Still As Death (30 page)

“Lacey, it’s okay” Fred said. “We need to talk about something.”

“What is that?” Lacey asked Sweeney. “Did you do that?” She gestured toward the sketchbook. One of the sketches of Fred was turned to the outside.

Sweeney looked at Fred, waiting for him to say something. But instead of explaining to Lacey about Karen and the sketch, Fred just looked confused. Then he stood up and came over to Sweeney, taking the sketchbook from her and looking through the sketches.

Sweeney saw confusion flash across his face. “What are these?”

“It’s one of the sketches that Karen did of you,” Sweeney said. “I know you were having an affair with her and I know that you killed her when she threatened to tell the university that you’d slept with a student. You had to make it look like suicide, didn’t you?”

“What?” He was incredulous, staring at her.

“What is she talking about, Fred?” Lacey had taken the sketchbook from him and was looking through the pages.

Sweeney went on. “I think Olga and Willem must have found out about it somehow, and they must have also threatened to tell. Maybe you’d almost forgotten about it, maybe you’d hoped it would just go away. Everyone had believed that she’d killed herself. No one looked too deeply into what she had been doing just before she died, no one looked into her relationships.”

“Sweeney.” Fred was still standing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t kill anyone.” He took the book from Lacey and looked through it again, as though he was trying to figure out where he’d seen them before. “Oh, my God,” he said finally. “Oh, my God.” And then he started to laugh.

“I was a poor struggling grad student,” he said. “And when one of my friends who was teaching studio art asked if I wanted to come in and pose for his life drawing class for a hundred bucks, I agreed. I dare say I wasn’t the hunkiest model they ever had, but they seemed fairly happy with my work.”

“So Karen must have taken the life drawing class,” Sweeney said.
“I guess so. I think I remember her being in it. It’s so long ago now.”

Lacey was standing next to him, still looking at the sketches of her husband as a young man.

“Fred,” Sweeney said, “I have to ask you. What did you think I was talking about?”

He sat down and took Lacey’s hand in his, caressing it and then rubbing it against his face. “Oh, love,” he said, looking up at her. “I told you. It’s something bad.”

“What is it?” Sweeney watched the look that passed between them, not sure exactly what it represented.

Lacey put her hands on his shoulders, and after a moment she said firmly, “What? Tell me. I told you. Anything.” Sweeney didn’t know what she was talking about, but she watched Fred reach up to encircle her wrist with his fingers.

“I was in graduate school,” he started. “I was working on my thesis on Potter. We had become friends in a way; he’d allowed me a lot of access, a lot of time. He knew about my thesis, but I went to see him one afternoon and told him I wanted to write his biography. We had spent a lot of time together and I think he had come to trust me, but he was very unwell at this point and his children were always around, waiting for him to die so they could get their hands on the estate. He had been a terrible father, and they all thought they were owed that at least.

“Anyway, I was telling him about how I wanted to write his biography, and he pointed to a cabinet in the corner of the room and said that I could have his journals. I hadn’t even known he kept journals, and I went over and looked and there were about fifty of them. He’d been writing since he was a kid. I’m sure you can imagine, I almost fainted. It was my book, right there. And I would be the only one to have it. It was … Well, Sweeney, you can imagine what it was like. So few biographers have access to anything like these journals. And he said I could have them. I promise you that. He told me they
would be mine after he died. Well, he died a few weeks later. I got the call from one of his nurses who knew how close we’d become. I arrived before any of the children did, and the nurse told me that his oldest son, Garrison, hadn’t even expressed sorrow about his father’s death. He’d just told her and the housekeeper not to let any of his siblings remove anything from the house.

“A couple of days later, I tried to explain to one of his daughters about how I wanted to write his biography and how he had promised me the journals, but she didn’t know about them and she just became very angry and said I had no right to poke around in her family’s business. I realized that there was no way they were going to honor their father’s word, so I said good-bye and went around to his studio and took them. I took all the journals. I want you to understand that. I knew what I was doing and I took them.

“Later, I got a call from one of his children, asking if I had taken anything, and I said that he’d given me a few notebooks but that was all. I thought I’d gotten away with it, but a couple of weeks ago, I got a letter from Garrison. He saw something about my book, about how it included information from Jennings’s journals. He thought the journals had been lost, but he realized I’d taken them, and he threatened to call my publisher.”

He put his head in his hands. “Garrison’s going to make it public. The thing is, it’s going to taint everything in the book. The book is good, I know it is. But because of the publicity about the journals, it’s going to be ridiculed. I’m going to lose my job. Oh, honey.” He reached up for Lacey, who put her arms around him. “I think he’d contacted Willem. Just before he was killed, Willem said he wanted to see me. He wanted to tell me something.”

“Fred,” Sweeney said, “what if you just explained to your publisher? As you say, you had a verbal agreement with Jennings. That’s got to count for something.”

“I don’t know,” Fred said. “It’s such a mess. I’ve been so afraid to tell you, Lace.” He looked up at her. “I’ve been so afraid someone
was going to find out.” He looked up at Sweeney. “But I don’t understand. You think Karen Philips’s death had something to do with Olga and Willem’s deaths?”

“I don’t know,” Sweeney said. “That’s the problem. I just don’t know.”

It wasn’t until she was almost home that Sweeney remembered the dinner. It was Tuesday night and she had promised Ian that she would meet him and Peter and Lillie at the restaurant at six-thirty. It was now eight. If they hadn’t already finished dinner, they must be pretty close. And if she showed up at the restaurant now, she knew that there would be a scene and it would ruin the meal for everyone. Better to try to explain what had happened when Ian got home. Besides, Ian and Peter had a lot to talk about. Probably they’d rather be on their own, anyway.

She pottered around the apartment, organizing bills and drinking wine against her nervousness. By eleven, she’d had four glasses and decided that maybe it would be better if she was in bed when he came home. She found a
New Yorker
to read, but it was only a couple of minutes before her eyes started to close and she fell asleep.

She woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing, and she sat up, the magazine falling to the floor. Ian came out of the bathroom, barely looking at her.

“Hi,” she said sleepily. “I tried to wait up, but I was really tired. I’m so sorry about tonight. I went out to Greenfield and I thought that I’d be back in time. How was dinner?”

For a minute he didn’t say anything, and she watched him undress with the sinking feeling that it was much worse than she had thought it was going to be.

He got into bed and rolled away from her. “It was humiliating, actually,” he said. “Peter had been looking forward to meeting you. But I don’t want to talk about it tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow night.” He said it sternly, as though she was a naughty child.

“I’m sorry.” In the dark room, she listened to him breathing, knowing he was still awake, and she wanted to cry, to tell him that she loved him, that she wanted to make it up to him. But she found that she didn’t have it in her, that all she could do was to close her eyes and go to sleep.

WHEN SWEENEY WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, her head aching from the wine, Ian was already gone. He’d pulled the covers up on his side of the bed as though he’d never even slept there.

She groaned and caught sight of the General, sitting on the chair by the window and watching her. “Do you hate me too?” she asked him. “Come over here and show me you don’t hate me too.” But the cat just stared at her, then turned and was gone through her bedroom window.

Sweeney rolled over and went back to sleep. When she woke up again, it was nearly three and she was bathed in sweat, the sheets stuck to her skin, the air in the bedroom so oppressive she could barely haul herself out of bed. She stripped the sheets, picked up her dirty clothes strewn around the room, and went to take a shower. When she got out, she cleaned the apartment and checked her e-mail, then took the
Boston Globe
with her out onto the fire escape.

The first thing she saw was the headline, “Museum Security Guard Questioned About 1979 Art Heist.” She read it twice. According to the story, Denny Keefe had been brought in for questioning after police received information that one of the two men who
may have carried out the armed robbery of the museum was Denny Keefe’s cousin. So Denny was the inside man on the 1979 robbery.

Had he been the inside person on the attempted theft of the canopic chest too?

If he had, that meant that Karen’s death and her work on the collar were unconnected to the robberies. But what would drive a brilliant young woman, with a promising career and a passionate interest in art, to end her life? Perhaps it was as simple as a bout of depression. Sweeney now understood that her father had killed himself because of an illness that he’d never named, one that plagued him all his life. If he’d been born a little later, perhaps he would have found treatment, perhaps he would have conquered it. She wasn’t sure.

Sweeney, more than most people, had had moments in her life where things seemed utterly hopeless. After Colm’s death, she had been so overwhelmed by grief that she hadn’t much wanted to feel it, hadn’t much wanted to be around to experience that bone-crushing sorrow. But she had never reached the point where she could have done anything about it.

She couldn’t shake her feeling that it was Karen’s work on the collar that had led her to that point. It seemed clear to Sweeney that the falcon collar had in fact come from one of the tombs of the princesses at Dahshur and that Karen had figured it out.

But how had it led to her death? Sweeney’s instinct told her that it was something about the collar, some secret that lay buried deep as the tomb it had been found in. She wished she knew more about Egyptian antiquities. If Willem was still alive, she could ask him, but of course he wasn’t.

But Tad was, she realized. Everyone forgot that Tad had also been an Egyptologist. Apparently he had been quite gifted. She could ask Tad. It was almost five. He would still be at the museum and she could ask him and get home in time to talk to Ian. Not that she was looking forward to that.

As she got her things together, she noticed there was a message on her cell phone and she checked it, hearing Quinn’s voice telling
her that he wanted to ask her about something. She called him back but got his voice mail. “It’s Sweeney,” she said. “I’m just heading over to the museum to ask Tad about something, but you can try me later.”

As she left the apartment, she caught sight of Ian’s trench coat hanging behind the door. It seemed so out of place there, so lonely. She ran the soft fabric between her fingers, the expensive Burberry’s weight of it, memorizing the way it felt, then went out the door.

“WHATCHA READING?” Ellie asked Quinn, coming up behind him at his desk.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
He was halfway through and he’d been eyeing the clock, trying to figure out when he was going to give Denny Keefe another try. He’d come in early, thinking he’d get all his reading for class that night done before the day started. He also needed to figure out what he was going to do about Ellie. She had been out of control while they were questioning that kid, and he needed to find out why. He needed to find out if it was going to happen again.

“ ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!” she announced dramatically.

“You read it?”

“Yeah, of course. I like to read.” She stood awkwardly over him, as though she wanted to say something.

“You okay?” he asked finally.

“I’m okay.” Her whole expression fell, her eyes full of regret and pain, and he wanted to scream at her, to tell her to control her emotions better, to keep hold of herself and not let everything show on her face. She was never going to be a cop if she couldn’t do that at
least. “I wanted to talk to you about that, about what happened at that kid’s place.”

Quinn looked up at the clock. It was almost nine. “Let’s talk later. I want to get to him before he’s too awake.” She hesitated. “The lawyer’s here. So come on.”

He had Keefe brought into the interview room, and he gave him a casual glance. “Hey there,” he said. “How are you?” The lawyer sat next to him at the table. With his new suit and shaggy hair, he looked even younger than Ellie.

Denny Keefe looked up, tried to seem nonchalant too, and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay,” he said. But Quinn could tell he was scared.

“Anything you want to tell me?”

Keefe whispered something to his lawyer, then looked up at Quinn. “Nope.” His eyes went up to the ceiling, then down to the table. His hands were shaking. He was getting close, Quinn knew it.

“Okay. You don’t mind if I just sit here and drink my coffee, do you?”

Denny Keefe shook his head. “Okay, good.” Quinn had brought his book in and he read and hummed a little tune, waiting for Keefe to break. Ellie had a magazine and he gave her a glance to tell her she should read too. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and made some notes on it. Ellie hummed a little. It was a nice touch. The lawyer looked annoyed. All the time, Quinn could feel Denny Keefe getting closer.

Still, he was completely taken aback when he finally looked up to see him sitting there with tears running down his cheeks. The lawyer looked just as surprised. “My client needs to take a break,” he said, pushing a Kleenex over to Keefe, who ignored it.