-1800s?”
“Yes. This was a museum, then a clinic and now a museum again. There are some exhibits left over from that earlier time.”
“Were any of the maps geologic maps?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s going to happen to them? I mean, is there any chance I can look at them?”
“Korey will have to assess any damage to the materials and stabilize them first. Perhaps do some repairs, if that’s possible. After that, they can be examined.”
“I have an interest in old geologic maps. They could make an interesting exhibit, especially if the rock and fossil collections can be matched up with the maps.”
“I don’t know if we have any provenience on the rock collection. Many of the things Korey is finding in the basement and attic were stored without much thought to organization or archiving.”
“I’d be glad to take a look at the rock collection. I may be able to determine where they were collected.”
“I’m not sure if it would be worth the time it would take. We currently have an extensive collection, as I’m sure you’ve seen.”
“Yes, I know. But I might find something interesting. Sometimes a specific kind of rock can get mined out and disappear. And who knows about the fossils? Sometimes new species have been discovered in museum collections.”
“By all means. Take a look at them.”
“Thanks.”
He disappeared up the stairs. Diane stood for a moment wondering about him and Melissa before she went back down to ground level and to her office. Through the adjoining door of her office, she heard Andie talking to someone.
“Yeah, they’d rather chase down somebody trespassing on some taxidermist’s place or some dog peeing on Mrs. Crabtree’s flower bed than investigate anything really illegal,” Andie was saying.
Diane opened the door between the offices and saw that it was Korey talking to Andie.
