Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 01 - Scorpion House (30 page)

“You mean, like one of you was Jody Myers?”

“If so, it has to be either Graham or Shelley, right? Couldn’t be Susan because her only name was the maiden name on the passport.”

“I don’t know, Lacy. It’s not much to go on.”

“I know. That’s why I haven’t talked about it to anyone but you.” She gave him a look she hoped he would understand. A look that said
because I trust you and I hope my trust isn’t misplaced.

Paul took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Have you seen anything here that you think needs more investigating?”

“There’s a lot that could be done with Graham’s analysis of the material in the unguent jars. Does it match up with any of the recipes on other tomb walls? What about the species in the herbal papyrus? How many of them were used in making those unguents?”

“Good ideas.”

“But what I’d really like to know is, did the artists who worked with the red and yellow paint in this room—it’s different from the reds and yellows outside. Did you know that? —did they suffer from arsenic poisoning?”

“How could you find out?”

“We’d need to find out if any of the mummies discovered so far can be identified as painters. Do an autopsy. Or maybe just a hair sample would do. Arsenic is deposited in hair, you know.”

“Wouldn’t it have degraded by now?”

“Not arsenic. It’s a metallic element. Elements don’t degrade.”

“So, you need to stay here!” Paul smiled and winked at her. “All this work will take you years.”

“Not me. That’s work for a forensic scientist.”

Lacy trekked outside to check on the outflow and make sure it was sticking to the channel Paul had carved. Paul was monitoring his progress by the width of the wet ring around the walls. The water level was about a third of the way down. When Lacy came back with a favorable report she said, “Did you notice that Marcus never met Graham or Shelley?”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. Shortly after we hear Marcus is coming, Graham and Shelley all of a sudden decide to go off on a felucca trip. They’re gone by the time he arrives. Then the rain comes, the trip is called off, and Graham does what? Comes home? He’s in Luxor, for God’s sake. Fifteen minute ferry ride. No. He calls Roxanne and asks her if Marcus is there! I overheard the conversation. She tells him Marcus is there but he’s taking the red-eye to Cairo in the morning. So Graham and Shelley get a room at the Sheraton and show up late this morning. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and almost as easy to simply take the ferry last night?”

“Why would they be avoiding Marcus?”

“Think about it, Paul. Who would be most likely to recognize Jody Myers after all these years? His old playmate, right?”

“Right.”

“Now. Why was Susan murdered?”

“Because somebody didn’t like her?”

“You don’t kill people just because you don’t like them. If we did, the human race would’ve gone extinct a long time ago. You kill people because they’re a threat. Maybe they threaten to wreck you financially or maybe they stand between you and the fortune you think you deserve. Whatever. I wouldn’t know. I’m no psychiatrist. Maybe they threaten your marriage or your freedom.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Or maybe because you really, really hate them. Not just
don’t like
them.
Hate
them.”

“Sure.” Paul pressed his hands together, raised them to his lips. “Horace Lanier didn’t like Susan and she didn’t like him. But Susan was, very likely, a threat to him, too. Shelley considered Susan a threat. She suspected Graham and Susan were having an affair.”

“I don’t think they were.”

“I don’t either. Selim didn’t like Susan’s attitude about the relocation of the locals.” He shifted the gurgling intake hose. “Akhmed walked out on the meeting where Susan was shooting her mouth off. Roxanne was mad at her. Kathleen was mad at her but is any of this a sufficient motive for murder?”

“No. Here’s another way to think of it. In all these horrible happenings, who’s hurting the worst?”

“Susan.”

“No. Susan is dead. Dead people don’t hurt.”

Paul’s neck jerked backward, obviously shocked by that statement.

“Who is right now, right this minute, suffering what his own son called
a fate worse than
death
?”

“Horace,” he mouthed the name, no sound coming from his lips.

“Horace. Right. A man who suffers from claustrophobia, who’s probably got OCS he’s such a neat freak, who can’t stand bugs, is sitting in a tiny, dirty, bug-ridden cell and facing life in prison if he’s convicted.

“So what if Susan wasn’t the target? What if Susan was no more than a means to an end? What if the idea was to get Horace Lanier convicted of Susan’s murder so he’d spend the rest of his life suffering
a fate worse than death
?”

Paul let out his breath in a sort of hiss. “You make it sound like Dante’s
Inferno
.”

“That’s exactly right. For Horace, that’s how it must be. Listen. You heard Marcus. Horace has already tried to kill himself. He’s obviously decided death would be an improvement over prison.

“So who could possibly hate Horace that much?” Lacy leaned forward on her stool until she nearly toppled into the water. “How about the kid who got removed from his home, his neighborhood, his friends, thanks to Horace and his wife, who, incidentally, was also murdered! Who could kill poor Susan just to get Horace arrested? Who could be so heartless? How about the kid who tortured innocent animals? A kid who Marcus told us was living in a horribly dysfunctional home?”

“You keep saying
his
, so you must think it was Graham, not Shelley. If this was all Graham’s trick to get Horace arrested, why did
Shelley
get arrested? Remember? She got arrested first.”

“I still haven’t figured that out.”

* * *

Shortly before dawn, the pump had done all it could do. Paul and Lacy turned on the exhaust fan above the vent to pull fresh air through the burial chamber and dry the wet, muddy floor. They walked back to the house together, Lacy’s groggy head on Paul’s shoulder, his arm around her waist.

“There was something else the other day that struck me as odd,” Lacy said. “Were you on the porch when Marcus first arrived? When Roxanne came out to meet him?”

“No.”

“She said something when she first saw him. She said, ‘It’s been a long time. Five years isn’t it?’ Like they had met each other before. But when could they have met?”

Paul stuck out his hand in a gentlemanly fashion, to help her over a rock wall. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard either Horace or Roxanne mention Marcus ever coming here. Maybe she went to Virginia at some point?”

“But why?”

Paul shrugged and reminded her of the little task they needed to perform at their first opportunity, then crossed the antika room and flopped into a chair at his computer. Lacy grabbed another one across the table from him and fired up her own laptop. She went online, pulled up the Wythe University website and clicked on “administrative staff.” She read one of the short bios, leaned back in her chair and stretched. Several weary bones popped. Now she knew almost everything she needed. Only one puzzle piece still missing.

T
hey were six for breakfast. Kathleen tromped in from the tomb and announced the coffin was in as good shape as one could expect after its watery ordeal. Lacy, her pale yellow hair in an unruly twist, announced she was going back to bed as soon as she ate, because she’d been up all night. Paul announced the burial chamber was now dry and the poor old pump could be passed along to the next group on the waiting list. Shelley and Graham announced they were still waiting for a call from Myerson about plane tickets.

Roxanne set her tea cup down. “I’m going to Luxor this morning to visit Horace.” She dabbed up a spot of orange juice with her napkin. “A friend of mine at Chicago House is a friend of the police chief and he’s worked it out for me. I probably won’t be allowed more than five minutes, but do any of you have a message for him?”

“Any word from Marcus?” Shelley asked. “It would be nice to tell him he has a grandchild.”

Lacy glanced quickly from Shelley to Graham, hoping to catch a revealing expression on either face. She saw nothing and reminded herself that she already knew they were dealing with a cool character. Susan’s killer, probably also Lanier’s nemesis, wouldn’t be caught out on anything as simple as an accidental grimace. “We promised Marcus we’d call him every day but I assume no one called yesterday. He wasn’t scheduled to get back to Seattle until …” she looked at her watch, “about now, actually.”

“What about the new chamber, Paul? Did it get wet?” Shelley’s face was sunburned on only one side, giving her a sort of Phantom of the Opera look. Lacy imagined she’d fallen asleep lying on her stomach with her head resting on her hands, her face turned to one side.

“The new chamber’s in good shape. The water didn’t even touch it.”

Roxanne set her fists firmly on either side of her plate. “Well! If we can find it in ourselves to go on, what with … everything … excavating the new chamber should be a very welcome adventure!”

* * *

Paul watched from the roof as Graham and Shelley walked out and down the driveway together. He dashed down the stairs and into Lacy’s room. She climbed down from the chair she was standing on to set her wet boots on the sill outside her little window. From the oversized T-shirt she was wearing, the one she always slept in, Paul deduced that she was getting ready for bed.

“Now’s our chance. They both just left. They’re walking toward the temple.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stand watch outside Graham’s room and let me know if you see them coming.”

“How about if I watch from the roof? I could see them sooner and give you more warning.”

“But then how could you warn me without shouting?”

“I could throw a rock down and hit Graham’s window.”

“Good idea.”

Lacy pulled on a pair of shorts and headed for the roof.

Paul walked into Graham’s room, yanked out the top dresser drawer and extracted the passport he’d seen Graham put there the day before. He rushed up the stairs to the roof and showed Lacy the name on the photo page. Now they knew everything.

* * *

“Joseph Graham Clark. That’s his full name. He’s Jody Myers, all right.”

Paul and Lacy moved to the back side of the roof in case someone was listening on the porch below. Paul stood there, still staring at the passport. “What about the Myers part?”

“Graham was raised by his aunt, Joanne Clark, who is also the registrar at Wythe. He told us his parents had been killed in a car crash, but that must have been a lie. His Aunt Joanne took him when he was removed from his home by Social Services after the Laniers got the community involved. Joanne Clark is married. Clark is her married name. What was her maiden name? I couldn’t think how to find that out without asking Graham directly, but then I thought of the Wythe University website. I checked her biographical information this morning and guess what? She’s Joanne
Myers
Clark.”

“So her brother could have been Somebody Myers. Graham’s father.”

“Her brother
was
Somebody Myers, a pervert and general all round bad influence. Joanne and her husband must have formally adopted Graham and changed his name to Clark.”

“And the Jody part?”

“Jody is a nickname for Joseph.”

Paul reached out and cupped the back of her neck in one hand. “That has to be it. You’ve cracked it, Sherlock.” Paul looked over the edge of the roof. He turned to Lacy, one finger on his lips. “Graham and Shelley. They’re coming back.”

In a low voice, she said, “What about Shelley? Is she in on this whole thing?”

“She must be. Shelley’s not dumb. She’d have noticed something that didn’t add up, surely. Probably several things.”

“I don’t think she is. At least I don’t think she
was
. Something happened on that felucca trip, Paul. When she came back she was like a different person.”

Lacy looked over the edge into the back yard and saw Graham pulling a length of reinforced polyurethane tubing from a box beside the water tank. He draped it around his neck and disappeared around the west end of the house. “Think about it, Paul. This kid grows up so full of hatred for the Laniers, he vows someday he’ll get his revenge. Maybe he even goes into biochemistry as an excuse to get a job close to Horace. Maybe not. I have a feeling Graham has always been drawn toward chemistry, but I’ll bet revenge was the reason he applied to Wythe for a position as soon as he got his PhD in Texas. It wasn’t long after that, Cheryl Lanier was murdered at their mountain home. Horace and Marcus had alibis, but the police would’ve had no reason to suspect Graham Clark. None at all. Her killer used strychnine which causes a horrible death.

“If I wanted to kill someone with poison, just to get rid of them, I’d use cyanide or sedatives or something. No need to cause them undue pain. Get the job done. Get it over with. But strychnine! You’d only use strychnine if you really, really hated your victim.

“Just think. As soon as the Cheryl thing is fading from the newspapers, before you can get even with Horace in whatever equally horrible way you have in mind for him, he ups and moves to Egypt! Oh shit! Now what does he do? He bides his time until he comes up with an idea. Susan Donohue, Wythe’s resident Egyptologist, is returning from her field season in Egypt where she worked and lived at the same house where Horace now lives. Graham makes up a good interdisciplinary project involving Susan and himself, among others, and pitches it to Susan. Susan applies for the grant and there you are!”

“So now he’s living in the same house as the man he intends to kill.”

“But now he’s decided killing’s too good for him. He’s gonna make him really suffer. How? Horace is claustrophobic, he’s a neat freak and he has a bug phobia. He decides to get him arrested for murder and thrown into an Egyptian prison. Poor Susan is the designated murderee.”

Lacy looked out toward the tomb again. She could see Graham, now fiddling with the generator on the slope above the tomb. A woman in a straw hat tied round with a yellow scarf approached the tomb from below. It was Shelley. Lacy recalled Graham saying he didn’t want Shelley going back in the tomb after the flood waters had brought in God knows what. “Why is Shelley going toward the tomb?”