The Inquisitor's Key (17 page)

Avignon
The Present

LIGHT AND COLOR FILLED THE SQUARE, A LEAFY PARK
that was jammed this Sunday morning with tables of bright fabrics, fresh flowers, watercolor paintings, and Provençal delicacies—cheeses, wine, honey, olive oil, strawberries, raspberries. Miranda was auditioning samples of cheese and wine—wine tasting at 10
A.M
.—to round out our picnic basket. Stefan had offered to meet us here and take us on a field trip to the Pont du Gard, an ancient aqueduct that was one of Rome’s finest feats of engineering. I wasn’t looking forward to having him along, but I was excited about the aqueduct. “Listen to this,” I said, glancing up from the guidebook. “The aqueduct is sixteen stories high and fifteen hundred feet long, but it drops only one inch from one end to the other. Can you imagine building with that kind of precision two thousand years ago?”

“Mmm.”
Miranda smacked her lips. “I can imagine eating my weight in this goat cheese.”

“It carried forty-four million gallons of water a day. Isn’t that something?”

“You really are in touch with your inner nerd, you know that?”

“Where’s Stefan? He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, wasn’t he?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Try his cell phone, will you?”

“I have. Twice. My call went straight to voice mail.”

“Try it again. Maybe he’s over at the palace.”

“Oh, I’m
sure
he’s at the palace,” she groused. “Which is why he’s not getting my calls. A nuclear blast couldn’t get through those walls, let alone a cell phone signal.”

“Then let’s just go over there,” I suggested. “Seems silly to sit here and wait for him. Either he forgot about the plan, or he got sidetracked by something.”

I hoisted the backpack over one shoulder—Miranda had managed to cram a hefty load of lunch treats into it—and we headed for the palace, a ten-minute walk away. As we approached, Miranda phoned again, but once more the call went to Stefan’s voice mail.

At the palace’s main entrance, we flashed our badges, ducked behind a cordon, and threaded our way down the staircases that led to the base of the treasury tower. “I assume he’s locked the gate behind him,” I fretted. “Do you think he’ll hear us if we yell?”

“I’ve got a pretty good set of lungs,” she said. “The last guy who grabbed me in a parking garage got a perforated eardrum to go along with his scratches and bruises.”

Surprisingly, though, Stefan hadn’t locked the gate; he hadn’t even bothered to close it. “He must be expecting us,” I said. “Either that, or he’s getting really careless.”

“If he was expecting us, he should’ve left the lights on,” Miranda grumbled. She flipped open her cell phone to wake up the
display screen, and used the light to scan the wall for the switch.

“Ingenious,” I said. “You’re so resourceful.”

“Hey, I grew up watching
MacGyver.
I can make a computer out of matchsticks and paper clips.”

“Really?” Even by the faint glow of the phone, I could see her eyes roll. “Oh. You were being sarcastic.”

“Not sarcastic. Only hyperbolic.”

“Miranda, if you hope to have
any
success in academia, you’ve got to stop exaggerating. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you—”

“Yeah, yeah, a billion times,” she interrupted. “The same number of times you’ve told me that joke.
Damn
it, where’s the switch?” She yelped as a spark split the darkness, followed by the feeble glow of bulbs trailing down the staircase like luminous bread crumbs.

I’d expected the subtreasury to be brightly lit by the work lights, but it wasn’t. Miranda looked worried as we stepped into the gloom. “Stefan?” No answer. “Stefan, are you in here?” Silence. “Come on, Stefan, this isn’t funny. If you’re in here, come on out. You’re creeping me out.” The only sound I heard was Miranda’s breathing, which had turned fast and ragged.

“Let’s turn on the work lights,” I suggested, as much to distract Miranda as anything else. “Can you find the switches for those?”

She opened her cell phone again and disappeared behind one of the support pillars; a moment later, my eyelids and pupils clamped down against the glare of the halogen bulbs.

The lights only underscored the emptiness of the room. Miranda looked at me; wordlessly, we headed for the blue tarp that curtained off the excavation area. I ducked around one end of the tarp, Miranda around the other. Our eyes automatically swiveled to the same spot. The table was empty; the bones were gone.

“I feel sick,” Miranda said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s not good.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded, “but let’s try not to panic. Let’s
look around a little more, then go outside and try to reach Stefan again.” She nodded, chewing her lip.

I studied the table where we’d laid out the bones in anatomical order. The white sheet was still in place; a few small smudges and stains confirmed that yes, this was where the bones had lain. I lifted the fabric that overhung the table and stooped to peer beneath it. “The ossuary’s gone, too,” she predicted, and she was right. “Goddamn it,” she said, but there was no heat behind the curse, just weariness. “I should have known.”

“Known what?”

“Known better. Known something would go wrong. Known that Stefan was working an angle. Known that he was still the same guy who cheats on his wife, shafts his colleagues, or does some other damn selfish thing that’s gonna blow up in our faces and make
us
the collateral damage, the civilian casualties, the friendly-fire deaths.” I considered trotting out my exaggeration joke yet again, but it dawned on me that Miranda might not be exaggerating this time. “He’s taken the bones and skipped town,” she said. “I just know it. They’re probably on eBay right now.”

“They won’t be on eBay,” I said, “but they sure aren’t here, and I don’t see a helpful note explaining why. Let’s lock up and see if we can find out what the hell’s going on.”

We switched off the work lights, climbed the stairs, and switched off the dim string of bulbs in the stairwell. By the faint light of Miranda’s phone, I wrestled the heavy gate shut, then hit a problem. “I don’t see the lock,” I told Miranda.

She brought the phone closer, playing its bluish-white glow over the hasp and then the nearby bars. “Hmm.” She widened her search, sweeping the light horizontally across the entire gate at waist height, then in progressively lower tracks at each horizontal crossbar. When she reached the level of the floor, she grunted, then said softly, “Oh, shit.” I bent to look at whatever she’d seen.

The padlock—the industrial-strength lock with the inch-thick shackle of hardened steel—had been cut in half.

“NOW WHAT?” ASKED MIRANDA.

We’d voiced our concerns to the ranking security officer at the palace; he took notes and promised to investigate, but he didn’t seem nearly as worried as Miranda and I were. After that, we’d gone to the police station, but the entrance was locked. A notice taped to the glass door announced F
ERMÉ
—
JOUR FÉRIÉ
. O
UVERT LUNDI
.
“Damn,” said Miranda. “Closed. Religious holiday. Open Monday.”

“Swell,” I said. “It’d be a great day to rob a bank, if we weren’t otherwise occupied.” I hesitated. “Do you…happen to have a key to Stefan’s apartment?”

She punched me in the shoulder. “
No,
I don’t happen to have a key to his apartment, but thanks for the vote of confidence. I came to work, not to get laid.” She drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Sorry; my issue, not yours. It was a reasonable question. But the answer’s still no. I don’t have a key.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“What, the key?”

“No, Einstein, the apartment,” I said.

“Ah. Actually, I do know where the apartment is. Stefan invited me for dinner the first night. I think I can find it again. It’s not far from the palace, and it’s got a balcony with a view of the palace and cathedral. If we stand at the front of the cathedral, I bet I can spot his balcony, and then we can figure out how to get to his building.”

Fueled by fear, we hurried back to the main plaza and scurried up the staircase to the cathedral, positioning ourselves directly in front of an immense crucifix. Shading her eyes against the late-morning sun, Miranda scanned the skyline. “I wish I hadn’t had that third glass of wine that night,” she said. “The view of the palace and the cathedral was great. I remember that much, but not much more than that.” She frowned, shaking her head. “
Damn
it. Why didn’t I pay more attention?”

I couldn’t resist the opening. “Hmm, maybe because you were delirious from appendicitis?” Her elbow caught me just beneath the ribs. “
Youch!
Now it’s
my
appendix that’s exploding. Come on, you know you deserved that.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry—I’m taking out my guilt on you. It’s less painful that way.” She gave me another token jab. “See? I feel better already.”

“So, the night of the winefest, you went out on the balcony. Were you standing? Perching on stools? Sitting on a stone balustrade?” She shrugged. “Doing handstands on a metal railing?”

“
Yes!
” she suddenly shouted, grabbing my arm. “That’s it—a metal railing. A cheap-ass, flimsy metal railing. One of the damn welds broke when I leaned on it. I almost fell off, from five stories up. Dogs would’ve been licking my brains off the sidewalk. Only thing that kept me from falling was a windsock I managed to grab.” She shook her head. “
That’s
why I didn’t go to bed with Stefan that night, even though I was looped and he was trying to put the moves on me. I thought,
You bastard, you let me lean on this cheap-ass, flimsy railing that could’ve killed me. You’re still the same thoughtless, selfish sonofabitch you were last time I saw you.
It’s true, Dr. B—
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
”

“Huh?”

“Old French saying. ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’”

“I prefer Eckhart’s warning about the price of inaction,” I said. “Come on, let’s look for a fifth-story balcony with a cheap-ass, flimsy metal railing.” Together we studied the buildings that overlooked the plaza, the palace, and the cathedral.

“It was a block or two away,” she said. “Maybe three. I remember rooftops between Stefan’s place and the palace.” Suddenly she smacked herself in the forehead. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what a
dumb-ass
. I took a picture from the balcony with my iPhone.” She fished out the phone and whisked her finger
across the screen, scrolling through her photos. “Here it is!” She performed a magician-like maneuver with her fingertips, and the view zoomed in, enlarging the details at the center of the photo. The image was small—not even the size of a postcard—but it was crisp enough to show three sets of tiled rooftops, a cluster of chimneys, and a thicket of television aerials between the lens and the spot where we were standing. I studied the photo, looking for distinctive features that would help me lock in on the balcony. “
Got
it,” she said, squeezing my arm again, then pointing. “The modern building? The one with the ugly TV antennas on top?”

“I see it.”

“One floor from the top, slightly left of center. See that red and blue and yellow thing? That’s the wind sock that saved my life.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

She didn’t answer. She was already halfway down the stairs.

WE TOOK TWO WRONG TURNS IN THE MAZE OF STREETS
to the west of the palace, but within twenty minutes we were standing before the glass-doored entrance to Stefan’s building. The doors were locked—not surprising—but I’d given no thought to what we’d do once we found the place.

“Now what?” I said.

She scanned the sidewalks on either side of the street, then pointed to a shoe store that was two doors down. “Come on. Have you got some money?”

“This is your idea of a plan? To buy shoes?”

“Watch and learn.”

Five minutes and ten euros later, we walked out of the shoe store, laden with shopping bags filled with shoe boxes. Empty shoe boxes. The clerk had stared at us as if we were crazy, but buying a dozen boxes was a lot cheaper than buying a dozen pairs of shoes. Our hands conspicuously full, we loitered in front of a
women’s clothing boutique next to the apartment entrance, pretending to window-shop. A saleswoman smiled and beckoned to us from inside—our bags marked us as big spenders—but Miranda fended her off with a slight shake of the head. The woman’s smile faded, and her expression shifted to disappointment, then suspicion. Suddenly Miranda hissed, “
Now!
”

A middle-aged man had just emerged from the apartments, and the door was swinging shut behind him. “
Monsieur, monsieur, s’il vous plaît,
” Miranda called. The man looked our way, and—seeing an attractive young woman struggling with an armful of packages and a faceful of smile—he caught the door and held it. Miranda sashayed inside with a “
Merci beaucoup,
” trailing feminine mystique and me in her wake.

We tucked our shopping bags behind a potted palm tree in a corner of the lobby and called the elevator. When we got off on Stefan’s floor, Miranda turned right. Walking slowly, she studied the doors on the far side of the hallway—the side facing the palace. She hesitated in front of a door marked 407, then moved on.

“Don’t you remember which one is his?”

“Sshh.”

“Wasn’t his balcony the third from the end?”

“SSHH!”
She sounded scarily like the German woman in Turin Cathedral.

Three doors from the end, at 405, she stopped and nodded, pointing at a small, half-peeled decal on the door. With the knuckle of her index finger, she rapped three times, then pressed her ear to the wood and listened. Wordlessly she shook her head. She knocked again, louder this time, and once more she listened. Nothing. She reached for the knob and slowly, slowly tried it. To my surprise, the door opened and we stepped inside.

The apartment was a mess: dirty dishes in the sink and on the kitchen counters, clothes everywhere, mail and stacks of papers strewn on every horizontal surface that wasn’t occupied by dishes. My first thought was that the place had been ransacked,
but my second thought—considering that ransackers don’t tend to smear food on plates and silverware—was that Stefan was a terrible slob. “Not exactly a neat freak,” I observed. “Was it like this the night you were here?”